Yearly Archives: 2014

Candy Barbarian Class Bursts onto the Trove Scene

Trove Candy Barbarian

Trion’s Trove, the open-ended voxel MMO adventure game currently in open beta, is receiving a brand-new, playable class today!

The Candy Barbarians are brave, nomadic warriors from the land of Candoria who use their sugar-inspired rage for supercharged special attacks. A powerful melee class that dual-wields swords, axes and spatulas, the brand-new Candy Barbarian class is available in-game now for 1,050 Credits or 5,000 Cubits.

For more information, please visit Trion Worlds’ official Trove page.

Winter has returned: Grimm’s Crossing Rejoins Heroes of Newerth

HoN Grimms Crossing Returns

Fans of the popular MOBA, Heroes of Newerth, can let out a collective sigh of relief, as today the team announced that its snow covered, three vs. three map, Grimm’s Crossing, has returned. The fan-favorite map, which was pulled from Heroes of Newerth’s retail client to make improvements, has been completely retextured and features a new mini boss: the hulking, mace wielding, ethereal brute, General Atrox.

“Since Grimm’s removal we’ve been bombarded with requests to bring the map back,” said Sam Braithwaite, Marketing Director for Heroes of Newerth. “The intention was always to reintroduce Grimm’s Crossing after, and only after, it received a “face lift” that met quality standards.”

“In Heroes of Newerth’s lore Grimm’s Crossing represents the passage that separates the Forest of Caldavar from the Iron Mountains,” said Braithwaite. “Whichever army, Legion or Hellbourne that maintains control of that plot holds a succinct tactical advantage over their opposition, as it allows them to move resources through the mountains, as opposed to around them.”

To celebrate the re-release of Grimm’s Crossing, The HoN team is hosting a 64 team cash prize tournament on Nov. 22 and 23. Signups for the single elimination competition are now live, and will remain open until 10:00AM EST on the morning of the event.

Iruna Online

Iruna Online is a mobile-developed MMORPG created by Asobimo Inc. “Iruna Online” features 3D graphics, cooperative play, and chatting just as in PC online RPGs.

Features:

Real time gameplay: Enjoy tradtional, PC style gameplay, with co-op and real-time chatting.

Exploration: Travel the world of Iruna and discover the 12 gods that created it.

Incredibly challenges: Battle against epic bosses.

Elsword Celebrates Eve’s Anniversary And Introduces Raid Boss Drabaki

Elsword Drabaki Ad

KOG Games, a leading developer and publisher of popular free-to-play action MMORPGs, today launches into the holiday season with two massive and mech’d out events.

Elsword starts the party off with a huge, North American premier birthday bash for Eve, the Queen of the robotic Nasod! Being the Queen of a doomed race of robotic warmongers can really get a girl down, especially after losing a war over scarce resources to the humans. Eve finds out that her King has gone corrupt and convinced the entire race to disregard her very presence. Then, he restarts the war with the humans (including you and your newfound friends), and causes the last of the Nasod race to get run down to the very last bot.  So, what’s a robo-girl to do now; right…?

3 years have passed, and it wasn’t until now… Eve realized that no one has ever done for her what her young friends have done. Experiencing adventure, sacrifice, victory, seeing their tears, their happiness… they’ve shared all of these with her; this robotic, cold Eve.

Something has changed.

Eve can not only see the love and friendship they’ve shared together… she can feel.

Elsword Eve

Eve’s friends throw her an awesome Birthday Event!
For starters, you can check out the exclusive Elsword NA in-game quests and events. KOG Games will also be exhibiting some amazing new Eve character illustrations, prizes and a premier Nasod Queen tribute video that has never been seen anywhere else in the world. They will be giving away over a thousand dollars in Eve-Themed prizes and merchandise.
From In-game K-Ching, life-Size Eve Pillows, Eve USB drives, Elsword 2015 calendars, Eve coffee Mugs, and more, 1163 players will win. You can’t go wrong with Elsword Swag and K-Ching!
But wait! There’s more… For those end-game players who aren’t into cake, how about a Raid unlike anything you’ve ever seen before?

Elsword Drabaki

Drabaki, The Warden of Darkness, is Elsword’s new Raid Boss. Drabaki rends the very ground beneath him as he tears towards our heroes. This is a Raid Boss encounter that allows up to a remarkable 12 players join in to fight Drabaki together! Sounds easy right? On the contrary! You have to bring your “A” game. Though you may take Drabaki on with a party of 12 players, you only have 12 minutes to destroy this gargantuan monstrosity or lose. Oh! Did we mention that he was huge? Drabaki’s epic coils, flaming purple poison and tree-sized bladed tail are large enough so that all twelve players are getting hit from all angles; it’s hands-down, the toughest fight in the game.

The rewards are epic. Drabaki has a small chance of dropping the very rare Jewel of Drabaki; an awesome +9 Weapon. As well, players who defeat Drabaki will receive a Title with some wicked stats, a Raid Boss Cube with Random prizes, high level crafting items and more.

Party down with Eve and the Elsword crew, or declare war against Drabaki, the biggest and baddest Raid Boss in Elsword history.

The Nasod Queen beckons ~ You better Mechanize!

Journey To The West International Review – Underwhelming

By Jordan Hall (ApocaRUFF)

 

Journey to the West Int Review HeavenSword

Introduction

Journey to the West is an MMORPG themed on the 16th century Chinese novel of the same name and is bring brought to the international community by Cubizone. Lore plays a large role in the game and the player will choose one of the race-class combinations that the lore is based on. The game features many traditional MMORPG traits, but also has a transformation system that will allow the players to unlock their true potential. There is also a highly detailed built-in auto-botting feature to allow players to fight enemies while away from the keyboard. Let’s see how the game has shaped up, shall we?

 

 

Customization

To begin with, you are offered some very sparse customization options. At character creation you’re given very little in the way of options. There are only four races in the game and the races also act as classes. Two of the races are also gender-locked. A limited selection of pre-created faces and hair-styles, along with few color selections, are all that wait you in terms of customizing the looks of your character.

Journey to the West Int Review CharacterCreation

Even after character creation, it seems like your customization options are very linear. Progression is a one-way highway with almost no choices left to the player. Things become available as you continue to level, but there is no extensive talent or skill-selection system to help make your character unique. Combined with the lack of originality available with the character looks, Journey to the West has left me disappointed with what it has to offer in terms of customization. This is definitely not the game to play if you’re looking for freedom with your character.

 

 

Graphics

The graphics in Journey to the West can be described with, “They’re alright.” They aren’t bad, but are not mind blowing either. Even at the highest settings and at 1920×1080 resolution, you won’t be stunned with how beautiful the game looks. Some of the architecture is nice to look at, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen from games like Age of Wushu or Swordsman Online. About the only time I was impressed was during the opening sequence of the game that took place in Heaven – with seas of clouds and mythical, ultra-sized stuff to gawk at as you’re auto-flown from one place to the next. About the only upside I can see to the graphics in this game is that older computers will have no problem running it.

Journey to the West Int Review Graphics

 

 

Controls

The controls in Journey to the West seem to be alright most of the time. However, there were some occasions where I found the game to not be as responsive as I would have liked. Whether this is just an issue with the controls or server lag, I’m not sure. The setup is typical to MMOs – WASD movement, right click to rotate character, left click to rotate camera, 1 through 9 to activate abilities. If you’ve played an MMO in the past decade, you’ll feel right at home here.

 

 

Community

As Cubizone is offering an International server, there is a wide range of languages spoken on the server. Despite this it seems that English is encouraged on most of the “global” channels – if not by the company, then by the community itself. It wasn’t hard for me to find a decent guild to help me out with questions and whatnot. But I couldn’t help but notice that the community seemed to be made up of mostly teens. Depending on you, that may be good or bad.

 

 

Gameplay

If you’ve ever played a themepark MMO in the past decade, you’ve basically played Journey to the West. There’s not much in it that can be considered new or interesting. The two things that stood out for me is the transformation system and the dungeon finder (which I’ll mention more later). Otherwise it follows the same ole formula that countless other MMOs have used. I’m going to say it now – the overall gameplay experience was disappointing.

Journey to the West Int Review Quests

Quests are your typical fare of killing 10 Demon Monkeys before returning to the same static NPC. Honestly, I don’t think I could have lasted the first twenty levels if it hadn’t been for the fact that you can click on quest objects in the quest tracker to auto-path to them. And then after level 20 I would not have been able to stand the game at all if it weren’t for the built in botting feature (I’ll get into that next). However, whenever I come across a game that requires a built in auto-pathing and/or botting feature, I’ve got to wonder what’s the point of playing? Why make the game if you’re going to give the players every tool not to play? So you can make money, that’s why.

Journey to the West Int Review AutoBot

The Auto-botting feature in the game is actually really nice. You get to choose what abilities the bot uses, what potions it takes, when it takes them, and you can basically fine-tune it into perfection and only have to come back to the game to restock on potions and organize your loot. The portable shop feature makes this extremely easy, too. You rarely have to leave the safety of your grinding spot. When I realize how much the botting is pushed on the player, I had to wonder why they didn’t just make a browser-based Progress Quest or Cookie Clicker or something.

Journey to the West Int Review Combat

Combat was a bit odd feeling in the game. At times it felt great but for each enjoyable moment there was a match unresponsive battle that ruined the flow. Again, I’m not sure if these issues were caused by server lag – I have no idea where the servers are hosted and I’m in the middle of North America – or if the combat just had a buggy feeling to it. Personally, my bet is on the lag as some gameplay videos I’ve seen showed a combat experience that was a lot more intense and smooth. I do have to admit that some of the knock-back abilities were fun, when they didn’t launch my enemy into the terrain and cause him to reset. In the end, at least for me, the combat experience was mostly disappointing.

Journey to the West Int Review Combat2

As I mentioned in customization, you don’t get much customization in choosing your abilities. So if you’re a Kitsune, you’ll probably be playing the same exact way that a hundred other Kitsune are playing. Combat is mostly a button-mash spam due to how easy the enemies are. The only time I had any sort of issue was when fighting boss mobs in dungeons. Even there the only real change was constantly spamming potions hoping the boss would fall before my inventory emptied. I’m sure I could have gotten the auto-bot to fight the bosses for me.

Journey to the West Int Review DungeonFinder

The one feature I was incredibly impressed with was the dungeon system. The way it’s done in Journey to the West is how it should be done everywhere. Using the Dungeon List, you can find available groups based on what dungeon they’re doing and at what difficulty. Or you can create your own dungeon instance, setting the difficulty and even password protecting it so only your friends can join in. With the difficulty I have finding a pub group for dungeons in other games, I would have greatly appreciated this sort of system in a game like ArcheAge.

Journey to the West Int Review Crafting

The crafting in Journey to the West is fairly simplistic. You get the materials, you craft it, and then you reforge and fortify it. Gathering resource is done at static nodes, however I seemed to get a majority of the resources I used from the daily log-in rewards and level-up boxes. If crafting is what you enjoy in a game, you probably won’t enjoy what you find in Journey to the West much. Especially considering the highest quality gear requires resources purchased from the cash shop.

Journey to the West Int Review Mounts

Mounts are something interesting in Journey to the West. There are flying mounts, and from what I understand you can upgrade your ground-based mount to also fly. To upgrade your mount you’ll have to make use of a cash shop item, though you can get them from quests or reward boxes and whatnot. As a Kitsune, I got a giant fox mount which I thought was fairly cute. Later on I got an “Angry Bird” flying mount which was basically a broken egg shell being carried by a bunch of funny looking birds (I guess inspired by the Angry Birds mobile game?).

 

Journey to the West Int Review Wukong Clash

Conclusion

Journey to the West has a few things going for it – an interesting and lore-rich setting, a good dungeon system, and some interesting mounts – but it also has a lot of things going against it. The repetitive content, boring crafting, and encouraged AFK play makes for a dull experience. However, I’m sure that at least some of the features will appeal to players. If nothing else, the relatively low-spec requirements of the game will attract an audience of players using older machines. It’s hard for me to recommend this game to anyone, as the circumstances that one would find it enjoyable seem to be meager, but I will say that if you’re looking for a new game and this one has captured your eye, it might be worth it to give Journey to the West a fair try.

 

 

 

Features: 3/5 – Some interesting stuff, but not enough.

Customization: 2/5 – Not much at all.

Graphics: 3/5 – They were alright, but improvements could be made.

Controls: 3/5 – Alright, but with a few negatives.

Community: 3/5 – What you would expect from an international F2P game.

 

Overall: 3/5 – It’s worth giving a try simply for the namesake setting.

Go! Go! Go! Racer: New iOS/Android Racing Game Coming Soon

iOS

Netmarble US, Inc., the newly formed North American gaming branch of the number one mobile game publisher in South Korea, Netmarble Games Corp. (“Netmarble”), today announced it is gearing up to bring GO!GO!GO!:RACER to the global market including North America for iOS and Android devices this year. Korea’s top-grossing mobile game* Race Cha-cha-cha (“다함께 차차차”) has been updated with new and enhanced features for its debut in Western territories— the company’s “endless racer” game will thrill players with its arcade-styled gameplay fueled with high-speed racing, humorous over-the-top combos, presented in nostalgic, vibrant cell-shaded visuals.

“GO!GO!GO!:RACER was an incredible success in Asia and it’s got great global appeal,” said Seungwon Lee, Executive Vice President of Global at Netmarble Games Corp. “We’re confident that players in the West will also be delighted with the non-stop entertainment that awaits them next month in our endless racer!”

In GO!GO!GO!:RACER, players can unlock over 60 cars, collect and show off to friends and rivals alike. Each car is sleekly rendered in glorious cell-shaded detail that harkens back to classic racing themed arcade games. Drivers can launch power-ups and upgrade cars for speed or mileage, all while honing their racing skills. Every competitor left in the dust thrusts racers’ cars even faster as they jump, draft and collide to chain combos, scoring more power-ups—the game features a combo system that maximizes speed at the expense of control. GO!GO!GO!:RACER is all about doing whatever it takes to boost your chance of making it to the next checkpoint.

GO!GO!GO!:RACER will race its way to the App Store and Google Play Store before end of year.

For mroe info, visit https://www.facebook.com/netmarbleus