Microvolts round-up now online

Just a quick update to let everyone know, the Microvolts round-up video is now online. Next week I will be planning a couple of shows that I will be streaming during the week, stay tuned for more information.

Microvolts and Microtransactions

As part of this weekends series on Microvolts, I will be starting by discussing the market and it's transactions. I will be uploading a first impressions game play later on this evening, so I will use todays blog to discuss the customization available.

As is the norm with free to play games, you can purchase items for varying duration's. If you choose to purchase an item for an unlimited duration you can then use a third currency in game to upgrade the item. You have a chance when killing someone in game for them to drop energy which is used to upgrade. So far I haven't found any set pattern as to when you receive this, so I can't recommend easy ways to farm it. Each weapon has 5 available upgrades for it.

In terms of real money purchasing, the game is fairly cheap to play. If you choose to purchase a weapon with real funds it will cost you just short of $10. The power increase on weapons between free and real money is around 3-5% increase, so these aren't required. Purchasing armor however has quite a bigger increase available on it. The bonuses from armor, either health or run speed and on the accessories extra ammo, is usually double. The increases on health for example are 20 on free, and 40 on the purchased items. If you purchase a full kit for 90 days (The maximum duration), it will set you back around $15, which works out at $5 a month. Not bad at all when you think the game is free to download, cheaper than any MMO going.

As I stated, later on tonight I will be having a video go live, and I am currently trying to get a stream going as well. Just a note to the Nexiuz fans reading this, don't worry I haven't forgotten about the game I am just waiting on the PC release before I go really in depth into it.

If No Cliché made a third person shooter

The original Dreamcast cover.

The title will most likely bewilder most of my readers, and certainly most of todays gamers. No Cliché  was a developer for the Dreamcast, and sadly only ever had the chance to make two games, one of which was a cheap game for the purpose of people testing out DreamArena their online service. The game I am speaking about is non other than Toy Commander.

Toy Commander is now regarded as some what of a cult classic. With the Dreamcast not doing so well in sales, it never got much coverage, especially with the idea that you were just essentially playing with toys. However beyond the toy skin lay one of the most entertaining gaming experiences I have ever had. The story behind it was how Guthy (Called Andy in the US version) had received new toys for Christmas and he neglected his old toys. Because of this his older toys decided to rebel.

Now I know this sounds like a crazy story-line, however it worked really well. You played in 8 different levels, all based on a room in his house, and upon completing a room you unlocked the next. You played as different vehicles which split up into three categories, ground, air and helicopter. Where Toy Commander shone though was it's game play. The levels and missions were vast and different, most of them required you to do varying objectives and the only mission that seemed to be a recurring theme was how each room had a race mission. Unlike how you might imagine, the game was actually fairly difficult and to beat the final boss you needed to defeat every other boss in the game to stand a chance. When you beat a boss you unlocked the ability to use it in the final battle, something you really needed to be able to do.

This ties us in nicely to the game I am playing this week, Microvolts. Like Toy Commander you are again playing as the role of toys in varying domestic environments, however this time it's a third person shooter. So far I've spent a few hours on the game, but the first impressions are solid. The graphic style is fantastic and the game play is unique for todays market as it features a variety of weapons available on spawn. These weapons are more like what you would find in an arena shooter however, with this such as gattling guns, rocket launchers and grenade launchers being the flavor of the day. You can purchase new weapons with typical free to play style, but the real money weapons seem to have higher stats. They don't seem like a giant increase from what I have seen, usually around 2-5% damage increase which I doubt will break the game. You can also dress your character cosmetically, with each item having either extra HP or movement speed.

Splash art for Microvolts.

The game is available at www.microvolts.com and I will be playing it over the weekend with the ingame name of Nood1e. I certainly recommend every to try this as the game is a huge amount of fun and I plan on doing a lot more content for it. There should, sound codecs permitting, be a first impressions video for it going online tomorrow evening with more written and video content over the weekend.

Are social games finally starting to move forward?

Social games are something that have started to explode over the last few years. Games such as Farmville and Bejeweled gained huge popularity through the medium of Facebook, and as a result Zynga, Farmvilles creator, is now worth over $1 billion. With Facebook having over 800 million members it's certainly starting to attract the attention of game developers.

While the games are often played by thousands of people, it's an area I haven't really payed much attention to. It seemed to me like every game released was either a game similar to Farmville, or something along the lines of Evony. Imagine my surprise when browsing online today and I discovered Überstrike.

Überstrike is a first person shooter developed by Cmune Games and is played directly through Facebook in your browser. While I have usually just passed over social games I decided that this was certainly worth a look. When first loading the game you are met by a tutorial as with most games. The only downside I have with this during the tutorial you are unable to change any of your settings during it. This includes both your graphics options and controls, so if the sensitivity is wrong there isn't much you can do, also if your PC is struggling to run the game then you have to wait until after the tutorial to change it. With there being no indication that you can change options this could put players off early as a lot of people on Facebook don't have amazing systems.

Being a Facebook game, it is free to play and allows for purchases with both in game and real money currencies. The cost of purchases with real money are quite extreme. I was taking a look at weapons and found a Sniper Rifle that costs $30.00 to buy, sadly it also one-shots enemies players if they don't have armor without hitting them in the head. The weapon was only available to be purchased through real money as well.

The game play is quite decent, however being a browser game it seems to suffer from some input lag, which affects the play of the game. Some of the maps are pretty poor too, one of them I played just seemed to be random boxes and jump pads thrown into a giant room, and when I say Giant I mean giant. The only way to tell which team the player you are shooting at is on, is by a health bar above their head. This is only visible when you are quite close, so on the previously mentioned map you couldn't actually tell who was on your team even when zoomed in with the sniper. At max range on the map the cross hair on the sniper is the size of a player, meaning an accurate shot of the head is difficult. This is a problem as all other weapons just seemed useless on the map unless you ran around the bottom of the map hoping for someone to spawn near you.

Overall the game is fairly average, and appears to be a pay to win shooter. This is something I would expect to see on a Facebook game, however it is good to see the platform finally starting to evolve. I will keep checking back on social games to see if anything else is changing within the market. At over 800 million users on Facebook it makes sense that people are starting to move towards the platform, and we already see a lot of integration with Facebook among games right now. Ijji already connects with your Facebook account and uses it to log in to their games. Combining games with Facebook and the mobile platforms is something I expect to see a lot of in the future, even if it's not the full game but something similar to Warcrafts auction house application. The future is looking good for the social platform, and it's also looking interesting for gamers too.

Blacklight Retribution video now live

I must apologise for the late uploading of this video, I planned on having it done yesterday. However I was having some issues with the sound codecs so it took longer than planned.

The video is now live and I would love some feedback on it. I will be starting to do videos more often now I understand how to get it done quickly, and I will be returning to regular blog updates tomorrow.

Here is the video;

Free Weekend First Impressions - Blacklight Retribution

Free Weekend


Free weekend is a new section I am going to be doing every weekend. Every week I will be finding a new release, or a game still in beta, that is free to play and be playing it over the weekend. I will be posting on the Friday my first impressions, and then on Sunday writing up a larger review. Throughout the following week, hopefully starting on Monday, I will be uploading videos onto Youtube of the game I have been playing. I will also be hoping to stream some games and play with the community as well. For the first weekend I will be playing Blacklight Retribution.

Blacklight Retribution

The game is published by Perfect World, who aren't well known for shooter games. However don't let this put you off. Blacklight Retribution is actually a followup to Blacklight Tango Down which was originally an Xbox Live Arcade game. The game itself is built upon Unreal Engine 3 and because of this has a solid foundation for it to be built upon.

While the game is still currently in Beta, it has now moved on to Open Beta. Most free to play games enter open beta before release, but during this open beta everything is usually usable including the cash shops. The cash shop in BLR is actually quite a surprise. Perfect World have been well known for having quite a few "Pay to win" games, where while they are free to play you can't actually unlock most of the more powerful items without spending money. Usually quite a large sum of money. BLR however doesn't follow this model, and everything can be purchased for either the real money or in game currency.

When you purchase an item in game you are given the choice of purchasing the item for 1 day, 7 days or permanently. The prices themselves are actually fairly reasonable for the majority of things. Unlocking a weapon permanently will cost you either 5500 GP (In game currency), which I have earned before level 8 in a night of playing, or 500 Zen which is worth €4.50. These guns can actually be hugely customized, ranging from damage to range and also recoil to weapon spread. There are also your typical unlocks such as scopes and increased magazine sizes. There are a few items that are only purchased by real money, but from all the ones I have seen these are only cosmetic items. The only problem I have had so far is that you can unlock an additional load out at level 5, but the game doesn't mention this anywhere and the load out is available to purchase for 1000 Zen (€9.00).

In terms of game play, the game is quite solid. I haven't seen many bugs other than an occasional problem with hit registration which I have read is currently being fixed. The connection seems to be fairly solid, and the maps well constructed. Blacklight Retribution currently 6 maps in the game and 4 game types, 5 if you count Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch as separate game types. The game features CTF and Domination pretty much how you would expect them to be but it also features King of the Hill with a bit of a twist. Teams will fight over the hill as you would expect, but each hill has a small capture time. Upon reaching the capture time your team will gain a point and the hill will move. It's more dynamic than normal king and leads to some great comebacks, where games might usually feel lost. Blacklights only downside is that servers only play one game type at the minute and don't rotate.

I will be playing the game during the course of the weekend, and will be uploading a more in depth review on Sunday. If you want to join me in game add me, my username is Nood1e. The L is a number one.

Official Blacklight Retribution website