After a short break, the Every Monday Bundle is back! Indie Gala and Capsule Computers have six great indie games for one low price from a variety of genres.
Elements: Epic Heroes – A hack ‘n slash RPG that will pit players against the Dark Lord.
Kill The Plumber – An anti-platformer that puts players in control of the hundreds of disposable minions in hopes of killing that annoying plumber.
Paradise Island – Compatible with Oculus Rift, Gear VR, and HTC Vive, Paradise Island is a MMO exploration experience made by hand.
Suits: A Business RPG – In a world controlled by The Corporation, players will follow a business man’s descent into corruption.
They Came From The Moon – Help the Bantaran aliens escape their imprisonment in the human laboratories in this casual puzzler.
Red Baron Pack – Relive some of the best dog fighting from the 1990’s with all both Red Baron games carefully ported for modern PCs.
For the first 24 hours of the sale, the entire bundle is only $1.89, so grab your copy at Indie Gala before the price goes up!
NIS America has announced that they are planning on releasing Spike Chunsoft’s tactical RPG, Grand Kingdom, in North America and Europe in summer 2016. Developed by studio MonoChro and by the director of Grand Knights History, this PlayStation 4 and PS Vita title takes place in a world where, after the fall of a great empire over a hundred years ago, Four Great Nations now war against one another to claim dominion over the continent.
Players take control of the leader of a mercenary squad where they will travel through the battle-scarred continent as they take on quests from each of the four nations and in the process they might unravel the mystery behind the downfall of a mighty empire.
XSEED Games has announced that fans of anime fighting games can expect Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel to be released on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 on February 2nd in North America. The $39.99 PlayStation 4 version will be available both at retail and digitally while the $29.99 PlayStation 3 version is only available digitally.
As mentioned previously, those who pick up an early copy of the game will be able to download both Homura from Senran Kagura and Aino Heart from Arcana Heart for free for the first four weeks after the game’s release. On March 1st both characters will then be priced at $5.99 a piece or $9.99 for both.
Square Enix and tri-Ace have begun releasing what will likely be a series of videos introducing the main characters of Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness and they have started with the lead male character, Fidel Camuze. Fidel is a twenty three year old whose father was the founder of the most prominent fencing school in the kingdom.
You can check out the trailer below and as for the game, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is currently set to be released in Japan on March 31st for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 and sometime in 2016 for North America and Europe for the PlayStation 4.
London, UK – January 18, 2016 – Today, Ubisoft announced the launch of CaveBnB, an online contest developed for Far Cry® Primal, the latest installment of its best-selling franchise.
Far Cry, the award-winning franchise that has stormed the tropics and climbed the Himalayas, now brings its innovative open world sandbox gameplay to a time when humans were not at the top of the food chain but were fighting to climb it, bringing together massive beasts, breathtaking environments and unpredictable savage encounters.
CaveBnB will give players the opportunity to experience the wild and untamed world of Far Cry Primal, while travelling back in time to the Stone Age to discover the extreme conditions in which our ancestors lived. The winner, accompanied by a person of their choice, will travel to an undisclosed location in France and participate in expert survival training, pushing them to their limits. By day, they will develop new skills, and by night, they will have to use them to survive.
Participants will have to show their primal instinct and prove in one tweet that they have what it takes to win the two day survival experience. The Twitter competition will start at 10:00 UK time on January 18th and end at 23:59 UK time on January 21st. To take part in the CaveBnB contest, users will have to add the hashtag #cavebnb and mention @farcrygame in their tweet.
Far Cry Primal will be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on February 23rd. The game will be released on March 1st for windows PC.
Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India traces the journey of Ezio Auditore’s box. It is the second game of the trilogy, which takes players to 19th Centaury India where the Sikh Empire and the British backed East India Company is in the midst of an intense war. Master Assassin Arbaaz Mir is on a quest to rescue the Koh-i-noor diamond and Ezio’s box from the Templars in this 2.5D stealth platformer.
Story
The game picks up years after the events of Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China, where Chinese Assassin Shao Jun traced her bloody path of vengeance. While she successfully avenged her fallen comrades, Jun was unable to regain control of Ezio Auditore’s box. Years later, the box resurfaces along with a growing interest in the Koh-i-noor diamond by the Templars. Due to the short length, characters and the plot have little time for development. Unlike Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China which had the benefit of some background in Assassin’s Creed: Embers, players are walking into the new setting cold. The story is pretty bland and predictable. Playing through the game, it was hard for me to shake off the feeling that the plot was the same as the previous title, with some minor adjustments here or there. It is a real shame, because I think the Indian setting has a lot of potential for a full Assassin’s Creed title.
Gameplay
Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India has spent many months in development since the launch of the first game. At the core, both games are exactly alike. The movement system is very smooth to use, and should be mostly familiar to veterans of the Assassin’s Creed franchise. The controls are solid for the most part. I find transitioning between areas in stealth can be a little finicky at times, which resulted in many unexpected jumps out of stealth.
The stealth mechanics are mostly the same, with guards having vision cones and set patrol patterns. Things have been improved a bit in Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India with the inclusion of the new cloaking ability, which allows Mir to burn off his Helix bar in return for guards being unaware of his presence while standing still. On the other hand, the number ammo resupply points are barely non-existent, forcing players to pick pocket guards to keep their numbers up. Considering how little time players often have to maneuver around, spending the extra three seconds to empty a guards pockets is a real pain. Players do have the option of simply killing or knocking out the guard for their ammo, but that will punish players by lowering their style score.
The level design is a bit of a mixed bag. There is one major improvement over Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China. The number of parkour based, stealth based, and puzzle based levels are spread out much better. On the flip side, the dodge and escape segments are incredibly frustrating and there are way too many of them in the game. The segments are essentially dragged out quick time events as the overall room for error is often about one to three seconds, requiring players to often put out a near perfect performance to get through. Instead, I wish Climax Studios put more focus on time based performance for the whole level or puzzle solving over the multitude of escape segments.
The leveling system in Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India has been untouched, which means it is still pretty poor. To gain points to level, players are encouraged to remain undetected and leave guards unmolested. Getting spotted or getting into fights will lower the score, holding the player back from the two upgrades awarded for completing the level well, making the later game more difficult. I think a better way of handling the leveling system would have been to put points in an overall pool which awarded upgrades at specific points and then having each level provide a maximum number of points. This way allows less skilled players a chance at earning some upgrades without having to replay levels until they perfect it.
There is a bit more content this time around. In addition to the New Game and New Game Plus modes that let players replay the game with all their previous skills intact, the Challenge Room has been added to Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India. Each challenge is focused on a particular skill and has three extra objectives to complete.
Visuals
Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India is a much more colourful game with nods to Indian art and culture throughout the game. The animations are smooth, and the game did not suffer from any technical issues in my testing. Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India continues to handle transitions between each flat zone well, giving the game a really good 2.5D feel. The UI remains in line with other Assassin’s Creed titles.
Audio
The sound effects, music, and voice acting are all top notch, worthy of a AAA title. My only gripe is that there could be more voice acting in the game. Several conversations between guards and a couple of Mir’s lines are repeated throughout the game a few too many times.
Overall
Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India is a step forward and a big step back. It is clear that Climax Studios has taken some of the criticisms from Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China in account with their latest game, but their solutions are not really well executed. Unless you are wildly in love with Assassin’s Creed Chronicles:China and absolutely must have more, I can’t really recommend the new game. The story is pretty boring. Worst of all, the level design leads to a lot of mind numbing and frustrating parts that is quite unpleasant to play.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
WAR DRAGONS Launches Novel, All Things Burn, on Appreciate a Dragon Day SAN FRANCISCO – Jan. 16, 2016 – Pocket Gems, the creators of WAR DRAGONS are announcing that the game’s literary adaptation, WAR DRAGONS: All Things Burn, is launching today for Appreciate a Dragon Day. The novel, which is available for download now on Amazon and Apple’s iBooks, is a prequel to the game.
The WAR DRAGONS universe is defined by chaos and flame. Everyday, ominous shadows overhead precede the destruction of carefully architectured bases and kingdoms. But it was not always this way. In days past, the benevolent guildleaders from the island of Atlaua ruled the land through the ability to speak with dragons. All that changed when an orphan child washed up on Atlaua’s shores. He would grow into a mighty soldier, a ruthless general, and eventually an immortal warlord. A man who would show the world that just as all things grow, all things burn. They call him Gustav, leader of the Blackbloods.
WAR DRAGONS: All Things Burn documents Gustav’s rise to power through his own eyes, as well as through the viewpoint of Ash, a commander in Gustav’s Blackblood Army who, after years of doing Gustav’s bidding, is orchestrating a revolution to take back her homeland. The novel was written by award-winning author Brian Oliu (SO YOU KNOW IT’S ME, LEAVE LUCK TO HEAVEN, I/O) and edited by Michael Rudin (CALL OF DUTY: DEVIL’S BREATH, CALL OF DUTY: RIGHTFUL KING).
“Let me proclaim this from the beginning, then. If there can be no peace for me, then there will be no peace for anyone,” said Gustav, the evil leader of the Blackbloods (in the story).
The book features six teams from WAR DRAGONS who won the game’s Great Contest last December. The winning teams were written into the fiction of the book as the powerful guilds which played a pivotal role in Gustav’s bloody journey to becoming a despot.
Originally launched in April 2015, WAR DRAGONS is a PvP team battle game (on iOS and coming to Android soon) with 3D graphics and real-time multiplayer built on Pocket Gems’ own Mantis Engine. After spending much of the year on the iOS charts, the game received it’s largest update in history last fall, Kingdom of Ice. Early 2016 marks a new chapter for WAR DRAGONS with not only the companion novel but also the imminent Android launch for the game.
WAR DRAGONS: All Things Burn is available for download on iBooks for free and on Amazon for 99 cents.
About Pocket Gems:
Pocket Gems is a top developer of original mobile games and interactive entertainment that was founded in 2009. Since pioneering mobile games, Pocket Gems’ titles have been downloaded more than 200 million times across iOS and Android. Pocket Gems team has grown to 200 people based in San Francisco. To learn more about War Dragons, visit www.wardragons.com
Nintendo has announced that they plan on releasing Pokken Tournament in North America and Europe on March 18th as a Wii U exclusive. This news accompanies the reveal of the previously teased Pokemon which has turned out to be the rather odd choice of Chandelure, as well as the confirmation of three other Pokemon at the same time.
The new additions to the roster now include the aforementioned Chandelure as well as Garchomp, the original Mewtwo, and Braixen making for four new fighters being added to the growing roster. You can check out screenshots of these fighters in action below and those who pick up a first run copy of Pokken Tournament will also obtain a special Shadow Mewtwo Amiibo card to unlock Shadow Mewtwo as a playable character.
It looks like Nippon Ichi Software is preparing to continue on with the style of gameplay that was found in htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary as both a teaser websiteand the latest issue of Dengeki PlayStationhave confirmed that the company is planning on releasing a game titled Rose and the Old Castle of Twilight for the PS Vita in Japan on April 28th.
In this title players will find themselves guiding a young girl named Rose as well as a mysterious creature through an old castle covered in thorns as they try to escape using methods similar to the original game.
In a move that is guaranteed to confuse their consumer base, Square Enix and Io Interactive have announced that their new Hitman game will now be a “fully episodic AAA game” rather than the piece-meal release they were going to do before. Instead the game will now be released in seperate pieces, all priced at different levels.
On March 11th the prologue mission and the Paris France location will be released, April will see the release of the Sapienza, Italy location, May will feature Marrakesh, Morocco, and following that there will be monthly content updates with three new locations, Thailand, Japan, and the US, set for later in 2016.
The intro pack for the first level is simply going to cost $15 with each new location costing $10 a piece. Those who wish to buy the entire game can do so at once for $60 or opt for an upgrade from the intro pack to the full game using the $50 upgrade download, though this route does cost the most as the total game price will be $65 if chosen.
Square Enix is also planning on releasing a $139.99 collector’s edition of the game that completely lacks a game disc as it instead offers a digital game download, a collectible box, tie and clip set, art book, and a “Chessmaster” statue.
