| Product: |
All Online Games in general |
| Date: |
18/08/02 (475 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Free, fun, uncomplicated
Disadvantages: may become a bit boring once the novelty wears off!
www.paranormaldeathmatch.co.uk
“Paranormal Deathmatch is an online battle game where your character fights other people's characters to see who is best. Here is your host, Bruce Forsyth!”…
I actually stumbled upon ‘Bruce’s Paranormal Deathmatch’ by accident after following a link from ‘The Rockstar Game’ – which incidentally is another great (free) online game! As the name suggests, we are hardly dealing with any serious issues here (!) – and if I was to sum up this site in just one sentence, it would have to be described as being ‘tacky, yet highly addictive’. I have only registered on this site today (17th August), and have been playing for about three hours, but it is really easy to understand and I am just dying to tell as many people as possible about it!!!
Basically, it is a game that is somewhat loosely based on the old ‘rock, paper, scissors’ theme – but with some more advanced adaptations. There are three breeds of character available - alien, magician, and spirit – with three different types in each species… for example, for the breed of ‘spirit’ the player can choose between ‘ghosty, vampire, or zombie’. For the ‘magician’ breed there is even the option of being Paul Daniels or Vanessa the Witch (Vanessa Feltz!).
After choosing to register, the player is faced with a screen featuring all nine characters, and all he/she has to do is pick the one he/she wants to play; give it a name; and enter a password – the site doesn’t even ask for your e-mail address! Once this has been done, the player can log into the site using this ‘name & password’ – it really is that simple!
After the player has registered and chosen a character, he/she is then taken to the main screen, where everything is fairly self-explanatory. For a quick guide to playing there
is a link at the top of this screen for new users – “click here to learn how to play” – and here the basics of the game are explained in very simplified terms under specified headings… your first fight; your first win; health; other stuff; etc.
The general idea of the game is to ‘fight’ other people using your character. If you fight someone of the same breed then it is evenly matched; fighting someone of the other two breeds may mean that you are advantaged or disadvantaged depending on the breed you are fighting. By fighting and winning, your character is awarded money and ‘Brucie bonus’ points – the money can be used to buy more health or special weapons; and the points help you to progress through to higher levels of strength, etc. The fights themselves are pretty instant… once you have selected an opponent (you can choose any other user – whether they are online or not!), you are given a breakdown of the fight and are told if you won or not – and it is at this point when you are awarded any money/bonus points. If you are ‘knocked out’ whilst fighting, you lose any money that you have and your health is reset to a certain level… although, you can prevent losing too much money by storing some/all of it in the ‘bank’. However, the ‘bank’ is only open once per day for a withdrawal or deposit so you need to plan wisely when to use the facility! There is also a ‘shop’ featured in the game, where you can buy health, weapons, and special items – and there is also the feature to reset your health for free, which means that you can prevent being knocked out in the early stages.
At first the game is something of a novelty. After about twenty minutes, if you stick at it that long (!), you may begin to feel like it’s getting a bit boring (nothing much really happening/no substance to the game) – however, do
try to stick at it! Once you start to progress to higher levels, you begin to realise the need for the special items (expensive!) and weapons available in the shop – and I have a feeling that it is going to get even more tactical the further I progress!
My character is currently ‘level 29’ after about three hours of playing – sure I made a few daft mistakes, but it certainly wasn’t too difficult to ‘get over’ them. No doubt I’ll return to the game tomorrow to find that I’ve been ‘knocked out’ by some other player whilst I was off-line – but with money in the bank it shouldn’t take too long to get my revenge!!! I said that the game was tacky and it is… just a bit of mindless fun! I even won a kettle for knocking out ten opponents – Bruce Forsyth is such a gem!!!
In relation to the main game, there are league tables to show how people are doing – at the moment of writing this, the person in the lead was at level 302!!! Although this may seem daunting, it soon becomes apparent that people generally fight amongst others of a similar level – the game is designed this way and allows newbies more of a sporting chance!
In addition to the above, other features include…
Player forum.
Chatroom onsite.
Log of all your recent fights.
Clans – start your own or join someone else’s.
The ability to send messages to other players.
So after only a few hours of playing I’m totally addicted (but I’m quite sad like that!) – and although it is a bit basic and very cheesy; try to remember that it is totally free! I could have described gameplay in a bit more detail, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun of figuring things out for yourselves… besides, I’m also trying not to give away any of my tactics!!!
I know I’ve already put the link at the top, but here it
is again… there are currently 2,099 active accounts at the time of writing this review – let’s hope that this will create a lot more. After all, the more people playing the game, the more fun it will be!
www.paranormaldeathmatch.co.uk
Note to guide (or whoever?)
There was no particular heading for this game for me to put my review in, so I have placed it in here (the most suitable) and will hope that one gets created? I have no idea on the process of creating headings/sections for reviews to be featured – but if Rockstar Game got a heading, I’m sure that this site could be worthy of one also?
Cheers!
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