Urban Rivals
Game Review, Guide and Tips

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Urban Rivals is a free multiplayer online trading card game with more than 500 characters to discover, collect and level up by fighting live against players from all over the world. You represent one of the clans trying to gain control of Clint City, and are out to show that your clan is the top dog in town!

The game is loosely based on the collectible or trading card game phenomenon that took the mid-90's by storm. In fact, the genre is still going strong, with games such as Magic: The Gathering and Legend of the Five Rings still in production with expansions coming out every few months. However, while those games are limited by the fact that they are physical games, Urban Rivals has brought the trading card game concept online, allowing players to play, trade and chat with thousands of other players around the world. And this happens instantly too: no more having to juggle conflicting schedules in order to get a bunch of friends to come together for a game!

Clint City has become a lawless town, and there are nearly two dozen clans or factions fighting for control. From the chivalrous Sentinels and the sporty All Stars to the demon-worshipping Nightmare clan and the gangland Montana's; various factions from all walks of life have come to represent and fight for what's theirs.

The basic gameplay in Urban Rivals is elegantly simple, and easy for a new player to pick up. In order to battle, you have to field a team of eight characters as your "deck" of cards. When you battle another player, four characters out of your deck are randomly chosen to fight against your opponent's team of four.

You each start the match with a certain amount of life and a limited resource of power-boosting "pillz". Your goal is to reduce your opponent's life to zero while protecting your own. The match happens in four rounds, each of which has one of your team of four fighting one of your opponent's characters, using their abilities and the "pillz" to hopefully swing the game in your favor.

The actual "game" in this is two-fold: the deck-building strategy and planning that happens before matches, and the resource management and bluffing that happens during the matches. While building your deck, you will need to think of a few things: which clans' characters to use (each clan gives a different bonus to the characters); the power of the characters; which mix of characters that have the best chance of winning; and you can even consider including abilities that counter the kind of decks you go up against often.

The gameplay during the match involves analyzing which of your characters (and their abilities) have the best chance of beating your opponent's characters. There is also a lot of bluffing and on-the-go strategizing too. "Should I use a lot of pillz now to boost my attacking character, or should I not use any and hope the other guy wastes a lot of pillz this round?"

Urban Rivals also caters for a whole range of players. Casual players will enjoy getting into a match instantly whenever they have 5-10 minutes to spare in between doing other things. Players who have more time to spare can also take part in the organized tournaments (12 tournaments are run every day). More competitive players can also take part in official tournament ladders with great prizes. On the other side of the spectrum, collectors can spend their time collecting all the available characters. Gotta catch 'em all!

Though the many layers of gameplay and strategizing are impressive on their own, the developers keep providing updates to the game to keep it fresh. A new clan is introduced every six months (with new characters and abilities) and new characters are also released every two weeks! In addition, the battle for Clint City isn't static. There is also an evolving story, as depicted in the Urban Rivals online comic. So come on down and represent your clan, and show those wannabes who's the real boss in Clint City! (Plus you get 8 character cards the moment you log in!)

Rating: 5.0/5.0  

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