Next: Unscheduled Move and Stranger Things. Previously: Egad Turbine.

Snap Judgment – Riders of Icarus

254 words.

Welcome to another installment of Snap Judgment, where I fully evaluate every nuance of a game after playing it for less than an hour.

I downloaded and installed the latest malware … I mean, Asian import MMORPG … Riders of Icarus. I kid, I kid. But it asked me to reboot to finish the installation, which makes me wonder just what kind of rootkit it put on my system. Not to mention the extremely suspicious Nexon anti-cheat monitoring software that runs in the background. But I guess that’s the standard for Asian games now, because ArcheAge had one, and I think Blade and Soul, and maybe some others I can’t remember. I assume they’re all capturing my passwords and sending them to China, and not doing anything to prevent cheating.

Icarus itself is the most average an MMORPG could possibly be. The graphics are average, the sounds are average, the animations are average, the classes are average, the cut scenes are average, the story is average, the combat is average. If I had to give a nod to one thing I’d say the music was pretty good.

While I personally find the concept of flying whales pretty cool, there wasn’t nearly enough of that in the first 45 minutes to make me want to continue playing. Everything about the initial experience was … completely average, well-trodden MMORPG territory. Nothing in there made this game stand out from any other fantasy MMORPG.

Anyway, check out the video, so you don’t have to bother installing it.

Next: Unscheduled Move and Stranger Things. Previously: Egad Turbine.

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Archived Comments

bhagpuss 2016-07-11T07:44:39Z

Interestingly it didn’t ask me to reboot when I installed it. It is indeed “average” but in my book “average” is a mark of respect. Something - anything really - has to be “below average” before I think of rejecting it. Clearly everything can’t be “above average”, as Garrison Keillor has made play over for decades.

The other issue, of course, is familiarity. RoI is solid MMO entertainment. Coming in somewhere close to the one hundred and fiftieth MMO I’ve played, unsurprisngly I don’t find it particularly impressive, but imagine if it was my first or second or third. For some people RoI will seem like the greatest thing ever. Lucky them.

UltrViolet 2016-07-11T13:39:28Z True enough. I feel like there are so many good MMORPGs already running now though that new ones have to really shine to be noticed.

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