A world a thousand years later, mired in corruption and pollution, where players must gather resources and level up to fight against Evil Spirits.
Along the way, they will meet many descendants from their Hometown World from a thousand years ago, but they have all been severely corrupted.
1-hour gameplay session.
Tong Xin becomes more confused as he plays, and the issues he discovers keep growing.
The game Dark Land doesn’t seem as perfect as he had imagined.
Or rather, the game doesn’t live up to the hyped expectations set by his friends.
Upon entering the game, the realism of the game scenes did surprise him.
But after an hour of deep play, numerous detail issues surfaced, indeed impacting the sense of immersion.
Before leaving the village, he strolled along the bustling streets, where the NPCs seemed lively but behaved like puppets.
For instance, the fruit vendor by the roadside, regardless of the time of passing, always sells fruit using the same words with a constantly enthusiastic expression, lacking the vivid presence of a real individual.
This issue is understandable, since only core NPCs need to be equipped with high-intelligence AI, while trivial NPCs shouldn’t consume significant data processing resources.
But if such issues exist, the game shouldn’t be labeled as perfect.
Looking at the architectural details, buildings and residences in the village are impressive at a distance, but coarse upon close inspection.
Bricks on the city walls outside the village become blurry when closely observed, as if hurriedly painted on, lacking the true texture of bricks, the distinctive tactile sensation and marks of age, though the AI models were varied, they lacked uniqueness.
Furthermore, the weather system in the game is a mess.
The weather system should be a highlight for setting atmosphere, but there are too many unreasonable aspects.
It was clear a moment ago, sunny and pleasant, yet the next second, it pours heavily without any precursor, no gradual clouds gathering, the weather changed abruptly without logic, and the rainy scenarios were further flawed, with raindrops falling on characters without splashes, the ground merely instantly becoming wet, lacking the dynamic process of forming puddles.
The strangest thing is, as he ran in the rain, his clothing only appeared wet on the surface, missing the weighty clingy feeling of being drenched, as if rainwater had no effect on clothing.
The combat system’s detail issues exist as well.
When he swung weapons to attack monsters, at the moment the weapon made contact with their bodies, there was a lack of true collision feedback, nor was there the pain feedback his friends mentioned, the sword striking the enemy felt coarse, void of any impact representation, nor the resistance sensation of muscle.
It’s certain that this game performed much better than Land of Sin and Conquest.
It could even be called the concept for a cross-era game.
But he entered the game with the highest expectations, wanting to experience the perfect virtual game spoken by his friends.
Yet he discovered multiple issues within the game.
These detail issues are like grains of sand, small yet irritating, consistently reminding him throughout the immersive gameplay that this isn’t a perfect virtual world, seriously undermining immersion, causing him to feel out of place during the play.
"Something is wrong, how is this game perfect, it deceived me for months."
Although he feels the game is indeed good, it falls far short of his ideal performance.
Feeling saddened, Tong Xin immediately opens the friends list, preparing to add them for criticism.
Typing "Preschool Group Tie Chui," selecting add.
Soon, the friend request acceptance notification sounds.
The Kindergarten head: A group of scoundrels, deceiving your dad, made my expectations too high, now I’m especially upset.
Preschool Group Tie Chui: Are you mad???
The Kindergarten head: How bold, criticizing elders is unfilial, truly impudent... remember to help me level up once we leave Newbie Village.
Preschool Group Tie Chui: You stupid thing, are you crazy, adding a friend just to curse, you XXXXX.
After being wildly cursed out, Tong Xin suddenly realizes something is amiss.
With confusion, he opts for a video call.
Moments later, the call connects successfully, and a pale blue light curtain appears in front, featuring a burly Alien Race figure, with an angry expression, opening its mouth.
Tong Xin decisively hangs up before the Alien Race player starts cursing, then deletes them from his friends list.
"Whoa, something is wrong!"
In the last group chat, he had asked his friends about their game names beforehand, confirming no issue.
"Could it be ID encoding?"
Tong Xin mentally conjures a possibility.
ID encoding is a setup used in many games for identifying different players, facilitating precise recognition in the game, avoiding confusion due to identical names.
Such games commonly allow identical names, just followed by a string of codes.
But now that his friends have entered the game, he can’t obtain ID encoding information from the group chat offline.
This makes Tong Xin feel vexed, unable to contact his friends temporarily, he decides to level up first, and deal with it after leaving Newbie Village.
Having entered the game, Tong Xin still opts to play properly.
Outside Newbie Village, the horizon is filled with the silhouettes of players, making monster grab excessively challenging.
Finally, his level reaches Level 2.
At this moment, a semi-transparent light curtain appears in front of him, indicating reception of the initial task.
This prompt makes Tong Xin freeze.
He clearly remembers that his good friends mentioned in the group chat, the game Dark Land features complete freedom of exploration, without main tasks or skill missions following level growth.