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.

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.