Review: Crittic Age
by Findar

To note: Our rating system is built for 3D MMORPG Games, from a 3D Gamers point of view the score of 4.4 is probably correct, but keep in mind that this is a complete other type of game, give it a chance!

The game is located at http://www.critticage.com/, and we are sorry for the lack of information here, but our MMOGD is supposed to carry only 3D/Graphical games right now. On with the Review now:

OK here I am an avid RPG’er whose gaming rig went adios and I am stuck with my trusty P3-550 with a very nice 2D card and I am supposed to be a reviewer. Thinking I won’t be able to do some gaming or reviewing a get a nice message asking me if I want to review a browser based MMORPG. I say “Sure why not, I can’t really do much with 3D games anyway.” A few hours later I get my account info and logon for the first time and lo and behold I am teleported back 10 years, sort of.

About the game:

The game is not what one would call a traditional MMORPG, it’s more of a MUD with some nice 2D graphics, plus it is web bases, so no extra client needed. Like any MUD or MMORPG there is leveling, item gathering, questing, and of course battling. Unlike a MMORPG there is no crafting system, no pretty 3D Mob’s or players to look at, and you don’t have to wait in line to do any quests or spend a lot of time to make money. The game doesn’t really have any story to speak of. It is however broken down into a few different areas: Metro, The Underground, The Dead zone, The Starport, and your Cydron (more on these later). Also this game is not designed to be played for several hours at a time, this is defiantly something you may play a couple of times a day for 15 minutes to an hour at the most, you will see why later on.

The Beginning:

Once you have your character setup and you finish logging in your brought right to your base. Here you can see your character picture, all your stats, equipment, Gang, money and all the info you will ever want to know about yourself. On the left-hand side of your screen is the shortcut panel so to speak. It lists all the major places you will want to go to anytime your playing the game. You start out naked with a few hundred dollars in your hand and you need to go shopping, so the first thing I did was go to Metro. Metro is the place where you will be going often, from here you can get to every single part of the game. Metro is basically a graphical representation of the world and each building does have a use and is pretty clearly described at the top of the page when you put your cursor over it (there are many places to visit, some are there to flesh out the world but don’t really affect gameplay all that much and you probably wont be visiting them often) .The descriptions aren’t always clear though, I highlighted all the buildings looking for a good place to buy some gear, so I headed over to the Gear shop figuring it was a good place to start. Turns out this is just the place to buy a passport for the Dead Zone (more on this later) and to upgrade gear to use there. I checked out a few more places, The Armory (this is actually for storage of your weapons and armor), and the Metro Market (where players can sell used items), everything here was expensive and it didn’t say if I could use it or not. I ended up at the warehouse, turns out this is where I need to be but I am not allowed to buy anything till I go back to the armory and spend a few dollars to get a locker. Not a problem but a little annoying, I head over to the Armory and get my locker and then go back to Metro and to the Warehouse. Finally I get a list of all the weapons and armor available in the game. There really isn’t much of a description on the items but it does tell you for what level they are for. Unfortunately they seemed to be all out of the level 1 weapons and armor so I had no choice but to spend all my money on these items instead of the $50 it should have cost me (this seemed to be a fluke because I have yet to see the warehouse be out of anything again). Also this each level has only one piece of armor or one weapon to buy, there is defiantly no weapon/armor envy in this game. OK I have my gear now what do I do?

Combat:

Combat here is pretty much like any MUD you have played except it is 3/4th’s PvP and 1/4th PvM. It is all text based but you don’t need to go exploring all of the time to find things to beat on and level up. The majority of my time leveling up is spent fighting the other players. From the Metro map or on the shortcut link I was able to go to the Battle Arena (just battle on the shortcut bar) and find people to fight. The first screen at the arena allows you to list all players alive and also where to spend your stat upgrade points. By default it brings up all the players alive at your level, and picking who to fight is up to you, there is no duel accepting of any kind, it’s a PK’ers dream. The combat is typical of this type of game, just a bunch of text on when you hit and for how much, it also tells you when you missed, or where hit by the other player and either you win or you don’t. Your first few levels you win 99% of the time and level up pretty quickly. Now you don’t always have to pick the battles, a lot of the time people will attack you and if you win it is just as good as if you fought them and won this is a truly persisting game because you don’t have to be in game to have this happen. The only other combat you will see is in another part of the game called the Underground. Here you will fight mutants in the sewers while trying to find and complete quests.

Questing & The Underground

The Underground is where this becomes very MUD like. Here is where I found all the quests in the game. I took the Grav Tubes from Metro down to the underground and ended up in what’s called Shanty Town, the main square for the underground. I poked around here found out I had to use minerals, not money to buy things, and I also needed to buy a vendors license (which luckily wasn’t too hard or expensive to obtain) to sell anything I found in questing. To get minerals I had to join or form a mining party. Now this may sound easy enough except you have a limited amount of time to form a party of your own and to do that you need to post on the message board or look for people in the chat room, I have only been able to go mining once in the few weeks I have been playing. I ventured into the Great Hall trying to find some quests that I heard about on the game forums, in the Hall you can reach your personal quarters and also talk to the Elder who will give you 3 quests to get you started, the rest you find on your own while wandering in the sewers. You can get a few more items down here for use in the game, mostly potions for buffing your stats and also a bit of training to help you when down in the sewers. The Underground is one of the best things about this game, even though you are limited to the amount of turns you have to do things, it is where the longest period of time will be spent in the game (you get 500 turns every time the game resets, once every day).

Economy:

Like any other MMORPG you need money to do things, which is both easy and annoying at the same time. The easiest ways I found were to go to the Dead Zone and dig for titanium, pump for oil and fish. The StarPort was also another way to do this but they tax you heavily to transfer money from your ship to your bank, so it isn’t the best. You can also sell points. Points are what you get when you signup for all the games advertisers, and this is the annoying part because you will get spammed to death when you do this, but hey the game is free and they have to pay for it somehow.

Cydrons:

The other big part of the game is building up your Cydron, which is basically your own little city. Here you build farms, storage facilities, defenses, power plants and of course you’re military. In your Cydron the only resource you need is metal, food is basically used to sell for more metal to then build more buildings and such. The battles here aren’t any different than in Metro except everyone is in their own zone, something like countries. You can attack in your own zone or anyone in any other zone, I wasn’t able to tell if there was anything better about going outside of your own zone and it didn’t seem to affect me negatively if I attacked my own zone mates.

Conclusion:

For what this game is, I find it a good way to spend a half hour twice a day to play and I will probably keep playing after this review. There are a lot more little things to do that what is here, it would add another 2 or 3 pages to fit it all in, so please go check this out for yourself, you may just get hooked like I did. Would this game be worth paying for? Probably not, but it is defiantly worth your time to signup for a mail account just for the game and deal with the spam to earn some points and money to play the game. If you like MUD’s and old school text adventures then I would recommend this game.

- Ryan "Jedirmd" Delaney, MMO Gamers Hell Editor.