The soul-eating genre known as the MMORPG was a big focus at E3 this year. With the success of popular games such as Guild Wars and World of Warcraft, everyone is looking to nab a piece of the pie (mmm… pie). One of the first titles we viewed at E3 was Soul of the Ultimate Nation, or SUN. Created by Webzen, SUN is about an evil emporer attempting to destroy the land using his magic powers. Wait… Haven’t we seen this before?
SUN attempts to incorporate some console game mechanics into this MMORPG and fails miserably; what we’re left with is a highly confusing interface and controls that are so complex, Steven Hawking would have a hard time figuring them out. The menu screens are unorganized and extremely messy; have fun finding a particular option, because it is not easy. The good side of that, though, is the high amount of options given to the player; there is a vast amount of character customization given through creation, weapons, armor, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Another nagging issue I experienced while playing the demo was the camera, it could only be rotated in one direction, and sometimes that didn’t even work. The camera is one issue that will hopefully be fixed before the game is released.
So, for those of you MMO fanatics that can’t get enough of fantasy worlds, SUN features fun, action packed combat reminiscant of Diablo. For everyone else, the visuals are sub par, the camera leaves a lot to be desired, and the menus are too complex to dive in and play immediately. For those interested the exact date of release has yet to be announced, but look for it sometime this year.
