Post by Morreion on Aug 29, 2014 15:25:04 GMT -5
The Stomping Land's dinosaur survival MMO is coming to Steam this month (Massively)
The MMO was successfully funded through Kickstarter last year and is being developed by Alex Fundora. The Stomping Land challenges players to survive as a human in harsh environments that include rather ravenous dinos. Hunger and thirst are issues that must be dealt with, and these are made all the more challenging by a lack of internal inventory (everything must be carried in hand or stored on the map). The game encourages players to form tribes for survival and allows them to capture, tame, and even ride dinosaurs.
The Stomping Land is switching to Unreal Engine 4 (Massively)
"The game is being moved to Unreal Engine 4 to take advantage of technical and creative opportunities, and while the game was so early in development, I didn't want to keep working for years with a game engine (UDK) that had officially lost support by Epic. The move has put a bit of more work on my plate, but the already discovered opportunities using UE4 are exciting, and I'm confident fans will be satisfied with the long-run decision."
Dino-survival: Hands-on with The Stomping Land's early access alpha (Massively)
The Stomping Land isn't technically billing itself as an MMO, but it boasts a semi-permanent world. But my experience in it was nothing like the trailers shown back in May. The current game is totally different. In fact, it seems to have regressed. There's no customization, there are no berries, and no one I talked to knew how to name a tribe. It feels like a semi-permanent shooter, similar to other survival games except without a lot of the building. You either make a teepee or you don't. You make a bow or you don't. You have a dinosaur mount or... you don't. The biggest servers I saw had 24 people, meaning I was able to avoid other players very often, but the game was more fun when I encountered people -- at least people who didn't one-shot me and waltz away.
The game also gives you no real inventory. There's no magic bag where you can place 100 pieces of wood while frolicking across the land. You carry what you can actually hold (i.e., if you gather a rock, you literally have to hold the stone; for two rocks, you lay them down to make a basket, add other things to the basket, and either craft it into something or literally drag it around by a rope). Don't look at crafting and item management as you would in other games, especially other survival-based titles. You don't drop anything on death (currently, anyway) because your pile of rocks or wood can be stolen freely, one item at a time, and unless someone has a teepee nearby and friends who guard it around the clock to ensure it doesn't get stolen or decay, it simply isn't worth it. You end up babysitting your materials as you move them to a camp site (sometimes building in a convenient area is more trouble than it's worth) rather than hoarding, but as someone who was in the Cub Scouts as a child and now has to do this in everyday life in Japan, I'd say it feels realistic enough. You have to choose what to carry based on your immediate need and your ability to carry it, not on arbitrary pack space.
...The game is far from perfect. There is currently no built-in voice chat, which I'm fine with, but I know other survivalists will be confused by that. The AI is buggy, so dinosaurs break down and run laps around you. If you get bola-ed, you're screwed. There's nothing you can do about it. You can't break out, fight, run away, just give up, log out, and lose everything. The same goes for being in a cage, except that you'll pray to starve quickly to hasten your release.
Meet Durango, Nexon's dino survival MMO (Massively)
Pop quiz, hotshot! Which of these things do not go together: dinosaurs, wooly mammoths, hot air balloons, chainsaws, survival gameplay. It's actually a trick question, because in Durango, Nexon's newest MMO, they all do.
Nexon recently revealed the survival-based dino-tastic MMO with a teaser site. From the looks of it, players will be put into a mish-mash prehistoric isometric setting and challenged to survive by making tools, constructing traps, fighting dinos, and building up a safe home. The title is being made by the folks who did Vindictus.
In an interesting twist, Durango will be heading primarily (from the looks of it) to mobile platforms, including iOS, Android, and Nvidia Shield.
Beasts of Prey is a dinosaur-themed survival sandbox MMOFPS (Massively)
If The Stomping Land and Durango aren't enough to sate your appetite for dinosaur-themed survival MMO gameplay, then here's a third game to add to that growing menu: Beasts of Prey. It's currently in early access alpha on Steam for $34.99, though developer Octagon Interactive hopes to launch beta in October...
The game boasts a single-server infrastructure, a detailed crafting and gathering system, a randomly generated world that adjusts its size based on the population, and dinosaurs that can wreck a camo-colored car much faster than a zombie ever could.
Dino-survival: Hands-on with Beasts of Prey's early access alpha (Massively)
When I first dived into the horror-survival genre, I knew there would be zombies, but I never expected dinosaurs. You don't get much bigger than a T-Rex stomping around your neighborhood (though I am still waiting for an underwater survival game that randomly has blue whales unintentionally ruining your kelp fort as they hunt for krill). When dinosaurs started to replace zombies, I knew that my inner child would drag me in, even if I once again had to pay for alpha.
...When first I logged into the game, I thought it was like Rust on steroids. While the starter experience on the official server is similar to the experience on custom servers (go hit rocks and trees to build stuff), the unmodded game doesn't have sleepers, doesn't require you to eat food, and seems to have a very vague requirement for getting rest. While Rust is trying to redo some code and add in things like stealing for those of us who don't kill everything that moves, the problem for me has still been having a world to live in, not just die in. However, I figured giant dinosaurs probably shouldn't be a solo kill, so perhaps the game would require some grouping with my fellow players.
The single official server is supposed to eventually grow based on population but is rather small for now. Players have complained the server gets reset a lot, which I found to be the case. During my first login, I couldn't attack other players, didn't lose items on death, and couldn't find any dinosaurs. The next time I logged in, my bags were empty, as were other people's. PvP certainly was fixed, but I still didn't lose anything on death. I play during Japanese prime time, so the server was understandably less populated by players, and I expected to be able to find plenty of dinosaurs to hunt. But they were quite rare, and nothing I found was small enough for me to kill as a new player.
I was, however, murdered several times by a pair of players who refused to respond to my attempts to communicate, which I attempted for the sake of experiment. Let's just say that I've yet to make any new friends in any survival game.
