Cosmic Break is a mech MMOTPS developed by Japanese game studio Cyberstep. The game is set in a futuristic time where there's fusion of human and robots are uncommon.

Story

The story in Cosmic Break is fairly simple. There are three Unions which rival each other. The nation of fighters who believe courage and friendliness win in battle, Bladine. The nation of those who choose strength and honor, Dostrex, and the nation of those who trust in wisdom, Wizard. With each of the Unions is a God that is starting to fade away. To bring it back, they must gain the favor of the Cosmos, and the only way to do that is to defeat other nations in battle. Against all of the nations is the great evil force in the game, Chaos, who's only purpose is to make sure none of the deities are revived; the unions all work together at defeating this common foe, but are rivals outside of that field.

Mech Types

Starting the game you pick your initial mech, choosing one of three predefined builds - Land, Air or Artillery. Each build has its weaknesses and its strengths. There is also the fourth type - Support.

Air mech is strong on boosters and air supremacy and good with beam weapons. They can be taken down quickly by bomb and missile type attacks.

Land mech is melee oriented tough robot with powerfull sub and main weapons. They tend to be weak against beam type weapons.

Artillery mech is long range firepower support, with the ability to utilize many different long range weapons including various bombs and missiles. They are weak against melee sub weapons.

Support mech have the ability to use special Wonder Bits unavailable to other robots, allowing it to repair and support their allies during battle. Some of them also have radar related abilities, as well abilities that allow them to inflict enemies with various status effects. However, they tend to lack the raw firepower of other types.

Controls

The controls are easy to pick up. The WASD keys are movement. Press them quickly to dash and run. The mouse controls the camera and targeting cross-hair. The left button fires the primary (usually projectile) weapon, and the right button fires the secondary (usually melee) weapon, but this can all be changed in the garage considering you can equip different weapons. Holding the shift keys and pressing the respective button changes your weapon. The F key is the special attack, only executed when the "Wonder Bit" gauge is full. The Z, X, and Y keys are macros for sending out comments (like follow me, or attack now), like in most FPS games today. Space initiates jump and booster.

Gameplay modes

Mission Mode

In mission mode, you go trough set number of linear stages, killing monsters and collecting loot towards the boss who is waiting at the end of each stage. the difficulty of the mission can be set to five different levels and can be done in co-op mode with 5 other players. The harder the level of the missions, the mobs and bosses gets nastier but the loot gets yummier. :D

Quest Mode

In quest mode of the gameplay, you are descending on the wild planets and explore them. The deeper you go the tougher the enemies get, and the loot gets better. Bonus is awarded for collecting the complete sets of loot, predetermined before the descent.

To stop the constant grinding, the timer is set for the exploration. If the timer runs out or you loose all three of your mech, you loose the loot and any other awards or items you collected in that run. This way, you are forced to consult the timer and the health of your mech, and decide how deep will you explore before you turn back. The layout of Quest Areas changes periodically to keep gameplay fresh, meaning that there's always new treasure to hunt for.

This mode can be done solo or in Co-Op mode, but you will run on other players on the planet while you explore in your group or alone.

Arena Mode

In this action intense PvP mode you battle against other players. You will earn points for your Union and aim for the top spot in the weekly Union point ranking.

Arena Mode - Union Wars

Large PvP battles typically on scales of 15 vs. 15 or 30 vs. 30. Protect your team's "Power Spot" home base while trying to take down the enemy's.

Arena Mode - Team Fight

A mode which allows players of any Union to freely form teams and fight on a smaller scale, such as 3 vs. 3 or 5 vs. 5. Play with standard Power Spots, or try out alternative rules such as Capture the Flag.

Mech Customization, Tuning and Shop

The meat part of the game. Probably the one you will spend most time in, calculating and min/maxing the stats and power of your mech.

The main attributes of mechs and parts are Health, Strength, Tech, Walk, Fly, Toughness, Cost and Capacity.

Health is somehow similar to all other games. Strength is essential for melee combat, while Tec determines how well your mech performs in ranged combat. Walk determines how well mech jumps and lands. Fly governs the flying speed and height. Toughness represents how easily mech is stunned when its hit, duration of a stun, and a consecutive damage reduction when its hit with burst fire or multiple enemies. Cost is the number which is added to mech capacity, and presents the space the part occupies on the mech. Equipping powerful parts and weapons will increase cost, meaning that stronger robots will use up more BP when destroyed in battle. Capacity determines the mech overall tuning and customizing capacity.

You can build and customize your own mechs with parts collected from spoils of war, or buy them from the shop. You can also earn and buy whole mechs. There are currently more than 50 mechs and 300 parts to collect. The mech consists from Head (HD), Body (BD), Arm (AM), Booster (BS), and Leg (LG). In addition, they may be equipped with a variety of main/sub weapon type parts, Wonder Bits (EX) parts, and a few other special types parts. If you own a mech you can buy it from the shop whole or as parts. If you own certain parts of mech, you can only buy that parts.

Parts also have number of slots for tuning up. The more slots, better the part. Tuning is done in a Cosmo Pot. A number of items are needed for each type of tune up. Each consecutive tune up decreases the chance of success. If tune up fails - that slot is lost forever.


Season gamers might find the 3D graphics rather outdated but then the game has something to offer which mecha fans get something to feel excited about.

Cosmic Break Official website

I am participating open beta testing of interesting crossgenre online game.

Battleswarm: Fields Of Honor pits First-Person Shooters against Real-Time Strategists in epic online battles waged between elite Human Soldiers and massive swarms of Bugs. This is very interesting concept and I think that with little polishing, this game will be worth playing.

To set one thing clear, this game is free to play. That means that there will be an item cash shop and everything that goes with this kind of games, but all the items you can buy also for the ingame cash.

Weapons and armor are bought on time basis. You can buy them for 3, 7 or 30 days, after which they expire. You can earn enough cash to be properly geared for battles with a decend group.

Here are some interface screenshots. Main interface, shoping, packing gear and game room before the start.

Currently I am playing as a human, and I must say that I enjoy this FPS. There is no soloing or Mr. Rambo actions, since humans need to communicate and organise in order to survive and win against the swarms of bugs.

Maps varies from defend the base full of reactors in Jungle outpost, planting the bombs into the Hive core, defending reactors and planting bombs in Ruined city and good old Arena matches.

"Leveling" a human player, if we can say that, consists of progressing trough ranks, which unlocks better armor, weapon and supplies. Also there is a "map leveling" which can provide you with attack, defence or speed boost after a certain amount of bugs are killed. Those boosts lasts untile you die, and can be stacked 3 or 4 times depending on your level.

Enemies drop blue diamonds, which when picked up, provide shield or health boosts, or random Gift Box (Paper, Copper, Silver or Gold) which with appropriate key can be unlocked after the game - which provide common, uncommon or rare drops in term of armor, supplies or weapons.

Here is my little gameplay video on YouTube.

We played Jungle Battle map, in wich Humans defend their base with three reactors. The game lasts until 300 points are won or timer expires. Humans gain points by killing bugs and staying alive, while bugs can win by destroying three reactors for 100 points each.

I am eager to see where this game will progress, since the authors and developers are listening to beta testers, and try to improve the game.

This was a test recording of my future endavours in Final Fantasy and other games diaries I intend to do.

This is a fight with boss Valvalis in Final Fantasy IV (GBA version).

The Wind attack will knock your party members' HP critically low. Valvalis uses this attack while in tornado form; use Kain's Jump attack to force her out of her spin. Rosa must cure your party while the others attack. Beware the Glare attack, which will cause Slow Petrify.

FF IV Bossfight Valvalis Part 01

FF IV Bossfight Valvalis Part 02

UberNES Nintendo Screensaver lets you watch or play NES games.

You can watch as shown as many as 60 games, and if u have an emulator with appropriate roms, with an arrow key you can select and jump right in into the game!

Very retro nice :D

UberNES Nintendo Screensaver

[video=6231290]

I must say, as roman number grows, so is the quality of voice acting. :D

After finishing FFXII, i needed some time off from traditional RPG. So, I decided to go back to traditional Fantasy Turnbased RPG game. Hahaha, what a change you say :D. I picked up Disgaea - Hour Of Darkness.

This game oozes geekyness :D 9999 levels for characters, uber weapons, leveling, min-maxing etc. Everything an old geezer like me needs right now :D.

If you liked Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, you will love this, trust me. There is some bizzare stuff in this game, that makes it unique and its really fun to come back and play it.

I'm off to waste some more time on it :D

Right now Im lacking free time. I finished the 4th dungeon in Persona 4 (striptease club). Also my friend started playing Final Fantasy XII, so I am hooked once again to give the one final push and finish FFXII finaly.

I finished watching Gundam 00 Second Season and I am gathering my toughts for a review. I am currently watching Fullmetal Alchemist - Brotherhood and Real Drive.

In the spirit of new Tekken instalment that will hit us in October, I am training again....with Tekken 5. :D

Playing with Lei was always a pleasure, and I was abit rusty until i started training again with my friend who plays Feng right now.

Tekken is an art.

Other fighting games are ...... just games.

After almost a year, again, i am stepping away from World Of Warcraft. I done almost anything in this expansion. I say almost, since my guild got stucked in Yogg-Saron encounter in Ulduar. Again, repetitivnes got me bored and I decided to step away.

Since I dont have that much time to play games, because of work, i decided to look back at missed titles on PS2 platform, while I am waiting for price drop in PS3 in my country.

Right now Persona 4 got me grabed, and wont let me go. :D

Very nice departure from the traditional RPG and JRPGs. I am having loads of fun right now. :D

I just wanted to point out, that one of the greatest improvements in the WoW game is going to happend in next patch: Dual Spec. Finaly we can have one spec for PvE and one for PvP. Or we can have one for trash mobs and one for big bad boss fights.

Also some form of Outfitter addon will be integrated in the game - Gear Manager. In that way gear can match your current spec.

More about that you can read in "Dual Spec Q&A" with Ghostcrawler on WoW site.