Dreamkiller, a review in 4 words:

[theweaselking]

"Circle-strafe and shoot."

For free, it's neat enough to be worth checking out.

For pay? Yeah, no. I wouldn't buy this game. In fact, I've got two days left on my free trial and I'm bored.

I'm not deleting it yet because I might feel the urge to play tomorrow or something. But, really, the ENTIRE GAMEPLAY is "circle-strafe and shoot", and the only things they've got to make it different are some enemies who can't be injured until you step through a portal (which, for a short time, lets you injure them but makes normal enemies invincible) and some enemies who resurrect all nearby enemies until they themselves are killed. Move to a new area following the little arrow, when it turns red stay in the current area and kill everything. When it turns green, move to the next area, rinse, repeat. It's like playing City Of Heroes single-player.

Comments

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

You have to circle things in City of Heroes?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

No, but the "move to an area, mash the attack button until the quest turns green, move to the next area" thing is the real point.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

City of Heroes is comparatively more simple than its contemporaries, but I don't think button mashing until the quest is completed is any more a feature of City of Heroes than it is most other games.

I'm falling into some cleverly laid trap here, aren't I?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Not really. "Go to quest location, kill things until the quest turns green, move to next quest location" is a standard feature of MMOs. CoH was just more blatant about it than most of the others I've seen.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that "button mash until everything is dead" is the starting point that almost all games start at and very few leave.

[kierthos.livejournal.com]

I play City of Heroes, and honestly, yes, many of the missions are "defeat everything in the cave/office building/warehouse/secret base". There are frequently other mission objectives (rescue hostages, find information, disarm bombs), but they almost always require you to beat up the enemies around them.

Now, I will say that one advantage that CoH has over many other MMOs is you aren't reliant upon getting some ultra-rare drop in order to get your character to look cool. The costume creator is incredibly flexible, and the devs routinely add more costume parts.

They are also a lot more responsive (IMAO) then the WoW GMs when it comes to problems.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've played CoX since launch and will probably play until they turn the lights out.

[flemco.livejournal.com]

It's like playing City Of Heroes single-player.

Or Serious Sam.

Or Quake v*.*

Or Doom Anything.

Or Painkiller.

Or FEAR.

Or Unreal *

Or pretty much anything first-person that VALVE didn't produce.

I used to be a pretty hardcore FPS gamer, but one day I realized the newer games were boring me. Then I realized the older games were boring me. Then I stopped.

That said, I'm downloading this right now.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

FEAR wasn't exactly like that, and *none* of the Medal Of Honour / Call Of Duty games were like that - all the ones that focused on humanlike opponents, where you didn't need to pump two dozen slugs into any given enemy to kill 'em.

(And Valve, oi. Better stories than most, but TERRIBLE hit detection. Knee, head, same difference on a human, right? Oh, you've got head hit detection on the zombies, great, why doesn't it work on the soldiers, hmm?)

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

Seems like games where you can reap enemies like wheat compensate by simply throwing more enemies at you, requiring you to mash the buttons to keep firing at them.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

There's usually at least one level like that, but the ones I have the most fun with are the ones where that's not the case. In general, you're just about equal with the enemies, and have to be a little clever to keep them from killing you.

(In some games, particularly Thief and Splinter Cell and the spinoffs, the enemies are *much stronger than you* and your only chance is to make sure they never know you're there, or cheat horribly to make sure they never get a fair fight)

I like those games more. In fact, my rule of thumb is that if a direct hit from an RPG doesn't kill an enemy who isn't A TANK, the game is probably not one of my favourites.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree (really, with much of anything you said), I just don't think that City of holds some sort of outstanding claim to the type of gameplay you're describing to the point of making it an archetypal example.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Of all the MMOs I've played, it's the one that MOST resembles the "go to quest place, spam basic attacks until quest turns green, go to next quest place".

So that's why I used it.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

But of all the games to compare it to, Dreamkiller most resembles a FPS, so wouldn't a button mashing FPS have been a better example?

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

^ That's pretty much what I'm trying to say.

[dreamshade.livejournal.com]

Looked at Borderlands? I know several people who feel its at least a modicum different than other shooters.