Well its another gaming day, and i just wrote half of this post and did a select all and delete, and then i couldnt even resurect it by pressing ALT+Z argh! Guess thats what i get for trusting in the wordpress editor, back to notepad++ for me. anyway… here goes again.

I really dont need another MMO to play, wow is just too all consuming as it is, but there is a bit of hype going around about a new one called Rift. It actually looks a little bit like aion vs warhammer. Some people are saying a few good things about it, you can get access to a beta key pretty easily i think, you may just need to pre-purchace it or something like that. But the community is growing.

Heres one review i found on RiftFan – Rift from an MMO veterans point of view:

I’ve played it all…
UO, EQ, EQOA, EQ2, FFXI, WOW, LOTRO, DAOC, Aion, AOC, WAR, AO, SWG, FE, VG, Shadowbane, FFXIV, DF etc… and I’m sure there are some I’m forgetting.
I’ve played WoW off and on since release, but did not buy into Cataclysm. It was just time to move on.
Enter Rift.. I had not researched it at all, I didn’t even care about it. The only information I had about it was what one of my friends had shared with me and even then I really didn’t pay attention. I didn’t think it would be a good game from how it sounded. One of the things I had missed about current MMO’s were their lack of attention to the PVP parts of the game. Once my friend mentioned how Rift was handling PVP, my interest was suddenly peaked. So I managed to get a VIP beta key.. and here’s what I found in the game. Please keep in mind that I’ve not stuck with any MMO except for WoW for more than a few months in the past year.

GRAPHICS
Trion was smart. They didn’t do like many others have done in the past and try to make a ridiculously system intensive game. They designed the game so that it looks great, but will still play fairly well on lower end systems. Mine is several years old and I can still play on almost the highest of settings. The graphic style was a good balance of “realism” and “stylishness” for me. The character models didn’t have a whole lot of customization options, but I believe there were more than WoW’s system. I also felt the models looked good and fit into the world around them. They didn’t look completely out of place like those in say, Vanguard. The world graphics fit the atmosphere of the game pretty well in my opinion. I really don’t have any gripes about the graphics at all. They look better than WoW and they run well on lower end systems.

GAMEPLAY
Since this is only a review of the parts of the game I’ve actually played. Please don’t take this and think that I’m referring that the entire game will be the same way, because we have yet to get to play the entire game as of yet. This is solely based on the short time I was in beta. I’ve heard alot of people scream that the game isn’t as it was advertised, or that it isn’t revolutionary.. etc. Does it have to be? WoW definitely wasn’t, and it did very well. Usually from what I’ve found, games that try to be extremely different from what people are used to.. are the ones that don’t do so hot. The gameplay in RIFT is definitely not revolutionary, but its very solid and smooth. What it does, it does well. The animations are smooth, the spell effects look great. I think everything they’ve done, takes WoW and amplifies it by a few notches. Which is what WoW did itself when it was released. They didn’t rewrite the book on MMO’s they just took what already works well and made it work even nicer. Most people who are looking for something “new” aren’t really at all. Most just want a familiar game in a new setting. This is what RIFT does. It won’t take long to familarize yourself with the controls or the game as it is indeed very similar to WoW and its counterparts. Is it a WoW clone? Depends on how you look at it.. are all the multitudes of FPS games with the same controls “clones”? There’s a certain formula that just “works” and this is one of those formulas. Age of Conan and Darkfall tried to change that formula and look where they ended up. On a down note, I could see where the game might get boring Because of this.. because they all eventually do.. but there’s always a downside.

SPECIAL FEATURES
RIFT includes a few things that we may have seen before in other games, but done in a new way. One of the biggest things I really enjoyed about the beta were the rifts, which are basically a more polished version of WAR’s public quests.. which I always thought was a great idea if they had been implemented properly. I really like the fact that they can appear anywhere . Its like a “drive by” raid and allows for group play without all the pains of trying to form a group. I’m sure they could get overwhelming when trying to level up, but I think that if your smart.. you can avoid them or better yet.. participate.
The Crafting in Rift is nothing special at all, its more of the “it works, so why change it” formula that WoW capitalized on. If your playing this game to be a crafter, I would suggest finding something else. This is not a crafter’s MMO. Crafting is more of a supplemental part of the main game and was never meant to be a game in itself here.
Rift’s Soul system is one of, if not the coolest feature in the game. With the way they’ve designed the character customization.. (if they are able to keep it balanced) We will be able to create some of the most customizable characters in an MMO to date. This could easily go very bad, if they did not balance things properly. As usual my fear is that within a few months, the “hardcore” min maxers will have already figured out what builds are the absolute best and idiotic gamers will just follow suit, rather than experiment and play the souls they find to be the most fun for them.
PVP in RIFT is something I haven’t gotten to do a whole lot of so I can’t really comment alot.. but from everything I’ve seen and read. They’ve put alot of thought into the PVP part of the game, so that its not just “Tacked on” like it is in most other games that focus mainly on PVE. It seems to have a purpose on its on, and I like the faction based system because I really think we will see some good world PVP out of it with how different the factions are.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I’ll be preordering the game, with several of my former WoW and Conan guild mates. I cannot tell you if the game will last for any of us, but as of now its surpassed everything else we’ve tried in the past year and is finally allowing us to lay the world of Azeroth to rest, and that for us is great because we were pretty sick of that world. If your looking for revolutionary, your looking in the wrong place. If you just want a fun game in a new setting that does what you already know very well.. Rift is your game, as it stands in beta.

Another interesting one that someone sent me a video link to is Interstellar Marines. This one looks quote good judging by the video so far, they have released three playable demos so far downloadable from their website. check out the vid below.

We realize that it can be difficult to explain the concept of Interstellar Marines and AAA indie game development to your friends and family, so we’ve put together a comprehensive new video that will get everyone up to speed in less than 5 minutes. Even your grandma will get the message! … Go to InterstellarMarines.com to learn more!

And finally a sweet (and yet surely annoying) console setup… Unless the fans dont make an annoying noise, and its not 3am…