We Just Played Vindictus (at E3 2010)

The E3 2010 event is underway, and that means the walls of the cavernous Los Angeles Convention Center are lined with all kinds of games. One of those games is Vindictus (known in Asia as Mabinogi Heroes) from Nexon--a free-to-play PC game that combines the bloody hack-and-slash combat of console games, such as Dynasty Warriors and God of War, with the character customization and progression of a free-to-play online game. Having seen a great deal of the game on previous occasions, we were ready to finally dive in and play.

Like in several of Nexon's other free-to-play hack-and-slash games, such as the recently launched Dungeon Fighter Online and the soon-to-launch Dragon Nest, Vindictus has social shared spaces, such as overworld towns in which all players may congregate, trade crafted goods, and use goofy dancing emote animations. But the majority of the gameplay takes place in segmented instances that spawn groups of enemies that must be defeated to move on to the next leg. However, unlike any of the studio's other games--and unlike every other free-to-play online game out there--Vindictus uses Valve Software's Source engine (which powered the acclaimed shooter Half-Life 2) to model physics for objects and environments. As a result, the game has very interactive environmental objects that can not only be smashed to bits, but can also be picked up and used as weapons.

The E3 demo currently includes only two characters, Lann (our pick), a fast-moving male fighter who wields a sword in each hand and uses speedy dodges (by pressing the space bar) as his best defense, and Fiona, a slightly slower female fighter who carries a sword in one hand and a shield in the other (which can be used to block by pressing the space bar). In addition to using the W, A, S, and D keys to move like in any first-person shooter, Vindictus binds your character's weak melee attack to the left mouse button and your character's strong melee attack to the right mouse button. Each character class will also have various attack combinations, such as three weak attacks followed by a strong attack. Putting together chains of attacks is as easy as pounding your mouse buttons, but the game currently doesn't have a targeting reticle, so zeroing in on an individual enemy when attacked by a group is still a bit imprecise--a Nexon staffer acknowledged this issue and assured us that Nexon is working on it.

In addition, you can sprint by double-tapping and holding the W key. You can also press the E key to grapple enemies, from which you can either perform several weak attacks (left mouse button) or finish off your foe with a spectacular strong attack (right mouse button). You can press the R key to perform a quick kick or stomp that will stun some enemies (particularly short foes, like giant spiders, which can be stomped underfoot), and you can press the F key to aim and launch whichever projectile you have equipped, whether that be a javelin or the nearest barrel or shattered pillar you just picked up. If an object looks like you can smash it and/or pick it up, you can probably do both to it in Vindictus. We picked up boulders, shattered chunks of wooden barricades, and huge ceramic urns, among other things, in our time with the game. We either smashed them over the heads of nearby foes or used the F key to aim a throwing trajectory.

The instance we played through was the stony gnoll lair we had previously seen at the Game Developers Conference, and while the lower-level foes (mostly small gnolls and giant spiders) didn't present much of a challenge, the huge, red-furred gnoll chieftain was an entirely different matter. The chieftain required a lot of time, patience, and some serious mouse-clicking to eventually bring down. This boss monster wielded a huge club and had numerous long-range melee attacks that dealt heavy damage and often stunned us briefly or knocked us off our feet (again, leaving us vulnerable). At several points, we were given an onscreen warning that our character's health was low and that drinking a health potion (bound to our "1" key) would be in our best interests, but not even this was a guaranteed way to recover. One of the other perks of having the Source engine power Vindictus is that if you move while drinking a potion, you'll actually spill most of the concoction all over the front of your armor, so you must remain perfectly still, which is easier said than done when you have a giant, angry gnoll charging right at you.

In addition to playing through the hack-and-slash portions of the game, we caught up with Nexon to get updated on other content that will be added to it, including Evy, the mage character, who wields a quarterstaff (that can be modified to become a giant scythe) and the power of Source-engine-powered sorcery. In a brief demonstration video we watched, we saw Evy lift her foes clean off their feet with a telekinetic power and also summon powerful golem creatures by using those same powers to lift piles of stony debris off the ground and assemble them into huge, lumbering humanoids under her control. In addition to getting a sneak peek at the next character, we also got some more details on the game's cash-op online store, which will let you purchase in-game items by way of microtransations--basically, paying small amounts of real money out of pocket in exchange for in-game stuff. The current plan is likely to keep most cash-op items focused on superficial apparel items that let you play dress-up with your character, though there may be a few consumable items in there as well. A Nexon staffer suggests that one potential candidate might be a potion that doesn't spill while drinking on the run.

In any case, Vindictus doesn't look anything like what you'd expect from a free-to-play game. Its high-end graphics and surprising physics modeling put it a cut above other free-to-play games and its hack-and-slash gameplay is an interesting departure from the usual statistics-based, dice-rolling combat you find in most games of this sort. The game is scheduled to launch next year with a beta sometime before then.