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NextGenBooks.com has announced the release of their new Role Playing Game (RPG), Warrior Quest. Warrior Quest is a little different than other RPGs because this RPG runs in your browser as well as browsers for the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Portable (PSP).

Warrior Quest  is a classic RPG similar to Dragon Quest. Players have to complete different quests to gain new skills and collect Battle Cards. NextGenBooks plans to add new content to Warrior Quest throughout the year to give players a reason to keep coming back to play.

Role Playing Games are usually in depth and can be very addictive. It is interesting that NextGenBooks has decided to make a browser based RPG. Running Warrior Quest in a browser widens the audience that is able to play. There is no need for separate executables, but it may run slower than native code. I guess we will have to wait and see how Warrior Quest is liked.

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Jagex Ltd, the developers of RuneScape have launched a new game portal. The games are mostly free to play, but there is the option to become a member and get access to more games, achievements and other community features.

FunOrb offers all types of game genres, such as classic shooters, puzzlers, 3D platformers and strategy games. Users are able to play the games in their web browsers because the games are all Java based and do not require users to download any games.

FunOrb has been designed with time-pressed gamers in mind. “For the first time, there is a generation of experienced gamers, turned young professionals, who want to play and be challenged, but are unable to devote large amounts of free time to gaming. FunOrb addresses this niche by blending quality entertainment with social functionality, offering players of all levels a complete social gaming experience.” said Geoff Iddison, CEO, Jagex.

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You are a great robot that needs to defend their territory in the action packed flash game Robot Territories. Players defend their territories with guns that are your robots hands. The robot is swarmed with a bunch of different enemies such as ground troops, tanks and helicopters.

Each level has different objectives. The robot needs to survive long enough to kill all of the troops advancing towards it. Players also have to make combos as they are killing the troops advancing towards them. The way to make combos is to shoot the unit while it is in the air. Players shoot at the troops and they will bounce into the air and if you can shoot the troop again on its way down you get a combo. The levels require you to make a certain number of combos before you can pass the level.

Another challenge is to get a certain combo multiplier. Some levels require a multiplier of 3 while others require a multiplier of 6. The multiplier is basically how many times you can hit the unit as it is falling down. Each time you hit the unit it bounces back up in the sky and the player has another chance to hit the unit as it comes back down. Basically, you need to bounce the unit on your bullets the number of times of the multiplier. In other words, if your combo multiplier is 3, you need to bounce the unit off of your bullets three times.

The levels are challenging to kill all of the units that come at you. There is a constant stream of enemies coming at you and those enemies are shooting at you and they have pretty good aim. The later levels throw more and more powerful troops at you and it doesn’t take long before you are taking a significant amount of damage and that is never a good thing.

I thought Robot Territories was really fun to play and it got my adrenalin pumping as I was trying to defend off all of the enemies coming towards me. I am not a huge shooter fan, but thought this game was different from other shooter games I have played and I found Robot Territories really fun. If you are into shooter games or even if you find action games fun to play, check out Robot Territories.

Gamers Media is another up and coming advertising company that wants to get in on casual games advertising. Gamers Media has decided to take a different approach with their in-game advertising. They have come up with an advertising engine. The engine is based off of Adify’s Build Your Own Network (BYON) platform.

Adify’s platform allows Gamers Media to target niche audiences with video, image and rich media advertising. The advertising is suppose to be able to reach the players that are less likely to click on the in-game advertisements. The service also allows the people implementing the advertisements to keep track of what is going on with a network management interface. The network management interface allows site administrators or portal administrators the luxury of ad management, tracking, reporting, billing, payment and technical support functions.

“Online casual gaming is exploding. There are now 80+ million casual gamers in the U.S., which represents 40+% of the US online population. Online gamers are responsible for the highest disposable income of any other group, spending an estimated $170 billion worldwide,” said Jay Gould, founder of Gamers Media. “Gamers Media provides advertisers with an alternative beyond the limited large scale casual game portals that currently exist. The total number of daily sites visited per user has grown 145% since 2006, and with our massive reach across many unique casual gaming sites, we help brands achieve their goals. Also, with our ‘Advergames’ we can help advertisers incorporate their brands into the games, creating a completely interactive and integrated experience.”

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I recently read an article in the fall edition of Casual Connect Magazine about story lines in games. The article talked about the importance of story lines in games to draw the player in and make them want to continue playing until the end of the game. The article got me thinking whether game story lines are truly important.

As I was reading through the article, I was agreeing with most of the points being made, such as story lines help progress users through the game and create a sense of urgency to make users want to play through to the end of the game. I think this is definitely a major part of the story line. I know that if I am not interested in the story line I  am usually not interested in playing the game.

Part of me also thinks that game play is very important and I can get past a mediocre story line or even get past no story line, if the game play is great. For example, I think Tetris is a great game to play and there is absolutely no story line to that game. The better companies can make the game play the more lea way they have with the story line. Game play can go hand in hand with the story line, which makes the game that much better and more interesting.

So, you have read how I feel about story lines. What does everyone else think? How important are story lines to games?