S4 League Review

Written by:  • Edited by: Michael Hartman
Updated Mar 29, 2010
• Related Guides: Mmo Gamers
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AlaPlaya and PentaVision's English rendition of S4 League leaves little to want in terms of style, excessive fashion trends and unique weaponry. But how does this game stand up against all the other action MMOs out there? With a little flash and panache.

Style, Sports, Shooting And eSper?

S4 is all about style...and shooting
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Combining the likes of the J-pop sub-culture, virtual reality deathmatching and over-the-top gun mechanics, PentaVision's S4 League is almost a sensory-overload experience for MMO gamers. The colors, the weapons, the characters, the clothes…everything is made to be superfluously stylish if not to the point of nearly being absurd.

Nevertheless, the game has some saving grace qualities in the form of decent gameplay modes and a community-based effort for ensuring that all players come out of each session with some form of experience or credits.

The game is called “S4” because it’s about: style, eSper (for the special abilities), shooting (a no brainer) and sports (because of the team sporting event on the game. The name doesn’t make a whole of sense but the game is generally fun to play on occasion.

Gameplay
Rating Average

What's that on his arm? A sword
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After choosing a male or female and some newbie starting clothes, players are thrust into a tutorial to help them learn how to play. The control mechanics are quite similar to third-person games like Gunz: The Duel or BattleSwarm. The mouse aims and turns the character, while ‘W’,’A’,’S’,’D’ strafes; it's the typical third-person controls. Players primarily duel one another in several modes, including standard deathmatch, touchdown (like football where a team scores by putting the Fumbi ball in their opponent's goal post), and chaser ( a mode that consists of each player taking turns as the “Chaser” and must get as much score as possible, it’s equivalent to Halo’s “Juggernaut”).

Each mode is fun in its own way but nothing particularly groundbreaking. Chaser is probably the most original mode on the game and is a good way to help players use a little teamwork and strategy for staying alive. Being that the game is an MMO, the actual gameplay is affected moderately by special skills and upgradeable stats but not quite as much as player skill.

For the most part the action is solid and players with twitchy-fingers and a good eye for keeping the reticule locked on an enemy will fare well within the game. It requires the typical third-person-shooting skill and relies very little on the actual level of a character to differentiate player efficiency. It's actually possible to get really high in level but still get owned pretty hard by a sharp-shooting newbie.

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