At PAX East 2012, we had our first chance to try out the upcoming monster hunting MMO from the folks over at Perfect World, RaiderZ. I was impressed by the amount of polish on a game that was still ways before a closed beta. There we got to see a beach side area which was colorful and bright. At E3 2012, we got to see a new area, a new boss and some new community features.
The new area that was shown off was almost the opposite of the bright beach side area from before. This was done mainly to showcase the fact that the game isn't all brightly colored with beautiful vistas, but also has some dark and eerie areas as well. This new area was a cemetery where various zombies sprung up from their graves and had to be disposed of. It was definitely a nice contrast from the area shown off before, and we were assured that the game's many areas will all be vastly different from each other.
Before we ventured forth to kill zombies and eventually slaughter the boss, we each prepared some sort of food item to boost our stats. This was one of the newly showcased community features. From your inventory, you can select various foods that you can then share with other people. Once you click on the desired food of choice, it will pop up in front of you either on a cooking table, in a cauldron, etc. Other players around you can then benefit from this as well, taking part of the feast and gaining stat boosts.
Another community aspect shown off were instruments. Though very little to do with actual gameplay, it was a cool little distraction that actually allowed you to play your instrument with your keys. I can see music aficionados get creative here.
After our short little demo of community features, it was time to hunt some monsters. Venturing through the cemetery, every kill will usually offer some sort of crafting material. We were told that you won't find any gear from monsters. Instead, various crafting material and recipes will drop which will allow you to craft various gear and weaponry to boost your character. It's yet one more Monster Hunter trope that I'm glad to see in RaiderZ.
The boss fight, though somewhat challenging wasn't as hard with three people taking him on, not to mention we were fairly high level. Though once again, being in the style of Monster Hunter, we were assured that the boss fights will be no walk in the park, and that they'll push players to the limit with trying to figure out the best strategies to take them out, figure out their weak spots, etc.
RaiderZ keeps on impressing us every time we see it, and we can't wait to get our hands on the upcoming beta's later this year.
