Yearly Archives: 2009
Armada Online
In Armada Online you can become a captain of your own ships. The alien armada that conquered Earth seeks to prevent humans from reaching the stars. They are your enemy. Study them and exploit their vulnerabilities.
If you want to survive in deep space, you have to create teams to fight the armada. So group up and form strategies in order to proceed.
You can modify your own ship to promote technological evolution. Life is upgradable too!
Infinity Online Review: Combined Hack & Slash with Style
Infinity Online Review: Combined Hack & Slash with Style
By Jeffrey Kerkdijk (Hyarume), OnRPG Journalist
Infinity is an online room-based hack and slash multiplayer game developed by Windysoft and hosted by Gametribe for the European public. The game offers a wide variety of missions and PvP.
Infinity online is like a martial arts combat centered game with its own style. Just like in Dynasty Warriors you will have to hack your way through hordes of enemies (not as many enemies at Dynasty Warriors but still you get the picture). Yes, you are going to hit everything on your path with a single blow in Infinity Online. It’s one of games that can remain entertaining for many hours, not despite but because of its flashy, overpowered repetitiveness on offer.
Into the Game
There are nine initial character archetypes you can choose from, and they are rather defined by their gender, body-type and, most importantly, their weapons. For example you can choose Kirius, a slender, gloomy-looking man with a long spear who is out for revenge and will bitterly slay anything in his way. Or else you can choose Beakho, a smaller but broad and powerful man with a sword in one hand and a claw in the other. He has devoted his life to battle and becoming stronger. Or if you go more for the female playable characters, Elina has a dual bladed spear and looks like a little angelic-demon (yes, that dual-sided). The nine different types have their own background stories and therefore developed their own independent fighting style and preference for different use of weapons. All of them are powerful souls who will let nothing stand in their way.
The background of the game-world doesn’t have a real story, although there are missions (called ‘acts’) that have their own descriptions which add some depth to the game. Mission rewards include XP, items and Luna (the in-game currency). Infinity also hosts PvP content in arena style. Pick a map, mode, fighting type and whether you want to fight with guards or without guards. There are some maps where you can fall off; these so called Ring-Out maps are more challenging than the regular maps. But these matches are also shorter. You can buy other guards, extra characters, extra skills, and other clothing all in the item shop. Some of these can be purchased with Luna, but most of the items on offer require you to get KASH to pay for it. KASH is the cash shop currency from Gametribe.
The controls are good, you move the camera with the mouse and you can attack with it too. You can jump with spacebar, dash with Q and counter attack with R once fully charged you can even unleash a special attack with F. All of these moves, obviously based around the standard WASD navigation keys. The controls work excellent and offer for quick responses in any direction as you mow down your enemies.
Graphic Quality
The graphics of Infinity Online are pretty good. The designs are amusing and carry a heavy East-Asian influence: the fantasy-combat outfits are all shiny and reveal skin at the most interesting places. The combat moves are highly graphic and will flash around the screen, accompanying the tossing of bodyparts. Overall the animations look top-notch and the game can look amazing. Certainly the moves may get somewhat repetitive, but there’s more than enough entertaining content so that even the grinding doesn’t get boring. If you adjust the settings, you will hear that the sound-effects are standard but that is good enough.
Personal Experience
Back when I played Infinity Online for the first time during the Game & Game beta, I was hooked. I told my friends that I had found a great fun game to play. During that same year half of my school class got into the hack and slash game that Windysoft made for us. The game was different back then, and the NEW Infinity has changed. It is bigger, more in depth and overall it feels like a new game now. They implemented things like jumping, purchased skills that only last for a week, or a month, and so on. The game became influenced by the cash shop. Premium characters are now only available on cash shop. Overall it became a commercial game.
Nowadays Infinity Online is heavily influenced by the cash shop, the balance that existed between the players during the Game & Game beta is gone. Players that pay for the game will have a big advantage of those who don’t and it is sad to see that this has happened to a good game like Infinity Online. The game is still fairly popular, but to me it has lost its touch.
Summary
Infinity Online is not a bad game; the game offers a lot of things to do and is fun if you play casually. However if you are a hardcore player Infinity online won’t be fun for long, and you will notice you’re doing the same missions over and over again. PvP is a rather interesting feature of Infinity Online and can be fairly fun. There is a pretty good balance between the characters, but the cash shop does have an influence on the balance of the game. Some characters are only available if you purchase KASH. These characters aren’t overpowered or anything but they are different, they have a totally unique style of battle and not having these characters might give your opponent an advantage against some of the standard characters.
Infinity Online, being a hack and slash 3D multiplayer game does have several flaws, but if you can overcome these flaws and if you can enjoy a casual game give Infinity a go. If you are like me, a player that had played Infinity Online from Game & Game, then let it go because it is a different game now.
Pros:
– Action combat with fluent animations
– Missions
– PvP that is somehow balanced
Cons:
– The cash shop
– Repetitiveness
Florensia: Private Banking coming
The Account Bank also provides 28 slots of item storage, but may be accessed by every character a player has on a server. Does your Explorer have a powerful item he or she can’t use? Just drop it in the Account Bank and give it to your lower-level Saint! Access to the Account Bank can be purchased from the Item Shop in 7, 15, and 30-day increments, and just might change the way you play Florensia.
Ys Online: The Call of Solum – Races
– Class: Cleric, Knight, Rogue, Warrior, Wizard
– Personality: Friendly
– Specialty: Alchemy, Archaeology
– Average Height: 170cm (5.5ft)
– Class: Guardian, Nighthawk, Myrmidon, Wicca, Witchdoctor
– Personality: Rebellious
– Specialty: Refinement, Weapon crafting
– Average Height: 190cm (6.2ft)
– Class: Archer, Conjuror, Protector, Shaman
– Personality: Reclusive
– Specialty: Collection, Cooking, Crafting
– Average Height: 120cm (3.4ft)
GodsWar Online: Open Beta Starts on April 9th
In addition, the developers are continuing to improve the game with new functions and new systems, such as the upcoming Constellation System.
Silkroad: get ready for Easter celebration
Rakion: get ready for a bloody Easter
War returns to Rakion… it’s time for clans to stand and fight!
Prize Dates: 4/13, 4/20, 4/27, 5/4, 5/11
The Clan War Experience
Submission: 4/20/09 ~ 4/27/09
Voting: 4/30/09 ~ 05/06/09
Atlantica Online trailer
Atlantica Online is a strategic turn-based MMORPG that combines innovative combat with character/party development and city/country management. Players take on the quest to destroy the Oriharukon, a powerful energy sensor from the lost civilization of Atlantis that survived and is now endangering humanity. This journey will take players around the globe to locations like the Great Wall of China and the pyramids of Egypt where they will come face-to-face with monsters ripped from history and lore, such as the ruthless Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu and Dracula.
Eve Online Review: Still Unmatched
By Ben Lamb (BGLamb), Onrpg writer
For 6 years now, Eve has held a special place in the field of MMOs. Set apart from the rest of the pack in many ways, it has remained an oddity that nobody has yet managed to replicate. Offering a larger degree of freedom than most, it has attracted and repelled gamers in equal measures. An almost impenetrable interface and extraordinarily steep learning curve hide what might be the deepest and most rewarding RPG on the market today.
Running on one gigantic server, CCP games has just released a major (free) expansion last month, so there’s never been a better time to break in to this breakthrough RPG.
Graphics
Graphically, Eve is like a stunningly beautiful but incredibly demanding schizophrenic; alternately making your soul weep at its beauty and your eyes bleed at its confounding minutia. To maintain its incredible integrity, the process of piloting a starship through even the most basic manoeuvres necessarily involves a multitude of menus and a plethora of displays, all fighting for your screen space. As you drift through the stars, however, you will quickly get used to turning all of these off for a moment, to press your face against the windscreen of your craft and gaze at the beautifully serene starscapes.
Gameplay
Sitting at the opposite end of the spectrum from Warcraft, Eve is notorious for throwing players in at the deep end. Eve’s galaxy is as vast and varied as the styles of play it encourages, and there’s nobody to hold your hand and guide you through it piece by piece like most MMOs. The entire galaxy of 5000 solar systems is available to explore right from your very first day, and with no Character Level to speak of, there’s nothing to stop you exploring every inch of it.
Eve employs a ‘passive’ skill training system, where your skills will level up in the direction of your choosing regardless of what you do or how much you play. You can train your combat skills while you make money by mining, or just turn the game off and continue training while you’re eating dinner. This doesn’t mean that veteran characters will necessarily have the advantage however, as the player’s skill in piloting a spaceship matters far more than a character’s skill points.
With no twitch element to proceedings, and the dense and complicated interface Eve certainly attracts a very select audience and has earned the nickname “Excel Online”. Eve’s player-base has consistently grown since its birth however, something matched by almost no other MMO. Even Warcraft seems to have hit its peak.
PvP
Due to the lack of Character Levels and Experience Points, the PvP in Eve is a singularly thrilling experience. When forming up a fleet, every ship counts, whether you’ve been there one day or 5 years. The scale of the ships is truly astounding, with the largest capitol ships stretching over 18 kilometres. For a new player there is nothing more satisfying than zipping close to one in a tiny frigate and jamming their engines or targeting systems while your team-mates in Battleships pummel away at them with projectile turrets and beam weapons.
The unique role of the Fleet Commander is also something that few will have experienced before, and is something that really takes the combat to a level above other MMOs. It is the job of the FC to organise the fleet (of perhaps 200+ players) into wings and squadrons and then issue orders over a headset. Calling out primary and secondary targets, ordering his Recon and Sniper wings into position and choosing the right targets for the Electronic Warfare squadron to hamper, the job of the FC is a more demanding role than I have previously seen anywhere in computer gaming.
The ‘Apocrypha’ Expansion
The producers of Eve Online, CCP games have an innovative business model that provides players with the client and all subsequent updates completely free. They see their development as funded by the subscriptions of their players. The most recent expansion (there have been 11 previously) has focused on features both for new players and old.
For the new players, there has been an overhaul of what they call the NPE (New Player Experience). This has been in direct response to the overwhelmingly difficult learning curve. New players are now guided much more slowly through the large numbers of skills and concepts they will need to understand, and give many more rewards and incentives along the way.
The main focus of the expansion is the much talked about wormholes. These randomly spawning rifts in space are the doorways to 2500 new star-systems, full of radical technology and slumbering ancients. This has given the developers an excuse to update the enemy AI which, to be honest, is rather disappointing.
The main benefit of these wormholes, however, is one of exploration. Despite the size of known space, Eve’s single-server model means that the exciting, valuable and dangerous territory at the fringe of the galaxy is pretty much all fortified by the huge player-run alliances. During Eve’s infancy, one of the unique thrills of the game was exploring these vast regions and laying stake to a patch, then trying to defend it when anyone else came prying.
The new wormholes will open and close randomly, sometimes granting players a temporary doorway into these new, uncharted areas. With no travel links between these new star systems, navigation is difficult and there is no telling if you will find your way home should your entry wormhole collapse. There is also a difficulty in bringing large ships through the gateways, which leaves players with a very exciting, if scary, opportunity to band together in a small group and lay claim to one of these new planets.
Summary
Eve is definitely not for everyone. If you want something easy, or instantly rewarding then you would be very disappointed in what Eve has to offer. If, however, you’ve pwned all your friends at all of those MMOs for kids and want something to really get your teeth into, then Eve is the place where all the hardcore end up.
Whether you want to build yourself the ultimate pirate ship and lurk in the dark corners of space where strength is the law, or hone your 1337 spreadsheeting skillz, commanding a fleet of 200 other players over your headset, the universe is yours for the taking, any way you choose.