Monthly Archives: May 2013

Guncraft

Guncraft is a first person shooter developed by Exacto Games and funded by fans via Kickstarter. The game utilizes the voxel style made popular by the highly acclaimed game, Minecraft. Using traditional FPS elements combined with real-time construction elements, a frantic chaotic gameplay emerges from the rubble. With the addition of a multiplayer editor and tons of modding capabilities, and you one heck of a sandbox to play in with this title.

Legacy of a Thousand Suns Mobile

Legacy of a Thousand Suns Mobile is an iOS-based title heavily driven by a compelling scifi themed storyline. Players must battle through countless foes as they choose the path of their own tale, gaining RPG levels to bolster their fighting power while teaming up with other players worldwide to tackle challenging raid content.

Legacy of a 1000 Suns Mobile: Choose Your Own Adventure, The Game

By: Vincent Haoson, OnRPG’s Mobile Master

 

Legacy of 1000 Suns Review

At first glance Legacy of a 1000 Suns would seem like another hammy mobile game with an oriental hook. However, the game instantaneously disproves that judgement and gives you a sci-fi mobile game that may become your next time sink.

 

Gameplay

 
Legacy of 1000 Suns Gameplay

LoTS plays like your typical simulation FB/mobile game. You control one unit as said unit travels through LoTS’ universe through either its unfolding story at missions and or raiding against bosses with your fellow LoTS players.

 

Missions

 Legacy of 1000 Suns Missions

Missions in LoTS puts you in the shoes of “The Captain”, the protagonist of the game’s narrative. You are given his/her POV as you engage through each mission at the cost of at least 10 stamina points each attempt.

 

As you go through each mission in LoTS you are welcomed by a highly stylized narrative that would put other mobile games to shame. In fact, I am already going to warn you that I’d be giving the game’s story writer (and the story itself) high praise till maybe the end of the article.

 

Legacy of 1000 Suns Storyline

 

One of LoTS’ quirks is that you can’t just redo each engagement like in other mobile games. You have to restart the whole “act” before you can revisit the mission you just finished in hopes of “maybe” having a more cohesive storytelling experience.

 

Raids

 Legacy of 1000 Suns Raids

Aside from doing missions, LoTS has a raid system in place where you can keep on facing bosses that you can’t take down alone. This may be the game’ biggest replayability factor since you’d be required to keep on coming back till someone would eventually be able to defeat said raid boss.

 

 

Legacy of a 1000 Suns also has a raid code system in place where you can share it through your social networks to get more people to help you take down the raid boss. You can see it on screen and can go to either your FB wall or the game’s FB wall and share it for the world to see. All they need to do is just input the code in-game and they’d immediately be able to help you out in your raid.

Simulation

Legacy of 1000 Suns Simulations

Aside from the gung-ho battles on missions and raids, LoTS has a mini-simulation feature where you can “build” structures in your labs to supply you with credits and items as you play through the game. While it’s not as in-depth as most mobile games go in this area, it keeps the gameplay varied so the game won’t bore you too much.

 

Alliance

 Legacy of 1000 Suns Alliances

Since LoTS has raids, it’s pretty logical to expect that the game allows banding of players to finish raids. In this regard LoTS has the alliance system in place. They serve as the game’s guild system where you can tell your alliance mates to help you or open up raids for you to take part in.

 

 

The alliance also has a chat room where you can talk to members in real time for coordination and basic communication.

Conclusion

With the game’s title alone, LoTS gives off a novel-like vibe that does deliver quite nicely. I have never seen a mobile game that’s so well written and stylized that it makes you feel like you’re reading a sci-fi space drama instead of playing one. This specific strength of LoTS however is a polarizing one since the possible target players of the game would either choose to love the prose or hate it.

 

Legacy of 1000 Suns Conclusion

Also, given that the game’s medium is the mobile platform, it should be expected that players would want short, quick bursts of gameplay that the game fails to deliver. In fact, I’d like to point out that one of the game’s biggest problems is the pace of the player’s progression. Normally, with a game like LoTS, players would expect to accomplish a lot of things for the first few hours of gaming. That however is lost in LoTS since engaging missions would require a minimum of 10 points at least, and it would take almost 5 minutes to regain a stamina point. It would seem that 5th Planet Games would still need to fix the balance in the stamina regen time and stamina point used per engagement since the website boasts of “fast leveling” in LoTS (found in their site http://www.5thplanetgames.com/projects).

 

The other issue I’d like to raise is the alliance system in-game. With the raid system game mechanic you are at the mercy of other players in terms of their activeness in playing. In fact, I am still not a member of the 30+ member alliance I applied for almost a week ago. The game doesn’t allow you to go apply for more than one alliance, and that’s just bad for a game that emphasizes the importance of such connections.

The game also has a thing for pushing the premium currency (suns) in every nook and cranny. While engagements do reward you with suns, it won’t be enough to cover most of the things you need to do in-game. But of course it should be given into consideration that the game needs some revenue for it to continue operations. It would’ve been better though that it wasn’t as obvious.

 

Legacy of 1000 Suns Issues

So in the end I can say that Legacy of a 1000 Suns is not a game for everyone. Unless 5th Planet Games changes the stamina points cost OR the stamina recovery time, the game would find it hard to get fans from the casual gaming market. Since that specific gaming target would want to play fast and do a lot of things in as little time as it would take. However, if you’re the type of gamer who’s looking for a good narrative that mobile games (or games in general) seems to lack these days, but have the patience that would shame even Gandhi, then by all means LoTS just might be the game for you!

New Game World for Stronghold Kingdoms Features Attack Formations

Stronghold Kingdoms

 

Firefly Studios, creators of the Stronghold series, have just launched a new game world for their popular Castle MMO, adding Attack Formations and Faction Applications to the game.

The ability to save castle designs in Stronghold Kingdoms means that in a few clicks you can rebuild your stronghold and get back to razing your enemies! That system has now been adapted for use when launching attacks, giving you the ability to set up and save up to five troop formations. These Formations allow you to set up troops layouts for use when planning your attack, whether you are attacking AI opponents or other players. So if you have a specific set-up for taking down The Wolf or ridding your Parish of those pesky wolf lairs you can now store it for later use.

 

Stronghold Kingdoms

Also featured in the update are two additions to the Factions system. There is the ability to apply directly to join a Faction, without having to wait for an invitation or ask for one by mail. The Faction General and Officers can then approve or decline applications as they see fit. Players will also now receive a report when they are dismissed from their faction, with details of their dismissal.

In addition, several other small additions to the game have been made, most to do with increasing feedback and functionality for new players. As always a full list of Patch Notes can be found here.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Beta Preview

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor) OnRPG Journalist

FFXIV Beta 1

What would you do when your game has the Final Fantasy name but it didn’t receive the popularity expected with soft a franchise? Final Fantasy XIV knows this fate all too well, receiving negative reviews throughout the community on its initial launch; a title that simply didn’t hold up the quality standards fans of Final Fantasy have come to expect. The game was in bad shape, and because of this the Square Enix’s president assigned an entirely new team to fix it up in a super rework project nearly unheard of in the online industry. For over two years the team has been working hard on this remake, and I got the chance to finally see their progress in the recent closed beta.

I have to be honest about my history prior to this write-up so you know where I’m coming from. I have never been a real big fan of the Final Fantasy series. Even though I appreciate the well thought out story line and depth of each title, they just brought something to the table that I felt wasn’t for me. The 2010 FFXIV launch more or less cemented this bias. I expected grandeur and polish and left the 2010 beta feeling let down.

FFXIV Beta Combat

In my eyes, turn-based combat has always been a signature feature of the FF series, giving a throwback to a simpler age of gaming. Yet the first thing I noticed when jumping into 2013’s beta when I engaged my first foe is that turn-based fighting is no more.  In my eyes they have finally made a huge step forward into the new era of action gaming. The combat’s overall flow is much improved and it truly adds the feeling of playing an MMORPG instead of a single-player RPG that happens to be online. Another thing I have always liked is the slickness of Final Fantasy; the user interface in every Final Fantasy game has been the absolute best, and its locales and various regions are so simple yet beautiful.  Back in 2010, I really felt the atmosphere was rather dead, and the soul of the series was lacking because of it.

FFXIV Beta Environment

However when I stepped into the updated beta, I was immediately sidetracked from questing by the sense of exploration to see the beautiful new starting zone. My adventurer Lalafell set out to do just that but unfortunately stumbled into something I dislike the most, invisible walls. Now I understand that having an instanced world makes invisible walls a necessary, yet it completely ruins the experience for me when there is no apparent reason why I cannot jump onto some places or reach some of the beautiful distant vistas. Still the areas you can reach have restored that FF soul the previous iteration badly lacked. The world feels vibrant and alive and they are now utilizing the epic graphics their engine was capable of in levels the franchise deserves. Heck even the attention to small details like door opening animations help draw you in and feel a warmth about the game. The improved chatboxes also provide a bit of nostalgia for the oldschool console RPG’s; they are simple yet appealing.

FFXIV Beta UI

It’s often hard as an online gamer to have to choose between the eastern versus western style of games. Although a few try to find that perfect melding between the two, they usually lean heavily towards one or the other. This goes beyond just graphics into the gameplay style itself. FFXIV also aims for this middle ground to attract both types of gamers. And while it’s impossible to perfectly appeal to both elements, I must say, I’m impressed by their approach. They really ‘westernized’ the game completely, and scrapped some of the core elements that have been standard in their titles for years. Luckily they haven’t changed what they’ve done best, and that is being as detailed oriented as possible. From the people you meet, to the objects you find, everything has this rich background story that could fill whole books. The combat has been made so much faster that it matches the games from this era, and the questing has been improved to the point that leveling doesn’t even feel like a grind. Public Events, known as Full Active Time Events or FATE, have been adopted as a core social gathering point to make PvE more addicting. Mostly they involve defending a location or person, by killing the foes with all the force that you have. They’re certainly optional but a lot of fun to break up the questing and meet new friends. But they seem to have the contribution to reward set up properly to encourage players to take them seriously when they get involved.

FFXIV Beta 3

Conclusion

Even though the game is still heavily into the beta testing and much still resides behind NDAs and blocked access, the rate that change is coming gives me hope for the relaunch. I must say that this new and upcoming Final Fantasy game has changed my attitude towards the FF franchise. Normally when an MMORPG extends beta, you expect some slight polishing to balance and graphics. Yet FFXIV went the extra mile and hit their core mechanics to meet the increased competitiveness in the industry head on. I am not one to  say ‘Game X will be the death of Game Y,” but with a bit more fine tuning FFXIV has the potential to blow the MMORPG into a new era of higher quality titles. The combination of modern refined UI and console level graphics with simple RPG elements shows the developers know what they’re aiming for and are pushing towards it ruthlessly. No longer is FFXIV a single player RPG trapped online, but an online rpg that will do the MMORPG genre proud.

OnRPG Shotgun News 5/2: SMITE, Camelot Unchained, Rift, and Navy Field 2

SMITE Reveals Fenrir

 

The monstrous wolf Fenrir from North mythology joins SMITE as the newest God in the Pantheon. The melee wolf uses his claws and jumps, howls. He builds runes to make his attacks more powerful. And in new God reveal video they show him in action against several gods as well as each ability without an enemy to fight back.

 

Camelot Unchained Kickstarter Campaign Ends

 Camelot Unchained Giant Duck

Camelot Unchained’s month long Kickstarter Campaign is now over. With over 2 million dollars backing it they almost reached two of their stretch goals in the last day. In the last 10 minutes one of the $10,000 backers backed out. And between City State Entertainment’s Co-Founder Mark Jacobs and private investors an additional $3 million has been committed to Camelot Unchained’s production.

 

Defiance Hellbugs Enter Rift

Rift Hellbugs

The world of Defiance is invading Telara in the all new limited time event taking place in Rift. Hellbugs are pouring out of Rifts all over the world and it is up to the Ascended to fight them off. There is even a chance to collect Hellbug mounts and companions.

 

Navy Field 2 Launches

 

Nexon’s Navy Field 2 has set sail from Open Beta and entered the wide open waters of Commercial Launch. New players can earn 1000 NX cash just by getting to level 5 before May 15th. While Navy Field 2 vets will be getting new NX items gifted to their accounts. And importantly the cash shop is now open for business.