Getting to know GetAmped

By Alex Villafania, hackenslash Reporter
INQUIRER.net

ABS-CBN’s online gaming division Amped Games recently treated reporters to a few rounds of its first casual game GetAmped, which is primarily a combat game that feels almost the same as Nintendo’s extremely popular Super Smash Brothers series. GetAmped was developed by Japanese firm Cyberstep and will be the first Japanese online game to be made available in the Philippines. It just started its closed beta testing but an open beta test is scheduled for another month, allowing more players to try out the game.

For those who have played SSB for the GameCube and the much older Nintendo 64, getting into GetAmped will be easy: a player would have to first create an account to log in. Next, the player will be able to create an in-game character from six different base characters, each having a different color palette. The base characters are Fighter, Military, Superman, ESPer, Spy and Armor. They have unique character attributes such as strength, technique, speed, jump and defense and the player would have to choose wisely what type of style he or she would be employing.

Weapons can also be bought from the item shop and these would vary in strength and type. There are melee weapons such as baseball bats, 4×4 sticks or golf clubs while there are long-range weapons such as guns, cannons and missile launchers. These items would have to be bought using an in-game currency called Gs.

The player can also make changes in their characters in two ways, either by buying character palettes from the item shop or by creating their own. Through the latter, a player can upload any bitmap file photo that will be used as a skin for the character, thus broadening the creativity of the player to customize their in-game character. In fact, more creative players can make their in-game characters look like them or their favorite person or item. The game’s customization option uses a sort of vector-mapping application that allows the player to design their characters according to specifications they want, from thickness, length and height.

The actual gameplay is indeed somewhat similar to the Smash Brothers series as up to eight players can duke it out in a melee-style fight. The only keypads needed are the four-way arrow keys for movement, Z for the targeting reticule, X for the strong attack, C for the short attack and the V for the jump. There as special key combinations that will produce different types of attacks or blocks, though the methods, strength and speed of attacks may differ from one character to another. However, it may take some getting used to with the controls, which are quite difficult for newbie players. Incidentally, the developers have put in an option for attaching USB controllers, similar to those used for the PlayStation console. In addition, the button configurations can still be assigned based on player preference.

Most maps are fairly small ones where players can fight until only one character remains, but there are variations in the game mode to break the monotony of simple deathmatches. There are also sports-like game modes such as basketball, football and capture-the-flag. Players can team up to four and play against an equal number of players from a different team. But unlike traditional sports games, players in GetAmped can deliver cheap shots against other players to prevent them from scoring. By the looks of it, it could get confusing especially when a player is trying to draw a ball away from the enemy while avoid getting struck at the same time.

So far, the game is doing pretty well. It’s targeted at younger people who may want to play a cute combat game rather than the more serious fighting games currently available from other publishers.

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