I recently redid my Icon Ultima review, and this one is quite long, scoring in at 5990 characters. I also posted this Sunday night, due to the fact I may not be on tomorrow. Well, here it is. Enjoy.
Many moons have passed since an icon utility has been created without the use of the Icon Chatterz Source that was once provided by some user I forgot the name of. Now this time has come to an end with the release of Icon Ultima. This game includes many things. An inventory system, a league system, a huge building area, a car system, drag racing, and yes... Paintball. Icon Ultima, by Enigmaster2002/Mobius Evalon, is a very advanced icon utility, and probably the most advanced out there.
Icon Ultima has a somewhat awesome community. It includes people off all kinds, from those labelled as "Comic geeks," to "Car freaks." Icon Ultima's community also has people from all over Earth playing it's wonderfulness, ranging from people from the Canada and U.S., to people playing all the way over in Australia, including those from the UK. IU's community is very outspread, and is a great cultural experience, and it's Administrators are very good at their job. I rarely see people typing "omg u abuz. im telln da ownr n he bann u dud."
Icon Ultima's community does have a downside though. Grammar is a must. Without it, you'll die unless you're outside the start area. IU has many perfectionists who'll correct your every grammar mistake. Once you leave start, the grammar intensity does die down though, which leads me to the building system.
IU's building system is very nice. The map is huge, and once you get so far away from start, I doubt you won't find a spot to build. You can't build within' the view of the wall's surrounding start, though. Mobius did it that way, to hopefully lessen the little spam he did get. Not much to say about it, but IU does have a great building system.
Now on to the more interesting stuff. Ever since the release of version... Hrm... Well, the version doesn't matter... But since a couple of version ago, Icon Ultima has used a BB code style of text fading, called UML. Mobius coded this in himself, and UML consists of the same style as BB Code, but with some different twerks. For one, you can't do the picture inserts like in BB code. If you don't know BB Code or UML too well, you can get an explanation of it in-game by going to Icon Ultima's game FAQ listed under the "Misc." verb. It's a great system, and cuts the amount of characters needed to fade a name. Don't know how to fade your name? Then you're in luck. IU also offers a name fader, and hexidecimal table for you to use. The fader works almost flawlessly, excluding the fact you have to use the hex codes to enter in custom colors.
Icon Ultima has a couple of minigames within it's entirety also. These minigames include a paintball system, and drag racing system. I'll start with the drag racing system. You talk to the mechanic, located in the Icon Ultima Garage, in the eastern area of start. You create your car, and you're ready. Don't have a car icon? No problem. Mobius offers a small handful of default cars you can drive in, although you don't have a key to it, and it can be easily stolen. Yes, I said you don't have a key. What is this "key" I speak of? It's the item you get in your inventory when you make a custom car. You can copy this "key" and give the copies to others is you wish, or you can keep your car to your greedy ol' self. Once you get your car, you go find another who you would like to challenge, and then click on the "Challenge" verb under the "Commands" tab. You set your bet, and you're off. When drag racing, it's a quick 100 meter, or so dash to the finish line. Straight line, and pure speed. The one with the better conenction, and least amount of lag wins, unfortunately. No skill to it, or awesome shifting. Just, you mashing the arrow key, trying to reach the finish line before the guy below or above you gets there first. Pretty lame, but still better than nothing.
Now for the one, the only, the Icon Ultima paintball system. You go talk to the Paintball Commodore in the Icon Ultima General Store located in the far east section of start, he gives you a marker, you equip the marker, and you're set. Now to find somebody to challenge. You can either directly challenge someone to 1-on-1, or you can set up one of many types of matches, from "Capture the Flag" to a "Free-For-All." There are also many maps you can choose from. What are they? Play and find out.
Lastly, I will cover IU's inventory, currency, buying system, and give you a "secret" surprise about IU. Mobius decided to enter in a currency system, and a buying system for users to use. In IU you get "$5.00" every minute, as long as your status is not "Idle" or "AFK." You can use this money to buy many assortments of items from the IU General Store's clerk. If you wish to see what these items are, you must again, play and find out.
Now, for this "secret" surprise I promised. IU has yes, a list of cheat codes you can use for extra perks. They do random things. Some are links that boot unsuspecting "n00bs," give you craploads of money, spawn extra building objects, give you items, or do odd things to you. Yes, I know what you're thinking. "What are these codes?!" "GIVE ME ONE!" Well, I only know a handful, but I can give you one. If you type iu:hirikiri, as a message, or type /hirikiri in your commands bar, you can either make others who don't expect it, boot themselves, or if you want a fast way to log yourself out, you can just type /hirikiri in your command bar, like further mentioned. Remember, type iu:hirikiri under say to trick others, or /hirikiri to boot yourself. Don't mix them around.
Overall, Icon Ultima by Mobius Evalon is a great game to play, and a must try for all. I give Icon Ultima a 9 1/2 out of 10.
ID:913
Jun 12 2005, 5:51 pm
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Jun 12 2005, 6:01 pm
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I just thought I'd make a small comment; hexadecimal knowledge isn't a mandatory requirement, as any place that traditionally takes only a hex value can recieve an RGB value or one of (soon to come)many color names. EG, [color=red], [color=#ff0000] and [color=255,0,0] all produce the same result.
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Thanks for the extensive write-up -- sounds intriguing and like a lot of work has gone into this game!
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Read it again and thought of something else; to enter quicklinks in the command line you have to use its' quicklink prefix, so a logout would be "/iu:hirikiri" and not just "/hirikiri".
Elaboration on previous comment; I actually went and counted the color names, there's 105 right now and it has the ability to easily add more as requested. |
Good, informative review!
You didn't mention anything wrong with this game -- why a 9.5 instead of a 10? |
"You didn't mention anything wrong with this game -- why a 9.5 instead of a 10?"
I imagine half mark was lost because of the grammar nazi's in IU's community. |
I did a 9.5, because of the grammar nazi's, and the fact that no game is perfect. I hope that clears it up enough for ya Tibbeh.
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