Rebirth, The Uprising

This site is like a clarssoom, except I don't hate it. lol

really neat and descriptive storyline, but TOO many text blocks... i like to play games, not watch them. there were a lot of bugs, and it was too much "Point A to Point B".

with all that said and done, a 5/5, because it's still the best game of last year, thanks to the innovative battle system and plot, even if it felt overly-done at times. bravo, jojoisjo.

I downloaded this game after a long time of anticipation. I played it. Needless to say the graphics were amazing. The gameplay and plot were original. The special moves were basically putting my Legend of Legia RPG Engine into real time. This was executed great if you wrote down the moves and such. The only problem is after you focus you don't have much time to input your move. I'm almost through file 1 as the editor shows. A must download.

I never played Ultima: Ascension, but I remember what the Computer Gaming World review said; U: A is a game with wonderful potential crippled by amazing bugginess.

Rebirth is the ZZT equivalent of U: A.

Writing:

Rebirth features a nice attempt at an epic plotline, with the obligatory battle between Science and Magic, but glaring flaws in the writing undermine it. The pacing is good, but the characterization is so-so. The plotline is above average, but the grammar and spelling are often downright painful. In short, the writing is a mixed bag.

Graphics:

Nice. Can't fault the graphics, really.

Gameplay:

The use of a combo system adds vitality to what has become an otherwise stale combat system (walk up to creatures, touch, back off, repeat), and shows immense promise. However, this gimmick, which is also applied pretty well to some puzzles, isn't quite exploited as well as it could be. Also, as ZZT has a bit of a reaction time problem, the controls are more than a little finicky.

The non-combat gameplay, however, is marred by horrendous bugs. Even in the ostensibly fixed version, I ran into a fatal passage error. Attempting to fix the problem, I found that the file's boards were ordered in a confusing enough manner that I ended up viewing most of the remaining game before I corrected the problem. This is not good.

In addition to the killer passage, there were several points at which objects sent messages that were, for some reason, either never received or just misinterpreted. "BAD COMMAND" errors even popped up now and then, which is certainly NOT a good thing.

Several objects referred to one of the characters by the name of another, and the game used two different spellings of the villain's name. This is not something one gets in a polished, FINISHED game.

Overall:

An ambitious example of why thorough beta testing is crucial to a game's playability.

Rebirth is all in all a good ZZT game. Compared to recent releases, it's great. But, in the long run only good.

The first thing that struck me about the game was it's music. It started to sound like it was very good. And it is, sometimes. The music seems to have no direction and takes wierd turns. But it is used properly and is never tedious. The music is used not just to add depth to a scene, but to add an atmosphere, and that's the most you can ask.

The graphics are spot on. Good shading and drawing on buildings andsuch. The forests are a little lack lustre, but I really enjoyed the caves. They even had stagmites. Sadly there were very few art boards.

So the graphics were good and the music was good. What went wrong?

Well, it was partly the gameplay. It might've been easier for those young'uns out there who can remember every Tekken move on the face of the planet (i think there are 2 million?) but it just either didn't translate well into ZZT or i'm just dyslexic. I was able to kill, but mainly avoid, my enemies, but it just didn't lend itself to aiding the rest of the game. The concept is great, don't get me wrong, but having to do diffenrt co-ordinated moves while surrounded on all sides by monsters was confusing. Plus I was never really clear as to what event lead to you using your powers. Probably just missed that though.

The buggy battle system might've been masked as better than it was if you didn't have so many chances to experiment with it. You need to fight, or in my case avoid (another flaw, you could get through a lot of the game with little challange.) a lot of monsters in a lot of areas. This lent to frustration as a dying player could not properly execute his moves whilst surrounded my ten monsters. Well, for this sort of battle system, I would've prefered less monsters with more skill, that way you can have a nice 1 on 2, 1 on 3 battle with creatures that knew their way around the ring making battle a little more interesting.

Next we have the story. Now in this day we are coming short on good RPG stories because all of the easy ones are taken. So it's fair to say that the story is a good spin on some things that have been done before. It's not bad, I enjoy familiarity, total originallity is reallt hard. Look at my games, a zombie game and on based on Wolfestein. But I digress from the topic.

Rebirth, The Uprising is a good game, it really is. There are just a few snags keeping it from being a great one.