Aion English and Gametime

Just a mini-update. I've been playing Aion a lot. It is pretty enjoyable, even in Korean. My Korean is terrible, but I'm understanding a bit more than I expected. Due to the nature of the questing system it is pretty easy to muddle through most in the game without too much trouble. You can always tab out and use an English quest guide of you're stuck. I've got a level 17 Chanter if anyone wants to join me on the server.

I tried the English language pack for Aion that was passed around during the Chinese beta. It doesn't seem to work. I think the Korean version and, what I'm calling, the international version have different architectures. So adding another language pack won't do it.

I also figured out how to tell how much time you have left if you buy an hour pack. When you log in you'll get a yellow message as your first chat message telling you how many hours and minutes you have left. Since I'm having fun, I'm considering buying a 30 day pass. I'll update on that if it shows anything different, but I expect it'll show an hour count and an expiry date when you log in since you have to use the 300 hours in 30 days.

JustiShow

Ever wondered what would happen if someone turned a beat-em up into a questing MMORPG? We have one in the form of Justishow. Not sure what the name means. I thought after the last few days of TK online, I'd try something different. This is not the usual fair. This is brought to us by the folks over at Mgame. As I pointed out earlier, Mgame is a portal which doesn't allow foreign sign-up. So if you want to try this game out, you'll need to get a Korean friend to create an account for you.

The install is fairly standard. Head over to the site and log-in. Click "Game start" and you'll get the usual active-x parade, and then a launcher which installs the game. You'll want to click 실행 on the installer to get it going. Also uncheck that box because it sets Mgame to your home page. Unless you really want that, I can't think of a reason why. The game will walk you through the standard install screens. Nothing surprising there. Next, next, click okay to the agreement and then it'll finish up. Once that is finished, close the launcher and head back to the main page. Click Game start and it will begin.

The game starts off in ultra low-res. Resolutions that I didn't even think existed anymore. Once you're in game you can hit escape and bring up the system menu (first choice) and change the resolution to something more palatable. Before that though you'll be presented with a character select/creation screen. The creation is fairly basic. Pick one of 3 base models and one of a few hair styles. I don't think there is any meaning to this beyond aesthetics. You'll be kicked back to the selection screen when you're done. Just click on your newly made character and hit 게임시작 to get yourself started. You'll be launched automatically into the tutorial. Its a series of messages (that you can ignore) and pictures which show you which buttons to push to do things. Run through the various screens doing the tasks and you'll eventually find yourself on a street with a guy in a trenchcoat. Important note, if you see an NPC with a red question mark it means they want to give you a quest. Stand on them and use space bar to active it. Just click the highlighted quest dialog button and then accept it. This is basically all you need to know to get going. It is fairly straight forward. Run around and beat stuff up. This is a side-scrolling beat-em up. Reminiscent of various console or arcade games.

The gameplay is done with the few keys you learn in the tutorial. After you get through a couple quests and screens you'll be deposited in a town. It has a store. All travel is done through various glowing way points. Stand on them momentarily to activate them. You'll be teleported to the next area or into a building. I only played a short while, but its a fun little casual game. If you level up, you'll get a skill point. Click the button to open the interface. It is fairly straightforward again here. Just click the litte + button next to the next skill to upgrade it. Eventually you'll get to a branching choice for which skill tree to go down. Once you have a new skill drag it to the quick menu on the right so you can activate it during combat. You can reorganize that pane as you need. Video when the site finally takes it.

TK onlne - The second day

Well it is day two of the TK online test. I got to play a full game. Only a practice game, but a full game none-the-less. It gave me a better picture of what this game is. There are other units you can get. As you upgrade your gear you can buy summon spells which summon groups of units. These are time limited but you can use them over and over, even if you have a full compliment of units. As far as I can tell if you wanted to be patient you could summon tons of units and swarm your opponent. This makes an interesting strategy where some people keep the enemy busy while you have someone in the rear protected summoning a ton of units then sweeping in and wiping out the enemies base.

I tried a couple of play modes. Death match plays for an amount of kills. These are player on player kills. Not deaths from random mobs. Also siege mode which requires you destroy the enemies base. Both are interesting. The siege mode is a long slog with many human players because it takes awhile to dig away at each team's base. Your heroes aren't that strong and expect them to die a few times. The healing potions are not that powerful. Taking one isn't an instant save and they're better used when resting between fights.

I shot a video. Its uploading now. When it is up I'll attach it. It shows some gameplay during a siege match. I'm summoning units and heading forth to attack. The heroes abilities seem to be hit and miss. I use some..but other ones don't always seem to fire when I try them. I need to pay closer attention to error messages to see if there is something up with that.

Defeating the bases are a challenge. Each base is guarded by pre-set towers. They're a little strong and if you go at them alone, probably you will die. You should take some generic units and summons with you. Each base has some buildings that spawn units who rush forward and attack. You can bolster them with summons to make larger armies. The units you summon are controllable, the base ones are not. While doing all of this you should also try to manage your inventory and crafting. It is a pretty tense game during a busy fight trying to manage everything. However, that is what makes it exciting.

Had some issues with the video update last night, here it is:

Tk online First Impressions

Sent from my iPod.
I logged in promptly at 4 as I didn't have a lot of time. Game is fun
but not an RTS. It is more of a diablo or dungeon siege light, but
with deathmatch. The game is also almost entirely in well written
English, except for a couple error messages. Which means I don't need
to provide any play instructions. I will provide screenshots and
video later as I'm on a bus.

Back home now. I'll add some screenshots here. I will try and do a video shortly to show you what the gameplay is like. Its fairly straightforward. Click the enemy you want to die, pop some potions activate a special ability or two. There is a simplistic crafting system as well you can use to make items for yourself. You gain gold as you kill enemies and there are regular infusions of gold you can use to buy these things. There is an interesting system with 2 characters. Your main fighter and an "aide". His job is to run around and buy this material for you. You control them independently.

TK online update

Well, I got an e-mail telling me there will be some kind of "double point" bonus during the test. I'm not sure if that means experience or what. It did also include a working link to the download client. You can get it here. Log-in, click download. Even works in Firefox. No IE required. The page doesn't look formatted properly, but it works. Not big around 320MB or so. Once its down, run the install. You actually get an English install choice. You can run it when it is done. There will be a launcher, click update and then start the game. You can't play now, you can get the log-in screen. It will fail to connect, but with English log-in prompts and an English error message. This game just gets weirder and weirder for a Korean game. I'm all for easy, but its certainly breaking the mold. I don't know how much will end up being in English, I suspect they didn't write any of the flavor text in English, but maybe some menus and other options might be in English. If enough foreigners check it out maybe we could convince them to translate the flavor text.

TK online Group Test

Awhile ago I commented on two seemingly defunct Korean RTS games. One of them, TK online, has come back to life. I was surprised to see an email for them in my inbox. They've announced a group test from October 15th to 25th. Running from 4 pm to midnight every night. Good news is that even though it is a stand-alone site, you don't even need an ID to make an account. It just verifies your e-mail address. So get signed up and try it out. It will start tomorrow night.

First head over to the official site and click the registration link under the login box on the left. If you are not familiar with what the registration link looks like, its on the left, black button labeled "회원가입". After doing so you will get this lovely pop-up to the right. The upper button just shows us the poster, the lower button starts the registration process. You will then get our standard ToS checkbox questions, click the left most check boxes after each one. I don't know what the right one does, but I expect its the "I don't agree boxes". On the next screen you'll input a name (use Korean, make anything up if you want), then you will have to enter your e-mail address on the next line. Then press the gray button. After pressing this, the site will send you an e-mail. Go check it and get the code, put that code on the last line and press the ever familiar and wonderful "확인" to continue. On the next page you're going to pick out a few miscellaneous details, like your user name, password, gender, age, and "Do you want to get our spam/updates" radio button. After setting all those obvious fields press "확인", and that is it, finished. Fantastically easy. You can log-in now if you want, but you can't download the client yet. It just generates that same pop-up about registering. Even though I'm logged in. Perhaps the client download will be available tomorrow night. If not, its going to be a very boring group test. So for now, I have no screenshots or videos that I can show. Not my own anyway, I found a couple random ones on the site. Though these shots make them look almost like different games. I think there is a persistent hero that levels up in all your games that you play. You can get items, etc for him.

Steeldog Video

I found a video of gameplay for Steeldog. As I expected, the game is all about vehicular combat. The video is from the closed beta and shows a deathmatch. I think this is taking place between two users. The vehicles seem very agile. Able to jump and zip around the screen, even in mid flight. They also seem capable of spawning walls, cages and other hazards. I can't find any info on when the closed betas are going to end. I think Korean companies don't like to commit that kind of information to public record in case they don't make the deadline. It looks like it could be interesting, but I expect if its simply player versus player it could be challenging for someone who isn't fluent in Korean if there is much customization on the vehicles. It might be difficult to figure out what all the options do. I hope they'll release it soon.

Aion

I finally decided to give Aion a try. Anyone who likes games and has a pulse has heard about it coming out. The game has been out for almost a year in Korea, but last month was released to the rest of the world in English. While I haven't found a way to run the English client on the Korean servers, it does give us access to plenty of English quest guides and info on the game. The games are mostly the same. For those who want to play the game fully in English apparently the North American version of the game is not region locked, so you can buy a copy stateside or a key online and download the client and get a month plan back home and set it up.

So why play the Korean version? The client is free. Lower ping. Got a Korean gaming friend? You can play together. With the time difference to your home country it might be hard to play with any friends back home. Also if you're at a PC방 you can play Aion. You won't find the US version of the game installed in any PC방.

Aion is the first non-free Korean game that I've tried. So the process is slightly more involved than a normal one. It was slightly confusing, and because I did it out of process, we're going to follow that method. So head over to the Aion site and follow along. First thing is to make sure you have your account verified with a cellphone. If you don't, my instructions won't completely help you. So if your ARC doesn't match your cellphone, get the ID that does. In my case, a friend helped me set up the cellphone, so I used their ID to make my account on this site.

Often the game can be installed by clicking start. The site usually detects that you don't have the game installed. It does that, to a certain degree. Clicking game start will launch a pop-up. You need to click the left blue button. This will install some activex and install the PlayNC Launcher. Great right? No, because for some reason Aion can't be downloaded via the PlayNC Launcher like other games. Why? I'm not sure, but I'm going to guess sunspots. So what you need to do after the launcher is installed is to click below the start button on 클라이언트 다운로드. It is the left longer button. This will cause a new pop-up, a round of activex and a new special downloader for Aion. Its several GB, and took me around 20 minutes to download. Once it is downloaded it will auto-install. Once that is done, resist the urge to click game start again. Since we have to pay for this game, we'll need to actually pay for it first. If you start it, it gives an error about something being expired. Just below the user information box we'll see the word 결제. They have conveniently made the word bold. Clicking this takes you to the payment option screen.

Having the account verified with your cellphone is about to come in very handy. We're going to use our cellphones to pay for the game time. You can see they have a couple plans. A monthly plan (non-recurring I believe), a 3 month pack, a 30 hour pack and a 3 hour pack. I have no idea who the 3 hour pack is for. I guess someone who just wants a taste. I chose the 30 hour pack as I tend to play in spurts. Decide which pack you want and click "구매" below. You will be taken to a new page showing the cost of your item. In the #3 section you can see payment choice. I have no idea what ARS is, and the last choice appears to be through online credit card/debit. The first choice is to pay with your phone. It should be checked by default. Leave it checked and click on 결제 again. At this point you'll get a pop-up asking you to verify your ID number, and punch in your phone number. This will send you a text message with a secret code. Type that in on the website after you've received it and you'll get another text indicating you've paid. At this point your account is all topped up. After buying the 30 hours, I cannot seem to find a place to figure out how many hours I have left. I have a feeling I'll get a text message or some kind of warning when I'm getting low.

Now that you have paid for your account, you're set. Go back to the main page, click on start and the game should launch. You'll get the PlayNC launcher (which now works) and a pop-up with info about the servers. This is information about which races can be played on each server. Most are okay but some servers are maxed out on some races. If they're red, you can't play that race on that server as far as I can tell. The blue column 천 is for the sky people and the brown column 마 is for the bad guys. 마 translates to demons or devil. I'm currently playing on the last server on the list, 우르툼. It was the top server when I logged in, so I just went with that.

After the game starts you're going to get an agreement form. It comes up every time. I can't find a button to disable it. Click the left button and you can continue. You'll be able to pick your server at this point. If you want to pick the same server as me and send me a message in game, go ahead. I'm not that high of a level yet. Character creation is pretty straight forward. You can muddle through it without any help. Pick good or bad, pick a class, play with sliders for body shape/facial features. Once you are in the game there is a lot of leading by the nose. So you can probably do pretty well without reading any Korean at all. My Korean is pretty basic, I've looked at the odd word in my dictionary, but mostly I've used an English wiki. It is PlayNCs official UK wiki for the game. You can check that out here. It has quest lists, with locations, pictures, everything. They are also working on an interface for the iphone. So when that shows up, or if you have an ipod touch, you can use that as a companion for the game if you get stuck. There is a link to it on the main Aion page. Just look for the icon on the left and it'll take you through to the app store. It's currently in Korean but they've stated that they're working on an English interface as well. It will probably connect to the NA or UK version of the wiki. In game performance is fine for me. Chugging a little at 1920x1200 in the big city, but otherwise its relatively smooth even on my aging laptop. It seems to autodetect the settings, but you can find the options menu in there and play with the sliders if you want. The only thing I did was to disable AA. My old 7950 GTX shouldn't really be trying to take on AA. I'm uploading vids and screenshots, but if you want more, they are pretty easy to find these days.

New Comment System

Nothing about a game, but I added a new comment system to the blog. It should work better and lets you use various accounts to comment, including facebook, twitter, etc. You can also embed images now. So if you're having trouble with something you can embed a screenshot and maybe I can help out. The comment system is called Echo. It also features real time posting, meaning that it will update the comment thread without reloading the page.

Landmass update, imbc

I had previously been asked to try Landmass. Its a first person shooter with battle suits. Cool trailer. Interesting screenshots. Website is a dud. The free board is full of people wanting to play. The game portal is run by MBC, one of the TV channels here. Its the equivalent of the NBC gaming portal. You can imagine how well something like that would be run back home. After logging in, I need to agree to a set of terms and when I click okay, the page gives an HTTP 500 error. Same error trying to access a lot of screenshots, free board posts, etc. The site last had news in March, but since then nada. I don't know if its abandoned or what. I will check back later and see if they've straightened it out.

The good news is that the IMBC game portal is very foreigner friendly. They allow in English account creation for foreigners. Both in Korea and living abroad. For those living in Korea you need to fax your ARC over or attach an image of your ARC for the account verification. The instructions are completely in English so I don't need to walk you through it. Just go to any game page and click the familiar registration button and you'll be taken to the IMBC site to process your registration. You get games but also a lot of other content. There are only a small number of games there, there is a soccer game, a couple MMORPGs, and a 3D dancing program called On Air. I'm probably not going to talk about that one so if you want to try it out go ahead. Really this is only useful if you want some MBC content or Landmass becomes operational again. There is possibly a fishing game but its also down right now.

Nolto and Metalblack

Nolto is another small games portal. It doesn't allow foreign sign-up, and seems to focus mainly on MMORPGs and casual games. Not terribly interesting unless you're fluent in Korean, or want a different site to play Jang-gi on for some reason. The reason I mention it is because it is the site which will host Berkanix. What is Berkanix? Well I don't know exactly. It is currently in the teaser stage. However it looks like they are going to target a western audience with this game as well as a Korean one. The teaser site contains an English site. It has 3 episodes, a couple of minor flash games to drive those episodes and a bit of a trailer. Beyond that there isn't much information. I don't know if it is going to be an MMORPG or FPS. However if it is in English, then either is fine for us. Let's just hope if its an MMORPG the English version can be played in Korea. This might be worth watching.

Awhile ago I mentioned that MetalBlack was in development over at Plaync. Well its still in development, but there is a new trailer with more details up. Including some detailed gameplay. I updated the old post because the old trailer was no longer there. It looks like diablo with guns, but interesting. Steel dogs is still in closed beta. There hasn't been too much released yet this year. I'm currently keeping an eye on Hessian. Its an FPS with cover, I think similar to gears of war. Looks pretty decent. Also has neck breaking finish moves. I'll post on that if I can get more info. It is currently in closed beta.

Age of Seventh Dragon

Age of Seventh Dragon is a web-based strategy game. You're probably familiar with these style of games. They're completely browser based. There are plenty of these out there and while you could just as easily play one in English, this one has a couple of interesting features and of course its in Korean which always gives us an opportunity to pick up some vocabulary. The first thing that works to our benefit is that since these are browser based you can copy and paste just about everything and run it through google. Google doesn't do a bad job translating most of it. It is all fairly easy to understand. The game is run through a small portal called "Webgamech". I haven't tried the other 2 games yet but they may be web-based as well. This also means you can play them easily at work if you want. There isn't anything to install, but you'll need an account. This one doesn't let you use your ARC, so time to order pizza again and call your friend. I'll wait....okay I assume you've got an account now.

Head over to the website and click the big game start button and the first thing that will happen is you'll be asked to log in again. Once you've typed your password again, you will be asked to choose a server. There are currently 5 servers. Number 5 is the newest and currently has a little "new" icon beside it. You can have a game on all servers, so don't worry about making a permanent choice. The other servers are just more established which makes it more difficult to get started. Even the new server is a little crowded already. After you pick a server, if it is your first time, you'll be presented with the game set-up screen. This screen will let you type your Lord's name, pick your race, starting region, and if you have a coupon enter it. I have no idea what the coupons are. Now that you've set all that, click on the button at the bottom and your game will start. You'll be presented with an option for a tutorial. It is all reading and in Korean. Some pictures, but I didn't see anything overly helpful there. You're better off clicking around until you get the hang of where everything is. First thing we'll see is the main game screen. This is the screen you'll do most stuff from. You can click the empty green squares to build something or existing buildings to upgrade them. Every building has tons of levels. The first thing you need to do is upgrade your farm in the lower left. You can't do anything until you do that first. To do that you can just click it and then you'll see a link in there for upgrading/building. As I mentioned earlier any time you want to translate something you can copy it and throw it in google, its fairly good at giving back something readable on these descriptions. Across the top of the screen you have choices for "City", "Hero", "Map", "Guild", "Market", "Ranking". The hero screen lets you put equipment on your heroes and see their stats. The map screen lets you view the world around you and interact with it. The other ones are fairly self-explanatory.

As with most games the point here is to build yourself up and take over the world. So far I've managed to put together a few buildings, a couple soldiers and attack some trees. I also took over a distant crystal mine. you can use the resources you have (upgrading them for big bonuses) and if you find resources on the map, take those. Every game I've been in all the resources are already claimed, but I did find 1 free crystal mine and took that. Non-resource squares let you send armies in to fight enemies of some sort and hunt for random elemental crystals. No idea what those do yet.

I've only scratched the surface of this game, but its completely playable without any Korean skill. All the actions are time based, not turn point based. So you don't have X actions per day. You can come back in a few hours after you've made some resources and do more stuff. Build buildings, attack squares, etc You'll see a countdown on the right of the main city screen about your actions. If you need gold, you can click the town hall and there is a link to gather 200 GP in taxes. When you make heroes and armies those will get listed on the main screen as well. The time required for attacks is based on how far away the square is. First you'll have to walk there, then your guys will attack, then they will walk back. You will get a message with a battle report (mostly readable). As I figure out more things about this game I'll post updates.

Jang-gi

Jang-gi is Korean Chess. If you've played western chess at all, you can probably learn Jang-gi quite quickly. I learned to play it on my cell phone and in a couple of weeks of playing it on the subway I learned the moves well and could play a decent game against the second lowest level. It can sometimes be hard to find real opponents to play against, and if you want to play against a friend who is far away you might need an online venue to do that. Since Pmang even allows foreign sign-ups for people not in Korea, with a little fudging, you can play against people back home too. I'm not going to talk about the rules here, but more how to get the application up and running and annotate all the various options. If you want to read the rules you can read about it here and here

First up after you cruise to the site you'll get a menu with various town choices. These indicate a level of play. If it is your first time I recommend free play or the beginner level. After you choose one you'll get a couple pop-ups and the pmang installer will do its thing. As always if this is your first time to the site, you'll have to install a few activex controls. After choosing a town you'll get the main lobby. If you want to you can change the room, but unless you're meeting someone in a specific room you probably don't need to. There are various options including the ability to watch a game in progress. This lets you jump into any game which isn't limited to 2 players and observe it. While in the game you also have the option of rewinding it and watching the moves up to that point. You can report a room, but I don't know what that entails and it is probably unnecessary. Also you can create your own room. There is a chat at the bottom. If you click on create a room you'll get a little pop-up. You can pick a title for the room, set the limit on how many people can join, and set a password. The join limit is for limiting observers. The minimum you can set is 2, or you can choose 4, 10 or unlimited. I can't possibly imagine why you'd want to arbitrarily limit a game to X amount of observers but you can.

Once you're in a game you'll have a choice to set things like take-back, time limits, move limits, etc. You can also switch your horse and elephants position if you like before the game starts. I'm not exactly sure what 접장기 is. I believe you can also use the grayed out button to switch sides. In this particular game I think the room owner took his side and I was forced to play the other side. As well there are various buttons you can do things with down on the right hand side. They includes help (in Korean), options, invite another player, and screenshot. If you are watching a game you will see controls under one players name where you can back up moves or move forward to see current moves.
Of course I won't be posting a video of this because it is a board game. Not very exciting to watch. The interface is fairly simple to use and if you're interested in playing Janggi this is probably a good choice. I tried to play it on Hangame but that site required some strange verification process before you could start, I think because on hangame you can play for real money. I couldn't do the verification because my Korean cell phone is not in my name a friend helped me create the account and I used my foreign ID to create the hangame account. The names don't match. I'd have to make a new account using my friend's ID.

If you have an SK cellphone and want to play Jang-gi on the go, I recommend World Chess/Janggi 2. It includes western chess and Jang-gi in one game. Practice games of various levels and tournaments. If your phone is bluetooth enabled you can play a bluetooth game against a friend who has the same.

Metal Rage

After a bit of a hiatus, I'm back with a new game. This is another shooter, but this one comes in the form of giant robot fighting. Metal Rage is run by a very small portal called GameHi. Unlike other portals they don't really have a main page. The site basically consists of three sub-sites for the three games they have a customer center if you try to go to the main GameHi website. They have an MMORPG and Sudden Attack, another FPS. This site will require you to have your Korean friend sign up for you using their ID. So I won't be walking through the sign-up. Even though the name field is very long, attempts to use my Foreign ID resulted in it telling me to choose "Under 14" when I had chosen adult, then after choosing "Under 14" I was met with an error that said there was a problem with the name.

The website is pretty easy to navigate. After you're logged in, click game start. It'll install a couple activex controls. After those are installed it'll direct you to the client download page. Click the download link and you will get a pop-up. Click "확인" and you will get the installer. Like many installers before it, you can change the folder if you really want or just hit "젼송시작" and let it do its thing. After it downloads 100% that button will change, and you can press it again to install. Once it's finished installing you might want to delete the setup file. This isn't done automatically and it's around 1.1 GB.

The menu is fairly simple and not much needs to be touched. I went to the options and maxed the resolution. Again on my laptop with max resolution the game ran and looked great. I didn't get any slow-ups except when I was taking my fraps video. The inventory/store button is the same. One useful choice is the game type sort/filter. This one presents a drop-down menu that lets you pick the game type and sorts based on that. Very handy for finding a specific type of game. All my photos and videos are from deathmatch. The cards are some kind of buyable/reward object. I haven't completely figured them out. I have 2, they look like weapons, but I can't find them in the store.
The store/inventory is fairly normal, except it also lets you choose which four mechs you want to take on a mission. You have many choices but you can only have four at a time in your bay. To swap them just select one that isn't in the bay and double click it and it'll be moved to the bay slot. From there you can buy new weapons, choose which ones you want to take, etc. There are a lot of choices here and you could probably spend quite some time setting mechs up. I might get into that later. I swapped out a couple mechs after a match or two just to try them and jumped into some games.

Gameplay is standard FPS fair. Move. Shoot. Die. No headshots though..so that was nice. The repair mech is also the turret builder, so you get a two for one deal here. There is a sniper mech, also a mech who can immobilize and turn into a giant cannon with a shield, and many other interesting abilities and guns. I quite liked this one, and I expect to play it quite a bit more. Currently its in open beta, so there is a chance some things might change.

Sting Part 2 - Gameplay

Sting gameplay can be summed up in one word: Headshot. This game seems to have the most headshots out of any of the FPS games I've played. My first few games seem to have been non-stop headshots and I would guess that in the first 5 matches I died about 70% of the time from headshots. Which is why there won't be an immediate video for this game. I'm trying to get up the gumption to go back in to it.

As with many games you gain some points as you play. You can use these points for guns, aesthetics, and skills. Skills are some abilities that you can have. One is healing, one is speed and one is respawn speed (I think, I didn't actually try that one). The abilities recharge over time. 3 levels total. The longer you let them charge the more benefit you get. Let the healing go to level 1, you get 10 health, level 2, 30 health and level 3 50 health. It takes time, so you better hope you're good at staying alive. I never got to use it for more than 50 and then 10 more before I got killed. The screenshot is a rare moment when I was not dead and near an enemy. The headshot hit box seems to start around mid ankle and run to about 5 feet above your head. The only time I didn't seem to die from a headshot was the rare time they killed me instantly with what appeared to be a heartshot. This is one of the roughest twitchiest shooters I've played. This is a shame because the graphics are nice, and the skill feature is very interesting. It adds a little strategy and depth.

The character classes are interesting, and as I said you can have 4. If you want to switch you actually have to exit the match and pick a different one. Each one progresses independently in terms of points, weapons, skills, etc. Each class is a different nationality. No Canadian, but there is an American. Gameplay modes are currently limited. The game is new and growing. Most of what I saw was team deathmatch. I don't know what else is currently there as I didn't really see anything else available. This game does have bots. Headshot loving bots. Some maps will let you play against a team of bots. You can even create private rooms with some bots if you want to play alone. Maybe just for practice. The bots are not pushovers. Everything is fairly intuitive, one thing to note is when your item expires, you can repurchase it for a discount. So don't go buy a new one. go to your inventory and buy it for a discount. I made this mistake and when I went to my inventory to equip stuff I found the old stuff still there but grayed out. Clicking it gave me an option to buy it again. Nice option and also unique.

In conclusion I personally won't be playing this one a lot. It has some nice features, but I find the headshot feature a total killer. I don't know if this is fully out of beta yet. I didn't really see any cash items so maybe not. In that case there is hope that they will shrink the headshot box down by about 90%. If you want to have a look at the new features it might be worth it for that reason. You might find the twitchiness okay. I'll tack the video on the end of this post perhaps tomorrow if I can get up the energy to go back in.

Sting Part 1 - Installation and Menus

I was going to do a different game today, but someone asked me about FPS games so I tried this out yesterday to see how it was. Sting is a FPS on an independent site. The game is made by YNK games who are responsible for a couple of mmorpgs and who also has a 2D flying game in pre-beta. From my searching on Naver this seems to be one of the newest FPS in Korea. So if you want to get in on the ground floor, you might want to try it out. It has several unique features will I discuss in gameplay. First off you'll need a Korean to sign up for you. It only takes 4 characters for name input.

Once you have an account, you'll have to click repeatedly on the gamestart link to install a couple of activex controls (at this point my computer is like a poster child for activex control addiction) and then launch the installer. This installer isn't a normal launcher so you won't see it again after you install it. Which means no screenshot, but it is relatively simple to navigate. You'll get the regular buttons letting you pick a folder to put the download in and then you can press go. It'll download and you can again hit go to launch the install. When the install finishes, the installer doesn't go away. You have to close it. After you close it you go back to the website and press game start again. Unlike other installers it doesn't auto-close or change in to a launch button.

Once you're in game you'll be prompted to pick a graphical settings level. Pick the right most to get the highest quality. I get decent performance on my machine at 1920x1200 on that setting. You need to manually adjust the resolution later. Next you'll be prompted to create a character. This is one of the ways this game differs from other games. You can't just change your class on the fly in this game. You can have up to 4 characters of different classes (or the same one..but why?) and if you want to change them you'll have to exit the current match. You build up their gear, points, ranking, etc independently. After you've created your first character you can jump in to the channel. The first screen is a general or clan select. Pick the top choice. It will auto-select a channel.

From the main screen you can do a lot of normal things. Inventory, manage your characters (and switch them), and get to the settings area. Exiting here will actually take you back to the channel select if you want to jump around the channels to find more games or different games. Items in the game are purchased on time again. You guy buy things for a set period of days. A note on hangul for this game. I mentioned in Pointblank how I had trouble using alt-shift to switch the input language. This game blocks it all. I have no idea why. The only way I could type in hangul in this game was to change my default input language to Korean and restart. You will still type in English letters by default, it just means the language bar will be sitting on Ko and not En when windows starts. You can use the right alt key to toggle between hangul and english letters. This solves the problems in all games. Tomorrow, gameplay!