It Came from Canada: Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar for iPad Previewed

In Canada, poutine is the national dish, ham is called bacon, and hockey is the game of gods, eh. Not only that, but the great white north also seems to get a bunch of iOS games early. Since it's a smaller country at about 10% of the population of the US, it really does make a good test market. That's why we like to pop in to the Canadian App Store every once in a while to see what's new.

In this episode of It Came from Canada we take a look at Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar. Ultima is the classic name in RPG and dungeon crawlers. While it's still early, will this installment make fans of the series happy without getting all that yucky EA freemium monetization goo all over it?

Ultima Forever looks much as it did when we took a look at it at GDC earlier this year. The one thing we get to see that we did not see then was how EA plans to monetize this freemium game. Unfortunately EA has taken the route of what amounts to play to win, but just one step removed. In the current version of Ultima Forever you can purchase keys. The type of key you have determines the quality of loot you get when you open up the chests you find in the game. If you use gold keys you get way better look than if you use bronze keys. You can purchase gold keys, yet rarely find them in the game. You will generally find bronze keys which yield low level loot.

That said, the game will likely still be fun, if you choose to play it properly. Take a look at our first quest in the game below.

We'll be sure to have more news on Ultima Forever, when it will launch globally, and a review when that happens.