Developed by United From Games Triad Wars is a fast paced open world action game where players find themselves as rising Enforcers on the streets of Hong Kong building up their own Triad turf, a dual style of gameplay mixing the strategy of building your mini empire and roaming the streets competing missions and fighting rival gangs. The game has just become available to open play and is completely free so we thought we’d check it out.

• Vehicular Pursuits - Being in a vehicle has so many combat options. Whilst they’re great for getting you from A to B, blasting down the main streets or hightailing it up a side alley with the police right behind you, the speeds you pick up make being in a vehicle extremely exciting. When you’re being chased by rival gang members or the police (which is usually far more likely) there’s some clever options that make vehicle combat very flexible and very cinematic, ranging the ability to actively ram other vehicles off the road to hanging out of your window and shooting weapons. Firing weapons from your vehicle is fantastic for unloading a spray of bullets through the pursuing cars’ windshield and killing the driver, or shooting out the wheels so that is strays off the road and crashes or, if going at high speeds, flips up in the air like in a movie. When you start aiming from your vehicle (motorbikes included) the game time slows down slightly so you have options to aim a little more precisely; ideal for driving by enemy turf and gunning down rivals on the sidewalk then speeding off.


• Combat - Combat is extremely dynamic and interactive. When fighting hand to hand, as a member of the Triad your character is fairly well trained when it comes to martial arts, as you level up you pick up new abilities and combat can be a flurry of punches, flying kicks and throws. With some fast thinking combos you can dodge incoming melee attacks, put your opponents into neck breaking headlocks, and even use the surrounding environment smashing their faces into walls, car roofs, high voltage power circuit boards, table buzz saws and more. Countering the police when they make a grab for you even allows you to flip round the back of them, put them in their own handcuffs and then drop them to the ground. Picking up weapons brings a new element, from hammers and hatchets to pistols, shotguns and machineguns, there’s a decent range of artillery available that changes up combat. Using a one handed pistol you can grab pedestrians and police and use them as a human shield whilst you fire at opponents, or run through markets and taking cover behind stalls and crates for an exciting shootout.


• Favors - Favors are an interesting way to customize your character. In the game you are able to earn “Favors”, booster cards that you can equip to your character to help you customize them, these can range from XP boosts, extra health, improved enforcers, or even having a default weapon to start with. Players are able to mix and match these boosters, which can be picked up from Favor missions in the open world, identified on the minimap, so players get to choose the types of rewards they want from their missions (XP, money, Favors), but in some cases (particularly combat related missions) the player will have to loot their card off an enemy so it isn’t as simple as just driving up onto the pavement to kill them and then getting away! Players can buy Favor packs with Gold, a premium currency bought with cash or earned in a handful of ways throughout the game.


• Sandbox Gameplay - An open world to explore. One of the most fun things is simply driving around Hong Kong and getting up to no good, with a living breathing world filled with pedestrians, street vendors and patrolling police it’s interesting to just take in the amazing scenery, appreciate the game, then smash someone’s’ face into a shop window and let the fun begin. It generally doesn’t take long until you build a scene in your head where a pedestrian bumped into you, allowing you to unleash any internal rage and stress you may have been feeling in real life, and going nuts. This generally results in stealing cars, ploughing through pedestrians as you speed down the sidewalk in a truck and ultimately get into a police chase. The police themselves start out as normal street cops but will quickly escalate, bringing in high ranking police and then the riot police as your riot continues and you start taking the police themselves out. This type of behaviour is so central to the game that there are various challenges where players get points and prizes for being pursued by the police for as long as possible (with a game timer tracking how long you have kept the police chasing you and how much carnage you unleashed during that time).


• Building Your Own Turf - Become the king of your castle. Turf is an interesting element to the game where players can build up their own private territory, start-up different illegal money making rackets within it, and hire goons to defend it. The defenses are for other players to get around, as they roam around their open sandbox world then there’s a chance your base of operations may popup as a viable target for them in a raid, and likewise you being able to raid other players turf. During a raid you have a time limit to do as much damage as you can, fighting and defeating the gang members in each racket will earn points and reward, heading to the safe house players go up against the Enforcer themselves controlled by the AI who is a more challenging opponents. It’s a fairly unique way for players to interact with each other in an otherwise fairly solo based game.

These are some of the things that we love about Triad Wars, but what do you think? What do you love about this game? Would you add anything else to the list? We await your opinions! Let us know!!!!!

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2015 at 6:39 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.