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  • Opening Moves

  • The Gam3, Book 1
  • By: Cosimo Yap
  • Narrated by: Nick Podehl
  • Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (886 ratings)
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Opening Moves cover art

Opening Moves

By: Cosimo Yap
Narrated by: Nick Podehl
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Summary

The Earth is changing. The alien invasion brought social upheaval, advanced technology, and an armada of peacekeeping robots. But Alan, a college student pursuing a now-useless degree, cares little about all of this. He has only one thing on his mind: the Game.

A fully immersive virtual reality, the Game appears to be a major part of the invading civilization. Alan can't wait to play, recklessly diving into the digital universe. Soon though, Alan realizes the Game is anything but simple, and the stakes are higher than he ever imagined.

©2016 Cosimo Yap (P)2016 Podium Publishing

What listeners say about Opening Moves

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Experience Online Role Playing - Without Playing

As an ex-MMORPGer (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) this book caught my attention by its somewhat novel concept; aliens invade Earth and give us peace and a virtual realty game the whole galaxy is playing. Not the usual outcome of such a scenario that you've probably come to expect. I gave up MMORPGs as I no longer have the time, but miss the fun, challenges and character building. So bear that in mind as it will colour my views.

The author has obviously has played MMORPGs. A lot. The book delights in the player's experience of building a character and is heavy on game mechanics. Heavy yes, but not to the point of being distracting. With an engaging and novel story concept, the reader experiences all the major aspects of what a player has to contend with when playing a MMORPG: character creation; chosing skills; chosing a moral standpoint; decision making - the list goes on.

But before all this sounds somewhat dull, it is presented against the backdrop of a very interesting story concept. Aliens "invade" Earth and stop humanity from tearing itself apart with war, famine, bigotry and the rest. They give us technology. They give us The Game, a virtual reality simulation where players from cross the galaxy interact, trade, do business, fall in love, and go to war. For the game is the only place where war is now fought. Our protagonist, Alan, is a newbie only equiped with an seemingly overpowered AI assistant Eve. He enters this virtual world only to find that there is a lot more to it than he ever inagined and that the actions in the game will have far reaching and devastating consequences back in the real world.

For the first published book by unknown Cosimo Yap, this really was a pleasant and engaging surprise. So much so that I went looking for the print version only to disappointingly discover there is none. It was also disappointing to discover that volume two is not yet available on Audible, simply as it is still being written.

My Audible reading list is already set for the next few months, but when book two arrives - and I really hope it does - it will be bumped to the head of the queue.

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21 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Very Good

Bit like the classic Ready Player One but more complex. Dunno how the author is going to get through this story in less than 20 books but looking forward to more

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9 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Straight onto the next thank you!

Extremely accessible (not really a gamer), well paced, expanding the richly fabricated world minute by minute. I've seen comparisons to Ready Player One, I enjoyed this a lot more and it is quite different. I'm in for the series, thank you.

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8 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Probably better as a book

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

The idea of entering a virtual world and levelling up yourself to become more powerful whilst gaining new weapons and armour etc.. was an addictive storyline for any RPG gamer. Entering the Gam3 and meeting multiple races battling over various things brought great depth to the story.

Nick Podehl is fast becoming my favourite narrator, but even he couldn't make the, seemingly endless at times, list of the main character's abilities when he 'levelled up', which was fairly regularly. There ws one chapter towards the end where I think the list took more than 10 minutes to get through. For example: Health +10 points, Armour +5 points, Dexterity + 3points, Agility +20 points. You think this is too much, you wait for when it gets to the sub categories of the specific class of the character like the "ability to communicate with an unidentified artificial intelligence +30". It was so ridiculous it made me laugh,

I enjoyed this book, and will listen to the next if it is released, but if you're also a reader I think this book is best read so that you can skim read the long list of attributes following a level up.

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7 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Very interesting book. Looking forward to the rest

This is one of the better books I have listened to with regards to the performance of the narrator.
The book itself is interesting, having listened to ready player one and we are legion, we are bob recently I would say it's right up my ally. My problem is that it seems just like it is the beginning of a much larger story. There is little to no middle or end. That being said it was still a good listen and I will definately get the next

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3 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

MMORPG

Good. waiting for the follow up.
Anyone who have dabbled with online games will most likely enjoy this book.

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3 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Good gamer, BAD writer

If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

If you're really into gaming, you might be able to overlook the bad writing. The author seems to get stuck on one word or phrase and will re-use it over and over, even in the same sentence. I wanted to like this book, and the story was reasonable, so I kept trying to ignore this, but it never stops. That, along with the endless reading out of lists and tables every time the protagonist levels up, became too much for me to put up with. If you don't care about literacy, and you love gaming, this might be acceptable to you. The narration was good, the story would probably have ended up ok, but the writing style is bad, and it's particularly badly-suited to an audio book, where you can't just skim over the frequent lists of who has which ability at which level and how far said ability has improved or decreased since the last time it was read out.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent LitRPG

Of course, this one has to be in my top fav of the genre. Nick Podehl is an amazing narrator and I've got a few of his books.

So this wasn't a bad place to start with for SciFi Litrpg.

I really wasn't disappointed. ---- some spoilers

Alan and his AI are great characters, it seems from the very start he's almost been set up for something great, even if he can't believe it. The initial pod and investment for him to enter the game and then the progression through it seemed very over-priced especially as we learn more of what things cost in his world and the game.

What I really enjoyed was the banter between Alan and the AI, she had a great voice, and her concern to protect him really did come across in all the right ways. Where she merges with an AI from another ship, I was concerned over this, mostly because of any ramifications in Alan's objective but everything seemed to go okay.

For those who love gaming, and SciFi this is a perfect set up for so many more adventures. I just hope that the translation and then the new audiobook is out soon, I really can't wait for the next one.

I do also think that because this is to me a hard litrpg there are a lot of stats, lots of info and at times these can be hard to listen to, kinda wanted to skip a few, but they were what they were. I'd be interested in a whispersync where I could see the text as well as listen to it, but thery're not easy with stat screens either, sigh.

Thanks to you both, awesome job and when's the next!

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Fantastic!

I'm an avid RPGer, but life seems to get in the way these days meaning I don't get to play anywhere near as much as I'd like.
I stumbled across this book by accident as I'd not heard anything about it and it really was brilliant.
The story was exciting and interesting and the narration was by far the best is heard on any audio book so far.
Really looking forward to the next part!

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Newbie to LitRPG

Picked this up because love the VR constructed world in Ready Player One and synopsis sounded interesting. Wow, if all LitRPG is like this, I'm a new genre fan. Beautifully paced, feels epic with likeable characters. Narrated well with each character feeling well defined. Can't wait to see how this unfolds..

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