Valhyre is a 3D third person shooter which gives you control of a dragon or alien/elf character and challenges you to battle against up to 15 other opponents. Unfortunately, when you first start the game, you’ll find that there’s no-one else there, because this is another one of those games that’s multiplayer only. Seeing as this game isn’t split screen, you’ve got to play online. I don’t know about you, but I’m unwilling to shell out 800 Points to play a game which feasibly could have no-one at all playing online.
And I’ve not even started on the game itself:
To the game’s credit, a lot of work seems to have gone into the graphics, having a full 3D environment and characters. The textures are blurry and the models angular, but it’s a decent attempt for something we rarely see on Community Games. It’s still not even in the same league as XBLA titles, and it’s probably comparable to PS2 era graphics. As long as the graphics weren’t ripped from another game or grabbed off turbosquid, then at least they’re making an effort.
The major technical problem is the framerate. Sometimes it is an almost acceptable 20-25 FPS. At others it’s under 5FPS. Try looking towards the centre of the map from the edge, and the game is unplayable. There’s very little chance you’ll be able to aim at anything with a framerate this variable.
The controls feel very basic ‘my first 3D game’ sort of controls. The movement speed is always linear and quite slow. The aiming feels too sensitive vertically, and twitchy horizontally. There’s actually an algorithm behind how Halo 3 maps it’s analog sticks to view control, and makes the game much more playable. It would certainly help this game out.
The gameplay is pretty dull, and the developers really need to go and look at some commercial games and compare the controls and movement behaviour before trying to enter such a competitive environment. First and third person shooters are abundant these days, and players expect a certain level of responsiveness and polish, which Valhyre severely lacks.
Valhyre was developed by Devilduck and is available for 800 Points.
This title was 800 Points at the time of writing this review but has since been reduced to 400 Points.
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There’s a great trick where you can quite happily run around the entire map with the camera under the floor too. Oh, and the rotten collision detection that means you can either fall through the bridge (I spent a great deal of time laughing with just my head sticking out between the rafters) or get stuck in places it looks like you should be able to fit through.
“Needs work” would be my favourite understatement of the day.
Cool Someone took a look at Valhyre Deathmatch. Quick question so I can pin point the problem, which map were you in and at the edge, looking toward the center and performance went to 5FPS?
there was some reports of frame rates of 15-20 FPS in the jungle map but never 5FPS so I need to see what is happening. Thanks
If I remember correctly, it was on village, on one of the higher points of the map. If you look out towards the majority of the map, the framerate drops significantly. As I don’t have a framerate counter, I’m just estimating it, but the gameplay is definitely hurt by the variability of the framerate.
I’ll also occasionally get a quarter second freeze, which is annoying as well.
Thanks will look into that.
Where you able to work the flight mechanics?
Not really. If I jumped off somewhere high, it’d nose dive. I tried tapping and holding the button, but it didn’t seem to work.
okay, will add a better flight mechanics tutorial to the list,
To fly, you start high, press forward to run then hit the A button to jump. at that point the left thumbstick becomes your flight controller, if you press up, the bastlur will tilt downward and gain momentum, if you pull back on the thumstick the bastlur will pull up. If you have momentum from your downward movement when you do this, the bastlur will climb to a higher point than started from, but if you hit anything the bastlur will land on the ground.
best place to practice this is on the mines map or the canyon map. The village and jungle maps are for more advance flyers as they have lots of trees to get in your way. You dont have to hold the A button its just to jump and get you going.
So in essence, find a high point, run forward and jump, release A button, Left thumbstick is now flight control. you push forward to dive, pull back to climb, to climb you need momentum from a dive.
Thanks for taking the time to check out Valhyre
It might be a good idea to add an option to invert the y-axis too as it was unplayable for me. Or better still, check the users default control options in their profile and match those
already done, it will be in the update.
Just wanted to give everyone here a heads up.
Valhyre has been updated with the following changes
Added function to read gamertag profile option of Y axis invert. So the function of the Y axis on the camera control will be read from your profile
Changed the village, temple and woodland maps to increase playablity
Fixed holes in terrain on the Canyon and temple maps
Added speed boost power up for the nilbog character
Added the option to automaticaly cycle the maps when a match is complete
Changed the method of terrain generation to increase performance
Increased the damage bastlurs do slightly
increased the number of power up spawns
Fixed some graphical glitches in the Mine map
Fix some typographical errors and text alignments
Added Dpad support for menu options.
These changes will make the game more enjoyable, if get the update redownload Valhyre, we now have the ability to run a continous matches so you should beable to find a match in the full version.
Thank you
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