Elvenar review

So I used to be a huge fan of these "build your kingdom" games. It all started with Evony years ago and now every couple of years an ad, or friend, hooks me back into the madness. I HATE everything about these "pay to win" scenarios where spending any amount of time involved in the game requires a major investment but the game isn't completely awful.

Elvenar is a city-building strategy MMO set in the fantasy world of Elvenar, ancient and untouched for centuries. Players pick from Human or Elven civilization to build and support a grand city as its ruler, managing resources and training up an army to grow a great new empire. Going beyond typical city builders, Elvenar has a culture system that must be balanced by placing decorations and upgrading buildings.

Elvenar claims to offer "build, encounter, and fight...but it quickly becomes "log on, sit and watch".

In terms of "just the facts":

THE GAME 

Elvenar’s primary gameplay revolves around city/base building mechanics and resource acquisition and management to build up a working village, exploring a tech tree and ultimately expanding their land (the competitive Ranked aspects of the game focuses on the culture and populous of a village to determine who the top players are).

The game also focuses on a more hands-on combat system shying away from the more automated battle mechanics seen in other MMO’s of this nature, in Elvenar players will directly control their units in battle, choosing where they move, when they attack and what strategy to employ to find victory.

BUILDING A VILLAGE 

Players begin with an open plot of land where their Town Hall has already been constructed and from which they must raise a settlement to house their people. Constructing new buildings requires both resources and time, construction can take anything from seconds, minutes to even hours, though can be sped up by acquiring and spending premium Diamond currency.

Buildings serve a number of different purposes, everything from increasing population (that leads to gaining gold resources from villagers), workshops to create food and tools, barracks to train up new units for combat, culture buildings to increase the villagers’ happiness and much more.

BUILDING AN ARMY 

Each faction has access to 5 different units that are unlocked at various stages throughout the tech tree, whilst the factions have different units many of them follow similar base roles such as the Human Axe Barbarian and the Elven Sword Dancer being the primary melee troop, whereas the Elven Sorceress uses powerful ranged magic to reduce enemy damage the Human Priest focuses on using his divine abilities to lower an enemy’s defences.

Each unit as well as having its own style of combat and attacks will also have its own movement range when manoeuvring around the hex based combat maps, units can be moved and positioned to block access to their weaker units, take cover behind terrain features and use all manner of strategy to outflank and outsmart their opponent. Currently the game does not feature a PVP element and instead focuses primarily on combat against AI opponents.

UNCOVERING KNOWLEDGE 

Knowledge is power and by advancing through the tech tree players will gain access to new features, units, buildings and other means by which to improve their village. The tech tree itself is a long branching list of available technologies were players must determine their own preferred route, choosing the elements that are most important to their settlement and picking up prerequisite technologies to reach them. Players must earn and spend Knowledge Points to acquire their new technology, which can be done in various ways.

EXPLORING THE WORLD 

The world map is broken down into various locations/provinces that can be uncovered by spending gold to send out a Scout. Each province has eight relics that players can try to acquire, either through peaceful negotiation (costs gold) or through force and by fighting the defending inhabitants. With each relic acquired from a province players will gain a Knowledge Point to spend towards the technology tree and, once all eight relics in a province have been uncovered, the player may settle the area to expand their buildable land within their village.

The main element the game is really missing is the social aspect. There's no chat functionality, and the factions are completely useless to you. In my opinion Innogames dropped the ball on this one, but I do have faith that it could be fixed with some updates and tweaking.

Overall I give it a 2/5 and I feel like I might be overly generous at that.

Child of Light Review

So essentially, if you've ever read a review about this game you already know it's amazing. I've heard nothing but glowing feedback since the game came out. I was ignoring the buzz until Steam put it on sale for less than $4. You can't really lose at that price point.

This magical side scroller has the BEST animation I've seen in years. The artwork is beyond incredible. It's a little... awkward to call a video game "elegant" but when the shoe fits.. 

With earthy, hand-painted art style and charming character designs, it deftly sidesteps the tropey land mines that have littered the RPG landscape for the better part of a decade. Yet it still pays loving homage to what's come before it with enjoyable exploration and puzzle solving, and a combat system that's second to none. The intelligent simplicity with which it's been crafted makes it both easy to grasp, and rewarding to master in a way that very few RPGs can match.

The game focuses on a young girl named Aurora who’s trying to save her father rather than the other way around. There’s also a travelling jester who can’t figure out how rhyming works, a love-sick mouse archer. None of them adhere to the overly worn, widely accepted conventions of powerful men and sexualized women, and the motley cast is all the more memorable for it. Aurora’s transformation from a frightened child to the hero of her own story is framed relatably by filial strife, making her journey feel deeply personal despite the broad strokes it’s painted with.

Aurora learns that it is her destiny to recover the sun, moon, and stars from the evil queen who has stolen the light from the land. At first, she is understandably reluctant and even petulant about having this responsibility thrust upon her shoulders when all she wants to do is wake up back in Austria and hurry to her heartsick father's side. It's the way that she grows over the course of the game that makes her journey meaningful. She befriends a diverse group of characters who all have struggles of their own and who find their strength in each other, and her journey is empowering, but not altogether joyous. Child of Light is a richer game for the ways in which it acknowledges the hard decisions and the inevitable sadness that are part and parcel of leaving childhood behind.

You travel through Lemuria from a two-dimensional side-view perspective, and though you're bound to the ground like an ordinary girl when the game begins, early on you gain the power of flight. There are plenty of treasure chests for you to discover and optional side quests to complete, giving you an incentive to venture off the beaten path, soar up into the skies and explore every nook and cranny of these lands. Many areas also have environmental hazards and traps for you to avoid, and though these never pose too much of a challenge, they make navigating the world a bit trickier and more involving than it would be if it didn't have any dangers.

The only negative I can come up with for this game is that the story arc can get a bit tedious at times. The Shakesperean Iambic Pentameter can be a bit... offputting to say the least 

As one of the only turn based RPG's on the market I just HAVE to give this one a 4.5/5

Upcoming Nerd Conventions Central Florida 2015-2016 (A Work In Progress)

Comic Cons

Clermont Comic Con is a Comic Convention at 3700 S Highway 27 Clermont, FL 34711 featuring Mitch Hyman and Alex Savuik taking place on November 22nd.

Clearwater Comic Con takes place at the Clearwater Main Library sometime in March and is sponsored by Emerald City Comics.

Tampa Bay Comic Conhttp://tampabaycomiccon.com/

http://www.wizardworld.com/home-orlando.html

http://northfloridacomiccon.com/

http://www.ancientcitycon.com/

http://daytonabeachcomicconvention.com/

http://www.florida-comics.com/ (Melbourne)

http://megaconvention.com/ (Orlando)

http://infinitytoyandcomicon.com/ (Orlando)

http://coralspringsmuseum.org/comics-fest-coral-springs/

Gaming Cons

http://www.enigmacon.net/

http://www.ameliacon.com/

http://umicon-daytona.com/

http://www.hmgs-south.com/vendors_13.html (Orlando)

http://www.wasabicon.com/ (Jacksonville)

http://www.boardgaming.info/cruisecon/index.html (cruise out of Jacksonville)

http://www.jaxarcadex.com/

http://www.boardgaming.info/convention/ (Kissimmee)

http://www.rapiercon.com/ (Jacksonville)

Sci-FI

http://necronomiconfl.com/ (Tampa)

http://www.omniexpo.com/ (Orlando)

http://www.floridaanime.com/ (Orlando)

http://www.spacecoastnerdfest.org/  (Melbourne)

http://www.hurricanewho.com/ (Orlando) October 30th- November 1st

https://www.facebook.com/events/1591498794467876/ (Tampa) October 25th


More: http://www.floridageekscene.com/category/conventions/page/2/

Light of Life: A new skill based action game coming to mobile platforms soon

Light of Life is an upcoming new game by OtterworksGamestudio.

Main story of the game:

The galaxies in the universe are empty and dark. Nobody knows who or what created it. For the life to break through, it needs help. The help of the light. So the shining bearers of life set to a journey, aiming to the planets holding the precious and dormant life trees, to empower them with the light and wake the world alive.

The gameplay:

The players are little dots of life, and their goal is to reach the life trees in the depths of the planet. They will need seed, collectible throughout the descent. With these seeds, they can activate life crystals along the way, to get more seeds, illuminate the path, eliminate anomalies and ultimately wake up the life tree.

They need to be careful, because beyond natural rocks and obstacles, there are malicious anomalies, that are out to get them.

Players can play form first person perspective, as our seed bearing light whizzes to the life tree, and dodges obstacles in a 3 by 3 grid, controlled by simple gestures.

The avatar has five chances to repel the anomalies attacks, but only one collision can snuff them out. Fortunately, there is a chance to slow down time and avoid the catastrophe.

Players get a number of  randomly generated planet in each galaxy. They have to reach a certain goal on a planet to activate the next one, and a the challenges are getting more difficult as the player progresses. The journey between galaxies are tied to another, more difficult task.

Summary:

The light of life is a skill based action game set in a mystical and spectacular world. It’s aimed to the casual gamers who like a little more challenging gameplay, exciting, surreal visuals, and deeper consideration of the story told solely by the art.

Light of Life is  currently in closed alpha, available in Google Play alpha testing program. Join by sending an e-mail to info@otterworksgames.com.

The game’s expected to step into beta phase around the last days of August. The target platforms are Android and iOS, but the iOS release may get delayed.

Personally, I'm excited to check this one out!

Dead Rising 3 Review

"Welcome to the beautiful city of Los Perdidos! Now strip down to your underpants and smack some zombies in the face with a traffic cone."

Dead Rising is one of my favorite zombie games. It's up there with L4D, but way behind the Last of Us. The story line is pretty great. The 5 day narrative kept me enthralled and the gore kept me excited. After playing Dying Light I was a little worried that it was going to be difficult for me, but Dead Rising was true to it's melee roots. Man, I love being able to stop and pick up just about anything and kill a zombie with it. The crafting adds another layer of fun, as collecting the parts to build a new blueprint becomes a quest of it's own. I also like being able to pick up a weapon at any safe zone once I've encountered it once.

Some survivors eventually join your party, where they can be armed with the game's less flamboyant weapons to fight alongside you, or can be led back to one of the game's safe areas and stored for later deployment. Keeping survivors alive was a key part of the first two games, as leading them to safety was how objectives were completed, but Dead Rising 3 considers it more of an optional afterthought. Safe rooms, scattered around each of Los Perdidos' four districts, also contains recharging lockers that can spawn in any item or combo weapon you've previously used. This is a game far more focused on having you slaughtering the undead than continually scavenging for items, though it's not always a change for the better. Dead Rising 3's accessibility makes it easier to rack up the kills, but infinitely spawning weaponry ultimately robs the game of the deeper connection I forged with Willamette mall or Fortune City. I can still remember the route to Colombian Roastmasters in the first Dead Rising, and jumping off the edge of the coffee shop to land on the balcony with the katana. I couldn't tell you much at all about Los Perdidos.

I never played nightmare mode, so I can't comment on it. Other reviewers seem to think it's great tho.

Since I'm pressed for time at the moment I'll just end by saying that the games frame rate is choppy, and seems... imperfected.


8/10