A Week Late? Surely you're joking?

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No, and don't call me Shirley. Yep, you guessed it, my newborn son cut so much into my sleep time that I forgot to post last week. Sorry 'bout that. But hey, no comments, no new followers, how am I to tell yet that you're even there? If you like it so far, let me know! If you don't then feel free to gripe! And please get the word out! Thanks!

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DC Universe Online Review #1

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Fellow cheapskates! Welcome! It is time to don the tights and capes, and fly off into the great blue yonder! Yes, this week we review:

OOHRAH! I have been a big geek since I was knee high to a grasshopper, so this game was one that I have been looking forward to for a while! DC Universe Online is a MMORPG developed and Released By Sony Online Entertainment in January of 2011. No more delay, let’s get to the review!

BLUF: The game is a new Superhero/Supervillain skin on the classic RPG Quest driven format. Heroes and villains both complete similar quests, and there doesn’t seem to be any deviancy from that format. Fun to play and a solid game, but if you want to think outside the box, think again.

Note: I built and played two different charcters, one villain in the PvP side, and one hero in the PvE side, unlike my other reviews to this point which only tried one character type. I may try this approach again in the future, in cases where there is supposed to be a major difference between certain choices.

SCORES:

Playability: 4/5 This game was designed to be playable on both the PC and gaming consoles, and with that in mind, it does fairly well at making the various keystrokes and combo tricks simple enough to use. There is a definite slant towards the combat side if you play solo, so if you want to try a non-combat archetype, get yourself a (super)team.

Atmospherics: 3/5 This one was hard to call. If I could break the score between the world and your character choices, I would give a solid 4/5 for the world, but a 3/5 for the character design options. More on this later, keep reading.

Community: 5/5 The people playing this game are probably some of the most polite and helpful strangers I’ve played with. In both the alerts and the quests I tried that were difficult, one shout out and you’d have at least a handful of people that would pitch in. PvP was slightly less so, but no camping respawn sites or repeated stalking of lower level players that I could see.

Learning Curve: 4/5 Each power and skill set has a fairly broad tree of powers that you can draw from, and the combinations that you can use allow for a pretty open ended ability to change and improve your tactics. That combined with the fact that there are at a minimum nine major archetypes (with a lot of combat skill trees available to all of them) for each faction means that the desire to try something different and finding your niche is rewarded with a style all your own.

Cash Value: 3/5 There are three levels of cash involvement available. Free allows you two characters, and access to the basic costumes and design options, with several more that can be unlocked in the game. You can also piecemeal buy items from the cash shop to get the specific look, respecify your powers/movement style/mentor, more character/inventory/bank/gear slots, or get consumables for in game bonuses and content. The memberships unlock all costume options, all of the slots available, and in general lets you have full access to the game. Since a lot of the gear that you’ll eventually want to buy costs more than you can have on hand as a totally free character, there is a big incentive to buy in at some level.

Support: 4/5 Regular updates and fixes keep the game fairly glitch-free, the only ones that I encountered was when the sound cut out on me during some quests, and one where I had to completely leave an area after dying to allow the quest to reset completely. Both reports I filed were followed up on within 36 hours, and both were dealt with appropriately.

Overall: 23/30 This is a good game, lots of fun, and definitely worth a look from you. I enjoyed my time with it, and will probably continue to play on my own time.

THE GAME

BACKSTORY:

If you are unfamiliar with the stories that have been told for almost eight decades in the pages of the DC comic books, and on movies, TV, and various other media forms, some of the characters and backstories of the world this game is built on will be confusing to you. However, once you have moved out of your cave and joined the rest of us in society, you should be able to spin yourself up on the major players and their motivations for defense or subjugation of the world. I will leave that up to you, and the rest of this review will assume you know who Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne is, and why you should never accept any candy from green-haired clowns.

In an alternate timeline, the infamous villain Lex Luthor wins a war against Superman and kills him, only to watch as Braniac annihilates the world. In order to stop that outcome, he returned to his past and introduced Braniac designed Exobytes (nanobots that contain the powers and abilities of heroes and villains) on the populace, transforming regular people into superpowered heroes and villains. Your character will be one of those graced (or cursed, if you like) with the powers held by the exobytes, but the specifics of what you get is up to you.

CHARACTER CREATION:

There are a number of steps to the process of creating your character, but at any time up until you name and approve the design, you can go back and change your decisions. Each of the major choices will change the quests available, and how your character interacts with NPCs, but most of the higher level quests are available to everyone, so you’re not missing much in any of the archetypes.

First choice: PvP or PvE? My advice, go for the PvE until you get up in level, you can swap out any time by going to your faction’s main base and entering the Phase Shifter. Otherwise you will get stomped any time you enter one of the open world quest areas by someone much higher in level. (Did you guess that I learned this first hand?)

After that: Male or Female, and what body type? Each has three types, and each type three sizes, but none of them affect gameplay. The hero I chose was male, and the villain, female.

Next: Hero or Villain? Here’s where I was most disappointed. There really is no difference between the two. I expected that as a hero, I would have the chance to stop random crimes while on patrol, or opt to go for quests to stop some masterminded world domination attempt. As a villain, I wanted to rob banks, blow stuff up to watch the pretty lights, or at the very least mug some random civilians. (Edit: Since the initial writing of this article, I have found that you can mug some, but not all, civilians. So brownie points for that.)

Nope.

What you get is an all quest driven approach, and a lot of the quests are virtually the same on both sides, with the only change being the narration from the NPCs giving you the quest. My opinion, it’s a wash either choice.

Fourth: Mentor. The game breaks down the heroes into three sources of their abilities, and represent each with a mentor. Magic is represented by Wonder Woman and Circe, Meta-humans are Superman and Lex Luthor, and Tech is led by Batman and the Joker. By changing your mentor, the early missions and the slant of some of the later missions change. However, it really doesn't affect gameplay whether you have alien DNA or a power suit. I went with Batman for my hero, and Lex Luthor for my villain.

Fifth: Movement type. Again a choice of three, this time flight, superspeed, or acrobatics. Flight and superspeed are pretty obvious, but the acrobatics, I wasn't too sure of. Turns out, it lets you move over any surface, double and triple jumps, and basically brings you as close to a parkour master as the game physics allows. Not too shabby, and all of them have some kind of offensive and defensive power tricks after level 9. I chose acrobatics for my hero and flight for my villain.

Sixth: Power type. A lot to choose from, including fire, ice, mental, gadgets, nature, etc. all of them have two roles that they can fill, one DPS and one either tank, controller, or healer. Tanks and healers, if you've ever played any other MMORPG, are basically the same, and controllers are there to limit the number of threats to a team at any one time with crowd control effects. Deciding how you fit into a team will help you decide what powers to take, but if you're like me and don't have a team in mind to join up with all the time, I'd go with tank or healer roles. Both of my characters were fire based, but my hero came out more damage oriented, and my villain leaned towards the tank.

Seventh: Skills, also called weapon styles. This defines whether you are a melee or ranged attacker, and includes guns, swords, hand blasts, staves, etc., etc., etc. There are a lot to choose from, and each has a tree of special attacks that you can learn as you level up. My hero fights with a staff, and my villain went with hand blasts. New Skills can also be bought along the way, rather than gaining a new attack in a skill tree you already own.

Eighth, and possibly the longest part of the choices made for character creation: What will my character look like? If you want to look like your favorite hero/villain from the DC world, or really, really close, you can find style guides that will match most of them. If, however, you are like me and want an independent look, each of the parts of your character's look have options. Unfortunately, if you can't find the look you specifically want, you'll have to settle for close enough, as you can only alter the preset styles by changing the color palettes. I won' bore you with the details of what my characters looked like, just know that I tried most of the options before choosing. Also, each piece of gear you pick up and equip, even if for only a second, adds a choice to your style (some aren't available at creation, and can be pretty cool), and you can opt to lock your styles so that the gear does not change your character.

And Lastly: What is your name? Fairly simple, just keep in mind that NPC names aren't available, and if there's already someone who chose your name, then you'll have to modify it a bit to make it work. Here are the two characters I created:

TheDragonsPalm (Hero), a martial artist that fights with staff and the focused flames of his Chi,

and OneBigTease (Villain), a party girl and wild child that developed fiery energy powers when the exobytes hit the Earth.

(Comments? Concerns? Smart-ass remarks? Do share!!! And feel free to post your own heroes and villains!)

Once that is done, you'll go to a cutscene, and then hero or villain you pop up in a Brainiac ship, needing to escape. Heros are led through the tutorial by Oracle, and villains by Calculator. The tutorial is good, and introduces you to combat, movement abilities, and lets you beat up some of Brainiac's goon robots before putting you together with Superman or Lex to defeat the ship defender bot and escape. Once out of the ship, you'll be transported to a safehouse, and given a tour of it. The safehouses are all over the place, in every city, and provide you with vendors, quest NPCs, mailboxes, and a warp to eiher the Hall of Doom or the Watchtower. You're also given a quest specific to your mentor that will give you the chance to get used to the cities, how to move around in them, and how to fight in them. At most of the early quests, once you get to the boss, you'll be given an NPC “partner,” a character from the boss's storyline to help you defeat them. Beating bad guys means cash, loot, and occasional gear drops will come your way. I found that combat, whatever style you choose, is fun and mostly not frustrating, unless you happen to drop right into the middle of a minion horde, in which case, they will usually swarm and beat you unconscious. If you are with a team, they can come up in the next 15 seconds or so, and revive you, or else you will respawn at a rally point some distance away. The early stuff is challenging, but not too much so, and I enjoyed most of the quests I tried early on.

UP, UP, AND AWAY

After the tutorial and basic missions that will be handed to you, you can check your Journal for additional quests, On Duty for alerts (special arena matches, including PVP options), and basically fight crime, or cause it, in whatever order you want. Each of the quests do have a recommended solo level listed on them, but if you are not a front line fighter, you'll probably find that you will want help on missions at or near your level. Bounties are also available on the heads of characters that spawn in certain areas in each city like Bizarro or Arkillo. One of the bounties available encourages PVP action as you try to take out players of the opposing faction that are within 5 levels of you. The community is also really great about finding help with difficult quests, so if you get up in level, remember to pay it forward and keep the support spreading.

Visually, each of the areas has it's own feel, the minions for each story arc create armies that follow a motif without being indistinguishable from the other minions, and the effects for the various powers are almost as cool to see as they are to use. The interfaces are easy to maneuver and are somewhat intuitive, and the overall looks is enjoyable.

Gameplay is flexible for you to find what works for you and to adjust to the role your team will need. Tanks, healers, controllers and straight up damage dealers all find a way to add to combat, and the fact that everyone has a damage and “specialist” loadout of powers that can be swapped outside of combat by a single keystroke means whether you have a dedicated team, play solo all the time, or pick up teams as needed, you will fit in somewhere.

Teamwork is definitely rewarded, though, both for you and the NPC minions and bosses. Dropping into a group of minions without backup is almost a guaranteed way to get killed, almost regardless of your current level and that of the minions. Going it alone means no arguing over loot, but it also means a bigger risk. Team members can also revive each other before you have to respawn, potentially saving you from missing out on EXP, loot, and having to catch up.

CASH SHOP

When Sony decided to make the game FTP, they did so in an intelligent way. The cash shop allows you two main paid options, Subscriptions and DLC. The DLC includes several style options that you can unlock for all of your characters, additional character slots, boosts, and at least two DLC packs so far, “Fight for the Light” which added all the Lantern Corps abilities to mold and shape light, and the newer "Lightning Strikes” pack, which added the Electricity power set and Central City as a new map. Also included in each were new styles including “Inspired By” templates that allowed you to look like several of the characters from the Lantern Corps books and the Flash comics. If you want something specific, and decide to invest, the marketplace is great. If, however, you want to shell out a monthly fee, you can also get a membership that gives you access to all the character slots, inventory slots, DLC content, etc., etc., etc. Memberships are advertised as unlocking everything to it's fullest extent. My opinion, this game is a lot of fun to me, so if I wasn't so cheap, I could see myself paying for the extra options.

MY FINAL ANSWER

Definitely a fun game, and one that seems poised to continue to expand and add better and better options. I recommend this game to any of you, especially if you like the standard quest-driven MMO format and/or comics. Tune in next week, same flat-broke time, same flat-broke channel, to see me dive into Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) with the League of Legends.

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Sorry for the delay...

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Fellow Budgeteers, I apologize for the lack of a posting on Monday. I hope you will forgive me, as I have been caring for my wife and new child! My son was born on Friday, and we all came home from the hospital on Sunday. Haven't had a good night's sleep since. Totally worth it, though! Anyway, the post will go up today. Thanks for sticking around!

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Rusty Hearts Review #1

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Fellow Budget Players! Welcome back! Today we'll be looking at:

Rusty Hearts is a brawler style Action MMORPG. It was developed by Stairway Games, is published by Perfect World Entertainment in the US and Europe (and WindySoft elsewhere), and was released September 20, 2011.

BLUF: Gorgeous anime art to watch and a fast paced combo-centric fighting style make this a fun, if repetitive, brawler game. Get your quest(s), kill everyone, gather the loot, turn in your quest, and repeat, repeat, repeat. Munchkins rejoice.

SCORES:

1. Playability: 3/5 The combat is combo-centric, and the amount of button mashing is high, but the number of skills you can use at once is a little too high, and several cancel out the use of each other for a while. That having been said, you can just repeat the basic attacks for a pretty good effect, so it's not impossible for a newb to start off with.
2. Atmospherics: 4/5 B-e-a-utiful artwork for the characters, NPCs, and monsters will keep you visually interested. Each set of dungeons have a particular motif, but the levels themselves are unique.
3. Community: 3/5 All interaction I had was polite, but no one seemed to go out of their way to talk to me, and there was no reason that I could see to want a party on your jaunts through the dungeons, although that might be different on higher levels.
4. Learning Curve: 4/5 The learning curve starts a little high if you want to use all of the skills available (and I found that I did). However, the flexibility and customization available in both your skill layouts and your weapons allows you to really stretch and find your groove.
5. Cash Value: 3/5 The cash shop has a variety of buffs, costumes, and one additional character available, all of which seem to be reasonably priced, and probably useful. There are also ways to earn Zen (in-store cash) without paying, but most are the “buy from our sponsors” type.
6. Support: 4/5 For now. I found one glitch in the game while I played, reported it, and as of today, have not heard back from them. That being said, one glitch during several hour long gaming periods over a week, and regular updates to improve or add to the game (including several Events in the game) gives them an overall high reliability factor.

OVERALL: 21/30 Enjoyable, munchkin style gaming that kept me playing for quite a while, this game has a lot of potential to really do well. If they continue to add to it, and if the levels eventually get more challenging at the higher levels, then I can see great things for this game's future.

BACKSTORY:

Vampires and monsters and bears, oh my. Long before recorded history a race of vampires came into existence. They were discovered by humans, coexisted for a while, even had some half-breeds, but in the end Count Vlad (Main Baddie) decided enough was enough, and set out to destroy all threats to his race. The heroes of the game are part of the Golden Seal Team, a group organized to destroy Vlad and his followers.

The mythical country of Rumania, and more specifically the city of Bramunez, is the site of this little adventure. Within the Castle Curtis, the Golden Seal Team believes that they have captured Vlad, and are preparing to attack, when the heroes of the game show up, calling themselves specialists, to get Vlad themselves.

You have the choice of four heroes to start with. Tude: A hand-to-hand fighter who uses gauntlets or claws. Frantz: Almost turned into a vampire himself, he is something in between and swings a sword or ax. Angela: A witch who favors magical swords and scythes. Natasha: Gunslinger for hire, Natasha has her choice of pistols or muskets.

TUTORIAL:

So, with no idea about any of the heroes, I arbitrarily chose to start with the gunslinger. The tutorials are a series of pause and pop-up windows that appear during the game. They try to cram so much data onto them, I found them a little confusing to understand at first. But they do contain enough for you to figure out the keys to attack, block,

grab, and activate one of six skills. One of the nicer things about them is that they don't force you to go through too many prescripted scenes and drag the process out, instead the game allows you to jump right into the action. This game is designed for you to constantly be doing something in combat, as the experience and rewards that you get during and after the dungeon you go into are based on combos and avoiding damage, which is easy enough to do while you smash in the faces of the monsters you run into. Targeting is somewhat automated for Natasha's shots, so as long as you are aimed in generally the right direction, you will hit. Initial combat is easy, fast, and although it takes some getting used to, it is fun.

THE TOWN OF BRAMUNEZ:

Town is a safe zone where you will find an ever increasing amount of NPCs, to include the usual armor and weapons dealers, the quest givers, basic fluff characters, and skill trainers that you'd expect to find if you've ever played any RPG style game before. Each has a story, and each will talk to you in long back and forth dialogs that I eventually skipped due to the vapid nature. You start out with only one section of the city you have access to, but as you complete the storyline quests, the city will open up to you, and you will find different entrances t the dungeons, with different areas to search.

QUESTS:

The main way that the game gets you to continue into the dungeons is through the quests available from the NPCs in town. Everyone wants something from you, and almost all of them result in you going in time and again to the dungeons, repeating levels at increasingly harder settings, and smashing everything you can. A l

ot of the quests that ask you to go back to a level add or change what you see in them. Sometimes there is a NPC to find, other times the monsters will change, and objects are added to be found and inspected, brought back, etc. The funny thing was that although the dungeon selection screen suggested that the hard and very hard settings for the various levels should be tried by parties, I never needed anyone to help me. I'm not sure whether this is due to innate skill on my part (doubtful), weak monsters in general (possible), or that Natasha is that much of a bad-ass pistolero with her multiple rocket launchers and all (wait, WHAT?).

You heard me. Multiple. Rocket. Launchers.

Yes, one of the skills that you can learn at a rather early point in the game is to set automated rocket launcher turrets that fire in a straight line in the direction you are facing when you drop them. They fire for several seconds, and if you set them right, you can basically sit back and wait for all the baddies to die. I don't know if the other heroes have similar abilities, as I was hooked by the sweet, sweet allure of missile fire, but if they do, a party must just steamroller through the dungeons, arguing over kill steals more than who gets what dropped items.

Crafting items is definitely available, and free gear drops regularly too, so soloing through the dungeons gave me a huge amount of stuff to bring back and sell. Some of the quests overlap as well, which allows you to clean up on experience, items, and to forward the story quickly. I was playing this over the holidays, and the event drops for crafting holiday gear and consumables were very plentiful. It felt a lot like Diablo I and II in that I had to decide what was the best gear to use from the plethora of dropped items. I never felt like I had to buy any of what the merchants offered, the dropped gear seemed to always have better stats. Leveling your character opens new items and skill levels, but there are no character stats to worry about, everything is in your gear and your skills. You can set up several different skill presets, and you have more skills than you have buttons, so if you think a certain level might be better suited for certain skills, you can swap those out. Use of certain skills will cause others to go on cool-down, and getting stunned, knocked down, or hurt badly will also start or restart cool-downs, so learning how to string them together makes you far more effective. Natasha has a kick-up skill that ties well into a shoot-upwards skill, which ties into a jumping spin-kick, which can be followed by basic attacks until you can trigger your shoot-down ski...well, you get the idea. The longer the combo, the better your style points, and the better you do overall.

After a while, the get a quest, rampage the dungeons, turn in the quest, rinse, repeat of the gameplay got to be boring from the repetition, and the easiness of setting rocket launchers up made all but the biggest rooms and mobs child's play.

CASH SHOP: The shop is available at virtually any time, and offers several buffs and bonuses, in addition to costumes for your favorite hero or heroine. Some of the quests also gave costume pieces out, so it was nice to know that you could modify your character a little without spending cash. There are also several "avatars" available; these are more or less variant skins for the characters that change their looks and effects, but use the gear of the main character. For example, Meilin is a martial artist fighter who uses all of Tude's gear. These avatars use their own character slots, so you won't have to worry about overlap. Zen is the cash for this game, and comes at the rate of 1000 for ten dollars.

FINAL THOUGHTS: All in all, I liked the game, and it definitely brought out my inner munchkin. I would like to see more variety to the levels, especially if I have to complete all the difficulty settings to complete all the quests. But the challenge of getting strings of hits without being hit myself, or pushing through a level in a certain time limit, as well as the other changes that the quests add to a repeated dungeon does keep it from being the exact same. I just couldn't see me playing it for more than an hour or two at a time without getting bored from the repetitive nature of it. If brawlers are your thing, give this one a try.

Next week I fulfill my childhood dreams and strap on a pair of tights in DC Online, till then this is NoCashReq, see ya!

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Spiral Knights Review #1

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Fellow Budget Players! Welcome to the first review of Flat Broke Gaming Review! Today we'll be looking at:

Spiral Knights (SK) is an MMO action title developed by Three Rings and

produced by Sega. It was originally released in June 2011.

Bottom-Line-Up-Front(BLUF): Dungeon delving style fun, nothing fancy, family friendly, and completely enjoyable at first. But if you want to play at the highest levels, get out your pocketbook.

SCORES:

1. Playability: 4/5 It's an easy combat system, and virtually all of the moves are intuitive. It's almost possible to play one-handed, but I don't recommend it.
2. Atmospherics: 3/5 the graphics are family friendly, but telling yourself from the other knights, unless you spend money on skins, is difficult and the music is repetitive. Many of the early maps are carbon copies of each other, only the color schemes and/or monsters change.
3. Community: 3/5 Not much interaction in the dungeons, and almost invariably spammed item sales when you are in town, there wasn't a whole lot to judge this area on. Most players were polite, but the constant “BUY MY STUFF NOW” made me stay out of town as much as possible.
4. Learning Curve: 3/5 The game is simple enough for everyone to learn quickly, but lacks the depth to allow for different styles of play and/or tactics. Hack, slash, shoot, bomb and repeat.
5. Cash Value: 2/5 The fact that the energy needed for everything you do is limited means that some things you'll want to do (most importantly upgrading your gear) virtually requires paying out of pocket.
6. Support: 3/5 Support for the site seemed to be smooth, but then again, I never saw any major updates or had any trouble with the game. That being said, the changes that historically were recorded seemed to be more for what the game designers wanted than what players would want.

OVERALL: 18/30 Not a bad little game, but unless the developers/publishers change the item creation costs, it won't really be worth playing without paying real money for the higher cost items.

BACKSTORY

You and the other knights have crashed on a strange planet known as Cradle. The weirdest part to this is that the planet seems to have been deliberately made as the internal structure are massive machines, their purpose, unknown. (dun Dun DUNNN) You and the other knights must go into the Clockworks in order to gather the supplies ( a huge variety of dropped items and five different colored minerals) you need to survive and make your equipment from. And, deep within the planet, there is a large energy reading, but no one has made it there and returned.

In addition to the random monsters that live in the Clockworks, there are the goblins, a race of crafty engineers. They seem to know more about the Clockworks, but whatever they know, the majority won't say. To them, all the knights are useful for is target practice.

Aside from that, there really doesn't seem to be much of a backstory. And all of that is only found out if you either talk to EVERY Non-Player Character (NPC), or read up on the main web site at: www.spiralknights.com. You can access the game from there, or if you have Steam, it's also available through them. With Steam, it will automatically register all your friends on Steam as your friends in SK.

TUTORIAL

The tutorial levels are light, and really only covers the basics of combat with the gun and sword, your main two weapons (I found out that you can charge your attack through seeing someone else do it, and trial and error). The third weapon is a bomb that you charge and plant, with a few seconds time delay fuse. You can buy the bomb once you've made it to the Rescue Camp on the surface of planet. At the camp, you can train in one set of levels, buy stuff, or head to Haven, which is the main camp, and where you can go into the deeper parts of the clockworks. Once you leave the rescue camp, you can't go back, so get comfortable with the interface.

This game has the most simple combat system I have seen in a long time, heralding from when gaming consoles only had 2-4 buttons to choose from, making it very friendly to young or inexperienced players. The three main weapon groups are: 1. swords (hack n slash and hack some more, the simplest weapon to use), 2. guns (medium ranged, these won't quite cross the larger areas. They have a limited ammo and you must stop firing to reload every 5-6 shots) and bombs (must be charged for about 3 seconds, Their Area of Effect (AOE) is shown when planted). Everyone starts with a gun and sword. Left click moves you (hold to continue to move) right click or Z button triggers an attack in the direction of the cursor. You can also hold down the attack button for a few seconds for a charged attack with any of the weapons. The X button activates shield. To swap between the two weapons of your loadout, you can use the mouse wheel or spacebar. I found using the mouse to direct and Z, X, and Space worked the best for me.

The Maps of the beginner levels are simple, with small monsters that are easily handled. You also run into exploding blocks, time delay exploding blocks, various breakable blocks, locked and switch triggered doors, and all of the other basic ingredients for your classic dungeon delving games. Monsters when defeated drop crowns (in-game money), heat (which improves your equipment from level one to ten) materials (used in the crafting of better gear), equipment (rarely), and useable items. The useable items are often throwable potions that have a variety of special effects such as shock and stun, but also include health capsules, which most often look like a Pokemon ball. Everything past the basics I found through trial and error, or from watching one of the other knights do something and trying to emulate them.

HAVEN AND BEYOND

The main town of Haven has all of the usual amenities you'd expect in a game like this: armor sellers, weapon sellers, random NPCs that have mostly useless information for you, etc. The main problem is that NONE of them are labeled, so you spend a few minutes trying to find the one you want. The main area you'll visit is the Arcade, therein you'll find the different gates available to you to go into the clockworks, kill stuff, gather loot, and improve your gear. One of the best features of this game is that everyone on your party gets every crown, point of heat, health heart, token, and mineral that the party picks up. They aren't divided amongst you, you each get the total amount. Materials and equipment are divided randomly, which can be occasionally frustrating as you'll see the last blue crystal you need for your next recipe go to the guy next to you, but the fact that you don't have to squabble for who gets what is great.

Going past level 8 of any gate is only possible once you have either bought or crafted two star equipment. There are limits like this for three, four, and five stars as well. Also within the clockworks, there are specially marked doors that can only be opened by using extra energy, these have a warning next to them that they are significantly harder than the level they appear in. They mean it. After being killed several times in one of these rooms, I ran out of energy to revive myself, and had to quit for the day. This along with the level limits means that you can't accidentally get in way over your head.

The single most limiting factor is energy. Everything you do requires energy, elevator rides, crafting gear, reviving yourself, etc. There are two types of energy in the game, the free kind is mist energy, and you can only gather up to 100 ME at any time. It accumulates one point every 15 minutes, so you have a full tank about every 24 hours. Crystal energy is bought and you can have thousands of CE if you so choose. It is possible to buy CE with crowns, but it is at the going market rates, and the average price I've seen is 6000 crowns per 100 CE. If you want to shell out your cash, you can get 700 CE for $2.45, and the more you spend , the better the rates. This is the major holdup I have with this game. Since your stats are only based on your gear, you have to buy or craft better gear to play to the end. Three star items require 200, four star 400 and five star 800 energy to craft, and buying them for crowns gets expensive fast. In other words, unless you want to grind out days and days of dungeon delving to get enough crowns to buy the energy you'll need to get five star equipment to make it to the end, you will have to pay some cash to get what you want. It's not impossible to earn enough in the game, but it will take a long while to get the gear you'll need.

LAST THOUGHTS

This is a nice little game, simple and easy to play. I enjoyed it, I just can't see myself wanting to play more than an hour or so at a time, and with the energy limit, that's about what you can do. That and the lack of higher end complexity and the amount of grinding needed to play this completely free of cash draws the fun factor down quite a bit, and relegates this to a title that I’d only occasionally want to go back to.

That's it for now, tune in next week when I go all anime and review Rusty Hearts. Thanks for playing, and GG!

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And now for something completely different...

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Welcome to Flat Broke Gaming Review! As a lifelong gamer I’ve played on almost every major system, wasted tons of money on worthless games, and found a few dedicated souls that actually slog through all the trash to find us the gems that are out there and give great reviews.

Recently, I’ve forced myself to limit the amount of games that I buy, and in order to stay on my budget, I’ve been drawn more and more to the enticements of the “Free-to-Play” advertisements that many of the online games have running right now. It seems that almost every MMO, MOBA, and any other style of online multiplayer game have added the option to play without a subscription fee, a promise that seems too good to be true. So the real question is: are they worth your time, or are you only getting enough of a taste to buy the subscription/character pack/etc.?

That’s what I’ll be trying to answer for you. The plan is simple: each week I’ll pick a new game, one with FtP content, and then post a review here on this site. In order to qualify for review, the game will have to meet the following requirements:

1. Not be a flash game. Don’t get me wrong, flash games are great, and I might make exceptions to the rule, but in general, I’m looking for games that you can play for months, and most flash games you’re done with inside of an hour or two.

2. Offer a free subscription option. Guest passes, demo modes, and other forms of playing that do not allow you to pick up where you left off won’t be considered.

3. Have some kind of Multiplayer interaction, whether PvP, Co-op, RPG, etc.

4. Allow for more than just the “Training Areas” to be accessed. There can be some areas where you have to have a paid subscription to enter, but there should be a robust enough open area for FtP Players that you would want to continue to play.

After the week of playing, I will write up a review with a zero to five point score on each of the following criteria:

1. Playability: Does the game allow anyone to play, of any skill level, and with any system/peripherals. A 5 would be a game with minimal system requirements that my wife could easily pick up the basics. Whereas a 0 would be a game that only the most hardcore system with the latest joystick/steering wheel rig/controller/etc. could handle, or one that if you have never played a game of that style before, you have no chance to even figure it out before you’re a splatter on the backdrop.

2. Atmospherics: Does the game have good graphics, nice music, maybe even some witty character banter? Top scores will go to a visually enjoyable art style and good audio that adds to the feel of the game, whereas the goose egg games will be impossible to stare at without H. P. Lovecraft level psychosis setting in (unless it is a Lovecraft game, in which case…) and where you would leave the speakers off while you play.

3. Community: I have played with polite, professional, and courteous gamers, and have also had the thirteen year old who seemed to think that anonymity allowed him to fire off a string of foul-mouthed four letter obscenities without pause. While this isn’t something that the designers or producers have a huge control over, you know and I know that the other players you run into always influence the gaming experience. Also, if no one plays the game, why play? Games with a five here have a robust community with good natured players the norm rather than the exception, and the game itself allows you to mute/block other players who aren’t so polite. A zero will mean that the game either has few players out there, possibly none, or they’re all rude, crude, and there’s nothing you can do about them.

4. Learning Curve: Different from playability, learning curve scores will be based on how easily you can master the game, compete with other players of your own skill level, and whether there is always room to grow in the game. Top honors will be earned by games that have a smooth transition from newcomer to the elite players, and the chance to grow and learn new styles of characters, new tactics, etc. If the transition from noob to pro is impossible, there is only one way to play that works, Lvl 50 players are wasting Lvl 3 players at the spawn point, or once you’ve finally ground out enough EXP to reach the top there’s nothing left to do, this game gets nothing.

5. Cash Value: All of these games should provide hours of cash-free gaming, but if you do decide to break out the checkbook, what do you get out of it? And how much do you lose to those who regularly spend $50-$60, even $100 a month on unlockable content/subscriptions/etc.? Hi-Fives will be had for those games that do not penalize the budget-conscious, offer sweet skins/mods/areas/challenges to those who have money to burn, and bonus points if they have an alternate way to buy the extra content (yes, there is extra credit on this quiz). A Gibbs Slap will be given if I get turned into a smoking crater every five seconds by the player who paid for the auto-targeting shoulder-mounted laser cannon with unlimited ammo, cyclic rate of fire, and built-in stealth technology (NOW only $149.99!!!). Also, constant advertisements while playing will lose points.

6. Support: Every computer I have ever had has crashed. What we’re looking for here is how does the developer handle these inevitable problems, as well as update patches. A five will be available to those games that show quick response to any problem, and that update on a published schedule with fixes for the known problems. A zero will be given out if the game lags constantly or drops my connection on a regular basis, if patches happen at random and never really fix anything, and if the developer’s response to any support-related email is “MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”

The game will get scores in each area as well as a cumulative overall score. In addition, out of the four games that I review each month, whichever game gets the highest score will be played for the next month in addition to the new games being reviewed, and at the end of the month I will revisit the game with a more in-depth review.

So there’s the plan. Got a game that you want me to review?Post a comment. Think that my review is completely off base? Comment on it. Looking for me in game? My Login will be NoCashReq, or as close as I can get to that. Want to help me expand my gaming budget? A donation option will soon be available, so keep an eye out for that. Until then… GG!

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