The Chase begins

Fighting games have been around almost as long as the console itself, dating back to the halcyon days of Street Fighter and Mortal Combat. But unlike role-playing games, championed by the likes of the Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger titles going as far back as the 8-bit Nintendo Famicom, the transition from console to online game has not been a successful one.

While Ragnarok Online here in the Philippines (and Ultima Online and Everquest in the US) paved the way for the RPG genre to migrate effortlessly from the confines of the console to the infinite space of the World Wide Web, the fighting game has remained all but marooned in console form, relegated to P100/an hour PS2 rental booths at hobby stores and computer shops.

For their latest game, Grand Chase, Level Up! Games isn’t just thinking outside the box, they’re breaking it – the console box that is, drop kicking the door for the pyrotechnic, pugilistic, high-camp genre to finally enter the cyber arena of online gaming.

Chase is a side-scrolling, real-time 3D fighting game from KOG Studios in Korea, known primarily for their award-winning contributions to the in-game physics of online racing games such as Jeep and RC Racer (which may explain Chase’s utterly illogical, arbitrary title). Artistically, it references LU’s branded RPG-style character design’– preternaturally elven, ageless cherubs.

"It seems like people really like that style here in the Philippines, so we really can’t ignore that," explains LU content director Phil Cahiwat, who spearheads most of LU’s content acquisition. "And plus, we’re really not going to compete against the console games, Tekken, Virtua Fighter. There’s no point in going in that direction."

Cahiwat admits that"Grand Chase is still in the very early stages of alpha testing; much of the game is still ciphered in Korean, with scant literature for reference or instruction. "We are letting Brazil take the lead on this. Once they have their version we will convert that. It’s actually more advanced than when we first acquired it, with about eight months more development."

The original incarnation of Grand Chase featured only three classes of characters – an Archer (range), Knight (melee), and Mage (magic). The difference? The cast was ALL female, a conscious effort, Cahiwat says, by KOG Studios to reach out to the often marginalized female gaming community. As the game gained in popularity, KOG decided to add male characters, most recently, a male Thief. Despite upending the traditional assignation of gender roles in MMORPGs, "guys started playing (Chase) anyway in Korea," cracks Cahiwat.""They almost prefer to play female characters because they like looking at the characters. As long as there’s no big gender gap in terms of skills or power, they would rather look at a beautiful female character."

Despite only cursory testing, LU has pinpointed some of the game’s major play modes: standard Team vs. Team, standard PvP, Free-for-All, and Survivor Mode. Aside from skirmishes, the game also has mini-games (think of them as DVD extras) such as truncated story-based quest modes reminiscent of classic side-scrollers, where the objective is to dispose of lobotomized pylons of enemy minions that operate with conveyor-belt predictability in order to reach, and beat, a main boss; an archery marksmanship contest that takes a playful dig at Mobius’ Gunbound; and a PvP race to destroy alien-shaped capsules that will remind grizzled gamers of the dash-to-smash bonus rounds in the classic Street Fighter.

Players who prefer cooperative to combative gaming will be relieved to hear that Grand Chase actually allows all six players to play on the same side against high-level boss monsters, which have also been known to intrude in free-for-all melees as "wildcards."

Chase’s gameplay is a throwback to early 90s’ arcade button-mashing fun. Directional keys control movement while the "Z" key handles attacks. Like any fighting game, the "Z" key can be combined with the directional keys to chain together more complicated combos such as double-dashes, auto-doubles and linkers. If you can get close enough to your opponent, you can even execute canned throws and grapples. Also, by holding the "Z" key down, players can charge up their character’s MP bar, which is divided into three rungs; the longer you hold down the Z key, the more powerful the resulting spell.

In the case of the Mage, for example, her spell progression goes from a charged pinwheeling pentagram rune to a concentrated Dragonball Z-style lightning strike to, at max level, a maelstrom of concussive comets that come hurtling from off-screen.

Most of the Ultimates are executed with Capcom-ish flare: a split-second still-frame where the characters in the foreground freeze up followed by a supersized visage of the charged-up character appearing in the background to unleash her brutally cartoonic, sensory-flooding attack.

To prevent mass Ultimate abuse, charging time limits players’ movement and prevents them from blocking attacks. If your character should get hit while charging, his/her MP bar automatically plummets back to zero.

Like its other 3v3 game, Freestyle, Chase is meant to be primarily an IB (item-based) game.

Considering the game has been out for more than three years in Korea, there is an ample storage of in-game items to choose from, ranging from customized full-body armors similar to MU’s ornately baroque designs by way of Megaman-X to Pokemon-like pets.

Mindless button-mashing mayhem aside, Cahiwat says Chase is subtly strategic. Not only can players calibrate the power of their spells using the hold-down time of the "Z" key, each character has three item sockets, which can be accessed using the""X" key. By equipping or consuming an item, a player can cause more powerful permutations of existing spells, as well as acquire brand-new abilities.

Characters can also graduate to higher-level classes: from Knight to Lancer; Archer to Ranger; Thief to Assassin; Mage to Alchemist (early testing pegs the level for class jump at level 12). These higher-level classes come with their own, select brand of weaponry: an Alchemist, for example, will abandon the Mage’s wand in favor of bombs and other incendiary concoctions, while a Lancer will sheath the Knight’s sword for a lance or spear.

The game has a player ranking system based on wins but no teaming system for guilds or clans, although Cahiwat says, "(It’s) definitely something we will try to implement this year."

LU’s only worry with Chase is its taxing peer-to-peer latency issue. "I can’t say we’re really sure about how good the infrastructure is here for peer-to-peer games. Up until Freestyle, there hasn’t been a big peer-to-peer game in the Philippines. Everything’s been server-based, so this is another experiment for us," Cahiwat explains. "But again this is an effort to get telcos to bulk up their bandwidth."

The plan, according to Cahiwat, is to push Internet cafés to increase the technological infrastructure to meet the higher demands of quality game content such as RF, Freestyle and Chase. "The packet size is small enough, but I think café owners have to share some more line, or something like that, because the infrastructure is there, but consumers are not necessarily using it the right way. I mean cafés have – they’re sharing five lines with one small connection. So hopefully we’ll convince them that it would be in their best interest to hire those connections so they can play more high-quality games. We’re hoping this game draws enough attention to be the catalyst for that."

For Chase to succeed, LU knows it will need to withstand the barrage of Mobius’ lock-and-lob, PvP hit Gunbound, which like RO for MMORPGs, benefits from being a first-mover in the casual game market. Moreover, Gunbound is turn-based, which negates the desultory effects of lag whereas Chase is set in real-time, at the mercy of increased bandwidth for players to truly appreciate the thrill of the Chase.

For this, LU is banking not only on infrastructure upgrades to help push Grand Chase but the eclectic, egalitarian tastes of casual gamers. Whereas MMORPG-ers, by nature, tend to be more territorial about their games, often investing arresting amounts of time and money on only one title, casual gamers are more likely to try and eventually patronize multiple titles.  

In fact, Gunbound, while a PvP game, and undisputedly the number one casual title in the country, is not by definition a fighting game like Chase or its Korean competitors, such as Windyzone’s GetAmped or Nexon’s Big Shot. The game is a direct descendant of the once flourishing artillery game subgenre pioneered by projectile-firing, terrain-based classics such as Scorched Earth and Artillery Duel. "Hopefully, since casual games cost lower, people may play multiple casual games, so they might have a Gunbound account and a Grand Chase account. We’re not really concerned," says Cahiwat.

"It’s amazing for this type of game to have such longevity in such a competitive market (speaking of Korea)," marvels Cahiwat. "Which is why we believe in it because of the success of Kart Rider and Freestyle we had to look at casual games. And, in fact, all markets are looking at casual games. Japan, Taiwan… (all) identify this as a good title."

There is, as yet, no timetable for the release of Grand Chase locally, much less a rollout plan. For the meantime, LU seems content to test the game on both the Brazilian and Korean servers. However, Cahiwat is confident the game will be launched soon. Even better, Cahiwat hints that LU may not be done acquiring new content, despite having four games either commercially minted or queued up for release in 2006.

Regarding the idea of bringing in more titles, Cahiwat says, "We may… This is all part of our strategy to grow the market. If you look at all the current games, it’s pretty much still what RO was at its peak, so no one has really tried to grow the market. It seems all the MMORPGs are trying to go after the same consumer base. So it makes sense to bring in more casual games, to get more kids and women to play."

Between advancing existing infras-tructure, freeing the fighting game from console limbo, and expanding the traditionally male-centric, teenage gaming base, it seems LU has more than just Grand Chase on its mind. It has a Grand Design.