Friday, April 16, 2010

GetAmped II - Demo Impressions

Bored out of my skull yesterday, I went looking around for a new game to play on my PC. I wanted a game that I could download quickly and was very light on the system requirements. Now I knew I couldn’t play anything graphic intensive because my PC is so old and crappy that it’s practically an antique. I browsed around MMOsite.com for a bit and noticed that GetAmped II was having a 2nd closed beta test that day.

Now I played the original GetAmped way back before it was even localized in English (called Splash Fighters in US) and thought it was a very, very, VERY bad game. However, after watching a couple of videos for GA2 on YouTube, I decided to give it a try.

Signed up, downloaded it, installed it, and logged in.
After picking my character and starting the tutorial, I noticed right away that something was wrong… The text was all in Japanese!

"Umm... What?"

So I pretty much have no idea what’s going on in this game’s story since I can’t read Japanese. A bug/glitch of un-translated dialog that should have been fixed way before public testing sure doesn’t make for a good first impression.

After the tutorial, I was given my own room where I could add furniture and decorate it for me and other players to hang out in, which is kind of cool. I doubt I’ll ever have a player other than myself step foot in here, though.

 "Wow. This room sure is depressing..."

I left my room to go explore the other game areas and was treated to more storyline cut-scenes filled with more Japanese text that I’ll never be able to decipher. I checked out the shopping, battle, quest, and chatting lobbies. The chatting lobby was pretty much empty, but the battle, shopping and quest lobbies were filled with tons of players, most of which were running around with copyrighted characters from animes and video games (more on that later.)

Finally getting down to the actual game part of the game, I decided to play a couple of quick rounds with some random players on a team battle. During the first round, I didn’t really have a strategy, so I rushed in blindly and quickly got my ass handed back to me. The combat seemed like it would be simple enough for anyone to pick up, but there was clearly more to it than mashing the attack buttons.

 "Random player bringing down the thunder"

Next round, I went one on one with an enemy team player and started mixing up my weak and strong attacks. I also figured out how to block and counter enemy attacks. I was doing pretty well nailing 10-hit combos without really trying, but sadly, my opponent pulled off a huge special attack out of nowhere that took well over a complete bar of my HP and finished me off. The third round was sadly more of the same, except near the end of the round, I was the only one left on my team. I fought with all my might, but...


"DEFEATED"
Failed. Well at least I tried...

After the battles, I went back to the battle lobby and chatted around a bit. Then I went back to the shopping area and bought some nice furniture for my room. I also bought some sweet roller blades which I could used to destroy my enemies in style, plus some new clothing and stuff. The prices for a lot of the items were all made cheap for the beta test so I picked up a lot of goodies. Another trip back to my room and I filled it up with all the stuff I bought. Now my depressing room looks almost livable.

 "There. MUCH better."

Now about the copyrighted characters that some players have been running around with: The game has a feature that lets you edit the models and colors of your character, allowing you to create and play as your own unique fighter. However, the majority of players seem more intent on using the skin editor to create characters from their favorite video games and shows, which I’m totally OK with since it would be kind of awesome to see characters from [GAME A] battle it out with characters from [GAME B] and what not.

 "Is that Taokaka from BlazBlue sitting behind me?"

After my short play through, I was fairly impressed. GetAmped2 seems to have a lot going for it which could make the game far superior to its predecessor in every way (which isn’t saying much since GetAmped/Splash Fighters sucked.) If they can just fix the obvious problems such as the un-translated and mistranslated dialog (and maybe throw in some word wrapping,) GA2 could be a hit.

As soon as commercial service starts, I’ll be giving a full review on it. Check back later.

Game website: www.getamped2.com

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