Online RPG game reviews, mostly Flash and web games

Flames of Fury  is a pretty interesting new RPG with an interesting concept: you are a dragon ravaging enemy armies.

The gameplay formula behind Flames of Fury sounds great on paper. You command a dragon who must wipe out enemy armies while collecting resources to upgrade and produce deadlier weapons. However, these resources are so limited, and can only be carried in such small quantities at once, that this part of the process becomes a constant nuissance. That you can run out of projectiles altogether is a poor choice on the creator’s part, especially when you find your nest under attack with no means of dispatching the attackers. Other strange choices include enemy units that can repair buildings even after they’ve been blown to smithereens with no trace left behind.

For all Zelda fans, this web RPG will seem quite attractive and in line with what they are used to. However, the Zelda Flash RPG is a bit simplistic. You go from one forest screen to the next, occasionally getting lost. Your objective is likewise simple - destroy monsters with your bomb.

In this game your goal is to search the forest for the seeds of darkness, and destroy them with your bomb. Forest areas have always been my least favorite areas of Zelda games, but I put that aside to be fair. As long as there isn’t a forest maze I could handle it. While it’s not a maze it’s the same idea- the whole game is a big collection of forest screens, with some being dead-ends. You just proceed through the screens until you find the end. No puzzles to be found, no items to collect.

Reverb is a strange little Flash game that includes a little bit of everything: talking to NPCs, puzzle-solving, and even shooting Boss monsters.

As you play through Reverb you slowly get a better understanding of what’s going on around you. Don’t expect any award winning storylines though, it takes plenty of cues from survivor horror games and action movies. I can’t really explain much else about it for fear of ruining something. However when the game starts don’t think you’re just limited to walking around and talking to people. There’s a little bit of exploring, a little bit of shooting, and a little bit of puzzle solving. You even get a mini-boss to top it off.

RAGE! Finally, an RPG that has a rage bar, if you’re missing your WoW warrior. I would imagine that people who play it though will fill this bar with their frustration just playing this game. It has too many controls for its own good.

The game controls nicely, but the controls themselves border on being a little complex. You’ve got two attack buttons, a roll button, a shooting button, weapons button, menu button, weapon drop button, super attack button, and the arrow keys. For the most part it’s intuitive but a little more than needed. For example I didn’t find the need to roll that much, nor did I ever want to drop my weapon. As you play you’ll see that you can harness two different weapons, one for shooting and one for attacking. You can find as well as buy upgrades for each one. My favorite part of the game is that the powerups you find are permanent. So if you collect a new sword at the end of a level but get killed by the boss, you can at least replay that level with the new sword.

Pico’s School looks a bit like South Park. Just imagine Cartman had a machine gun and it will all fit into place.

The game is controlled through a point-and-click interface, with extra mouse interaction for the boss fights. There’s items to pick up and some small puzzle elements, but nothing unmanageable. The biggest difficulty is making it through the boss fights themselves. Back when this game was made it was a little graphics intensive for most computers, meaning the boss fights slowed down and made them much easier.