kismetism

Just wanted to briefly go over some of these games that I’ve been playing and/or tried recently. I have more things to say about some of them than others, so meh. ;x

Chocobo’s Crystal Tower: a really interesting hybrid of D&D Tiny Adventures and virtual pet games. I loved this one conceptually, but Square Enix really dropped the ball on certain things. It’s incredibly buggy for one… a lot of people complain it doesn’t load at all, whereas I have just encountered a lot of slowness and everlasting loading bars. (I also bugged my brown chocobo… he can’t go to dungeons anymore. >_>; )

And besides the severe amount of technical issues, they screwed up some other more basic things… as far as I can tell, you can’t get any farther than the second dungeon without spending money, which is a huge huge HUGE HUGE mistake for microtransaction games… the rule is that you only ask people to spend money on things that will save them time or energy in the game, not totally roadblock them entirely. This decision is driving free players away and very possibly paying players too, because it happens so early.

The other big mistake is having the upgrading currency (gold/lucky feathers) also be the social currency… it results in nobody using it for the social interaction at all. Worse is that there appears to be no way to actively replenish feathers. I have noticed that my stock increases on occasion, but not by a predictable amount, nor by any discernible cause. Also bad, to have rewards without a clear trigger and no method for the player to experiment and find the trigger.

(I also found it really funny that there is chocobo breeding, but the chocobos have no genders. kek?)

Did they do ANYTHING right? Well, yeah… the dungeon aspect is pretty great and I’m definitely learning from that. And I like how they encourage people to visit other ranches… usually you will catch other ranches in a state where you can get some actual XP for helping out. And having a unique store-per-ranch is cool, so you can go around and buy discounted items from more than just your own store.

Too bad it takes so long to just LOAD the other ranch. >_> I really want to like this game, but … yeah, Square just screwed some key things up. plzfix

Knights of the Crystals: I was disappointed beyond belief that this was an xWars game. Like I basically didn’t want to play the game at all disappointed. And I really haven’t, so I’m not totally qualified to say much. It’s certainly way more functional than Square’s other game, so that’s a relief, and the art style is visually unusual and unique… so that’s a plus. And I have to admit that the chest upgrading system is a pretty intelligent way of almost guaranteeing at least one “help me” share for players to do.

And the music’s cute, very Final Fantasy. So for an xWars game, if you’re into that kind of thing (which I am abjectly not anymore), may as well give this one a try.

SimSocial: Okay, wtf. >_>

I could rant all day about the “mistakes” this game made but… as it turns out, I think a lot of them are not applicable. Because this one’s actually not a microtransactions game at all… there’s no way to spend money to get ahead. (and I’m surprised it took me this long to realize it. -_- ) Which is kind of too bad… you would think EA could figure out a way to leverage the Sims brand and actually make a good FB game out of it, especially when the Sims audience is generally considered to be more casual than your average console or PC gamer.

Still, conceptually, this game isn’t that great and while there are a number of similar elements, it doesn’t really bring over the spirit of the original Sims games very well. They also made a number of fairly lousy UI decisions. Bleh. But again, it’s not meant to make EA money… just a promotional game for Sims 3, I guess.

Warstorm: This is the best Facebook game ever. (not sarcastic; I haven’t failed to log in since I started playing it months ago) There are some really small issues, but they are very few and far between, and fairly easy to forgive considering what sort of game the studio set out to make. It’s really too bad that the game is so “niche”, as Quad puts it…

Schism: THIS GAME IS AWESOME. but there are more problems with it than Chocobo’s Crystal Tower. qq.

[edit] WHY CAN’T I SLEEP. ARGH.