Indie sensation Human: Fall Flat lands on PC, Mac and Linux today
Physics-based puzzler from Tomas Sakalauskas hits digital stores at 6:00pm BST
22nd July 2016: Human: Fall Flat, the debut PC and console game from Tomas Sakalauskas, unlocks on PC, Mac and Linux today at 6:00pm BST / 10am PDT.
The game sees player guide Bob through a series of surreal dreamscapes, using only his dexterity and the objects he finds around him. Its mix of surreal visuals, open-ended puzzling and laugh-out-loud gameplay has seen it become a firm favourite since a protoype was launched on itch.io – but this full Steam release comes with a significant amount of extra content, gameplay refinements and a brilliant co-op mode.
Human: Fall Flat encourages repeat playthroughs thanks to its multiple solutions – often there are many ways to reach each level’s exit. Experimenting with how objects interact with Bob and the environment can lead to some genuinely inventive moments. Players should never wonder how they can, more how will they.
“It’s been quite the journey,” says Tomas Sakauskas. “From an idea, to a test level, to a prototype, to close to 30 million YouTube hits to date, and now the final release, it’s been an unbelievably wild ride. I’m so excited to see people discover new ways for Bob to complete his journey.”
Human: Fall Flat is available for PC, Mac and Linux on July 22nd, priced £11.99 / $14.99 / €14.99 (although launch discounts will be available). Console versions will be published later in the year.
While fans of Hatsune Miku have already known that they were guaranteed to see the release of Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X on August 30th, fans of the game in Europe have been wondering just how long they might have to wait to see their virtual idol arrive on the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita. Well it turns out they won’t have to wait any extra time whatsoever as Sega has announced that they are releasing Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X in Europe as a digital only title on August 30th, the same day that the game is being released physically and digitally in North America.
Sega also announced that they will be offering a demo for Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X that will be available for both platforms in both regions on August 9th and will include three songs on Easy and Normal difficulties with these songs being “Satisfaction,” “LOL -lots of laugh-,” and “Raspberry & Monster,” and in this demo players will even be able to unlock a number of costume modules and create a custom Music Festival medley through the Event Request system.
Post-Apocalyptic Digital Boardgame ‘Nyheim’ Hits Indiegogo With Large Square Enix Collective Community Support
Rebuild society with innovative deck and dice gameplay
London, UK – July 22 2016: Nyheim™, the post-apocalyptic digital boardgame featuring an innovative deck and dice gameplay system, has launched on Indiegogo®. Having achieved a punchy 80% community approval rating in their Square Enix Collective Feedback pitch, FanART Games™, the Finland-based developer of Nyheim, has set a goal of €30,000 (€27,000, £25,000) to complete the game. Nyheim is being developed for mobile, consoles, PC and VR platforms.
After a deadly rat-borne virus spreads worldwide from London in February 2015, the player, as one of a small number of survivors, must find others, gather food and equipment, and help a growing community survive the harsh post-apocalyptic conditions of fictional Northern European city of Nyheim.
“As they already have with all Square Enix Collective®-supported campaigns, our community has now also voted strongly in favour of a crowdfunding campaign for Nyheim”, said Phil Elliott, creator and project lead for Square Enix Collective. “The gaming community’s commitment to Square Enix Collective has helped us to achieve 11 successful crowdfunding campaigns in a row. Nyheim will make a wonderful 12th addition to the increasingly diverse roster of Collective games”.
About Nyheim
A fusion of digital and tabletop worlds involving a card deck and dice gameplay system.
Single player game played out across the districts and surrounding area of fictional Northern European city of Nyheim.
Players must be strategic, choosing the best survivors to help explore the city, find new members and collect food, equipment, and other supplies.
Dice-roll discovered supplies are crucial to the community’s development; for example, will the players find the crucial books to teach their survivors new, desperately-needed skills?
Resources must be managed to successfully develop a growing community of survivors.
Always something new! Every game is randomly generated and has multiple endings. The map’s locations are randomised for each game as are the available cards, survivors, and their dice. With conditions and situations constantly changing, every game of Nyheim is unique.
Post-apocalyptic Nyheim is dangerous; perma-death means every life is precious. If the player’s whole party dies then it’s “game over”!
Developed for mobile, consoles, PC and VR.
For all the latest information on Nyheim, please visit:
Blizzard wasted no time at their panel at San Diego Comic Con today. The California based company released three pieces of supplemental lore for their upcoming World of Warcraft: Legionexpansion pack in three very different forms. The first is episode one of a new animated series of shorts called World of Warcraft: Harbingers – The Story of Gul’dan. Told from the perspective of the first Orc warlock and series antagonist, the six minute animation tells the story of Gul’dan’s life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzNrcixsx-8
The audio drama World of Warcraft: Legion “The Tomb of Sargeras” was also announced at the panel today. To be delivered as a free podcast, the drama is written by Blizzard Story Developer Robert Brooks, who has written for all three of Blizzard’s franchises. The series will be narrated by Steven Pacey, a well known West End actor and cast member of Blake’s 7 on BBC.
The series will cover Gul’dan’s quest to reopen the Burning Portal at the Tomb of Sargeras. Legendary Archmage Khadgar is hunting Gul’dan and will do anything to stop the Burning Legion’ return to Azeroth. The podcast and the teaser trailer is available on iTunes.
Finally, Blizzard has released the comic World of Warcraft: Legion #4. Entitlerd “Anduin: Son of the Wolf,” the issue follows Anduin’s struggle as a leader and as a young man. The comic is available for free directly from Blizzardas a PDF or as a motion book through Madefire.
While Juri might have appeared in Street Fighter V‘s disappointing story mode, she hasn’t been released for normal play but that will soon change. Capcom has announced that they are planning on releasing Juri in full to Street Fighter V July 26 at 5:00 p.m. PT / 8:00 p.m. ET. The company has also provided something of a history for the character stating that Juri is a provocative S.I.N. agent from South Korea who goes by the codename of “Spider” and worked under Seth. Juri is a sadistic fighter who enjoys violence and loves tormenting her prey, with a tendency to get involved in anything she deems as fun or dangerous. Fueled by hatred of Shadaloo and M.Bison for the murder of her parents, Juri joined S.I.N. to seek revenge and doesn’t care who she has to annihilate to achieve her goals.
Juri returns to Street Fighter V with a brand new look and some tricks up her sleeves. A trained expert in Taekwondo, Juri also possesses a ki booster called the Feng Shui Engine equipped in her left eye to aid her during battles. She focuses on flashy, fast and furious kicks, and has a wide range of ki-based attacks at her disposal. Her trademark moves are her ki-based fireball attack and pinwheel kick.
Juri will launch and cost either fight money, be part of the season pass, or be purchased from the platform’s respective store. You can check out the reveal trailer for Juri as well as some screenshots focusing on her below.
Today Square Enix revealed the special and limited editions that they will be offering for World of Final Fantasy and this one is a bit different from the standard collector’s editions that we generally see nowadays. The PlayStation 4 version of the game will feature a special Square Enix Online Store exclusive collector’s edition that is priced at $119.99 and includes Cloud, Lightning, and Squall mini-figures, an 80 page hardcover at book, a 20 track OST, a code that provides players with digital content in the form of a Sephiroth summon, glow moogle, red bonnetberry mirages, a white chocobo, and Japanese voice DLC, all contained in a special pop-up book container.
Those who don’t want to pay extra can pick up the $59.99 limited edition of World of Final Fantasy that simply comes with a 24 page art book and all of the digital content mentioned earlier or simply pick up the day one version that includes only the digital content for, oddly enough, the same price.
2K released a brand new trailer for their upcoming open world shooter Mafia III. The live action trailer entitled “Death Suits You” features Lincoln Clay avenging the death of two of his mafia brothers in New Bordeaux. The trailer is sharply edited and tells a great story without a single word uttered.
The game is set in the fictional city of New Bordeaux in 1968. Black mobster Lincoln Clay has returned from the Vietnam War a hardened soldier. After narrowly escaping a purge by the Italian mob, Lincoln is hitting the streets on a quest to rebuild the organization and take vengeance on those who nearly destroyed it. Mafia III will launch on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on October 7th.
Mafia III is at San Diego Comic Con! The trailer will be shown at the Screen Junkies Live Movie Fight Panel with Kevin Smith. The panel will be held on Saturday at 9:15 PM in Room 6DE.
2K Games and Hangar 13 have released a new trailer for Mafia III and it is the first in what will apparently be a series of six videos for the game and this one happens to be called “Lincoln Clay: The Soldier” as it gives us a look at what drives Lincoln in Mafia III. You see, Lincoln was robbed of his family and orphaned at an early age, forced to grow up on the streets of New Bordeaux, he fell in with the black mob.
Now, back from Vietnam, his adoptive family has been wiped out by the Italian Mafia – and Sal Marcano will pay with everything he holds dear. The Mob is about to learn that family isn’t who you’re born with, it’s who you die for. You can check out the video below and keep an eye out for Mafia III when it is released on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC on October 7th.
Ghostbusters the 2016 film may be the most controversial film release of the year, but the 2016 video game release of the same name is much tamer in comparison. A top down shooter with RPG mechanics, Ghostbusters is set just after the events of the film. The ladies have gone on a cross country ghost busting tour of the United States and have left four brand new rookies in charge of New York City. The city is plagued with a rash of ghosts and now the rookies must step up to the plate.
Story
Ghostbusters is pretty bare on plot. It serves purely as window dressing to provide the minimum background for the levels. None of it is particularly interesting, either. The writing is incredibly lazy, with the same small handful of cheap one liners being recycled throughout the game. For a game that is supposed to be a co-op title, all of the characters exist in a bubble in-game. Even though they are capable of combo attacks, there is no banter between the characters or vocal interaction. It is as if characters are just shouting corny one liners out to the universe.
Gameplay
Ghostbusters is a top down shooter presented in a 3D isometric view. Each of the four characters have their own weapon and grenade type. Grenades can be used together to create combo abilities. Score earned during a mission is converted into experience points. Get enough experience points to level and the player gets a skill point to spend. If it sounds like every other generic top down shooter, that’s because it is.
Ghostbusters is incredibly shallow. There are only five zones in the map with three levels each. Levels are an incredible drag, with some of them lasting taking up to thirty minutes to clear with side areas explored. They are almost completely linear, with a few detours here or there for optional collectibles. Players are encouraged to use their P.K.E. Meters to find the trail of a ghost or bonus points. The use of the meter feels pretty pointless as a faint purple haze signifies a bonus area and the game tells players when to pull out the meter to trigger an event. One could assume the P.K.E. Meter is designed to guide lost players to their objectives, but there’s a separate function for that, which makes the meter all the more pointless. To make matters worse, the meter causes a slowing effect which is just plain annoying.
All four characters carry the standard Proton Pack and trap combo to wrangle ghosts. Each character has a main weapon from the standard shooter archetype: a balanced assault rifle, a shotgun, a pair of fast firing pistols, and a minigun. The weapons have an unlimited supply of ammo, but they do need to be reloaded by “venting” heat. If the weapon becomes overheated, then players are saddled with a reload time penalty. Each character also has a special grenade that also draws from the standard shooter archetype. These grenades can be used together to create combo effects that are really less impressive than they sound.
Once elite enemies and bosses have their initial health pool depleted, players get their chance to capture the monster by wrangling them with their Proton Packs until they can be trapped. Wrangling ghosts requires a simple rodeo style mini-game that speeds up the process if the mouse or left thumbstick is in the correct position. Once wrangled, a trap is deployed and the player gets to mash a button for a bonus multiplier.
Each character has a skill tree they can spend their skill points on. Each tier is locked behind a level requirement. All of the skills are completely underwhelming, as they serve to provide small stat upgrades to existing equipment. The result is feeling like little has changed after leveling up and entering a new level, it’s just the same old, same old. Even more annoying is the the fact the game actively discourages players from experimenting with new characters. If players want to switch characters to try a new weapon, they must start at level one with the new character.
Ghostbusters is just a boring game. It is incredibly repetitive and dull. Players run around and pump bullets into enemies that pretty much feel the same until they die. Once in a while, an elite pops up and players have to go through the chore of capturing the ghost. The poor level design makes each level feel exactly like the last. If players want to share their misery, they’ll have to invite friends over for local couch co-op, as there is no online co-op support. The only real interesting draw are the unique bosses, and there are only a small handful of them in the game.
The controls are a mixed bag, depending on what platform you choose to play it on. It’s a standard top down shooter layout on with a controller, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s simple and it works. On the flip side, the PC port is just plain awful. The UI has clearly not been designed with PC players in mind. Instead, the controller bindings are essentially bolted on the mouse and keyboard. There is no way to rebind keys and the mouse is completely pointless for navigating the menu.
Visuals
Ghostbusters has a nice, but slightly generic cartoon art style. There isn’t too much variety in the levels, which means the levels visually start becoming a giant blur very quickly. The in-game graphics aren’t much better. Even with the graphics cranked up to max on a 1920×1080 monitor, things like player characters are suffering from a serious case of the fuzz. The blurry graphics are made even more obvious when contrasted with the sharp looking UI. For PC users, there are the standard graphic settings that can be adjusted. I couldn’t seem to get the true fullscreen setting to work, as it always seemed to behave like a windowed fullscreen instead.
Audio
The only positive thing I can really say about the audio is that the Ghostbusters theme song is in the menu. The voice acting is B movie level at best, the soundtrack is uninspiring, and the only real sound effect you can hear most of the time are the pew pew pew of the weapons. The most frustrating thing is how poor the audio is for the voice acting while in game. The voice acting audio in the menus and cutscenes sound like the standard definition used for video games. But once in game, the quality drops significantly, sounding more like a MP3 file recorded at 32kbps or below. In less technically inclined, it’s like the audio is being played out of an AM radio.
Overall
What is so disturbing about Ghostbusters isn’t the ghosts, the boring gameplay, the lacklustre story, or the poor audio/visual quality of the game. It’s the price. If Ghostbusters was a mobile game priced at three to six dollars, we would have a pretty average title. It wouldn’t be amazing or groundbreaking for a mobile game, but it would likely earn some okay reviews. Instead, players are being charged fifty dollars for a high end mobile game that overstays its welcome. It’s clear attempt to cash in on the release of the movie.
What’s really sad about this entire affair is that there are good Ghostbuster games. This one just isn’t one of them. If you’re in dire need of a Ghostbusters game that you will actually enjoy, go pick up Ghostbusters: The Video Game on Steam for $9.99 USD. You’ll have way more fun and save yourself forty dollars to boot. Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Compile Heart has launched a brand new countdown website and from the looks of things, it is going to be a brand new Neptunia game of some sorts. I say this because the countdown website features Japanese text saying “The gate to the world of chaos will open” and English text reading 6 days to go set against a colorful backdrop featuring a silhouette of Neptune.
The last game to be released under the Neptunia franchise name in Japan was Superdimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls for the PS Vita and that was released back in November 2015 (with a Western release set for Fall 2016) so it is roughly around the time that the company announced a new game in the series.
