S4 League: A Vibrant And Stylish MMO-Shooter

To date, Chris "Pwyff" Tom has never been satisfied by an MMO-Shooter... Will S4 League change that!?

Over these past two weeks of intensive writing schedules and playing Dragonica (weee Australian Open Beta), I have been very much on the lookout for some quality shooter games to scratch my action junky itch. Maybe it's the fact that there are very few opportunities to engage in extreme sports in my life (I suspect that most practitioners of extreme sports don't get their 'action' fix via FPS shooters), but the fact remains that, when you play these slow-moving MMORPGs all day, sometimes you just want to blow people up on an equal level instead of having a 'who's more purple' competition in battlegrounds.

Unfortunately, while I would say that I love my shooters as much as I love my MMORPGs, it does feel like the industry is having a difficult time giving me my ideal version of the MMOFPSORG (pronounced memo-fepsorg). GunZ Online gives me carpal tunnel syndrome and its colour scheme makes me want a hug; Battlefield 2142, Call of Duty 4 and Team Fortress 2 all feature some form of character progression system, but Battlefield 2142 sometimes devolves into a game of "whoever doesn't crash the helicopter wins." Call of Duty 4, on the other hand, seems to have replaced all of their bullets with grenades and Team Fortress 2, while it is charming, makes me rage so much when I get backstabbed that I think I might have an aneurism if I play it any more.

In this way you can imagine just how difficult it is to find an MMO shooter that fulfills all of my criteria. I needed something unique, entertaining, engaging, somewhat complicated, colourful and vibrant and it wouldn't hurt to have some fairly decent character customization. In this way, you can also imagine my shock when I… sort of…found what I was looking for.

The game I'm talking about is called S4 League. The S4 here stands for the four 'S'es (how do you pluralize S?) of the game: Stylish, eSper, Shooting and Sports. While the literary side of my brain almost died at the sheer absurdity of the name (the five Ws is a stretch for me), I do suppose that the three words that start with S do a fair job at summarizing the game. More on that later.

S4 League is developed by a Korean-based company, Pentavision, and is currently available only via European hosts, alaplayer, and Korean hosts, Pmang. Fortunately, S4 League utilizes a P2P network, and alaplayer allows North Americans to play through their portal. Unfortunately, this also translates to some rage-inducing ping issues, but more on that later as well.

I first heard about S4 League from an online artist whose work I was browsing. He didn't have too much time to play games, but he did mention a few online F2P games that caught his eye visually. On the basis of this advice, I went and checked out the game, and I have to say, I'm fairly impressed by what this game brings to the table. Players start out with a standard Plasma Sword and Sub-Machine Gun, as well as a +30 HP Skill. Throughout the game, players will only have three weapons to bring into battle, and they will have to choose only one skill. Fortunately, as you level up, you can also unlock extra character profiles so that you can switch between weapons / skill sets during match halftimes.

In terms of weapons, the game offers a fairly diverse range of weapons to choose from - three melee weapons and about fourteen 'ranged' weapons. In terms of melee weapons, players can choose between the Plasma Sword, the Counter Sword and the Storm Bat. You can basically think of them in terms of 'balanced', 'defence' and 'offence'; the Plasma Sword is well balanced in movement and attack while the Counter Sword offers less attack per swing but it grants the very useful guard ability. The bat is… literally a bat. You swing it at things and if you left click you sort of flail it around in a haphazard tornado of… bat. The ranged weapons are also fairly diverse in nature - you have your standard choice of sniper rifle, shotgun (it's actually a revolver), sub-machine gun and rifle, but there's also a handgun that allows you to move faster when you have it out, an energy rifle that gets more inaccurate the longer you fire it, and a large chain-gun that makes you move slower but effectively turns you into a moving turret. In fact, the game does a fair job at balancing all of the weapons - including the melee weapons, which are not mandatory for players to take. While I chose to go the path of rifle, sniper rifle and revolver, I can tell you that I ate many a bat to the back of my head.

S4 League offers two styles of game play across several maps - Team Death Match and Touchdown mode. In Death Match, the game is simple; players kill the opposing team until someone reaches the kill counter. In Touchdown mode, players rush to grab a 'Fumbi,' which is basically a small man in a space-suit that operates as a flag, and they must bring this flag to their opponent's 'touchdown' zone. Games are also split up in halves, as players are treated to a hilarious half-time 'Fumbi' dance.

Stylistically the game is very colourful and vibrant. It's done in a quasi-anime / cel-shaded style, and despite being very easy on the hardware, it's actually fairly nice to look at. In fact, the game play is just as smooth as the graphics - players start with a standard dash and wall-jump, but they can also pick an extra skill that grants the ability to fly (very… slowly…) or the ability to 'hook' themselves onto things and grapple over. While I was very quick to grasp the basic controls of the game, I still see other players blend wall-jumps and hook shots in very creative ways.

Finally, the game offers a great deal of character customization for players. Not only can you play with any combination of 3 weapons (I've seen people with all three melee weapons), but the game allows you to choose a unique 'skill' to bring into matches. I've told you about the hook shot and the uber-slow flying ability, but there is also a neat invisibility, a move that 'binds' players in a line for three seconds, a limited bullet shield and an incredibly annoying 'block' ability that allows you to place a giant barrier to block bullets and impede movement. As well, there is a vast clothing system in the game for players to buy in order to really customize their character.

Of course, no game is without flaws, and in the case of most F2P games, there certainly are a fair number of flaws. Because most Korean developers create games for Korea's internet, it's easy to make games operate on a Peer-to-Peer network instead of a Peer-to-Server network because Korean internet is so closely packed that everyone might as well be lanning their games. Unfortunately, when you port that over to our ultra-spread out North American internet, P2P becomes an incredibly frustrating way to play games. Therefore, unless I manage to get 12 people in Vancouver to play with me all the time, chances are very high that your average S4 game will include someone from Russia, someone from Spain, and several people from the moon. I say the moon because nobody should get a ping of 700 in a game, but there are at least two people per game who manage to do it.

Another frustrating aspect about the game is its push to get players to buy cash shop items. Players start the game with, literally, two weapons on a 10-hour timer - to permanently purchase a weapon, the cost runs you about 32,000 'pen' (the in-game currency), but your average game nets you… 300-500 pen. You can 'sample' the other weapons for 5 hours, but after that, if you like to buy random clothing (like me!), you can very quickly run out of in-game currency. When a player finds that he has no weapons to use and he cannot 'rent' another weapon, the game literally tells you that you can no longer play this account unless you purchase some cash currency. While it's fairly difficult to get to this stage (you should definitely purchase a permanent weapon and skill so that your account doesn't get locked down), it's certainly distressing to know that if you don't manage your money properly, you could, literally, run out of time to play the game.

All in all, however, I highly suggest you try this game - if only so that I can play with people with better pings! If I ever move to anywhere else in the world, I think I'd like to live in Korea, just so I can play these games as they were intended to be played. In all honesty, however, this game is the closest I've come to really enjoying an MMO-shooter, despite having some of these insane ping problems. While the game could certainly use some more weaponry and other neat things, I can honestly say that if someone published this in North America, I'll certainly be one of the first in line.

P.S. I'm only suggesting this game to those of you with decent internet. Dial-ups… stay away!

 

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom
Editor
ZAM.com

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