Monthly Archives: October 2010

Cabal Online NA Merges with International Version

Cabal Online NA Merges with International Version


ESTsoft has announced that the Global Service of CABAL Online, which is serviced to every region where there is not a dedicated publisher, is going to be merged with CABAL Online NA Service.

 

According to the announcement posted on the CABAL NA website, the reason for the merger is to concentrate more resources onto both of the services.

 

The Global Service of CABAL Online is going to be merged with CABAL Online NA Service.

 

Now the users of both Global Service CABAL and CABAL NA Service would be able to enjoy better services such as more events, cash items, and timely updates.

 

The merger is scheduled to take place on October 28th.

 

Sky Legends Announced For 2011

Sky Legends Announced For 2011

 

UTV True Games, an international publisher and developer of multi-player online games, and developer Smart Bomb Interactive today announced that they have partnered to bring a new online flight combat game, Sky Legends, built on the Unity engine.

 

Smart Bomb, known for the development of such popular games as Snoopy Flying Ace and National Geographic Animal Jam, are developing the upcoming free-to-play flight combat game that will have players taking flight in customizable airplanes built for fast-paced multiplayer battles in an attempt to rule the skies.

 

Sky Legends will launch into the skies in 2011

 

Players will take flight in this unique browser-based game where they will fly customizable open cockpit era airplanes and battle other players in fast-paced multiplayer combat. Influenced by FPS titles and based in a fictional fantasy world, Sky Legends will feature multiple factions to join or battle against as a work-for-hire mercenary that seeks to restore order to the world! The game’s item shop will include hundreds of items to enhance the player’s planes, weapons, and piloting skills, presented in numerous categories with exclusive items on offer. Airplanes in Sky Legends reflect the personalities and combat styles of their pilots; and with the diverse, fun art styles of three airplane classes to choose from and hundreds of possible enhancements, players will discover endless customization options.

 

“Sky Legends expands the typical flight combat genre of games and brings a fun and irreverent feel to the gameplay experience,” said Peter Cesario, Director of Product Development of UTV True Games. “Smart Bomb has an excellent pedigree of high-quality, fun and dynamic flying titles so we are confident that Sky Legends will be another amazing product from this team.”


At launch, players will be able to master the skies by battling in three fast-paced game modes including Dog Fight, Team Dog Fight, and Capture the Flag. Additional launch highlights will include community features such as friend’s lists, guilds, achievements, rankings and leaderboards. A diverse cast of characters, multiple weapons to earn and unlock, extensive customization features and diverse mission environments will appeal to both shooter fans and players who wish to reconnect with the aerial combat genre or try it out for the first time.

 

“Our team has an extensive background with successful flying games, and we are confident that Sky Legends will be an instant multiplayer hit,” said Graham Kays, Game Director of Sky Legends at Smart Bomb. “Our goal is to deliver the pulse-pounding action and intense competitive gameplay of aerial dogfighting without the complexity and inaccessibility of conventional aerial combat games.”


 

Sky Legends

Sky Legends is a cute remake/rebrand of the XBox Live Game “Snoopy Flying Ace”. The game offers a low threshold for new players to get in while also offering a bunch of granular customization for experts to really specialize their planes. When we first saw it in action at GDC2011 we were quite impressed by the game and we look forward to being able to tell you more when we get our hands on a test account.

Sky Legends is a browser-based, free-to-play, online multiplayer flight combat game featuring intuitive flight controls, intense aerial combat, and outstanding graphics! With a wide range of PvP game modes, upgradeable and customizable air planes, and a full range of unique weaponry, Sky Legends offers endlessly replayable short-session gaming. Compete as a lone pilot or with a Squadron to sharpen your skills and prove once-and-for-all that you are the top ace!

 

Final Fantasy XIII Review Best Hair 2010

Final Fantasy XIII Review Best Hair 2010
By Tully Ackland, OnRPG Editor

 

After waiting what felt like an eternity, Final Fantasy XIII made its debut in Europe earlier this year and I was waiting with gleeful anticipation at the store doors early morning on day one. Having already done research prior it was made clear that the public viewed that the PS3 version was graphically superior to the Xbox 360’s, I followed that advice and was not disappointed.

 

Final Fantasy XIII Lightning

 

Western and Eastern RPG architectures have been diverging dramatically over time, where the West takes the approach of giving more freedom in character development, multiple choices and open worlds the East focus on very linear storytelling and predefined fates for each and every character.

 

With that in mind Final Fantasy XIII is most certainly an Eastern RPG, and if you’ve been away from the genre for a long time it can feel at first hit you like a truck and at the same time feel like a setback to the general gaming experience. I should make clear from the start though that Final Fantasy XIII is eventually a fantastic game if you give it enough time, however the build up speed both mechanically and narratively is far slower than should be acceptable.

 

To me this isn’t such an issue as an avid fan of the franchise but it strikes home that anyone not as patient or entirely new to Final Fantasy would have a serious time continuing to the 10 hour marker where the games combat system and story start to take shape in an engaging and fun way.

 

Final Fantasy XIII UI Battle

 

The story is one that takes elements of previous Square-Enix games, a band of rebels are brought together and unwillingly made L’Cie which are empowered humans who serve a single purpose and then ultimately die, their purpose is to save the world from certain doom.

 

Your party is brought into the chaos from the beginning and are soon finding themselves in the middle of a war that has raged for generations. As time progresses the story becomes more and more involving and Square Enix have already begun working on two more games in this universe, Agito and Versus and I’m for one interested how the extended lore takes place.

 

FFXIII Paragim

 

Without a doubt the game shines its brightest with its combat, characters all can fill each of the 6 roles available. COM, RAV, SEN, SYN, SAB and MED which are in MMO terms, MDPS, RDPS, Tank, Buffer, De-buffer and Healer.

 

Your Battle Team is made up of three characters at a time and cannot be swapped in combat, you define what a character is which role by setting up Paragrims. You can have up to 6 Paragrims created at a time and these can be switched in combat whenever and as often as you like and is a key part of each battle. As an example you could have a Paragrim as COM, RAV, RAV and switch to COM, SEN, MED if you need to heal and defend more. Two of the three characters are controlled entirely by the A.I which always use the best skills for the job, if the enemy is weak to fire. They’ll cast ice!

 

Battles are fast and extremely beautiful to watch play out, there’s an automated attack function for your primary character but this is near useless in the later fights. With a little time and practice you can work out strategies and combinations to make swift work of enemies, however don’t be surprised at an occasional boss encounter which may take you more than half an hour an attempt. The combat engine is such a stunning one it’s a real shame that Square Enix don’t let you truly see it in action sooner.

 

You are also encouraged to upgrade your equipment, both weapons and accessories. In fact the only way to obtain your ultimate weapons is to upgrade a weapon fully, which can be quite an accomplishment to achieve.

 

FFXIII Odin Summon

 

You’ll be hard pressed to find such a beautiful game in both its in-engine graphics and pre-rendered CG, there were moments where I just left the game running as a screen saver while I attended other tasks, and confirmed: best hair 2010. The sound track also holds up well which was my biggest surprise, while Nobuo Uematsu (the composer of the majority of FF titles) has been out of Square Enix for a while, this is the first game in the series not to feature a single track from him, a special note has to go for the epic boss battle music and the character Snow’s theme.

 

FFXIII Battle

 

I’m in love with Final Fantasy XIII, it’s just truly unfortunate that the game punishes you for the first several hours, still that hasn’t stopped me now racking up over 150 hours while I attempt to finish every last side-quest and obtain the ultimate weapons for all characters.

 

After XII I worried that the franchise was losing its ability to keep me interested in Eastern RPG’s. I’m pleased to say that I’ve been happily reassured that Square still have what it takes and I’ll be picking up XIII Versus as soon as possible to see what else they can do with this universe.

Pocket Legends Review: MMO At The Palm Of Your Hands

Pocket Legends Review: MMO At The Palm Of Your Hands
By Kei Beneza (dividelife), OnRPG Journalist

 

Pocket Legends is an MMORPG made exclusively for the iPhone, iTouch, and iPad. The game is entirely free to play, and only takes around 40MB of your diskspace (that’s like 5 minutess of download?). That’s actually pretty amazing as most apps take around 100MB+. I was really impressed upon seeing this game, especially since I used to dream about playing Ragnarok Online on my Game Boy Advanced years ago. The game is actually pretty simple compared to desktop MMOs. To be honest, I was expecting the game to suck bad after seeing the filesize. How the hell are they gonna fit MMO content into a 40MB client? I guess you could say that the old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” slapped me hard across the face. The game was actually quite fun, but don’t take my word for it. Let’s dive in and see what else they got.

Starting Up

After logging in for the first time, you will be asked to create your character. It is not really that big of a chore as you will only have 3 classes to choose from: The Warrior, who uses strong melee attacks; the Archer, who specializes in ranged tactics and speed; and of course, the Enchantress, who draws power from damaging and healing spells. I was pretty disappointed when I first saw the game’s character creation system due to its lack of customization features. First of all, you are not allowed to change your character’s gender. It’s not really that much of a big deal, but this option is usually a basic feature among MMOs. Secondly, the game only sports one default model per class (Bears for Warriors, Cats for Enchantresses, and Eagles for Archers). For me, character customization is a must for all MMOs. I believe that the developers have overlooked the players’ drive to be unique. A simple color changer would have been useful.

 

Pocket Legends Starting Up

The World

Much like GuildWars, the only persistent territory in the game is the town (or in this case, Towne). Here you interact with players and visit merchants for extra items and equipment. Once you’re done with your shopping spree, you’re ready to start your adventure. Pocket Legends’ pacing is similar to Lunia Online’s ladderized level system, where players play through a series of linear stages, one after another. This is done either by hosting a game or joining a game in progress. Scenarios are completely instanced and the only way to get players to join you (provided that you sadly don’t have any friends) is by leaving the password option blank.

 

How Is It So Far?

Honestly, the game is too grind-y for my taste… Once you create your game, you’ll be given a number of enemies to kill. Once you’ve killed everything on the map, you’ll be prompted to port to the next level. From there on, your party will be given the choice to either join you in your next adventure or leave the group. Playing an MMO in the palm of your hands may be awesome as hell, but the linearity of this game really affects its overall appeal. I’ve played tons of dungeon crawlers, but this one is a bit more senseless than usual (especially when it comes to the grind factor).

Pocket Legens How is it So Far

Controls

I was actually a bit disappointed with the ingame controls since the game uses a touch screen D-pad which doesn’t really respond as well as it should. Your attack button, as well as your skills are located on the right side of the screen, allowing you to touch or click on them when needed. The camera is moved by scrolling your hand across the screen, which is by far the most responsive feature in the game. Anyway, for those of you who cant stand the D-pad feature, you can enable the point and click option by disabling the touch joystick function in the options menu. In my opinion, the game is better off played without the joystick as the touch d-pad tends to block your field of view, especially when your thumb is hogging 30% of the screen.

Graphics And Interface

The graphics are a bit pixelated but quite superb for a hand-held MMO. It’s actually a pretty decent game for a 40 MB app. The skills are nicely done, with a bunch of colors flashing through the screen as you execute spells and other special effects. The game could use more enemy models as seeing the same enemy in different locations may make it a bit linear, shortening the game’s overall lifespan. The interface is quite basic and is easy to understand. The menus (inventory, attributes, etc) are separated on top of the touch screen via tabs, allowing you to scroll the options effectively. A very impressive layout, as they are able to utilize the touch screen’s capabilities.

 

 

Pocket Legends Graphics and Int

 

Room For Improvement

All in all, I would say that Pocket Legends is a game with a lot of potential. It still has a long way to go, but I believe it can find ways to improve further. My first gripe would have to be the game’s lack of invites. Although you are given a friends list to keep track of your online buddies, there is no way for you invite them to your instanced game, that is unless they manually join your session. Secondly,  the game needs to focus on its character customization interface (which is seriously lacking at the moment). Being a bear is fun, but it would definitely be a lot better if we were able to choose our race/animal; on the other hand, if cross-racial classes are impossible, it will be a lot cooler if gamers were allowed to add some defining features to their character such as scars and probably hairstyles. From what I’ve seen, the game seems to update its features regularly. I guess all we need to do now is wait for its FINAL FORM.

 

Pros

It’s a friggin mobile MMO!
Character Classes
Emoticons
Tons of skills to choose from
Updates regularly


Cons

Lack of classes
Character customization interface is limited to character naming
Repetitive backgrounds
Lack of enemy models

 

 

World of Magic Review- Magic at Your Fingertips!

World of Magic Review- Magic at Your Fingertips!
By Kei Beneza (dividelife), OnRPG Journalist

 

World of Magic is a 2D MMORPG made exclusively for the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. The game uses the isometric bird’s-eye-view often used by regular 2D MMOs such as Ragnarok Online. When I first saw the game, I was instantly captured by the town screenshot (back in the iTunes store), which showed a huge population of players sitting down in the middle of the virtual town. It’s quite rare for handheld devices to support MMOs, making this game a blessing for all apple handheld users. The best part? IT’S FREE! I’ve been seeing a lot of positive comments regarding World of Magic, and since the app was only 30 MB, I clicked on the download button as soon as it came up. So what does World of Magic have to offer? Is it really as awesome as people claim = or is the ‘pocket MMO factor’ the only thing going for it?

 

Take It Anywhere!

What’s really great about this MMO is that you can literally take it anywhere! Aside from the usual wifi connection, players can use 3G signals (please contact your network provider) to connect to the game. It can be a bit laggy at times, but I personally had no problems playing it through 3G signals. I guess this serves as a big plus, especially since you can just pull your iWhatever out and start playing anytime— anywhere. What more could you ask for?

 

World of Magic

 

CREATE YOUR POCKET CHARACTER!

Much like any other MMO, the game gives players the ability to customize their character before starting the game. Compared to other handheld MMOs like Pocket Legends, the game actually lets you edit some of your character’s features such as: hairstyle, gender, and color scheme. You’re given a rather small set of customizable features to choose from, but heck, at least they gave us something more than the ability to change our names. Much like Pocket Legends, the game uses the old generic Diablo classes, namely: The Warrior, Ranger, and Magician. Seriously… when will this class-renaming stop? They’re still the same class regardless of what you call them.

 

– “Berserkers are better and stronger than Warriors!”
– “Why?”
– “I dunno… it just sounds better”

 

Upon customizing your desired character and class, you will be prompted to pick between two factions (Lanos and Siras). Be careful when choosing your faction as you are only allowed to pick one faction for all your characters per account. At least you won’t have to worry about spies this way.

 

World of Magic

 

Go Forth Adventurers!

Perhaps the best part about this game is that it doesn’t really hold back on content despite its small file size. You’re given an open world where you can interact with other players as you level up. It’s actually a good thing since I believe that instancing is only good for dungeons (that’s just my opinion of course). The game has a decent amount of quests but still requires some hefty grinding sessions for your characters to progress.

 

More MMO-ish Than Other Handheld MMOs

Aside from huge player base and broad maps, the game managed to retain some of the general features of MMO gaming. Comparing it with other iPhone MMOs like Pocket Legends, the game actually puts you in one persistent world rather than a room full of game hosts. The game also has a bunch of quests and dungeons that are sure to expand your MMO experience. Tired of grinding? You can always join the PVP arena to prove your worth. I’m not sure how they managed to fit all this stuff in a 40 MB application, but heck I’m not complaining. The main fact that you’re able to explore different areas and fight in dungeons guarantees the quality of this pocket MMO.

 

World of Magic 

 

Controls

The controls revolve around the touch screen dpad, which sort of feels okay since you’re only allowed to move in four directions (up, left, right, down). The skills are perfectly aligned on the right side of the screen, allowing players to click on them easily. Also, the attack and pickup buttons are located on the bottom right part of the touch screen. Definitely better than one big attack button right? <__<

 

Graphics And Interface

When I first saw the game, I instantly laughed at its horrendous 2D models. The monsters were ugly, the background looked like repeating tiles, and most of all, the frame rate was poor. Guess I was wrong. Upon progressing further in the game, I saw a lot of awesome spell animations that made up for the small 2D sprites. The bosses looked extremely menacing as well, and of course, seeing tons of people cast tons of fiery flash effects was marvelous to behold. You won’t be able to tell how good the graphics are, until you’ve played the entire thing.

 

The Verdict

After exploring the game’s features and participating in a couple of raids, there’s no doubt that World of Magic is an MMO worth playing. It really sucks that the game is an iPhone exclusive as not all players will be able to enjoy it; however, for those who are interested in buying one, the game can be downloaded for free in the iTunes store. Aside from the lack of textures, I can’t really say anything bad about the game, and the fact that you can play it through your 3G network showers this game with utter awesomeness. The controls could also use a bit of tweaking, but it’s only for proper polishing. The game also suffers from a bit of lag and connectivity issues, but I’m sure they’ll work on it soon enough. I’ve recommended this game to various gamers and none of them were disappointed. If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or an iPad, don’t forget to try it out (COME ON! IT’S FREE!). You might actually drop your desktop MMOs for this.

 

Pros:
– Character customization interface
– Dungeons
– 3G network compatibility
– Guilds
– PVP
– Awesome spell effects.

 

Cons:
– Textures are a bit old
– Lack of classes
– Can get a bit grindy at times.

Flyff Announces V16: Rise of the Muran

Gala-Net is excited to announce the latest expansion for Fly for Fun, better known as Flyff! Being released in early November, V16: Rise of the Muran contains a wealth of new content and will be one of the largest updates released.

 

In V16: Rise of the Muran, players will uncover the lost region of Kaillun, a diverse territory with peaceful plains and dense forests, just north of the Valley of the Risen. Roaming the lands of Kaillun is the hostile and violent Lykan tribe, a territorial clan of wolf-men, that feel threatened by their homeland’s recent discovery. However, nestled within the forest is Eillun, a new city populated by the cat-like Muran race that offers a safe haven for adventurers. Within this massive city, players will uncover the long forgotten and hidden secrets of Madrigal’s past.

 

Gala-Net is excited to announce the latest expansion for Fly for Fun, better known as Flyff

 

New features for this expansion include a new zone, a level cap increase to 139, a major update to the Guild Housing System introduced in V15, three new bosses, and a new premium area tailored to endgame leveling.

 

Additionally, V16 introduces a new challenging instanced dungeon known as Ankou’s Asylum. Within this dungeon, the god of death, Ankou has been awakened in order to destroy Madrigal and its people. Players will be tasked with helping the Muran in destroying this monster. Blessed by their benevolent god, Rhisis, the Muran will provide players with new enchanted weapons to help defeat Ankou and eradicate his minions.

 

Players will also be introduced to the much-anticipated 3rd Job Evolution where players can transform their characters by exploring the eight brand new classes. Flyffers can now become even more powerful than before as they learn new skills, discover new gear, and find new weapons.

 

Open Beta kicks off in late October, but to celebrate the approaching launch of V16, the Flyff team is starting the party early! Join them for the fan-favorite Level-Up Event starting on October 6th, and the all new Zombie Apocalypse on October 13th!