The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So if you look back, you may remember me talking about the Browser RPG of my dreams, the one I have planned out in my head that I wish I had the skills to make, called Small Souls. Or maybe you won’t. In any case, I was all about making this game with branching paths and a card-based battle system, and it was going to be totally awesome. I guess.

Man, Metroplexity is going off of a very different thematic base, but it is DAMN close to the game I was dreaming of.

Of course, I”m very late to this party. It was at least a month or two ago when I heard about the game, but I only started playing it now that the semester is over, simply because I didn’t have enough time to play the games I was trying to keep up with, much less start a new one. Val was even telling me I needed to try it after that. Well, I finally did. And it’s very good stuff.

Basically, what separates this game from others is the fact that you can fail missions. The vast majority of the time, if you get into a tough and plot-important battle, and fail it? Well, you fucked up. You don’t get to try it over and over again. The hostage died, or the evil corporation managed to do what it needed to do and left while you were on the floor bleeding. The plot changes based on how successful you are and decisions you make in this regard. This might frustrate completitionists. I mean, hell, I am the sort of person that, when I like something, I do want to see as much of it as possible. I want to see everything that can happen. But the game has a variation of an “ascension” mechanic built in, where once you get to the end you can start over, make different decisions, and see what happens this time. That’s a huge incentive to keep playing. I like that very much.

The combat, too, is combat of my dreams, because it involves building a deck of cards and then playing them. Basically, the combat works like playing straights in poker or something. Abilities have a number, from 0 to 9. You draw a hand of 5 abilities each round. Either going up or down, you can play as many as you can string together. So you could play 4->3 or 1->2->3->4 or 9->8->7 or whatever. The more you can play, the more actions you get a turn, so it’s to your benefit to build a deck to be able to chain together multiple actions. The various moves also often have special effects depending on where they are in the combo. For example, I have a move called Kidney Punch (1). It does significantly more damage if it’s the first move in the combo. I also have a move called Lash Out (2) which is most effective as the last move in a combo. So 1->2 using those moves would deal a whole lot more damage than comboing them 2->1.
On top of comboing, you also have attacks in various disciplines. There are four main ones, from what I can tell: Melee, Ranged, Etheric, and Stealth. Melee, Ranged, and Stealth are pretty self-explanatory. Etheric refers to the drug-and-nightmare-fueled “magic” of the world. I don’t have many Etheric or Stealth powers at the moment, but what’s interesting is that Melee and Ranged powers don’t overlap. You don’t find Ranged attacks in the 0 to 5 range, and you don’t find Melee attacks in the 6-9 range. Since you want to spec out your equipment to help the moves you’re using, it makes it more difficult to use a mixture of Ranged and Melee attacks effectively. I kind of like having to make those kinds of decisions. I’m using a Melee-based deck myself, at the moment.

Like most of these browser games, the amount of turns you can play is limited by your energy. You get some back every day. You can also get extra turns by using up your Hunger and Body points. Hunger is just like Stomach in KoL. You eat various foods, which use up different amounts of Hunger to give you more energy. Body is more like KoL’s Spleen. It’s about how much you can push your body before you can’t take any more. So you can use your body to take caffeine pills or drink coffee and get more energy, or you can use it for various other buffs and things to help make the turns you have more effective. Pretty easy to figure out.

There’s no chat or anything in this game. Even more than other browser RPGs, it’s very much trying to be a single player experience, though I can’t fault it for that. I mean, although I’m lucky to have found some good friends in these games, they started as a single-player sort of thing, and will probably always be, for the most part. But man, it’s just amazing how well thought-out Metroplexity is. It’s a really good game. I hope that it gets to a more complete form and keeps being worked on. It comes highly recommended.