Spiders and Focus Home Interactive announced their upcoming fantasy RPG GreedFallwill launch on the 10th of September for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC. The game is priced at $49.99 USD or $69.95 AUD, and is available for pre-orders at major retailers.
GreedFall is a fantasy version of the Golden Age of Piracy. The world is plagued by an unknown disease, and it appears the world will collapse if a cure is not found. Rumours takes players to the newly discovered island of Teer Fradee, where multiple factions are attempting to colonize the new world and push out the indigenous people.
GreedFall is an open world RPG where players have full freedom to make their own alliances, choose their approach to solve conflicts, and determine the fate of Teer Fradee. The extensive talent tree will allow players the flexibility to specialize in physical combat, magic, diplomacy, stealth, or deception.
Few could expect that a horror based game would have a multiplayer mode but Bandai Namco and Supermassive Games have announced that The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan will have two different multiplayer modes for online and offline play. The online mode is called Shared Story Mode and will spread the story simultaneously with a friend in two-player online co-op. Both players explore the world, make choices and perform actions that affect the outcome of the story and the fate of their respective characters. Traverse scenes through a different perspective from the single-player experience sometimes together, sometimes apart in totally separate scenes revealing new information, locations and scares.
As for the offline mode, it is called Movie Night Mode and will feature a local group of up to five players using one controller with each player taking charge of the movement, decisions and choices of one of the five main characters. Players can choose between saving themselves, or trying to keep their friends’ characters alive. At the end of each playthrough, actions and impacts will be judged, with achievements & rewards for each player. A trailer introducing these multiplayer modes can be found below and as for the game itself, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan is currently set to be released on August 30th for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
If you haven’t played the original release of The Alliance Alive HD Remastered then you may be a bit curious about the cast of characters that will be appearing in the game but now a new trailer has been released by NIS America that focuses on introducing these “Unlikely Heroes.” These nine characters, all from different races and possessing ideologies, have come together to unite a fractured world and reclaim it from the Daemons, invaders that caused darkness to envelop the sky.
The Alliance Alive HD Remastered is currently set to be released on the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC on October 8th in North America and October 11th in Europe.
While the core Senran Kagura series is currently stuck in limbo due in part to Sony’s policies the spin-off Senran Kagura: Peach Ball is ready to thrive on the Nintendo Switch as it has been released digitally today in North America and Europe. As such to celebrate the launch of the game XSEED Games has released a launch trailer that you can check out below. For those unaware of what happens in this pinball game, Haruka, the mad scientist of Homura’s Crimson Squad, is up to her usual experiments again, brewing up mysterious concoctions with unknown effects. Unfortunately for her fellow shinobi, she’s chosen the local arcade she works at as her laboratory, storing her experiments in the bathroom.
After an accidental outbreak infects five of her shinobi friends, she learns that her latest concoction can transform those exposed it into animals, at least mentally.Now, with Asuka, Yumi, Yomi, Ryona, and Murasaki causing wild havoc in and around the arcade, Haruka has devised a way to return these shinobi to their senses – the mystical Peach Ball. Applied to a subject’s body repeatedly, with the proper vibrational force, it can undo the effects of her experiment. Conveniently, it’s just the right size for a pinball table. Now all Haruka needs is a skilled assistant to operate the table, bopping each shinobi girl with the ball until she comes around.
Paramount Pictures and Ghost House Pictures released their horror film Crawl to cinemas today. Set in Florida, Haley (Kaya Scodelario) and her father (Barry Pepper) are trapped in rising flood waters after Haley chooses to ignore a hurricane evacuation warning to search for her father instead. Her father is seriously injured and trapped in the crawlspace of the house. The waters are quickly rising on the two, who must rely on each other to survive the flood and the bloodthirsty alligators that are prowling the water.
Crawl is directed by Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes) and is producted by Craig Flores (300), Sam Raimi (Evil Dead), and Alexandre Aja.
Paramount Pictures is celebrating the release of the film by releasing a never seen before clip of Crawl, where Haley tries to take cover from an alligator in the bathtub.
A few days ago, I was talking with a friend about the old consoles and we agreed on one thing. Each generation of them is getting progressively smaller and soon enough it will be pretty hard to maul a person to death with it. To give that insane insane statement some context, we were talking about Sega Master System earlier (seriously, just google how massive that thing was). Hm, I guess even with some clarification, that statement above isn’t making me look any better. At least in the eyes of the law. Regardless, the Sega Master System was my entry console into the world of tough-as-nails platformers and arcade games. Memory card, saving games…..what’s that? Nuh uh, you had to dedicate a whole day for it, pretty much memorize every enemy and hope you pull it through. That’s how I was taken to those childhood memories of joy and torture while looking at the store page of Blazing Chrome. The screenshots look good, the gameplay seems fluid so let’s dive deeper into it and see if it’s any good.
Story
“Humans are expendable after an AI controlled robot army take over the world. They survive in hiding while their hunters rule the surface. When a small rebel group gets an intel about a big AI’s power plant, the machines strike their camp before they can organize an attack. Choose to play as Mavra, a super badass human resistance soldier, or Doyle, the equally groovy and deadly insurgent robot. This suicide mission will result in heavy casualties and a ton of lock-and-load fast-paced action where scraping robots and blazing chrome with your powerful weapons is the only thing standing between you and your freedom”. Oooh, they said the title of the game in the description blurb – Blazing Chrome! My silliness aside, the introduction is short, simple and tells you everything you need to know. The story plays well into that “garbage metal” aesthetic that I love so much from the Metal Slug series. And speaking of playing well…
Gameplay
Blazing Chrome is a game that hides a lot under the hood. You might expect a simple run n gun arcade but you get a lot more than you’ve bargained for. There is a huge selection of special weapons, 5 highly detailed environments as well as a huge selection of enemies to test those weapons on. To keep the game even more interesting, sometimes you’ll spend some time shooting from a hoverbike or piloting a high powered mech. One thing to point out, though. In the spirit of that whole retro era, the game very well captures the atmosphere of a good run n gun arcade – as well as the difficulty. The first level in the game might give you some leeway but after that memorizing enemy placements and learning from your mistakes is a must. And mistakes you shall have, trust me. On the bright side, the game is unforgiving but never unfair. I can say with a clear conscience that every time I died was absolutely my fault, a casual misstep or a case of being greedy while fighting a boss. One thing is for sure, there was never any reason to blame controls for it (only my lack of skill). The controls are fluid and super responsive, whether you’re on foot or in a mech/hoverbike.
Visuals
The praise for the controls had to be given, but that’s not all. For such a small team, JoyMasher went above when it came to visuals. The environments are incredibly detailed and colorful, with great attention to details. There’s no dip in quality or details when it comes to characters or enemies or bosses (and some of them are just amazingly designed). There is a good chance you’ll be replaying some levels only so you could enjoy the scenery…..for a short 1-2 seconds before you get mowed down. Pay attention to the screen, after all.
Audio
As far as the audio angle goes, it’s not on the same levels as visuals but at the same time, I can’t say anything bad about it since most of the soundtrack reminds me of glory days of Contra, except it’s amped up to 11 in Blazing Chrome. At the same time, there’s no memorable tune or anything that stands out but the music does its job rather well to keep you company or pump you up during boss sequences. All of the weapons also have distinctive sounds. While I couldn’t find anywhere official weapon names, the audio worked well on that front that I came up with my own such as shooty tooty, bwoangh laser, bzzzzt gun and kabloooey launcher. What can I say, I’m easily amused.
Overall
Blazing Chrome captures very well the glory days of the SEGA & SNES era. The atmosphere, the difficulty, the retro tunes…everything is there. I’ll say again, with all that also comes the challenging difficulty from the said era but for me, it’s also part of the charm of the game. The incredible visuals, tight controls and attention to details made me fall in love with the game. While draws a lot from the golden years of Contra and Metal Slug, Blazing Chrome offers a lot to establish its own identity.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
PQube has always been a publisher willing to take some risks and bring unique games to English audiences and now they are diving in again with an Indonesian developer this time. The company has announced that they will be publishing Studio Namaapa’s Ciel Fledge for the Nintendo Switch and PC sometime this fall.
Ciel Fledge is described as a “whole simulator” where players will find themselves raising a daughter in a ruined world. In the distant future humanity has abandoned Earth after facing near-extinction from a colossal alien threat. Amidst the destruction, a mysterious young girl is rescued and brought to safety on ARK-3, a magnificent city built in the sky.
From here players will need to help raise Ciel until she is an adult and can survive on her own. This includes scheduling out her week with classes and hobbies to encourage Ciel to make friends or even giving her part-time jobs. Battles will appear in the form of puzzle battles to complete activities or pass tests in class and every choice the player makes will affect how Ciel will grow.
Idea Factory International has doubled down this time with Date A Live: Rio Reincarnation character introductions as not only has the company chose to introduce two unfamiliar looking characters as well as a character and system trailer. The cast this time around happens to be Maria Arusu and Marina Arusu, A.I.’s that wish to learn about love.
Maria Arusu has made it her priority to collect information about love. She is eager to learn, and is shown oftentimes to be willing to apply things in practice if she doesn’t understand it the first time. As for Marina Arusu, she looks exactly like Maria, who appears suddenly before Shido in the digital world. She only appears after the sun sets, and it seems that she takes a strange pleasure in teasing Shido. Somehow, she is quite acquainted with the troubles plaguing the digital world, which encourages her to rely upon Shido.
Currently Date: A Live: Rio Reincarnation is set to be released on the PlayStation 4 on July 23rd in North America and July 26th in Europe with the PC version dropping on July 23rd.
The Persona 5 Royal re-introduction trailers are continuing and this time around Yusuke Kitagawa is the one being focused on. This new trailer from Atlus features a number of new scenes featuring Yusuke in different scenes as well as some footage of him in combat, this includes a look at a combination move that sees him pairing with Ann to deal large amounts of damage to their foe.
If you stick around to the end you’ll even see a bit of extra story content involving a certain painting. Currently Persona 5 Royal is set to be released on the PlayStation 4 in Japan on October 31st with a Western release planned for sometime in 2020.
Those who want to try out Kill la Kill: IF before it is officially released now have the chance to do so, at least on the PlayStation 4, as the demo has been released on the PlayStation Store and is available for free. This demo gives players a chance to play as four fighters in Versus as well as Tutorial Modes with these fighters being Satsuki Kiryuin, Ryuko Matoi, Ira Gamagoori, and Uzu Sanageyama as well as the chance to play through the first chapter of the game’s story mode.
Those who want to play a demo of the Switch version of the game will apparently have to wait until July 22nd according to European publisher PQube. As for the full game, it will be released on the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC on July 25th in Japan and July 26th worldwide.
