Bullet Hell isn't a genre that has ever had much to offer me. If I want maddening pattern memorization, I'm far more likely to seek those experiences in something like Rock Band. Or pretty much anywhere else than in a spaceship. So I'm more than surprised by my initial impressions of Realm of the Mad God, a "co-op fantasy mmo shooter" from Wild Shadow Studios. These guys have done something incredibly smart with their game of hellish bullets: they've incentivized death.
And you will die.
Realm of the Mad God's mish-mash of different genres presents a surprisingly cohesive whole. On the MMO side, you start by playing the Wizard character class, and navigate around an instanced realm shooting bad guys, and indulging your loot lust. Quests are simple; as you approach a mini-boss type character, a red pop-up window points you in the direction of the mini-boss (equivalent to a 'named' I guess, though they're mostly nameless), and once you kill him, you get the quest complete dialogue, and a bag of loot falls out of the corpse. This condensed version of questing is very satisfying because it keeps you in the action, which is usually still going on all around you after the guy drops. Random baddies will drop loot at random too, though this is usually lesser stuff like potions.
For the bullet hell side of things, it can be said that there are bullets. Tons of them. It's a fairly simple control scheme, WASD for movement, mouse to shoot, space bar uses your class's special ability. Standard stuff. And you die a lot, but I'll get to that.
Each of the instances you enter are connected by a central hub called the Nexus. From here you can buy gear, trade with other players, and party up for the next instance, though there doesn't seem to be a true grouping mechanic. This is also where free to play can turn to pay to play, as you can use real currency to purchase in-game currency for items in the nexus. That currency can be used to buy additional character slots as well.
The instances themselves are surrounded around a raid boss of some kind. These instances hold just under a hundred players, and for all intents and purposes, all players in an instance are grouped. Nearby players killing monsters grants you xp, and your health spells help others nearby as well. It's just a matter of proximity, which keeps you moving, and keeps the momentum going.
What stops the momentum is death. Death comes frequently, especially your first few go rounds. But that's kind of the brilliance of this game. Your character progression overall is moved forward by how far you got before you died. It's a little strange, death is permanent to that character, but advances you in the class, which by turns allows your next character to get even farther, which advances you even farther, and perhaps unlocks a new character class to begin with. It's a pretty well thought out mechanic that brings something new to the bullet hell concept, namely making death a means of advancement as much as living is, in its own way.
I feel a little kinship there between this game and Super Meat Boy. SMB doesn't incentivize death in the same way, but in that game, there's a certain satisfaction in seeing your dozens or hundreds of deaths play out simultaneously once you do finally beat it. There's a similar satisfaction here in seeing how far you get give you something on dying. It's like cashing in your chips, and always having winnings.
I did have some technical trouble with the game. Fullscreen mode doesn't seem to work for me at all, and there were multiple connection issues. Its also hard not to get annoyed by the nudges towards purchasing currency, though I can't fault the game for that. I played entirely for free, and enjoyed myself.
IMPRESSION: Worth playing, to see if it hooks you.
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