Gaming Signal: REVIEW: Dungeon Runners

REVIEW: Dungeon Runners

I got a chance to play a new, mostly free, action oriented MMORPG named Dungeon Runners this past weekend and I thought I would share the results.

This new title is produced by NCSoft and acts pretty much exactly like an online Diablo 2 clone. That was a fine game, so you could do a lot worse than copy it. Unfortunately, Dungeon Runners leaves a little to be desired as we'll see below. The game is free to download and play, but if you want certain features - such as a bank or the ability to equip the best items - you have to subscribe. This alone makes it worth your time if you've ever enjoyed Titan Quest or Diablo.

The action is classic hack-n-slash Diablo-style with quantities of monsters rushing around you and needing a smack-down. And the loot drops exactly as in those other action RPG titles - with so much you rapidly run out of ways to carry it. But like all the latest of this style, you can use a scroll to teleport back to town to sell your inventory off and keep going. It is in the loot that the game shows you the first element of its business model. The best items (of mythical, epic, and rare level) are only available for use by subscribers. You can see the item, see its uber stats, but you can't equip it unless you start paying $5/mo. I felt this was ingenious - I've seen plenty of people subscribe right after getting that great piece of loot.

The graphics are pretty poor and much better suited to 1 or 2 generations old graphic cards. This is good in that it plays one a wide variety of systems, but bad in that it looks dated. The music is monotonous - I eventually turned it off completely. Sound effects are reasonable, but nothing special.

Overall the core gameplay is there, but the game seems unfinished in several ways. You can only have 1 character per logon - which seems pretty restrictive for an MMO. You can't trade items to other players without throwing it on the ground - which is pretty odd. The game lacks many of the best conventions of this genre that has been perfected by games like Titan Quest - your inventory isn't sortable, you can't see the entire skills tree to know what to focus towards, and the story is pretty flat. And finally the game has some bizarre NPC audio that attempts to be funny but ends up being annoying. For example, several NPCs with bad Scottish accent's routinly say "I know a lady with a lot of money, her name is Penny." Ugh.

There is a lot to like about Dungeon Runners, but the game has a ways to go as well. At least I can say for sure that the price is right to try it out and see if it's your style of action game.