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| Blatant World of Warcraft clone is blatant |
Graphics: What an odd place to start this review. Well, right after you notice how similar everything is to WoW you will then notice: Gawdam! This is beautiful. This game is among the best free to play has to offer in terms of graphics. Taking a look at the screen shots shows just how much time was put into just creating the scenery. While up close it might seem a bit bland in a largely unchanging area such as a forest, when you take a look off the sides of the floating islands the game is set on you can't help but feel awestruck by the beauty of it all. I sat for about ten minutes just staring out into the void of nothingness in the first quest zone you arrive at. In addition the animation was surprisingly fluid, if a bit repetitive, and is even said to be fully motion captured. That being said, all of this really does play into the whole World of Warcraft rip-off feel of the entire thing. Honestly, I would expect more originality from the developers of Heroes of Might and Magic 5, especially with the $12 million budget, the largest video game budget ever in Russia, it's developing country. Especially considering it has Gala-Net behind it, one of the largest free to play MMO publishers out there. Allods gets a 6/10 for Graphics. The scape is simply breathtaking, however the minute details are dated and boring.
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| Fantastic |
Sound: Again, a very strange placement in the review for this particular piece. Allods prides itself on it's development quality. Stating in it's information page several times how reputed it's developers are, particularly the inclusion of Mark Morgan, a musician who has worked on Dexter, Fallouts 1 and 2, and Planescape: Torment. Honestly though, none of the music really stuck with me. I played this game only a few minutes prior to beginning this review and cannot remember a single tune. That's very disappointing given how fantastic the music for the Fallout games were. At the very least the town music should stick in your head. I remember playing Fallout for the first time, the very first time I heard "Trader's Life" I knew it would stick with me and it has. To this day "Trader's Life" is still one of my favorite examples of ambiance in a game. Unfortunately, the same holds true for the combat sounds in Allods. Sometimes after charging a spell and then holding it for the next encounter I'd get no sound after firing it. In addition, the melee fighting sound is very minimalistic presenting very little to pull you into the mood. Allods gets a 3/10 for Sound. A horribly disappointing turn.
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| What the fuck is this thing? |
Gameplay: Here we get to the meat of the game. Of course, the game can have all of the stupendous graphics it wants, but if it's not fun to play then who gives a fuck, right? Let me just say this. If you've played World of Warcraft, you've played Allods. There are the basic archetypes: Fighter, Ranger, Mage, and Cleric/Healer, and each seems to be different from the others with a decent amount of interesting skills for each of them. The crafting system in the game works more like a mini-game than in games like World of Warcraft, a refreshing change of pace. The game is said to be a spiritual successor to Rage of Mages, a game the developers had previously worked on. Having never even heard of Rage of Mages I can't confirm or deny this claim, but I don't think that even really matters. The game functions exactly like World of Warcraft with one tiny.. or major rather, difference. You cannot change the key bindings. I'm sorry but this really makes me angry. Especially when the developers decided that "A" and "D" in the normal "WASD" set up shouldn't be to rotate, but to strafe. Having played World of Warcraft since launch, only recently ending my account for good, this took a very very long time to get used to. I still mess up most of the time when trying to move. I don't understand what is so difficult about letting me change my bindings to set strafe to a different key.
Now, as per Free To Play law this game must have one huge hook factor that sets it apart and ahead of others. That hook comes in the form of The Astral, a supposedly enormous sea of nothingness in which numerous "Allods", basically islands that give a huge 'fuck you' to physics, float. I've not been able to reach the necessary level to explore this area as it also requires a very hefty sum of cash, and I really don't have the time to test out every aspect of every game I feature on this segment. According to the site a group of six players can man a flying ship and search The Astral to find Allods containing treasures and monsters, giant demons they must fight, and even enemy ships they can fight against, board, and subsequently pirate. This seems like a very interesting proposal, if a bit irritating that someone much more powerful than you can simply steal everything you won and, I'm guessing, destroy your ship in the process.
Allods gets a 7/10 for Gameplay. While it may just be World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft was magnificently executed and this game chose well in it's quest to rip-off a much more popular one. However, I am still angry about Key bindings.
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| The obligatory Elf race of Allods |
Community: Allods is a unique game, at least to my knowledge, in that it's a Free To Play MMO that has a community with the mentality of a Pay To Play. Honestly, I couldn't tell the difference between chat in WoW and chat in Allods, it was spectacular. You get your classic MMO spread: The normal players who are looking for a good time, the hardcore elitists progressing through end game while being determined to make a name for themselves, the general assholes who like to be assholes for no reason, and everything else you could imagine. But.. everyone is so nice. I was really amazed at how well interactions went. Almost every question was answered, given of course there was someone around to answer it, in a timely and respectful manner. A nice change of pace from games like Gunz or some of the more infamous WoW servers, I'm looking at you Destromath. The guilds are friendly and seem to be real COMMUNITIES, something a lot of MMOs and players forget in the pursuit of being "hardcore". The service team even has interviews with popular and up-and-coming guilds and guild masters, showing how much they really care about the community. Allods gets a 9/10 for Community, while it does have some minor nagging issues that are of so little consequence that I didn't even mention them, this will become my example of how great an MMO community can be.
Support: Gala-Net did well, partnering with GPotato for the release of Allods. GPotato is a very large company that hosts several MMOs. Due to this the game gets great support all around. The team working on content and maintenance is also very clean and professional. As I've said before it really feels like the developers are proud of this game and promote the community in any way they can. However, the updates are slow, as can be expected from a Free To Play, but with the amount of people working on it, being free to play is little excuse. Allods gets a 5/10 for Support, amazing in it's developers fervor, but not excessive enough to warrant a higher score.
Overall: Allods gets a 6/10 overall. It is definitely one of the better Free To Play MMOs. The graphics, gameplay, and community really make this game what it is, while the sound and support are it's weaker links. If those two aspects can be brought up to par with the rest of the game then it could rival even it's inspiration, WoW.
That's all for this entry in Free To Play Freakout
Cheers,
HappyPariah
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