Pyros plays: Vin-Dick-Tus.

PyrosNine · 11-12-2010, 05:07 PM

Computa ASPLODED!

Alrighty, I be playing the new ememmorepeeguh called Vindictus, which is being hosted by Nexon, and uses the source engine. That's right, the same thing that makes Half Life 2 look awesome. However, the pliability of the source engine has always been questionable in my opinion, and the Source engine hates my computer's guts. But I play nonetheless because it is free!

The game loads slowly, no doubt a combination of it being installed on my external usb hard drive, a need for more ram, and Source engine hating me.

To start off with, you're given three character archetypes. I was actually a little worried this'd end up like Borderlands, where you pick stylized characters with different skill sets, and the only thing that sets you apart from everybody else is what loot you're equipped with.

There are three characters, one's Lann, a dude decked out in full armor and can dual wield, and specializes in being quick, long combos, and can counter any time.

Then there's Evie, who is an "alchemist" which mostly means she's a priest (heals)/ mage (hurls fireballs) /and summoner (summons monsters to do her bidding.

Finally there's Fiona (pictured), who is more basic, and the one I picked. Meant to be the balance character, Fiona has a sword and shield as her special power and does more damage while also having decent defense. I picked her because I've been watching a Demon Souls LP, and the idea of hacking into enemies with a sword and shield european style has overpowered my notions of running into enemies wielding 6 swords or a BFS.

A neat feature is the streaming video that plays for each character, describing their strengths and weaknesses. Throughout the game these videos will play seamlessly within the game whenever they want to teach or show you something.

It's looking bad for character customization when I immediately get shoved into a loading screen before even naming a character....

Not pictured due extreme lag, but I'm immediately dumped in strange environs for a cutscene. The Source engine always starts with a slow, grinding stutter, that suggests to me that the level I"ve emerged in is still loading as I'm walking through it, because if I wait a bit, it goes away completely until I enter the next area. For this cutscene however, rendered in the source engine, shit be weird. I don't know what's going on, but people flicker in and out of existence, theres' a giant spider, I don't know where the hell I am during some dramatic argument between flickering people that basically went along these lines:

Transcript of cutsene

And then dog men attack. I was too busy during combat to hit the printscreen button, but they were men and they were dogs. Newstyle DND would call them Kobolds, but I have no clue. I hit them in the face with my sword. It's a tutorial, so they were laughably easy, I took no damage as I fought with controls and the lagging computer, but once I killed one the game caught up with itself and evened out, and things moved at a normal clip, with no flicker.

The game already has a few points of interest: You can tell how good a game is by what elements it has to offer from the get go. For starters, there were crates and barrels in the opening cutscene. Secondly, the game begins with a damn escort mission. But on the plus side, she was invincible for these events, and EVERYTHING IS DESTRUCTABLE (except the priestess for what I just said)

Especially crates. So as I'm beating the crap out of dog men, I'm also wrecking the building's foundation, destroying fences, walls, crates, barrels., and enemies. When the enemies die, they turn to stone and then shatter under the force of my blade.

There's a simple combo system, with basic melee swings coming from left clicking the mouse (though there is a keyboard and controller scheme) and special attacks by right clicking. Different combinations of left and right clicking in a combo will result in different attacks, my favorite being "slash, kick, slash, shield bash to the groin that sends them flying"

Special attacks for me just mean a piercing strike that does more damage, and can send them flying. I have a stamina bar which depletes with every special attack, but regenerates quickly when standing still.

I can also press the E button to grab things. This is epic is what this means. I can grab an enemy, and hurl him at his friends for extra damage. I can grab an enemy and pile drive him. I can pick up defeated enemies weapons and smack them with it, as well as beat them over the head with their own comrades rocky corpses. I can destroy parts of the scenery and pick up the rubble to throw or smash into my opponent.

I very quickly ignored the quite awesome combo system in favor of grabbing chairs, fences, support beams, and enemy corpses as impromptu weapons for beating the crap out of enemies. However, this came to a stop as mine and the rampant destruction of the spider brought the ceiling down, which resulted in this (and then I remembered the print screen button)

A carrying escort mission. She got hit with a plot two-by-four, and broke her ankle. Like this, I only have access to a short range kick attack with a long delay between kicks. However...

The next area was next to a 4 story fall.

Capture function was a little too slow, but what you're not seeing is the dogman falling to his death.

Ditto for this one, but you get a good view of a burning village, which is always nice.

One thing you'll notice about the map is that this is not a straight up dungeon, as I'm walking through rooms that load for each room, but it's a fast load, and later dungeons do not do this. These rooms are just for tutorial and fencing me in.

Well anyway, on the top floor we catch up to the hissy fitting spider, and the maiden talks to it after calming it down. She then talks to the spider. I"m not kidding. They hold a conversation. Or she does, the spider just kinda stands there.

"WHERE DID THEY TOUCH YOU!?"

I think a bunch of guards just died on the whims of a crazy person who talks to giant spiders.

Then the spider got possessed by an evil red glow (don't you just hate it when that happens?) and the mark of Fomor (same as the stone found earlier) pops up on it's forehead, and I have to kick it's ass. Sadly, it's a giant spider, and y'know. Arachnophobia. Seriously, what is it with European style RPGs and giant spider enemies?

Didn't printscreen the fight, but halfway through I get help from the ballistae, which not only hurt the boss, but also litter the battlefield with the spent spears, which I can then pick up. I impaled the spider's leg on one of them, making it hold still and let me beat sense back into it.

Traditionally, when something's possessed by evil, beating the crap out of it with bladed weapons resolves the problem, if Dark Cloud has taught me anything.
The exorcism of the spider.

A good night's rest at the Inn cures everything!

Now we get some character customization.

Oh hey, I do get a character, not just one prepicked for me. Welp, since I picked Fiona I be a chick. It was a 2/3 chance of me being a chick anyway, and I bet Lann's totally gay or something, so we'll have to wait for an update to play someone manly. There were two shadowy masculine characters on the class selection screen, and a dark knight character with a sign that said "Coming soon"

AFROS NOOOOOOOOooooo!

My virtual self is not pleased by this hairstyle.

This would make wearing a helmet more comfortable but...

This be who I be. Asheth, because all the other names I use are taken. Except PyrosNine, but I'll save it for when I make a male character.

You'll notice some things in the customization window are greyed out or have a star on them. This means....MICROTRANSACTIONS! I can't have Ashethian burning red hair or cool hairstyles unless I unlock them somehow or shell out some cash. You know which of those I'm doing....cuz pyroz broke!

Still surprisingly robust customization, and it's the source engine, so a lot of detail in face and hair, without tripping into uncanny valley territory. I can totally adjust the size of my chest. There is a slider and everything. Well, we know what this means for Asheth. I wonder what the male version has?

Now for some poses!

Let's Play Pretty Dress Up:
WORDYPLOTWORDS
More Stutter. More grinding sound. Loading takes time. But then....PUPPIES!

And doggie! And an Inn with a floating sign!

And a kitty!

CAPITALIST SWINE!

Lag is making this asshole forever to tell me something. Or he just has a really slow monotone.

But then I discovered the neatest feature....

Not only does this game have a built in screen cap function...but it also a built in video recorder...

However....you can guess what happened when I used it. Recorded the first quest, beat the crap out of a boss by throwing it's own mooks at it to stun it, and then killed it by smashing it in the groin.

So when I decided to call it quits and check out the recorded movie....hitting stop caused the game to freeze....then crash. Then take down firefox with it...and my computer.

It got back on it's feet quickly enough, but the video was corrupted, and a strange korean folder popped up in my documents along with the Vindictus folder.

however, the game automatically saves a few nice snapshots of the killing blow of a boss. So it's not a total loss!

Caution: May be too violent for the male and squeamish and/or puppets.

More Deets later as I get better pics or vid of combat, and have played enough to really rate this game. Though aside from my problems, it's looking pretty good so far.

Krylo · 11-12-2010, 05:32 PM

I hope they made the capitalist swine joke on purpose.

mudah.swf · 11-12-2010, 06:39 PM

I'd play this along with you if it WORKED IN MY COUNTRY

Again, Nexon have gone for the "Fuck the UK" approach to localisation. Also is the UI really that cluttered or is it just the small screens making it look worse than it is?

Sage Harpuia · 11-12-2010, 07:25 PM

A friend of mine told me about this game. From what I've heard it's stats/skill upgrading mechanic(s) seem to be somewhat similar how it works in Final Fantasy 2; including other games made by the same director, although I fail to recall his name... Of course this is a imperfect comparison since I haven't actually tried to play the game, but I will someday... because it's free and within North American.. So I'll be waiting any more feedback updates from you, Pyros. To see if it's any good...

Ryong · 11-12-2010, 07:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mudah.swf

I'd play this along with you if it WORKED IN MY COUNTRY

Again, Nexon have gone for the "Fuck the UK" approach to localisation. Also is the UI really that cluttered or is it just the small screens making it look worse than it is?

Nexon's default MO since three years ago has been "Call the NA version global, IP block everyone, release an EU version in two years." I wanted to play it too, but I'm in Brazil, so it's even worse.

Magus · 11-12-2010, 11:21 PM

Looked cool and I had it written down somewhere to play because it said "Source-based physics MMORPG" and I was like "WHA THAT IS COOL GOTTA PLAY".

I will have to follow through on this promise to myself.

Niveras · 11-15-2010, 01:46 PM

Offtopic rant: what the hell is with the ubiquitous presence of pando media booster these days? Why not just rely on an open source peer-to-peer download method, like torrents, instead of this shit "booster" that makes browsing the web absolutely impossible while it is running? It seems like every FTP game I've tried in the past year uses it for the download, and I can't understand why. I've had a page of raw text take 5 minutes to load, and it still stopped halfway through. And why does it continue to run after the installer has finished downloading? Seems shifty to me.

End rant.

PyrosNine · 11-15-2010, 03:20 PM

Pando is just an accelerated torrent, methinks, and the reason why it keeps running is that you were able to download it so fast, you downloaded most of the pieces from other downloaders near you, also reducing the strain on the game's servers.

However, your internet speed shouldn't deteriorate after it's been updated, it normally shuts off. If your internet remains degraded after updating, it may be a problem with your router or something, because after I just started torrenting, my internet would die for a bit long after I stopped all torrents until I messed with my settings, and later, got a new router.

As for right now I"m using college 'nets, so I got something a little less than a T1, so I don't have problems aside from Wifi for my phone and nettbook goin' down.

Anyway, apparently trying to record video with the program itself causes the game to asplode, which then takes down my computer. I think it's pushing the limits of my RAM, which I need to upgrade. I do also remember how Half Life didn't like my dual core computer, which may once again be the case, but I will admit that after doing some tweaking (including hitting a dual core option) the game loads much faster and has less slowdown.

I did find another method of video recording, but it's jittery and has slowdown. There's also the thing where I shove a camera in front of my monitor record that way, might do that.

Do have another update coming tonight-ish, anyway, with better pictures, some multiplayer, and some more thoughts on gameplay.

On one final note, this is a Pyros Plays, not a let's play, which is just a slightly more active review, as MMORPG's and the like, cannot actually be played to the end. Unless you have no life.

h4x.m4g3 · 11-15-2010, 04:41 PM

I download and played it through the weekend and I'll bite its pretty fun. I'm on the East Server under the character name Goudabii if anyone wants to hang out. I don't like the token system for doing missions but I just started needing tokens, and don't know if it will actually be that big a deal in the end. Still it seems like its an attempt to limit playtime/make you pay more. Groups seem to come and go with the wind, which I like because a big problem I had with WoW was committing to hour + long dungeon adventures with random strangers (who normally annoyed the heck out of me), on the inverse of that I haven't found myself making any friends, or running with the same group ever. Also I can't find the mute player button and the gold spammers in the town are reallllly annoying.

PyrosNine · 11-15-2010, 05:05 PM

Asheth is also on East Server! What a koinky dink!

11-12-2010, 05:07 PM	#1
PyrosNine Zettai Hero Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: A figment of my own imagination Posts: 6,103	Pyros plays: Vin-Dick-Tus. Computa ASPLODED! Alrighty, I be playing the new ememmorepeeguh called Vindictus, which is being hosted by Nexon, and uses the source engine. That's right, the same thing that makes Half Life 2 look awesome. However, the pliability of the source engine has always been questionable in my opinion, and the Source engine hates my computer's guts. But I play nonetheless because it is free! The game loads slowly, no doubt a combination of it being installed on my external usb hard drive, a need for more ram, and Source engine hating me. To start off with, you're given three character archetypes. I was actually a little worried this'd end up like Borderlands, where you pick stylized characters with different skill sets, and the only thing that sets you apart from everybody else is what loot you're equipped with. There are three characters, one's Lann, a dude decked out in full armor and can dual wield, and specializes in being quick, long combos, and can counter any time. Then there's Evie, who is an "alchemist" which mostly means she's a priest (heals)/ mage (hurls fireballs) /and summoner (summons monsters to do her bidding. Finally there's Fiona (pictured), who is more basic, and the one I picked. Meant to be the balance character, Fiona has a sword and shield as her special power and does more damage while also having decent defense. I picked her because I've been watching a Demon Souls LP, and the idea of hacking into enemies with a sword and shield european style has overpowered my notions of running into enemies wielding 6 swords or a BFS. A neat feature is the streaming video that plays for each character, describing their strengths and weaknesses. Throughout the game these videos will play seamlessly within the game whenever they want to teach or show you something. It's looking bad for character customization when I immediately get shoved into a loading screen before even naming a character.... Not pictured due extreme lag, but I'm immediately dumped in strange environs for a cutscene. The Source engine always starts with a slow, grinding stutter, that suggests to me that the level I"ve emerged in is still loading as I'm walking through it, because if I wait a bit, it goes away completely until I enter the next area. For this cutscene however, rendered in the source engine, shit be weird. I don't know what's going on, but people flicker in and out of existence, theres' a giant spider, I don't know where the hell I am during some dramatic argument between flickering people that basically went along these lines: Transcript of cutsene And then dog men attack. I was too busy during combat to hit the printscreen button, but they were men and they were dogs. Newstyle DND would call them Kobolds, but I have no clue. I hit them in the face with my sword. It's a tutorial, so they were laughably easy, I took no damage as I fought with controls and the lagging computer, but once I killed one the game caught up with itself and evened out, and things moved at a normal clip, with no flicker. The game already has a few points of interest: You can tell how good a game is by what elements it has to offer from the get go. For starters, there were crates and barrels in the opening cutscene. Secondly, the game begins with a damn escort mission. But on the plus side, she was invincible for these events, and EVERYTHING IS DESTRUCTABLE (except the priestess for what I just said) Especially crates. So as I'm beating the crap out of dog men, I'm also wrecking the building's foundation, destroying fences, walls, crates, barrels., and enemies. When the enemies die, they turn to stone and then shatter under the force of my blade. There's a simple combo system, with basic melee swings coming from left clicking the mouse (though there is a keyboard and controller scheme) and special attacks by right clicking. Different combinations of left and right clicking in a combo will result in different attacks, my favorite being "slash, kick, slash, shield bash to the groin that sends them flying" Special attacks for me just mean a piercing strike that does more damage, and can send them flying. I have a stamina bar which depletes with every special attack, but regenerates quickly when standing still. I can also press the E button to grab things. This is epic is what this means. I can grab an enemy, and hurl him at his friends for extra damage. I can grab an enemy and pile drive him. I can pick up defeated enemies weapons and smack them with it, as well as beat them over the head with their own comrades rocky corpses. I can destroy parts of the scenery and pick up the rubble to throw or smash into my opponent. I very quickly ignored the quite awesome combo system in favor of grabbing chairs, fences, support beams, and enemy corpses as impromptu weapons for beating the crap out of enemies. However, this came to a stop as mine and the rampant destruction of the spider brought the ceiling down, which resulted in this (and then I remembered the print screen button) A carrying escort mission. She got hit with a plot two-by-four, and broke her ankle. Like this, I only have access to a short range kick attack with a long delay between kicks. However... The next area was next to a 4 story fall. Capture function was a little too slow, but what you're not seeing is the dogman falling to his death. Ditto for this one, but you get a good view of a burning village, which is always nice. One thing you'll notice about the map is that this is not a straight up dungeon, as I'm walking through rooms that load for each room, but it's a fast load, and later dungeons do not do this. These rooms are just for tutorial and fencing me in. Well anyway, on the top floor we catch up to the hissy fitting spider, and the maiden talks to it after calming it down. She then talks to the spider. I"m not kidding. They hold a conversation. Or she does, the spider just kinda stands there. "WHERE DID THEY TOUCH YOU!?" I think a bunch of guards just died on the whims of a crazy person who talks to giant spiders. Then the spider got possessed by an evil red glow (don't you just hate it when that happens?) and the mark of Fomor (same as the stone found earlier) pops up on it's forehead, and I have to kick it's ass. Sadly, it's a giant spider, and y'know. Arachnophobia. Seriously, what is it with European style RPGs and giant spider enemies? Didn't printscreen the fight, but halfway through I get help from the ballistae, which not only hurt the boss, but also litter the battlefield with the spent spears, which I can then pick up. I impaled the spider's leg on one of them, making it hold still and let me beat sense back into it. Traditionally, when something's possessed by evil, beating the crap out of it with bladed weapons resolves the problem, if Dark Cloud has taught me anything. The exorcism of the spider. A good night's rest at the Inn cures everything! Now we get some character customization. Oh hey, I do get a character, not just one prepicked for me. Welp, since I picked Fiona I be a chick. It was a 2/3 chance of me being a chick anyway, and I bet Lann's totally gay or something, so we'll have to wait for an update to play someone manly. There were two shadowy masculine characters on the class selection screen, and a dark knight character with a sign that said "Coming soon" AFROS NOOOOOOOOooooo! My virtual self is not pleased by this hairstyle. This would make wearing a helmet more comfortable but... This be who I be. Asheth, because all the other names I use are taken. Except PyrosNine, but I'll save it for when I make a male character. You'll notice some things in the customization window are greyed out or have a star on them. This means....MICROTRANSACTIONS! I can't have Ashethian burning red hair or cool hairstyles unless I unlock them somehow or shell out some cash. You know which of those I'm doing....cuz pyroz broke! Still surprisingly robust customization, and it's the source engine, so a lot of detail in face and hair, without tripping into uncanny valley territory. I can totally adjust the size of my chest. There is a slider and everything. Well, we know what this means for Asheth. I wonder what the male version has? Now for some poses! Let's Play Pretty Dress Up: WORDYPLOTWORDS More Stutter. More grinding sound. Loading takes time. But then....PUPPIES! And doggie! And an Inn with a floating sign! And a kitty! CAPITALIST SWINE! Lag is making this asshole forever to tell me something. Or he just has a really slow monotone. But then I discovered the neatest feature.... Not only does this game have a built in screen cap function...but it also a built in video recorder... However....you can guess what happened when I used it. Recorded the first quest, beat the crap out of a boss by throwing it's own mooks at it to stun it, and then killed it by smashing it in the groin. So when I decided to call it quits and check out the recorded movie....hitting stop caused the game to freeze....then crash. Then take down firefox with it...and my computer. It got back on it's feet quickly enough, but the video was corrupted, and a strange korean folder popped up in my documents along with the Vindictus folder. however, the game automatically saves a few nice snapshots of the killing blow of a boss. So it's not a total loss! Caution: May be too violent for the male and squeamish and/or puppets. More Deets later as I get better pics or vid of combat, and have played enough to really rate this game. Though aside from my problems, it's looking pretty good so far. __________________ Pyrosnine.blogspot.com: An experimental blog of writing. Updated possibly daily. Possibly. A fair chance. Current Works for reading: War Between them, Karma Police. PyrosNine: Weirdo Magnet Extraordinaire!

11-12-2010, 05:32 PM	#2
Krylo The Straightest Shota Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: It's a secret to everybody. Posts: 17,789	I hope they made the capitalist swine joke on purpose. __________________ I am very tired.

11-12-2010, 11:21 PM	#6
Magus Archer and Armstrong vs. the World Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Pennsylvania Posts: 7,164	Looked cool and I had it written down somewhere to play because it said "Source-based physics MMORPG" and I was like "WHA THAT IS COOL GOTTA PLAY". I will have to follow through on this promise to myself. __________________ The Valiant Review

11-15-2010, 01:46 PM	#7
Niveras Shyguy Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 214	Offtopic rant: what the hell is with the ubiquitous presence of pando media booster these days? Why not just rely on an open source peer-to-peer download method, like torrents, instead of this shit "booster" that makes browsing the web absolutely impossible while it is running? It seems like every FTP game I've tried in the past year uses it for the download, and I can't understand why. I've had a page of raw text take 5 minutes to load, and it still stopped halfway through. And why does it continue to run after the installer has finished downloading? Seems shifty to me. End rant. __________________ God has no heart, has no mind, has no body, has no soul, and no resemblance of you.

11-15-2010, 03:20 PM	#8
PyrosNine Zettai Hero Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: A figment of my own imagination Posts: 6,103	Pando is just an accelerated torrent, methinks, and the reason why it keeps running is that you were able to download it so fast, you downloaded most of the pieces from other downloaders near you, also reducing the strain on the game's servers. However, your internet speed shouldn't deteriorate after it's been updated, it normally shuts off. If your internet remains degraded after updating, it may be a problem with your router or something, because after I just started torrenting, my internet would die for a bit long after I stopped all torrents until I messed with my settings, and later, got a new router. As for right now I"m using college 'nets, so I got something a little less than a T1, so I don't have problems aside from Wifi for my phone and nettbook goin' down. Anyway, apparently trying to record video with the program itself causes the game to asplode, which then takes down my computer. I think it's pushing the limits of my RAM, which I need to upgrade. I do also remember how Half Life didn't like my dual core computer, which may once again be the case, but I will admit that after doing some tweaking (including hitting a dual core option) the game loads much faster and has less slowdown. I did find another method of video recording, but it's jittery and has slowdown. There's also the thing where I shove a camera in front of my monitor record that way, might do that. Do have another update coming tonight-ish, anyway, with better pictures, some multiplayer, and some more thoughts on gameplay. On one final note, this is a Pyros Plays, not a let's play, which is just a slightly more active review, as MMORPG's and the like, cannot actually be played to the end. Unless you have no life. __________________ Pyrosnine.blogspot.com: An experimental blog of writing. Updated possibly daily. Possibly. A fair chance. Current Works for reading: War Between them, Karma Police. PyrosNine: Weirdo Magnet Extraordinaire!

11-12-2010, 06:39 PM	#3
mudah.swf Rocky Wrench Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: England Posts: 1,294	I'd play this along with you if it WORKED IN MY COUNTRY Again, Nexon have gone for the "Fuck the UK" approach to localisation. Also is the UI really that cluttered or is it just the small screens making it look worse than it is?

11-12-2010, 07:25 PM	#4
Sage Harpuia alea iacta est Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Ontario Posts: 130	A friend of mine told me about this game. From what I've heard it's stats/skill upgrading mechanic(s) seem to be somewhat similar how it works in Final Fantasy 2; including other games made by the same director, although I fail to recall his name... Of course this is a imperfect comparison since I haven't actually tried to play the game, but I will someday... because it's free and within North American.. So I'll be waiting any more feedback updates from you, Pyros. To see if it's any good...

11-15-2010, 04:41 PM	#9
h4x.m4g3 Lakitu Join Date: Nov 2003 Posts: 2,152	I download and played it through the weekend and I'll bite its pretty fun. I'm on the East Server under the character name Goudabii if anyone wants to hang out. I don't like the token system for doing missions but I just started needing tokens, and don't know if it will actually be that big a deal in the end. Still it seems like its an attempt to limit playtime/make you pay more. Groups seem to come and go with the wind, which I like because a big problem I had with WoW was committing to hour + long dungeon adventures with random strangers (who normally annoyed the heck out of me), on the inverse of that I haven't found myself making any friends, or running with the same group ever. Also I can't find the mute player button and the gold spammers in the town are reallllly annoying.

11-15-2010, 05:05 PM	#10
PyrosNine Zettai Hero Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: A figment of my own imagination Posts: 6,103	Asheth is also on East Server! What a koinky dink! __________________ Pyrosnine.blogspot.com: An experimental blog of writing. Updated possibly daily. Possibly. A fair chance. Current Works for reading: War Between them, Karma Police. PyrosNine: Weirdo Magnet Extraordinaire!