You may or may not be aware but the MMO Hero has now come out for an open beta. I figured I'd give it a shot. I'm still on the hunt for that one MMO that will provide me content I will still crave after a few months whilst not demanding I invest my entire life into plumbing its depths. It's a free open beta so I though, what the Hell.

Things started off promising enough. The client downloaded nice and quick the installation was painless and the opening cinematic, while shot in-game, was adequately interesting. Then things got ugly. Anyone who has played Guild Wars with me knows how annoyed I get at the fact that every player character in the game bar your own uses a low res version of the textures that adorn your avatar. All of Hero looked like that.

Sure the control set up didn't do much for me and there were some glitchy visuals going on but I did not play Hero for more than ten minutes before I uninstalled it. Why? Because it looked like crap.

The art design was pretty enough but technically it looked very dated. I'm not going to pass judgement on Hero on the basis of its graphics. You certainly won't see me on the PC Powerplay forums laying the boot in and calling it an awful game. To be honest I have no idea how it plays. I didn't stay around long enough to find out.

Last night the graphics whore that I have kept at bay for so long leaped out with a resounding roar and hit the uninstall button. Now please don't take that to mean that I treat any reviews I'm doing with that kind of contempt. I do properly play all the games I review but when it comes to the land of gaming in my own time for my own pleasure… well last night I think I may have just shamed myself a little as a gamer.

To wash the shame away I booted up Oblivion to see if I could get any further in the game but five crashes in twenty minutes saw me just go to bed early and play The New Super Mario Bros. on my DS.

Sometimes being a PC gamer is tough.