Casual MMOs not getting enough attention that should.

AmbushMartyr

I just wanted to drop a post here about a couple of casual type MMOs that havent been getting a whole lot of play and I feel deserve a shout out for attention to get others awareness peaked!

 

I picked up 2 casual MMOs over the past week, 1 entitled "Neo Steam" and the 2nd "World of Kun-Fu".

 

At a glance both games may seem a little B-rated in the graphics department, but graphics are decent enough and that its the gameplay that matters, right?

 

Neo Steam and World of Kun-Fu both feature PvP,PK,GvG. Neo Steam with a exception offers RvR as WoKF does not, but that could change at a later date. Both games offer your standard formula for crafting,guilding,party,trading,auctionhouse and personal shops,Safe and PvP zones,so on and so forth.

I dont want to get into a huge detailed post about each game but Ill try to touch on what I felt made the games fun to play for me, and the research you can do on the respected websites for each game yourself for more detailed nfo.

 

"NEO STEAM"

A fun little title with a lot going for it. I think what makes this game a bit fun for me is the spin put on the fantasy world and how they incorporated certain everyday systems uniquely into the game!

Example, Dungeons! While dungeons is a big part of almost any MMO today, they tend to be presented as the standard dark, dank, hole in the wall for you to adventure in. While some give a variation on themes ranging from realistic underground coal mines, to creepy and dark vampire like dwellings, no one has really been able to expand on this idea and give it a more wide range of mobility, till now.

NEO STEAMs Dungeons systems are done in a odd and most immersive way anyone can do with a dungeon, make them a living, breathing, entity! Example being in a very large, and open field located south just outside the beginners opening city, youll encounter (if your able to find, or catch up to it) a huge 10 story tall massively green moss covered turtle! Not even thinking in a millions years this could be nothing more than a huge open field boss to battle, turns out to be a living, breathing dungeon! Clicking the huge turtle gains you entry into your first section, his mouth! This is a very very funny and very smart way to present a dungeon system! While in the mouth of the giant turtle, looking around, you can actually see the edge of the level laced with the turtles own teeth! Theres of course a tongue, and a roof of the mouth, its just a huge turtle mouth!

Theres a few interesting mobs in the beginning area of this dungeon to get ya warmed up and to get ready to move on to the next section of the dungeon...the turtles throat! Now at first I wasnt sure how to gain entry here as I come to the tonsils and clicked the arrow i was offered 2 choices. 1 was "Would you like to "HIT" the turtles tonsils?" or "Would you like to "TICKLE" the turtles tonsils? I chose tickle and gained entry. But before i explain the next area I have to say I also tried HIT and it teleported me back to the main town i started in! Ok, after gaining entry through the tonsils you could probably guess where i started my journey from, thats right the esophagus, or throat! lined in veins and mucus it was what a throat was supposed to actually look like, except for all the mobs! I only got to the stomach area of the dungeon before i wiped on a couple of aggressive mobs, but for the most part, it was a colorful, realistic dungeon with its own spin on things!

Anyway, thats a brief description of NEO STEAMs dungeon system, and just one of the fun things youll encounter there.

Check out - http://neosteam.gamengame.com/ - Give it a chance, I think you might like it for those into Anime,Fantasy type MMOs!

 

"WORLD OF KUN-FU"

I just started playing this title for the past 2 days and I have to say its been a real blast so far! Nothing super innovative here, but the gameplay is addictive and fun if your into Kun-Fu themes, and looking for good crafting, combat, skills, classes, guilds, and overall great community!

 

I think what really stands out for me in this title is a couple of things, aside of the great community how this publisher runs this title is one, and this little title has a lot, i mean a lot of little details that make playing the game fun than most other titles!

After only playing for maybe a couple of hours, I was looking for some answers about the game in general and had a overwhelming reply by at least 15+ people! Doesnt happen much for me in any game really so this was a nice surprise as all were friendly and you could tell these werent your standard noobs looking for attention, or trying to give smart ass answers! After a few mins talking with a number of the players I had asked a question about the item mall and the overall scope of pricing and how the items effect play. Most tried to answer the best they could but after each reply they all said "You can also ask one of the GMs here, theyll be happy to help you out!" So I thought ok I really dont want to have to go back to the forums and post for a GM to reply to. Wasnt even a minute after that a GM whispered to me and asked if they could be of some help!! Firstly, That NEVER happens to me in any game Ive played be it F2P or P2P!! So I was pretty stoked about how the GMs were in game and alert and ready to help others, big bonus in my book!

Thats just a small snippet of what stood out for me, as far as the many number of small details the game had it was pretty cool to actually be able to open a world map and have it become alive in real time for me. Everything was well documented, everything form being able to click one of the many little dots moving to find out who that player is, to being able to distinguish between quests that needed picked up, to those that needed to be turned in. Being able to clearly see where certain areas of interest are located such as warehouse, auction house, mounts, weapon and armor dealers and so on. There is a ton of those little details just in the world map alone that the map coulda been a game within itself it was so cram packed full of goodies you wouldnt think would be in a F2P game world map.

While some will say "omg big deal its a map thats all you got to say about the game was the stupid map?" But its not just the map, this extends to almost every aspect of the game when it comes to finding those little features most other games sorta leave out! I used the map system as a example to sorta give you the feel of what Im talking about. Its the little things in a game you would not expect, but when you do find them, it sorta puts a smile on your face, and in this case it did me!

This title is fun, fast paced, great crafting, really nice skills system, huge almost seamless maps (no worrys, longest load time for me was exactly 8.5 seconds, no kidding, and thats on a 768kbps DSL line!) very very reasonable item mall prices, combat, interaction, the grind didnt feel like a grind! And though it offered those little detailed touches throughout the game I spoke of, the game is not bogged down with a lot of need to know before you play! Though for some sections that might be a great idea but for the most part picking this game up and just playing it doesnt take long at all to get the hang of things if your FOB!

Check out WoKF at  - http://www.worldofkungfu.com -  Give this title a real chance as well, it is a great game once you get used to all it has to offer! The game at first didnt sit well with me (basically because I let my spoiled brat need for high octane graphics get in the way) but after a couple of hours of play, or getting to level 20 I found it was really worth continuing, and I am thinking of supporting it as well since theres a lot coming to improve and make the game even bigger and better!

Well thats it, Just wanted to get those 2 titles out there as I feel they are definitely worth playing and supporting, not to mention that they havent been getting a lot of press here lately. I hope the nfo given was enough to at least get ya to DL the games and give them a try. As for the DL, both games took less than a couple of hours for me on a 768kbps DSL line, pretty fast and no problems whatsoever! I especially like NEO STEAMS use of the Neffy download system as its proven to me to be very reliable and fast! Both games patched very fast as well, took maybe 5-7 mins for Neo Steam and 2-3 mins for WoKF.

snowytechna

Neo Steam has no WASD movement and thats a BIG thing for me, so I deleted the game after downloading and the game  was not smooth for some reason.....I dont know but this game just didnt do enough for me.

World of Kung Fu.....I have yet to play it......But after trying around 5 F2P's I have given up, they all seem very 1 dimensional with very less content. Can you describe the basic gameplay of WOKF and if it sounds interesting I'll give it a go.

AmbushMartyr

The best thing I can do is point ya to the website and right there describes what the gameplay is about and so on. Im not sure what your hoping to find out there but if your setting the bar to high for a F2P Im sorry to say you may never find what your looking for, and in the future when you do find it, itll be to late as everything else has advanced 10 fold past it.

 

I take F2Ps with a grain a salt as most are basically set to the same formula and gameplay to a extent. You get what you pay for as they say, and in this case these are pretty much free. As for uninstalling a game over WASD, wow you really have a to high of a bar man and will probably miss out on a lot of good things a game has to offer besides a mode of movement! Its a give and take with F2Ps and sometimes we give up up minor pet peeves to be able to get the big picture of fun out of a title. We overlook the small stuff and campaign to possibly have it put in at  a later date, but it doesnt actually kill or break the game not have those at our disposal for time being.

 

I can only say this to you as far as the bad or pet peeves of my own atm I dislike about WoKF, I feel the mouse speeds and the ability to turn around on a dime is a bit loose and needs a bit of tightening up. Also a little tweaking for objects your not allowed to go through, or cause you to have to go around causes you to get a bit stuck unless you sorta wiggle around a bit. I think its collision system but dont quote me on that I could be wrong.

 

So as you can see i have my little beef with WoKF but I also know its not a game breaker for me and I can wait to see if they possibly fix it, and if not Ill keep at least trying to post a suggestion for them to and continue to keep playing.

 

All I can say is its a fun title, when ya grind you go through mobs like a hit knife through butter and being able to kill hundreds of thousands in a blink of a eye is sorta fun for me, but to each his own. Bosses line the areas as well, or what I call field bosses, or mini type bosses. Some of the mobs are actually gorgeous  as the first one I come in contact with was a huge white tiger with 6 butterfly bat type wings? Hard to explain , it was just cool looking. The combat is fast paced, there full on PK after a certain level and thats pretty much world wide, get a into a good guild, or school is what the game calls it.

 

Sorry if I seem a little hard on ya, but Ive learned a long time ago that if I let the little things keep me from playing certain games, Ill never ever find a title that suits me and I may as well just not play games at all. Sometimes you gotta compromise and decide if that little feature you like thats missing is really worth tossing what could be a awesome game away.

 

Also Neo Steam dioes have a WASD system its just not what we are used to sorta speak. Its more like a auto-WASD feature as it auto-runs when you tap W, but to stop you gotta tap S. I guess they thought who wants to hold down the W button all day when trying to get across a huge world by foot? So I sorta understand why they did it, but in a way it only works for PvE environments as for PvP it just blows chunks! But form what I seen in the forums they are planning on changing it soon for a more traditional wasd feature.

 

Anyway I hope what Ive offered helps, and I really hope you can look past a few things and give certain titles a chance even though they may not feature a specific feature you like atm. You never know with a little posting and hanging in there anything can be changed or added with a little time and patience. Good Luck friend and Game On!

 

 

[UPDATE] Sorry forgot, WoKF has WASD, the type we like lol. it also has strafe and so on, a lot of ways to move in game. I also forgot but theres a neat skill you can actually buy in game that says flying but its more like drifting. it lasts like a couple of mins and your basically able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. I also think its another way for you to get through a area quicker and not draw a lot of agg since your taking huge jumps across the map!