Explore a mythical world of 3D combat and adventure in Juggernaut

Explore a mythical world of 3D combat and adventure in Juggernaut:

Juggernaut is an online multiplayer game that offers tons of turn-based fighting action, and stunning graphics. It runs on the Unity engine, which is fast becoming the watchword for ‘net based games, and best of all: it is free.
While it is a multiplayer online game, Juggernaut is distinctive from most of the other MMOs out there, in some ways. The concept, the graphics and the dynamic game world are all of high quality, as well as being of a different flavor than many of the games out there that are classified as MMOs. It may not be actually unique, but it sure does stand apart from the rest of the pack.

Essentially, Juggernaut is what I would call a casual massive multiplayer online game (CMMO) because, while it does have many aspects in common with the standard MMO rulers like World of Warcraft, it is not nearly as all consuming and immersive. This can have both drawbacks and advantages, of course, but in the end result I think it is more a positive than a negative. While games like W.o.W. offer a full screen 3D world to explore as if you were within it, CMMOs like Juggernaut offer a more text and mouse based experience. That is not to say that the graphics in Juggernaut are in any way poor, just that it is a different concept than a fully rendered MMO world.

The ‘main window’ of Juggernaut will switch from flat 2D pictures, to 3d isometric (top down with an angle) to full 3D profile views as you navigate between different parts of the game, and the graphics are indeed quite well done in most of the game I have experienced so far. One of the nicer, more thoughtful features of Juggernaut is that it has multiple different graphics settings that are scalable. This means you can turn the graphics way down if you have a slow machine or way up if you have a great computer. While the graphics in the low end version are not quite as pretty and impressive as the visuals in the high end version, they are still pretty comparable. Even so, the ‘highest’ graphics modes won’t require a dedicated video card or GPU so that makes Juggernaut a great alternative for people who are running it on older computers or on weaker ones, like laptops that have onboard video.

The game plays out in a kind of story mode, where you create a character, give it a name and choose appearance, etc. just like any other game of this type. Be prepared, however, for a lot of reading involved in playing juggernaut. While the action portion doesn’t make you read much more than damage numbers or short things like “Right Attack” or “Fury”, the rest of the game is pretty much text based with icons. The story of your character will play out based on choices you make as a result of reading the text that appears in various parts of the screen so if you’re one of those folks who “isn’t a reader” then Juggernaut is probably not for you. Come to think of it, though, if you don’t like reading then you’re probably not going to bother with this article. If you are up to reading a lot of text, though, you will be happy to know that Juggernaut also has a very well-planned and executed tutorial system.

As far as downsides go, there are two issues I have with Juggernaut. First, the sound is really annoying. It’s actually quite high quality sound, maybe too high. I noticed almost instantly, once I turned the sound on, that the virtual birds that are part of the ambient sound are very piercing in their warbles. Way too piercing, in fact. At first it did not bother me a lot but as time went on the fact that the birds were not only high pitched and piercing, but they also seem to somehow be louder than the rest of the sounds, no matter how much fiddling I did with the controls and options. Additionally, the birds seem to be everywhere, even inside of the shops and under the ground in caves. This is, I hope, a minor bug that will be fixed in future updates. The only other real issue I had with the game was the monotonous nature of it over the first few levels of play. This is, however, a pretty standard problem to overcome in an RPG of any kind, online or not, so it was pretty easy to dismiss.

Overall, I found Juggernaut to be lots of fun, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a more casual roleplaying experience, as well as anyone who is looking to branch out in their gaming interests and horizons. For now, I will be back in there, beating up snakes and hyenas until my character can get a better haircut with his hard won gold and experience. Until next time, my friends!
Check out Juggernaut here.