Enjoy Epic Battles In Lords Mobile!

Lords Mobile is a game that ended up surprising me. We all know the saying about judging a book by its cover. Well I’m adding to that: never judge a game by its tutorial.

For whatever reason, the developer stocked the opening of the game with the players repetitiously digging through menus. There were a few moments where I got to watch a battle unfold, but they all played out on their own with no direct involvement required from me. Once those battle segments ended, it was right back to opening a menu, hitting “upgrade,” closing the menu, and utilizing the free instant upgrade ability to finish off the timer for that particular upgrade.

I was stuck watching the large battles unfold on their own.
The game directed me from menu to menu, upgrading so many buildings that I stopped paying attention to the specifics and just went straight for the “upgrade” button and then the “free” button to finish off the upgrade. This sort of chore is typical (though to a lesser degree) in many mobile strategy games, but Lords Mobile has taken it to an extreme. One or two examples of how to instantly finish an upgrade is fine, but a dozen or so back-to-back is boring, and less patient players than myself will likely check out of the game before they even get to play it.

Luckily I stuck around and discovered Lords Mobile’s saving grace: its Hero battles.

If you were paying attention during the large-scale fight sequences at the beginning of the game, you’ll have noticed that hero units lead the armies. Players can not only collect heroes, but they can take their group of heroes on side quests that involve battling waves of enemies and strategically utilizing each hero’s unique special abilities during real-time combat.

Loot collected from these battles is used to upgrade the heroes’ stats, and as the player levels up their account, the heroes themselves can level up further, allowing them to progress against tougher enemy groups.

I was surprised by how much I was enjoying the hero mode, when moments earlier I was halfheartedly tapping away at menus.

The hero battles taking place in real-time, combined with the need to frequently summon and aim special abilities at crucial moments, stands in stark contrast to my experience with the rest of the game. Because the hero mode is only a side attraction and not the main focus (building a city to compete with others in a multiplayer world), it’s not a completely fleshed-out experience. But I was happy to play it, as it not only gave me an active role in combat (which is something the larger scale battles lacked), but because it didn’t involve me mindlessly upgrading more buildings.

The rest of the game became busy-work once I discovered the hero mode. I’d check in with my town before jumping into tackle a few missions, and then check my town before closing out of the game. I was probably supposed to be analyzing my defenses, checking out what my neighbors were up to, and so on. But I didn’t care about that. I’ve done that stuff in so many games before Lords Mobile that the familiarity and repetition held very little interest. I just wanted to go tackle some more monster fights and collect more heroes.

Angry Birds Movie Could Be Just A Matter of Time

"Angry Birds" has officially transcended your phone screen — for now, at least. The Angry Birds Movie is hoping to become this summer's animated hit, with voices by comedians Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, and Maya Rudolph, to name a few, all playing various kinds of big, fluffy birds, just like in the beloved smartphone game. With the movie hitting theaters on May 20, fans are wondering if, like the game, The Angry Birds Movie might be just the beginning much more – an Angry Birds sequel, perhaps? As with almost any popcorn movie being released nowadays, there's no doubt that Angry Birds was made with the idea of a potential franchise in mind. But will there be an Angry Birds 2? Well, it's not set in stone yet.

Sequels don't generally get the green light until after the original movie makes a nice amount of money at the box office, and it looks like The Angry Birds Movie is well on its way to box office domination. The movie, which opened in Europe, South America, Africa and the Middle East one week ahead of the US, made $43 million over the weekend. And Rovio Entertainment, the company behind the original "Angry Birds" game, boasted that ticket sales increased over the weekend thanks to positive fan reactions. "Strong critical reception and great word of mouth ignited the box office on Saturday as The Angry Birds Movie displayed huge increases from Friday," Rovio said in an online statement, according to IGN.

Should Angry Birds be as successful at the box office as the original game was at the app store, then Angry Birds 2 seems inevitable. In fact, Sudeikis, who plays the main character Red, has already casually mentioned sequels in interviews. "You have to take sequels into consideration," he told Collider in February when speaking about his character development. In that same interview, Gad even joked that the sequel would be "a full-on Angry Birds musical." So, at least we know the actors are ready and willing to appear in a hypothetical sequel.

It's unclear how, exactly, a potential Angry Birds movie franchise will build off the countless "Angry Birds" games. Despite there being countless "Angry Birds" games, each with different themes and gimmicks, Rovio has only released one official "Angry Birds" sequel, the newly launched game app called "Angry Birds 2." Considering the original "Angry Birds" was released in 2009, I think it's safe to say that should Angry Birds get a sequel, it will, happily, come much quicker than the game did.

Seven Knights Users Are Pumping Out From Japan

Netmarble Games said its mobile game "Seven Knights" has become the first Korean title to rank fourth on the Apple Appstore top-grossing chart for Japan.

Korea's largest mobile game company stressed that this is the best-ever performance of a Korean mobile game in Japan, one of the world's largest mobile game markets.

"With Seven Knights, Netmarble Games is gaining business knowhow in the Japanese mobile game market," said Park Young-jae, a senior executive at Netmarble Games.

According to its earnings report, Netmarble Games recorded 157.9 billion won in overseas sales in the first quarter, the highest in the company's history. Expectations are high that the popularity of "Seven Knights" in the Japanese market will further boost the company's overseas performance in the coming quarters.

As of May 19, the mobile title has also recorded more than 4 million cumulative downloads in Japan, about 100 days since its Feb. 5 launch in the market.

"We seek to break the record by clinching the top perch in the Japanese market with a Korean mobile role-playing game by providing localized services," said Park.

Park attributed the success of "Seven Knights" success in Japan to thorough localization.

"We have carried out an overall restructuring of the game from the way of training characters to user interfaces and business model in order to customize for Japan's gaming market environment," the company said. "After the launch, we have focused on adding new contents that we thought users in Japan might feel more comfortable with such as Japanese-style character decorations and Japan-themed battle arenas. We have also collaborated with makers of popular Japanese games such as the Guilty Gear series and BlazBlue."

Many mobile games such as Supercell's "Clash of Clans" have hit international markets based on the "global-one-build" strategy, which enables a quicker release in more diverse overseas market.

Netmarble Games, which has tested the global-one-build strategy with its "Marvel Future Fight," decided to redevelop "Seven Knights" for the Japanese market two years after its release in Korea.

Netmarble Games said the decision to focus on localization was to appeal to the unique nature of Japanese users, which is different not only from Korean gamers but also those in other parts of the world.

"Besides Netmarble Games, many Korean game companies have launched mobile games in Japan but with little success due to such differences," a Netmarble Games spokeswoman said. "Japanese gamers tend to opt for games made by Japanese developers, ones tailor-made for their unique tastes. So we rebuilt the gaming content to appeal to Japanese gamers and worked with Japanese dubbing artists for better character voices."

In Japan, Apple iOS holds about a 44 percent share of the mobile operating system (OS) market compared to Google Android's 52 percent. This shows that the market influence of the two mobile platforms is not as strong as in Korea, where Android is the dominant mobile OS on the back of the popularity of Android smartphones made by Samsung and LG.