Monday may be just around the corner, but you can still check out all of the exclusive features and noteworthy news articles that have been posted on ZAM this past week. You can find more links after the jump.

ZAM features

The Endless Forest: Oh Deer: Is The Endless Forest a relaxing experience or just lacking content? Sam "azerian" Maxted investigates.

We Dream of Genie: The newest update to Perfect World International includes genies, and we talked with Product Manager Jonathan Belliss to get all the details.

Gunz Online: Fast, Intense and... What Else?: Christopher "Pwyff" Tom checked out this MMORPG/FPS hybrid to see if the game is packed with anything besides adrenaline. Pwyff wasn't too impressed. Find out why in his editorial.

MapleStory: Still Worth Playing?: MapleStory just celebrated its fourth anniversary, so azerian decided to venture into the game's virtual world to see what's changed over the years.

Rub Our Exclusive Media Lamp: We got an exclusive look at the genies introduced in the newest Perfect World International update. Check out the screenshots to see what they look like.

As I blunder along in my journey to find unique MMORPGs, two questions always float in the periphery of my vision. The first question concerns the MMORPG as a genre; what really 'defines' the MMORPG, and where do we draw the line? The second question I have is really just a complaint but voiced as a question (don't you just hate those?); just how much 'grind' can a game have before it becomes pointless? Well, unfortunately, as I ventured into the world of Gunz Online, I discovered just what happens when you really take the MMORPG genre to its limits - but not in a good way. Not to spoil the article but... bad things happen.

Gunz Online is an MMORPG/MMOTPS (TPS standing for Third Person Shooter) developed by MAIET Entertainment and published by ijji for North American players. When I first wanted to check out this game, I wasn't entirely certain if it really could qualify as an 'MMORPG,' because the game uses purely instanced rooms, where up to 32 players can congregate to blow each other up in a shooter style game. On the other hand, Gunz Online also has an extremely light 'quest mode' (how misleading!) and it offers the players the ability to level up and purchase higher grades of equipment for their avatars. While you may disagree with my inability to pin the genre tail on this donkey, I'd like to point out that hybrid MMORPGs that incorporate an FPS (or TPS) style of game play are pretty neat points of curiosity.