action RPG
Latest
It's coming for you: Land of the Dead dated for June 16th
We finally have a date on the release of Warhammer Online's brand new RvR zone, the Land of the Dead. Everyone make sure you have your swords sharpened and your armor ready for June 16th, because that's the day when the Tomb Kings rise from the south.Land of the Dead will include a brand new zone filled with public quests, traps, and some intense RvR combat as the sides of Order and Destruction fight over control of the entire zone. To mix things up, many of the new quests will feature elements that have more in common with action RPGs than with MMO mechanics -- emphasizing movement, positioning, and cooperation over straight number crunching exercises.We got some great interviews and a first hand look at Land of the Dead during Games Day '09, plus we also are hosting a Tomb King Cartouche puzzle contest where you can win an exclusive in-game item for WAR! So get your wagggghhh on, because the Tomb Kings are coming, and they're coming for you! The sands of the Tomb Kings are coming as the final release in the Call to Arms live expansion, the Land of the Dead approaches! Massively has your back with coverage from Mythic Entertainment at Games Day '09, so get your WAAGGGHHH ready for RvR mayhem as Massively re-arms for WAR!
Ijji.com unleashes new screenshots for Huxley, Soul of the Ultimate Nation
Ijji.com sent us a whole slew of information about two of its upcoming titles to us today, and we figured that we should pass on the love. If you're looking forward to either Huxley: The Dystopia or Soul of the Ultimate Nation, you'll be happy to hear that we added 10 new screenshots of each to our galleries today. Huxley's screenshots show a few more battle scenes, including the scoped in view on one of their guns, while SUN has elected to show off some spectacular landscapes accompanied by some nice armors. If that wasn't enough, we also have two trailers, one featuring gameplay and the other a pre-rendered video, for Soul of the Ultimate Nation, featuring the Shadow class, included in this post right after the break. The Shadow looks like one heck of a wicked rogue class, so take the leap across the break to see his high flying, fast running stunts that even put the Team Fortress scout to shame. %Gallery-48874% %Gallery-65491%
Four-player Pokemon fighting on Japanese WiiWare June 16
While we were off doing whatever, Nintendo announced a new Pokémon game for WiiWare in Japan. Melee! Pokémon Scramble is developed by the same company (Ambrella) as My Pokémon Ranch, but is combat-based instead of standing-around-based. In fact, it may be the most actiony Pokémon game yet!The player controls a remote-controlled robot Pokémon, building strength by fighting Pokémon in the wild, in anticipation of a big tournament. Gameplay is real-time, like a Zelda or Ys-type action RPG. And, of course, four players can face off in the game's Battle Royale arena mode. Melee! Pokémon Scramble will be out in Japan on June 16. No release dates have been announced outside of Japan, but Nintendo won't deprive the rest of the world of its biggest brand.[Via Nintendo Life]
E3 2009: Dragonica Online impressions
Continuing the somewhat recurring theme at E3 2009 of "what was old is new again," Dragonica Online has taken the traditional 2D side-scroller format and transitioned it to 3D. The resulting environment will be friendly to any of the Night Elves you see endlessly bouncing around World of Warcraft and fans of nostalgic action RPGs like Secret of Mana.The game sports fast and furious real-time combat, crafting, guilds, dungeon raids, PvP, and a light-hearted atmosphere. It didn't take us long to realize that Dragonica doesn't take itself too seriously. For example, in the demo, we saw an archer battling shark pirates who were wielding swordfish. We're obviously not in Middle Earth here.
Blood of Bahamut gets dated for Japan
Square Enix news continues in full force today with word (via Kotaku) that Blood of Bahamut has been given a release date for Japan. The Nintendo DS title is expected to ship on August 6. Blood of Bahamut is a four-player action RPG set in a city constructed on the back of a giant creature, cleverly named Gigant. Characters are presented in 2D, battling it out in a 3D environment. One of the game's many directors is future Square Enix legend Motomu Toriyama, whose previous work includes planning for Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII, as well as event directing for Final Fantasy X. Also, while the game is looking better every time we see it, it still pales in comparison to the incredibly rad artwork Square Enix is using to promote the game. Or as we like to call it, "Future wall scroll." %Gallery-36800%
Soul of the Ultimate Nation finally makes its way to America
It's only two years late, but hey, we're not complaining! Ijji.com has reported to us that they've obtained the rights to publish Webzen's Soul of the Ultimate Nation in North America and that the game will release somewhere in late 2009. Soul of the Ultimate Nation, called SUN for short, is a hack and slash MMO developed by Huxley creators Webzen. The game was originally slated to be published in North America in late 2007, but the game's status went silent and slowly slipped off of everyone's radar. SUN features a quicker style of gameplay, more akin to a game like Dynasty Warriors than your standard MMO. To perform this feat, the game breaks the world map up into zones created by players in towns, very much like creating your own match in a first-person shooter. Players create these fields in order to hunt down monsters, solve missions, or complete quests. Players can also take objectives to assult areas in a siege-esque manner, where many players create rooms to assault one objective. In these cases, successful and unsuccessful sieges affect how the other in-progress games play out, altering the difficulty of the battle to show the turning tide of one side winning or losing. The game does feature persistent cities where players can mingle, much like it's first-person shooter brother, Huxley.
Games Day '09: Lands of the Dead design discussion with Gabe Amatangelo and Jeff Skalski
After saying goodbye to Paul and Josh, I soon found myself sitting down with Gabe Amatangelo, the senior designer on Land of the Dead, and Jeff Skalski, the RvR team lead, with the task of getting inside the Land of the Dead development process.What I got were some great insights into how testing and development works at Mythic Entertainment, as well as some inside facts on Land of the Dead and some great reasons for why players should come back and try out some WAR. Interested in what sparked the movement to an action RPG dynamic? Wondering what features may not have made the final Land of the Dead cut? All of that and more is inside this Games Day interview.
Games Day '09: Lands of the Dead design discussion with Gabe Amatangelo and Jeff Skalski pt. 2
Now you guys have a really interesting design going on with Warhammer, regarding the City Siege system. You've basically built in your own cap on the game's system, which is very different from other MMOs in the market. What's it like designing something like Land of the Dead with that restrictive cap in mind? Jeff: It's challenging. Sometimes it feels like we're splitting hairs, but we planned to do this type of stuff earlier on, so we left some space to design in. We wanted to make sure this was a free expansion that all players had access to that runs parallel to the tier four campaign... Gabe: It compliments many different areas of our content. It compliments many types of players with many types of gear and gives them new objectives to achieve. But the top end, yeah, it's definitely a challenge, and that's the one campaign. We have three campaigns. The Warhammer world just has so much stuff in it. There are so many other armies and other things to be inspired by to make new content. With all of that other stuff in mind, where would you like to take Warhammer if the decision was solely up to you? Gabe: There's alot. You know, when we explored the RvR gated "Darkness Falls" dungeon, we explored a bunch of different things. We explored Mordheim, we explored Skavenblight, and then we fell across the Tomb Kings. This was perfect for us, as it allowed us to explore a bunch of different gameplay dynamics. But still, I think Skavenblight is a very cool element. Then you have the whole Vampire Counts dark world... Jeff: We still got Sylvania and getting out there to do. Personally, from a visual standpoint, I'd like to see Lustria. I think it's an environment we just don't have in the game at the moment, which was one of the reasons I was really excited about Tomb Kings. I like having a completely new environment and it's a setting we don't have at all in our game. Gabe: And it also really depends on what we want to get out in regards to content. Is it a dungeon, is it a new open zone? That affects where we go with it. If it's a dungeon, oh well then we should go to Skavenblight as it's a underground thing over there. If it's a whole new mini-zone, then maybe we go to Lustria. Of course I'm talking in broad general terms, but that's the stuff that directs where we take it. Is there anything that got left out of this expansion that you wish would have made it in? Jeff: We accomplished alot, but there is that one thing we had to cut back on, as we needed to get moving with production, and that was being able to bring the Tomb Kings in as an ally in the RvR siege. In the early days of the design, we were thinking about giving the assistance of the Tomb King and his army out during city sieges. Gabe: There were several ways we strayed away from that and one was certainly production issues, but another was that we wanted the campaign system to be the campaign system. Land of the Dead is gated by the campaign, but it doesn't hinder or affect the system in any way and we wanted to leave it like that. The one for me was that we wanted people to be able to access Land of the Dead from level one. But, well, we just couldn't do that. We pushed it back to level 25. Jeff: But the majority of our players meet that requirement anyway. The other other thing that we wanted was for instances to be able to let more players in. So there's six man runs right now, but there was this "other one" where we wanted to get that number higher, but we didn't get that in. Gabe: *evil laughter* Not yet. Now one of thing some of our commenters are going to point out as a problem is the power leveling. You can be level 25, then get bolstered to level 36 in Land of the Dead, and you gain level 36 experience at level 25. Why did you guys decide that? Gabe: Well Darkness Falls was very successful as an alternate spot for power leveling. So we went and followed that form and put it into Land of the Dead. The other thing to note though is that you can lose control of the Land of the Dead, and that will cause power leveling to spike. It's another carrot on the stick for players to gain control of the area. So I don't think it's going to be a problem, I think players are going to enjoy it. Jeff: It gives you another track, an accelerated track, and it happens right at 25 for a reason as it's in that lull between tier three and tier four. It's going to be that extra push that will get people into tier four. We've done many things to help ease that lull, like new epic questlines and boosted quest experience, to get people into tier four. So, ok, let's pretend I'm a newbie to Warhammer. Why should I come and play your game? Jeff: If you want PvE content, we got the public quest system which is a trendsetter in the industry and I know we're going to see more of it pop up. Oh yeah, Runes of Magic already jumped on that. Jeff: Oh yeah, we know, and it's cool. It's just a good system because it helps get people together. From an PvP standpoint, our game was built for realm vs. realm combat. You can do it from rank one in our game. There are scenarios, there's RvR areas, they're dynamic, there's a lot of variety. We slowly introduce the player to harder and harder mechanics as they advance through the tiers, like keeps, and outer walls of keeps, and city sieges. To me, that's why players should come. If you want PvP then there's no other place to go. Gabe: With Land of the Dead specifically, it's the pyramids and the necropolis. There's no other setting like that in modern MMOs. It's the action RPG elements and working together to overcome them as a group as well as individually. There's just nothing like it. You like Zelda, you like God of War? Then check this out. The sands of the Tomb Kings are coming as the final release in the Call to Arms live expansion, the Land of the Dead approaches! Massively has your back with coverage from Mythic Entertainment at Games Day '09, so get your WAAGGGHHH ready for RvR mayhem as Massively re-arms for WAR!
Games Day '09: An overview of the Land of the Dead
You've heard us talk about it, you've heard us discuss it, and it's now time for us to tell you exactly what it's all about. Land of the Dead is not your father's MMO dungeon -- it's a dungeon that is something more than just a dungeon. It's an entire zone filled with activities and sub-dungeons, all culminating in an epic instanced dungeon that features a face off with the first leader of the Tomb Kings himself, King Amenemhetum. (Try saying that five times fast. Heck, try saying that one time fast. Not even Gabe Amatangelo, one of the chief designers, can say that name properly. He got close to it though during his Games Day presentation.)So how do you get down to test wits with the Tomb Kings? What public quests and objectives are scattered throughout the zone? What changes and improvements are coming with this addition to the game? Read on warriors, and find out!
Black Prophecy keeps community up-to-date with Bulletin #2
If you're all about those sci-fi space MMOs, then you've most likely got Black Prophecy on your radar. The early screens and previews are absolutely gorgeous, and the space action-RPG looks pretty tasty too. For those who are looking for more news on just what you can expect with Black Prophecy, then the second Stellar Vox community bulletin posted on the forums by Snowcrash is soemthing you should check out. Among the goodies for this edition of the bulletin include a recent interview with Black Prophecy's design director, Simon Bachmann, by our very own James Egan; there are also great interviews with Buffed; Rock, Paper, Shotgun; and Gamesource. Beyond that, the community chatted over topics as far-reaching as factions and forum signatures - and everything in between. So if you like nice, shiny packages with all the best, then check out the second Stellar Vox compilation. It's well worth the read!
XSEED no longer publishing Muramasa
You should probably sit down, we have some bad news. According to NintendoEverything, XSEED has decided it will not publish the Wii exclusive Muramasa: The Demon Blade in North America. Muramasa: The Demon Blade -- which recently landed on store shelves in Japan -- is the new action role-playing title from Japanese developer Vanillaware, makers of the cult-hit Odin Sphere on PlayStation 2.Muramasa was originally planned for release in North America as part of its US publishing agreement with Marvelous Entertainment US. According to NintendoEverything, XSEED states it still believes in the game and "will look forward to seeing it release in North America" -- as long as it isn't released by them, apparently. If you thought the wait was going to be long before... grab a Snickers bar, kids.%Gallery-33431%
Plenty of horsing around in latest Sacred 2 screens
Fresh from the developer oven and cooled just enough for immediate consumption are five new Sacred 2: Fallen Angel screenshots from the Xbox 360 version. There isn't much terribly new to be seen in the screens, but they do focus on both the Temple Guardian and Seraphim characters. What we find most interesting is the Star Wars Wheel Bike inspired Monowheel and the horse screenshot, mainly because we are fans of most all equine. Enjoy the screens. Gallery: Sacred 2: Fallen Angel
Get up close to Ougon no Kizuna
How much are we freaking out over Jaleco's Shadow of the Colossus-esque Ougon no Kizuna (Bonds of Gold)? Long answer: obviously a heck of a lot, considering we're already comparing it to the majesty of Shadow of the Colossus. Short answer: UIVJM(*RIWV%WOV&IUPO/WF.While we previously only had scans on which to base our assessment, IGN now has full screens, allowing us to really scrutinize the unique art style of the game -- we don't think we could ever get sick of that pencil filter effect in screens, and seeing it in motion will hopefully be just as impressive. Two other shots follow the break, but we'd also urge you to hit up IGN for the full-size versions. It's blimmin' lovely.
Ougon no Kizuna: Jaleco's new action RPG
The latest Famitsu reveals a new game from Jaleco with a bit of a Shadow of the Colossus vibe. Ougon no Kizuna (Bonds of Gold) features big, climbable bosses like Team ICO's game, though not quite as big. These bosses also have specific weak points, though in this game you use the Wiimote pointer to find them. The non-boss gameplay involves using the Wiimote and Nunchuk to fight crowds of enemies. In addition to the main quest, Ougon no Kizuna features 100 sidequests involving helping townspeople and, of course, killing monsters. With the game scheduled for a winter release, we're sure we'll find out a lot more very soon.
Space Siege PC demo now available
Tired of constantly clicking dwarfs and dragons to death in a cliché-ridden fantasy setting? Rejoice, for Gas Powered Games' Space Siege demo is now available for download! You -- yes, you! -- can now be plunged into a brave, hitherto unexplored world as you click aliens and robots to death in a cliché-ridden sci-fi setting!Here's the lowdown on the download: This smattering of outer space adventure will lay siege to approximately 935MB of space on your hard drive and offer you a glimpse of the game's environments, combat and cybernetically enhanced space dudes. You can grab it from our pals at Big Download.
Aeria adds Diablo-like Cronous to its library
MMO portal Aeria Games has acquired a new game called Cronous, which was originally developed by Lizard Interactive. Cronous' gameplay is similar to that of Diablo, Mythos, or Dungeon Runners. That makes it somewhat unique in Aeria's library, which is otherwise made up mostly of games of a different character such as Dream of Mirror Online and Shaiya.The game's info page lists most of the usual action-RPG features, plus "nonlinear storytelling" with regards to quests, guild castle building and management, and siege warfare. We don't fully understand the nonlinear storytelling bit, although it's included in the press release as one of the major selling points of the game. It sounds cool up front though.Sign-ups are already underway for a closed beta test, so if you want to give the game a try, that's probably your best bet.[Via Ten Ton Hammer]
Can't find the End of the World
Searching, searching ... dang it all! Where's the Japanese cyberpunk Shibuya-themed trendy pop culture action-RPG when you need it? Gamers have been trying to find The World Ends With You on store shelves, but a meager shipment + critical acclaim = no game for you.Square Enix has admitted this oversight, and released a statement to Joystiq explaining the lack of units. They felt the unique style of TWEWY was released in just the right place at just the right time. They were right -- but that still doesn't result in John Q DS getting the game! Square has confirmed that the next round of units will be arriving mid-June, so you'll have to twiddle your thumbs for a little longer. Relax - it's not the end of the world.%Gallery-11943%
Zero Punctuation Ends the World
With such a vast catalog of high-profile, big-budget console games under his reviewing belt, Yahtzee risks life and limb this week to review The World Ends with You on the DS. It may be known around these parts as a stellar action-RPG with outrageous originality and style, but we're well aware that no amount of praise can stop that affable British chap from offering a hefty serving of hate.It's certainly a unique genre to tackle, and we know everyone is totally ready to accept his criticism in the most professional manner possible. Well, maybe not, but it makes for a funny video all the same! Hit the break for the full review.%Gallery-11943%
Infinite Undiscovery finds release date and trailer
In a year that'll the see the release of Fable 2, Microsoft and Square-Enix have been quiet about the action-RPG Infinite Undiscovery. In the first news we've heard of the 360 exclusive in some time, the game has received its official release date: September 2. Also released was another trailer, which gives some story hints and shows off some of the real time gameplay. The fans of the more traditional Japanese RPGs may not find this to be exactly to their liking, given that it is not turn based, but the game seems to be a good hybrid and could provide a good entrance point for those in the 360's more traditional demographics.
Can Mythos live up to its hype?
We've written once or twice about the upcoming free-to-play game action-MMO Mythos. It will rock you, sock you, completely demolish you and keep you coming back for another round of its point-and-click gameplay. Well, that's the theory, anyway. Can any game ever live up to all its hype? As Miguel Lopez points out in his Mythos preview, you have four races, but there's really not that much difference between them. Eventually, you'll run out of quests, and the only thing that will keep you coming back is the prospect of more fairly similar dungeon crawling.Mythos shows the most creativity in its classes. Your characters must choose between one of three classes, but the talent trees can turn them into almost any variant on those you can think of. Want your caster to tank and melee? You can do that. Want your gadgeteer to let his pets do the fighting? Entirely up to you. Your character can be uniquely yours in every respect. This might come in handy when you meet someone else in the FFA PvP world of the Shadowlands. They won't have any idea what you can do... and you won't know anything about them, either. Will Mythos have the staying power of Diablo II? That's a tough call, but the developers at Flagship Studios are definitely hoping its addictive gameplay, casual setting, humor, and low price (can't beat free) will give them a hit after their miss with Hellgate: London.
