Blake Blaster is in for the ride of his life when he (underhandedly?) secures a spot in a virtual reality contest.
Death Portal Online is a madcap romp through a virtual reality video game fantasy land. Blake isn’t particularly smart or that good at games, but he does have one thing going for him: he’s not afraid to kill everything that moves. Fast-paced and none too serious, his journey through the MMORPG’s dark fantasy world is full of humor and surprises.
Is Blake a couch potato with nothing left to lose, a reprehensible hack turning the game world inside out, or a lovable slob who just wants to be a better man? Click “buy now” to start reading and decide for yourself!
My Opinion: $2.99, 164 pages, Available on Kindle Unlimited
Death Portal Online is the best and most expensive VR game on the market. However, Blake and his best friend get a chance to beta test DPO 2, after attacking two other beta testers and locking them in the trunks of their cars. These two will do whatever it takes to win the beta contest to get permanent spots on the dev team.
This story took some time to grow on me. Most people will either hate it or love it.
Everything in the story is in service of the joke. So, whether you enjoy the novel or not is dependent on whether or not the jokes in the story are funny to you. Most of the jokes are either related to pulp culture, gaming, or just plain punny. But there are jokes galore.
The VR world is a little loose on the game mechanics, none of which are explained fully but are in line with the story. Players have to explore discover all the rules as they play. However, there are health bars, mana bars, levels, and stat points and progression according to those terms.
A few things I didn’t like:
The main characters are jerk gamers, who at the beginning of the story almost feel sociopathic. Willing to do whatever they can get away with in game to get XP.
Includes: Killing innocent NPCs, even quest givers, burn whole forest down, slaughter a village of gnomes for the punch line.
They’re eventually reigned in by the game moderators and the characters realize the importance of a ‘good reputation’. But their behavior almost made me put down the novel.
Once I realized everything in the novel was just for the sake of the joke, I didn’t take the story as seriously and had a better time reading it.
Score: 7 out of 10.
Death Portal Online (A LitRPG Classic in the Making!)