Wolf-team update

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.

Recent withdrawals

I was finally going to get around to my irregular spurty update as I'd noticed a few new things coming out lately and when I started poking around I've found that several games have also recently closed. Some were getting old, but a few were surprises. So before I get into a slew of updates about new games, I'm going to just make a note of which games have recently disappeared. In no particular order:

Metal rage - which was the giant robot fighting game recently closed it's doors after many years of operation. A shame to see it go, but it was getting old. It was however a bit of a unique game.

Sting - Sting seems to have finally disappeared. This is too bad, because while it was head-shot crazy there were some unique gameplay elements which I did like.

BattleStar - I never really got to write this one up, but this was a FPS vs RTS space marine style game. It looked unique and I had a very short time to play a beta, but I never got to really enjoy it. Netmarble has pulled the page. I have no idea why, the game was technically only out for a very short time. I can only surmise that they ran into some financial or technical difficulty.

Unit - I was disappointed to find out that this had disappeared. I liked Unit, but gamebus has totally redone their site and seemingly shut down many of their offerings. The site is mostly a generic corporate site now. I don't know if that means they're shopping Unit around to other sites, but as far as I can tell it's dead.

Company of Heroes - Korea was affected by the global shut down of the game. Sometimes Korea is immune to those kinds of things, but in this case they did not keep the game running here. A shame as it was nice to have another RTS option in country.

I'll keep my eyes open to see if any other games have recently shut down. I'm most disappointed about Unit and Battlestar, but really it's a shame to see any of these games go. I did get a chance to play Soldier of Fortune over the last few days and take some screenshots and a video so I'll see if I can get that written up. It's not open now, it was a short test, but I think it opens up finally for good at the end of this month if I read it correctly.

Another Day Install and Impressions

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

Allstar sign-up

Allstar is a portal I meant to cover before, but I seem to have forgotten to write about it. I found some old sign-up photos stored away in my blog photo directory but they're out of date now. Allstar has changed their sign-up page a little since I took those screen captures. However, signing up for this site is pretty straight forward and easy. Head over to the site and have your i-Pin ID ready.

Start by clicking "회원가입" underneath the red login button. Ignore the impulse to use the foreigner sign-up form. If you do this, your account takes time to be verified. They expect you to fax or attach a scan of your passport for verification. Using the i-Pin you can pass on your details to the site through the normal registration process. So choose the left-most option. Then click the i-Pin tab on the next page and launch the i-Pin interface. Sign-in and it will pass on your details to the website. Fill out the rest of the form and away you go. The form has all the standard questions. I can't recall right now if the ID and nickname can be the same or not. Their captcha has changed. You don't write what you see, you might have to do a math question. So basically put in the value of what you would get. For example the current captcha on the foreigner registration page that I can see says "8+4+5" so I'd enter 17, not "8+4+5".

The reason I bring up this portal is of course a first person shooter by the name of "Another Day". I played this game last year during one of the beta tests, but it didn't run that well. I tried it briefly a few months ago again and it was much better. Now with the new machine I'm going to give it a proper go and write it up.

Psychic Online first impressions

Well, I got to play through the second test day of this. It hasn't garnered that much attention. I think I only counted about 20 people online or so. A couple of them were "Gstar" accounts which is the big games expo going on in Busan right now. I debated going down, but since I'm still fighting some allergies I decided not to. What can I say about Psychic Online? Get yourself a hobby. Any hobby, doesn't really matter what it is, you'll just need something to do during the waiting time.

While getting into client and lobby is pretty quick, getting into a game isn't. We had a nearly full room and sat there forever. I have no idea why. Eventually half the people left the room and made a new one. So I joined that. We got all set to go and....hold on. I'll tell in you 3 minutes. I've never seen a level take so long to load. They're not that big. This particular one was almost tiny. Just an area around a gas station. I almost felt like I should have taken a before and after picture. The second and third times loading it didn't seem to help it along. Slightly faster, but still rather lethargic.

Once in the game it's much better. Frame rate was okay. Seemed to be locked around 60 on my rig, which tells me that the game itself is probably limiting. Your movement speed is so-so. I felt a bit like I was plodding around. The speed run didn't feel all that fast compared to say Warcry. I think the scout units were faster. They were always running up behind me and stabbing me to death. Hence why I'm looking behind myself in that picture. The main focus of this game is the "psychic" powers. I'm not entirely sold on them yet. They're interesting enough, but there isn't much focus on them. Previews always show these dueling psychic masters, but in game, you can't really do that. You fire off one ability and there is a serious cool-down before you can use another one. My medium soldier guy had 2 abilities. He could push stuff away and pull stuff toward him. Other than people anything I tried to push didn't really move that far. I was getting visions of a guy blowing stuff out Jedi style. Not happening in this game. The scout type people could turn invisible. The snipers could slow people down around them and the heavy guys.. well I'm not sure exactly what it was they did. Maybe over the weekend I'll try out the other classes. With all the waiting, I didn't actually get to play all that much. They have several training missions you can use to bump yourself up a few levels to use better weapons.

The beginner guns are pretty weak. You can unload a whole clip into someone and they probably won't die. So it's worth getting to level 4 as quickly as possible, say via the training missions so you can get that next gun. I think there is too much focus on the guns in this game, for a game called psychic online. I would expect a heavier focus on cool powers as you duke it out.

Overall I think this has potential. The loading issues need to be addressed. I really hope they'd consider tweaking the powers a bit to put a little more focus on them. It seems a bit unbalanced that the scout can turn invisible for the duration of a fight, but a medium guy gets a single repulse attack. That one repulse attack is not as powerful as being invisible.

Psychic Online Guerilla Test

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 Open Beta

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.