GC Asia 2008

Over the weekend, I went to the Games Convention Asia 2008 at Suntec City. The convention seems smaller than what it usually is but I liked it as the area was full of demos and games for you to try. The way I like my games conventions. I mean what’s the reason for games convention if it isn’t to entice customers with demos?

Of the many games on hand there, there were 2 which really interest me; Warhammer: Age of Reckoning and Spore. I did look at the other games there but these 2 are the ones that I really try out.

First off was Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, better known as WAR. The game itself seems nice enough. Graphics and gameplay were good and solid. There’s a good range of races and class for you to choose, and the Warhammer setting is always interesting. Unfortunately, WAR is also a shameless rip-off of WoW (World of Warcraft).

In fact, I would even call WAR ‘WoW Version 2.0’. The gameplay and overall look of the game is similar to WoW, which I guess isn’t a bad thing considering how successful WoW is, but more refine. The graphics is slightly better, the PvP is much better, and the Tome of Knowledge was great. But after playing it, I can’t help but think of WoW. If you in for PvP, then WAR is the game for you; if not, you can flip a coin and decide between WAR or WoW. There’s no real difference.

I was much more impressed with Spore. The reviews of the game were decidedly mixed but I enjoy the game. Granted I only tried parts of the game, but I liked it. The game might be over hyped, but it’s fun. The cell stage was a blast and when your spore comes out of the water onto dry land…Hooray!!!! The creature, tribal and civ stage isn’t much to shout about but the space stage looks huge.

It was a fun game. I think I’ll buy that.

Review of Cabal

As a free MMORPG, Cabal is one of those games which, as expected, has a lot of plus and minuses. After trying my hand at it, I’ll say there are more minus than plus.

Good news first. The game got a few things going for itself. First off, the music and graphics were excellent. Cabal is one of the better looking free MMORPG on the market with bright landscapes and beautiful characters. The world itself had an alien feel to it which I kind of liked. It is spilt between 3 regions with a portal room connecting all 3 regions. It was interesting to skip between the 3 worlds while doing the quests.

For all the pluses, the game has some serious problems. First off, you can’t download the game from the CabalSEA website. I first wanted to try out the game months ago when I saw it at a games convention but after 3 tries over a couple of months, I gave up on it (hear that Asiasoft!). However I got a free disc for the game and that’s when I finally managed to try it recently. Installing it is one thing, getting into the server is quite another. On 3 occasions I was either kicked out of the game or I was unable to login into the system. The unstableness of the game is a little surprising for me as I never had any problems with Maplestory before, another game under Asiasoft.

The game-play itself was pretty simple. If you had played other free MMORPGs before, nothing here will be a surprise. That’s the problem. The game itself is pretty to look at, but ultimately it’s run-of-the-mill. There’s nothing that really jump out to say that this game is different from any other on the market. Another problem I think the game has is the balance of the classes. Bane of many MMOs, I feel that some of the classes in Cabal are vastly overpowered. The balance felt very wrong. In some classes, I could just walk through enemies like they weren’t even there, while others require careful game-play…very careful game-play.

I also faced some problems with the NPCs. As NPCs are the main givers of the quests, I got into problems when I failed to do the earlier quests. As the NPCs give multiple quests, I found that the quests are stuck at the first lower-level quests. If you fail to do those, you can’t do the higher-level quests even when the quests has nothing to do if each other story-wise. No such thing has multiple quests for you to pick which one to do first in this game.

I won’t say Cabal is a bad game, it does have some points, but I feel it’s more like a work in progress. Nothing in it is really different, so unless there are some vast improvements…skip it.