Curse

RedNova88 · Mar 11, 2009, 06:49 AM // 06:49

Those of you that have played games such as Gunz and Exteel are likely familiar with the growing trend of free to play online shooters. Well, we have yet another, but this one is special in it's own way. S4 League is a free to play 3rd person shooter that has made it's way over from it's native Korea. I've been playing the game constantly for roughly a week, and I can honestly say that the pace of S4 makes Gunz look like that dimwitted fat kid you used to go to school with.

The graphics are good, although many people will be thrown off by the cell shaded anime appearance of the game, it really does look good and has a lot of nice visual effects, all without bogging your system down. I ran this game on my measly Nvidia 6600 GT and always sustain a 60 FPS while playing. The only game lag I suffered was while joining a game, which is tolerable seeing as it only lasts a few seconds.

The gameplay is incredibly addictive and fun. If I had to sum up this game is just one sentence I'd say it was as if Team Fortress 2 made babies with an anime while The Matrix sat and watched. Players are capable of vaulting off of walls and laying the hurt out with a good variety of weapons, ranging from enormous baseball bats to arm mounted laser cannons.

Players are given skills as well, these skills range from merely increasing maximum health, all the way to allowing your character to project a shield in front of themselves, sheltering you as well as teammates. The skills are truly interesting, and add a good layer of depth to the game. You can grant yourself extra health, or extra SP which is needed for acrobatic maneuvers and special abilities. Other skills include stealth, flying, anchoring which behaves sort of like Links Hookshot from the Zelda games, as well as some others I'm likely forgetting.

Players are capable of decking their characters out with not only skills, but also up to 3 weapons for different situations on the battlefield, each weapon has distinct advantages and disadvantages. The variety is just as you'd expect it, you have fast firing small arms, hard hitting railguns and cannons, but you are also given a selection of melee weapons. Each melee weapon handles completely differently, each having it's own attack combinations and advantages. The plasma cutter allows you charge directly at your opponents, stunning them briefly, opening them up to further attacks. While on the other hand the stormbat allows you to spin around chaotically smacking any unfortunate fool that should get in front of you. The other interesting thing about player loadouts is that you can also get yourself deployable walls, which act as cover for your team. You are also free to grab some turrets, you have the basic turret which unloads on whatever comes in range, but there are also the so called "Sentry Nell". These sentries shock enemies that come near them, stunning them for a second and generally screwing up whatever strategy they had.

When you first begin playing you will be limited to two game types and two maps. It's unfortunate that you cannot play on others at first, but it's just the way it is. As you rank up, and move out of the rookie bracket you are introduced to different players and different maps. Let me explain the game types, currently there are only two game types, team death match, and touchdown. Touchdown is essentially a glorified game of capture the flag, but it's far more interesting than it lets on, seeing as how teamwork really shines in this game type. One player must pick up a ball/flag called the "Fumbi". Fumbi is a little yellow anime robot dude...thing... Anyway, your teams job is snatch him and charge the enemies base and plant him in their goalpost. To mix things up, the player carrying Fumbi slowly loses their SP, preventing them from simply sprinting through enemy defenses or wall jumping, so teamwork is a must.

Player customization is pretty generic at first, you get two or three choices for face/hair as well as clothes. However, you are free to spend money (real or ingame) on additional clothes/faces/hair/hair colors. This bring us to the beginning of the BAD in S4. It's truly pitiful how some companies take advantage of the micro transaction system, and this is no less true with S4. The currency in S4 (PEN) is hard to earn, and things are expensive, as most people will likely learn the hard way. See, when you first start, you only RENT your weapons, and must buy your own. This is a bit of a chore because it's hard to make enough pen to support 3 weapons, a skill (which is REQUIRED), and a costume to make your character look unique. So my advice to anyone planning on starting is to not spend much on clothes or vanity, focus on buying a skill and a few weapons, after that feel free to splurge. You are required to pay upkeep on your weapons and even your vanity items, but it generally costs so little that you can simply not worry about it for the most part. There are also a good number of things that are reserved specifically for those who pay real money, including both weapons and stat boosting clothes. However, it's unlikely that you will care, seeing as how people die so fast, you could double their health and probably not notice it.

Now that we're done discussing the in-game currency and such it's time I inform everyone on the true bane of this game. The bugs, oh hell are there bugs, and lag, lots of lag. The game is ran peer to peer so fighting people from the other side of the country can prove to be a bad experience, since you can unload on them and they simply will not die for some time. One of the other drawbacks is the connection bugs. Disconnected this, error code 2 that, it happens frequently. This can be overlooked to some extent since the team is always hard at work fixing bugs, and the game only just came out of open beta (or it just went to beta, I forget).

Conclusion: If you aren't dealing with a lagger or random disconnects this game is golden, and if it weren't for these flaws it'd retain a much larger player base. But if you have the patience to put up with it's flaws it's totally worth trying. Oh, it's also a very small download of 300 MB or so. Sorry for wall of text, I was bored.

http://s4.en.alaplaya.eu/

EDIT: Should also mention the music and certain sound effects are painful to listen to, for me anyway, so it's recommended you bring your own music to the party.

kostolomac · Mar 11, 2009, 02:05 PM // 14:05

It's an ok game I guess, but I prefer TF2.

User Name: · Mar 12, 2009, 09:04 AM // 09:04

I play it and its awesome

Abedeus · Mar 12, 2009, 01:26 PM // 13:26

It's decent. First F2P game in a long time that didn't bore me after an hour.

I have yet to achieve a rank and see if anything changes (I'm 400 exp short of R2). I do not, however, like the idea that you must constantly fight to be able to fight. That is - weapons wear out after few days or hours... That's kinda meh.

RedNova88 · Mar 12, 2009, 09:16 PM // 21:16

I agree with you there Abedeus. However, once you actually buy yourself a weapon or skill it's permanent unless you neglect repairing it for a long time which should not happen because repairs cost very little. Also a tip to help things stay interesting for you that I didn't know about at first. Go into the shop and look for a weapon or skill you think is interesting, click on "license" and after doing a quick tutorial on that weapon or skill they give you a 5 hour rental of it. The Stormbat is both hilarious and fun, mostly because of the sound it makes, and then watching whoever you hit fly like a ragdoll.

Abedeus · Mar 13, 2009, 05:24 AM // 05:24

I've figured out that Licence gives a free 5-hour weapon/skill.

Oh, is there a way to turn off THOSE FREAKIN VOICES?! Seriously, that game has one of the worst voice acting I've ever heard.

RedNova88 · Mar 13, 2009, 06:32 AM // 06:32

No clue. The touchdown voice is the worst though. DANGA! DANGA! GET THE BALL MAN! *blows brains out*

Abedeus · Mar 13, 2009, 06:44 AM // 06:44

That's why I love Team Deathmatch so far.

Maybe because yesterday I was in a team with only one other person, the other team had 4 people and we were still leading by 6 points.

RedNova88 · Mar 13, 2009, 07:02 AM // 07:02

Yeah it's always nice to get into a team that knows what they're doing. It gets better once you move into the second bracket, quite a few more maps and better players.

Abedeus · Mar 13, 2009, 02:40 PM // 14:40

I know it's a bit superior to GunZ, because there you have:

a) level up to get items.
b) get money.
c) advance to higher ranks
d) get pwned if you are not a skiller k-styler
e) train exploiting bugs, I'm sorry, "techniques"
f) know there are people with macros that will be always superior to your movements.

Here, the better you are, the faster you advance. You train while you play. That's why after 10 minutes of game, I became the top priority target - only 1 person could duel with me and survive, others died before landing a hit on me.

Of course, anyone with a sniper rifle could take me out - I used 2 swords (Counter and Plasma) and one Revolver for nice mid-range damage. No long-range weapons.

Oh, and this is good too - everyone has some strong points and weak points.