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Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week: 1/10-1/16

Jonathan Zungre — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:29:43 +0000

Every week, I research all the best new video game releases to find the one game that you need to play and the one game that you need to stay away from: my Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week. On this week’s show, we’ve got Army of Two: The 40th Day, which lets you team up with a friend and become a money making, globe trotting mercenary, and Walk It Out!, a game about…walking.

Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week: Jan 3rd -9th, 2010

Jonathan Zungre — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:39:01 +0000

Every week, I research all the best new video game releases to find the one game that you need to play and the one game that you need to stay away from: my Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week. On this week’s edition, we’ve got Bayonetta, one the toughest games ever to describe to someone who doesn’t know anything about it, and Turf Wars, a game that uses Google Maps to let you claim real world turf.

Top 9 Things Gamers Learned in 2009

Jonathan Zungre — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:44:51 +0000

2009 is over, but before we buy our first game of 2010, lets look back and remember the top 9 things gamers learned in 2009. 2009 was a year of shifting: Shifting the tide of the console war, shifting where we usually play our games, shifting release dates and shifting sales numbers. But what shifts were the most important? Click to find out.

1. The PS3 Ain’t Going Down Without a Fight.

I’m sure last January, Sony top dog Jack Trenton was training in the mountains of Russia with Rocky, because if gaming business is a boxing match with Ivan Drago, the battered PS3 KO’d the competition in 2009. PS3 exclusives Killzone 2, Infamous, Demon’s Souls and Uncharted 2 all received critical praise, with the later two winning multiple game of the year awards and the PS3′s price cut to 300 dollars caused sales of the console to spike to 300%. They may not have won the next gen championship yet but, just like Rocky, they took some shots but came back with a fury this round.

2. We’re Just Not in Love with Nintendo Anymore, and it’s Them Not Us.

Nintendo’s president, Satoru Iwata was quoted in saying, “The Wii has stalled…and the mood has chilled.” Wii sales were down 40% last year and the DS is slowly losing ground to the iPhone, but more importantly many gamers just don’t feel the warm fuzzies for Nintendo’s innovative experiences anymore. Many gamers would be quick to blame it on the lack of first party cash cows, but with a new Punchout, Zelda and Mario game released in 2009, maybe that’s not the case. Maybe we’re tired of waggling or hopping on Goombas. Maybe we’re just tired of Nintendo.

3. Good Voice Acting Helps.

Jack Black rocked as Eddie Riggs and Mark Hamill’s reprisal of the Joker stole Batman: Arkham Asylum’s show. The most impressive acting of the year may have been from Claudia Black’s Zoe and Emily Rose’s’ Elana in Uncharted 2 which made us feel like Brad Pitt trying to decide between Agenlina Jolie and Jennifer Anniston. Add that to the convincing voice acting that always comes from Grand Theft Auto and Bioware games and 2009 was possibly gaming’s best year for acting performances.

4. Everybody wants to Sense Our Motion.

It strikes me as funny that everyone’s so hot on motion sensing technology for gamers. It’s not like gamers are known for their movement. Does everyone realize that with the announcement of Project Natal, the new light wand for the Playstation Eye and the Wii Motion Plus we are inching closer to having to get off our asses? Kiss those all night gaming binges good bye, suckers, no one wants to play Wii-tennis or talk to Milo at 4am.

5. Everything Ends.

Midway, Pandemic, Grin, Eidos. The list of of companies that either locked their doors or were bought by another company reads like names of dead characters at the end of a slasher movie. Companies like Sega, Sony, Microsoft, 2K were among those to lay off hundreds of workers and game sales were generally down for the entire year compared to 2008. We thought Video Games were recession proof and we were wrong.

6. Downloadable Content is the Future. And Was Most of 2009.

The DSi and PSP Go were released with a heavy emphasis on downloadable games, with PSP Go even eschewing the UMD discs Sony created for the original PSP. Grand Theft Auto 4 and Fallout 3 convinced us to stop trading in our games to Gamestop by releasing engaging DLC like the Lost and the Damned and Broken Steel. PS3′s Flower and the Xbox 360′s Shadow Complex were critically acclaimed download exclusives. I even bought a Bioshock 2 shirt for my Avatar. I spent real money on a shirt that doesn’t exist, because I liked the way it fit. DLC was one of the biggest trends of 2009 and the clearest look at what the next “next gen” will look like.

7. Everyone’s afraid of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The hot witch from Bayonetta, a Big Daddy and even the Splinter Cell himself all hightailed it away from Soap and Price this holiday season. What does it mean for so many games to be unprecedentedly releasing in January, February and March? It means they’re adopting a more movie-like release plan, trying less to cram all the best games into one season and more to space their games so they can own a week where gamers will have cash to spend. And that there’s no reason to believe that Q1 2010 won’t be a great time to release a game. We’ll all still be playing.

8. You Don’t Have to Do Something New. You Just Have to Do Something Well.

The best selling and most critically acclaimed games of 2009, and of most years, are sequels who have a formula that they’ve polished. Modern Warfare 2, the best selling game of the year, and Uncharted 2, the most critically acclaimed game of year are great examples of this. Meanwhile, the genre-blending, refreshingly written Brutal Legend and the super innovative Scribblenauts were mostly left out in the cold in 2009 when it came to writer’s pens and gamer’s wallets. Sure new games make mistakes, but shouldn’t critics, if not gamers, be a little more responsive to games that take risks?

9. Successful Games Can Pop Up in Unsuspected Places.

Zynga, the company that makes Mafia Wars and Farmville, have stated that 12 million people play their games over Facebook and Myspace. That’s like World of Warcraft numbers, many of which would have never played a game otherwise. The iPhone and iPod touch have sold over 30 million units and use the slickness of the app store to get games into the hands of consumers that would never pick up a wii-mote (as dignified as that sounds.) And lets not forget the impressive indy games that are thriving on the Internet and and stealing the show at GDC. Gaming wasn’t only based on the big three’s efforts in 2009 and hopefully 2010 will be the year that games are played by more people than ever before.

Words: Jon, Pictures: Chad

Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week: 12/13

Jonathan Zungre — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:08:00 +0000

Every week, I research all the best new video game releases to find the one game that you need to play and the one game that you need to stay away from: my Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week. On this week’s edition, we’ve got a little gem on Xbox Live called Don’t be Nervous Talking 2 Girls. Will it be the winner or the loser? Click more to listen.

Listen to Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week

Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week: Black Friday Edition

Jonathan Zungre — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:14:15 +0000

Every week, I research all the best new video game releases to find the one game that you need to play and the one game that you need to stay away from: my Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week. And man, after a bunch of great weeks, this week yields some of the years worst losers. Click more to listen.

Listen to Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week

Dementium II Preview: Hands Coming Out of Your Face!

Jonathan Zungre — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:37:49 +0000

Zungre: Chad, I think a hand is about to come out of my mouth!

Chad: What the hell are you talking about Zungre?

Zungre: No seriously, it feels like..blahhhahhlk *garble garble*

Chad: Whoa! Zungre, can I get a picture of this and send it to the guys who make Dementium II?

Zungre: …Mmmhmm.

Dementium II reminds me of growing up with the most pants-peeingly scary game series ever, Silent Hill. Why? Because, like Silent Hill, Dementium II makes use of the unsettling mechanic of constantly thrusting the player between two different disturbing worlds, therefore never letting them establish a sense of familiarity with the environment. You never feel comfortable. You never feel safe.

Dementium swaps you between two almost equally horrifying dimensions, an insane asylum, with its muttering, screaming inmates, and an industrial, gore-splattered torment dimension. And the game knows exactly when to switch it up on you for the best scares.

You’re thrusted between the insane asylum world and…

… its even more foreboding, hellish counterpart. Good luck.

The game also uses some slick scripted events. Right after I took down a disgusting “Chest Maw,” a ghoul with a humongous mouth slit vertically down its abdomen, I saw a poor soul strung up from the ceiling like a side of beef in a meat locker. As I considered if I had stumbled into the Todd McFarlane section of a dank comic book store, an enormous beast sped through a door, snatched the poor soul up in its shark-like mouth and disappeared. The whole thing took seconds.

Monsters gotta eat too…

Naturally when I walked through that same area, I was on the lookout for the same huge monster. And that’s when the game ripped me out of the hell dimension back into asylum level, with a loud startling noise. I was playing with headphones and, yeah, I jumped.

Chest Maw

It’s ambitious enough to make an M rated game on the DS, but it’s even more impressive to try to make it a first person shooter. You move forward, backward and strafe left or right with the cross pad and moving the stylus on the touch screen controls which way you’re looking. Controlling your aim with the stylus is refreshing break from console controls, as it feels a lot more like the responsiveness and pin point precision of a keyboard and mouse configuration.

Double tapping the crosspad makes you run and the shoulder button makes you fire or swing your shiv. It takes some getting used to, especially when you’re under the game’s duress, but could ultimately prove to be a really deep control scheme for the DS.

I also got to play through (get my ass kicked by) two of Dementium II’s bosses. The huge beast who ate the dangling corpse returns in a boss fight and this time he not only wants to eat you but spit bile at you as well. Another boss battle features a room lit only by a centered spotlight and a Banshee that screams and flies at you from the room’s dark edges. It’s exhilarating not knowing where she’s going to attack from and the screaming naturally adds to the tension of the confrontation.

“Like a Banshee!”

Dementium 2 makes a bunch of improvements over the first Dementium game. First of all, it’s outdoor areas make it twice as big as the original, and an onscreen map keeps you from getting lost in those many blood soaked corridors. And, hallelujah, you can now hold a weapon and the flashlight at the same time. The monsters are scary enough let alone not being able to see and fight them at the same time.

The game also features some cool puzzles, health restoring items and well placed save points, but the main attraction here is surviving the scares. We’ll see exactly where Dementium 2 makes itself remembered in the great history of survival horror games this February.

Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week: 11/15 – 11/21

Jonathan Zungre — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:47:26 +0000

Listen to mankind’s greatest radio segment, Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week

Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week: Modern Warfare 2 vs. Badass Rumble

Jonathan Zungre — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:25:32 +0000

Listen to Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week

DS Preview: Crime Scene

Jonathan Zungre — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:32:46 +0000

Crime scene is a detective adventure game for the hardboiled only. It earns its rare M rating on the DS with grisly, realistic depictions of crime scenes and cases involving murder-suicides and burnt bodies.

You play as rookie detective Matt Simmons as he tries to piece together the strange events of a double murder involving a former police detective and his wife. The gameplay consists of exploring crime scenes, collecting evidence and questioning witnesses. What sets crime scene apart from other games in the crime adventure game genre, such as Phoenix Wright, is its realistic portrayal of crime scenes, more serious tone and its mature subject matter.

Did a former detective really murder his wife and then commit suicide, or is there some foul play going on here? They say this detective was a happy guy… It’s up to you to find the truth.

Tapping the DS stylus on the screen lets you investigate important elements of the crime scene. Once you find something significant, like a blood splatter on the wall, you can collect evidence with a variety of interactive tools, such as a blood collecting cotton swab, fingerprint powder and tongs for dislodging bullets. Dusting for fingerprints and all the other evidence gathering mini games require a steady stylus hand. Make a mistake, like I did often, and you’ll lose some of your credibility gauge and look like the rookie that you are. Lose enough credibility and say goodbye to that gold detective badge, it’s game over for you.

Once you’ve collected evidence, it’s time to take it back to the lab and test it, where your results will reveal even more clues for your case. Do the finger prints on the gun match up with the fingerprints on the table? Does the blood on the victim match the blood on the ground? Putting the blood samples under a microscope will tell you. The lab mini games were the most enjoyable of the bunch, although I don’t know if zapping bad cells in a blood sample with a laser beam is really how they find DNA in real life investigations. But what doesn’t get better when you add lasers?

Crime scene looks good, especially if you’re fan of CSI and the other 1000 crime based tv shows on network television or if you’re into the Phoenix Wright series, but crave something a little less cutesy anime and little more Dashiell Hammett. Hopefully, when it launches in February we’ll have another great mystery title, and one that doesn’t pull any punches.

Ripten Radio: Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week, 11/1-11/7

Jonathan Zungre — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:55:41 +0000

Every week, I research all the best new video game releases to find the one game you need to play and the one you need to stay away from: my Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week. Who will win this week? Dragon Age: Origins? Band Hero? Five Minutes to Kill Yourself?

Listen to Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week

Videogame Winners and Losers of the Week: 10/25 – 10/31

Jonathan Zungre — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:31:04 +0000

Every week, I research all the best new video game releases to find the one game you need to play and the one you need to stay away from: my Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week. Who will win this week? Grand Theft Auto, DJ Hero, Forza 3? Click to find out!

Listen to Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week: 10/25 – 10/31

DS Preview: Wedding Dash

Jonathan Zungre — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:31:01 +0000

Wedding Dash tries to capture all the stress, creative thinking and excitement of being a wedding planner, which is, if the game is an indicator, a challenging and rewarding job. It starts off by letting you choose the location of the wedding reception, which functions as a level select screen. You can have the reception in a banquet hall, on a ship or on the beach among other locations.

Next, you’re presented with facts about the couple getting married, which you must pay careful attention to, because the couple’s personalities factor into what you to feed them and where you send them on their honeymoon. If Jeff and Katie are vegetarians and nature lovers, then serving them bloody rare steaks and honeymooning them in New York City would make you a really bad wedding planner. Choosing salads and Yellowstone National Park will earn you some valuable points at the start the game.

From here, Wedding Dash plays much like Diner Dash, with guests arriving to the wedding, you finding them tables, serving them an appetizer, a main course, a dessert and then getting them out to the dance floor so you can seat more guests. Even though it seems like not having enough seats for all the guests would be a great way to get fired as a wedding planner, the fact that you need to turn tables is what brings the frenzied, stressful pace to the gameplay. If you make anyone wait too long for anything people are going to get angry and you’ll be losing points and possibly your check.

Sharp thought bubbles above a person’s head indicates that they’re getting impatient.

To add some challenge, Wedding Dash’s guests have particular desires about where they sit at the wedding. For example, many people won’t want to sit next to Aunt Fran, so you’ll gain extra points by sitting them at least one seat away from her. Other guests will want to sit at a particular table or by a particular person.

You’ll also have to avert wedding catastrophes. During one of my weddings, I thought I was doing great, serving everyone’s food fast and getting them out on the dance floor, when I realized that the sound system had shorted out and all the people on the dance floor were upset. All it would have taken to was one touch of the stylus to solve the problem, but since I was so busy serving food, it must have gone on for half of the wedding and the bride was livid. Wedding Dash does such a good job of making you juggle tasks and concentrate on a couple key areas of the screen that you won’t even notice the wedding apocalypse happening right in the corner.

Wedding Dash seems to be shaping up to be an enjoyable game. The hectic pace coupled with the satisfaction of a successful wedding makes this one game that could appeal to both those who see wedding planning as a dream job and those (like me) that just want a fun, quick, challenging game to play.

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Video Game Winner and Loser of the Week: 9/27-10/3

Jonathan Zungre — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:42:29 +0000

Every week, I research all the best new video game releases to find the one game you need to play and the one you need to stay away from: my Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week. Who will win this week? Kingdom Hearts, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, MotorStorm: Arctic Edge?

Click Here to listen to Video Game Winners and Losers

Ripten Radio Winner of the Week: Scribblenauts

Jonathan Zungre — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:16:13 +0000

By now you’ve probably heard of Scribblenauts, but if you haven’t you should know that it’s being hailed as the Savior of All Organic Life, a.k.a. one spot lower in a gamer’s mind than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Scribblenauts allows you to write any noun on the DS screen and that word will appear in the game. Ridiculous, I know. Click to listen to me drop the awesome bomb on 3 unsuspecting radio show hosts in my Video Game Winners and Losers of the Week segment. Were they as impressed as gamers are?

Scribblenauts Wins My Winner of the Week

Ripten Movie Review: Gamer

Jonathan Zungre — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:08:48 +0000

Gamer unseats The Happening as the worst movie I’ve ever seen. It’s a disgusting, abrasive movie made by someone who doesn’t understand or appreciate games and can only see the negative in the youth and culture that surround them.

Most gamers weren’t interested in seeing Gamer. It’s because Gamer’s premise doesn’t appeal to gamers to begin with. In the future teenagers won’t be playing Halo 3, they’ll be playing Slayers, a multiplayer shooter where they control real people, death row convicts (because there’s always so many hanging around) via engineered cells injected into their brains. So in short, it’s a movie about a kid playing a soldier. What the producers trying to cash in on the gaming craze didn’t realize is that when gamers play games, we are the kid playing the soldier, and Gamer is a movie where we sit and watch a kid play a soldier. The film reduces gamers to passively experience what they already interactively enjoy. Why watch Gamer when you could just play a game? Watching Gamer is like having an older brother who wont pass the controller for an hour and a half.

The action in Gamer is supposed to feel like video game action, with all the supposed earmarks of the medium like flashing lights, quick camera movement and big explosions. The accumulative effect is jarring and hard to watch. It feels more like what someone might see if they’re not used to playing games and can’t understand the pacing and the context of the action that’s happening on screen. It would look frenetic to them, almost incomprehensible.

The attempt at video game action reminded me of the awkwardness produced when Ang Lee tried to nail why comics are appealing in Hulk by using a split screen camera technique to mimic comic book panels. Didn’t Lee understand that progressing through the panels of a comic produces the same effect as simple film editing? Two uneducated attempts to appeal to audiences who love mediums they don’t understand. Their efforts to make comic book movies “comic booky” or video game movies “video gamey” just become trivializations of the mediums themselves. I’ve never purchased a comic for its panels and I wouldn’t be a gamer if the action in video games was as painful to watch as the action in Gamer.

Most prevalent and intolerable of all, Gamer hates gamers. The movie is strewn with negative, loathsome amoral gamer stereotypes. They’re stomach turning, profane bastards wallowing in a movie obsessed with putridity. The youth is demonized ; new media is demonized. Are there any humans in this movie? None of the characters deaths have any emotional weight and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a movie so devoid of a sense of place. This is not how a feel when I play games, this is not how I feel when I talk with gamers. Much like its protagonist in his proudest moment, Gamer is a loud, wandering, barfing mess that marginalizes the audience it’s supposed to appeal to.

Sumo Sultan Review: The Ultimate Gaming Chair or Ultimate Friend?

Jonathan Zungre — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:49:22 +0000

I wasn’t sure how I felt about the Sumo Sultan at first. It’s a monstrously large luxury “bean bag chair” that has a removable, washable micro suede cover, and claims to be the ultimate gaming throne. But it’s actually filled with a super sculptable furniture foam, not beans of any sort, and so right off the bat, I felt the Sumo Sultan had lied to me about its true nature, and I could see my other furniture was intimidated by its Brock Lesnarian size.

However, I began to notice how my guests reacted to the Sumo Sultan as opposed to my other furniture pieces. Where I saw apathy to my rustic leather couch and awkwardness and fear to my seven foot wooden Indian carving, I saw enthusiasm to the Sumo Sultan.

It was when my hot-as-fire Asian girlfriend curled up on it and said “This thing is awesome” that I began to realize that this thing is awesome. Not only my Princess of the South Asian Seas, but every guest that visited seemed to be attracted to the Sumo Sultan’s voluptuous promises of comfort. It made my staunchly masculine room more casual, more approachable, more endearing.

In moments when I and the Sumo Sultan were alone, we bonded when I discovered the Sumo Sultan could withstand an elbow drop from the top of my couch, something my coffee table couldn’t even boast. But it was the night I fell asleep inside the Sultan’s loving folds after playing Oblivion that I realized I had started to care less what my friends thought of my Sumo Sultan and more what my Sumo Sultan thought of my friends.

I will say that the Sumo Sultan, like any person, has its shortcomings. As a gaming chair it lacks neck support unless you use a pillow, especially if your TV is mounted high, like mine is. And yes, you could sculpt yourself some neck support from the Sultan’s copious amounts of foam, but doing so is harder than it sounds, mainly from the Sumo Sultan’s tremendous weight and girth. That same awkward weight makes moving Sultan model around quite a Herculean endeavor. They don’t call it Sumo for nothing.

But even though the Sumo Sultan and I don’t agree on everything, it’s still a great, throw anywhere, conversation piece addition to my living room and a pleasure to sit in. The Sultan model is good for game rooms but I would recommend a smaller Sumo model for studio apartments and tighter spaces, lest the Sultan dominate your room with its size and charisma.

Final Word: The Sumo Sultan is a throne that deserves a throne.

Verdict: Ripten Recommended

Get one here: Sumo Bean Bag Chairs

Xbox 360 Review: UFC Undisputed

Jonathan Zungre — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:44:05 +0000

UFC Undisputed’s authenticity in portraying the sport of mixed martial arts is both its greatest strength and weakness.

Devoloper Yuke’s demonstrate a keen understanding of the sport by breaking down the complex fighting into 6 distinct martial arts: Boxing, Kickboxing and Muay Thai for striking and Wrestling, Jui-jitsu and Judo for grappling. Each discipline feels right too. Finding your striking range as a kickboxer and punishing your opponents legs with kicks only to set him up for a knockout high kick, or using wrestling to slam and push your opponent up against the cage both feel like authentically gratifying experiences a real UFC competitor would have.

The damage system created for UFC Undisputed makes me never want to see a health bar ever again. Each body part takes damage individually. Take enough damage to any part and you could get knocked into a “rocked,” dazed state where your opponent could finish you off for an easy TKO. Guard your head, especially, because UFC Unleashed is the first game where flash, one hit ko’s can happen and feel completely organic. Guard your head too much and your arms will take a beating, making your punches weaker. It’s all very deep and realistic to the sport.

UFC Undisputed’s authenticity has drawbacks, however, and most of them surface in it’s baffling ground fighting. Not only is the ground game, where wrestlers pound their opponents and jiu-jitsu players look for submissions, extremely foreign to casual game or fight fans, but navigating the ground game with Undisputed’s controls feels like guesswork. I can foresee so many annoyed questions from new players: “How do I advance my position, how do I even know which position is best and most frequently, how do I get this guy off of me?” I’m not a controller thrower but being checkmated on the ground is the closest I’ve ever been to hurling plastic, especially because it feels like there’s nothing you can do. I’m sure having Brock Lesnar on top of you is even more frustrating and scary, but as a wrestler myself, I felt that some of these moves seem to be easier to pull off in real life.

The game roster depth sets a new high standard, and most of the character models look incredible, although I did notice a slight preference to the UFC’s current stars, both in stats and look. It’s certaintly understandable, but I had to laugh when I saw a scarily photo realistic Frank Mir go up against Mark Coleman, who looked like he’d been dropped into a vat of tan makeup. Anderson Silva and GSP look perfect, Rampage Jackson looks idealized and poor Mac Danzig, who’s lost his last three, looks like a bobble head.

The Career mode is a refreshing look into the life and training schedule of an up and coming UFC prospect, complete with angry letters from Dana White and assigning workouts to the eight or so weeks given to you before a fight, with the emphasis on balancing training with rest so you don’t go into a fight completely beat. Visiting the various real life fight camps to learn techniques from masters like Anderson Silva was a high point, but it’s a bit disapointing that Xtreme Couture was changed to Xtreme MMA and Team Militch to Team Militant.

Future versions of the game should clean up minor issues like the labyrinthine menus that make create a figher and designing shorts a chore. Additionally, a UFC game should really offer the option of unlocking UFC legends like Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock. And I wonder if fan favorite Clay Guida was excluded just because they couldn’t simulate his flowing mane of hair correctly.

Final Word:

UFC Undisputed, like the sport it simulates, offers action found no where else in the world of sports and gaming but suffers from a somewhat bewildering ground game . Even so, UFC Unleashed is the start of of something great and a solid nomination for Sports Game of the Year.

Ripten Interview: Deadliest Warrior’s Max Geiger Talks Horrifying Weapons, His Computer Simulation and What Scrares the Crap Out of Him

Jonathan Zungre — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:19:04 +0000

Deadliest Warrior is one of Spike’s top new shows, with ratings averaging 1.7 million viewers per episode, and one of the most downloaded TV shows on Xbox Live. And how could it not be? Each show answers the questions that burn deep within the heart of every man, such as, “who would win in a fight, a ninja or a Spartan?”

Max Geiger is part of the team that determines who wins the title of deadliest warrior for each show by collecting data from tests done on the warriors weapons and inserting it into a program which simulates the fight between the two combatants and determines a winner. Max took some time to tell us about some of his most exhilarating and horrifying moments while filming the show and gave us some clues on how the program chooses its winner.

Jonathan Zungre: What’s up man, how are you?

Max Geiger: Hey, I’m doing alright, man, how about yourself?

JZ: I’m doing really good dude. Hey, thanks a lot for agreeing to do this interview.

MG: Hey dude, it’s really not a problem at this point. I mean, it’s out there, I want the show to do well, so I like talking about it.

JZ: Awesome man, awesome. Hey, well, my first question is, dude, how do you feel about being part of one of the most awesome, manliest shows on television. I mean, what did it feel like when you first got this job?

MG: [Laughing] To be entirely honest, this is kind of blind dumb luck, how I sort of stumbled into this job. And so while we were actually shooting the thing it was awesome. It’s probably the most, like, fun job I’ve ever had. It was getting to wake up and go to Willy Wonka’s magical murder factory.

JZ: [Laughing] That’s awesome.

JZ: One of my favorite things about the show is how you get these guys on there that represent the different warrior types and they are passionate about their ancestry and they will talk smack on each other, like hardcore.

MG: [Laughing]

JZ: Honestly, bro, I’ve always wondered, has it ever gotten to the point where you’re like, “Oh man, this dude’s sincerely mad, something’s about to go down here. There’s going to be a fight.”

MG: Well you know the thing is, it’s kind of like how boxers work. You know where, like in the run up to the fight and in all the promotion for the fight, two boxers will give this gigantic impression that they hate each other, right? That they would like, eat each other’s children? That they have nothing more than this seething [loathing] for each other right?
But when we’re actually there doing the tests everybody’s professional and the off-camera stuff is all super professional. Because the thing is, the guys are actually former military or martial artists who’ve spent a lot of time working on their discipline. They have a professional respect for one another. In the moment of a test, because, yes, results are on the line, yeah, emotions can flare a little bit but everyone is still super professional and there’s actually a lot of mutual respect that goes around.

JZ: Oh that’s cool. Do you have any personal favorite characters that have gone on the show? I personally really liked the Mafia guys.

MG: I can’t really say like, “yeah this guy is a favorite of mine,” because I have to be as impartial as possible, but the viking vs. samurai was a totally awesome match up in my opinion and I would totally love to redo it with different weapons and more tests in maybe the second season.

JZ: Why was that, because you liked the guys demonstrating the weapons or you liked the weapons themselves?

MG: I’m just an enormous fan of both warrior cultures that get seen there. You know, it’s a little history nerdish but, you know, Japan had that whole thing where they were staring down the mongol invasion right? And it was only because of a Divine Wind that they avoided that, and in my head it’s not too hard to replace mongol boats in that fantasy with long ships that did make it. [laughs] That image right there, you know, long ships amassing on the shores Honshu would be just an amazing thing that I’d love to see in a movie.

JZ: What about the different weapons you’ve seen throughout the show? Have there been any that really surprised you, that really blew you away, or ones that you were just underwhelmed by?
MG: The thing that has startled me most about weapons is, you really don’t get the impression of it onscreen, but anything that spins. So, something like the morning star or, actually, [in the Shaolin Monk vs. Maori Warrior] episode, the twin hooks the Shaolin monk has, anything that uses rotational force or rotational momentum, you know angular momentum, is just very difficult to control and it’s also very difficult to observe and watch as a human being from a battlefield, tactical perspective.

So, because it’s bringing in all this power and it’s generating all this power but it’s difficult to control and difficult to avoid, those things are just the most dangerous things and I cringe every time on set one of them starts getting spun up because I’m like, oh man, we’ve got shields and everybody’s at a safe distance but, you know, this could still go wrong.

JZ: I saw that clip of the Shaolin monk’s twin hooks swords where he linked them together and did that ballet type move and slit the dummy’s stomach right open and I was like, “There’s no way that should work, but it does.”

MG: No, it’s horrifying and those things are sharp. You know, that makes sense to hold as a sword but when you’re putting them together and that’s not even a closed link, you know, it’s just like each hook is there and they’re not beaten together like a chain, it’s just like, “oh man, ah.” [laughs] It was a nerve racking moment.

JZ: As I’ve been watching the show, I’ve been seeing that you’ve been cutting up a lot of pigs lately. [laughs]

MG: [Laughs]

JZ: The Deadliest Warrior always says that a pig carcass is the best way to simulate what a human body is like, but I wondered, are you getting any heat from PETA from this?

MG: No.

JZ: No phone calls?

MG: I don’t see any of that, the producers would see any of that and they haven’t mentioned it to us. A rule of thumb on this, when it came to how many pigs we could destroy was there was an episode of Mythbusters where they shot a cannonball through like, four pigs, or something like that.

JZ: [Laughs]

MG: So our producers were basically comfortable with any level of carnage up to that.

JZ: [Laughs] The Mythbusters quotient.

MG: Right, right, exactly. So we do owe sort of a debt to the work that they’ve carved out and the path they’ve forged on ahead down this trail for us. Even though, it’s Spike and you know, we don’t like to talk about Discovery shows.

JZ: When you talk about Mythbusters, they’re very scientific in their approach. Sometimes on Deadliest Warrior, when you’re testing two different weapons in the same catagory, why doesn’t it seem like they get the same test? The test isn’t uniform. Like in the case with the hand grenade from the Green Beret vs. Spetsnaz episode…

MG: Yeah, yeah, everyone has been on about that test.

JZ: I mean, I thought the test was awesome, I thought it was super entertaining, but I was wondering…

MG: [Laughs]

JZ: I mean, hey, what can I say? But if the test isn’t uniform, can you really claim that it’s a true test?

MG: The thing is that there is about a week of testing that we do and there are four cameras rolling on that constantly. That all gets cut down [because] we have a huge shooting ratio, right. Part of that is that we just have so many weapons that not everything can make it into the show. And then, combined with the fact that the reality side of it, the testing, the labs, the dojo and out on the range is only part of it and then recreation [of the fight between the two warriors] is the other part of it, there’s not just enough time to show everything.

Unfortunately, one of the things that doesn’t make it into the show as much as it should, in my opinion, is the science. In the case of the grenade test, specifically, this is actually pretty interesting, those grenades both have a known quantity of explosive within them. In the case of the M67, it’s something like, I can’t remember off the top of my head how many grams it is, but it’s composition B, which is a combination of RDX and TNT, I believe. But when it comes to explosives, the industry standard is to relate everything back to TNT, I mean, like even nuclear bombs were thought of as, “well, it’s the equivalent of 10 megatons, which is ten million tons, of Trinitrotoluene [TNT].”

And so, this is more on Geoff’s end of it because he handles the hard science more directly, but Geoff actually has a calculator based on his biomechanics work and his injury and trauma mechanics, because he’s done a lot of IED testing, that will calculate the actual effect of the blast wave based on the quantity and type of explosive.

With those tests, what we’re actually looking at is more the effective range of shrapnel distribution and just, sort of, blowing something up in order to see the pieces that would come out of that, as opposed to looking at the direct effect of the blast wave because that’s a known quantity.

JZ: Now, you’re mostly in charge of the computer program that decides the result. That’s your area of expertise?

MG: Yeah, I am its keeper. [laughs]

JZ: [Laughs] I always see you press that button on every episode and then it goes into the computer, sci-fi sounds and then it brings up the fight at the end.

MG: [Laughs] They’re like, “Alright Max, we need a definitive strike on the enter key,” and I was like, “Are you serious guys, are we seriously doing this?” And so I was like, “Alright, I’ll do my best press on the return key.”

JZ: [Laughs] You, like, miss it sometimes.

MG: [Laughs] I wish I could press buttons that definitively in real life and other cool stuff would happen.

JZ: So the program is what really decides who wins the title of “Deadliest Warrior” for each episode. In your words, how exactly does it work?

MG: We’re taking something that was originally developed to simulate army on army combat and my job is to pull it down to an individual level. It was actually really funny because when we shot the pilot, I spent, like, three days sweating balls on how to get the graphics side of their engine to show two dudes actually fighting each other in the middle of a field and have it be accurate and load the right weapons in based on what they wanted. And so I show that to the producers and they’re like, “We’re just going to do a recreation for all that, you don’t have to worry about any of the graphics stuff.” And I was like, “What?”

So at that point I could just strip all that out, just basically ignore that, and look at the underlying functions and modules that determine the actual battle and get my hands dirty with that. And so everybody’s been like, “Oh my God, your advanced simulation software is just an Excel spreadsheet.” And I’m just like, “Ah, no dude, no see, the Excel is a really good tool, well it’s actually Open Office Calc, but Calc is a really good tool for managing large amounts of data, even the raw scientific data from the sensors that Geoff is pulling in, that’s getting stored in the spreadsheet format.”

So what we’re doing is taking that data and then crunching it so that so it can be packaged and then used by the sim. And then the sim goes ahead and gives us its output. So it’s all doing things in the raw, numbers way, so there’s not really a visual component to it.

JZ: Yeah, I remember some of the early advertisements said something about a CGI fight, or something like that…

MG: [That was] a misnomer on a PR person’s part somewhere. They’re just like, “Yeah, it’s going to be CGI because it’s computer technology!”

Unfortunately, in the TV world, there’s this understanding that “computers are magic!” And it’s like, “No they’re not but they can do this very well but not these things very well.” It’s like, “please, this is not Felix the Cat and his magic bag.”

JZ: [Laughs] In the case of the Ninja vs. the Spartan, I remember I absolutely fell in love with the ninja egg, remember this glass egg, you put the glass in the egg…

MG: The black egg.

JZ: When you showed the test with the ninja throwing it at the Spartan’s face it looked like it completely covered his eyes in glass. And I remember thinking to myself, that seems like it could be the decider of a lot of the fights, because I would feel that if your eyes got coated with glass, that would be something that would incapacitate you so that you could be killed very easily. The glass egg got zero kills in that episode, but I wondered if the program took into account…

MG: The kills for each weapon are the definitive, like “this weapon went into his body and then he fell over and stopped moving.” Like “this was the thing that put the critical leak in his circulatory system and then all of his blood came out.” So the glass egg isn’t, you know, you can get glass in your eyes and your not going to be able to see, but it’s not going to kill you out right. But the glass egg in the sim result contributed to basically every kill that the ninja did get.

JZ: Oh, ok, so that was going to be my question: Does the program take into account incapacitating damage?

MG: Yeah, so when you see the very end, when we’re in at the closest ranges, often times the guys are wounded, you know, they’re not doing well. And that’s when, at close range, things come out to really finish the other guy off.

JZ: Does the program take into account the abilities of the warrior himself, such as a ninja’s stealthy ability or the fact that the Spetsnaz knows all that crazy rolling around technique [laughs]?

MG: [Laughs] Well, ok, this is sort of a tricky row to hoe, as it were, because when we’re doing a test it would be very easy for us to say we’re testing our experts and we’re basing everything off of them but that’s not entirely accurate because as awesome as our modern ninjas were, they’re not the ninjas of legend. And as awesome as our modern Spetznatz and Green Berets are, the former Spetznatz have been out of active duty for 15 years.

And in the same way there’s also the historical consideration that modern people are bigger and healthier than ancient people in a lot of ways. This is kind of an interesting thing, a lot of people thought that the gladiator was this huge big tank and that’s the way they played it, but ancient Romans were actually pretty short, 5’4”, 5’6”. You compare that with the Apache and the Apache would have likely been bigger in many cases.

JZ: Oh, wow.

MG: When Europeans actually arrived in North America they were shocked at the height and over all health of native Americans. So there is that consideration to take into account, we’re actually looking at the ancient warrior not the expert and that’s part of the reason we do so much of the testing on the weapons, because once we know the weapons we can, sort of, put that into the hands of what we think that ancient warrior would be.

So, the warriors, in terms of skill or any sort of special tactic or training that we’re looking at, are good warriors. They’re not, you know, the once in a lifetime, legendary Miyamoto Musashi but then they’re not your average fighting man running grunt whose going to go get killed. They’re good at what they do.

When it comes to something like the ninja’s stealth skills, we’re looking at that in the context of terrain, for the most part and decreasing the accuracy of the Spartan’s weapons. So, yes, things like that are a factor.

JZ: So terrain, where the two warriors fight is also factored into the program?

MG: We look at cover, basically, and we give cover equivalent to different areas. For Yakuza vs. Mafia it was cover equivalent to the interiors and exteriors of a city block.

JZ: I remember in the Yakuza vs. Mafia matchup, the bat got the edge over the numbchuks. Was that just based on the damage the bat can do rather than the technique that the Yakuza member would have wielded the nunchucks with? I guess you already answered that question when you say, “We’re talking about good warriors.”

MG: Yes. And to speak to that test specifically, part of that is that the bat has a greater reach than the nunchucks. It’s able to get in there and strike further, but at the same time it does have its disadvantages, there’s a lot of lead on the shot, you can see a guy winding up to do it.

JZ: So overall, a lot of the matchup is decided on the damage and the power of the weapons but you also try to factor in what the skill sets of the actual warriors themselves would be.

MG: Right, right and the skill that’s required to use the weapon and the ability and the need to use it accurately. So things like the sling are inherently inaccurate weapons and we look at that.
We try to look at skill as much as possible, the problem is that once you get into a, sort of, skill pissing match it just comes down to, “well if you would have done this, he would have done this” and all objectivity gets thrown out the window. So we try to keep everything as testable as possible.

JZ: And you really have to go with the representatives that you have in the building at the time as part of that too, because the rest of it is just throwing out objectivity.

MG: Yeah, I mean it’s the core of a hypothesis, it has to be falsifiable. It can either be proved right or wrong. If it can’t be proved wrong, if there’s no falsifiability in the condition, then it’s a subjective bit of data.

JZ: You’ve got a controversial “Taliban vs. IRA” episode coming up. How are you feeling about that?

MG: [Laughs] Personally, I’m scared shitless.

JZ: [Laughs]

MG: It was actually a really difficult episode to film. Thankfully, the experts that we got in on it, and this is where things get a little bit trickier and we have to nuance the show a little bit more, so in the case of Spetsnaz vs. Green Beret we could get former operators, right, guys who had actually done it. In this case, it’s people who were close to the world of the IRA or the Taliban. One of our experts on the Taliban, for instance, is an FBI anti-terrorism agent. So he’s very familiar with that world and he knows how they would operate.

At the same time we have to be very clear and we took great pains to make sure that it’s clear these guys are not actual IRA or Taliban operatives, former or currently active. They’re experts on the subject material and that’s something that we’re trying to get across.

And then the other thing, which was a bit of a sticky wicket, was that we’re looking at guys who are killing people that, you know, exist today. We can’t hide behind history on this one, and that was an uncomfortable thing. I mean, we were looking at weapons like land mines and IEDs and people have lost people to land mines and IEDs. Land mines are currently a huge problem all over the world, places like Cambodia, Afghanistan, so on and so forth. So, actually, what we decided to do, because this is such a modern problem, we decided that one of the things we could do with the episode is use it to raise awareness about the effects of these weapons on civilian population in a lot of places around the world.

So the cast and crew got together and we all made a donation to landmines.org, which is the United Nation’s humanitarian fund, which goes and directly clears mine fields. They’re the adopt a minefield program.

Even though we’re looking at two of the most reviled people in modern history, or two of the most reviled factions in modern history, we’re hoping that some good can come out of this episode, so that we can get people to actually go to landmines.org and make a contribution and help to clear minefields in the developing world.

JZ: Well, great. What about any rumors of a second season? Are you hopeful?

MG: I am not privy to any of that. This is the period of time where Spike and MorningStar do the delicate dance of “is there going to be a second season, what’s that going to look like?” Everything becomes complicated as soon as money gets involved, you know, it’s Hollywood. So I’m going to be hopeful that there’s going to be a second season. I’ve been thrilled with the response online and I haven’t seen the cable tv ratings directly but I hear that we’ve been doing really well there. So I would love to come back and do a second season but, you know, at the same time I’m very much aware of the fact that this is television, this is luck as far as I’m concerned. It could all dry up in a moment.

JZ: What about possible match ups for the second season that you personally would like to see?

MG: Oh my God, dude, don’t even get me started, I’ve been thinking about this since day one. [Laughs]

JZ: [Laughs] Well you said something about the Mongols. The Mongols haven’t been tested yet, have they?

MG: Dude, ok, so Mongol vs. Polish Winged Hussar, like Golden Horde era Mongol vs. Winged Hussar is one of the fights I want to see most. It’s probably #2 on my list, right. #1 is both the Roman Empire and the Chinese, this was the Han empire at that point in time, you know, warring stage, romance of the three kingdoms period, both were aware of each other’s existence and actually made successful contact back and forth. But what I would actually love to see is a confrontation between a Roman Legionary vs. a Han Chinese foot soldier in the middle of the Parthian dessert, with the empire right in between the two of them and what that would look like if two of the ancient worlds greatest empires ever squared off.

JZ: Wow, sounds great, sounds fantastic. I’d tune in [laughs].

MG: You know, if we get the money, the other thing that I would love to see is a battle of World War II era frogmen. So the UDT, the underwater demolitions team, the Allied group, sort of the American military group that would go on to become the Navy SEALs, I’d love to see them against a Nazi frogman and just try and see what that battle would be like underwater because the stakes are much higher there, you know, you lose your air, you lose your life and just see what that would look like.

JZ: That sounds great man. Hey, thanks so much for the interview, Max.

MG: Hey, no problem.

Cross your fingers for a second season for Max and don’t forget to watch the “Taliban vs. IRA” season finale on Spike tv, your 360 or your PS3 and donate to Landmines.org.

Fight Night Round 4 Hands-On Preview: Making the Game Real

Jonathan Zungre — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:40:00 +0000

Fight Night Round 4 is the first game in over 21 years to feature Mike Tyson, and let me answer your first question right now: No, you can’t bite someone’s ear off. EA goes to great lengths to capture the devastating power of the late 80′s-early 90′s Tyson rather than the hot mess that was ear-biting, post-prison Tyson. The roster of over 40 boxers is also the first in 17 years to feature “Big” George Foreman, again, not the smiley grill salesman but the cinderblock-fisted monster who almost ended Joe Frazier’s career in the 70′s. I recently got my hands on the newest entry in EA’s successful franchise to see exactly how the skull busting will be going down.

The last Fight Night game, much like Oscar De La Hoya, while technically solid, garnered most of its attention from how good it looked as one of the first Xbox 360 titles. Fight Night Round 4 looks like it’s shaping up to be more like Floyd Mayweather Jr.: just as pretty and with better boxing. From the glimmer of Ali’s satin robe to Ricky Hatton’s creepy arched eyebrows, all the fighters look, act, and, most importantly, box like their real life counterparts.

The new AI, dubbed R.E.A.L. (Record, Evaluate, Adapt, Learn), dictates that each fighter will fight as they do in real life but will also attempt new tactics if their strategy is failing. That means if you’re fighting Muhammad Ali, he may come out cocky, ready to back you up, throwing lead crosses, but if you start beating on him, he may try to go on the defensive, let you tire yourself out and then turn up the heat in the later rounds to take the fight from you.

Playing to your fighter’s strengths will give you the advantage in the ring, such as pumping Ali’s piston-like jab and using Tyson, whose jab looks weak in comparison, to duck and weave into close range to throw absolutely demonic hooks and uppercuts.

But it’s Legacy mode that has everyone excited, Fight Night Round 4′s revamped career mode, where you’re not out just to become a champion but to cement your legacy as the greatest of all time. You’ll start out as a lowly club fighter and by managing your Legacy Meter, you’ll work your way up the ranks, earning titles such as contender, champion and if you’re good enough, you’ll surpass Ali as the Greatest of All Time.

Your Legacy Meter is made up of two things, your Popularity and your Pound for Pound rating. Your Popularity is based on how exciting your boxer is to watch: Does he knock people out, does he have 12 round wars? Your popularity can go up even if you lose, as long as you’re exciting. Your Pound for Pound rating is entirely different. It measures your technical proficiency. Do you waste punches? How’s your accuracy? Can you counter effectively? That 12 round slugfest you lost probably did wonders for your Popularity, but it won’t be helping your Pound for Pound rating, and you need both to become the greatest.

You’ll also be fighting against father time. Many boxers are way past their prime once they hit their late 30′s and the game will reflect that. As your fighter ages, doing the training exercises that once improved your stats will only sustain them, and eventually will only manage their decline. The good thing about Legacy mode is that what you must do to become the Greatest of All Time will be fairly clear. For example, at the end of your career you’ll be able to see that if you beat two more top contenders, you will be known as the greatest, but it won’t be easy because those fighters are deadly and if you lose to them you could be knocked out into retirement and obscurity.

20 years after losing the title, George Foreman returned at age 45 to become heavyweight champion.

The deep create a boxer feature is back and now has Xbox Live Vision support if you want to add your own mugshot to your boxer’s body. Aging won’t show on your boxers face, but if you take a bunch of beatings, you could have some lasting visible effects. And, thankfully, you won’t be getting strange bonuses from the equipment you use, like getting +10 to punching strength from Everlast boxing gloves. Were they lined with lead or hiding brass knuckles? This time the only way to improve your stats is to train.

The new physics engine makes the game more organic and unpredictable. No punch ever seems to land the same way. Even during the tutorial, when the boxers aren’t moving around the ring, my jab would land on my opponents face differently every time I threw it. Fighting on the inside produced realistic, natural moments, such as Manny Pacquiao resting his glove on Ricky Hatton’s arm for a second and the boxers arms getting briefly entangled when they threw a punch at the same time. The important thing to remember is none of this is scripted. It’s not that the fighters arms will always become entangled when you throw punches at the same time, it’s something that just happened to occur in that one moment because of the game’s physics, and may not happen again for the entire fight.

Knockdowns are also more organic and unpredictable. Flash, one punch knockouts are based on the strength of the puncher, the angle the punch lands and the physics of how it hits. Blocking can be punched though and the scripted punch swatting and parry system that existed in the past two Fight Nights, which allowed you to bat punches out of the air and capitalize on the stunned fighter, has been almost completely scrapped. Parrying punches still exists but will be based on more realistic timing and blocking is as simple as high or low.

The biggest improvements over the last Fight Night will probably be the streamlining of the controls. The team found that the motion for haymakers made them too hard to throw, especially the right hook and uppercut haymakers. The Right bumper now functions as the haymaker modifier. Just hold down the right bumper and throw a hook or an upper cut and you’ll be winding up like Joe Frazier himself.

From my time with the game, the “KO Moment,” the groggy slowness right before a knockdown that was throughout the last Fight Night game, seems to have been removed along with the game mechanic of clinching to prevent a knockdown and gain yourself some magic health. Clinching and pushing are still a big part of the game, but serve more realistic purposes, such as when the developer used Tyson to push me into the corner in order to pummel me. If your fighter takes too many big shots in a row his health bar will flash, indicating that he is dazed and each new punch he takes does sizable damage. I can see KO artists being able to capitalize on these moments for some first round knock outs that are unnaturally rare in other Fight Night games.

The cut man game in between rounds is gone, replaced with a RPG-like points spending system. Based on how well you boxed in the previous round, you’ll earn points to spend to improve things like your health or stamina for the next round. When I asked if this would produce an even bigger hole for losing boxers to get out of, I was told that points are distributed for a variety of reasons, one of which is accuracy. Boxers that are flurrying, going for the knockout, rarely have good accuracy, limiting them from earning points in that area, therefore enabling losing boxer to gain some leverage to turn the fight around.

Fight Night looks good, and especially good when the people playing the game know how to play. However, new players at the demo managed to make the game look some what like a frenzied catfight, which worries me a bit, but I’ll put myself to rest by remembering that those newbies were having a great time and overall EA has built a deep, realistic game with a fair learning curve in which those novice, frantic players will probably be put on the ground by veteran players faster than Ali put down Liston.

Warrior Epic Preview: MMORPG Rewards You for Killing Your Character

Jonathan Zungre — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:45:24 +0000

Warrior Epic is the first RPG to reward players for letting their created characters die. Having your created character bite the dust brings one of two benefits: you can either infuse the dead character’s soul into a weapon or one of your living characters can carry their spirit and use it as a powerful spell. You don’t have to find your body and you don’t lose experience or progress. It’s Warrior Epic’s way to turn a negative into a positive.

Another negative that they turn into a positive has to do with money. Your money. Warrior Epic is a MMORPG that’s (almost) entirely free. No fee to download, no monthly fee to keep playing. The only things you’ll be paying real live money for are new outfits and cosmetic items for your characters, new stuff to pimp out your castle and health potions. That last one’s a downer, I know, but as of when we did this preview, they were only supposed to be around 5 cents for a bunch.

To offset that cost, Warror Epic is giving every player a castle with two main areas to use, the stable and the Sanctuary. The Stable is where you create not one but multiple characters, any of which you can take out on missions. The Sanctuary is where the spirits of your characters go after they die in battle. Did you lose your sweet level 20 pit fighter in that last quest? Don’t worry you can revive him to land of the living for a fee (not real money). But if you don’t want that sucky level 1 mage anymore then put that loser’s spirit into your pit fighters sword. The after death options are quite a neat innovation.

The Castle can be stylized and modified to fit your liking. You can change the pillars, the lamps, the walls, add new rooms like a pitfighters arena and even buy little pets. These all cost real money but the options are very much available and attractive if you want to spend the funds.

Warrior Epic is an MMORPG that was created for the gamer that has a lot of time on their hands but not a lot of money, so the price range of purchasable items, costumes and castle decorations will be around 5 cents up to 3 dollars. With all the interesting options it brings to the table, and the fact that it should run on almost any PC, Warrior Epic looks like it could be worth the precious dollars of your monthly allowance or the precious hours after your commute home. Check it out in the closed beta now.