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| Guild Wars (PC) |
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You could call me cheap, but I like to think of myself as a bargain hunter. I like looking through old cheap games that were maybe all the rage a year or two ago, but are now quite cheap. That is partially the case with Guild Wars, because it still costs $40, but there is no subscription fee. After I saved up all my money, I went out and bought Guild Wars at my local game store, and I went home happy. I was sure it was worth the $40.
In case you don’t know what Guild Wars is, I’ll give you a short summary. The basic gist of the game is running around the worlds, going from town to town and killing creatures. There is also a PvP (Player versus Player) portion of the game, which allows you to create a level 20 (the highest) character for you to battle in arenas. I’ll explain a little more about the story and PvP in the gameplay section.
Gameplay
Guild Wars is pretty similar to other MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games), except it has a very obvious story. The story goes like this. First you have to create a new character from 6 different professions. These professions are Warrior, Ranger, Monk, Elementalist, Mesmer, and Necromancer. From there you can choose the looks and height of your character along with the color of his/her starting armor. It would be very smart to read your manual about the different professions before choosing one. After that, you start out in the “Pre-Game” which is a tutorial area that sets you up for the main game. In the “Pre-Game” it begins 2 years before the main game, and everything is nice and peaceful. Asacalon City is the main town in the “Pre-Game.”There you can get quests. These quests give you XP (Experience Points) once you complete them, and once you collect X number of XP, you rise to the next level. When you rise to the next level, you get more attribute points, which make skills and attacks more powerful. So after you have raised your character’s level to 3 or 4, you talk to one of the NPCs (Non-Playable Character) and you select your second profession. Then you do a quest for that profession and you are off to battle! Once you go to battle, you are sent 2 years into the future and are traveled to the destroyed Ascalon City. Here you complete a few quests, and then you go to your first mission. These missions are one long quest with a bonus, along with other players. Once you complete the mission, you gain 1,000 XP, and are moved on to another town or outpost. If you do the bonus, you get an additional 1,000 XP. So the rest of the game is pretty much completing quests and missions. The story mostly progresses from the missions, so you won’t miss anything if you don’t do a certain quest. Overall, the gameplay is pretty basic; you go from enemy to enemy, attacking enemies and using skills, waiting for them to recharge. Other then that it’s very much like other MMORPGs, you collect gold, spend it on armor and weapons.
Graphics
The character models in Guild Wars are simply beautiful and the anti-aliasing makes them even better. Even if you have to run the game on low visual settings, they still look amazing. I’d imagine most gaming machines will be able to run the game on high visual settings, with anti-aliasing on. Heck, my machine isn’t a gaming machine, but it’s fairly new and it was able to run everything on high visual settings and anti-aliasing as high as it would go. Though the character graphics are amazing, the ground textures could be a lot better. There are lots of places where there is just blocks of textures, which look horrible. This makes the experience not nearly as realistic as it should be, considering the quality of the character models. Though if you ignore the ground, it looks pretty nice. The water in most places is done beautifully too, with little ripples behind you when you run through shallow water. Overall, the graphics were top notch considering the date the game was released.
Sound
The sounds in Guild Wars are fairly good; there is a different sound depending on what terrain you are walking on. Your weapon produces a different sound depending on which enemy is being attacked. Characters also make sounds too, like when a female is knocked down, she whimpers. Also the splish splosh of walking through shallow water sounds great. I think they should have added sounds of your character randomly taunting your enemies and encouraging your allies. Maybe they thought that would be annoying, but if it was sporadic it would have been a nice feature. Overall the sound quality is fantastic, but there could have been more sounds so the player would feel more like they are actually there.
Value
Guild Wars is a great buy if you are looking for a RPG that is playable with friends. The replay value is huge, considering how long it takes to the beat the game. After that you can create up to 3 additional characters with different professions, so it’s a whole new game! Overall I would say it’s well worth the $40.
Anyone looking for a fantastic RPG should definitely check out Guild Wars. With all the missions and quests to do, it’ll keep you busy for a long time. I’ve been playing it for 85 hours and I haven’t beaten it yet, so it should last you awhile.
Posted on April 29, 2006 at 12:54 pm
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| Games Playing: |
Counter Strike: Source
Call of Duty: UO
Guild Wars
N-Ball
Ragdoll Masters
Super Stealball
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| Reviews: |
• Guild Wars (PC)
4/29/2006
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Blackshawk
Ian Beck
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