MMORPGs, or MUMORPUGUS if you prefer, are bloody everywhere these days. WoW is obviously everyone's favourite right now. Hell, a friend of mine has four level 70 characters, and is working on a fifth. This entire craze has honestly passed me by. I don't own WoW, or Tabula Rasa, or Hellgate: London, or Everquest, etc. etc. To be perfectly clear: I don't care. The fact that I have to actually pay real money, up to $15 per month of my valuable pay check to get this game to work, whether I play it or now, just blows my mind. I much prefer Xbox Live, as it's only $50 per year, and you can play any game with an online component.
This comes about to under $4.50 per month, and for an order of magnitude more of gaming potential. For example: Halo 3, Rock Band, Team Fortress 2, Condemned 2, Chromehounds, Lost Planet, Grand Theft Auto 4, Saints Row. All these can be played with other people over Xbox Live. With this example alone, that's eight times the game, and less than a third of the cost. In fact, still within this example, it comes out to, per game 56 cents. Two quarters, a nickel and a penny. For a year of gaming.
If we were to include every single Xbox 1 and 360 game that's online available, not including those that just have stuff on the Marketplace, that $50 a year comes out to, brace yourself, 13 cents per game for a full year!!!!!
That's less that a 1/115 the cost of an MMO! The point I'm trying to hammer home is this: I don't think MMOs provide enough game content to warrant such a high cost. I'm not even going to get into what really pisses me off, that being paying more real money for the good equipment/power ups. Oblivion's horse armour fiasco anyone?
Moving on to the game on my personal little reviewing podium today, Audition. Those of you who actually read the Escapist's articles instead of just watching ZP may have noticed that a couple weeks ago, the free, and that's a point in its favour right there, MMO Audition was semi-reviewed and talked about. I thought it rather interesting sounding, as I love rhythm games and had been looking for a new time waster for my PC.
Well, it wasted time alright, taking over an hour to download. I got it set up, activated, and was happily surprised by what I found...for a while.
Audition basically plays like a combination between Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution. You press the series of arrow keys the game throws at you, then hit the space bar when the little ball crosses what I call the "Beat Bar." That basically being an area on a meter that you have to hit in order to score points. So you punch in the directions, then hit the space bar with the right timing and you win points. The sequence gets longer as you go, thereby more complex, and some songs have high BPM (beats per minute) ratings, making it hard to get a long string in before the ball reaches the Beat Bar and wrecks your combo.
The music in this game isn't the best, but it's not terrible either. It's mostly what I call safe music. Songs you could play in a grocery store. Hell, one song I heard in my town's grocery store just yesterday. As I'm a proud Rock/Alternative junkie, I wasn't too pleased with this. But the strange thing is...it works with the tone of the game.
This is an extremely nice game, in content and in tone. The user base is excellent. They wish you good luck pre-game, congratulate you post-game, and actually offer kudos when you pull off one of the game's fiendishly complex finishing moves. A quantum leap from Xbox Live in terms of friendlyness and supportiveness, this made the game for my nearly on its own. To be fair though, I haven't encountered all that bad shit on Live. Halo can suck sometimes, Rock Band is good, and Team Fortress 2 is really pleasant, but Audition by far is the greatest.
As for content, as I said, the music works. When you correctly pull of a string of "notes" your little avatar dances along to the song. The animation is pretty good for a free MMO, and to be honest, I think they look pretty dang cool pulling off dance moves that I could never do. This corresponds to a higher level of frustration when you screw up a string, as the dancing immediately stops, as does your combo, and likely any cred you built up in the process. It's challenging without being frustrating, fun without having to work for it, as you can play for one song or one hundred, and really sucks up the hours.
However, it definately has some pretty glaring faults. The dialogue of the NPCs isn't all that prevalent, but it sure as hell is irritating after about eight nanoseconds. I think this game is from Korea, and is anime in style. Hence: Over-wrought, corny, happy-go-lucky crappy lines. The best part is that you can mostly ignore it. The graphics kinda stink too. Your avatar isn't that much of a unique snowflake for a while, and the graphics are basically high end PS1 quality stuff. I wasn't expecting Gears of War levels, but seriously, it's bad.
All in all though, I enjoyed playing Audition. The great player, addictive game play and well-matched music had me going for a while, but it ultimately got too same-same for me and I quit playing a while back. If they were to put some real rock in there, maybe they could lure me back. This really isn't a game for everyone though.
My verdict: 7.5/10. Good game play and animation, but bad graphics and some tech issues dampen the fun.
Oh and one final note, I have played World of Warcraft. I'd rather be shot in the face than play that again. Ugh...
This comes about to under $4.50 per month, and for an order of magnitude more of gaming potential. For example: Halo 3, Rock Band, Team Fortress 2, Condemned 2, Chromehounds, Lost Planet, Grand Theft Auto 4, Saints Row. All these can be played with other people over Xbox Live. With this example alone, that's eight times the game, and less than a third of the cost. In fact, still within this example, it comes out to, per game 56 cents. Two quarters, a nickel and a penny. For a year of gaming.
If we were to include every single Xbox 1 and 360 game that's online available, not including those that just have stuff on the Marketplace, that $50 a year comes out to, brace yourself, 13 cents per game for a full year!!!!!
That's less that a 1/115 the cost of an MMO! The point I'm trying to hammer home is this: I don't think MMOs provide enough game content to warrant such a high cost. I'm not even going to get into what really pisses me off, that being paying more real money for the good equipment/power ups. Oblivion's horse armour fiasco anyone?
Moving on to the game on my personal little reviewing podium today, Audition. Those of you who actually read the Escapist's articles instead of just watching ZP may have noticed that a couple weeks ago, the free, and that's a point in its favour right there, MMO Audition was semi-reviewed and talked about. I thought it rather interesting sounding, as I love rhythm games and had been looking for a new time waster for my PC.
Well, it wasted time alright, taking over an hour to download. I got it set up, activated, and was happily surprised by what I found...for a while.
Audition basically plays like a combination between Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution. You press the series of arrow keys the game throws at you, then hit the space bar when the little ball crosses what I call the "Beat Bar." That basically being an area on a meter that you have to hit in order to score points. So you punch in the directions, then hit the space bar with the right timing and you win points. The sequence gets longer as you go, thereby more complex, and some songs have high BPM (beats per minute) ratings, making it hard to get a long string in before the ball reaches the Beat Bar and wrecks your combo.
The music in this game isn't the best, but it's not terrible either. It's mostly what I call safe music. Songs you could play in a grocery store. Hell, one song I heard in my town's grocery store just yesterday. As I'm a proud Rock/Alternative junkie, I wasn't too pleased with this. But the strange thing is...it works with the tone of the game.
This is an extremely nice game, in content and in tone. The user base is excellent. They wish you good luck pre-game, congratulate you post-game, and actually offer kudos when you pull off one of the game's fiendishly complex finishing moves. A quantum leap from Xbox Live in terms of friendlyness and supportiveness, this made the game for my nearly on its own. To be fair though, I haven't encountered all that bad shit on Live. Halo can suck sometimes, Rock Band is good, and Team Fortress 2 is really pleasant, but Audition by far is the greatest.
As for content, as I said, the music works. When you correctly pull of a string of "notes" your little avatar dances along to the song. The animation is pretty good for a free MMO, and to be honest, I think they look pretty dang cool pulling off dance moves that I could never do. This corresponds to a higher level of frustration when you screw up a string, as the dancing immediately stops, as does your combo, and likely any cred you built up in the process. It's challenging without being frustrating, fun without having to work for it, as you can play for one song or one hundred, and really sucks up the hours.
However, it definately has some pretty glaring faults. The dialogue of the NPCs isn't all that prevalent, but it sure as hell is irritating after about eight nanoseconds. I think this game is from Korea, and is anime in style. Hence: Over-wrought, corny, happy-go-lucky crappy lines. The best part is that you can mostly ignore it. The graphics kinda stink too. Your avatar isn't that much of a unique snowflake for a while, and the graphics are basically high end PS1 quality stuff. I wasn't expecting Gears of War levels, but seriously, it's bad.
All in all though, I enjoyed playing Audition. The great player, addictive game play and well-matched music had me going for a while, but it ultimately got too same-same for me and I quit playing a while back. If they were to put some real rock in there, maybe they could lure me back. This really isn't a game for everyone though.
My verdict: 7.5/10. Good game play and animation, but bad graphics and some tech issues dampen the fun.
Oh and one final note, I have played World of Warcraft. I'd rather be shot in the face than play that again. Ugh...