It's Robin! Look familiar?
DOMO (Dream of Mirror Online)
by Robin Prescott of VoR
Ok, so to start this, we got a request from one of our readers, asking us to take a look at DOMO, this MMORPGthing that honestly, I had never heard of. That I hadn’t heard of an MMO was already odd, but what was even odder was that Garrett (Yes, that Garrett) had already played the game a few months ago. Seriously. So, Garrett tried (vainly) to keep me from getting this review. He wanted it handed to Josh. Why? Well…
Oh my god, this game is cute. CUTE, I tell you! As in so cute your ears will bleed! And, to use Erin’s word, I “lurve” the cuteness. It even more cute than Phantasy Star Online and its Mags, which I loved. Garrett was trying to keep me away from it so he wouldn’t have to hear me squealing all the time at the cuteness, so Mitch said I could play it at his house, which was fine by me since I could play the game, visit the cats, and hang with Mitch, all at the same time! So, here’s the deal, I was going to write a review with the whole like “Day one” and “Day two” thing, but I really got sucked into the whole thing. I’m writing this on day five, so I guess you’ll just have to make due with that. :p
As much as I want to start with all the positives, I think I should get all the negative stuff out of the way. First, the UI is absolutely confusing. It took me a few hours to figure out just how to do simple things. It took me two days to figure out how to just take things off the freaking action bar. Also, it seems that the fonts on my game were really messed up. So messed up, in fact, that I could never actually read the last few lines of my missions, which really sucks because I happen to like reading. I like it a lot. Grrr.
Second, the controls suck. I mean, they really suck. Especially when you’re used to things like World of Warcraft and City of Heroes. The only way to turn left and right is to right click and move the mouse, which is frustrating because moving the mouse all the way across the screen only turns the character halfway, like, 90 degrees. So, just doing something simple like running around a corner becomes this marathon of clicking and mouse waving. On the plus side, I have started building my biceps because of it. Ooo, sexy!
None of that would be a big deal though, if I had some freaking way to change the controls and key bindings, or mouse sensitivity or something. I guess I could do it by asking Mitch to change his peripheral settings, but should we really have to do that just to make a game playable from the beginning?
Last thing on my list is bad animation. I know I said that the game is really cute, and it is. Even the bad animations are still cute, but some things seem like they need more work, like the running animations, combat animations, standing animations… Actually, I think most of it needs a little bit of work. Most of them are really kinda chunky, like the animation team was drunk at work. [Dear God, wouldn’t that be the life? –Ed.]
Even with that stuff though, the cuteness of the game really pulls it through. I mean, seriously, I am absolutely in LOVE with this game.
- Story line is something about a mirror
- My character is a swordswinging badass with fuzzy ears.
- A lot of people compared it to Final Fantasy, when it’s more like Guild Wars, because Guild Wars is free, but other than that, it doesn’t have too much similar to either one. Really, I think it’s closer to Animal Crossing.
Compared to Guild Wars, yeah, Guild Wars is probably the better game, but GW is also very… not cute. And GW has this big thing about killing, and death, and destruction, and fire, which is all very cool and stuff, but it’s not cute. And DOMO is CUTE.
Oh yeah, and it’s free.
