Aniplex USA announced on Friday night that the upcoming “Yuki Kajiura Live featuring Sword Art Online” concert has been cancelled due to “visa issues”. The concert was scheduled for this coming Saturday, January 14, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre. The exact nature of the visa issues has not been revealed, nor has it been stated whether or not the concert will be rescheduled for a later date.
All purchased tickets will be refunded. The cost will be automatically refunded to the bank account of each customer within 10 business days. The collectible event pamphlet and exclusive Sword Art Online: -Ordinal Scale- pouch will be given to all ticket holders. Instructions on how to receive the items will be announced at some point in the future.
In other news, ticket sales have begun for the March 9, 2017, theatrical screening of the aforementioned movie, -Ordinal Scale-. Tickets are exclusive to www.sao-movie.net/us.
Day of Infamy started its life as a World War II mod for Insurgency, designed to be the spiritual successor of the original Day of Defeat mod. The project was soon picked up by Insurgency developers New World Interactive with plans to release Day of Infamy as a full game. After five months of alpha testing, Day of Infamy is now in closed beta and is on track for a Spring 2017 launch.
As the game started out its life as a mod, Day of Infamy shares a lot of similarities to Insurgency. Day of Infamy is just a hair short of being a full blown military sim. Firefights are tense, brutal affairs as realism means nobody will be tanking half a magazine of ammunition before dying. Weapons behave much like their real life counterparts. There is no ammunition counter, just a number for how many magazines with at least one bullet is in one’s possession. Combined with the fact there are no automatic reloads when a magazine runs dry, Day of Infamy’s weapon mechanics creates an incredible amount of tension during extended firefights. The game has made the click click click of an empty weapon officially worthy of my nightmares.
The game’s suppression system adds an extra layer of intensity to the firefights. Shots that land near the enemy are still helpful as bullets that zip past the player will give them a suppression penalty that causes the screen to blur and lowers their accuracy. While it is hard to properly replicate the sheer terror of hiding behind cover in an attempt to stay alive in a video game, the cover system discourages players from acting like Rambo and running out of cover for too long.
The class system starts with the standard World War II mainstays of rifleman, assault/submachine-gunner, machine gunner, and sniper. Day of Infamy also adds an engineer who specializes in opening new attack routes with dynamite, a flamethrower class designed for close quarters, an officer who can call in support from HQ, and a radioman who must radio in the officer’s support requests. I think the radio is an important key of creating Day of Infamy’s realistic environment. Voice chat can only be heard within an earshot of the speaker, so transmitting information about an attack to teammates across the map will require a radio operator with each group. The officer/radioman is a potent combo unique to Day of Infamy. Radios can help speed up capture of points and an officer within two meters of a radio can call in large smoke screens for cover, resupply points, and a variety of explosive strikes to pummel the enemy. Good use of these skills can be the turning point for any match, making soldiers toting around binoculars or a radio a high priority target.
Currently, Day of Infamy features single player practice maps, co-op, and competitive modes. A bulk of the action will be found in co-op and competitive multiplayer. Co-op pits a team of eight against waves of AI in two different modes. Stronghold is an attack mode that has players capturing points from the AI. Death is semi permanent as dead players respawn after the next points is captured. Entrenchment is Strongholds’s defensive counterpart with players respawning when a live player falls back to the next line of defense points to trigger a wave of respawns. The co-op gameplay is a lot of fun. While technically AI will always be less competent than an actual player, Day of Infamy makes up for the skill gap my throwing larger waves of enemies against the player. It is an intense experience to survive fending off a large wave of attackers on the last point of an Entrenchment map knowing there are no more respawns.
Day of Infamy’s multiplayer emphasizes objective-based gameplay. There are currently three modes available. Frontline is the game’s push and pull mode, with both teams fighting for control of the map. Liberation and Offensive are close siblings, with both pitting an attacking team against entrenched defenders. The main difference is Liberation rewards players for sneaking behind enemy lines and capturing undefended points while Offensive only opens up one objective at a time, forcing the two teams to clash in a more concentrated area. The multiplayer battles are incredibly fun and the air of unpredictability of human opponents will appeal to most players.
The maps in Day of Infamy are well designed. Day of Defeat fans will find plenty of areas that feel familiar, as many chunks of the maps are inspired by or recreate classic maps like Thunder. Those who haven’t played Day of Defeat will still recognize important locations like Bastogne that has been featured in plenty of WWII films and shows. The mpas of Day of Infamy feature a good balance of wide open spaces for snipers and riflemen to dominate and close quarter areas that are ruled by flamethrowers and submachine guns. Steam Workshop has already been implemented in Day of Infamy, so I suspect plenty of player made maps will follow once the game is launched.
Day of Infamy hits the right balance between realism and accessibility. The game features a simple control scheme that will be familiar to most FPS players, making it much easier to get into the game versus a true military sim. Additionally, a stripped down weapon mod system has been implemented into the game, maintaining a certain level of realism while giving players a little extra flexibility in class customization as they gain access to more supply points. Day of Infamy’s sound design goes a long way to increasing the level of realism in the game. The explosions and gunfire are loud enough to drown out voice chat. The sheer volume makes it difficult to coordinate with teammates while being bombarded with bombers and artillery strikes, creating an extra layer of chaos when intense battles break out.
Day of Infamy may be slightly more realistic than the Day of Defeat mod it intends to replace, but the game still packs an enjoyable WWII infantry combat experience. The game hits the right balance, making for a realistic shooter that is still accessible to the average FPS player. While New World Interactive may still be stomping out bugs and fine tuning Day of Infamy, the game is stacking up to an excellent World War II shooter in its own right.
Funcom (The Secret World) released a brand new trailer for their upcoming open world sandbox game Conan Exiles. The trailer features interviews with the development team and fresh gameplay footage of the game’s free form building system.
In Conan Exiles, players will be able to build everything from small outposts to epic cities. The system allows for buildings to be erected on any surface, including ones built on the side of mountains. To populate your city, players can capture thralls to complete mundane tasks or even craft specialty items. Of course, all might cities fall. Players will need to not only fend off attacks from other players, but also giant avatars of gods summoned by enemies.
Conan Exiles is set to enter Early Access for PC on January 31st and on Xbox One Game Preview Program some time in Spring 2017.
Battlestate Games released a lengthy recap of their progress on the FPSEscape from Tarkov in 2016. If you have not been lucky enough to get into the alpha, the video will get you up to speed on some of the features, weapons, and locations completed in the past year, along with a few hints on what will be coming in 2017.
The extended alpha was released yesterday, which brought some new players into the game. A closed beta-test is still planned for 2017, with sign ups available at the official Escape from Tarkov site. Pre-orders starting from $4.99 USD for the game are available that guarantee access to the closed beta.
Russian indie devs Battlestate Games announced that their upcoming hardcore MMOFPS Escape From Tarkovwill be entering another round of alpha testing. Being called an extended alpha, the new build introduces the Woods environment that provides a more natural contrast to the urban environments featured in the game’s first alpha. The Woods is a mix of open fields and dense forests, which creates plenty of opportunities to ambush unsuspecting PMCs. Additionally weapon failure, weapon repair, and player groups have been added to the game. Behind the scenes, Escape from Tarkov’s in-game physics have been improved and plenty of optimizations have been implemented.
A new round of keys for Escape from Tarkov’s extended alpha are being sent out, with priority going to those who have purchased pre-orders. Those who purchased a more expensive package will have a higher chance of getting into the alpha. Closed beta is scheduled to start later this year.
Paramount Pictures released the second trailer for the upcoming horror film Rings. Set 13 years after The Ring and The Ring 2, the film stars Matilda Lutz as Julia and Alex Roe as Holt, a pair of lovers who are the latest victims of the mysterious video that kills. In order to save her curious boyfriend Holt, Julia watches the movie and has only seven days to live. But there’s a horrifying secret, there’s a movie within the movie that no one has ever seen before. Rings will also star Johnny Galecki (The Big Bang Theory) and Aimee Teegarden (Friday Night Lights).
Ringsis set to hit cinemas in Australia on February 23 and in North America on February 3rd.
Parisian publisher Focus Home Interactive and French developers Asobo Studio are partnering up to release a new game called The Plague. Asobo Studio is the team behind Kinect Rush and has assisted in development of many major titles in the past several years. Their resume boasts games like Quantum Break, The Crew, and Recore.
Not much detail is available at the moment about The Plague. We know that the action/adventure game is finishing pre-production and will be released for consoles and PC, but that is about it. The Plague will be given a full reveal at What’s Next De Focus event in Paris running February 1-2. Asobo Studio is expected to release new visuals and show off the first version of the game at the event.
Koji Igarashi decided to kick off the new year, or at least rather close to the new year, with a fresh update for those who are following the development of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. This update came in the form of a thirty-second gameplay video showing off the new “Village” area of the game that players will be encountering in the game.
As described by the developer, the village area is located before the castle where the game is mostly set and players will need to pass through the area to enter the castle while fighting against demons who are attacking it at the time. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is currently set to be released in the first half of 2018 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, PS Vita, and possibly the Wii U.
It looks like Atlus USA is giving fans of The King of Fighters XIV a bit of a treat as the company has released a number of themes for the game that players can use to customize their PlayStation 4 user interface. The company has released eleven total themes onto the PlayStation Store and only one of those is currently priced at $2.99 while the other ten themes, including themes that focus on the holiday season, specific teams and characters, or the girls of the roster, are currently free to download.
You can check the themes out on the PlayStation Store here but it is worth noting that Atlus has not stated how long these themes will be free.
Yesterday Sentai Filmworks began what is turning into a series of English voice actor reveals for the dub of Amagi Brilliant Park. The first time around we were introduced to Princess Latifah and now the company has revealed that the character Seiya Kanie will be voiced by Adam Gibbs when the series is released on Blu-ray, DVD, and in a premium box combo pack on February 28th.
The premium box version of the release will include the series on Blu-ray and DVD, Sticker Sheets, Iron Token, Mirror Button, Metal Pin Set + Card, Authenticity Card, Park Brochures, Map Poster, and a Collectors Box.
