Saturday, July 20, 2013

SFOTH: Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters

Hello once again, Catalog Manager NonstopEpic here this time with something different. Today I'll be reviewing what has been described by the community as "the worst promotion game ever", and explain why it is receiving the negative feedback. In fact, it even had 619 likes and 1,354 dislikes before the ratings system went down "for bugs in the site". That's about a 70% dislike factor. I'm not saying that the admins are bad at making games, but this one was just made poorly. (They were likely in a rush because of BLOXcon prepping.)


First off, this game is just a modification of Shedletsky's original and classic Sword Fights on the Heights IV. Yes, that's right, this game isn't even an original game. In fact, I have no clue how sword fighting even relates to Percy Jackson. To make this review less complicated, I'll be detailing each problem with it in seperate columns.

THE MAP: 3/10

This map is the same old Sword Fights on the Heights IV map with very little (and I mean minimal) change. A giant blue brick meant to resemble water has been added to the bottom of the map, but it really doesn't make a difference as far as the appearance of the game. The only other thing different about the map is that there are tons of Percy Jackson decals everywhere. You'd think the fire decals would be changed to water decals, but that hasn't been changed either. Overall, the map feels free-modeled and something that a regular user could make in a few minutes.

WEAPONS: 4/10

If I'm right, I'm pretty sure every single weapon in this game is a weapon that is already in the catalog. Meaning, the gears aren't original either and neither do they actually relate to Percy Jackson. The starter sword is pretty useless; there's no point in using it because you're going to get owned by someone holding one of the four "special swords". The Ice Breaker currently seems like the premier special sword that most players use. It's pretty powerful, and freezes people who get attacked by it. This seems too similar to the Ice Dagger. The Trident is also extremely powerful, and can push people off platforms, which gets annoying because if someone falls off a platform you don't get a kill. The Beach Battle Sword isn't that powerful, even though it can fire wave projectiles. The worst of the gears is the Ice Axe. All you can do with it is spin in a circle, and the reload time is terrible. When you find all four special gears, you get the Golden Fleece. The Golden Fleece is ridiculously overpowered, as you can fly around with it while hitting people with your swords. However, the game never tells you that pressing spacebar stops flying, so you could just be flying in the air, accidently hit spacebar, and ruin your quest to earn the actual Golden Fleece gear. The forcefield orb and shadow sphere are still present in the game, although other SFOTH swords and tools such as the rocket boots have been removed. 

BALANCING: 1/10

According to the blog, the gears were modified so that gameplay could be dynamic and balanced. Clearly though if you look at badge statistics its evident that some gears are more powerful than others. (The Ice Axe badge is about 10x as rare as the Ice Breaker badge.) The Ice Breaker and the Trident are the overpowered gears, and the Beach Battle Sword and Ice Axe are the underpowered gears. Plus, don't even get me started on the Golden Fleece. When you earn it, you're pretty much unstoppable and can gain a ridiculous amount of kills.

GAMEPLAY: 4/10

If you have weak gears (starter sword, beach battle sword, ice axe), you are a target for an easy kill and it's hard to find good gears. Plus, it's pretty hard to get all four gears without being attacked by someone with an Ice Breaker or a Trident. The main concern about the gameplay is the Golden Fleece. With the Golden Fleece you can easily go anywhere in the map, which means you can quickly find targets, spawnkills, and be unstoppable. The amount of spawnkilling and unfair kills in this game is ridiculous.

Difficulty: 4/10

The minimum amount of kills you need for each badge is just 10 kills. For any sword fighter, that is not a lot of kills. Plus, once you have the Golden Fleece, it's actually really easy to win it because you only need 10 kills and can fly anywhere. You don't even need 10 kills while equipping the Golden Fleece; you just need to have 10 or more kills and earn the Golden Fleece. It's so easy to earn it and get ten kills that it's the second easiest to earn badge in the game (the first one being earning the golden fleece). TL;DR, if you have the golden fleece, it's pretty easy, if not then you can get spawnkilled a LOT

PRIZE: 6/10

The only prize in this game is the overpowered golden fleece (except you can't carry separate gears and fly with this one.) It's evident that all they did was take the flying physics script from popular gears like the Artemis Bow and R-Orb, and recycle it into a new gear. This isn't a huge problem, but users who own the aforementioned gears won't be receiving anything 'new'. What's even more of a shame is that the flying physics script was meant for expensive non-limited gears, not promotion gears. This gear also has a lot of gear attributes, meaning you can bring it into barely any games. 

OVERALL: 4.5/10

Suggestions:
- Make an entirely different game actually based on Percy Jackson.
- If not, then at least add more actual details to the map.
- Add some Percy Jackson characters/monsters.
- Limit the amount of time you can have the Golden Fleece.
- Change the gear scripts so that it's more balanced.
- Make the gears look like they're from the Percy Jackson series.
- Add more different gears.
- Make it harder to obtain the Golden Fleece gear item.
- Add more prizes.
- Don't ever make a SFOTH version of something ever again.
- Re-enable likes/dislikes on the game.


- NonstopEpic, Catalog Manager


4 comments:

  1. Add to the suggestions:

    -Turn on ratings again so users can express their true opinions, not hide it all up

    ReplyDelete
  2. Doesen't even deserve a 4.5.

    Other than that, a good and honest review.

    ReplyDelete
  3. i was going to give it a 0/10 but arb edited some of it

    ReplyDelete

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