Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Dragons of Atlantis: Heirs of the Dragon


Year: 2013
Genre: General
Website: https://www.kabam.com/games/dragons-of-atlantis-heirs


Shane:
  • Platform: Android
  • Hours logged: 25.0
  • Playthroughs: 0
  • Rating: 6/10


Notes and Discussions:
  • Shane (5/6/2014):  I had a weekend.  I burned it into this game.  I am not sorry.

    So it was Friday evening and I was surfing around on Twitter after I remembered that I set up a twitter account a number of years ago.  Wil Wheaton was talking about being involved in a video game.  "Interesting" I thought... I like Wil Wheaton and I like video games.  Do I dare install this thing and maybe end up being disappointed by something to which Wil has attached his name? Well I was sitting on the throne and figured I was going to be there for a few minutes so... why not?

    This is one of the category of games that start with a lot of stuff for a user to do.  I could occupy myself pretty much constantly for a few hours, setting something to upgrade and waiting the 30 seconds to a minute and a half or so that it took it to update before I could do something else. (Damn you farmville style mechanics... I resisted thinking about this until now.  The hours I sunk into that wasteland back in the day...)  Things carried along rapidly enough and it seemed that everything I did was in one way or another associated with a "quest" that I was supposed to accomplish.  Pretty cool really.  The game is set up to reward you for fucking everything.  I had to scratch my ass and half expected to see a little "quest completed" dialog pop up.

    A light storyline followed me along my journey.  Something about dragons and Atlantis and I should come up with jobs for all of these migrant peasants.  I trolled along (like the fishing kind, not the "being a dick on the internet" kind) and was actually kind of proud of myself for accomplishing as much as I was.  I was even relaxed.  I suppose that is one of the better side effects of a good game.

    Pretty soon I realized it was taking longer to complete the tasks offered me.  I thought about a game with a similar mechanic that I heard about and ever-so-slightly wanted to play.  When I set up a task in Dragons that took an hour I installed Dungeon Keeper and played through the introductory rapid reward stuff there at the same time.  I then had TWO games patting me on the back for doing simple things!  I loved it!

    You know what?  There isn't anything profound here.  I did a bunch of this game.  I loved it.  I can even see myself leaving it installed and dinking around in this world on occasion, for a few seconds, before I go back to whatever else I was working on. Would I recommend it to someone else?  Meh.  No, not really.  I felt more positively about it than Dungeon Keeper but it still feels like just another entry in a sea of similar gameplay systems.  At least with Dungeon Keeper I could recognize the sprites as something from my childhood.

    Devs, thanks for this game.  It was worth my time and I tossed you a couple bucks to support your efforts.  And that is about all I have to say about that.

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