City of Steam
Preview
High fantasy steampunk
by Zee Salahuddin
previewed on PC
Learning the ropes (cntd)
The attack was led by a winged demon, which turned out to be a bit of a scary fight as I struggled to keep my health in check. Combat felt meaty and more hack-n-slash than your typical, traditional MMO fare, which was a welcome change in pace. Bear in mind that this entire time, the train is moving, and you can see a short distance around it, as the landscape rushes past you in a flurry. Sure it’s the same repetitive textures, structures, and terrain details, but it conveys a sense of momentum and urgency that I am sure the developers were aiming for. All in all, it’s a well-designed initial segment that teaches you the absolutely elementary stuff.
The skill-tree offers a plethora of abilities that you can improve as you continue to level and grow stronger. There are multiple paths, and though the tree may seem daunting at first, it is really quite straight-forward once you get the hang of it.
Blowing off some steam
Nexus is massive, and due to the nature of the game, broken up into several sections that take a short loading screen to get to. One of the coolest features I saw was the ability to auto-travel. The city’s streets are peppered with massive sign-boards that list the various locations you can travel to as icons. You can interact with any icon by clicking on it, and that sets your character on the shortest path to the destination with zero input needed from you. Your hero will simply run to within a meter of two of that point and wait for further input. If you change your mind about the destination, just interact with the movement controls to take over your hero’s actions. I felt this was a very cool implementation of fast-travel within cities.
Quest boards also dot the landscape, giving you directions to quest givers, for example. This is either an asset, depending on how you quest in MMOs, or it’s a useless distraction, but at least you have the option. The quests I attempted were nothing ground-breaking or revolutionary, but they kept me engaged, as the story of my Stoigmari Gunner unfolded. During my adventures, elements of the tutorial still kept popping up, to help me understand the world a little better. Having played an alpha version of the game, it’s still fairly premature to comment on the character, depth, or emotional profoundness of the quests and the overall story. But already, the folks at Mechanist Games have presented a very stable version of this browser game, with possibly several tweaks and improvements to come.
High fantasy steampunk
City of Steam will likely not redefine the genre, nor will it be the ever-elusive next WoW-killer. It offers some interesting twists on established class paradigms, and there are some innovative sub-systems in place. While not exactly groundbreaking, I felt strangely drawn to its world. Maybe it is because it is a fresh MMO genre, high fantasy combined with steampunk elements. Or maybe because you can play it right in your browser. Or maybe simply because it has character, grace, and exudes an air of lightheartedness that is both endearing and refreshing. City of Steam is only in alpha, but if they continue to improve on everything I have seen so far, it may well be my next casual indulgence.
