To our lost gift

These are words that you will never read, for we will never get the chance to teach you what they mean. Those same eyes will never see the joy that learning you existed did create. You were a dream come true, a wish plucked from the heavens made flesh. Neither of us understand why you could not stay, and we both bear the weight of that sadness.

We cannot be sure when life begins, but we do know when it ends. Just know that a house full of love awaits you if you choose to come back.

8bitMMO Review

Have you ever wondered what an MMO would look like if it were made in the Nintendo/Sega Master System era? Well, keep wondering. This isn't that game. Crated by Robby Zinchak, 8BitMMO was apparently hailed by a couple indie game cons that I have never heard of as being good.

It decidedly isn't.

First, the graphics of the world look in theme, but the actual characters look utterly cheap. The controls are horrible. You move with either the WASD combo, or via the arrow keys, and attack with the space bar. Here is the thing, your character only ever faces left or right, and  only marginally. And your sword attack direction is in the last faced direction. This makes combat problematic. The "animation" for the game looks and feels cheap.

Hailed as a 100% player built world, oh dear god does it ever look like it. Towns are half finished and devoid of any NPCs, there are a few enemy generators which spawn some supposedly humourous enemy types (one styled after Yahtzee Crowshaw's avatar for his videos, for example), but there is virtually no content.

There are about 4 actual quests before you are dropped into the hell that is player generated quests. These quests amount to wandering around looking for a reward block which you click on to complete it, then you run back for another. Depending on the nastiness of the individual, the warp to there can be safe, or just a death trap. And I mean a literal death trap, placed on spikes that insta-kill you, for the lulz I suppose.

Now, with a dedicated, motivated community like the Minecraft one, which is obviously where the creators mind was, this could be a fantastic game. In reality, combine free with player creation, and suddenly your game becomes an utter garbage heap of useless, time wasting crap.

What makes this a special kind of hell though is the massive amount of lag. Supposedly there is a player versus player option, but I didn't bother to try it. The game lags so hard that you frequently warp across the screen, or keep moving long after you stop. You freeze up, you fall off walkways, and in general have a terrible time.

The final straw is the economy of the game. You need gold to build. God comes from questing, which we have established is hell. It also comes, slowly from killing enemies. OR if you purchase the game... Yea, it is one of those brilliant, pay for fun style games. So afraid of the big guys using this, we forgot the little guys can too.

While the horrible lag issues do showcase why MMOs need steady funding to be viable, this is not the game to fund. The player created content idea sounds great on paper, given how player created content has really revolutionized different games, even creating a entirely new genre of games. However, without a guiding hand or structure from a dedicated creator, what results is what resides in this game: an utter goddamned mess.