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Head-on Collision: Kingdoms Collide out now
Posted on March 13th, 2010 10 comments
Blogging? On a weekend? Who’da thunk it? It’s just another quick one, though, to tell you that the much-anticipated HL2 mod Kingdoms Collide has been released. It’s a swords-and-magic-and-looks-a-bit-like-Oblivion-graphics multiplayer mod which I know Andrea has been looking forward to. So, naturally, I’m downloading it now so I can pip him to the review. More as soon as I’ve had the chance to play it for a while, but for now, you can grab the installer from here, and if you want to run a dedicated server you can do so with these files.
10 responses to “Head-on Collision: Kingdoms Collide out now”
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Just had a quick go now. At first I thought it was fiddly and rubbish. Then I ended up in a really awesome extended one-on-one fight with this one guy, where we were artfully blocking and dodging and all sorts. If people start to play like that… well, yes, more soon I suspect.
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DrGonzo March 13th, 2010 at 19:11
I tried it briefly. Admittedly I was tired but I had no idea what was going on. Kept thinking it could be pretty cool if the servers weren’t for 32 players, it became a clusterfuck of people lagging all over the place.
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Jakkar March 13th, 2010 at 20:09
Oh, my, good, god..
I’ve not played a mod this bad in years D:
Unintuitive upgrade interface greets you to the game, mass of weapons you can’t afford using points that don’t change – magic powers no-one uses because they appear to be wholly useless, and a melee combat system broadly ripped from similar games of the last 5-10 years, but godawfully laggy and poorly animated.
Played half an hour and didn’t -land- a single strike on an enemy, lost in a spraying haze of sparks and glowing lights, overdone bloom effects and spiky, spiky hair. Whirling cloaks made of wooden panels, slapping me in the face. Endless cries of GYUH, YEAGH, GYUH, punctuated by the same ‘TING, TING, TING’ strike effect.
Pirates Vikings and Knights 2, Age of Chivalry. These are two games that annoy the hell out of me, but with great style and varying presentation coupled with simple but entertaining gameplay.
Anything melee on source is rather awkward, mod or not – TF2’s ever-controversial Spy play is a good show of this. For many, Spyplay/Spy avoidance is a great challenge due to undefinable and nigh-unfixable lag/choke/interp issues..
.. but this takes akward and adds a horrendous pile of overly shiny gadgets into the mix with the powerful feeling that none of them were actually thought about or tested.
The ‘DragonBall Z’ school of design; add grunting, rage, glowing balls of light and excercise NO RESTRAINT – then serve warm to the public.
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@Jakkar,
That’s roughly how I felt about it at first, the weapon points thing seems to be a first play bug or something though that’s hella confusing. The second time I played it worked fine.
After playing some more I started liking it some more, it’s true some things need alot of work, but I’ve played PVK2 and AoC in their early days, they needed work then as well, give it time and I think it’ll get better.
I’ve posted some suggestions and constructive critiscm over at the ModDB release post, go check it out for those interesting in the rest of my insignificant opinion
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DrGonzo: I agree that it would be infinitely better with a lower server cap. Because of the nature of the game, players tend to all flock to one part of the map, and it gets a bit messy. Some of the best fights I’ve had have been one-on-one when we’ve fucked off the objective play and just gone for a good old swords ‘n’ shields dual.
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DrGonzo March 13th, 2010 at 21:14
@Lewis Denby. Indeed. Hopefully they will continue to develop this mod. While it’s closer to shit than good at the moment, it does have a lot of potential. Ever play Dark Messiah? This reminded me of that a lot, and DM was very good fun.
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Jakkar March 13th, 2010 at 21:26
I was left with a very sour taste after that brief experience, forgive my rather acid words up there – a little dramatic.
It turns me off harshly to see a game so emphasising visuals while ignoring any depth of gameplay. I observed other players for a while, and those who had a positive kill/death ratio (as that server had no deeper goal than a face to face rush) were those who took a Master Sword, no magic, and simply ran, spamming the left mouse button while circlestrafing.
A lot of work needs to be done before this will attract any long term community or real critical acclaim.
The worst failure is simply that there’s very little game here. Just.. swinging.
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Manual HERE http://www.kingdomscollide.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=55&start=0&sid=4fe1919ee811fbe31a3e4720687ae5c3
Thought it might interest a few people :)
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Andrea Varotsis March 13th, 2010 at 10:18