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Block N Load

Block N Load Hands-On

Building better worlds of attack with Jagex's crafting-influenced shooter.

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Appearances can be deceiving, and our first impression of Block N Load when it was announced last year was that it was a simple evolution of Ace of Spades, a game that Jagex initially launched at the tail-end of 2012, but one that ultimately failed to set the world alight. There's undoubted similarities, most obvious being the Minecraftian digging and building at the heart of each game. We'll not make a side-by-side comparison, but these are certainly games that are cut from the same cloth.

There's also plenty that's different, and it's these differences that transform the concept from simple shooter to something altogether more interesting. We were fairly neutral when we played Ace of Spades. It's solid enough game, but we also thought it unspectacular. It was alright in bursts, but we didn't get hooked by the gameplay loop of "build and shoot" and so walked away after just a few hours.

Having played Block N Load during a recent studio visit to Jagex in Cambridge, we can say for certain that this new take on the crafting-shooter hybrid is superior in every way to the game that inspired it.

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Visually it looks a ton better. The blocky characters that starred in AoS have been ripped out and replaced by characters that aren't voxel-based. They're cartoony, almost in a Team Fortress kinda way, and they look great. There's decent variety in the character models; they're nice and distinct and very playful.

Each character's distinctiveness isn't just skin-deep, they all handle very differently to one another too. One example might be the long range specialist, Nigel Purdy-Longshot, who looks like a colonial hunter and who during battle wields a pistol for close encounters and a rifle for long-range blasting. Sarge Stone is a Rambo-like muscle head with a machine gun, Cogwheel has loads of health and a mini-gun / missile launcher combo, Juan Shinobi is a melee-focused ninja, and so on.

There's more besides, and others in the pipeline, and these characters certainly inspire different ways to approach the game. We probably had the most fun with Nigel and his rifle; we got plenty of kills and a huge number of assists thanks to his ability to take potshots from distance, which no doubt helped when others were on hand to get stuck in from close up and finish off the job. Playing as the robotic Cogwheel was a contrasting experience, and we got less assists and more kills thanks to the mini-gun (which has both long and short range functionality depending which mouse button you click). Crucially, both were fun.

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Another difference between Block N Load and its predecessor is the opening of each game. Here players have a period of time to do their building in preparation for the battle ahead. It's not just blocks that players take into the battle, but traps and turrets that can turn the tide. There's also items that can be dropped that aid the team, such as respawn points and health boosts. There's plenty of strategies for teams to explore, and these will shift based on the characters on each side. With even more playable characters on the way, the tactical meta-game is only go to expand.

During the opening five minutes (the period of time is adjustable, from sixty seconds to ten minutes) the two teams of five have an armistice, and in that time they can scurry around and build defences around their cores - objectives that the enemy team are going to be trying to take down over the course of the battle - in the quiet before the storm, so to speak.

It's this five minutes of building before fighting commences that gives the game much more focus than its predecessor, and a team working together will of course be able to coordinate beforehand and better prepare their base. As the cast of characters all have different items that they can drop, a balanced team will be able to populate their half of the map with a broader range of tricks and traps to keep the enemy at bay.

At first, however, it can be disorientating. If you don't know what you're doing, or if you're a new player in a team that's not offering advice, it's an almost overwhelming introduction; there's so much going on and there's so much variety between the different characters. If this one's going to have players staying on instead of bouncing off and away into the arms of other games, then Jagex are going to have to introduce a robust tutorial, and not just the short instructional video they've got at the moment.

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Block N Load

It's complicated. Almost Dota complicated. This isn't a coincidence, as this very much feels like a one-lane MOBA. The studio has clearly learned plenty of lessons from their cancelled outing with the Transformers license. Each map has three cores that teams must take out in sequential order before the battle at the back of the map around each team's last core. There's no outside lanes as such, and no creeps to last hit, but there is a frantic battle across the map as teams balance attack and defend in their bid to win the match.

Matches tend to last between 20 and 25 minutes, although they can go on for much longer. As the game progresses the respawn times increase, leaving bigger gaps for teams to exploit, and of course the landscape changes as teams build bridges and dig tunnels between objectives. That all-important opening five minutes sets the tone; it encourages teams to build in a way that AoS just didn't.

Block N Load feels much more focused than Ace of Spades, and after our short introductory session we have to say that we preferred this retuned and revised take on the concept. There's an enjoyable game in here, with playful design and plenty of opportunity for improvisation and expression, and looking ahead, it should be a fertile ground for expansion.

During our visit it was explained to us that map rotation will cycle with new maps replacing the least popular of the old, and most importantly, new arenas will be free. Jagex are also talking up the influence that community will have over the game, and how they're planning on growing this game with input from the players, a new system that's working wonders with their other game, Runescape.

Free maps and a degree of influence should help keep the community together, and if Jagex can then go on and build up a strong enough following for this after its launch next month, there's nothing to say that this one can't run and run for years to come.

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Block N LoadScore

Block N Load

REVIEW. Written by Fredrik Walløe

"Despite minor flaws Block N Load is a blast to play. The strategic Minecraftian elements makes this team-based battler feel different in a crowded market."



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