Real Life: A Video Game Review

So a couple billion years ago this game was released. The game has no title but has been referred to by many players as "Real Life". No one knows the true identity of the developer but many players call him/her "God".

It's a groundbreaking game, the first game ever created as far as anyone knows. It was the first game to use 3d graphics, and probably the best one at that. The graphics are pretty amazing, with an unparalleled level of detail it is truly immersive.

It would probably be classed as an MMORPG but contains elements of pretty much every genre imaginable. Gameplay is non-linear, set in an open world with no clearly defined objectives, so you can potentially do whatever you want. The economy is purely player driven and uses multiple currencies. Best of all it is nearly free of bugs and glitches.

Sounds like a pretty amazing game right? Well there are a TON of glaring flaws in the game design, lets take a look:

Character Selection

The character selection system, if you could even call it that, is fundamentally broken.

When you start out, you are randomly assigned a race and gender, then spawned in a random pregnant female player's body. Your mother (the pregnant female player) then painfully pushes you out of her body and gives you a name (You don't even get to choose your own name!!!). At this point your character is so weak that you literally can't even feed yourself and are totally dependant on your mother for survival.

A ridiculous number of players don't even make it past this first part. You could be spawn-killed by a doctor class (we'll get to classes later) by accident (rare, but it does happen), or if your parents requested it (yeah, some players are pricks like that), you might die due to random flaws in your character (could this be a bug? product of a flawed spawning system?) or even flaws in your parents character.

Your mother, and sometimes another player, usually a male player called your father, are responsible for keeping you alive and teaching you basic skills like walking, talking, reading and avoiding things in your environment that can damage and kill you. There is no tutorial, so hope that your parents don't completely suck at the game.

There is no way of viewing your attributes, which are randomly assigned when you spawn. Some of these attributes can be increased in-game, but there does seem to be a cap on some attributes, such as intelligence, which also seems to be randomly determined. This has led to some HUGE balancing issues with some players just being naturally superior to others. To figure out your attributes, you pretty much just have to play the game and become familiar with your character's limits.

In addition to randomly assigned attributes, you also recieve randomly assigned traits, which can be positive or negative. I was fortunate enough to recieve the light frame and fast metabolism traits, which keep me fairly agile and prevent me from getting overweight, but other players aren't so lucky. Some of the negative traits include mental and physical impairments and permanent ailments that can kill you over time.

Oh, I should also add that you only get one life and one shot at character generation, so if you get screwed over and want to try a different character build, well, tough luck.

Skills

Just like attributes, there's no way of viewing your skill levels. The only way to gauge your skills would be to compare them with other players. You can improve your skills by practicing them and there may be a skill cap determined by your attributes but again, theres no way to tell. Skills are needed for pretty much everything though some skills are much more useful than others.

Classes

In the early game, there are no clearly defined classes until you begin school and recieve the class of "Student". From there, you have a wide selection of sub-classes you can choose from, such as Nerd, Loner, Jock, or Cool Kid, though you usually just fall into one that fits your character. It can be difficult to change sub-classes since other players may still see you as the sub-class which has been previously established.

Upon completion of 13 levels of school you have the option to change classes again. These options are limited by your performance in school; if you did poorly and lack the necessary attributes for a physical labor class, you might be stuck with Waiter/Waitress or Fry Cook. If you performed well enough and choose to remain a student for another 2-8 levels of school you can unlock even more classes. You can also choose to change class to Drop-Out before completing the 13th level of school but this greatly limits your class selection.

The biggest issue with this class system is that some of the classes are EXTREMELY OVERPOWERED. The best example is the Bankster class; these players have the ability to create as much in-game currency as they please, and loan this currency to the two types of high-level clans (Governments and Corporations), and as a result they have INSANE amounts of influence over these clans, in fact MOST, IF NOT ALL large scale PVP battles occur because of Bankster influence. Crazy right? And in order to become a bankster, you pretty much have to be born into one of their families and trained for the role, this class is completely inaccessible to 99% of the player base. It's ridiculous!

Another problem with the class system is that most of the clans have formed around a certain set of classes. Governments, for example, are formed entirely by political classes, and unfortunately intelligence is not a prerequisite for the political classes, it's almost purely charisma based. And of all clans, Governments have the most power over the regions that they occupy. So we have a bunch of smooth talking idiots in control of large regions, AND in control of the Military of those regions. And get this, many of the Governments are trying to nerf the weaponry that is accessible to the civilian classes. Seriously? You have control over the MILITARY, the clans with nearly ALL the combat classes and best weaponry, and you want to nerf civilian weapons? If they do this, the game's balance will be ruined- who am I kidding, it was never balanced in the first place.

Conclusion

Groundbreaking visuals and immersion are great, but the flaws in game design are huge. The developer should have thought out some of the balancing issues before releasing the game. A character selection screen would have been nice. Maybe a user interface of some kind...

"Real Life" had the potential to be the best game ever, but fell flat on it's face. I give it a 2/10: would not buy.

Also, I wanted to talk about the lore.

There is no clearly established lore, but a lot of players over the years have written "fan-fic" versions.

Some claimed that the game world was only about 6000 years old, but other players have discovered evidence that objects in the game world are a whole lot older, through some quirks in the game engine.

Some claim that the ultimate objective of the game is to not play certain parts of the game and follow certain rules, and if they win they'll ascend to another level of the game where everything is on permanent easy-mode. If you fail, they claim that your character will not be deleted but instead transported to a level where you will perpetually take fire damage but never die.

Some players think that you actually have more than one life, and that if you die you simply respawn as another character.

A few players have uncovered interesting systems in the game that allow in-game creatures to adapt to the game world and develop different traits over long periods of time, but many have rejected these claims, stating that everything was designed a specific way and does not change.

Thousands of these theories and fan-fics are circulating in the game world, and many of the players who support these theories claim that their fan-fic is the only true canonical lore.

reply to post by Glass


Some players can hack the game and make their experience much more enjoyable, sometimes at the expense of other players unfortunately.

reply to post by Anundeniabletruth


I'm not so sure it's a hack as much as an exploitation of the huge flaws in the game, like with the criminal classes, they're not hacking, just exploiting the open PVP system to take what they please from other players.

Though I sometimes wonder if the banksters have somehow hacked the game to allow them to respawn into their own family repeatedly...

Some also believe right before you are die you get to watch an entire replay of your game experience, so make it a good one.

It would be nice to have been given a walk-through or at least a guide for this game.

What are the cheat codes!!!!

Brilliant review

I tried to play that game once.

I ended up spending too much time trying to win it, and ended up wearing out the controller.

Now I just watch other people play.
waiting to respawn...

Yo I heard there was no respawn!

Cheatcodes doesnt exist in this game..
If you find an "exploit" or some "hack",
its called "Feature"...

And for the dev...Biggest Fail Ever...

Best way to play...
Dont..

reply to post by Glass


WTF man, no respawns? What kind of cheapo game is this, anyways?

reply to post by Glass

Conclusion Groundbreaking visuals and immersion are great, but the flaws in game design are huge. The developer should have thought out some of the balancing issues before releasing the game. A character selection screen would have been nice. Maybe a user interface of some kind... "Real Life" had the potential to be the best game ever, but fell flat on it's face. I give it a 2/10: would not buy.

One thing to add, like all other games. In the game of life you start at level 1, the easiest level, from there it just gets harder, more interesting and much much more bizarre. Its a game were the ending is the beginning is the end is the begining.

Right now it sort of reminds me of a game I am playing, if you all played it you know what I am talking about. Dragons Dogma, its a whole cycle that perpetrates itself. After you kill the dragon and supposedly save the world, the whole world goes to hell with the dragons death. Then after you dive into hell gaping maw, and you fight your way through a bunch of baddies, you fight another sort of optional dragon who takes freaking days and days to kill, then after you kill it and do everything there is to do, you finally open the rift and get to meet the one who created it all, only to come and find out that he is just one in a long infinite line of senechals who came before you and sent the dragon as a sort of test to find his successor, and after you fight and defeat him, he asks you to kill him. So you do that! and now your god, only one problem however...The game is over and there is nothing to do, you walk through towns invisible and after you get bored of that, and completed all the mission there is one final mission, that mission is to kill yourself...And after you kill yourself! Presto like magic! You restart the game back at level 1 again, for a go at the cycle once again, only you know whats coming because you played through it all before.

But yes! I would give the game of life a 6/10, its a rental, but I would not buy it. The designers were going for something big and grand but failed badly at its design, its a cool concept that just fails to deliver, and when it does deliver it tends to completely suck, or just be plain lame. The game of life definitely needs more cowbell.

Unfortunately the game was hacked in the 1700's by wealthy land owners who wanted more. They managed to hack into the games engine, change the way players could use the games environment, and added a mod that gave them an economic advantage, ownership and control over how players can gain wealth and resources.

The game now has bugs, and the developers are no longer supporting it. Install and play at your own risk, there is no customer support, and incorrect installations can lead the game being permanently unplayable.

You'd be better off with the new SC5

reply to post by ANOK

Nah its all part of the game, the game of life were there are games within the game within the game, kind of like inception, you wake up and keep waking up to another reality only to find that its just another dream. In all of life you just keep endlessly waking up to other dreams which eventually turn into nightmares, which eventually turn into other dreams, and so it goes. But hey everybody at one point agreed to the things and the rules of this game we call life, and eventually they come to regret that.

But it's funny if you ever played any mmo or any online game that has an online economy or just a place to sell and buy or trade things that are in the game, even online over things that dont exist but in digital form, things eventually end up being and modeling themselves after the things and ways we do things in real life. Even to the point were people would spend real money on digital items to make there digital characters look cooler, there even is a whole black market, and even a whole wall street sort of thing going on eventually, # I remember they even had Chinese players who would hack the game or be on it 24/7 farming digital items from mobs only to sell them to Americans for real cash. Most times it completely ruined the game and made it boring as it made everything either cheep or kind of pointless to play for much longer then you had to. But over all lots of people and by there nature, well things tend to always lean toward such ends...So you know landowners, greed to is a game that people like to play oh so feverishly.

Its funny how our society and economic leanings are scaled down and right on the dot they mirror those in the so called real world, even in such things as silly videogames meant to be fun. Eventually turn into some sort of flea market were everybody is inching there way to make a bit of digital profit, over digital items and digital possessions, which eventually they will forget about in a few weeks when they get bored and stop playing that videogame. The game of life, it but mirrors your soul casting back your own reflections.

reply to post by galadofwarthethird


You can believe what you want but I have been playing this game for a long time, you newbies don't know anything!

Originally posted by SPACEYstranger
reply to post by Glass

 

WTF man, no respawns? What kind of cheapo game is this, anyways?

It all depends on which version you buy...

Originally posted by ANOK
reply to post by galadofwarthethird

 

You can believe what you want but I have been playing this game for a long time, you newbies don't know anything!

Hundreds of thousands or so and more of respawns, and still going and plodding along through thick and thin. I suppose there must be something keeping people coming back to the this game we call life, it cant all just be stupidity. Or can it.

reply to post by galadofwarthethird


Re-spawns can happen but they're rare. Some re-spawners talk about seeing a light and a tunnel, but that's just a cut-scene that's played as your game ends. There is a back door hack that only the doctor class players can access, but finding one when you need one is difficult. The game needs to be updated to operate correctly on our new systems, but the game is no longer supported by the original developers. In fact they're rolling in their graves as we speak.

reply to post by ANOK

Respawns are about as rare as finding sand in the Shara or on a beach is a rare thing. However your right, this game may need a firmware update, after all when my TV has a higher resolution then the real world, you know there is a bug or two or two trillion in the system.