MMO's are well known for their expansive worlds, but what video game world is more expansive than Earth? That's the question posed by Shadow Cities, a new location-based MMORPG that's set to launch in the US next week.
Epic Gladiator is an iPhone game developed by Critical Hit Software that lets manage and battle gladiators. Gamezebo's Epic Gladiator strategy guide and walkthrough will provide you with a quick start guide, tips and tricks, hints and cheats to help you defeat your opponents.
Menu-based games tend to work well it comes to strategy games or city-building sims, but not necessarily action games. It can be hard to translate the tension of gladiator battles, for example, with just a few lines of text and some numbers. That's part of what makes Epic Gladiator so impressive. There's no actual story, and you don't actually participate in any of the bloody battles, but that doesn't make it any less addictive.
Last year's Chaos Rings was pretty revolutionary when it came out for iOS devices. It was beautiful, it was fun, and it was the coolest RPG experience to ever come to the iPhone. Of course, this wasn't exactly surprising since it came from Square Enix, a publisher known for delivering quality RPGs. Now, Chaos Rings ? has come to the App Store, and it's a little weird to play, mainly because it feels so dang familiar.
The problem with a lot of Facebook MMOs is that they ultimately feel like trials or demos for the client-based versions of the same games, rather than sincere attempts to make an enjoyable social MMO. The Facebook version of these games often lack features available in versions that are client-based or directly browser-based, like fullscreen graphics and more control customization. Trials of Elsword takes this approach to a whole new level, literally acting as nothing more than a way to promote downloads of the client-based MMO Elsword.
Progress. It's inevitable and generally, it's a good thing. Video games are no exception. Over the years, production values have continued to climb and along with them, developers have also refined the techniques that wow gamers. But for all the good that progress brings, there is a price to be paid and some of us find ourselves yearning for simpler times. Enter Avadon, an homage to old-school gameplay in an age where graphics reign supreme. It might not appeal to everyone, but those with the urge to go dungeon exploring will find that Avadon is more than enough to quench their thirst for adventure.
A Mystical Land is a new multi-platform MMO that's using the Portalarium player (which does require a download and install) to run through Facebook's platform. It may strike some players as reminiscent of Runes of Magic, which is not coincidental. A Mystical Land is one of the first projects released by Neonga, a company formed by former executives of Runes of Magic publisher Frogster. A Mystical Land's 3D graphics are very striking and its gameplay is a bit more polished than the usual Facebook MMO fare.
Pirate Galaxy is a browser-based free-to-play MMO that's making itself available on Facebook like so many others. There are a few unusual things about this particular game, though. For one, it's written completely in Java instead of the usual Flash, so you may find yourself having to do some Java installs before you can play it. The game's theme is pure science fiction, with the player controlling a spaceship instead of any sort of human avatar. The 3D graphics create some extremely impressive landscapes compared to most things you'd see on Facebook, but the gameplay itself is fairly standard.