Path of Exile
This week I decided to do a review of a game in development by New Zealand based developer: Grinding Gear Games.
I stumbled across this game some time ago whilst it was still in an early alpha stage. The developers offered ongoing access to the game in it's current state and access to every succeeding build through to game release for a nominal fee. By doing so they offered incentive for early investment by the gaming community whilst sourcing crowd based funding in order to continue development of the game (an increasingly common practice for Indie studios). Note the game will be free on release and will be supported by an ethical micro-transaction system.
Whilst it is important to research games that have come before in order to find inspiration for future titles it is also important to research the current market, PoE is a product of such research. Grinding Gear Games was formed due to the distinct lack of modern offerings in the Action RPG genre of games; from a small group of ARPG enthusiasts, GGG was formed.
As is typical of an ARPG, PoE involves real time interactivity in a hack and slash style of game play. The player is presented with a user-interface containing pertinent character and status information (health and mana globe, action bars, mini map etc). In so far as the interface is concerned it is very typical to the genre and is reminiscent of many such games categorised by this genre (Diablo Series, Titan Quest, Dungeon Seige etc comes to mind).
The player is an escaped convict stranded on a remote continent home to criminals and dangerous monster and beasts. Hey this sounds familiar, doesn't it? The player, now given a new lease on life with their freedom must complete trials of ever increasing difficulty and face opponents of ever increasing strength whist traversing the continent and progressing through the story. This is achieved by obtaining powerful magical items and developing class based skills in order to survive this challenges.
The goal of PoE differs a little from that of traditional ARPGs. Whilst at first the game follows an act based structure (only two acts), end game content is served by finding and completing maps (which are found with similar item qualities and affixes as items have). It this way there is no definitive goal condition, only continuing mindless hack and slash that some of us gamers love.
This game offers a number of challenges for the player. As the game progresses the opponents become more difficult to best, on top of this the game may be replayed with harder difficulty modes and finally with increasing difficulty map drops. To further offer more challenge the game may be played with a variety of different rule sets (permanent death, harder monsters, world player-vs-player etc).
From what I have played (only a few hours so far) the game offers little in the way of narrative but this is typical to the genre and is not really all that necessary for this style of ARPG.
What sets PoE apart from the myriad of ARPG games that have preceded it, is that it takes everything commonly found in ARPGs of the past and puts its own twist on it. The developers have taken what everyone loves about ARPGs and packaged it into a nice neat title. The game offers everything one would expect in an ARPG and more.
Below is a screenshot of the skill tree from PoE showing the amazing complexity and the literally endless character builds that one may design (some would say this is far too complex, I love it!).
This game has highlighted to me once again the importance of not deterring too much from the standard path / genre of a game. As has been mentioned to us in class, humans like something to be both new and yet familiar. PoE is a great example of this. There are far too many examples of what sets this game apart, too numerous to list in this review to be certain.
On that note, I might just have to fire up PoE and play some more :D
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