Geekscape Games Preview: Rusty Hearts

Few of you may have heard of this manga-inspired beat-’em-up. Rusty Hearts follows a group of characters  attempting to stop a villain who that threatens to destroy both their world and the world as we know it. Lord Vlad wants a perfect world where there are only pure-blooded vampires, even if that means wiping out both humans and half-vampires. As you play through, you will fight Lord Vlad’s armies of vampires until you face him yourself.

The main characters include:

o      Angela – a sassy witch specialist of elemental magic

o      Tude – a mysterious, monstrous past and a clear taste for close range melee weapons

o      Frantz – a half vampire with mid-range merlee weapons and dark magic

The gameplay follows a Marvel: Ultimate Alliance or X-Men Legends like formula with up to four players on screen. Each player has a special ability that they choose to rank up. Special abilities can’t be combined, like fusion powers in MUA: 2, but they still look cool nonetheless. It’s important to note that this is not a side-scroller. The developers note that their inspiration for gameplay came from Castle Crashers, Scott Pilgram vs The World, and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Their inspiration for their anime-inspired universe came from Bleach, Full Metal Alchemist, Naruto, and Dragon Ball.

You and your friends will be exploring different dungeons, encountering more difficult dungeons as you progress through the game.There are a wide variety of bosses, each with a difficulty level between 1-4. Rusty Hearts also plays like a traditional MMORPG with the inclusion of loot and a variety of missions.

As you rank up, you will have the ability to upgrade your weapons. When you do this, not only will your weapon be stronger, it will undergo a physical appearance too. When you’re in-game, you don’t just simply tap your attack button, players are encouraged to explore different attacks to execute stylish combos.

Rusty Hearts features PvP combat with multiple game modes. You have the choice of using the keyboard to play or a gamepad. (I used an Xbox 360 conrtoller.)

Rusty Hearts is Free-to-Play and enters a closed Beta on July 27, 2011.

System Specs:

Minimum – Pentium 4 1.4 GHz, 1GB of RAM and a video card with 128 MB of RAM

Best Experience – Intel Core2 Duo 2.5 GHz, 2GB of RAM and a video card with 256MB of RAM

Written by:

Jacob Lopez