Mabinogi Heroes (devCAT/Nexon)
http://heroes.nexon.com/
An offshoot of the Mabinogi MMO, but instead of being cute and friendly, Mabinogi Heroes looks like a serious, action adventure game. It's still online, from what I understand, but perhaps cooperative between a few people rather than massively multiplayer? There are a lot of physics effects and character to environment and character to character interactions. The art, although somewhat rough around the edges, has an interesting darker tone to it. It's more bad ass than beautiful with the characters looking more grounded and minimalist than other contemporary Korean designs. The somewhat jerky animation is my main concern, but it looks like fun.
Dragon Nest (EyeDentity/Nexon)
http://dragonnest.nexon.com/
Action MMORPG. I like the off-center camera and the fast paced combat. The mobs apparently spawn somewhat randomly and it appears to use some instancing. The graphics are nicely stylized and effective. Hard to tell what else there is to the game, but it looks promising.
Continent of the Ninth (Studio Cloud 9/NHN/HanGame)
http://c9.hangame.com/
A heavy hitter of a game, C9 looks very impressive and appears to play solidly. Combat seems to be more like what you might expect from an action console game than an MMORPG as it is being billed. There's a clarity to the graphics that I really like about this game. It's realistic, yet not distractingly so. The over the top action looks great.
Dragonica (Barunson Interactive/IAH)
http://dragonica.barunsoninter.com/
The cute game of the bunch, Dragonica is a side scrolling online game that appears to be marketed at a more casual audience. There is a level of craftsmanship in the concept art designs that really sell it for me. Looks like there's a focus on microtransactions similar to Maple Story.
These are some of the games that I've been keeping tabs on, but I'm sure there were a lot of other cool games missing from this list at GStar 2008. Hey, that's what future posts are for.
