Well, as I started poking around there are in fact a few more upcoming games. Always upcoming. Who knows when we'll actually see them. The new buzzword this year is "Hyper FPS" I've seen a couple games referred to as that. I have no idea what it means, but I suspect it has to do with some kind of fast paced game-play.
Davinci Online is an upcoming Hyper FPS from Bridea. Not much on it yet, but it seems to be set around the time period of Davinci. This may be going the Warcry route. I did find this video:
Next up is IOB. Not sure what it stands for, but it's the next WW2 shooter. I know you haven't played one in awhile, but Karma was rather underwhelming in the scheme of things, so perhaps this will be better. It again has little out but a few screenshots, and a video.
We've actually got a FPS over at Nolto. Project Mercury. It's a stylized shooter and if you're reading this when I'm posting it, there is 1 more day of a beta test. Not sure if it's automatic, but I think I can access it. If so, I'll post some vids and screens. It has an interesting retro style, so it might prove entertaining.
Netmarble, have I mentioned they still haven't fixed their sign-up issues? Regardless they have a Hyper FPS coming called Ground Zero. They don't have any videos worth looking at on their page. Just a bunch of 5 second videos showing various attacks/abilities.
I was just thinking about doing my latest round of infrequent updates to catch up on what games have become available, but the answer seems to be not much, and we've lost some of the existing games.
Pointblank joins the ranks of the closed FPS. It's a shame, because the game still looked good, and when I last played it a couple months back, the community still seemed to be there. PlayNC seems to be moving to focus solely on MMORPGs and casual games.
Also, Another Day has closed as well. This is no surprise as the community was pretty dead when I was last there, but don't let that reflect on the quality of the game. It was a decent shooter.
Psychic Online, Metal Black, Dizzel, Metro and Gundog are still "Coming soon", so who knows when we'll see them.
Born to Fire seems to be the only new FPS game these days. The FPS scene in Korea is getting small. We've had 6 FPS shooters close recently, while only gaining 1. It's left some portals without a FPS that previously had some. I don't know if FPS in general are getting less popular, but it seems like MMORPGs are the big money makers as most portals, except Pmang, have many more MMORPGs than FPSs.
Wolf-team has found itself a new host. It's not longer on Hangame and can be found at Softnyx. A bonus to this move is that the site does not require any ID card to sign-up. You can sign-up with any information you want, and even make multiple accounts if you need to. The sign-up is straight forward. The only thing I found was that my ID was in use, but my password didn't work. Strange, as I've never had my ID taken on another Korean site before. I'm not sure if user data got transferred with the game, but if it did, it's not working properly. The site doesn't seem to use Active-X and this now runs from a downloaded client and also has global servers.
Another Day is a first person shooter from Allstar. It's in open beta, which like all other open betas basically means it is out. I played this last year during a test and it didn't perform that well. Now, on my new machine with everything set to max it seems to play just fine. I didn't notice any framerate issues during gameplay. To get it installed, head over to the site and login. As an additional note you might see no rooms when you login. Click the "채널이동" in the middle of the screen. This will take you to the channel select screen. Choose "일반 채널" which puts you in the general channel. You might have defaulted to the beginner channel, which is usually empty. Though, don't expect a lot of players. While an interesting shooter, it hasn't gained that much traction yet. Allstar is not a major portal.
Install is pretty straight forward. Press game start a couple times and get your usual round of pop-ups asking for permission to install various controls, etc. Once you get the installer panel you see to the right, push the lower left button "전송시작". That will start the download. After the download is finished, the button will change text, push it again to start the actual install. Basically keep pressing "다음" through the whole install and accept terms when they appear. It's not a huge download or a long install, so it shouldn't take you a long time.
Once in the game you'll want to go to the options and up your screen resolution and up the various settings. This game defaults to very low settings, and once or twice during the game I noticed that it actually reset itself to low settings, I had to jump into the options in game and set them to high again. I'm not sure why it did that. The model in the shot on the left is on low settings. You can see the very muddy armor. The option menu is of course the one with the gear icon in the upper right. Once in there go to the "비디오" tab, which is the third one and make sure everything is set to "상" which means high. "하" is low and "중" is mid.
Guns are fairly standard in this game. You can carry multiple guns dependent on size. You'll see a "+X" number at the bottom, this translates to how much more you can carry, but different sized guns take up a different amount of space. A big gun might take 4 or 5. In the equipment screen you'll want to drag the guns you want to use down to the equipment bar for each class. What makes this game special are the suits. Your suits can come equipped with jump jets for your 2 battle classes, while the sniper can come equipped with a cloak. You can by better helmets, suits and packs that house your jump jets and cloaks. The helmets are interesting in that they have a function in game. If your helmet gets shot, you'll see broken glass and you might lose your radar if your helmet is blown completely off. I don't have a shot of that, but in the video below you can see me blowing the helmet off someone. He would have seen broken glass as it was hit. The jump jets can propel you quite far ahead or you can use them for short bursts to the side to avoid fire, a grenade, or an enemy with a hand-held ripper.
The maps are interesting and varied with a good mix of outdoors, inside, tunnels and even air ducts present on a lot of maps. There isn't really anything to interact with on the map, but some maps have doors present that you can open. It could add strategy but the matches are you usually too fast to really use those. You won't find a lot of places where a team could hole up and defend. So this is mostly a chaotic run and gun. There are lots of places for an ambush though, so it's pretty easy to get the drop on someone if you can find a safe place behind a barrel or some boxes. However, you want to change location after that because they do get a camera on you after they've died. They'll be expecting you next time. The radar shows enemies well so if an enemy spots you, you can be sure any nearby enemies know you're around. So picking ambush spots and moving around is a good way to add up the bodies.
This is a good looking shooter. It performs well and it has a couple of innovative features like the suit and the way the helmet can be blown off. It makes for a pretty fast paced and interesting game as people jump around the map firing at each other. You have to be able to spin fast and shoot as the guy you have lined up suddenly rockets past you and blows you away from behind. The only real problem is lack of players. There is always at least 1 game going on, but you don't have a lot of choices if there is some shark in there destroying everyone, or they all want to play bomb maps and you just want a straight out deathmatch. It's worth checking out, but if the body count picks up, it's a definite must-play
The Psychic Online "Guerrilla Test" begins today. It runs until the 24th but it's only open from 5-7pm each day. Kind of a short window. I think I'll be able to take advantage of a few minutes today before I must head out. Tomorrow I think I can probably put in a couple hours and try and get some screenshots and a video. They don't seem to be letting us download the client ahead of time so that is only going to cause delay.
Battery entered open beta on the 11th of this month. I got to playing it on Sunday night when I was taking a break from Warcry. It has a few different features which make it a bit unique, but also a bit of a challenge to play. I've only put a few hours into it so far, but I'll comment on what I've experienced so far.
The first thing you'll notice when jumping into this game is that there are health packs. Yes, you can actually make a nice run at getting tons of kills and make up for the occasional lapse with health packs. Enemies will randomly drop a few things. They almost always drop their weapon, which you can grab to replace yours if you run out of bullets. They sometimes drop health packs, and even rarer they'll drop power-ups that allow you to call in artillery or an attack chopper. These power-ups are powerful for a couple reasons. One, they do massive damage. The artillery can really pound a side, and the helicopter flies all over the map automatically attacking the other side. The helicopter can be shot down if someone grabs some rockets though. Two, the player who calls them in gets credit for the kills. A helicopter who gets on a run could easily add a dozen to your kill record. These can be called tons of times each round by both teams.
The guns seem fairly standard and deteriorates over time. So you'll need to repair them as you go. Repairs don't seem overly expensive. Some guns can't be repaired. On your inventory screen you'll see them as the guns that have some extra text on their boxes. You can "win" guns and other bonuses as part of a post round lottery. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but after each round, 2 spinners come up and various prizes and things can be won. I've received a gun, bonuses to XP, money, etc. I'm still investigating the full system of how everything works. I tried to change my default gun and I can't seem to use my grenade anymore in game. I'm sure there is a good reason for that.
Finally the other major change I noticed is that there is no set base in this game. Both teams will start at a fixed location but if your base is invaded by the other team who camps it, your spawn will change to another empty location on the map. The map I played several times seemed to have 4 major spawn points. I don't know what happens if the other team spreads out in those locations. I've never seen a side try it. This is interesting, but also a little chaotic. You're advancing on an enemy and suddenly they are popping up behind you. There are also fixed gun emplacements around the map. These work on a heat system. Heat goes up quickly then you've got to give it a break. Short infrequent bursts are the best way to use it. An incoming horde actually won't take a lot of damage from it as you'll quickly overheat and it takes awhile to cool down. You can also pick up a flamethrower as an extra on map weapon instead of a rocket launcher. This is a pretty quick kill weapon. There is also partially regenerating health. If you take massive damage but survive, your health will regenerate to 50%. Beyond that you'll need medkits to heal. Each one is good for 25%.
I think I'll stick with this for right now. Get a few more hours in and investigate the system a little more. Warcry is still on hold, as is Born to fire. I shot as mall gameplay video in which you can see the fixed emplacement and a bit of a go against bots. The bots aren't entirely pushovers in this, much like the bots in Sting.
As Stanly mentioned in another comment, Born to Fire was playable the past few days as a partially open beta. However, I think it's finished if I'm reading the notice correctly. When I hit play its announcing that the "real" open beta is coming December 2. So I wasn't able to play it, but they do have a bit of a funny intro video up on the site. It seems to suggest there will be a medic class in this game.
Undead Defense Champion is a bit of an oddity. Despite the website address this game isn't an online game. This is a free to download zombie defense game. Download and set-up is pretty easy. You don't even need an account. Head over to the site, click the link, wait for the main site to come up and choose "game download". Install, during which you can choose an English option, and you're done. The English choice seems to only be for the installer. The game itself is still in Korean, but it's pretty easy to figure out.
Controls are standard for a game of this kind. You can carry 4 weapons at once. A knife, grenades, a pistol and one main weapon. As you defend against the zombies different areas will open up and you can get additional weapons in those areas. Hit 'E' to swap weapons. The menu is fairly straight forward. Half in English. I just changed the resolution to 1920x1200 and set it to "high". According to fraps I was getting about 40~ frames per second. It's a decent looking game.
The game progresses in rounds. After you clear all the zombies in the round a new round will start. There does seem to be a time component as well. If you don't finish one fast enough and there is one or two stragglers it will start a new round. There are a few "boss" rounds where there are some very tough zombies. One of the most difficult I've found so far is round 20 where there are 3 or more chainsaw wielding zombies. They're very tough and the second time through I didn't pass them. The game can go on for up to an hour. I assume, I haven't gotten past about 30~ minutes so far. You have 2 extra lives to help you last. Some zombies will spawn with guns later on, and zombies will have various speeds and toughness mixed together. Sometimes they will be both fast and strong. you want to be fleeing and dropping grenades or shooting backwards at that point.
The pathing is a bit off in this game. There is a spot where you can stand, pictured below, where if you step through the doors most of the zombies will turn around and go back around the other way. If you're in a bad way it's a good spot to exploit the AI and pick off a couple and step back through causing them to turn around. This does not always work. I would say only about 70% of the time so far. If zombies are close to you they will follow you through and the odd one will charge through anyway, so don't completely rely on this trick. It's pictured right and you can see me exploit it at the end of the video. If your health is below 25 when the round ends you'll be bumped to 25. Zombies will drop ammo boxes and med-kits. Med-kits seem to heal around 50%. Other than that, there is another bug where zombies will just walk over stuff, including debris. There is fire on the stairs. Don't try to jump over it you won't make it and you'll die fast. You cannot use the fire extinguisher you find in one hallway near the trick corner either. Trying to open it does nothing and it's very explosive. After the 20th level you need to head upstairs or you'll catch on fire.
All in all it is a pretty fun game. A good time killer. I'm hoping to make it to the end sometime and see if there is anything special there or not. I just need a good strategy for the chainsaw zombies.
Thanks to Stanly for pointing this one out. Battery is a first person shooter due out this summer. I missed it because it isn't directly connected with any game portal. Even though Naver does a pretty good job of indexing new games, I still find games I miss from time to time. All I know so far is that it's coming out this summer, and they are using motion capture for the models. I'm going to attach a few screenshots I found. This is being brought out by Webzen and seems like it will run on an independent site and not as part of a portal. Webzen is also responsible for Huxley and if you have an account from the old Huxley website, it looks like it works. I seem to have an account already for this game and the only way I can imagine having it was from when I created an account for Huxley last year.
Looks like Warcry is finally going to be open for play. June 18-20 will see the game open up. I will do my best to get on for a bit and record some video and get a few screen shots. Maybe we'll get a chance to find out if this is going to be interesting or not.
Battlestar is entering "pre-open beta" on the 10th. Not sure exactly what that is, but maybe it means that open beta is not that far off. You can watch a decent video on the main page right now that shows off the game. It looks like a very interesting FPS/RTS combo similar to Natural Selection, if you remember that old Half Life mod from long ago.
Apex just finished a closed beta test a week ago. Hopefully we'll see an open beta before too long.
Blackshot is a first person shooter from Gametree. I have also found the game in beta on a site in Germany. I haven't checked that version out yet, but I assume that this version has a much lower ping. As I mentioned before Gametree doesn't allow foreigner registration. So either borrow a friend's ID or get them to make an account for you. Once done, head over to the site.
Installation is straightforward. Hit Game start. It'll give you a pop-up about downloading the game. Hit Okay. It'll ask where you want the download, choose a place and let it go. In the screenshot you'll notice I unchecked a box. This box sets Gametree as your home page. So probably you want to uncheck it. After it's done downloading, installation will start automatically. Next next that to completion then head back to the page. Hit Game start again and it'll give you some message about an update. Press game start a third time and it'll launch the update launcher. Once that is done, it'll auto start the game. Once in the game you'll be allowed to make a character.
For some reason I can only choose female characters. Perhaps because my friend's ID is female or maybe you need to unlock the male characters. It's rather odd, and there doesn't seem to be much explanation yet. My choices seem to be either a skinny scout or a rather hefty M16 toting linebacker. I'm going with the scout as I like to do a lot of running around and flanking at times. I'll update later if I'm able to unlock the other characters. There are two character slots available. I'm not sure if that is the max or if more can be unlocked.
Blackshot offers some unique gaming modes. One of those modes is some kind of bunker defense game. You can play solo or with up to 3 companions. The goal is to defend the bunker for around 8 minutes. Enemies will constantly spawn and sometimes some of those enemies will be suicide bombers making a dash for your bunker. You need to keep the bunker intact so the more enemies you kill and especially the bombers, who take 2% off per explosion, the longer it stays alive. After it's over you get some XP, and both times I tried it I got a free piece of armor. Once or twice random helicopters will show up and clear the area for you. Some of the enemies will drop grenades and guns but you can't leave the bunker. You need to mouse over them, they will have a green icon, and press "G". You'll auto-equip them. You can only carry one gun, so you'll switch out the one you have. Your pistol has unlimited ammo.
I played this for a few hours tonight, the intro was written a few hours before and I stopped to play, and all I can say is that it is rough. Compared to Unit, there seems to be a steep "getting used to it" curve. It will be hard to avoid comparing this to Unit since I'm enjoying Unit more than I thought. Right now I'm ranked around #100 overall in Unit. On Blackshot I don't think they've invented a number low enough to describe my rank. I was going 1/15 in my early games. I got slightly better as it progressed but I never surpassed a 1:2 kill:death ratio. This comes from a combination of factors.
Grenade radius seems to be larger than Unit. So many times I thought I was safe and I ended up losing 70-80 health. I didn't last much longer after that. Guns seem to be extremely important in this. My starting gun seemed extremely under powered compared to what I was getting hit with. I'd empty half a clip into someone and it seems like only 2 or 3 bullets from them would kill me, even when they weren't head shots. 99% of the time I got the drop on someone they responded with a head shot. The rest of the time the head shots didn't seem excessive. I really don't know what it was, but every time I caught someone looking the other way or I'd come up behind them, they'd spin and it'd be a head shot.
This was very frustrating. Compared to Sting which was head shot crazy this is kind of middle of the road.
Guns can be purchased a couple ways. You can buy them by the hour or purchase them for a single match. Hourly purchases range from 1 hour to 30 hours and in game purchases run for about 10% of the price of the hourly rate. For example one gun cost around 500 points for an hour rental, but about 40 points for a single match purchase. You can average around 200-300 points per match even as me getting slaughtered. If you are in game and want a new gun, press the "B" key and you'll get an overlay to purchase a new gun. This helped me slightly, as did increasing the mouse sensitivity, but I think I'd need a lot of practice at this game. I was pretty good at flag capturing though and made up some points through that. A kill is worth 1 point, a flag worth 5 points, but somehow in the end kills still seem to be worth more money and experience wise. Grab a lot of flag points and get slaughtered and you won't find yourself really getting more experience and money than someone who has half your points but they're all from kills. Armour seems to be only available from this map. After a win you get random pieces and other odds and ends. You can't buy it in game and the store doesn't seem to have a big selection. So you might want to play some bunker maps to build up your character.
The other play mode is set the bomb. I did better at this, even winning a couple maps. However, my luck ran out and I ended up getting slaughtered non-stop in the next round. Everyone caught on to my tricks.
Overall I think this is an interesting game. The survival bunker map is kind of interesting. I'm not sure how much more I'd play this because I'm enjoying Unit so much these days, but if I get bored with Unit I might give this another go. Perhaps in a couple weeks I'll do a "Weekend with Blackshot" and see if I can't change my luck with some time getting used to it. Menus are standard, nothing fancy or unusual here. I'll see if I can annotate a screenshot, but looking at the menus for of the other games I've done should tell you what is going on.
I decided to try Youtube for the video this time. I've been less than happy with the quality of Viddler recently. I think the next video I make I'm going to try and get it at 720p. I've been recording in Fraps at half size, but I'll need to record full size to do that.
I've decided to spend a little more time with Unit. I may do more of this in the future as time permits and games are sufficiently interesting. Initially I wrote Unit off due to the cheesy graphics on the site. However, the English option gave me pause and I played it a bit more. I have now played the game about 20 hours or so. Not a lot for a first person shooter, but more than I'd put into some passing games that I put up here.
After 20 hours, I can say that Unit starts to grow on you. Well probably before that point. I often found myself thinking, "okay, this is the last round and then I'm turning it off." When I do finally turn it off, I realize I had thought that an hour before. This game is still in beta and I did experience some technical issues while I was playing.
As I mentioned before, the sound has some hissing/skipping/something weird going on. There isn't much you can do with the sound settings so I wasn't really able to play with them a whole lot. Also a few times a game has counted down to start and then instead of loading, it pops up a message saying "Please try again later". I immediately push join and it counts down again and joins the game which has already started. Also, I once played a round where we played for about 30 seconds it suddenly said "Game over, you win!" but there were no stats like we'd normally see and we were kicked back to the room. Everyone seemed very confused. Other than that there were no other clear cut technical issues.
There was an issue I found with a couple players. I don't think it was technical, I'm sure they were hacking. If you watch this video you can see towards the middle.
The guy takes a full clip to the face which bends him over backwards and he keeps running then shoots me through a wall from 40 feet off with a shot gun. He was doing that for a couple games. When I finally got host, I banned him. Screen name was "Ryuk" and belong to a clan who call themselves only "A". That was a couple days ago. Today I encountered him again with a clan buddy. They both seemed capable of taking far more damage than anyone else on the map. They still died, but slowly.
This map you see in this video is a Mercenary Free For All. These maps are fun for a few minutes, especially if you get a defensible position. However, they quickly turn into an episode of loony tunes. People can spawn almost anywhere and get a 3 second invulnerability when they do. You constantly have this situation where one person dies, someone spawns and kills his killer and someone else shows up and wastes him and then someone else spawns, and it goes on and on. A killing chain. It's difficult to get any momentum at all unless you can get a bunker or something. That map you saw there has one building that has a flight of stairs in it. If you can get up it, you can sometimes hold it for awhile and get a rhythm going before anyone gets you. Due to the nature of the game it can take awhile for someone who knows you're there to make it back to the place since people are constantly popping all over the place. Even if they get back over there they might figure you're not in there anymore and forget about it. I've been able to have runs of 5-10 kills which is far better than simply running around.
Team death match has been my favorite so far. One of the popular maps for this is called "Sweden". There are 2 opposing bases with 3 entrances/exits each. A central bridge, a couple sniper buildings, and lots of hiding spots to get the drop on people. Controlling the bridge usually means your team will win. From the bridge you can quickly move between all 3 entrances and exits (overlooking 2, direct access to 1) so a good team can cover everything and really pen in the other team. I played for a couple hours with a fellow calling himself 바보 (Korean for fool) followed by some other characters I forget. Very good and most maps were a duel between him and I for top spot. He won slightly more than me, but I had some very good games both on his team and against him where I started the game 6 or 7 and 0. In addition to your team winning the match the players individually compete for the most points during a game, and the game will inform you if you're currently leading. Annoying if two people are dueling like we were. "You've taken the lead! You've lost the lead! Assit! You've taken the lead!" it can get pretty rapid fire until someone pulls away.
Experience works interestingly in this game. You get XP based on the rank of the person you kill, assists (more than 60% damage to someone and then someone else kills them), head shots, and stacking kills. Each time you kill someone you get 5 seconds to kill another person to have it become a "multi-kill" twice I've hit 5 and once I hit 6. The progression is something like: multi, triple, monster, ultra, crazy then at 6 it just said "6 kills!!" Kind of a let down. It says that you get a big XP boost if you get 5 kills in a row like that.
I also got to make a new character and find out more about buying things. Characters and guns are permanent. Not rentals. Armor is a rental. Characters let you assign 7 points to various stats. To make an assault guy, a sniper, etc. I'll attach a screenshot below. Guns get repaired, and armor has to be bought every 30 days. It is nice to see guns as permanent. If you don't play for awhile you'll lose your armor and have to but it again, but at least your guns will be there. Some armor choices can be made between adding stuff to give more defense or more speed. Grenades aren't rentals but they can't be repaired. I assume when they run out you need to buy a new one, but it's okay, they're pretty cheap compared to everything else.
After playing this some more, I think I'll continue playing it. I didn't think it would stand-up to AVA, but it has proven more interesting than I initially though. So just because there is some girl holding a gun in an entirely inappropriate way on the website, don't pass the game over. You might be pleasantly surprised. I still don't know what "Justice for all" means. There doesn't seem to be any clear-cut sides in the game and they're referred to as mercenaries. The English in game is great. I didn't notice any weird sentences, so I think they've paid to have this professionally translated. At the time of writing this I'm ranked 158th globally. So this really isn't that hard of a game to get into.
As I said in the last post, Unit is a first person shooter at Gamebus. This will be an easy post because Unit has an option to set everything to fully English. Text and voices. The English is good and there are in game guides and tutorials. So instead I'll talk a little bit about the game itself. I should mention the game is launched from the start menu, not the game page itself unlike many other games.
The game is a standard shooter. Nothing fancy here. Gain levels, buy equipment, get shot at. The graphics are serviceable, the ping low, and the sounds mediocre. I was getting some kind of crackling on the audio in game. It's a beta product and while momentarily distracting, I ignored it pretty fast. There are no advanced features like zooming in on your crosshairs or that kind of stuff. Zooming is limited to sniper rifles. You can add bots to games if you choose. They're dumb as a stick. I got killed because I thought an area was safe. You see there was a bot standing there not doing much so I assumed there was no bad guys. I turned the corner and was wasted. Apparently the bot didn't feel the need to shoot the enemy 3 feet in front of him. Lot's of standard upgrades. Guns, armor, grenades, knives, etc. You also upgrade your "character" by buying them in the store. It all works on points which you get from each match. At my level I could only use the trainee, later I can get a bunch of others, but I'm not really sure if it is just aesthetic or if there is function.
What's the attraction for this game? Well, the site allows foreign sign up via ARC or I-PIN and the game can be completely switched to English. Frame rate is great, I regularly got 100 FPS on max settings on my Geforce 7950GTX. The game is not head-shot crazy. Head-shots seem to require you actually aim at the head and even then it isn't completely guaranteed. Would I really choose it over other options? No. I'd still rather go to AVA or something over this, but if you must have a game in English try it out. You might want to sign-up, try it out and post on their free board just to encourage them to do more games full in English. Any company willing to do this should be encouraged even if the product is middle of the road.
GUNDOG is an upcoming first person shooter from Innoceed. I haven't really heard of either before, but it looks like a fun cartoony shooter. It also looks like some of the text will be in English which will be a help for those who don't speak/read Korean. I haven't come across a gameplay video yet, but the official site does have a few screenshots on it. Here are a couple. I'll keep an eye on this to see when it comes. It is scheduled for 2010.
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Sunday, May 16, 2010
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I did a bit on this game a little over a year ago. Due to the insane headshot box I didn't really play it again. Since I was doing updates I decided to check on old games and found that this game has been rebranded. It is now called "Sting Arcade". This also means that the site has disappeared as well. I'm not sure what this "arcade" thing will entail, but if it opens up again and I catch it, I'll be sure to post on it. The message on the site indicates they are doing new tests, and the main YNK menu bar says the game is in beta.
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.
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.
