ChuChu Rocket Reaches the UK + Impressions

Sonikku has spent more time with CCR, and now he gives more thoughts on CCR online:

I’ve tried online play a little more now – it’s been going pretty well in the games I’ve had so far – and it’s pretty fun too. The biggest problems that should be addressed is the actual connection to the server, I can try and enter a game room / game server / whatever and sometimes, in the time it takes to load this room, I can learn at least one language fluently, learn telekinesis and start a successful business enterprise. And in this time, it’s costing you money. Ouch. If it doesn’t load within about 3 minutes, the game will disconnect you. Hmm…

Continuing onto the chat rooms, the attitude there is surprisingly civil. I’ve yet to come across two players arguing like mad with the usual ‘gay @*” lezzie’ and so forth, and they have sensibly put up a profanity filter. This is of course, all going to change quickly.

Onto the actual games now – I have to say that the chat system is pretty crap. I only usually chat to players to say “Hi”, “Do you want a game”, “Are you ready to start?” or “Good game!” – but they’ve got the usual public chat and the ‘whisper to player’ version – I’m not sure if any of my messages have actually gotten through to the other players because it doesn’t come and say “Sonikku: Good game!” or whatever my message is, like most in-game chats do, so I’m either immensely lagged or it’s just not designed to do this. Next thing – starting games, it’s really annoying when you want to amass 4 players and someone just enters the room and hits start game. Why the heck couldn’t they do the ‘Players 1 and 2 are ready! Waiting for Player 3….’ like most multiplayer games, or at least, wait for the server to press ‘Start game’.

Furthermore, why the heck isn’t there an option to turn off the computer player(s)? You can’t have a simple one-on-one match without two computer players getting in the way? On the other hand, if it’s a slow day, it might be good to have the extra competition – so why not include an option to turn them on or off?

Onto the lag now – on the whole, it’s usually pretty manageable. Once you get used to having to think ahead, it becomes a little easier, but the scoring is the biggest problem – in one game, I pumped about 4 Nekos into this guy’s rocket. It came up with the “Ouch! -76 mice!” message, but his score just jumped up and down one – three points, this was then followed by mass confusion when the game tried to work out who’d won. Not good. This also happened to me once, though, but on the third game, the scoring had managed to even out a little. 😉

Overall – it’s pretty good, I’d much prefer this to Half-Life or Quake deathmatch – if they improve the servers a little, ChuChu will become a heck of a lot more enjoyable… will this lead to update discs, maybe?

6/9: Sonikku, who lives in the UK, has received his copy of ChuChu Rocket in the mail. He quickly tried it out last night, and this is what he thinks:

…and I’ve spent 3 hours giving it a decent test (no exams for 2 days! Yay!) – the online play is decent enough – it was certainly better than…attempts at playing HL DeathMatch… though the lag could get pretty bad sometimes – while I’m laying down my arrows for a ChuChu Fever (Mouse Mania), they can take a good 5-8 seconds to actually respond and lay the tile – by which time, someone’s got a pink mouse and it’s changed to Neko Fever (Cat Mania) and then I end up with a nice path for the cats to walk along and straight into my rocket.

That said – it doesn’t allow (thankfully) online chatting – meaning no more “U GAY *%£”#/! FAG #!>/ LESBIAN, WHY DON’T U $”#! UR …” and so forth – not that you’d have time, but instead they offer a random insult machine by pressing the L and R triggers, meaning no more of the above, but instead, the sort of insults that make you want to keep playing, or something. Hurray.

Oh, and the CD works fine. It seems SoE have done this without any hitches. Blimey, that’s a first – but wait! They’ve not sent it to EVERYONE yet. Everyone should have their copy by now…