In my first
impressions of NDOORS' Atlantica
Online, I told Ten Ton Hammer readers the game was
smoother and more fun than anything I had played in a long time. My
love
affair with Atlantica
has only improved over the past four months, reaching the status of the
proverbial
href="http://www.comment2u.com/img/comments/loveyou/loveyoulike001.gif">fat
kid and cake. While it has its faults,
style="font-style: italic;">Atlantica is easily
the best F2P
game I have played and is more fun than many subscription
games I have tried.
border="1">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/45316">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 200px; height: 121px;" alt=""
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/45316/preview">
style="font-style: italic;">This lady with the snakes will
pwn your system if you try to run Atlantica
style="font-style: italic;"> with the minimum system
configuration.
You Can't Park
That Jalopy Here
First, ignore the required system specs. If you try to play
style="font-style: italic;">Atlantica with the
bare minimum, your experience will be much like going for a ride with
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rdLOrOLJiA"
target="_blank">Toonces the Driving Cat.
NDOORS suggests gamers have a GeForce 6600GT graphics card
with 128MB memory and 1GB of RAM. My computer houses a GeForce 8600GT
graphics card with 512MB memory and 2.5GB of RAM, much better than the
recommended configuration, but I still experience
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z83WWw3WtpE"
target="_blank">baby hiccups and lag from time to
time with the medium to high graphics settings.
style="font-style: italic;">Atlantica
simply has too much going on to expect a full-speed play session of 3+
hours. Skill animations, large numbers of character models, and
bountiful particle effects all contribute to the game
performing worse the longer I play it. It never becomes a slide show,
but I can detect the dip in performance after about 3 hours and know
that I need a quick restart. Optimization flaws aside, the client is
stable. I've never once crashed to the server select screen or the
desktop.
The Search for
Atlantis
The beauty of Atlantica
is its strategic gameplay (view some video
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/40597">here).
Most games drop players into hundreds of hours of
href="http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/i/moleinside_zoom3.jpg">Whack-a-Mole,
but the moles whack back in Atlantica.
The grass snakes and rats you kill in the beginning of other MMOGs are
Fairies and Hell Warriors in Atlantica,
and they come in a couple of flavors. One type of Fairy uses a
standard attack while the other one casts a devastating spell. One type
of Hell Warrior might have a special attack that does major damage
while the other has the ability to revive fallen comrades. The result
is that Atlantica
players must treat every battle like their opponent is
href="http://www.nescentral.com/images/mike-tysons-punch-out-1.png"
target="_blank">Mike Tyson instead of
href="http://smackdown.myrmid.com/smackdown/downloads/joe3.gif"
target="_blank">Glass Joe. Kill the Hell Warrior
who can revive first, and you might get killed by the kind with high
damage attacks. Kill the ones who cause the most damage first, and the
other type might keep reviving them. And this isn't just end-game
material; this occurs around level 4!
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style="font-style: italic;">To be successful in combat,
players must learn to use strategy from the early levels.
The story in Atlantica
pushes you down the path to discover the cause of some major
disturbances to once peaceful areas. Monsters have risen up, and
normally amicable creatures have become more malevolent toward humans
than
href="http://disney.go.com/vault/archives/villains/cruella/cruella.html"
target="_blank">Cruella De Vil toward Dalmatians.
The basic premise has been done to death, but the setting and execution
are original. The game takes place on Earth with players starting out
in historic areas of China and Japan, and the journey takes gamers on a
hunt for the fabled city of Atlantis. Despite the realistic setting,
the creatures are fantastic, and your human avatar and his or her
mercenaries
will possess superhuman powers.
The early quests do a good job of teaching gamers how to play
style="font-style: italic;">Atlantica, and all
quests contribute to the overall plot. It's solidly written
and
translated into English perfectly, but it won't make anyone go "
href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_s3m31tyWL4Y/RqTg3h3NKTI/AAAAAAAAARQ/_2CR_YkF3OY/DSC05493.JPG"
target="_blank">J.K. Rowling is releasing a new Harry Potter
book" nuts.
Somewhere
between the Mona Lisa
and Painting by Numbers
Basically, the graphics of Atlantica
would be a single member of the
href="http://www.cinematrix.hu/fajlok/galeriak/filmek/dodgeball/dodgeball-02.jpg">Average
Joe's dodge ball squad; they aren't amazing on their own, but
they contribute to the
championship-like performance of the entire game. They're certainly not
up to the level of
style="font-style: italic;">Age of Conan,
but the game still features some beautiful vistas, especially when
coming up on buildings for the first time. Water seems pretty good at a
distance but looks fake up close. Character models (see some character
creation video here)
visit the same
target="_blank">uncanny valley that those in
href="http://www.eq2.tentonhammer.com">
style="font-style: italic;">EverQuest 2
do. That is, they look human enough, but something is a little off and
makes them look a bit creepy. If the gameplay were not so great, the
graphics might be considered under average. Since the tactical elements
make the game so fun, the graphics are more than adequate to deliver
the package.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Atlantica Online Game Page.
