Recently we got the chance to check out Games of Glory from Lightbulb Crew, a sci-fi themed free to play MOBA where players step into the shoes of gladiator Clones in a team focused PVP battle with a variety of different humanoid and alien characters, each with their own skills and abilities and all that good MOBA goodness. The game is currently in beta testing this but players can purchase Early Access through Steam to get in on the ground floor with a variety of packages, the most expensive being £29.99 that gives players access to the current roster of 12 Clone characters. For our extensive play through we want to check out whether the game was going to sink or swim in the sea of MOBA, make waves or barely a ripple.

We haven’t heard much about the game and once we went to check it out we have to say that there’s not a whole lot of information for players to find out about it, the website is simply a cinematic showing a bunch of Clone fighters in an elevator heading up to the arena, which then cut into some gameplay action. All in all the cinematic isn’t too bad but given that it’s the only content on the website we would have expected something a little bit more exciting to generate a little bit more hype, the graphics looks a little bit dated and basic including awkward anatomy and the ever unnatural unblinking eyes of one of the characters (Saga if you’re interested). The graphics within the game and are much better, little things such as lack of details, awkward floaty run animations, even the text rotating around control points has a jagged quality to it that could really use some anti-aliasing. Combined with the lack of special effects for the majority of attacks, making it pretty hard to know what has just been launched by your teammates or enemy, it’s quite hard to capitalise on making combos. Whilst the game is in beta gets a bit of a grace period, but honestly we would have expected the graphics to be considerably more up to par at this stage particularly if users are now spending money to purchase Early Access.

Whether graphics might let it down slightly the general theme and immersion is quite well put together giving us that The Running Man feeling starring a younger Arnold Schwarzenegger, minus the gore and bloodshed. The added touch of the robotic female voice giving players updates of objectives and kills matched up with the male enthusiastic commentator actually worked really well.

The game does have many MOBA style qualities including a general overall objective (at least for the Arkashan map) of destroying the enemies tower turret defend Energy Core in their base, to do so players must control three points in a ever shifting point capture to drop the enemy base forcefield and then assault the core in the allotted time before they reset. As well as general objectives the game has a similar style QWER key binding controls, though with the implementation of run n’ gun tactics players may prefer to use the standard WASD movement; at least we did as trying to use MOBA controls whilst backing away constantly from a pursuing enemy and shooting them as well as constantly hitting space bar to center the camera (for some reason it doesn’t auto lock to your character) is extremely difficult. The game follows a similar format of gaining XP to unlock all level up your skills and credits to purchase weapons, again something we are all too familiar with, however at least with Games of Glory the melee vs ranged component has been removed as players assume the mantle of both able to switch between weapons and still use their key skills, albeit some Clones are considerably more powerful in melee.

The ranged weaponry has a little bit more detail than the melee, we were able to purchase a variety of weapons in our base from the Credits we’d earned through killing enemy players, taking control of Bonus Points for a constant income or fighting minions in the Control Point rooms when they locked up during a reset (they are actually pretty deadly at lower levels). Starting out you choose which melee and ranged weapon you want, then able to choose which type; the ranged weapons have a wider choice from pistols, shotguns, automatic rifles, sniper weapons and more, and then players are able to continue to upgrade their weapon throughout the match following a tree that branches off into further more powerful weapons. It is a simple system but very effective and easy to pick up in comparison to the item maths that some other MOBA games force on you.

The other map is the Svandia map, but in all honesty it feels like this is a game mode that was thrown in without anywhere near as much time or effort and was simply put in to try and avoid being a single map MOBA. The objective is different and here both teams of three are teleported from their base at the beginning of each round into the arena with one of their teammates flagged as being the All-star and the target to be eliminated for the other team. When a player dies they are removed from the Arena with no respawn and the first team to kill the enemy All-star wins the round, first to 5 rounds wins the game. The problem is that the arena is pretty small, lacks any other objectives and as there is a sub objective of being the team closest to a central point should the round run out of time (making them the winners) it means that everyone pretty much gathers the same location and rounds typically don’t last any longer than a minute and are particularly interesting. Spreading some control point objectives around the map or the ability to bring minions into the map to attack the enemy team would have been far more fun for the game mode, that in all honesty we don’t think many people will play.

All in all the game isn’t terrible, it’s just not that great either, and given that Early Access is a relatively steep £29.99 (the price you would pretty much pay for a fully developed AAA title) we were expecting far more bang for your buck the what is actually delivered both in freebies and general content. The games aren’t particularly exciting and we, personally, would be hard pushed to see ourselves playing this for a few hours at a time. Whilst we appreciate relatively unknown developers need to find a way to bring in some extra income sometimes we honestly don’t think that the pricetag for the Early Access is worth the investment with the current state that the game is in, players expecting a game that is a fair way to being complete are going to be sorely disappointed, however we intend to keep an eye on the game to see what shape it is in at its final release.

SCORE:

• Graphics: 6


• Gameplay: 5


• Performance: 7

• Pros: Interesting mechanics make objectives a little different, fun future gameshow setting with in game narrator, item leveling is easy to grasp.


• Cons: Only one map for main game mode and doesn't add enough new features, lack of flair and special effects makes it a little plain.

Rating: 6

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2015 at 7:17 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.