Editor's note: I heartily approved of the Bitmob Game Club's next selection: Dungeon Runners. Turns out that the game's immenient demise means that new players can't sign up. So they're moving on to Battlefield Heroes. I expect to read about flying around with soldiers on airplane wings. -Jason
The Bitmob Game Club, created by the inimitable J. Cosmo Cohen, is a community effort. Four Bitmobbers play through a section of a (typically free) game. After doing so, they each turn in a piece in whatever style they decide they like best to recount their experiences and tell us what they think about the game.
In this edition, we're tackling two games, both primarily multiplayer-focused. The goal is a more diverse collection of articles. This also means that the phrase "play along" is more accurate then ever before. Feel free to download the game yourself and join in with Game Club members.
The first two weeks center on Battlefield Heroes. This free online first-person shooter is a bit goofy, but deep enough to addict. One of the many games to try the, free-to-play-but-optional-cash-upgrades formula. Will anyone of our contributors be addicted enough to fork over their hard-earned money? We'll see, and you can play along by downloading the game here.
Now, let's meet the cast of Game Club.
Brian Petro-Roy: When not giving all of his fellow Bitmobbers friendly tips on writing, Brian dives into some pretty deep topics in very insightful and creative ways. How can anyone resist clicking on a story called "Videogame Music Needs to go Back to the Future"?
James DeRosa: Obviously, James likes to keep busy. With school, work, his own site, and multiple Bitmob commitments, I'm surprised he ever gets any sleep. Somehow, he manages to write ridiculously thoughtful -- and long -- articles amid all his other activities.
Jasmine Maleficent Rea: We all know and love Jasmine, Bitmob intern extraordinaire, mostly because we want to get into the Spotlights. Also, she's a girl, and she plays video games. That's supposed to be really rare. At least that's what I've been told.
Chris Davidson: I don't know very much about Chris. He should really get on Twitter or something. I do know that his entries in the last Game Club made me giggle like a school girl. And that's really all that matters, isn't it?
There's the Bitmob Game Club Third Edition Crew. Please play along with them, and leave them plenty of comments. Also, since the games featured in this edition are both multiplayer, you can feel free to grief the hell out of them. I'm sure they'll appreciate it, as they can then write about what a jerk you are.
Comments (15)
Seriously, there is a giant bomb that is going to go off the day the servers go offline. I kinda want to be there for it.
Also, you 4 should TOTALLY hang around until Jan 1st and write a follow-up Game Club entry about the end.
We shoould watch the end.
You see, when we intrepid Game Clubbers attempted to install Dungeon Runners, we ran into the slight problem in that it appears that DR has been removed from NCsoft's store, meaning that it is impossible to create a new account at the moment. We received word from Alex that we would start this edition with the *other* planned game for this month, Battlefield Heroes, until we could figure out what to do about DR.
Although, I believe that one of the ways you can get a serial code for DR is to get referred by a friend - if you gave us all referrals, we might still be able to pull this off. Hmm...
You see, when we intrepid Game Clubbers attempted to install Dungeon Runners, we ran into the slight problem in that it appears that DR has been removed from NCsoft's store, meaning that it is impossible to create a new account at the moment.
Actually, it will be impossible from now on. NCSoft has shut down the game permanently due to lack of interest in the game.
How do we play with the Game Club?
This game looks like it took a lot of inspiration from TF2. So, I am all over it.
Ben Cousins, executive producer at DICE (who developed Battlefield Heroes):
We developed our art style in January 2007. At that point there were very little images out there from Team Fortress. As more details about Team Fortress came out we said 'well there's a similarity here because we're both cartoony, shall we change and go realistic again?'. But no we decided we wanted to keep going. The alternative would have been another gritty, realistic WW2 game and everyone's fed up with those. We really believe in our style and we're just going to go ahead and do it.