FORGE (2012)

What's here is good stuff, though, and even if it never got another piece of content Forge would pull its weight.

Forge is an ambitious mixture of genres--PVP and team FPS--but it's not polished enough and doesn't have quite enough content to work completely yet. Dark Vale has their work cut out for them making Forge a complete and intuitive experience, but the potential is there.

Dark Vale Games created an enjoyable mix between massive role-playing and action games, focused on the PvP. Forge is then a good game, with great potential, but at the moment it just lacks some key elements. We really hope that the development team will go ahead with the support, keeping its promises to expand the game.

For all of the things that it does well, Forge feels like it needs more time in development and beta to achieve its potential. I really like the game's model of instanced PvP, and enjoy Forge's dynamic third-person combat. The overall features feel unfinished, however, and while it looks like Dark Vale Games is aware of Forge's missing - and necessary - elements and is working to include them, the game in its released state requires a bit of faith in the developers to make it what it should be. The core gameplay experience is fun and frantic, but Forge will need to attend to a more robust feature set to encourage the dedicated community it requires to succeed.

While most of the things displayed in Forge look pretty good, one can never take away the sensation that most of its features have been rushed and that we're all beta testing it. It could greatly use a few more weeks of extra work on the coding.

Forge is a fun break from the monotony of the same old competitive multiplayer games, but with only four maps, two game types, and an uninspiring progression system, it currently lacks the depth to be something you can fully sink your teeth into.

Forge has some bright ideas, but they're buried under the rushed execution and unimaginative presentation.

I find the game very great and well made. It has a lot of potential. It is already rumored that it will be the ESL game par excellence. Since the new patch lots of news have come into force, give the game a final status. I find it charming and will continue to play it.

Gameplay.. nice, skillsystems/cosmetical systems.. great, replayabilty without getting bored.. meh. With friends its great but doing solo there isnt a massive amont of content keeping you addicted.

I'm normally a fan of games that are 'get in-play-get out' and don't require much time. It would have been easy for me to give this game a 3 or 4 rating based off of my experience of the first hour of gameplay. The tutorial isn't very clear and for learning 9 abilities for 5 classes, the tool tips for each class is a good paragraph read for a game that should be fast paced. I spent roughly 30 minutes in the tutorial just trying to figure out what abilities did and how to use them effectively. Then movement was introduced and they threw in 'wall jumping' to F the whole thing up. Its an effective way to navigate some areas of the map, but since this is a team based game, running off solo is a good way to get you killed. My first issue with the game was the key bindings. You start with the abilities being mapped to the keys just right of WASD, your basic movement keys. I have never, in my entire life needed to use those keys in any game I have ever played. My muscle memory wasn't developed for it so my first real games were just horrible because I would press buttons that weren't for the ability I wanted, or I pressed so far over that it did nothing. I highly recommend remapping the keys to something that suites your play style in games like LoL or your Rogue in WoW. A lot of people make the argument "Wow has 42 buttons and Forge only has 9" , but...I don't know ANYONE who plays WoW and has to hit all 42 buttons in 1 fight. Hell, the most i've ever had to press was 1, 2, 3..........9. 9 total buttons during combat. A lot of WoW abilities are buffs/out of combat abilities, and the rest are buttons one only presses on a proc, or class/race specific CDS that can only be used once every 2-3 minutes. It is an invalid argument to say that WoW is harder because it has more buttons. Forge requires you to use just about every single one of those 9 abilities in a span of about 15 seconds, you can get pretty flustered if you get jumped or targeted and need to do a ton of quick thinking. The community inside the game is horrible. No one is supportive or tries to coach or give tips. Its just Noob this noob that. On the Forge website though, its a different story, a lot of players want to see this community grow and offer their support, tips and recommendations. Currently, there is a level up system for each of the 5 classes that is only about 75% complete. Which is a bummer because it seems like that can really make the game unique. You get to level up your classes based off of the XP you gained while playing the game. Even better is that you can play 1 class, and use the xp gained form playing him, to level up a separate class. Once you really get the game figured out, the XP starts to flow like water into your stats. It is awarded to you similarly to how bonuses are awarded in Call of Duty: "Assisted X number of times" "X kills without dying", "lived Xmins without dying" "Survived from X amount of health" One downside I am seeing is the ability to select a server. There are multiple game types (Team DeathMatch, CTF, and arena) but you don't get to choose from a server which game you'd like to join. When you choose your gametype you Do get placed in a match rather quickly, but most often times you are thrown into a match you just quit because the other team is just 5 assassins running around, or there's a player on the other team that just won't shut their mouth. You just have to exit and keep trying until you get into a new match. One thing that game me a good laugh was that the creators believe this game is **** everyone pretty much only plays the assassin class. Its obvious to see why, but its also ridiculous if you have 50% of your player base playing one of the 5 available classes (6th one supposibly on the way along with a new map or two and new gametypes) In my current state of how well or bad I play this game, a 7 is the best I can give. I could see me boosting this up to an 8 if leveling up seemed worth while (or maybe I just don't understand it, there's no help in figuring out what the benefits are) and server filters can be used. The game has a tiny community from my perspective, and i'd like to see it get huge, because I really want more than 5v5 or 6v6. I want 12v12.

The reason for this review being relatively low is a combination of problems in the game and the developers. The game itself is not bad in the least, but there are many things that really bring it down (and I'll keep it short). 1. The optimization is terrible. I bought this game in Alpha and it is still in terrible condition as far as running on computers. I can run Battlefield 3 multiplayer on maximum settings, yet have issues with Forge. This has and is happening with a large quantity of players. 2. Features. Simple features like guilds and friends were never implemented, and this being a strictly PvP game made this a huge problem. There are many other features simply not added into the game that were PROMISED to be in the base game by Dark Vale Games. 3. The developers treatment of customers. Many people who payed for Forge have asked for refunds, due to the game not being even finished when it was "released" and having many issues with it. That, and the absurdly small "rewards" given to people who had pre-purchased and and purchased the game was a huge slap in the face to the many people who supported this game's development. 4. They do NOT want to give you a refund. I've tried before and after Free To Play release to get a refund, and Dark Vale completely avoids the question, ignoring you but kindly asking "We love your feedback, make sure to let us know what you want in the game!" Overall the gameplay for the game is fairly good, but bugs, optimization, and the awful development team make this game something I would advise NO ONE investing money into. Now that it's free, sure, go for it! But supporting this game will only leave you disappointed and at a lack of some cash that you could spend on a game that will use your money much better. P.S. I know Dark Vale had some financial issues, but they do not value their customers at all, and it is quite disgusting.

Get on the stacked team, hide behind a pillar, spam m1, get healed, that is forge. So many annoying cheap tricks, perma stealthed assassins, team with the best healer wins. It could be such a good game but it fails hard in so many aspects. Pointless mana, you sprint you lose mana, you don't sprint then you will be walking across a huge empty map till you get to the enemies, which by this point you are probs outnumbered. Maps are awful and confusing, it is very easy to get lost. Game modes are pointless, you have tdm, and a version of ctf which is just tdm with a couple of flags. The game had potential but it didn't deliver, nor will it, 51 players at peak times. Overpriced, no population, cheap mechanics, boring and stale gameplay. If you want to play a shooter go play a shooter there are countless better shooters out there, if you want to play mmorpg style pvp play an mmorpg, there are countless better mmorpgs out there. Do not get me wrong game may be good in 3v3 but pubs, which most people will be playing are an absolute joke.