Apa kabar sahabat gamegimi? lama sekali rasanya saya sudah tidak membuka Blog ini. Sekarang saya akan membahas mengenai Update terbaru Atlantica Indonesia. Setelah ini saya akan mencoba membagi informasi mengenai Bot Atlantica, Simak saja Post saya selanjutnya yah. :)

Petualangan Atlantian yang selama ini mencari benua Atlantis, akan menemukan jawabannya di bulan April nanti, karena Atlantica Online Indonesia akan mengadakan Update “The Rise of Atlantis”.  Benua Atlantis yang selama ini dinyatakan hilang kini telah muncul, dan Atlantian bisa memulai menjelajahi Benua Atlantis ini.

 

You may think you know about the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, but you don't. In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3's alternate history, it's the Allies launching a surprise attack on Hawaii, a longtime stronghold of the Empire of the Rising Sun, and that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Red Alert 3 puts tongue firmly in cheek and dreams up a bizarre world where armored bears parachute from the sky, transformable Japanese mecha wreak havoc, and Mount Rushmore is actually a secret military facility where Honest Abe's head shoots deadly laser beams out of his eyes.

Red Alert has always been the more "colorful" of the Command & Conquer franchises. Its premise of time travel messing up the space-time continuum allows it to come up with some silly scenarios that are conveyed by scenery-chewing performances by actors in live-action video sequences. So with the Soviet Union facing defeat at the hands of the Allies, a trio of Russia's finest (played by Peter Stormare, Andrew Divoff, and Tim Curry) travel back in time to whack Einstein. This is a tip of the hat to the original Red Alert, where Einstein travelled back in time to whack Hitler. Job done, the Soviets return home only to discover that, like Eckels stomping on a butterfly in A Sound of Thunder, messing with time has unforeseen repercussions.


What results is three campaigns that let you play from the perspective of the Allies, the Soviet Union, and the new Empire of the Rising Sun, basically a Japan that's led by Sulu from Star Trek and armed to the teeth with almost every notable Japanese clich? turned into a unit. There's the aforementioned transformable mecha as well as non-transformable samurai robots, high-tech ninjas, suit-clad engineers, and, yes, even a skirt-wearing schoolgirl armed with Akira-like psychic powers. Not to worry, because the Allies and Soviets can play silly too, with helicopters that shrink opponents to pint size, tuxedo-clad spies, armored zeppelins, and leggy female commandos.

The big new addition in Red Alert 3 is that the entire single-player game has been designed with co-op in mind. You can either play with another human being or with the computer, but basically you each control your own base and forces. If you're playing with a human, there's built-in voice-chat and an ability to drop markers on the map to get their attention. If playing with a computer, you can issue orders for them to seize a location, or strike a certain target. It's a good dynamic because it can make what are traditionally long slogs shorter; you effectively have double the forces that you would normally have in a traditional RTS. Quite often, I let my computer partner tackle half the map while I tackled the other.


There's also a naval element in Red Alert 3, as many maps incorporate bodies of water. You can build submarines, dolphins, carriers, and battleships, though the line between naval and land warfare isn't exactly cut and dry due to the amphibious nature of many units. Vessels can sprout legs or treads and roll up to dry land, and some land units can float. It adds an extra dimension that was lacking in previous C&C games, and it also lets the developers show off the gorgeous water tech.

Aside from that, though, the gameplay formula hasn't changed very much from both ancient and recent Command & Conquer games. The economies have been gated a bit better in Red Alert 3, but aside from that you're in a mad race to gather resources, erect a variety of structures, research upgrades, and churn out armies, navies, and air forces. What's more, the missions have the same puzzle-feel; the campaign gradually unlocks the units and special abilities at your command. It's not until the final mission that you get everything unlocked. That, along with the design of the various missions, reinforces the feeling that you're not so much thinking for yourself as you are doing exactly what the level designer wants you to do. Plus, it's also annoying that you can't pull the camera back to see more; you're limited to the same sized slice of the battlefield as before.

Multiplayer and skirmish play is as cutthroat as ever, even more so in fact due to economy being gated better. In last year's Command & Conquer 3, it was possible to accelerate an economy by building multiple collectors per refinery, but in Red Alert 3 you can only assign one collector and one refinery per resource deposit, which helps to prevent an early game knock out. Still, you're going to need a lot of cunning and aggressiveness to keep the other guy off balance and to seize and maintain the initiative.



The balance between the three sides feels good at first, but if there's one glaring weakness it's the Empire's dire lack of sea-based antiaircraft early in the campaign, when the Allies hurl wave after wave of aircraft at you. What anti-air units the Empire does have require some micromanaging since they're transformable. That's rectified a bit later on, but it's a major headache until then.

The cast looks like they had a lot of fun for the most part. The great J.K. Simmons plays a gung-ho US president, Stormare basically echoes his role as the crazed Russian cosmonaut in Armageddon, and Curry's Russian accent just drips on the floor. Then there's no complaint about the bevy of beauties skimping about in cleavage-showcasing blouses and short skirts, though some of the "flirting" by British bombshell Gemma Atkinson is more than a bit awkward if you're anything other than a 14-year old boy.

Musically, the game has a driving soundtrack that helps fill in the lulls in missions. It works to the game's advantage that composer Frank Klepacki returned to help out with the soundtrack. Klepacki was responsible for Red Alert's iconic and memorable Hell March, and Red Alert 3's soundtrack feels like a fitting successor to that, with a modernized version of the Soviet anthem along with plenty of guitar-riffing background pieces.

Given such a ghostly title, you'd expect squads of shimmering spirits and imposing armies of the undead to loom ominously over Spectral Force 3. It's true that this strategic role-playing game features fluttering birdmen, bony grave escapees, and magic-wielding vampires--not to mention purring catwomen, ninjas, and matronly goblins hungry for an afternoon snack. But rather than go hog wild with this campy crowd, developer Idea Factory has created an immediately forgettable experience. Spectral Force 3 plays decently enough--as it should, given that it cribs from decades-old games that have already perfected and reperfected the turn-based formula. But for a game featuring a sasquatch militia, it has no personality, and the practically nonexistent story and weak character development will disappoint even the most stalwart genre enthusiasts.

This lack of character means that the game relies purely on its gameplay for entertainment value, and it partially succeeds, thanks to battles that last just the right length, and an eclectic assortment of units you can recruit to your posse of ragtag mercenaries. As you progress through the game, you will add more and more characters to your list of available party members. In turn, you gain some strategic flexibility, thanks to an assortment of gladiators and gunners you can mess around with on the battlefields. The constants are main character Begina and the cowardly healer Diaz, and several missions require you to protect one or both of these party members to achieve victory. In fact, you'll spend a lot of time protecting Diaz in most scenarios, not just because he is your main healer, but because he can utilize magic squares on the gameplay grid called geomancy lines. When he stands in these squares, the party receives a particular enhancement (say, a hit point boost after every turn), and Diaz can unleash a helpful area attack.

Regardless of the mission objectives, most battles play out in more or less the same way. You plant your selected party on the gameplay grid and take turns moving about and bashing on your AI-controlled enemies. Granted, there are some variants on the usual recipe. By landing successful standard attacks (of which there are light, medium, and heavy variants), you fill the friend gauge. As this gauge fills, you can then string attacks together in one of two ways. With an assist attack, you can land additional blows using nearby party members; with the teamwork command, you can grant an entire additional turn to another character. These mechanics aren't groundbreaking, but they're the key to surviving the hardest missions, some of which can feel incredibly difficult. That isn't to say that Spectral Force 3 is, overall, a punishing game. However, in the midst of the easier tasks, you will encounter some difficult story missions that may have you reexamining your strategies and equipping your characters in a variety of ways.

There are other considerations as well, such as Diaz's healing ability, which is freely usable without depleting any kind of mana gauge. On the other hand, he cannot heal himself with his standard spell, so you need to equip him and other characters accordingly. There are no potions in Spectral Force 3, so you'll rely on a number of equipped items to enhance your party's built-in skills. These run the gamut from additional spells to stat buffs, though you must first create and equip the necessary items to use these abilities. This means a visit to a smith (easily done via the game menus), who will then form the items you find on the battlefield into the necessary object.

Unfortunately, there's no real context for any of this gameplay. The setup sounds like a neat idea: Your group of hirelings seeks work for any of a number of warring factions, which in turn affects the tide of the gameworld's political direction. In practice, this just means you take on any given mission for the faction of your choice while taking on story and recruitment missions. It all feels very random, and there's nothing to draw you into the struggle. Your own mercenary squad will squabble and sass, and there some nice tidbits of dialogue, but there is no standout character, no compelling drama, no unpredictable surprise. Without a real story to pull you through, Spectral Force 3 becomes a series of stand-alone battles in which choice is an illusion and you must create your own sense of forward progress.

Like the gameplay, the visual and sound presentation is simply old. Not only will you probably mute the awful, monotonous MIDI score, but you'll be surprised at just how bad the sound effects are. There is a limited selection of lifeless thumps and swishes, and some of the effects don't even match the accompanying attack. Why would a sword against flesh sound like a club pounding an empty bucket? Spells sound unspectacular as well, which is at least consistent with their visuals, which lack drama and pizzazz. Spectral Force 3 does not look like a current-generation game. Animations are limited, environments are utilitarian, and the overall impression is that of a PlayStation 2 title with a slight high-definition boost. The aging technology powering the game could have been mitigated by an outstanding art design, but like its story and character progression, the game's style is depressingly generic.

There's also a sense of overall sloppiness, from text that spills over the sides of its background, to misspellings, to bee noises that were obviously created by a guy going "bzzz" into a microphone. These things might not bother you if you're a diehard SRPG fan looking for a fix, but Spectral Force 3 projects no sparkle or enthusiasm, and doesn't offer anything to get excited about.

In the fairness of full disclosure I'm probably the PC editor with the least amount of World of Warcraft time under my belt. So diving into the beta of the upcoming second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was an interesting experience. This is, after all, an expansion that packs a lot of new content, as well as a new level 80 cap, for the most popular MMO in the world. How would a relative newcomer take to it?Though I lack a high-level World of Warcraft character, I was still able to make a Death Knight, the new hero class that requires you to have a level 55 character, minimum. The Death Knights are basically the new badasses of World of Warcraft. Armed with a signature runesword, Death Knights were former heroes in life, but after death they've been resurrected by the Lich King to serve as his champions. Thus, you start your career as a Death Knight in Acherus, the grand citadel of death, which happens to be floating above the pastoral lands of New Avalon. It's time to get some war on.

First, however, you've got to do some basic quests to acquaint you with the nature of the Death Knights. Starting off, you must forge your runesword, a fairly simple task since Acherus is full of battle-worn swords. Take one, use it in the runeforge, and you've got a runesword. Next, you must engrave a rune onto your sword, imbuing it with power. There are a number of difference runes to pick from; cinderglacier will boost the power of your frost or shadow spells, frostfever will inflict disease and cause frost damage, swordshattering increases the chance to parry, and so on. Whatever you choose affects the look of your sword, as well as the effect on it, like flame or frost.

Death Knights definitely have some cool abilities, such as being able to raise their vanquished opponents to serve as undead minions in battle. They also have Death Coil, which can dish out the damage. And this is just the start of the Death Knight career; over the next few weeks I'll try and give progress reports as to how my character is shaping up.It's also interesting going back to World of Warcraft after quite some time. Sure, in terms of the graphics engine it is showing its age, but it's impressive the art design has held up so well, as the visuals still look imaginative and compelling. The interior of Acherus is a bit menacing while the overall look of some the landscapes remains eye-catching. And, of course, it's always helpful that your character looks awesome as he or she runs around with a giant flaming runesword strapped to his or her back.

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As the athletes assemble for tonight's opening ceremonies, you may find yourself regretting that your parents loved you too much to foist you on some manic Russian gymnastics coach, or that they couldn't afford to build a heated Olympic-size pool in the backyard, or that they bought the cheap dinner plates that broke the first time you hurled them across the lawn. And as you ruminate about how your Olympic glories were so unjustly denied, you may find yourself looking to soothe the hurt of those broken dreams by watching real, world-class athletes do what they do best in Beijing. Or you may decide to compete yourself in Sega's latest Olympics game, Beijing 2008.
Don't even bother. Sure, Sega's Olympic cash-in is definitely full of all of your favorite events and it has a reasonably authentic visual style, but the gameplay is shallow and repetitive and the basic setup of the competition is clumsy and unsatisfying.

There are two basic formats for the competition here, the à la carte Competition mode where you and your friends can compete in whatever events you like and the more serious, progressive Olympic mode that includes trials and daily challenges. The competition mode is definitely more attractive because you can just jump right to the events you care about, but it doesn't have a big payoff in the form of a big ceremony. For that you'll need to start your own Olympic game.

In this mode, you'll have to qualify for different events day by day, and if you fail at enough of them, you'll have to reload and start all over. This isn't much of a problem if you get a day full of easy events like table tennis or pistol shooting, but if you find yourself stuck with hurdles and pole-vaulting, you may be fighting again and again just to progress to the next stage. The control scheme has an accomplice here and it's the bizarre role-playing system that lets you upgrade your athletes. Nevermind the fact that these athletes come to the Olympics because they're already the best in the world, but who thought it would be a good idea to have the player's team of athletes start out behind the curve? You spend the first part of the Olympic mode playing catch-up, hoping like crazy that the game doesn't load you with a day's worth of terrible events.

And after all, isn't that what the Olympics are really about?
No.

They scored big here with the authentic presentation and the great selection of events but then they married it to a series of mini-games with such poorly designed controls that favor luck and calloused fingers over skill and insight. Video games based on the Olympics always seem to rely more on the visibility of the actual games than about delivering inventive gameplay and Beijing 2008 is sadly no exception.

The words "EA Sports" and "underdog" don't often belong in the same sentence, we know. Somehow, though, we find ourselves repeatedly struggling to avoid mentioning that FIFA Manager 09 is the de-facto underdog to industry standard Football Manager in the space of text-based soccer (or football if you're nasty/not from America) simulations. The legendary descendent of Championship Manager still hasn't announced firm plans of its 2009 edition, leaving EA with an opportunity to swoop in and gather fans' hearts with screens and details of a potential FM killer. If EA's preview of the game at the recent Season Opener event in Vancouver is anything to go by, it will have a distinct chance to do so.FIFA Manager has always attempted to differentiate itself from Football Manager by presenting a slicker presentation style more in line with the EA credo. The biggest differentiator is the 3D engine the game uses to simulate matches, something which has been overhauled for the 09 release. The development team has significantly rehauled the match system after spending most of the 08 developmental cycle working on the menus involved with the system. The game features new commentary, sounds, stadiums, shirts, rendering, and AI, all of which can be fine-tuned and edited by the end-user. Graphically, the game looks closer to FIFA 08 than Football Manager 08. The substitutions and lineup screens within the match have also been revamped to allow for quicker, more intuitive changes that encourage the user to tinker with their formation and tactics.

For those more interested in a text-based analysis similar to FM, the text mode was also completely overhauled. The idea is to combine a live ticker of results and information with commentary on the match going on. The system's conference mode allows the user to read about up to four matches at once, switching to different matches for cut-ins on important moments like penalties or last-gasp chances. The system again allows the user to edit commentary, but a deeper vocabulary and intelligence allows the game to comment on events using player attributes or previous statistics in the game or the season, while seeing injuries that happen in stages and warnings before a player gets a yellow card. That doesn't surpass Football Manager's model by any means, so we'll need to see how FIFA Manager 09 uses the commentary to peg it as superior or inferior. The game's Story of a Season mode has been fleshed out and expanded to provide more detail on a player's success over the course of a season. The game now features 60 specific screens with statistics and information, as well as 20 videos that are triggered by events like a team's first trip to Europe, or a striker winning the European Golden Boot.

What most excited us about the game, though, were the significant amount of random screens that were discussed and shown that, while not part of any broad category, were incredibly intuitive and relevant to being a manager; essentially, things we'd put together ourselves anyway, but provided instead automatically by the game. A good example would be the list of transfer targets taken from a list of relegated players at the end of each season, detailing players we could potentially purchase at a bargain rate (why hello, Robbie Earnshaw!).

The team has also fleshed out many of the sections with further detail and options for customization. The staff section now features more than 20 positions and adjusts coach's performances for morale. The interview and press conference module now has 400+ questions and is available for edit; all in all, more than 40 areas of the game are modifiable using the game's provided editor. And 1800 different messages allow the user to communicate with other coaches or players, regardless of whether the message is positive or negative. We don't think you're allowed to just bother them for no good reason. Scouting agencies can be hired, and scouts can be given a queue of players to prioritize for scouting; a youth player transfer market allows the Arsene Wenger's of the world to poach, say, a Cesc Fabregas; youth player contracts also exist to attempt to prevent such an act. It's easy to offhandedly dismiss FIFA Manager 09 as inferior because of how consistently good Football Manager is, while justifying it by making snide comments about EA putting together a management sim. Immediately dismissing something because of the company that makes it is just as bad as immediately praising a game because it's made by a popular developer. Evaluated on its merits alone, FIFA Manager 09 looks to be a worthy contender to the throne of Football Manager. As the game's release date draws nearer and we actually sit down and put it through its paces, it will be exciting to see who the king of soccer management simulations in 2008-2009 really is.

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