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By Zeus’ beard, it’s a Roman MMO! Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising is the debut game from Perpetual Entertainment, set in 300 B.C. Italy. Distributed by SOE, the game draws heavily from mythology and history to create a world that strived to be as accurate as possible for the setting of the time, keeping out only the parts that wouldn’t make the game fun. The world is even set up as the Romans thought the area looked like in 300 B.C.!
So, click the jump to check out what SOE was kind enough to show me!
As you play through the game, each player finds out that they are the son or daughter of one the Gods. You then become a hero for your God, and in return the God blesses you with special abilities, such as permanant stat increases or the ability to summon fire volcanoes from the ground to destroy your opponents. I’d like to note here that the creator for the original Diablo is the mastermind behind it, so you know it’s going to be big.
The combat system for the game allows for special attacks that can be linked together, such as one boss flinging a player into the air, zapping them with lightning, and then grabbing them and taking a big bite out of them. In addition to that, the game focuses on a squad based system, where you can recruit minions as you level up. Unlike in Guild Wars, where they’re just readily available to be recruited and are just redshirts to players, Gods and Heroes has these characters level up with you and stay with you in your “camp.” They’ll take on your character’s color scheme, and will be a lot more personal. By the end, you will be able to have 8 minions fighting with you simultaneously, and I believe 16 can be recruited into your camp.
There are a plans for a PvP server where players will challenge each other, and then enter into a gladitorial arena. The PvP server will feature leaderboards and all, so it looks like it’ll be fun.
The graphics for the game are very nice and looks a lot smoother than World of Warcraft , but in order to acheive this, the system requirements are a lot higher than most games. I was given an estimate of a minimum of 1GB of RAM, a suggested 256MB Video Card (128MB will get you by), and somewhere around a 1.7GHz processor. The moves are very fluid, and the only problem that I ran into was that it took a while for the characters to start attacking each other, although I think that might just be a timing issue, which is what they’re currently working on during the small beta that is currently going on.
From what the guy showed me, the game looks like a hell of a lot of fun. The interface isn’t anything revolutionary, but watching the combat go on was really cool. The game, from what I’ve seen, is going to be on a big scale (I think 150% of one of the race’s continent). I can’t wait until they offer up a larger scale beta so that I can hop on, and I would love to see this game beat out WoW over time, as it certainly has the potential to do so. Be sure to check back for more information about this later, as I’ll be pursuing an interview with the design team in a month or so.
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Published: Jan 12, 2007 08:40 pm