• Fomat: PC
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: NCsoft
• Developer: NCsoft
• Players: Unlimited (MMO)
• Site: www.aiononline.com

Does anyone else find the ethics of running around in the woods clubbing badgers, woodpeckers and cats to death, all in the name of career progression, to be a bit of a moral grey area? Sure, it’s an innocent animal that did nothing wrong other than entering your line of sight; but cracking its skull open with a hammer will bring you one step closer to the next level and a bigger sword. We think we’ll go for that sword.

Such is the world of grinding for experience points, which is one thing you will find yourself doing lots in NCsoft’s MMO, Aion. It’s like hard labour at times, rather than something you would do for fun, but just like ploughing a field, there are plenty of benefits if you push on and get it done. Unlike ploughing a field though, with each level it gets even harder. Sure you may start out with a tractor and breeze through it all, but soon enough it feels like you are running the entire farm with nothing but a toothbrush. This feeling certainly is not unique to Aion by any means, but just be prepared to face it.

This grind is something that always kicks in when the next level seems a billion miles away, and whereas other MMOs offer many realistic options to get XP, Aion seems to slap you in the face and tell you that violence is the way forward. Sure you can craft, gather plants and play the postman for people, but the fastest way to the top lies with indiscriminate murder.

Part cat, part goat, part flowing locks

There are the usual quests that you accept from NPCs who are too lazy to move from the same spot, happily talking to everyone who crowds around them; but all of the more rewarding missions send you to kill something and bring back its severed body parts.

The combat itself is reasonable. Click on things to start hitting them and then start using the skills you have earned through levelling up to bring more pain. The class you choose and then specialise in is key to how you will fight off everything, whether you get up close and stabby, or stay at a distance and magic or arrow things to death. To begin with there are four classes to choose from – your vanilla warrior, stealthy hit and run scout, the bright light spewing mage or the important medical expert, the priest.

With your chosen skill set in hand and your preferred method of delivering death firmly stamped in to your brain, you then set about recovering from your shockingly original bout of amnesia by helping everyone in the immediate area. You do this until you reach level nine before ascending to become a Daeva. What this means is that you grow wings and enjoy aerial antics in certain areas which is actually a really fun mechanic to play with.

A shoulder barge from this guy significantly shortens life expectancy

Flight is generally used to get around faster, but in most areas you can only fly around the major cities and not outside the walls, which does feel like a bit of a wasted opportunity. You can glide down slopes or off cliffs when in the no flight zones, but it doesn’t offer much use other than saving travel time and getting away from fights if you’re on a hill.

At this relatively low level stage you will still be wandering around safe areas with only the computer trying to outwit and kill you. The penalty of death, unlike in real life, isn’t too harsh in Aion. You lose a few XP and can choose whether to pay then or later to get it back, with the amount you lose and have to pay being relevant to your level. It means you value yourself enough not to run to a suicidal fate, but you won’t cry yourself to sleep should you get tenderised by the wildlife.

Aion is a PvPvE game, which means you will get a taste of both fighting off NPCs and getting battered by other players, there’s no way around that. Depending on which race you chose at the start of the game, you will fight as the Elyos or the Asmodians against each other in a desperate bid to make the other side stop breathing. The main PvP enclosure lies between the two factions’ land masses, called The Abyss. It’s a desolate wasteland full of floating platforms and hideous demon like monsters that make up the game’s third race, the common NPC enemy of all players called the Balaur. It is also the one place where you can fly around in all areas and partake in aerial combat, usually against other players. It adds another layer to the PvP aspects and gives you more combat options to think about.

This wing span is actually concealable. Must be a huge flap of back fat...

Griefing lower level players is rife in the world of Aion. It’s not unusual that you will be happily questing in a relatively low level PvPvE zone when a horrible death train of 12 enemy players will storm through and brutalise you. Sure this is frustrating, but first you have the sadistic pleasure knowing that they will be dead soon, and second, you can go and do exactly the same thing on their side of the world.

Aion is like gaming pizza. There is plenty of variety with a plethora of toppings that keep it interesting, but after a while it’ll all taste the same. Despite this, you will still want more of it than is medically safe. It has an addiction level that will make you ignore the phone and play it later than you should, but not enough to make you miss a good pub trip.

It has a few flaws, such as a similar amount of grinding as that required to make bread, and environmental textures that look slightly past their best before date. Push through these little niggles though and you will find that Aion is a fun, addictive MMO with some fresh ideas and no elves or orcs in sight.

8/10

When it comes to choosing what race to play in an MMO, it often seems like a difficult question if it is your first approach to the game, as it is a commitment that will affect you for months, possibly years. To make things a bit easier, NCSoft has just released a video for the highly anticipated Guild Wars 2, showing off the five races on offer to help your pre-decision.

There seems to be an interesting mix of races to play, with your fairly standard human flavour leading the charge. On top of this you can choose to be a ferocious feline warrior with the charr, a clever little sprite thing that uses technology called an asura, a shape shifting norn or a sylvari, a mystical plant spirit.

The free to play MMO looks to be shaping up nicely, following the success of the original that was certainly received well. The selection of races look quite diverse, but if it came down to a fight between them all, our money would be on the massive cat people with gun axes.

Format: Xbox 360 (version reviewed), PC
Unleashed: Out Now
Publisher: Deep Silver
Developer: Piranha Bytes
Players: 1
Site: www.risen.deepsilver.com

Risen is a real time action RPG. We thought it would be similar in style to Fable 2 but perhaps much darker in content. The trailers for the game suggested a lush exciting world, similar to the Fable universe in parts, but less cartoony. They promised battles with bizarre lifeforms and a range of characters in a deep and involved world.

Risen centres around your main character who ends up shipwrecked on an island. The island seems to be being terrorised by a group of people with magical powers called the inquisitors, who are fighting for control with a local gang. You arrive with a female companion who seems to like telling you what to do and taking a seat when work is to be done!

Gameplay is largely made up of carrying out a range of tasks for the non player characters dotted around the landscape. These range from simple fetch tasks to entering dungeons and caves with the intention of slaughtering various animals and monsters.

However, when the gameplay moves out of the countryside to the towns and villages, the tasks start to vary. The menu of tasks increases to include stealing for example, or revenge attacks. Which tasks you choose will have an effect on how the different ‘gangs’ in the game react to you. However, it seemed that whatever we did in the game there was no impact in the medium or long term.

Fighting is clumsy. Do not expect a Fable 2 (or even Fable 1) experience. Your character seems to only have one attack animation and blocking is crude and largely ineffective. The animation of your character is also very poor, as if he has had various knee operations which he is yet to recover from. We know this isn’t meant to be a fighting game in the same way as the recent Batman game, but Fable and other games have shown that it is possible to bring a simple but dynamic fighting system to a game with a third person perspective. Fighting in Risen is ugly and repetitive, so you can expect to die a lot and not enjoy looking at the game whilst it happens either!

You can develop your character with various skills as you would expect in a typical RPG. Risen’s skill system is quite in depth, but we hated the menus, which seem straight out of a PC where the player is expected to be nose to nose with their PC monitor. We experienced the game on a 40 Inch TV, which is still larger than what the average 360 owner has, and clearly no thought has been given to those players. Gamers with a small SDTV shouldn’t even try playing this unless they have a magnifying glass close to hand.

Presentation is inconsistent. The suggested design of the landscape is lovely, but very quickly you will notice poor textures. At times the textures just break down to reveal a gradient type ‘fill’ you would expect in Powerpoint! Many games suffer from ‘pop up’, and Risen should be included in that club – however, Risen seems to have more than just that one symptom. It suffers from scenery being coloured in as you walk along, especially landscapes which are above head height.

The worst aspect of the graphics is only seen during the daylight hours (indeed many of the faults are seen during the daylight hours – this game looks much better in the pitch black of night). We noticed some kind of strange filter or mesh across the graphics when it was bright and sunny. It was very off-putting and helped to ‘break’ the gaming experience as it felt that we were looking into the game through a window.

The music is pleasant enough and certainly added atmosphere, and the other sounds certainly work within the environment, helping to bring the game to life. However the voice acting is very disappointing. The actors do seem to be putting a lot of effort into their lines. Perhaps too much so! You see, the animated scenes are so clumsy that along with the overacting it just results in a type of Monty Python comedy routine.

All in all, this is a meaty game. The game world is large and there are lots of tasks to complete. There are many skills to learn, and you can really develop your character. Hardcore RPG players might find some pleasure in this. However, more discriminating gamers would do well to steer clear. This is not user friendly; but it is (though we can only speak for the Xbox 360 version) clumsy, with laughable dramatic scenes and pythonesque combat. We have decided that we’ll wait for Fable 3.

5/10

Swords, magic and the internet are a fairly mainstream cocktail these days when it comes to role playing games. The concept of Aion itself is hardly new - with so many swashbuckling, fire conjuring adventures set before the time of deodorant and firearms, maybe a new angle needs to be taken on it.

Aion at first appears to be a cookie cutter MMO with very familiar concepts. You start out by picking a side - Elyos or Asmodian - designing a character, and picking a class from the only four professions that seemed to exist in the past according to games (a mage, a warrior, a priest or a scout). You then find your character waking up with amnesia and the desire to start helping every stranger in sight. Sounds pretty innovative so far, eh?

You then spend your first ten levels going around the starting area seal clubbing, or rather, killing lots of non player characters to get experience and loot. You also start completing optional and campaign quests for the various people you meet, helping you learn the ropes and build up your character’s abilities in a controlled environment.

Things get slightly more unique upon reaching level ten, at which point your character ascends. At this point you go through a relatively simple campaign quest which reveals that you are a Daeva, a divine angel creature originally created to battle against the evil Balaur race. Having said that, at this stage you are still a while away from seeing any Balaur, as the next ten levels are spent in another, more dangerous starter like area. You will also not see anyone else from the rival faction meaning you are PVP safe for the time being.

After ascending you will be able to unfurl impressive wings to fly around certain areas which makes the game feel a lot more free form and unrestricted. Initially you have a minute of flight time and whilst airborne you can do most things that you would normally do on the ground but in an entirely new dimension.

Unfortunately, as awesome as it is being able to fly you can not do it in all areas, especially where it would actually be a tactical advantage (which seems a missed opportunity). Admittedly this is in the quite early areas of the game but if flight is being pegged as one of the selling points for Aion, it feels like you should be able to use it more than is currently allowed. At that stage being able to fly around and pick your fights by swooping down like an angel with a grudge feels like a special treat, rather than the normal thing that is done. In later areas however, it does become more integral, you just have to work for it.

The other thing about ascension is that it forces you to specialise your character a bit more. For example, in the case of the warrior, once past level ten, they must decide if they want the additional gank of the gladiator, or the formidable tank of the templar. Likewise, a priest can become a cleric - the ultimate healer - or they can follow the path of the chanter, and inspire strength among allies.

Although it might not be anything radically new, Aion is not going to jerk you suddenly from a comfort zone, which is a nice feeling. All the usual elements are there, but it feels refreshing somehow. The graphics are very good, especially when lined up against the wall with other fantasy MMOs. There are so many differerent character models; it’s nice to see the sheer variety of enemies spread around. Each area feels alive and buzzing, like a delicate eco system designed to help the player level up, whilst remaining challenging.

The most important aspect of a game like Aion is of course the other people you play with. Forming groups with other players is simple and can happen quite naturally if you are all hanging around a mission start area dying a lot. If you like the same people that much you can form a legion, the equivalent of a guild. Banding together is important for some of the tougher quests and areas filled with high level enemies, and it makes the whole experience more fun. Find some nice loot but worried there will be a fight over it? No problem. Aion has a dice rolling system that automatically kicks in, meaning that it’s a bit of a lottery who gets the nice spoils of battle. Can’t be more brutally fair than that can you?

Aion is a good, fun MMO that is showing a lot of potential, and should be a blast when it is released on PC later this month on the 25^th.