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Friday, May 27, 2011

Why I’m Behind.


See the picture above? I got a new Laptop. An Acer that is running like a dream so far. My old computer was falling apart, slowing down, lagging to Hell and back and blue screening like crazy when it didn’t like the program. Not to mention taking MINUTES at a time to finish starting up.

It’s going to be awhile before I get this computer fully configured and get adapted to Windows 7. But once that’s done I’ll be doing a double update. Posting an Urban Rivals card review and a game called Shadow Era.

Peace and love,
Kawaiido

Friday, May 13, 2011

Aron's Dive Into the Gang

Urban Rivals

Hello everyone My name is Aron, and I’m here to help Kawiado with reviewing games by giving them a look at from a more avid gamers’ point of view and this time I will be having a look at Urban Rivals, this is my first one so please, bare with me as I try my best to give it my all.


Story

Urban Rivals has an interesting story I’ll give it that, gang wars breaking out in a city, many people, creatures and other things breaking into fights over theses magic pills. Yes that’s right people, over pills, but no ordinary pills. These pills have the ability to grant someone even more power then they have which is all made by one person by the name of Morphun which I think is a throw back to Morphius from the Matrix.

Now due to this massive gang war breaking out, it seems to have a vacuum effect pulling more people, and in some cases, animals into this fight like a spreading plague which makes me wonder, why doesn’t the police force (If any left) kill this person
Who is making the pills that are the cause of all this?

But all and all, the story is okay, and a bit from the norm, but still interesting by my view.


Game Play

Now the game play of this is very, very simple. The stats for each cards are this, Attack, the amount of power the character has in a fight and Damage, how much damage the character inflicts on the other player if they win the fight. There are also pills, in each battle, you get 12 pills to use each pill, adds on more attack the character you give it to so if the one your using has 8 attack, the pill will add another 8 onto their attack, Damage can’t be changed by the pills unless you use three of them to activate fury, which adds a 2 to the damage they deal, knock your opponent down to 0 HP first, or have higher HP by the time the fight is over and you win.

Almost all character have an ability, the gang that they are in, has a gang ability that activates if only members from one gang are in the fight everyone has this. The ability the character has is next to the yellow box, the gang ability is next to the green box.

Now fights are executed in four rounds, you get four people in the battle, each person can only battle once so make sure you don’t use the one you’ll need in the end to early so there is a bit of strategy their. About the abilities of the fighters, some abilities can only be used with cretin conditions, like losing fights, or being the one to start the brawl, so pick carefully.

Each character can level up with the EXP they get from either, knocking someone out, or getting the crap beaten out of them, winning gets more EXP, and characters abilities are unlocked as they level up, so keep that in mind. If a character who is at MAX level enters a fight, the EXP that they would of gotten goes into an EXP pool that you can go to later to improve other gang members.

There are game modes such as the normal way of playing were luck comes into play as well as the attack of each gang member, and Death match, were higher attack always wins, there are more but you’ll have to see for yourself.


Overview

Over all, that’s all there really is to the game. There’s a market, you buy stuff, you sell things to players, you get rewards for ranking up, but all and all it’s okay, nothing too in-depth, nothing way too simple, but still very simple I say it’s more of a casual gamers game then a hard core one. The frequent updates are nice, but not nice enough to see me on every day, maybe once or twice a week maybe three but not every day.

New Reviewer Coming On Board!

Looks like I won't be a solo act for long.

Turns out that I talked someone into doing this with me. They're more on the "competitive" side of things. That's not a bad thing, I mean its not one of those stop having fun guys that is the bane of all casual players everywhere. So their will be some contrast to my casual gamer insight which could only help broaden the scope of the games overall.

Once the account is set up the other side will show. Stay tuned.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Urban Rivals: Bashed Into My Heart


Clint City.
A wretched hive filled wit conflict on a regular basis.
Clan wars all abound.
It’s not safe to walk out on the streets no matter what time of day.
I don’t know why a girl like me decided that roosting here for awhile was a good idea.
I think I might have gotten myself into something I don’t quite understand.
Something vicious and dark. Something…that might consume my soul.

OKAY, enough of the film Noir bits. I’m reviewing Urban Rivals.

I just discovered the game a few days ago, and I love what I see thus far. This is like the Magic the Gathering of online games. It’s been around for about nine years now and still going strong. Now it’s got its hooks in me. As we speak I’m checking the in game market to see what I can snap up for a few possible decks I can bust out. But enough prattling on, let’s get right to the review. Some of us have lives…I think.

Game Play: Unlike other card customizable card games it only takes a few minutes to really get the hang of the rules. Though it may seem rather “cut-&-dry” those views might become obsolete the moment you get into things like Clan bonuses, but more on that later.

When you sign up you get to select from one of three random booster packs. Each one of these packs will have a random assortment of 8 cards from a pool of all the available clans. As I write this there are 22 Clans with 2 new characters being introduced every 2 weeks and a new clan every 6 months. Its getting to the point where I can’t help but wonder exactly how big is Clint City? It’s got to be close to bursting right about now. Anyway onto the basic stats. Power (indicated by a Fist icon near the number) and Damage (indicated by an Explosion looking Icon). Power determines the odds of that character winning, while Damage determines how much damage they do to you if they win I’ll expand on that a little further along.

Onto the Clan Bonuses I mentioned earlier. Clan Bonuses are a unique trait among clans which can only be accessed if at least two characters you control are from the same clan. These could tip the balance in your favor, but it’s not always an absolute. Abilities also come into play as well. Some have them, some don’t. Sometimes lacking an ability can be a Godsend as opposed to a hindrance since you got Abilities and Bonuses that stop Abilities and Bonuses. I’m not going to get into ALL the abilities and bonuses since these kinds of reviews are to be compact as possible since people can be quite busy these days (also if I told you EVERYTHING that would probably make you less eager to visit the site).

ANYWAY, onto the game play. Your deck is comprised of 8 cards. Once you find an opponent (shouldn’t be that hard, the place is pretty active) out of those 8 cards 4 are picked at random, and so is turn order. In standard play you start off with 12 Life (60 in Pratice) and 12 Pillz. Pillz are what you can use to power up your characters to help give them that extra push needed to gain the upper hand. Part of the game is to know when to spend Pillz and when to hold onto them (as a side note, neither one of you will know how many Pillz (if any) have been used until both players finalized their choices).

Another key element is to know when to lose. Yes, you read that correctly. There are going to be situations where it would probably be better to throw a Character to the wolves as opposed to trying to actually win the fight. The game is determined by who has the most Life left by the time the 4 rounds are up. It’s possible (if not hard) to lose 3 rounds, then come back in the 4th round to win the game.

Another interesting feature in the game is that the cards gain experience points and can level up to become more useful. The artwork will also change on these cards. Changes can vary anywhere from cute, to sexy, disturbing and everywhere in-between. Most of the strategy in battle comes from the deck building, so experiment, see what works for you.

Features: Like any of these “free to play” games, you don’t need to pay in to get anything out of it, but expect it to do it SLOWLY if you’re not lucky enough to get anything that sells well. Oh, the game has two forms of currency. Credits and Clintz. Credits are used to purchase from the in game system while Clintz are used to buy cards from other players (as an added annoyance, if you’re a seller they take 5% of the Clintz you priced the card for, so take that into account as you set prices). Clints are obtained in small amounts just for playing the game to completion.

Tournaments are held every two HOURS. Yeah, ALWAYS at least 12 going on in a 24 hour period. They give out cards and extra Clintz depending on how well you perform by the time its over. No entry fee needed, you can enter in as many as you want in a day you just need to at least be level 15…well, you need to get adjusted to the game so its for your own safety.

The game also has several kinds of formats, so if you’re looking for a challenge from the norm you can take part in them as long as the deck follows the regulations of the format (you can look this up easily in the My Collection/My Deck screen by clicking on one of the formats to produce a dropdown list).

The biggest format in the game is known as Elo. I don’t know what that means, but the key feature of that format is that it’s the only format where certain cards are banned. If you see a crossed out pill on the upper left hand corner it can’t be used in that format. The list of cards banned is always in flux. The players can actually vote on what cards they want on the list and which ones they want off. So, they do care what the players think. Just pray that the community at large sides with you. It also seems to be the format that gives the most Clintz.

Expanding further on the buying and selling of cards you can either make the sales public, private or hold an auction for the card. The message boards can also be used for such conduce and other things like advice and the joining/establishing of Guilds.

Final Judgment: I would defiantly give this game a try at least once. It’s free to start and the games can be nice and quick so you can get in a bunch without throwing off your entire day. Not too deep on thinking but not too shallow either. Go on, give it a look and try it for a day.

Also, I’d like to say that in about a week from now I plan on reviewing cards from the game as a common occurrence. Though I must tell you I have a rather STRICT “review what I own” policy. If I don’t own it I won’t review it. I just don’t think I can give a fair review for anything I have not had any first hand experience with. If by chance you want to alter that you could either offer me said cards for sale (provided I can afford) or simply donate cards or Clintz to my cause so I can have more stuff to review. You’ll find my profile on the Gaming Haunts page. So, have a good evening people.

So back to the streets of Clint City I go.
This girls gonna hustle.
Got to keep some kind of edge.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Sea Treasure Match



Ahoy there MATES!

Captain Kawaiido here, back from sailing the high seas in search of treasure on the high sea- OW! Oh GOD…my head. It hurts so badly. And it’s not from the rum I pounded back seventeen times because the alcohol content wasn’t nearly enough to make anyone this way. Let me get a seat…there.

Okay today’s game happens to be a puzzle game. One of those Bejeweled knock offs as it were. Okay, its not a complete Bejeweled knock off, it’s got its own elements- OW! So of a…anyway, lets get to it before I take a gun to my- SWEET ZOMBIE JESUS MAKE IT STOP! Sorry, sorry, onto the game

Game Play: The objective of the game (like others of its kind) is to clear away a certain number of jewels in order to advance to the next level. In this case, replace jewels with sectors. They’ll be indicated by yellow boarders. Jewels might switch places but the boarder will always remain where it is. You eliminate these boarders by matching jewels by at least 3’s to clear them, and off to the next level.

To aide you’ll be getting items such as bombs, dynamite, hour glasses and lightning bolts for clearing certain amounts of jewels in one swoop. The bombs if matched with a jewel of the same color eliminates jewels in a 3-by-3 area- OH GOD, WHY WON’T THE POUNDING STOP!? Sorry about that. AS I WAS SAYING, dynamite does the same thing with the same trigger as the bombs except in a cross pattern and wider range. Lightning- KILL ME, SOMEONE KIILLLL MEEEE!! Again sorry about that, back on task. Lightning has the same trigger, but it takes out 7 random jewels and finally Hourglasses (same trigger as the others) give you an extra minute to the clock.

As an added hindrance, you’ll run into these locked jewels further on. They can’t be moved, but can be eliminated if matched or blown up. They will get in your way by having somewhere under them more boarders that must be cleared away. If you run out of any possible matching jewels the game will help by reshuffling jewels. The only true foe here is the timer.

Interface: What interface? It’s just point and click! Though I do like that if you click outside of the game it pauses for you. That’s very nice of the game.

Final Judgment: The game is fairly challenging and could keep you busy for at least an hour. One thing I should advise. The games music (and only song) is sleep educing. Just something about it just makes you want to curl up and snooze, which in turn could also educe boredom. If you’re going to play it either quiet the music or turn it up and play it when you’re having issues sleeping.

Now excuse me. I need to find a bullet to put in my head to stop the headaches. OKAY, not a bullet, but pills. Allergies suck!

AT&T: Soon to become A Gamer Sinkhole & A Brief Word About Alteil Section



According to this article I read earlier this afternoon, AT&T is ditching their unlimited dataplan forcing its customers to keep tabs as to how much data one manages on a monthly bases.

Now this is where the issue comes in for those who play any games online. Even if you don’t realize it, you’re downloading a lot of data when you play games such as World of Warcraft. I shutter to think what your monthly bill would look like after playing it for an hour, let alone once a day. This gets worse when you also take patching the games into account and other uses like Instant Messengers, watching videos on YouTube and God help you if you use any kind of Torrenting software.

Anyone who wasn’t already fed up with AT&T might jump ship once news breaks out further, so that’s what I’m doing, trying to make it far more viral.

You suck AT&T! I know a business needs to make money to stay in business, but this is just going too far. This isn’t price raising, this is bleeding your consumers dry! They claim it’s based on customer feedback, bull shit! Be honest about it at LEAST. Not all of America is stupid, I can see through your lies.

Here’s hoping this blows up on you fast, hurts hard and that you NEVER recover from this!

If you got an opinion either supporting, anti or whatever post back. I’m just fuming right now.

On a lighter note, the Alteil segment is being worked on, but reviews won’t start until the next round of Errata’s are done. No way am I doing any reviews only to find out the info is dated the moment I post my thoughts on it.

Princess in the Dungeon



Well, seems like my wandering fingers had led me to this game. A Princess lacking a name (who may or may not resemble a certain other princess from a game with a certain plumber in it) is locked in this dungeon for some…reason or other.

Okay, we don’t know who put her in their or why, it’s just a lame excuse to set up this puzzle game. The objective is simple in principle. All you have to do is get the jewels to our nameless Princess so she can escape her prison.

Interface: The game is controlled using the mouse. You click the bolts this jewel is clinging to, in an effort to insure that when you click the last one, it rolls to her. YES, she is so damn lazy that you got to make sure it lands next to her. It makes sense for the sake of being a puzzle game, but still…maybe I’m thinking about this a little too hard, who knows.

ANYWAY (sorry for trailing off) back to the game! In the later levels you’ll encounter the likes of destructible blocks, warp points and even air pumps to help you get the jewel to the princess.

One complaint I got relates to the words on the screen shot. Some of the bolts start off near that thing and if you click closely (its too easy to do) you’ll end up opening a new tab/window. I guess the designers were more concerned about pimping out their website as opposed to insuring that…you know, it doesn’t become a hindrance.

Game Play: As I mentioned earlier, it’s a fairly simple in concept, yet at times you might make slip ups at first in later levels. It’s not just enough to click the anchors, you must also in a good deal of cases TIME the clicks just right so the jewel lands right where it needs to be.

Final Judgment: Despite the game featuring a Princess Peach knock off, I liked it while it lasted. The game is short. Very, VERY short and no real replay value outside of four achievements. We’re talking attention span of a goldfish short. But for what its worth try it at least once.

Twas a nice distraction.

Yu-Gi-Oh Online Ver 3 Review

Welcome to my first review. I decided to ease on into this with something I know about as well as the back of my hand. Before I begin I got to tell you, this game assumes you have working knowledge of the offline card game variation of itself. So, unless you are already playing it for real or on a gaming system expect to take some bumps and dings trying to get a handle on things.

Also note that reviews of this game have been done before, but are dated to say the least and cover it under its past, shoddy incarnations. With that in mind, let’s go.

Setup: If you’re installing it for the first time, expect to wait quite awhile before everything finishes (it took me about 2 hours before I was battle ready) unless you have a fast connection and a fast machine. All those patches really seem to add up overtime.

Interface: The interface is fairly straightforward in terms of dueling, but things might take some getting used to in terms of chat. The major issue for me (at first) was how you made decks. You first have to make the deck, then go to save deck, pick new, give it a name and then click save.

As I mentioned earlier it’s possible to do live chats in game. Also, you can add friends and people onto an in game block list in case you run into someone who’s troubling you. Since adding or blocking also gave me issues, I’ll tell you how to add people to friends or block list. Just double click their name and pick from the choices. Sadly this cannot be done in battle, and as of yet I have not found a chat command to add them to said friend list. If anyone knows how to do it that way, please say something.

Game Play: The game plays out like any Yu-Gi-Oh battle starts. 8000 Life Points and drawing 5 cards to start. You just highlight the card you want, click what you want to do with it and go from their. Phases are advanced through clicking buttons in the middle of the screen.

To keep things at a brisk pace, each person is allotted a certain amount of time during their turn. On average each player is given 20 minutes to play out the match, and a secondary bar with a smaller count. If you run out of either total time, or turn time you lose regardless of other factors.

The game will ask you if you’re sure about your responses and chaining stuff. Some cards seem to be glitched however, like Tunningwear which says it’s suppose to act as a Level 2 for Syncro Summoning if you wish (this cost me a few games, so until they fix it, its not in my deck) If you get it, don’t use it, unless you wish to be annoyed like I was.

If you’re looking to try out your deck before going into the arena head over to Kaiba Corporation where you can battle various NPC’s to get the hang of it. The NPC’s have a tendency of using cards that are classed as Forbidden. I don’t have the slightest idea if this is for reasons of additional challenge or simply something forgotten. I’d believe the latter over the former since the A.I. on the likes of Yami Yugi and Hell Kaiser are about as bright as a baseball.

Those who have played the game in real life more than likely are aware of the Limited/Forbidden list. This game has one that differs from that list, so it could be an adjustment. For better or worse all depends on preference.

Complaints: Of course, nothing is flawless. These are my gripes in the form of bullet points:

- I had to build my deck in the Duel Options before I could use it. Even if you buy a structure deck, it doesn't automatically save itself in one of the slots. Keep this in mind before you try to play a game.


- The default selection of cards is rather abysmal in terms of usability unless you sign up during a Registration Campaign. Unless you got some money lying around ($2.99), I suggest waiting till a Registration Campaign, otherwise you’ll have a struggle to overcome.


- For the credit card option, they only take Visa or Master Card.


- BP can only be gained by way of Booster Pass (they give 30 BP).


- With most packs, they cost 15 BP and only give you 5 cards.


- You can only buy each structure deck once, and only 1 of them (I know they need to make money, but come on).


- Cards and BP are held by character so if you delete one character to make another, kiss all those things goodbye.


- The censor system in chat is stupid. The h-o in “how” will be censored for example.


- The filtering system for cards leave quite a bit to be desired. The more precise you want to be, the more likely it gets to not showing anything. You’ll be refreshing like crazy. Here’s hoping they fix that.


- Though it is possible to trade in game, you can only trade cards that you purchased with Booster Points. Yep, those cards you get from buying Booster Passes don’t mean squat. Awfully greedy if you ask me.

Final Judgment: Despite all the gripes, I do enjoy the game. Though I honestly only recommend this to people who are already fans of the game and have maybe $10-$15 bucks to spare to start up their dueling carriers.

As I’m wrapping this up I’m preparing to go back on for a bit before calling it a review day. Also I'd like to know there's a possibility I will be touching up on this game again in the near future.

If curiosity is great enough, here’s the link:
http://www.yugioh-online.net/

And some screenshots below. Now to get to cracking open a book on coding so I can show thumbnails.:
http://s1091.photobucket.com/albums/i381/Kawaiido/YuGiOh%20Stuff/YGO%20Review%20Screenshots/