Kingdom of Loathing

4 Beats WoW...
Yes, I do mean that, I enjoyed this low-rent semi-MMO more than I enjoyed my stint playing World of Warcraft. Not that it’s saying much, I hated WoW. Too time consuming, people constantly acted like idiots, the /dance emote was abused more than I cared to think about…

What was I talking about? Oh, right, KoL.

Kingdom of Loathing is part of a separate genre of MMORPG I refer to as “SMOMORPG” – Semi-Massively, Ostensibly-Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. Semi-Massively because the game doesn’t feel massive. Deep, perhaps – but it still feels manageable, something that you can dig into without it taking over your whole life. Ostensibly multiplayer because while you know there are other people playing it, that doesn’t really mean much, and you can probably make it through most of the game without interacting with one other person if you tried hard enough. Not that it’s a good idea, just that you COULD. The online role-playing game bit is fine as is, but we’re still keeping our eye on it for later revision, so don’t get too comfortable with it yet.

As a dabbler in Sumomorpuhguh’s, and a fan of one in particular, Anime Cubed’s “Billy vs. SNAKEMAN”, I was able to leap into Kingdom of Loathing pretty easily, but my past experience wasn’t really necessary. The opening quest made it dead simple to get up and running on your own, and the shortcut-laden menu bar made hopping around easy as pie. As a bonus, it couldn’t completely take over my life, because each player has a set number of adventuring turns each day, something that could be increased with food or booze, but only to a certain level. Thus, a perfect diversion that fits in a lunchbreak. But I digress – back to the playability. In only a few minutes, I was leaping around the map like a rabid monkey and disco’ing knob goblins to their imminent doom, and no, I’m not kidding there. With classes like Seal Clubber, Disco Bandit and Pastamancer, Kingdom of Loathing isn’t afraid to drop you into “distinctly odd” territory, right outside “K.C. Green” and a few miles off from “Road Waffles” and “Hunter S. Thompson”. If you still don’t know exactly what I mean, consider this; the first weapon store in the game is called the Armory and Leggery. And it is run by a fellow who has no arms, or legs, who is quite aware of the irony and says that he’s “heard them all”. I don’t doubt it. Toss in monochrome stick-figure graphics, and you’ve got a game that plays out like something you doodled in the margins of your notebook back in Junior High, only better, because there are no typos and no margin lines.

In short, Kingdom of Loathing is simple to get into, highly playable, and quite clever besides all that. I felt comfortable giving it a 4/5, and suggest you give it a go when you’ve got nothing better to do… such as now. I mean, come on, you’re reading a long, rambling review written by ME, that says something.