Beside NCsoft’s mega MMOs, Blade & Soul and Lineage 2: Goddess of Destruction, most of the gamers forgot about the company’s other offerings. Metal Black: Alternative happens to be one of them. First displayed at last year’s G*Star, the game is now playable with demos available at the convention. While most upcoming MMOs are focused on “hack n slash”, Metal Black’s main feature will instead be “shoot n bomb”.
 |
| 2 of the game’s developers at G*Star 2010 |
For the demo, there are 3 available classes: Striker, Inspector and Machinist. The game will be instanced-based, with players able to meet up at a common town map to trade, chat, form parties etc. According to the game’s developers, each round of PvE will last about 15-20minutes, so playing a few hours each day will give players a sense of satisfaction without having them glued to the screen for an extended period of time. Talk about fast-paced action!
A total of 3-4 people can party up for PvE maps, while PvPs are at a maximum of 8 people, with Guild Vs Guild battles to come. As you can see in the trailer, each character comes with their own armored tank of some sort. It is known as the APU, Armed Personal Unit. While this function is available at the demos with no restrictions, it will be limited in the actual game. See it as an ultimate skill of sorts, dealing tons of damage.
Boss battles will also be rather interesting, and to me, an old-school feature revived. Each boss will have 3 stages and will change according to a drop in health points. The 3 modes, in descending health points order, are Defensive, Offensive and Berserk. Without going into details, I guess you know what this does. The boss available at G*Star 2010 demo is called Builder Sentinel RX-II.
Will the players find the gameplay repetitive after a short while? This tough question was put forward to the lead developer. He replied that each level within the game will provide players with something new to do, exploring new instances and maps, configuring APU, PvP modes and so on. More features are currently in development, hence Metal Black: Alternative wil be one for the long term.
Metal Black: Alternative is currently look to launch in 2011, with a total of 4-5 classes available. The payment model has not yet been confirmed.
