1. The police are idiots and/or insane. Opening fire on a speeding vehicle not knowing who's inside or why they were speeding. Opening fire on a suspect who is clearly not armed and who they may need to take in on questioning to find the kidnapped child who's life is in danger. Spotty detective work and clearly incompetent.
2. No evidence against Ethan other than hearsay and a flimsy story from his ex. Which wouldn't hold up in court anyway as her child was kidnapped and her previous child was killed. She could be blaming her ex for his murder. And the wife obviously doesn't care for him either way, since when they got hit she didn't even call his name or seem too concerned about him getting hit.
3. Issuing a warrant for the guys arrest, not saying he may be linked to the origami killer, but that he IS the killer based on this flimsy evidence.
4. Bad acting. The kids are especially horrible conveying no emotion, but the main adults actors are pretty mediocre in their own right. It may be technical limitations but their performances come across as stilted and wooden. I'd blame this on the animation, facial and body, and as I said technical limitation but their voice acting is sometimes subpar. It doesn't help that the dialogue and overall writing is bad. Lack of direction can also be blamed.
5. Why would the characters keep the evidence of what happened that could be crucial to the investigation? It's an open case this should be in police custody. Why is the writing so lazy to have the characters not wanting to give information until their lives are in jeopardy at that exact moment when the detective is there? Did he pay them? Even then, that's nonsensical why they would give out information when they know a kid's life was in danger, or even why they should give out information to him after he saved their lives or helped them?
6. If the killer did indeed send letters to the victims fathers, has noone reported this fact? The police seem completely unaware of it. Wouldn't there be enough of pattern there to trace it? Fingerprints, nothing? Did all the dads reach as far as Ethan and were killed off? Unlikely, but none of them reported this? See #1.
7. Idiotic red herrings. Why would he wake up with origami models? Drowning bodies reference was for said red herring and nothing more.
8. The characters aren't people. They are stereotyped cliched dolls. Both in looks, characterisation and performance. These are also some of the worst criminals imaginable and would likely be caught within a day if not for #1 again. Yeah sure, I'll kill a police officer in broad daylight who came to investigate me at my place of business. Noone will suspect a thing or follow up on it, those damn Crackers...
9. Instant Love. It's annoying in movies, it's annoying in this as well.
10. None of the main characters has any common sense to use an umbrella or raincoat. But I suppose it's to symbolic.....symbolic of the idiotic things that happens in this game. It also works against it, enforcing the idea of the characters not as real people, but as dolls.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Nintendo files trademark for 'The Last Ranger'.
Nintendo files trademark for 'The Last Ranger', Siliconera
Well this is new. I have no idea what the name may pertain to. And this doesn't seem related to Nintendo's other projects(in name). Also note that it was originally(?) a Japanese trademark so the translation may be a bit different. The game could be something related to Pokemon(with 'Ranger') or Dillon's Rolling Western, The Last Story or some new IP.
Don't know, and I wouldn't have too much hope, I'm just passing on something I saw in a forum and this was a rumor from in March(on Siliconera) of this year. So far all their trademarked titles recently have been about covering their asses, or maybe its more.
Original Rumor from Siliconera
Please note that the original rumor said the rumored trademarks came from a Japanese gaming blog called 'My Game News Flash' The link to that rumor is now 404. The original rumor also said Sony trademarked "Lord of Sorcery", SquareEnix to have trademarks in "Gunsuma," "Ikusa" and "Sen". The last bit of the original rumor states that Nintendo trademarked "Nintendo Game front". I haven't heard anything from any of those games, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Well anyway, read the articles, and what I wrote was to give context to the rumors and a small bit of background information. or what I could find so far anyway.
Source site from which the rumor originated
Page from which the rumor originated, now 404
Well this is new. I have no idea what the name may pertain to. And this doesn't seem related to Nintendo's other projects(in name). Also note that it was originally(?) a Japanese trademark so the translation may be a bit different. The game could be something related to Pokemon(with 'Ranger') or Dillon's Rolling Western, The Last Story or some new IP.
Don't know, and I wouldn't have too much hope, I'm just passing on something I saw in a forum and this was a rumor from in March(on Siliconera) of this year. So far all their trademarked titles recently have been about covering their asses, or maybe its more.
Original Rumor from Siliconera
Please note that the original rumor said the rumored trademarks came from a Japanese gaming blog called 'My Game News Flash' The link to that rumor is now 404. The original rumor also said Sony trademarked "Lord of Sorcery", SquareEnix to have trademarks in "Gunsuma," "Ikusa" and "Sen". The last bit of the original rumor states that Nintendo trademarked "Nintendo Game front". I haven't heard anything from any of those games, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Well anyway, read the articles, and what I wrote was to give context to the rumors and a small bit of background information. or what I could find so far anyway.
Source site from which the rumor originated
Page from which the rumor originated, now 404
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Top 4 Free PC Games of the Week.
With all this talk of Steam, IOS, Wiiware, XBLA, PSN games, its easy to forget that we can download games on the PC, for free, and they're good.
Frets on Fire
Have you ever played Rockband or Guitar Heroes or the various other clones that these games spawned? Did you like those games? Then you will love this. Free to download, free tracks to download as well. You can use usb joypads, guitar controllers, and the keyboard of course.
Download Link: http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/
Doom 64 Absolution
Doom 64 came out in 1997 for the Nintendo 64 and was made by Midway, and not ID(the original creators of the Doom series), and met with little fanfare and boos from the hardcore Doom crowd. It had its own atmosphere with its own darker, more atmospheric soundtrack. Visually the game was darker and grim as well, with frames of animation severely cut to accommodate the N64's low memory(being a cartridge based platform).
Despite its shortcomings, it retained the original Doom gameplay and had its own charms and diabolically clever maps. The gameplay itself is outdated at the time it came out as it was competing with games such as Turok and Quake with polygonal graphics and newer effects which made Doom 64 look ancient in comparison. Still its a great game and this version while not having everything the original had, is pretty faithful and updates some of the visuals.
Download Link: http://www.doom2.net/~doomdepot/abs-download.html
Seizuredome
Essentially a seizure-inducing Sumo match with guns. Think Robotron(if you even remember or know of that game) and that kind of dual stick shooting. You control the player with the keyboard and shoot with the mouse.
Its simple: shoot everything before they push you out of the ring. The guns have an alternate fire(right-click)and you will get different types of guns, such as a rocket launcher, homing missiles, shotguns etc.
It can get pretty messy and you'd be surprised how complicated and difficult it can all get but its pretty damn fun. Music is great and pretty trippy as well.
Download Link: http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/22735
Avert Fate
Less of a full on actual game, and more of a tech demo in the mold of a standard scifi shooter ala Halo. Based on the Unity 3D engine it has its moments. Don't expect great things though, but it can be a nice free benchmark for a PC you're going to set-up.
Download Link: http://unity3d.com/gallery/live-demos/avert-fate
Sunday, April 8, 2012
The Darkest Hour (Movie Review)
The Darkest Hour
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So I decided to watch the Darkest Hour, a scifi movie about some electric aliens trying to take over the world, or at least get at our mineral supplies.
The movie starts off in earnest, introducing us to our bland and somewhat forgettable cast. Sean(Emile Hirsch) and Ben(Max Minghella) have traveled to Russia on a business trip to pitch their idea to a firm. Turns out they were stupid enough not to copyright their idea or have the firm sign an NDA(non-disclosure agreement) and so they do what any company would do in that situation, steal the idea. So being out of a deal and having wasted their time, they decide to drown their sorrows and gullibility, with booze and maybe some sex. They meet up with some other Americans, Natalie(Olivia Thirlby) and Anne(Rachael Taylor). Well I'm assuming American anyway, since Anne's accent seems to go in and out.
The aliens show up as balls of light and all hell breaks loose as they begin disintegrating people. The special effects in the movie is passable, nothing mind-blowing, but it does remind me of a somewhat higher budget direct-to-video movie. The coolest effect being when the aliens disintegrate someone, however this was already done in War of the Worlds and the effect is much better there.
Without getting too much into the plot, not a lot of character development happens, and its all very predictable. There are five main characters, and you can tell which two are going to die without fail. They also go by horror movie logic as well, you know, do the thing that makes little sense and defy logic and common sense as to make for a longer movie and provide more delicious drama. There was only one event in this movie that threw me for loop, and jerked me out of my lethargy, but it quickly went back to going through the motions. The characters follow stereotypes you're used to as well. Hero type, bland, white and heroic. The scared guy who will eventually put the whole group in danger. The love interest who will eventually need saving. The best friend of either the love interest or the hero who's sole purpose is to die and spur or inspire the hero to do something. The setting itself, Russia , in underused. Why set the movie in Russia if the main characters are American and the other two Russian characters speak English? Yes there's one other character, but he's called Dr. PlotDevice and is used to give the characters a way to fight the aliens. And yes, he's the stereotypical quirky genius. The setting is just watsed, and just seems like a cheap way of setting the movie in a city or wanting an exotic locale or somewhere which hasn't been done before.
The movie is also without any humor or any real drama or emotion. Or if there was I didn't see it. Which would have helped this movie a lot. As it stands its just very drab with bits of action. The acting is pretty bad as well. Not saying the actors themselves are bad, but the movie lacks direction and feels a bit aimless. Cinematography is dull, and really feels like a TV movie at points rather than a movie deserving of a theatrical release. The music was sort of there, I honestly don't remember any of it. This is my problem with the movie. Everything is just mediocre and passable. It never excels in any area, neither is it abysmally bad or even just bad. If it was abysmally bad there would be some entertainment from that at least, but no, its just, passable.
The are a lot of logical inconsistencies in the movie, like the way how the aliens behave and how they see you. For example, the aliens disintegrate people, and can fire hadokens(yea I'm calling them that). But when the plot calls for it, they conveniently 'grab' people with their electric wires and pull them towards them. Later on in the movie, one character sacrifices himself for a young Russian girl, who, wouldn't you know it, speaks English as well(how convenient). Instead of say, going near to her behind cover and getting her, the character goes up to her, only to push her about two feet away and gets killed. You have to see this to believe how stupid it was. That's okay though as the character was bland as hell with no development at all, so really, nothing of value was lost. There are other inconsistencies as well with the aliens and how they operate but really its just nitpicking at this point.
The movie is just bland really. Bland aliens, bland special effects, bland characters, bland action. Bland bland bland and mediocre. As much as I love scifi movies and wanted to enjoy this, it was just mediocre. But if you want to watch a scifi movie and have some time to kill I'd recommend something else, but if you've watched everything else, then you may want to check this out.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
So I decided to watch the Darkest Hour, a scifi movie about some electric aliens trying to take over the world, or at least get at our mineral supplies.
The movie starts off in earnest, introducing us to our bland and somewhat forgettable cast. Sean(Emile Hirsch) and Ben(Max Minghella) have traveled to Russia on a business trip to pitch their idea to a firm. Turns out they were stupid enough not to copyright their idea or have the firm sign an NDA(non-disclosure agreement) and so they do what any company would do in that situation, steal the idea. So being out of a deal and having wasted their time, they decide to drown their sorrows and gullibility, with booze and maybe some sex. They meet up with some other Americans, Natalie(Olivia Thirlby) and Anne(Rachael Taylor). Well I'm assuming American anyway, since Anne's accent seems to go in and out.
The aliens show up as balls of light and all hell breaks loose as they begin disintegrating people. The special effects in the movie is passable, nothing mind-blowing, but it does remind me of a somewhat higher budget direct-to-video movie. The coolest effect being when the aliens disintegrate someone, however this was already done in War of the Worlds and the effect is much better there.
Without getting too much into the plot, not a lot of character development happens, and its all very predictable. There are five main characters, and you can tell which two are going to die without fail. They also go by horror movie logic as well, you know, do the thing that makes little sense and defy logic and common sense as to make for a longer movie and provide more delicious drama. There was only one event in this movie that threw me for loop, and jerked me out of my lethargy, but it quickly went back to going through the motions. The characters follow stereotypes you're used to as well. Hero type, bland, white and heroic. The scared guy who will eventually put the whole group in danger. The love interest who will eventually need saving. The best friend of either the love interest or the hero who's sole purpose is to die and spur or inspire the hero to do something. The setting itself, Russia , in underused. Why set the movie in Russia if the main characters are American and the other two Russian characters speak English? Yes there's one other character, but he's called Dr. PlotDevice and is used to give the characters a way to fight the aliens. And yes, he's the stereotypical quirky genius. The setting is just watsed, and just seems like a cheap way of setting the movie in a city or wanting an exotic locale or somewhere which hasn't been done before.
The movie is also without any humor or any real drama or emotion. Or if there was I didn't see it. Which would have helped this movie a lot. As it stands its just very drab with bits of action. The acting is pretty bad as well. Not saying the actors themselves are bad, but the movie lacks direction and feels a bit aimless. Cinematography is dull, and really feels like a TV movie at points rather than a movie deserving of a theatrical release. The music was sort of there, I honestly don't remember any of it. This is my problem with the movie. Everything is just mediocre and passable. It never excels in any area, neither is it abysmally bad or even just bad. If it was abysmally bad there would be some entertainment from that at least, but no, its just, passable.
The are a lot of logical inconsistencies in the movie, like the way how the aliens behave and how they see you. For example, the aliens disintegrate people, and can fire hadokens(yea I'm calling them that). But when the plot calls for it, they conveniently 'grab' people with their electric wires and pull them towards them. Later on in the movie, one character sacrifices himself for a young Russian girl, who, wouldn't you know it, speaks English as well(how convenient). Instead of say, going near to her behind cover and getting her, the character goes up to her, only to push her about two feet away and gets killed. You have to see this to believe how stupid it was. That's okay though as the character was bland as hell with no development at all, so really, nothing of value was lost. There are other inconsistencies as well with the aliens and how they operate but really its just nitpicking at this point.
The movie is just bland really. Bland aliens, bland special effects, bland characters, bland action. Bland bland bland and mediocre. As much as I love scifi movies and wanted to enjoy this, it was just mediocre. But if you want to watch a scifi movie and have some time to kill I'd recommend something else, but if you've watched everything else, then you may want to check this out.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Vindictus Review(In Current State)
So Nexon has screwed us all again.
The Dragon update is out and it's not working on the East server; as in hardly anyone can enter. Things have been going downhill in this game for a while(more pay2win), but this is beyond stupid now. Four days and no fix to the situation and no announcement that it will be fixed, and no acknowledgment from the company that there is even a problem.
This is how I am with Vindictus. Excited about playing the game, then going back and feeling disappointed, and encountering some new or old glitch and being bored of its repetitiveness and lack of content and leaving the game again.
If you haven't played or even heard of Vindictus, it is an action based hack and slash MMO. A unique MMO upon launch, now others have entered the arena and have been arguably better, with better graphics, more content etc.
Launched in 2010, with the open beta becoming available in October, Vindictus was a breath of fresh air in the stale genre of MMO's. Featuring real time combat, outstanding graphics(Source engine that powered Half Life 2) and real-time physics, many players welcomed this new game.
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Every mission has an end boss, which much like Monster Hunter requires you to memorize its patterns and learn how to dodge and effectively counter its moves. Bosses are fairly easy on Normal difficulty, but things get much harder on Hard and downright brutal on Hero difficulty. On Normal difficulty, the enemy HP bar is present, they do less damage and you have more secondary weapons. Hard Mode the HP bar is gone, bosses hit harder, you get half as many secondary items, but you get more XP, gold and an additional drop. Hero mode require you be over 50. Like in Hard mode, there are no HP bars, bosses hit much harder, and move faster, but the rewards are much greater, as they have the chance to drop rare scrolls, and items you cannot otherwise get in Normal or Hard mode.
Content in Vindictus is pretty limited as is, even if it is a year old, the game feels pretty anemic. This is probably due to the fact that a lot of the areas of the game are practically the same, save for some slight color differences. Perilous Ruins, the first are in the game, is composed of eleven missions. The area is the same but with different layouts and obstacles with harder enemies being introduced in later missions. Unfortunately however, Perilous Ruins is much like Ruins of Sanctity and Hilder Forest Ruins, those have eight and seven missions respectively. So you will be seeing and playing the same area twenty six times. Not only that, some missions have you repeating the same area for completion of Oaths for quests or to unlock other missions or for specific items.
Further exacerbating the problem is how the game is structured. This is not an open world MMO, but an instanced based one. You have two main hub ports essentially. One is a small village called Colhen, the other is a castle called Rocheste. These are the only two main areas in the game with a path between them that takes about a minute or two to travel between. You access missions by going to the docks, and a ship takes you to the battles.
Since it is instanced based, it relies on peer2peer connections, so if someone in your group has a bad connection or lives far away from you, then the group may suffer as a result of lag. And there are two things in this game which kills the player a lot, lag and glitches. And there are quite a bit of glitches in the game.
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Lag is to be expected in an MMO, sometimes the server is under strain, lag spikes with your connection, etc. However, with Vindictus being a peer2peer game, the lag can be atrocious at times depending on who you're playing with. Since the game is action based and in real time, any sort of lag can and will be dangerous. I pointed out that Lanns have a 0.3 seconds of invulnerability when dodging, well imagine lag coming into play and you mess up that dodge. Or you simply mistime attacks and you miss that valuable window to dodge. Thus the problem becomes much clearer. Glitches have been present in this game since Open Beta, and while some have been resolved, others have just been less frequent.
Support from the Nexon, the publisher is a major issue as well. Recently there has been a hacking wave of sorts. Many were hacked, none were compensated or had their items returned. Hackers were brought to the company's attention, but none were actually reprimanded. Botters have been rather rampant as well. Since the missions are instanced, it is fairly easy to bot, and crank up your characters stats for one hit kills and invulnerability. In the most recent update, some of these hacks have been patched.
The population has been dwindling as well, maybe due to the repetitive nature of the game, lack of content, poor customer service, having more pay2win/gear2win style gameplay has turned off some players or players have simply migrated to other more impressive games launching.
The nature of the game(hack and slash) makes it seem even more repetitive than it really is, which has pushed many players away. This game has a lot of potential but it is holding itself back, and with Tera, C9, RaiderZ, and Guild Wars 2, it may not be as unique and fresh as it once was.
Every mission has an end boss, which much like Monster Hunter requires you to memorize its patterns and learn how to dodge and effectively counter its moves. Bosses are fairly easy on Normal difficulty, but things get much harder on Hard and downright brutal on Hero difficulty. On Normal difficulty, the enemy HP bar is present, they do less damage and you have more secondary weapons. Hard Mode the HP bar is gone, bosses hit harder, you get half as many secondary items, but you get more XP, gold and an additional drop. Hero mode require you be over 50. Like in Hard mode, there are no HP bars, bosses hit much harder, and move faster, but the rewards are much greater, as they have the chance to drop rare scrolls, and items you cannot otherwise get in Normal or Hard mode.
Higher level raids can only be played on hard, and lower level raids can be played on Hero. This is where Vindictus truly shines for most people. As these raids give precious items and require teamwork and skill to win. However with the game becoming more pay2win/gear2win, players can simply buy the best armor and enchant it with the best scrolls and tank/dps the boss to death. If you go to see videos of Vindictus you will see many 'solo' videos of raid bosses.
Content in Vindictus is pretty limited as is, even if it is a year old, the game feels pretty anemic. This is probably due to the fact that a lot of the areas of the game are practically the same, save for some slight color differences. Perilous Ruins, the first are in the game, is composed of eleven missions. The area is the same but with different layouts and obstacles with harder enemies being introduced in later missions. Unfortunately however, Perilous Ruins is much like Ruins of Sanctity and Hilder Forest Ruins, those have eight and seven missions respectively. So you will be seeing and playing the same area twenty six times. Not only that, some missions have you repeating the same area for completion of Oaths for quests or to unlock other missions or for specific items.
Further exacerbating the problem is how the game is structured. This is not an open world MMO, but an instanced based one. You have two main hub ports essentially. One is a small village called Colhen, the other is a castle called Rocheste. These are the only two main areas in the game with a path between them that takes about a minute or two to travel between. You access missions by going to the docks, and a ship takes you to the battles.
Lag is to be expected in an MMO, sometimes the server is under strain, lag spikes with your connection, etc. However, with Vindictus being a peer2peer game, the lag can be atrocious at times depending on who you're playing with. Since the game is action based and in real time, any sort of lag can and will be dangerous. I pointed out that Lanns have a 0.3 seconds of invulnerability when dodging, well imagine lag coming into play and you mess up that dodge. Or you simply mistime attacks and you miss that valuable window to dodge. Thus the problem becomes much clearer. Glitches have been present in this game since Open Beta, and while some have been resolved, others have just been less frequent.
Support from the Nexon, the publisher is a major issue as well. Recently there has been a hacking wave of sorts. Many were hacked, none were compensated or had their items returned. Hackers were brought to the company's attention, but none were actually reprimanded. Botters have been rather rampant as well. Since the missions are instanced, it is fairly easy to bot, and crank up your characters stats for one hit kills and invulnerability. In the most recent update, some of these hacks have been patched.
The population has been dwindling as well, maybe due to the repetitive nature of the game, lack of content, poor customer service, having more pay2win/gear2win style gameplay has turned off some players or players have simply migrated to other more impressive games launching.
The nature of the game(hack and slash) makes it seem even more repetitive than it really is, which has pushed many players away. This game has a lot of potential and its still young in the world of MMOs, but it is holding itself back, and with Tera, C9, RaiderZ, and Guild Wars 2, it may not be as unique and fresh as it once was.
http://vindictus.nexon.net/ USA Version.
http://vindictus.nexoneu.com/ EU Version.
The Dragon update is out and it's not working on the East server; as in hardly anyone can enter. Things have been going downhill in this game for a while(more pay2win), but this is beyond stupid now. Four days and no fix to the situation and no announcement that it will be fixed, and no acknowledgment from the company that there is even a problem.
This is how I am with Vindictus. Excited about playing the game, then going back and feeling disappointed, and encountering some new or old glitch and being bored of its repetitiveness and lack of content and leaving the game again.
If you haven't played or even heard of Vindictus, it is an action based hack and slash MMO. A unique MMO upon launch, now others have entered the arena and have been arguably better, with better graphics, more content etc.
Launched in 2010, with the open beta becoming available in October, Vindictus was a breath of fresh air in the stale genre of MMO's. Featuring real time combat, outstanding graphics(Source engine that powered Half Life 2) and real-time physics, many players welcomed this new game.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Every mission has an end boss, which much like Monster Hunter requires you to memorize its patterns and learn how to dodge and effectively counter its moves. Bosses are fairly easy on Normal difficulty, but things get much harder on Hard and downright brutal on Hero difficulty. On Normal difficulty, the enemy HP bar is present, they do less damage and you have more secondary weapons. Hard Mode the HP bar is gone, bosses hit harder, you get half as many secondary items, but you get more XP, gold and an additional drop. Hero mode require you be over 50. Like in Hard mode, there are no HP bars, bosses hit much harder, and move faster, but the rewards are much greater, as they have the chance to drop rare scrolls, and items you cannot otherwise get in Normal or Hard mode.
Content in Vindictus is pretty limited as is, even if it is a year old, the game feels pretty anemic. This is probably due to the fact that a lot of the areas of the game are practically the same, save for some slight color differences. Perilous Ruins, the first are in the game, is composed of eleven missions. The area is the same but with different layouts and obstacles with harder enemies being introduced in later missions. Unfortunately however, Perilous Ruins is much like Ruins of Sanctity and Hilder Forest Ruins, those have eight and seven missions respectively. So you will be seeing and playing the same area twenty six times. Not only that, some missions have you repeating the same area for completion of Oaths for quests or to unlock other missions or for specific items.
Further exacerbating the problem is how the game is structured. This is not an open world MMO, but an instanced based one. You have two main hub ports essentially. One is a small village called Colhen, the other is a castle called Rocheste. These are the only two main areas in the game with a path between them that takes about a minute or two to travel between. You access missions by going to the docks, and a ship takes you to the battles.
Since it is instanced based, it relies on peer2peer connections, so if someone in your group has a bad connection or lives far away from you, then the group may suffer as a result of lag. And there are two things in this game which kills the player a lot, lag and glitches. And there are quite a bit of glitches in the game.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Lag is to be expected in an MMO, sometimes the server is under strain, lag spikes with your connection, etc. However, with Vindictus being a peer2peer game, the lag can be atrocious at times depending on who you're playing with. Since the game is action based and in real time, any sort of lag can and will be dangerous. I pointed out that Lanns have a 0.3 seconds of invulnerability when dodging, well imagine lag coming into play and you mess up that dodge. Or you simply mistime attacks and you miss that valuable window to dodge. Thus the problem becomes much clearer. Glitches have been present in this game since Open Beta, and while some have been resolved, others have just been less frequent.
Support from the Nexon, the publisher is a major issue as well. Recently there has been a hacking wave of sorts. Many were hacked, none were compensated or had their items returned. Hackers were brought to the company's attention, but none were actually reprimanded. Botters have been rather rampant as well. Since the missions are instanced, it is fairly easy to bot, and crank up your characters stats for one hit kills and invulnerability. In the most recent update, some of these hacks have been patched.
The population has been dwindling as well, maybe due to the repetitive nature of the game, lack of content, poor customer service, having more pay2win/gear2win style gameplay has turned off some players or players have simply migrated to other more impressive games launching.
The nature of the game(hack and slash) makes it seem even more repetitive than it really is, which has pushed many players away. This game has a lot of potential but it is holding itself back, and with Tera, C9, RaiderZ, and Guild Wars 2, it may not be as unique and fresh as it once was.
Every mission has an end boss, which much like Monster Hunter requires you to memorize its patterns and learn how to dodge and effectively counter its moves. Bosses are fairly easy on Normal difficulty, but things get much harder on Hard and downright brutal on Hero difficulty. On Normal difficulty, the enemy HP bar is present, they do less damage and you have more secondary weapons. Hard Mode the HP bar is gone, bosses hit harder, you get half as many secondary items, but you get more XP, gold and an additional drop. Hero mode require you be over 50. Like in Hard mode, there are no HP bars, bosses hit much harder, and move faster, but the rewards are much greater, as they have the chance to drop rare scrolls, and items you cannot otherwise get in Normal or Hard mode.
Higher level raids can only be played on hard, and lower level raids can be played on Hero. This is where Vindictus truly shines for most people. As these raids give precious items and require teamwork and skill to win. However with the game becoming more pay2win/gear2win, players can simply buy the best armor and enchant it with the best scrolls and tank/dps the boss to death. If you go to see videos of Vindictus you will see many 'solo' videos of raid bosses.
Content in Vindictus is pretty limited as is, even if it is a year old, the game feels pretty anemic. This is probably due to the fact that a lot of the areas of the game are practically the same, save for some slight color differences. Perilous Ruins, the first are in the game, is composed of eleven missions. The area is the same but with different layouts and obstacles with harder enemies being introduced in later missions. Unfortunately however, Perilous Ruins is much like Ruins of Sanctity and Hilder Forest Ruins, those have eight and seven missions respectively. So you will be seeing and playing the same area twenty six times. Not only that, some missions have you repeating the same area for completion of Oaths for quests or to unlock other missions or for specific items.
Further exacerbating the problem is how the game is structured. This is not an open world MMO, but an instanced based one. You have two main hub ports essentially. One is a small village called Colhen, the other is a castle called Rocheste. These are the only two main areas in the game with a path between them that takes about a minute or two to travel between. You access missions by going to the docks, and a ship takes you to the battles.
Lag is to be expected in an MMO, sometimes the server is under strain, lag spikes with your connection, etc. However, with Vindictus being a peer2peer game, the lag can be atrocious at times depending on who you're playing with. Since the game is action based and in real time, any sort of lag can and will be dangerous. I pointed out that Lanns have a 0.3 seconds of invulnerability when dodging, well imagine lag coming into play and you mess up that dodge. Or you simply mistime attacks and you miss that valuable window to dodge. Thus the problem becomes much clearer. Glitches have been present in this game since Open Beta, and while some have been resolved, others have just been less frequent.
Support from the Nexon, the publisher is a major issue as well. Recently there has been a hacking wave of sorts. Many were hacked, none were compensated or had their items returned. Hackers were brought to the company's attention, but none were actually reprimanded. Botters have been rather rampant as well. Since the missions are instanced, it is fairly easy to bot, and crank up your characters stats for one hit kills and invulnerability. In the most recent update, some of these hacks have been patched.
The population has been dwindling as well, maybe due to the repetitive nature of the game, lack of content, poor customer service, having more pay2win/gear2win style gameplay has turned off some players or players have simply migrated to other more impressive games launching.
The nature of the game(hack and slash) makes it seem even more repetitive than it really is, which has pushed many players away. This game has a lot of potential and its still young in the world of MMOs, but it is holding itself back, and with Tera, C9, RaiderZ, and Guild Wars 2, it may not be as unique and fresh as it once was.
http://vindictus.nexon.net/ USA Version.
http://vindictus.nexoneu.com/ EU Version.
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