Before we dive into this week’s review, I’d like to take this time to ask for reflection. Remember when playing Snake on your phone was the coolest thing ever? Okay, that’s enough reflection for now, just keep it in mind as you read.
So without further ado, I have a game for you guys that I think you’ll really enjoy, if you don’t have it already, by the name of Order & Chaos.
Order & Chaos is an MMO created with the smart phone in mind, which is a very interesting approach for an MMO, for obvious reasons. The small screen, not always dependant internet connection and graphics, along with boatloads of people wanting to play is incredibly daunting. But this game decided to take the path less travelled, and to quote Robert Frost, “That has made all the difference.” Let’s look and see just how much of a difference, with The Good, The Bad, and The Final Judgement.
The Good
Graphics and Game Speed
Now I’ve never played an (actual) MMO on my phone before and I wasn’t too sure what to expect, but holy graphics Batman, it is much prettier than I thought it would be. It kind of reminds me of an earlier World of Warcraft, which was not what I was expecting from a game on a phone.
Another plus? I played a little of this game last night, and started up again earlier this morning, and not even once has it lagged. Everything has stayed crisp and synchronised, just like a game should.
Customization
Again, any game with a good amount of customization gets a gold star from me. This game does not have as in-depth detail as other MMOs, but I’m letting it slide, since it’s a game for a phone. You can choose the basics, gender, race, type, hair and hair color, skin color, and even what your face looks like.
I chose to be a human ranger and customized her to bear as much of a resemblance to me as I could, and as you can see, the similarities are just staggering.
Gameplay
This is truly what sets the game apart from any other self-proclaimed MMOs that have tried to play on the smart phone. They tend to end up just being boring, you click on each character’s name to go to them, and that’s about it, the game does everything for you, and you don’t even get the visual eye candy of differing armor upgrades. It’s not fun, it’s boring and I’m so glad that this game stayed true to the traditional MMO style. You control where you go, who you fight, what you wear, and different clothes have different looks, which I’ve always found to be fun and keeps me encouraged to play the game to get better and cooler looking gear. If your armor is getting stronger that’s great, but what’s the point when it always looks the same? Then you’ll never know the excitement and pride of finding armor that, Arceus forbid, actually matches.
For now, I’m perfectly content wandering around wearing this clashing outfit. I mean, black matches everything, right? I’ve never been very good at matching…
The fighting is smooth too, with nicely detailed enemies to pound into the ground.
Like that guy.
Price To Play
Did I mention the game is free to download and play? Do I even need to write anything else about why this is good? No, I don’t think I do.
However, I do need to cover a bit of the bad, so southward ho!
The Bad
Facebook Login
I know this option is supposed to make it easier, to help you avoid the hassle of having to remember yet another password, but it doesn’t really help anything. After the first time logging in through Facebook, allowing it access to my information, I figured that would be the last time I saw that screen. I was terribly misled.
Whenever the game had to sign me in, it would go back to the screen where I had to acknowledge to Facebook that yes, I know I already gave you permission, I don’t know why I’m here either, maybe they wanted to double-check.
This isn’t exactly a deal breaker for the game, I know, but I figured a warning should be passed along. Login any other way if possible, because this gets a bit annoying. It takes up a space on your internet browser pages, so if your queue is already full, it will drop a page to make room for this.
Controls
The controls on this game tend to be kind of sloppy and frustrating because, obviously, small touch screen. So it’s to be expected but after a while it was met with a sigh or an eye roll from me. Again, not that big a deal, and I am grateful that this game allows for controls at all, but it’s something to keep in mind.
Too Much Stuff, Not Enough Space
When I had originally heard about this game (thanks to Gaijin Goombah from Game Theory), I had the iOS 6, mostly because I saw that everyone else had the updated 7, and I wasn’t all that impressed. So when I tried to download the game to my phone, it told me I didn’t have enough room. It didn’t surprise me, since I have a lot of dumb apps that I never really used anyway, so I deleted them until I had the space that was required to download the game. Only that didn’t work, it still told me I didn’t have enough space. I deleted all of my apps and tried many times, and it still refused to download. Finally, I updated my iOS and decided to give it one more try. Of course it started downloading immediately.
The bizarre thing about it was that the game hadn’t specified that it needed iOS 7 to be able to run, so even now I’m not all that certain why it wouldn’t download when I was on 6.
Final Judgement
Order & Chaos, in my opinion, is definitely worth a try. I think that some of you MMO veterans will really enjoy the graphics and the gameplay. The controls take a while to get the hang of, but when you do the game is pretty fun.
NOTE: I put the suggested age at 17+ not because of the game itself, but because of the people who tend to play the game. The game itself doesn’t seem to have any gore content, there is suggested alcohol use and obviously, violence, but all in all it looks to be a pretty tame game.
That being said this is coming from someone who got to the awe-striking level of 6, which worked out really well for me when two level 7 bandits ganged up on me.
Thanks so much for checking out my review, I really appreciate it, and if you have a differing opinion or maybe just something to add, please feel free to comment, I love talking to people who love video games as much as I do.
