I've been looking for something interesting to do lately, so I am going to see how I fair out writing a game reviews, but instead of focusing on a big boxed titles, I am going to focus on another growing sector in gaming: Free games. Free Games after all is not only face book, and have been around for long time. They consist of the fan made flash titles to full mmo's. While there has been some big free to play games; BF Free to play and World of Tanks as examples. I will look for more unknown titles, because free titles are a great way to get your gaming fix without touching your budget
TRIBAL WARS REVIEW
MMO are time commitments, highly addictive social games which game play consists of nothing but grind. Tribal wars is no exception to any of those and if you are hooked you will be setting up the alarm at 3 am to send off that final attack to take that pesky village you have planned for the last month. While despite being a text based game you will be competing nonstop 24/7, were one day off can mean game over and teamwork and tactics are vital for success. So if you enjoy teamwork and lots of tactics and strategic game play and at the same time not scared away by Microsoft excel then Tribal Wars may be the game you been looking for.
Like mentioned above Tribal wars is a text based game, and while your zork nostalgia kicks in Tribal wars isn't exactly a text adventure. When jumping into one of Tribal wars Worlds with around 20-30 thousand other players you are straight away given control of a small village. Depending on the worlds settings you village usually consist of a town centre, iron/wood and clay mines and a warehouse. Your one and only goal is a very straight forward: Survive as long as possible. You do this by upgrading and building your buildings and when you first start you will hit the town centre and hit upgrade/build to your desired buildings and in less than 1 minute the real time mmo kicks in. Your buildings don’t finish instantly nor is it like other games like age of empires with an <1 minute wait. Waits in TW range from 10 minutes to 48+ hours and that’s for everything you do which can make or break TW for you, but if you are hooked you will spend hours on end waiting as that timer clicks down to zero. The other thing that’s on a timer is your resources that will again stop you in your tracks and force you to wait it out as resources are produced over time and depending on your resource buildings levels it can grow fast or slow, making upgrading resources a vital early key to survival, but resources aren't only sourced by your buildings but from also other player’s villages and barbarian villages, this Is where the fun of tribal wars begins.
Dubbed Farming by the TW community, this is where you send troops and attack other player or barbarian villages (non player active villages) and take their produced resources. And once the 3-5 day peace mode is deactivated you are free to attack any of the thousands of players in the world, but be aware that you also can be attacked at the same time. The World is displayed to you in a simple map which consists of a tiny blue dot representing your village and a vast variety of dark red dots representing the other players as well as grey dots representing inactive/barbarian villages. So when laying first eyes on this map you will right away discover "you are not alone" with depending on when you join the world can range from 3-10 other players right next to you and 100s of players only an fraction further away. But don’t panic this game isn't village wars but Tribal wars, and you can band together to form tribes up to 50-100 players in a single tribe. From there Tribal wars moves from a village sim to a political sim were tribes are more like nations, with some tribes can have their very own government’s type structure, but more likely you will end up in a tribe run by a dictator who calls the shots. Tribes are the social aspect of this mmo, like guilds in WOW you are an team working together to survive by helping and communicating with each other though your own tribe internal forum or though the games internal messaging system. Now you don’t have to join an tribe if you don’t want to but instead can create your own if you want, once you have the power and some members to control you are given an few options of interactivity with other tribes such as alliances, non-aggressive-pacts (nap) or set them as neutral or enemies. You can also declare war if one tribe is getting in your way, and when that happens you tribe will call on your armies, this is the 3rd aspect of tribal wars and is also loaded with an array of tactics and choices to your own desire.
Armies are the life blood of any player willing to survive or dominate the landscape of your area, and you are given a few different types of troops to create your army. You start off with basic spears to begin with and with the upgrades of military buildings such as barracks, stables, smithy, siege works you unlock a variety of different types that come down to either offensive or defensive types. Like buildings tho units each take an certain amount of time ranging from seconds to minutes depending on your buildings levels, so building an army will take an lot of time, making losing troops have an damaging and almost game over effect. So you have to be wise when using your troops, and have to be a smart general when attacking other players. When you do attack an fellow player there is no fancy combat or total war battles, once your troops reach their destination you are given a sheet with the results like when auto resolving an match in an sports game.
The tactics for this text base mmo is staggering, and once you get in a tribe with a few experienced veterans you will see the amount of chess like moves there are. If you managed to survive long enough to past the initial stage you are thrusted into the 4th aspect of tribal wars the conquest aspect where when your village is upgraded to the point you can recruit nobles you can be use them to take over other villages and form your very own empire. If you reach this stage you are going to be hooked as getting and using an noble takes heaps of time and you will be there every second watching it count down. But don’t feel upset when the game can turn from entertainment to full on painful torture as you watch months of work get destroyed.
Being a free mmo game there has to be a catch for where the money is generated, and tribal wars system is good that you don’t ever need the premium service that is offered. But if you do go premium you are given some bonus that are worth your few dollars an month such as the ability to put more than 2 buildings on the waiting lists which gives you and few extra hours sleep at night, mobile phone optimised version, better maps and more stats, toolbars on the village page. While it’s nice you won’t feel that getting it is a must to do well.
While it does sound like a mmo to quickly jump on there are some issues, the waits can be a turn off. It does that around a month or 2 to really get the game going. You can be placed in an unlucky area surrounded by experienced players that have formed a pre made tribe. Also it’s pointless to join any world late in the game so you have to wait for when an new world open ups or else you will be months behind, but those issues aren’t game breaking and the game play is well balanced and fair.
So if you are looking for someone that free and involve lots of tactics regardless of its text base structure, jump into a game of tribal wars and remember this game is free so there is no harm in creating an account and giving it a quick try. I recommend this to people who enjoy chess, like lots of tactics, patient and have plenty of time because this is an game that can give you months to years game play for no an single cent.
Visit: www.tribalwars.net to play American servers (other servers with different languages are available)
By mchaza.
Of Course That's Just My Opinion, I Could Be Wrong
