City of Heroes: Freedom, part 1.

Genre: MMORPG, Super Heroes

Developer: Paragon Studios/Cryptic

Publisher: NCSoft

Release year: 2004

Freebie type: F2P MMO

Paid option: Real-World Currency Market, Monthly subscription

Zolgar paid: .. I plead the 5^th.

Beaten: It's an MMO

Zolgar's rating: 9.5/10

Replayability: MMO

As much as some of us may hate it, Free To Play is currently the future for MMOs. This may change when someone finally headshots World of Warcraft and/or the American economy rises out of the shitter, but until then? Free To Play it is.

As such, many games that have been Pay To Play have gone F2P, at first it was just the ones that failed to take off very well on the subscription model (DDO, Horizons and, CO, just to name a few), yet in recent years even some of the more popular ones have switched to F2P, with various models and levels of success.

There's a lot of bad business models when it comes to a F2P MMO. Super restrictive free accounts, 'unlimited trials', or systems that limit how much you can play without paying (“10 quests a day, then you pay.”)

There's some good ones, too, though. The one I find to be the best is the model which I believe Turbine pioneered (I could be wrong), and is used in many games that went from Pay to Free. It's the one City of Heroes has adopted, too.

With City of Heroes: Freedom, a player can level 2 characters from 8 different archetypes (classes) from 1 to 50 without paying a dime.

Free players have 2 character slots, and can access any of the 15 non-VIP servers. They have access to 8 out of the 10 basic archetypes (lacking Controllers and Masterminds), and have access to most of the power sets for those archetypes. As well they have access to most of the games content, including full run of both Paragon City and the Rogue Isles.

Sure, there are some things a completely free player doesn't get, but if there weren't, what incentive would they have to give Paragon Studios their money? There is, however, more than enough content to keep free players interested, and make them want to pay for a less restricted account.

When someone decides that City of Heroes is worth money, they have two options. Premium account, or VIP account.

A Premium account is any account which has purchased any number of points from the Paragon Market. Most of the restrictions are still in place, but there's a few minor upgrades, and then they use their points to buy things like character slots, archetypes, power sets, content, costume pieces and so much more. As well, they start progressing in the new Rewards System, which gives players tangible (but not game breaking) benefits based on how much money they have given Paragon Studios. Most of these benefits are things like enhanced storage and useful utility powers. For every 1200 points they purchase, they get 1 'token' which allows them to select a benefit from a level based off of how many tokens they've earned.

.. and I'll look down and whisper "no."

Or, they can go VIP.

A VIP account costs $15/month and gets access to all (current) archetypes, that is all 10 basic, and the 4 Epic Archetypes, all but a scant few power sets, all current content, free use of Mission Architect, alignment changes and, the Invention System (things which Premium players have to pay for), a monthly stipend of 400 points (worth $5) and 1 Reward Token, 12 character slots per server (and a 16^th server).. and, of course, the Incarnate System, which is the endgame power advancement system that cannot currently even be purchased.

For the price of buying everything that the VIP account unlocks, you could easily pay for a VIP account for several months, and use your 400 point stipend to buy fun things like new power sets and costumes.

A nice little list breaking down the account types can be found here.

Now, I warn you.. my review of City of Heroes is a little biased.

I've been playing it for more than 6 years, my main account has all but one upgrade, collectors editions of all 3 games, etc. and, I have 2 accounts. Suffice it to say I like City of Heroes just a wee bit, and have probably given them more money than I spent on my truck.

One of the things which has kept me in City of Heroes for so long is the character creator, while it's not perfect, it is the best one I have ever seen. The main weaknesses are a limitation of 2 colors per item, and the inability to do an asymmetrical character.

With just the base costume pieces, you can do almost anything you can imagine, and it only gets better the more costume packs you get.. there are still a few things that are really hard to pull off right (like I've had a very hard time finding a way to replicate the Repo Man from Repo: The Genetic Opera). Honestly, I could try to describe the character creation, but it wouldn't work very well. Simply put it's color selection, item selection and sliding scales. I would have a screenshot of the creator for you, but, well.. something hates me and I can't get a screenshot.

Slightly dated, to be sure.. but let's be honest.. City of Heroes is a 7 year old game, they've managed to improve the creator over the years, but it's reaching it's limits without a total system overhaul.

The other thing you have with City of Heroes, is character options, far too many options some might say.

As a free account you have access to:

• 

  Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls.

  Brute: Melee damage, very 'balls to the wall' in play style. They have good HP, good defenses, and low base damage, but improve in damage the longer they're in combat. A good brute never stops moving until the mission is over, or he's dead.. and a good brute doesn't die!
• Tank: Should be pretty obvious, damage soak. The best personal defense in the game, and a very good Taunt, paired with a passive AoE taunt in all of their attack makes Tankers best suited for the role of keeping enemies off the 'squishies'. Their damage is weak though.
• Scrapper: Very much akin to a Brute, Scrappers are a rather fast-paced melee class usually, though they can benefit from careful tactical playing and pausing to 'catch your breath' so to speak. Scrappers have very good damage, and a chance to critical hit for double damage, and their defenses are decent, but not quite as good as a Brute.
• Stalker: the last of the Melee archetypes, Stalkers could also be called 'ninja' or 'assassin' or other such things, and likely would in other such games. Stalkers do better damage than Scrappers, but have even lower defenses, they also all have a Stealth ability and will crit (double damage) from Stealth. Stalkers also get a special attack that deals obscene damage if done from Stealth.
  Unfortunately though, the game tends to be stacked against Stalkers, especially in teams. In solo, you can do well with a stalker with patience, and a willingness to run away. In teams a stalker is often relegated to the role of a scrapper, which is.. not ideal with most stalker builds.
• Blaster: Blasters are primarily a long-range class, and do, IIRC, the best base damage in the game. Their secondary set usually gives them a mixture of control and melee attacks. Blasters tend to have one major weakness: they piss a lot of things off, and have no raw defenses on their own aside from limited control. Although, blasters are the only characters who can continue to attack even when mez'd.
• Dominator: Crowd control is a Dominator' primary focus, with an assortment of holds, immobilizes, and other forms of mez attacks, and a pet for some extra damage later on. Their secondary is a mix of melee and ranged attacks. A well build Dominator is a force to be reckoned with, sacrificing a true melee archetype's self defenses for crowd control, which serves to make them just as survivable against most foes as a tank, but dealing far better damage.
• Defender: In other games this might be called a “cleric” or the like, or even worse a “healer”. Defenders however, are not healers. Defenders are the only dedicated support archetype though. Their primary powers are usually buffs or debuffs, sometimes dispersed with a heal or two as well, entirely focused on one thing: keeping the team alive. Their secondaries are ranged attacks, usually fairly low damage output. When solo, Defenders do get a damage boost however.
• Corruptor: Reverse Defenders. They share many of the same primary power sets as Blasters, and many of their secondaries are the same as Defender primaries. If a Defender is focused on supporting the team, and attacks when they have the time, a Corruptor is usually more akin to dealing damage, and supporting the team.. if it's convenient, which leads to Corruptors usually favoring aggressive secondaries that debuff and debilitate foes. Corruptors have a base damage lower than Blasters (but higher than Defenders), and have a chance to do double damage that increases as their foe takes more damage.

In addition, you can purchase two more archtypes, and four Epic Archetypes, or VIP players get access to them for free:

• Controller: Sharing many of the simae primaries as a dominator, a controller is also heavily focused on crowd control, however instead of attacks for their secondary they get support sets like a Defender's primaries. This leads to a very useful, and powerful, character when teaming, although without a good build controllers suffer solo.
• Mastermind: Who hasn't wanted to stand back and send an army of robots to deal with their foes? Or maybe zombies? Or street thugs? Do you want to team, even when you're solo? Then a mastermind is your archetype! Their primary is a mix of summons (Minion, Lieutenant and, Boss grade ones), and ranged attacks, while their secondary is party support, making them forces to be reckoned with while solo, and outright murderous in teams.
  (side note: All Mastermind teams are fun and insane.)

Bloody hell, they let Furries play this game?!

I would cover the Epic Archetypes, but .. well, they're kinda confusing to go over, and you won't have access to them until you reach level 20 anyways, so you can get someone else to explain them to you. Just be prepared for a lot of “Kheldian's suck!” Information on Epic Archetypes, as well as the most up-to-date information on the above listed archetypes and their power sets can be found here.

Now, I know.. you're thinking “8 archetypes free, 14 if I pay.. that's not a lot of options!”

Well! Every archetype has multiple primary and secondary power set options, for example a Brute has 120 potential combinations for a completely free player, with payment you can get that to 140 right now. Dominators are on the low end of the spectrum with 42 options for free players, and while I could try to list all of the power sets for all of the archetypes.. I would be here for far too many hours, especially since, on top of those numbers there are:

Power pools, generic powers for your hero or villain, such as flight, super speed, limited heal, things like that, with 9 options, each character can take up to four pools which gives a hell of a lot more options per character.

Then if that wasn't enough, there's also Ancillary/Patron pools which unlock at level 35, and add another dimension of power to your character, usually these add something that your archetype doesn't usually have the ability to do, most archetypes have between 8 and 10 options for their Ancillary pool.

Finally, if you have a VIP account you also have Incarnate abilities. There are currently 5 incarnate slots available, 4 of which can get 4 power trees (the 5^th can get 16 trees), each tree has two 'final' options.

Then, because of individual power selection and personal choices on enhancements no two characters will be identical unless they are following a specific build guide.

So a Dark Melee/Shield Brute, with the Speed, Leaping, Leadership and Fighting power pools and Mu Mastery Patron will not be identical to another one of the same set choices.

For the last time I am not the Green Arrow, Lantern or Hornet!

So yes, even free players have so many choices that if you tried to play every single option in the game, you would never make it. Even if you tried to play every primary/secondary combination, you'd be hard pressed to make it. If you want to then think about going VIP and spending a bit of money on additional powers? It gets to a point where you can sit there staring at the creator for an hour trying to pin down a concept for what exactly your going to play.

This alone, I consider reason enough to get a VIP account, 12 slots per server and 16 servers available, instead of 2 slots total.

That concludes Part 1! Next up we'll cover the mechanics and content of the game!

And if you've already decided you want to play?

Freebie Friday: Puzzle Pirates

Genre: Puzzle, MMO
Developer: Three Rings Designs
Publisher: Three Rings Designs/Ubisoft
Release year: 2003

Freebie type: MMO
Paid option: Real-Money currency to actually play the game.

Zolgar paid: Nothing! (and it was still too much!)
Beaten: my head against a wall, maybe. It'd be more fun.
Zolgar's rating: 2/10
Replayability: MMO

OK, so I wasn't even going to review this steaming pile of guano, because.. well, it's a steaming pile of guano that I don't enjoy playing... however, there's that whole deadline thing, and I decided I'd rather review guano, than be late.. again.

Initially, I saw Puzzle Pirates was freshly released on Steam, decided it looked like a nice easy one to do cheap and dirty *insert 'your mom' joke* review of. Well, right off the bat, I run in to problems. Namely the Steam version (as of writing this) doesn't bloody work. Honestly, some stupid frelling java glitch.

So I go first to the Steam forums, no help there, other than a lot of people griping about the same problem, so I meander over to Puzzle Pirate's website and downloaded and installed the game. That's a minute 30 seconds of my life wasted.. 'thankfully' this time it worked.

So I make a character, the customization and graphics are crap.. but hey, it's a free to play, so what do I expect? As long as the gameplay is fun that's all that matters.

I jump in to the world, where I've given a worthless tutorial, and then told to go on missions. Now, I knew going in to this, that it'd be what they like to call puzzle games.

So let me say this again:
Puzzles require logic to solve. Using what is known, and the abilities at your disposal to solve a certain problem.

HERP DERP MATCH COLORED BLOCKS RANDOMLY APEARING.
Is not puzzles, it's luck and or skill.

The 'puzzles' in Puzzle Pirates, are mix of luck and skill games, with a side order of puzzle elements, occasionally. They are still far more about quick thinking, adapting to changes in the game board, and using what you have available at this exact moment.. oh and did I mention luck? Lots and lots of luck.

And the problem is, most of them are not even very well done.

The puzzles used are:
Anyone remember Snood? Or maybe Bubble Bobble (or some such?) Yeah, it's that kind, shoot a randomly determined colored ball at an ever encroaching wave of balls, match 3 or more colors balls and clear them, dropping any.
This one is a PvP version, where as you drop balls, you attack your foe with them. Also there's an option with 2 turrets, controlled by the left and right mouse buttons (OK, I'll grant that that's pretty cool).

Bejeweled. Yep, Bejeweled, except you can plan out moves and make moves without matches. Otherwise it's not even 20% as entertaining as Bejeweled.

Something that's almost like Tetris, but.. not. Essentially stacking up blocks and then, when you get lucky enough to get the right piece you destroy the ones of a certain color touching each other, and attack your foes.. Generally just boring.

Another 'falling blocks' puzzle, this one your objective is to fill certain colored squares with certain colors blocks. Not a competitive games, and frankly, boring.

Then there's “Carpentry” a “fill in the hole with the provided blocks” puzzle.. except you can overlap, and, in fact you have to overlap due to how the game works, only providing you with 3 randomly determined blocks at a time.

Oh, and if you happen to actually start enjoying the puzzles, every like.. 2 minutes a stupid board pops up for 30 seconds, locking you out of your puzzle, which lets you know the progress of everyone on the ship. Maybe we'd progress more if you bloody well stopped interrupting us, eh?

I could keep going, but suffice it to say there's a better version of almost every single one of these “puzzle” games available on most Flash Game dumps.

Now, I'll admit, that Flash game dumps don't have the nice fun MMO element...

Well, Puzzle Pirates has a user controlled economy. What does that mean? Unless you have a lot of money, you're frelled. Totally utterly frelled. Most things you can buy cost several hundred, if not several thousand, Pieces of Eight (main currency) and some Dubloons (Real Money currency) too. And Dubloons, they CAN be obtained with PoE, at an insane rate, or purchased at the low price of $20 for 90.

The only positive thing I can say is that it seems, at present, there's no uber items that can only be obtained with Dubloons. That's a small saving grace.

On the flipside of that though, you pretty much have to get Dubloons in order to unlock certain minigames. I covered almost all of those available at the start, there's about that many more you need Badges for Badges cost Dubloons. Anything beyond the ultra, most basic (boring) element of the game, you need Dubloons.

This, boys and girls, is an example of how not to do a Free-To-Play MMO supported by a Real Money Currency house. It amazes me it's been around for 8 years now. Better games have closed up shop in that time. (Dungeon Runners, how I miss thee.. *siiiigh*)

In closing. If you're a Steam player, and they get the frelling game working, you can pursue.. wait for... Brace yourself..
Two Hundred and Twenty achievements.
WTF? Are they on crack? Scrolling through the list, most of them look like the every so classic “Hey, you're playing the game!” crap.. Well, I guess they needed some way to keep people playing this pile of guano.

Since I suppose it should be asked “What would make you give it a better score?”
Get rid of the damned progress board. It's annoying as hell.
Make the minigames not all slow paced and suck.
Make it so we didn't have to pay real money, or play for many hours just to access the rest of the minigames.

Screenshots stole shamelessly from Steam, mostly because I couldn't find where this pile of guano hid the ones I took.

TL:DR:
“Two Hundred and Twenty achievements? I think I'll have more fun reading the list than I did playing the game.”

Availability:
Please, for the love of the FSM, don't go looking for this game, save yourself!

Freebie Friday: GemCraft: Labyrinth

Genre: Tower Defense

Developer: Game in a Bottle

Publisher: Armor Games

Release year: 2011

Freebie type: Flash

Paid option: Premium Edition upgrade: $5 US.

Zolgar paid: $5

Beaten: No

Zolgar's rating: 8/10

Replayability: High

So after bashing Sanctum a bit a couple weeks ago, I decided for the next Freebie I actually needed to do what I feel is one of the best Tower Defense games on the market, especially for the price.

GemCraft: Labyrinth is the 3^rd in a series, unlike many Flash game series though, it's not a case of “it's the exact same game just reskinned”, yet the developers managed to still keep the feel, style and playability, but simply improve on the design.

Now, if you've played a lot of Tower Defense, you're probably sitting there wondering what is so great about GemCraft: Labyrinth (and the rest of the series, in fact), because after all.. all TDs are basically the same game. Honestly, that's kind of true, they're all basically the same game.. but saying that is like saying “All first person shooters are basically the same game.” They all use a predefined formula, but those that stand out are ones that find a way to deviate from that formula.

Take Sanctum, as a TD is follows the formula to the letter, but it then lets you take part in the action in FPS mode. It's not, however, the first TD give you a 'player character' that assists the towers. I forget what it was called, but there's a Platformer TD that you have a gunman in it as well as the towers.

The GemCraft series deviates from the formula quite a lot, and Labyrinth shows it the best.

First, the game actually has a story! We're not talking a generic “OMGz0rz the Creep(tm) is attacking your Convenient Plot Device(tm) following a set path, use these nonsensical weapons you shouldn't have anyways to protect it!” Especially Labyrinth gives you an actual story progression as you play through the game. The gist of the story is that you are a student of the GemCrafting school of Wizardry (not taught at Hogwarts, no), which is the discipline of creating weaponized gems. You discover the source of the creatures that have attacked, and nearly destroyed, the village you were protecting.. and go after it. I know, I know it sounds generic.. but it gives you a lot more than that as you play through.

Then, there's a bit of an RPG element to the game, or more to the point what the game industry calls an RPG element. Because clearly “Leveling Up” makes an RPG (you know, instead of things like.. choices and consequences.. OK, I won't start ranting about that). As you beat a map, you gain experience, this XP is determined by how good you do, as you gain XP you level up. Levels grant you skill points, skills have passive effects on the game, anywhere from granting you more mana, bonus to damage, bonus to Gem attributes, reduced creation costs, etc. Also, it allows you to reset your skills at will, to try something else.

The number of Towers (“Gems”) you get is, in and of itself rather impressive. This isn't the classic TD fodder towers (slow high damage, fast low damage, explosion damage blahblahblah), no sir. While some of the Gems have standard TD tower attributes, others are completely unique to GemCraft, and their 'special' always improve as the gems get higher in level.

• Chain Hit: Moderate base damage with a chance to hit multiple creatures, damaging all of them.
• Multiple Damage: Decent base damage and has a chance to add a multiplier to the damage the gem deals.
• Blood Bound: Low base damage but takes a percentage of the total kills a gem has and adds that to the damage of the gem.
• Mana Gathering: This is your standard 'extra money tower', it generates mana (your 'money') with every hit, deals low damage of course.
• Poison: This one is pretty self explanatory, slightly low 'hit damage' with a DOT (Damage Over Time, for you non-slang-savvy folk.)
• Shock: Fair base damage and has a set chance to Shock (freeze in place) a foe for a set amount of time.
• Slow: Also fairly self explanatory, decent base damage.
• Armor Tearing: A semi-common one in TDs, this one reduces the armor of it's target, making it take more damage from towers, deals low damage on it's own.

You might be thinking “Well that alone isn't much.” and you know what? You're right. You can also combine gems, not once but twice. (Well, you can actually combine gems as much as you want, but after 3 type gems they get weaker, and only the dominant 3 gems work.) When you combine gems, the multi-type gems gain a bonus to damage, range and attack, but also gets a penalty to it's specials. To counter that? It has multiple specials. So you can do things like:

• Chain Hit/Multi Damage/Blood Bound: This gem is honestly broken. It deals multiple damage, hits multiple foes, and for every kill it deals more damage.
• Slow/Mana Gathering/Armor Tearing: These are the perfect companion to the above-noted brokenness. Slows your foes down, makes 'em take more damage, and give you more mana to boot. Especially if you happen to use them in Traps (I'll explain later).
• Slow/Chain Hit/Poison: You can't tell me that's not a killer combo.

And that's just scratching the surface, you can create .. well, if my brother-in-law and I are correct: 129 different towers. (Please feel free to provide me with math that shows I'm wrong, but don't say I have it wrong if you don't have the equation to back it up.)

Next up on the list, you also get more than just Towers. You also get Traps, Shrines, Amplifiers, and Bombs.

• Towers: Are obviously what you drop the Gems in to in order to make them shoot at the Creep.
• Traps: Are akin to towers in that you place Gems in them to damage the Creep, but in this instance they are placed in the pathway and have a fixed, very small, range. The Gem has it's damage reduced, but it's special (or Specials, for multi-gems) increased.
• Amplifiers: Also get Gems placed in them, but they do not directly harm the Creep, instead any Tower or Trap adjacent (including diagonally) receives a buff to damage, range, firing speed and it's special(s).
• Bombs: Say something slips past your last tower, you can grab a Gem, turn it in to a Bomb and drop it on the Creep to do an AoE explosion for decent damage. The damage and number of critters the explosion can hit is based off the tier of the Gem you use.
• Shrines: Shrines are slightly strange. These deal damage in a predefined pattern (either an AoE, or straight lines on the N/S and E/W axises), based on the tier of Gem your sacrifice to them, in addition they have a cool-down time so you cannot simply spam them.

Now most TDs have like 10-30 maps, maybe 50 levels with lots of duplicating maps. Not CG:L, 165 (I think) standard story maps, plus 4 challenge maps that can be unlocked, and so far none I have found have been exact carbon-copies of another, though obviously there are only so many viable patterns before you start to run in to “this looks kinda familiar.” Each map also has default Gems 'unlocked' for it, but for a bit of Mana you can unlock additional Gems for use for that fight.

There are also your Battle Settings. Say the game isn't hard enough for you, or you want to get a bit more XP, as you level up, you unlock modifiers for battles. 20 modifiers in total (for the free version), which add more monsters, add more waves, make monsters stronger, etc.

Lastly, there's the Achievement system. By now, if you've read many of my reviews, you'll realize I like to mock achievements. GC:L is not exempt. It does have a lot of meaningless “Congratulations, you blew your nose!” achievements, I'm sorry “Amulets”. What it does well though, is it breaks them down in to different categories. One of which is actual honest to the FSM achievements! Radical concept, eh?

Now, no game is perfect.. CG:L is no exception to that rule:

The Creep is simply generic. A few models, 'tough slow' 'weak fast' 'swarm' 'normal' and 'boss' monsters. Not even flying monsters. Everything that went in to the rest of this game, I would have really liked to see a little more creativity with the critters.

The balance of the Towers is .. slightly skewed. Know that combo I mentioned back there? Blood Bound/Chain Hit/Multi Damage? While I was writing this, I was also playing GC:L, and I was on Endurance mode.. I got past wave 150 with one of those towers (surrounded by 8 amplifiers), not even any traps. By the end it was doing something like 20,000 damage per hit, and hitting at least 2 foes every shot. I've had other combos prove good, but nothing is as good as that.. and it's just insane if you pair it with mana/armor tearing/slow or shock traps.

I feel certain features are lacking in the Free version. In order to get Endurance Mode (unlimited waves), you have to purchase the Premium Edition, and most of the Challenge Amulets required Endurance Mode. The previously mentioned 4 unlockable maps? To get those, you have to get all of the Challenge Amulets.

It moves slow. I can comfortably keep up with the game on 'Fast Forward'. It really needs another tier of speed that makes things move even faster.

If you purchase the Premium Edition, you are still forced to play online, logged in to one website or another.

Not a lot of detractors though, especially not for a game you can play absolutely free of charge.

Finally, a word on the Premium Edition:

Honestly, I was on the fence about purchasing it for two reasons. First, it seemed it would slightly off-balance the game, and second.. it's a Flash game, which I have to play in my Browser on Armor Games. If I have no internet, or Armor Games goes down.. I have no game. The factor that made me decide to buy it was deciding that I had already gotten more than $5 worth of enjoyment without even paying for it, and I am a firm believer in supporting Indy developers.

The Premium Edition doesn't even throw the game balance off much, though it does make it a lot easier to level up, and start out if you buy it before you start playing.

It gives you 30 extra skill points (doesn't mean much after about level 30, before that it could be really useful though.)

It gives you access to 9 new skills (some are useful, so are not so much), none of which are exceptionally game-breaking.

Lastly: it open up an extra 10 Battle Settings, these include Endurance Mode, Tenfold monsters, Bosses Only, and 7 more almost as challenging.

TL:DR

“Jokes about The Sorcerer's Stone or Family Jewels will not be tolerated.”

Available from:
Armor Games
Game in a Bottle

Freebie Friday: Prometheus

Genre: Puzzle (First Person)

Developer: Quantum Flux Games

Publisher: Quantum Flux Games

Release year: 2009

Freebie type: Demo

Paid option: Not yet.

Zolgar paid: Nothing!

Beaten: yes

Zolgar's rating: 6/10

Replayability: Low

I was first planning to review one F2P MMO or another for my first Freebie Friday, but let's face it. F2Ps come and go faster than a John. I stumbled across this little gem by complete accident though, and instantly fell in love with it.

Prometheus is.. well, on the surface it seems like a Portal rip off. Oh who am I kidding? It IS a Portal rip off. It's a mod for a FPS engine (Unreal), which uses an atypical mechanic to create a rather unique puzzle game. But you know what? It does it well! So well in fact, that I decided to review a fairly short demo (of a game that doesn't look like it'll actually get released).

The game play in Prometheus is simple and honestly, not all that original. It's been the central focus of several Flash games.. however, Prometheus brings it to 3D and actually puts a story behind it. A story that leaves you wondering what the bloody hell is going on, and wanting more of it at the end.

The game starts up with you coming to your senses in a testing chamber (Portal anyone?) initially you hear a brief conversation between two people, then you're welcomed to the Prometheus Project by a man who then explains that it's a project dealing with quantum states. In the brief tutorial he gives you, you are given control of a device that will split you in to multiple Quantum States.

Your Quantum States are like clones, to an extent, except that the whole thing exists within a set amount of time (say a minute and a half), and each Quantum State does a specific task.

So you run in, trigger a switch and then activate the next quantum state. You watch the previous 'you' hit the switch, and then you go through the door it opens. Simple, huh? Well, it gets a little more complex when you have a total of 5 quantum states running around, and a lot more than just 1 switch that opens 1 door. And then you get a gun. Yes, a frelling gun.

After a couple missions, you switch over to using the Epimetheus Device, which works a lot like the Prometheus device except instead of 5 Quantum States, you only get 3.. but you can control each one multiple times.

When you get to Epimetheus it's a lot like playing a really weird game of Simon. Watch your clock, run through the game the same way each time and remember when and how you did each thing, so that you don't screw one of your other two Quantum States up.

This is all tied together by a bit of a story that, much like Portal you're left to try and piece most of it together as you go.. and at the end it really leaves you hanging and wondering what the heck is going on.

Much like Portal it seems to get slightly easier as you go on, even though technically the puzzles are actually harder, because you start thinking with por- I mean Quantum States.

Now for the games flaws:

First it's short. I mean.. really damn short. If you played Portal and thought it was short, Prometheus is even shorter. But hey, it's a free game. It may not entertain you for a long time, but you'll more than get your money's worth. Depending on how quickly you solve the puzzles, you're looking at between half an hour, and an hour and a half to beat it.

It's got very little replayability. Mostly just trying to get all the achievements or beating levels faster. A slight positive note about the achievements though: it's not like a lot of games where you get an achievement for every bloody action you take! “You shot a gun!” “You walked 5 feet!” “You ate a cheeseburger!” Seriously, WTF? Game companies need to learn that achievements are meaningless when you get them every 2 seconds! Prometheus only has 10 achievements, there's the standards (beating the game, switching to Epimetheus, things like that.) The others are all things you .. don't have to do in the midst of game play anyways.

It's an indie game from '09, based on the Unreal Developers Kit, so honestly.. it's graphics suck a little.

The female protagonist is no where near as cool and well designed as the girl from Portal.

In closing: seriously, it's a free game that has a lot of potential. Go play it.

TL:DR

“Oh god, GlaDOS got a hold of the Prometheus Device! RUN!”

Avialability/Price:

Impulse: FREE!

Quantum Flux Games: FREE!