It followed me home, can I keep it?

As promised, I'm keeping you updated the ever growing and always changing MMO, Wizard101.

Exciting news! The new pet system went live yesterday! Kings Isle had opened the test realm a little over a month ago for subscribers to check out and test out the new pet system they've been working so hard on. Here is a little background history: Like most MMORPG's out there your character can attain pets, little guys to follow you around and benefit you in some manner. For Wizard101, standard pets could boost your power pip chance, give you an extra card for your deck to use in battles, or just look plain awesome standing by your side. That was pretty much all pets did, but it was cool, the most rare pets were feverishly farmed for even though the new pet didn't help your stats at all. Now, with the new and improved pet system, all that has changed.

For starters, pets can now do more than just stand by you, you can let them loose in your dorm room and not just keep them stuffed in your backpack. But aside from aesthetics, they have their own little arena called the Pet Pavilion. There you can do so many things with all your pets. First you can buy snacks for them which increase their stats: intellect, strength, agility, power, and will. Same with little mini games, the games take energy to play, but you gain experience, which ages your pet, and depending on which game you play and how well you do, the pet's stats go up. Another fun little bit you can engage your pets in is the Wizzy 500 (aka the Pet Derby), a cute little racing game where your pet races three other pets. The derby takes no energy so you can play as much as you want while you wait for your energy to build back up. The better you do, the better rank your pet gets. Doesn't do anything for your pet's abilities, but it's fun bragging rights.

Another great thing about the advanced pet system are the new talents the pets can have. Now, this part of the pet system promises to be one of the most rewarding, yet at the moment, is the most unknown. All pets start out as babies or teens with little experience. You have to train and grow them to get them to adulthood and from there they can move up to me ancient then epic. With pets, older is better. With the talent system, your pet can give you help in battle by casting their own spells, buffing spells, increasing damage, giving cards, increasing mana, increased resistance, dealing damage, de-buff and disarm opponents, increase accuracy, increase health, increased power pip chance, increasing pet stats, and so much more that hasn't even been unlocked yet. As you age your pet, he unlocks more of the talents to either use in battles with you or in the pet derby.


After the pet gets to be an adult it can participate in the coolest feature, in my opinion, the hatchery. If you have two adult pets or if a friend has an adult and so do you, you can both hatch a new pet with combined powers. That's right, forget farming for pets, you can make custom pets with literally MILLIONS of out comes. It's completely random chance as to what talents, powers, and abilities your new hatchling will get from it's two donor parent pets, but if you hatch with a friend, you both get the same new baby pet. I, for one, am totally stoked about this feature and can't wait to see what kinds of new powers these custom pets can give me in battles.

Kings Isle has been busy with all this pet release but they are still hard at work on the new world, Celestia, new schools, spells, and raising the level cap. You have to give it to them, they are doing awesome for a two year old MMORPG. More updates to come soon, and you know I can't resist posting about them. I'm off to hatch some new pets and save the spiral again.

3D Dot Game Heroes: The Little Game That Could

What do you get when you mix, classic RPG gaming, retro graphics, a 3D engine and Lego? 3D Dot Game Heroes! Join us as we sally fourth on a quest to explore Silicon Studio's re-imagining of a classic RPG franchise and get our hands dirty building sprites! 


How can I describe 3D Dot Game Heroes? For anyone who caught the games' teaser web page, in August 2009, that featured simply a cube with a countdown timer the game could have appeared to be little more then an interesting curiosity amidst the catalog of games becoming available that month. Bearing in mind that August 2009 gave us the sublime Batman: Arkham Asylum, it's easy to see how Dot Heroes has perhaps not been bathed in the limelight it deserves. But for those of us who have waited for Dot Heroes to arrive there has been a feeling that we are about to be treated to something special.

Chicken cruelty will be punished 

The first thing you notice about Dot Heroes is the unique presentation of it's graphics. The game is basically a 2D RPG presented with 3D graphics with sprites built out of 3D "pixel" blocks. These are enhanced by more advanced lighting effects that are applied to water, fires and lighting within temples and so on. The style oozes charisma and instantly reminds the player of both a nostalgia ridden trip through games of old and the classic toy that is Lego. This means that even the coldest hearted player will find it hard to not be drawn into the fun and playful atmosphere that Dot Heroes possess.   

The second thing many gamers will recognize is the games obvious similarity to Nintendo's classic Zelda titles featured on the NES. This has divided gamers and reviewers alike across the gaming world as some see it as a fun homage to Nintendo's classic adventure while others have been quick to label the game as "ripped off" and unoriginal. It's fair to say that the opening sections of the game do feel like a screen for screen clone of the Zelda franchise with the first upgrades you find being the sword dash and the boomerang but these similarities are countered with the inclusion of a upgradeable sword, a slightly more advanced fighting system and the inclusion of several mini-games.

Unlike in Zelda, players can now "swing" their sword in combat by holding the attack button and turning with left stick or directional buttons. While not the most innovative control system of all time, this does expand on simply pressing an attack button for a quick stab at enemies who you manage to get close enough to. Although a little clunky at times, this style of attack does prove particularly useful when your sword has been upgraded to fill impressive amounts of the screen. One inescapable observation of Dot Heroes is that the sword really is massive which, once you get used to the idea, actually highlights the games' fun approach and further expands of the games unique visual style.

The inclusion of Dot Heroes' mini-games adds further enjoyment to the games fun style and is  a further nod to gaming history with the inclusion of Blockout -the obvious reference to Breakout, Dash Race where players are invited to test their running skills and Block Defense, which you will receive no prizes for guessing is a tower defense game. None of these games will win awards for changing the world of gaming but as a homage to classic games you would not expect them to. They do play well however, which is what counts.     

Blocks away!

However, with all these tweaks Dot Heroes is still inescapably heavily influenced by Nintendo's Zelda games. It draws on Zelda's basic game-play system with life shards and magic being used in more or less the same way and Dot Heroes' story is more then a little close to that of Zelda, although with the added genius twist that the Dot Heroes universe has been changed from 2D to 3D in an attempt to encourage tourism! It should be noted that the similarity to Nintendo's creation is not really a bad thing. The cynical out there argue that it is shameless cashing in on the Zelda franchise and you can bet the last of your younger siblings pocket money that there will be fan-boys out there who consider Dot Heroes to be sacrilege, but honestly I see it as more of a homage to Nintendo's games. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery right? The only time that this works against Dot Heroes is with it's music, which while usually as charming as the visual element of the game, can sometimes sound a little flat or like a less catchy Zelda sound a-like.

The final selling point for Dot Heroes are it's creation tools which allow players to create their own character sprites. The systems is simple enough to get to grips with and allows the user to build "sprites" out of single "pixel" blocks, which gives Dot Heroes a certain "toy" feel. At a glance you could forgive the casual observer for asking if where playing the latest Lego game. However, despite the coolness of this idea there is fairly little to say about it. It is well implemented but disappointingly only allows the player to create his own sprite and not that of the monsters. However, what is impressive to see is that Silicon Studies have implemented a system where you can change your sprite each time you return to the game without affecting the games progress. this clever touch means that you can make the most of the creation tools without having to restart the game but may limit the games re-play value after you complete it.

Over all, Dot Heroes is well worth looking into. It's true to say that it's not a hugely innovative game, but it is a lot of fun which is what really counts. Everything about Dot Heroes is a joy to experience and it's charm definitely extends to more then it's presentation. To match it's playful image, Dot Heroes is driven by a witty and occasionally silly sense of humor that consistently invites the play to play more. It's only a shame that Dot Heroes is likely to not get the return it deserves as it becomes over shadowed by other more high-profile releases. I'm going to give Dot Heroes a rugged 8 out of 10 dinosaurs and beseech you give a chance to 3D Dot Game Heroes, the little game that could.

"A rugged 8 out of 10 dinosaurs."

         

         

                  







   

 

     

Tell me I'm not the only one!

Alright, I have a confession to make, and because I'm confessing it, that means NONE of you are allowed to ridicule me. It's kind of two fold really, first part isn't too bad but the second part is where I'll need you to bear with me. First off, I'm addicted to a child's game. See? Not that bad. What game is it, you ask? Well, this is the embarrassing part so I'm just going to put it out there...

I play Wizard 101 like a bandit.

There, it's out in the open and everyone knows it. Now that the cat is out of the bag, I'd like to tell you why I'm addicted to this elementary pass-time.

Wizard101 is an MMORPG by KingsIsle Entertainment, aimed at families and kids, but is so brilliantly done that anyone, even the most hardcore of gamers, can play it and have a great time. Wannabe wizards start with the choice of seven different classes (and they are literally classes, the story is set as if you were a student) that determine what type of spells you cast. The schools range from elemental (fire, ice, and storm) to spirit (death, life, and myth) and the odd one out, a neutral class called balance. True to the staple of these types of games each school has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. The spells are based on a deck of cards style system, when you are in a battle you choose from the hand of cards you were dealt that round, which may contain card types like damage, healing, boosts, defensive, and offensive. To cast a spell you merely select the card, then select your target. Seems easy enough, right? Well KingsIsle decided to make it a bit more challenging by using the age old "mana for magic" requirement but adding in a "pip" system. Pips are glowing white or yellow orbs that appear at the feet of your wizard in battle. The cards take any where from zero to seven pips and you gain a pip each turn. You may have a card in your hand that does enough damage to defeat your enemy in one hit, but if you don't have the pips for it you can't cast it. Therefore you either have to pass and do nothing, or use cards that don't use any pips at all. The yellow orbs are called "power pips" and count as two regular ones if you are using your school specific spells.

The story is simple yet engaging, you are a new student at Ravenwood, a school for young wizards. You start out in the primary world, Wizard City, and very quickly your studies get you involved in the fate of the Spiral (Wizard101's ever growing universe). From then on you go on quest after quest to visit other worlds and save the Spiral from the greatest evil it's faced. You gain experience along the way which gains you new spells from your school and even training points to learn other school's spells as well. Along with experience you get gold and items dropped from monsters and bosses. Its really engaging and each world has a different crisis's that no one thinks you can help with because you are a young wizard in training. Now a number of the quests are similar, but stock quests are typical for RPGs.

A couple down sides to the game are the level cap and limited numbers of worlds. As any gamer knows these two things can pose a problem with the length of time you can play a game, and if it's a game you've payed for you want to get as much out of it as possible. KingsIsle didn't expect Wizard101 to take off like it did, in under two years it has gained over five million users. Luckily they have been working hard to catch up with the massive demand and have new content come out every few months. This summer they have promised to raise the level cap, introduce a pet system, introducing a new world, and three new schools with new spells. Wow, what an update. Needless to say I am stoked about all this. After you hit the level cap and defeat the final boss there is nothing left to do save for craft or create another wizard of a different class, but now there will be much more to do. Very exciting news and you know I'll keep you posted, now that my obsession is public. I really feel anyone, young or old, experienced gamer or nOOb, can enjoy this game.