iNethack2 HD Review

@

The @ symbol has a lot of meaning for me and quite a few older gamers. Long before it was a part of user names on Twitter or even widely known as part of everyones email addresses, it was your player character in one of the best games ever, Rogue (1980). Yes, THE Rogue that is referred to when someone says (or writes) that a game is Rogue-like. Rogue begat Hack (1985) and Mike Stephenson made NetHack (1987). All of them share the same premise of an adventurer trying to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor from deep in a dangerous dungeon. They all sported the same ASCII graphics with the @ as your character you moved through the dungeon. If you haven't heard of them, they are the precursor to games like Diablo.

iNethack was the original version of NetHack to grace the App Store, but it was removed in 2014. It is now back as iNethack2 due to the hard work of Future Shock Software to update the code and get it back out there for players. As a free download, there is no reason why this isn't already on your device. It is compatible with iPhone, iPod and iPad. Or play the latest version of NetHack online here.

Pick a class, any class

The basics of the game are simple. You tap the screen in the direction you want to go. Double-tap and you move in that direction until you run into something or a monster shows up. Run into a monster and you attack it with your weapon. Have a ranged weapon, use the correct command letter in the command bar at the bottom to throw something (or zap if you have a wand or spell) at the monster. Kill it and you gain experience. Don't and you likely are going to die. To help you in your travels you start the game with a pet (kitten or puppy) who can also fight for you in some cases. Warning, your pet can die. You will die. Horribly and often. All of the Rogue-likes share one thing, death is easy and permanent. With the right settings chosen you might even run into your ghost in the dungeon one day.

The Quest

DawnHack tileset and UI

Sounds simple right? It is and it isn't. You have to manage your hit points, collect enough food not to starve, and solve puzzles to make it all the way to the bottom of the dungeon and get the Amulet let alone make it back out again. I have been playing for 30 years and I have never won. I have never even had the Amulet in hand. Even using wiki pages or downloaded guides, I have never ever even been close. It is that hard. I have also never stopped playing. It is that good a game.

Sometimes you take a risk and a Water demon crushes you.

So, dungeon crawl, permadeath and deep gameplay are all here. You choose between a number of character classes and races at the beginning of the game. Your choice determines your starting stats and general equipment. Rangers start with ranged weapons and food, Wizards with wands, rings and spells, etc. Your pet can help you find out if anything you find in the dungeon is cursed or not (a pet will only reluctantly step on a cursed item). Your pet can even help you steal from shops you find along your journeys - you just have to train him or her to do so (by throwing them food when they do something you like). Wish for the right thing and you can have Excalibur in your hand, polymorph objects to change them into better ones, use Genocide scrolls to get rid of extremely dangerous monsters like the Basilisk. Pray to your god for help. Eat what you kill to stay alive. It is all up to you and all in the game.

Here's a death. A sad pathetic one.

Worried that ASCII, old school graphics aren't your thing, you can change it in your settings to something more modern. (Exit the game, go to Settings on your device, find iNethack2, scroll down to Tileset to find a new one. You can also change your character name there or make other adjustments to the gameplay. The game has in-game help to get you started on what the commands do. Don't forget to use s to search as there are hidden traps and doors all over the place.

Here's a better death.

Here's everything I killed on my dungeon crawl.

Don't take my word for it. iNethack2 and its predecessors are some of the best games ever. They are free due to the awesome work of very smart people making them available that way. Go get a copy or play online. You won't regret it. iNethack2 gets 5 Mick Happies. If you like it, buy a copy of Future Shock Studios' Interplanetary Drift to say thank you for making it available on iOS again.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Demo Review

It’s interesting to review a demo, but since I just spent the better part of 3 hours playing the demo for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (KoAR), I thought I would share.  Note that this game is rated mature and you will need to be old enough to access the game website. KoAR is a single player RPG from 38 Studios and Big Huge Games. 38 Studios was founded by Curt Shilling and KoAR is their first game and features significant input from Todd McFarlane and author R.A. Salvatore.  The KoAR demo is available via download on Origin, Steam, Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. The full game will be released on February 7, 2012.

The demo starts with a cinematic scene of two Gnomes pushing a cart with a sheet covered body. As they push the cart, the two Gnomes discuss the body upon it and this discussion leads to the character creation steps. A little different take on the RPG usual setup fare and after the opening cinematic you awake on a pile of dead bodies. From there you are taken through a tutorial to try and exit the tower you find yourself in while getting equipped and learning a bit about how you got there. Once out of the tower, you find the start of an open world adventure and soon are in a nearby town and picking up multiple quests to gain experience and loot. After the initial escape from the tower and completion of that first quest, you have about 45 minutes of game time to explore the world before the demo ends. This is plenty of time since it does not include time spent in the menus or speaking with non-player characters.

The look and feel of KoAR is very nice. The graphics are not as picturesque as say Skyrim, but have a nice feel that is better than but somewhat reminiscent of World of Warcraft. It is easier to see items to pick on screen than in Skyrim due to the helpful lighting effects. The overall combat mechanics and magic system are interesting; especially the over-the-top sword bashing you can give the early monsters. There are a couple of interesting mechanics that involve specific combinations of buttons to yield special effects and they are worth the frenzied button mashing (I was playing on the Xbox). One thing I especially liked was the lock on target nature of the bow, where I didn’t have to constantly be moving to keep the enemy in my sights while shooting (unlike Skyrim where 15 hours in I am still having difficulty tracking dragons with a bow). The game also has the usual pick up ingredients and supplies to mix potions (alchemy) or make items, but unlike most games, finding a source of a particular ingredient doesn’t guarantee that you will be able to harvest it (sometimes you fail unless you Alchemy skill is trained up). As you battle and explore, you will gain experience that will eventually lead to you leveling up, which will allow you to raise your skills and choose perks, rather than a the increase your skills by using them that makes you increase in level mechanic in Skyrim.

As you play the demo for KoAR, you unlock items for use in the full game and a few items for Mass Effect 3. If you plan on playing either game, you should spend the couple hours trying out KoAR. I give the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoking demo 4 Mick Happies. I enjoyed my time in Amalur and will likely be picking this one up after it drops on February 7.