5 Most Disappointing Games of 2014 (So far) - #4: The Elder Scrolls Online

Continuing on from #5: Destiny the next most disappointing game that I experienced is 'Elder Scrolls Online'; Bethesda's first attempt at making its historically single player game into an MMORPG experience. Admittedly it was always kind of expected that this game wouldn't be very good but, nevertheless, it was one of those games where I jumped straight onto the hype train. Whilst I hoped and prayed that it may not be as bad as what everybody was expecting it to be and gleefully anticipated the opportunity to play Elder Scrolls with friends, I was disappointed, though not surprised.

#4. Elder Scrolls Online

Developer: ZeniMax Online Studios

Genre: MMORPG

Release date: April 4th 2014

Platforms: PC, (Early 2015/Late 2014: PlayStation 4 and Xbox One)

ESRB: M - Mature

This game was a knife to my heart though admittedly I would probably still go on to buy it on console when it comes out since there are supposedly going to be several changes to improve it. As a lover of Elder Scrolls and a ‘frequent flyer’ when it comes to MMOs I eagerly anticipated the return to Tamriel and, although I enjoyed myself to some degree, the game was disappointing. It was perhaps naively optimistic to hope that the joining of a famously single player game with some multiplayer aspects would result in something beautiful but instead the two parts clash constantly. Whilst quests can be completed together the narrative focuses on you as an individual and any immersion acquired within the quest is quickly demolished by the sight of several other people performing the same ‘individualized’ quest. In quests leading to you making a decision that affects the world around you you can quickly find an incompatibility between your decisions and the decisions of your friends leading you to see two separate worlds and the inability to interact with your friend’s world. You may see enemies that you friends don’t, meaning they cannot jump in to help you as is standard in multiplayer gaming and sometimes you friend may turn invisible such as during the main questline, guild quests and when you’ve made different decisions in certain areas. 

But it’s not just these two halves of a game that won’t fit together; the combat’s targeting system is irritating and the combat itself is clunky with the lag and bugs making it unpredictable. For fans of the Elder Scrolls series you’ll be disappointed at the lack of personality in NPCs, your inability to commit crimes and the complete lack of immersion in that you cannot interact with bodies or objects, fast travel is unrestricted and everything tends to appear out of thin air from fishing rods to horses. This game is infamously buggy and with shed loads of lag but those are likely to be fixed for the console release, if they’re not then there’s a serious problem going on with Bethesda, so I’ll try to ignore those downsides. If you enjoy the Elder Scrolls so much you’ll take anything that returns you to the world of Tamriel then you may get some fun out of it, I enjoy the idea of being able to play co-op and can generally overlook a LOT of negative points as long as I get mine but, still, it’s a very disappointing turnout for what could have been a fantastic edition to the series. 

The Good:

• Decent crafting system
• Environments quite nice
• Nice variation of creatures and enemies
• 'Skyrim' with friends a nice experience
• Very good voice acting
• PVP is acceptable
• Skills trees are very good though not restricting on your play style
• Character customization is good for an MMO
• Lovely music and audio
  

The Bad:

• Dodgy co-op questing experience
• Very little teamwork
• Quite an empty game world for an MMO
• Limited interaction with the game world 
• Repetitive, clichéd quests
• Not many voice actors, bad writing in places
• PVE is poor, unbalanced at times, boring the rest of the time
• Very laggy and bugged in its current form
  

The Score: 6/10 

Final thoughts: "Despite my reservations I'd probably continue playing this, provided more content is included. As a diehard fan of the series I'll probably take anything that's thrown to me purely so I can play it with my partner, but that doesn't mean it's a good game." 

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ÆRENA: Clash of Champions - Guest Review (Online Multiplayer Game)

ÆRENA is a free to play, turn based combat strategy game based in a rather unique and beautifully designed steampunk world. Developed by Cliffhanger Productions the game is hero-centric and revolves around your team versus another aboard an airship, sailing through the skies and battling out your differences along the way. The game is primarily intended for multiplayer matches and these matches tend to last between ten to fifteen minutes rather than long winded rounds that test your staying power over strategic prowess. Whilst ÆRENA is by no means shaking up the genre of turn based strategy games, that’s not to say it’s not a good game. In fact, the depth of strategy and the intensity of the game are both incredibly addictive.

To read more of my review, check it out on DarkStation here. This is a genuinely good game and I'm pretty amazed that it's free, for those of you who love a challenging strategy game then this is the game for you. Plus, no Pay-To-Win features! Can't say fairer than that.

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Maple Story - MMORPG Review (Online game)

Maple story is a much beloved free MMORPG that’s got a pretty cutesy, chibi feel about it whilst maintaining classic RPG gameplay, albeit in 2D. To begin with, it’s not a browser based game which is quite common of MMORPGs but I found the 5GB download to be a pretty steep commitment for a new player. The game features very in depth customization of your keyboard and mouse settings, which is the primary means of playing the game, so if you’re not happy with the set up you can be sure to change every aspect of it. The game is quite alluring with its simple, 2D style and promise of far and wide adventures across the land however scratching beneath the surface reveals a game that’s fast falling out of favour with its players.

Storyline and quests

Strangely, Maple story doesn’t really have a storyline though there are a lot of quests to complete and skills to train. The lack of storyline is fairly irksome given that the very name implies that they’d at least be something there. There’s some general reference to some evil Black Mage hovering about in the background and that warriors are needed to eventually, at some point in the future, fight him. Black Mage has been banished for several years now and hasn’t re-joined the fray yet so there appears to be no immediate threat. In terms of a plot that’s all you’re going to get. Players are generally citizens in the world and don’t actually appear to have any sort of ‘hero’ status. You can find out the previous storyline by talking to all the NPCs and slowly piece together why the world is the way it is. If you can consider this storyline rather than a history of the world then I suppose it’s alright; it’s a nice little story but more serves as a form of lore than as something you can interact with and become a part of.

Bright, cheerful and varied environments.

Maple Story’s quests are certainly numerous, if a bit repetitive. There are a lot of quests that tend to be along the lines of delivery tasks, killing a certain number of monsters or collecting a certain number of items. For completing quests you tend to get a lump sum of experience and sometimes a few items like healing potions or a piece of equipment. There are however, absolutely dozens and dozens of quests that require increasingly higher levels to unlock so if you intend to complete them all then you’ll certainly have lots to do.

Music and sound

The music is pretty decent and the style of it changes depending on which area you’re in. The music is very varied in the style and can range from classical string music to some hard-core rock. If you’re in one area for a prolonged period of time the music naturally gets repetitive so you either turn it down or turn it off completely, but the fact the music changes style at all is great. Each skill has its own sound and, like the music, fits in well with the whole feel of the game though the death squeals of certain monsters start to grate on you after a while. Overall, the music is fairly cute and pleasant sounding but tends to get repetitive after continued exposure to it.

Gameplay and content

Gameplay generally consists of increasing your stats and levelling up your character by combating monsters and completing quests. Players can form guilds together to make these challenges easier and may trade and chat with one another too. There’s a fairly pointless system that allows straight guys and girls to marry one another but that doesn’t stretch to be inclusive of potential homosexual couples, take that as you will. Maple story doesn’t seem to have a great deal of content unless you really enjoy grinding your combat skills by killing stuff and, when judging when an MMORPG is worthy of my time I do tend to look at how much choice players get when deciding what to do today. Maple story certainly is lacking in choice and content as, after levelling up, you don’t tend to get access to something bigger and better you just sort of have to… do it all again and level up some more. New equipment is unlocked quite frequently in the very early levels but after that it becomes less and less frequent whilst taking longer and longer to level up. It’s frustrating that prolonged hard work isn’t really rewarded and it just makes the grind worse. On the plus side, it’s really easy to level up… I guess that’s a plus side because it means the game will be over faster. I’ve spent a lot of time in games that include vast amounts of grinding as I play RPGs quite often but grinding needs to be counteracted by the reward of good content, new areas or storyline progression and Maple Story just lacks reward for what feels like a lot of pointless, hard work.

Yep... still looks pretty good, shame about all the problems.

Maple Story lacks the feature of player killing which is a shame as combat is a core part of the gameplay. Rather than killing your fellow players Maple Story would prefer it if you worked with them instead. A large aspect of Maple story revolves around the community and playing with groups of people, for instance, through team-quests. This is the kind of game you’ll want to play with friends as it makes levelling up so much easier, especially in later levels. Of course, since there are so many people who play this game you’ll have no trouble finding others to buddy up with and help each other out. This brings me onto the community of the game which, due to the focus on team playing, is extremely important.
Community

Every online game has its good players and its bad players, that’s simply the way things work. You’ll always find people who are selfish, greedy, disrespectful or just plain irritating and that’s kind of a part of playing with people you’ve never met before. So, I was expecting a degree of those kind of bad attitudes but what I was not expecting was the sheer amount of it. In a game that encourages teamwork you’d expect there to be some kind of incentive for people of all levels to be able to work together, where a higher level working with a lower levelled player was of no detriment to either player. I’m reminded of certain MMORPGs where experience gained is relative to your own account when working in groups, not relative to those around you. Unfortunately in Maple Story it’s just simply inefficient to help out or buddy up with low levelled players because it produces less experience and thus is more time consuming. Kill stealing is quite common where, when you’re about to kill a monster, someone else comes in and nabs it thus gaining the experience. In the current release of Runescape that used to be quite common however it was changed so there’s no incentive to be a dickhead to other players and all experience was guaranteed to the player what clicked the monster first. Simple system, discourages kill stealing. Maple Story simply lacks incentive to be nice to one another and actually passively encourages bad sportsmanship.

Graphics and environment

The game looks good, no doubt about that, as a side scrolling 2D game it’s taken on some fairly impressive graphical features. Everything is very bright, colourful and detailed with a very traditional chibi style that relays it’s South Korean and Japanese origins. The backgrounds that are inaccessible behind the primary area are detailed and beautifully shaded whilst not being too intrusive on the main area of gameplay. The fact that the game is actually a platformer of floating islands is quite interesting and it sometimes feels like an RPG in Rayman’s world though with a completely different graphical style. Your character itself is very well detailed and any change in armour or equipment is very visible on the character which is great given how hard you have to work to get something that’s of a higher tier. Overall, everything is beautifully animated and incredibly sharp with lots of nice little embellishments that give additional character to each new area you discover.

 

Lots of hacking and slashing and attention to detail found here.

The environments of Maple Story are quite varied and the game world is actually rather large. There are dark creepy woodland areas and bright, grassy regions too. The game consists of different islands, some bigger than others, and you can visit them as you progress through the game which is nice as exploring new worlds is a great part of RPG games. The regions of the game are all very distinct and interesting and there are plenty of towns and cities with their own unique background and style.

Pay to win capacity

Unfortunately there are many aspects of the game that revolve around the purchasing of ‘NX points’ such as character customization which, if paying for clothing isn’t bad enough, all expires after 90 days of use. A lot of new features that are brought into the game usually come with the little ‘if you pay for it’ clause that is very off-putting in an online game. Obviously, all companies need to make their money but no player likes to feel like they’re getting a raw deal with weak content but plenty of overcharging. The cash shop also features items that are not just cosmetic but that provide users with an in-game advantage over other players. By purchasing benefits that prevent experience loss upon death, double exp or full on exp buffs it seems as though ‘pay to win’ may be a big problem for those looking to play this game, for free, on an equal playing field. Most of the things in the cash shop are cosmetic such as pets and clothing though the ability to get married in game will cost you somewhere between $10 to $30, depending on how much your love is worth. Thankfully there are no subscription costs and NX points are not a necessary purchase so you can quite happily enjoy this game without spending a penny.

Overall

I find Maple Story to be lacking in any worthwhile content due to the strong focus on killing monsters. The quests are repetitive and fairly boring but the dialogue between yourself and NPCs is quite ample. It’s quite hard to get on servers and I frequently experienced crashing and disconnections with no real help from the support team. The community isn’t particularly good either. Whilst I usually wouldn’t a blame a game for what kind of people play it I believe there should be a means of not making new or lower levelled players an inconvenience on the rest of the community. The fact that those with greater real world wealth can purchase stuff to give them an in-game advantage is a pet peeve for me and whilst I don’t mind cosmetic items I don’t agree with double or buffed experience purchases. Maple story looks and sounds wonderful but its surface charm quickly dissipates with actual in game experience.

Score: 5/10

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