Monthly Archives: February 2016

Rappelz Epic IX Part 3: Rise of Power is Now Live

Rappelz Epic IX Part 3: Rise of Power is Now Live header

WEBZEN, a global developer and publisher of free-to-play games, announces that the dark fantasy MMORPG Rappelz released its latest expansion, Epic IX Part 3: Rise of Power today.

After the scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, 2nd February, 2016 (UTC), Rise of Power was delivered to the Rappelz community bringing many new features, including a brand-new dungeon, new monsters and quests, a final awakening system and much more.

The Remains of the Ancients is a new dungeon where many challenges await players. Among the strongest opponents that players will face in the Remains of the Ancients, two powerful and terrifying monsters known as the Bloodthirsty Slaughterer and the Crystal Golem along with a mysterious final boss, Grand Master Hector, will have a prominent place. The boss monsters will push players to their limits, and this dungeon can only be accessed with a “Defense Force Token” quest item. This is a level 170 quest chain, meaning that players below this level will not be able to access the dungeon unless they are teleported inside by a player with the item.

On top of the new dungeon, with Epic 9.3 players will have new reasons to return to the last 6 instanced dungeons: Cubric Dungeon, Arid Moonlight Underground Base Stage 4, Valmore Mine Underground Base Stage 4, Crystal Valley Underground Base Stage 4, Palmir Relics Underground Base Stage 4, and Red Spider Circus Stage 4. Once players kill the final boss in each of the dungeons above, players will see a special pillar. Clicking on it will bring the boss back to life in a “revived” form. If players manage to kill the boss again, they will be rewarded with a Broken Jewel. By combining all the Broken Jewels, heroes of Gaïa can obtain a quest item that will allow them to complete the first talent point quest (level 160).

Epic 9.3, Rise of Power also adds the final awakening system that boosts players’ skills like never before, will generate a blast of power that will shake the lands of Gaia and unleash players’ full potential. In order to awaken armor such as helmets, gloves, and boots with these special powers, players have to buy the Awakening Stone from an NPC in game. There is no real money involved in this process. However, if players wish to optimize their equipment, they may want to “reset” the randomness of the second option with a Cash Shop item (Final Awakening Seal Scroll).

Dead Star

Dead Star is a top-down twin-stick multiplayer space shooter being developed by Armature Studio for PC and PS4 where you have been banished to the edge of the universe, forced into fending for yourself in the depths of space. In Dead Star players can participate in heated matches with up to 10 players on both sides, fighting for resources and fame. Use the piloting skills you’ve gained from your exile and your own customized ship to take down anybody that dares stand in your path. Do you have what it takes to become the galaxy’s most notorious pilot?

Features:

Unique Battlefields: Procedurally generated battlefields with differing nebulas, dynamic events, and base types ensure that no match will ever be the same!

Ship Customization: A variety of ships are available for you to take into battle, each of which can have their abilities upgraded to meet your preferred playstyle. Skins can even be earned to help you blast through your foes in style.

Intense Battles: Battle in exciting multiplayer matches where you will participate in dogfights, capture outposts, and upgrade your defenses with the resources you’ve acquired.

PAX South 2016: Neighborhorde

By Jaime Skelton (MissyS), Senior Editor

 

Neighborhorde PAX South

“Couch co-op” has been a recent buzzword in the gaming industry, but it’s easy to understand the charm. Many gamers – particularly adult gamers and developers – grew up playing games on consoles huddled together on the family couch. Though it dates me, I recollect the days I used to sit in front of the TV with a couple of neighborhood friends as we took turns at the infuriating Duck Hunt or, later, raced together as Sonic and Tails. Heck, I’m jealous that most of my friends now live far away, because the games today for couch co-op are better than ever.

My digression brings me back to point – one of these titles at PAX South 2016 was Neighborhorde, a twin-stick co-op shooter developed by Fermenter Games. Unlike many of the titles at the convention boasting co-op, Neighborhorde is strictly local play with no online features. That is the worst news I can tell you about the game, but the lack of online multiplayer isn’t a death knell. Neighborhorde is fun and really recaptures that “gaming with the neighbors” feeling.

Neighborhorde PAX South

The premise behind Neighborhorde is that you and your friends have been kicked out of the house in typical “Go play outside for a change!” mom fashion. Unfortunately, your neighborhood is being invaded by all sorts of crazy creatures, so there’s only one thing left to do: huddle up and save the town with whatever’s at your disposal. Everything has a very childlike feel to it, from the silly animal costumes the characters wear to their arsenal of weapons.

Neighborhorde has a few maps, and each game plays out in a cycle of day and night. During the day, a new enemy or mechanic is introduced. During the night, that new thing is incorporated with everything else you’ve already faced. The hordes of enemies you’ll face include robots, snowmen, lunch ladies, wizards, and even zombie presidents. There are also bosses that appear every few nights. While the team wouldn’t commit to a definitive “end night,” they did tell me that the farthest they’ve ever gotten is night nine and that they’d like to have an “all bosses in” ending for the truly daring.

Neighborhorde PAX South

Every day, the team alternates between picking a new superpower and picking a new weapon. Superpowers apply to everyone on the team permanently and include things like additional damage with melee weapons or leaving a burning trail behind you. Weapons on the other hand come in “supply drop” gift boxes. While these weapons aren’t permanent, supply drops come frequently enough you should have one most of the time. Weapons are just as outrageous as everything else in this game, including water guns, toasters, confetti poppers, bowling balls. . . you get the idea. It’s like Fermented Games tapped into the creative genius of childhood just to build this game.

What really pushes this game as cooperative though isn’t just the fact you’re playing with friends in a single team; it’s the healing and revival mechanics. The only way to recover your health after taking a hit is to stick with the rest of your team. Likewise, downed players can be brought back up if at least one friend sticks next to them for a short time. In gameplay, this encourages team huddling, making sure everyone has each others’ back and moves as a group, rather than each character heading off on their own to face the enemy or grab new weapons.

Neighborhorde PAX South

Of course, the enemies know this too. Enemies – especially bosses – will work to single out a player and send them scattering for cover. I watched as a team faced their first boss night, only to have the worm boss drive one of the players into kiting around to stay alive while the other three tried to reach him without getting split apart themselves. Even after the player rejoined the group, it was only a few seconds before another player got separated and hunted down.

The end result? Neighborhorde ends up being a game of dodging and skill, teamwork and planning. Grabbing superpowers that synergize together, being aware of all your teammates and making sure they’re never alone, and avoiding enemy hordes all become incredibly important. It’s fun, frantic, and an excellent delivery of couch co-op excitement. You can expect to see the game launch later this year, and if you’re interested, go vote for the game on Greenlight!

PAX South 2016: Infinium Strike

By Jaime Skelton (MissyS), Senior Editor

 

Infinium Strike PAX South

They say you should save the best for last, and while I can’t say I have a definite favorite from my time at PAX South, one of the most exciting meetings I had was an impromptu scheduling with Codex Worlds at the Infinium Strike booth. Infinium Strike was a game I’d passed by a few times as I walked the floor, mentally filing it under “space shooter.” But on Saturday afternoon, I pulled myself to a halt as I heard the representative at the booth describe the game as a tower defense. The next morning, I was excitedly chatting with Dexter Chow, CEO and Creative Director of Codex Worlds, about this distinct sci-fi title.

Infinium Strike PAX South

With a show floor full of space shooters, including the titanic Dreadnought and Elite: Dangerous, it was too easy to overlook Infinium Strike. At quick glance, the game looks more like Battlestar Galactica than Defense Grid. A starry sky is lit up with warp portals, battleships, and gunfire. There’s no 2D overhead map in your face pointing at each incoming enemy unit, no clearly visible lanes. While at its core the game is tower defense, it cannot be described easily using standard genre conventions.

Infinium Strike PAX South

So instead, let’s start with the basic command view and game flow. As a player, you are in command of the Freedom Strike, a massive battlecarrier. While you will never steer or fire directly from your ship, you will manage its entire arsenal of guns and other defenses. The ship is divided into four quadrants, which act as the lanes. Each quadrant has its own defenses, formed primarily of turrets. You must build turrets on each quadrant of the ship to deal with incoming threats, along with using upgrades and battleship deployment strategically to take out the oncoming Wrog, humanity’s enemy.

Infinium Strike PAX South

Enemies arrive through warp portals, and each enemy is countered by a different type of turret and battleship. There are three essential ranges: close range, mid range, and long range/boss. Warp portals are color coded to give you a clue as to which enemies are incoming on your lower HUD. It’s your job to make sure that you have the right turrets on each quadrant to deal with the threats. Destroying enemies nets you Infinium, a liquid metal which is used as a resource to build and upgrade your turrets. The battlecarrier itself can also be upgraded using Infinium. Upgrading the carrier increases its shields, base health, and the number of available turret placements on each quadrant. You also gain additional resources which can be used to deploy battleships as an additional, temporary boost to take out swarms of enemies.

Infinium Strike PAX South

At first, this seems like a pretty relaxed, if not multi-dimensional, approach to tower defense. What you begin to realize, however, is that your HUD only alerts you to incoming portals, not how many enemies will come through those portals. Your upper ship display indicates which quadrants are under attack or damaged, but to really assess the threat and respond, you must be constantly changing between quadrants. By the time I picked up on this in my first play through, one of my quadrants was being destroyed by three simultaneous waves of enemies. At full heat, you’ll be managing four separate lanes against three types of enemies while using up to eight turrets (each with a different type advantage) and deploying multiple types of ships (also with type advantages), all in real time.

It’s the most exciting tower defense I’ve played since Sanctum.

Infinium Strike PAX South

After playing the demo, I began talking more in-depth about the game design with Dexter Chow, who enlightened me on all sorts of additional aspects I hadn’t glimpsed while frantically racing to defend my battlecarrier. For instance, in my play through, I managed the entire ship from a basic command view, a sort of 2D view where the cannons are lined up neatly in a row in front of you as you look at each quadrant. Infinium Strike has a free roaming camera, however, letting you view your entire ship and its attackers in a 3D view, and more importantly, you can manage your defenses from any view you’re in rather than having to swap back and forth between cameras. There’s even an overhead camera with radar that you can manage from if you prefer a more traditional tower-defense approach.

Infinium Strike PAX South

Dexter explained that his vision for the game came primarily from the cardboard staleness of the tower defense genre. While some developers put down their competition to sound bigger, let’s be fair – he’s telling the truth. Tower defense, as a whole, has been “been there done that” for years. Infinium Strike, however, is gorgeous, intense, and robust. It plays more like an arcade space shooter than a tower defense game, and requires some quick thinking and planning to master.

Infinium Strike PAX South

Infinium Strike will launch with a full campaign story mode with multiple difficulty levels to master in a three-star ranking system. Each difficulty level not only increases the power and number of enemies, but also disables an additional turret. Players can also compete in the leaderboards of an endless arcade mode. Already Greenlit on Steam, you can expect to find Infinium Strike across PC, Mac, and Linux later this year.