Mobile games in recent years have been making great strides in what they do. More and more titles are released internationally with more and more content and complexity in their game play. Once, we only had Centipede on a button phone, now we have full-blown RPG's available. One such RPG is Ares Virus, but is the amount of content and complex mechanics a recipe for a great game?
In a Nutshell
Overall Opinion: Not that great
Pros:
- nice artstyle, great graphics
- relatively complete game
- large, non-linear world
Cons:
- very basic, slow-paced writing
- questionable gameplay mechanics
- quest tracking is primitive and basic
Story
In Ares Virus, you play as a special operations soldier named Neil. In the very beginning of the game, your squad is tasked to obtain a cure for a disease that has infested the world with zombies. Your squad arrives on-site, but a betrayal sends the mission awry and decimates your squad. Now, Neil must complete his mission and piece together what happened to his squad. Along the way, he'll help the denizens of the world he comes across and meet many obstacles.
The story concept is actually really great. The world that was built in the beginning of the game and the way that the player is introduced to the situation at hand is well-done. The problem though is what comes after the tutorial. A lot of the dialogue has grammatical errors. However, because the developer is Chinese, I can excuse their non-native language use. However, I do feel that the interactions between the main character and the rest of the world are much too simple and predictable, and making up words doesn't help the presentation of it.
Any mention of Locust, the game's gang-like organization, felt a little too convenient and simplistic for example. Each time they come up in a conversation, it was as if they were magically created. There was no reason for their existence from the parts I played through. It almost felt like a detail the writers kind of forgot about and left a placeholder explanation for it before release.
Neil himself is a bit of a Mary Sue. For some reason almost everyone in the game entrusts him with tasks. He shows up at a village after stopping by at a bulletin board, and the village chief doesn't really react with anything more than slight surprise. Neil showed up right after the village was attacked by Locust, so it's a bit strange that the villagers don't treat him with more suspicion, save for an outcast boy and a random grandmother on the outskirts of the village.
Graphics and Aeshetics
The art style of this game is actually really nice. It's a very minimalistic aesthetic, with limited colours and a reliance on shading. The character designs are quite western, with stronger shapes and sharper angles in the features. The combination of these factors give a very bleak presentation that reflects the intended resignation of the game's inhabitants.
The game is from a bird's eye view, so the in-game visuals are a bit limited when it comes to human proportions. The animations are unnatural, but it can be excused as a result of the perspective the developers have chosen to go with. I believe it's really difficult to keep natural-looking actions when the camera is looking from directly overhead. That being said, the animations have a strange quality to them that reminds me of flash games from the early 2000's, not that it's a bad thing.
The environments are also really nice, and there is a lot to see and explore in this game. There is actually quite a large amount of variation for a game that is largely monochrome. Areas are also very clear on what they are representing - the quarry looks great for an area that is only rocks, and the starting forest was actually visually appealing for an early game environment.
Sound
The soundtrack to this game is quite minimal. There is no music except for the opening screen, as far as I've played. Sound effects are consistent, and they actually don't sound too bad through headphones. Mobs occasionally make noises that are sensible, like chickens clucking and dogs barking, but there are no voices for human enemies. In place of human sounds, the developer opted to keep dialogue boxes that track the NPC.
Gameplay and Mechanics
The game is an action RPG, so to fulfill the action part of that description, there is a virtual joystick for movement. Thanks to the bird's eye view, the game doesn't require another joystick for camera manipulation. Depending on your equipment, there is also a button for sprinting. Higher level gear determines how fast your sprint is. Movement is a bit clunky thanks to the nature of a virtual joystick, and low level equipment make travelling a huge slog.
The other fundamental mechanic is attacking. To attack, you need to hold and drag away from your target. There is a red cone that appears in front of you to show you where you are currently aiming and what your swing will hit so that you aren't completely lost when it comes to targeting things. With ranged weapons, the cone is narrower and longer, but only hits the closest target. The longer the attack is held, the narrower the cone is for ranged weapons, and wider for melee weapons, and the damage is increased. Additionally, the weapon's durability is affected less if the attack is fully charged, so the weapon lasts longer if each attack is charge to the maximum. The player's movement speed is significantly slowed when the attack is held.
I'm not such a fan of this mechanic. On paper it sounds fairly sensible, but in practice it creates a really wonky experience. The charge takes quite a while to reach the maximum, and the game tries to put the player into situations where the charge isn't beneficial, but the difference between charged and uncharged was too great to make the uncharged attack worth it. It felt like fighting with a rolled up newspaper when using uncharged attacks, and the slow movement speed makes for really choppy combat.
On top of that, there is a stamina bar that needs to be kept track of. If the stamina bar becomes depleted, you can't make any attacks. Charged attacks and sprinting take a lot of stamina, but uncharged attacks take some stamina as well. This makes movement the biggest issue I have with this game. It can be said that this results in Souls-like mechanics, but the Souls series gives you more escape mechanics, such as the roll. You can't even block in this game, and your only escape is the sprint.
On the RPG side of things, there are no character levels in this game. Player growth is done through finding blueprints for better equipment. Naturally, materials need to be gathered in the wild areas of the game, and there are crafting stations that can be accessed in the home map. Materials don't stack very well in the wild, and fill up the backpack really quickly. Fortunately, returning to the home map automatically deposits the materials into the infinite storage.
There are also side quests that can be picked up along the way. Most of these side quests are side quests, and unfortunately the writing does no favours to make them bearable. They're a chore as you can only track one quest at a time, and the tracker does not track them completely. For example, if you're on a quest to collect some materials, the tracker doesn't let you know what you've already collected. This is especially frustrating since items are automatically placed in storage once you arrive in the home instance.
Final Thoughts
This game had lots of potential, but fell short of its admirably high goal. It had a clear vision of what it wanted to be, but I couldn't bring myself to go very far in the game. To keep things fair, I can't give this game a numerical rating, but I can say that I have less-than-average feelings for this title.
There is a lot to see, and what you do see is really easy on the eyes. However, there are some negatives that hurt it's presentation, namely mechanics that arguably don't work out too well together. The nails on its coffin are its quest tracking and basic-level writing.
That's it for Ares Virus. Thanks for reading!