A new trailer for The King of Fighters XIV debuted during PlayStation Experience 2015 and with it SNK Playmore confirmed a number of new characters for the title, including Angel, King, Ralf, Kula, Billy Kane, and more.
The company later went a bit more in-depth saying that the roster will consist of fifty total fighters, many being returning characters as well as a number of new characters that will be involved int he story for the first time. You can check out the trailer below and as for The King of Fighters XIV, it is currently set for release on the PlayStation 4 sometime in 2016.
REACH NEW HEIGHTS AND DOMINATE THE SKIES IN ACE COMBATTM7!
Celebrating its 20th Anniversary; the acclaimed Ace Combat Franchise Arrives on PlayStation®4
Sydney, Australia – December 7th, 2015 – BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe is pleased to announce that ACE COMBAT 7 is in development at BANDAI NAMCO Studios’ internal teams in Tokyo, Japan. This will mark the franchise’s first outing on PlayStation®4 as ACE COMBAT 7 will deliver the most beautiful air combat experience ever through photorealistic visuals, intense dog-fighting action, and an immersive storyline.
Leveraging the trueSKYTM technology and developed utilizing Unreal Engine 4, ACE COMBAT 7 will astound players with beautifully rendered skies and highly detailed cityscapes but also set the stage for the most engaging aerial battles in the franchise’s storied 20 year history accompanied with an immersive soundtrack. ACE COMBAT 7 will take the elements that the series is known for to a whole new level! Aces who have proven their combat prowess in ACE COMBAT 7’s campaign mode can take their dogfighting skills further with furious online multiplayer battles.
PlayStation®4 players will also be able to get immersed in ACE COMBAT 7’s realism through exclusive features developed specifically for PlayStation®VR.
“It’s no small feat for any video game franchise to thrive over two decades; ACE COMBAT’s legacy lies in its tremendous quality and deep storytelling. With ACE COMBAT 7, we are planning on dominating the skies once again and delivering an unparalleled experience thanks to the PlayStation®4 technologies and to our team experience with their know-how!” Hervé Hoerdt, VP of Marketing and Digital at BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe
BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe S.A.S., part of BANDAI NAMCO Holdings Inc., is a leading global publisher and developer of interactive content for platforms including all major video game consoles and PC, with marketing and sales operations in 50 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Australasia. The company is known for creating and publishing many of the industry’s top video game franchises, including PAC-MAN™, Tekken™, SOULCALIBUR™, NARUTO™, NARUTO SHIPPUDEN™, Dragon Ball®, GALAGA™, RIDGE RACER™ and ACE COMBAT™.
We are less than two weeks away from the highly anticipated (to say the least) release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Well in the lead up to the huge cinematic event, Disney have rolled out a new content update for their popular Star Wars: Commander mobile game. In the first big content update since July, the game now features new planets, new missions and new characters all related to The Force Awakens. Here is a brief rundown on what you can expect from the update:
Luggabeast Munitioneer – Players can hire the armored Luggabeast Munitioneer, based on the cybernetic-enhanced beast of burden in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, to support their massive armies as they apply a damage buff to nearby friendly units.
Dowutin Hunter – Inspired by a new species unveiled in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Dowutin Hunters are lumbering infantry hired to dispatch enemy defending units with shock and awe, troops and vehicles alike. They carry a grip of thermal detonators and a modified starfighter blaster to ensure that the job gets done.
Planet Takodana – Featuring Maz’s Castle, the planet Takodana is the home to many unaligned scoundrels and provides the perfect setting for new Conflicts in Star Wars: Commander.
The new Force Awakens update for Star Wars: Commander is available as a free download through theApple App Store or Google Play. In addition, the base game is also free to download so be sure to check it out today and get yourself even more hyped for The Force Awakens next week!
So after months in Early Access, Mordheim: City of the Damned has finally gotten its full release with its full starting complement of warbands. The title is a video game adaption of the Mordheim tabletop game by Games Workshop. As a fan of the original game, I was excited to see that a video game adaption was in the works (and I even did a preview earlier this year). A lot of new content has been added since last I played and with it, a lot of ground to cover in this review so let us make haste through these ruins to seize our prize…
Story
The basic premise of Mordheim: City of the Damned is that the eponymous city, in the lead up to a cataclysmic meteor strike, became utterly depraved due to its wealth and affluence. This drew all manner of evil beings to the city as well as corrupting its inhabitants. A twin-tailed comet then struck the city and largely obliterated it in a terrible conflagration. The meteor contained a significant volume of (what is basically) magical uranium called wyrdstone which was thrown across the city due to the impact. The city’s remains are now picked by scavenger warbands of various races for anything of value, including the rare wyrdstone.
As part of the campaign mode, players do have the option to go through a single-player storyline with their warband. This largely entails going through multi-stage scenarios with objectives that are thematically different (i.e. place bombs around bridge, collect holy water, desecrate temple, etc) but largely play out the same in terms of gameplay (i.e. get to point A with a unit that holds item B). Each of these missions begins and ends with a bit of voice over by a famous NPC (recognisable from the Mordheim tabletop) giving you the gist of what the mission will entail and how it will affect things for your warband’s faction. You also get to play with the NPC in the story mission as part of your warband and it’s a nice touch to use them and see their unique character models.
Outside of this limited narrative, the stories you’ll get from Mordheim are largely the ones which emerge just out of play. You might have the fun (or frustrating) experience of having a low level goon take down another team’s impressive hero, wiping out an opponent’s warband due to excellent tactical positioning, or having your leader go from master assassin to a peg legged (but no less deadly!) terror after a bad roll on the injury table. These events aren’t scripted and will be the meat of your experience as you explore the ruined city. If you, like me, are the kind of person who can create your own story from the random points which a game can throw at you then you’ll be able to have your own fun here.
Gameplay
The gameplay largely holds true from the design I wrote in the preview. On a tactical map, players take turns moving units around the map and activating special abilities. Units are given a limited number of points each turn to activate these abilities and higher level units generally receive more of these points a turn. Turn order is assigned by their initiative score, which in turn is determined by what equipment they have and their agility stat. Attacks and abilities can do damage and when a unit loses all of its health, it ‘goes out of action’. When warriors are taken ‘out of action’, you lose morale equal to the value of warrior (as determined by their skills). You generally win regular matches by putting a significant enough portion of the enemy warband out of action to cause them to rout.
A new addition to the tactical gameplay is the ability to ‘search’ various points of interest across the map. These add new tactical objectives to the battles which you’ll need to balance with the immediate objective of survival. There are three types of search points which are wyrdstone deposits, search points, and loot points dropped from out of action warriors. These come in three variants entitled ‘crush their will’, ‘wyrdstone rush’, and ‘marked for death’. The first one entails stealing the opposing warband’s banner from their cart (which does a significant morale penalty to boot), the second involves gathering as much wyrdstone as possible from the map, and the last one revolves around putting out of action specific enemy units to steal their gear.
The big change in gameplay from the previous version I played in the preview is the addition of a new level of strategic gameplay where choices in the tactical map have a repercussion in the future of the warband. Gathering loot and wyrdstone generally gives you better options to equip your warriors with as well as a source of income to pay them with. Having a warrior put out of action can lead to them sustaining a permanent injury which decreases one of their stats or even gives them a mental disorder which prevents them from disengaging from melee combat. Collected can be sold or sent off in shipments requested by the warband’s faction. Failing to meet four shipments leads to game over for the warband as they lose the support of their patron.
Visuals
The visuals have been revamped and improved since the preview I did a while back. That being said, the graphics and models aren’t particularly cutting edge or awe-inspiring. The textures are also underwhelming for a significant portion of the game with many walls and features looking very plastic. The overall visual design maintains a very Warhammer look however, so although the models could be better in terms of small details concerning graphical features… they are at least accurate in capturing the look of the models from the tabletop game. There are also some levels, such as the demonic library, which feature some interesting visual design for the environment.
The customisation on offer here is also woefully limited. The biggest changes to a units look are when you equip it with a different level of armour, which is cool and dandy. It’s nice that units can have a number of different colour schemes for the various levels of armour they are wearing as well. But what really shows the limits of the options is that there is no variation within the levels of armour and you cannot change the physical features of each warrior. Weapons are similarly stuck to one model which was also a missed opportunity to differentiate the units from one another. Across warbands, the equipment takes on their various characteristics but, within warbands, you might need to resort to colour coding various henchmen so you can recognise who is who.
Audio
The musical score which plays throughout is suitably orchestral in matching the tone of the game. The music generally plays to reinforce the tension of exploring the unknown in the ruins of the city as well as featuring some (I believe) synthesized notes in some tracks to play off the strange nature and danger of wyrdstone. The voice over performances themselves feel a little underdone and I feel that the actors, although strong in their performances, would have done well to have been given more direction.
Overall
Overall, I very much enjoyed my time in Mordheim despite its shortcomings. The setting is suitably Warhammer and the writing for the campaign missions are fairly spot-on. The gameplay equal parts addictive and frustrating as your warriors slowly gain experience but die quickly… in a fun sort of way. The visuals capture the Warhammer look pretty well with the warriors and environment even if model customisation was limited. The sound design overall is a solid effort even if I feel it could have been better with more. For me, Mordheim: City of the Damned is a flawed gem that I’m probably going to sink a lot more hours into the game after I’ve finished with this review. This game earns a recommendation from me, alongside a number of caveats.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
A new trailer for the long thought dead but recently revived Ni-Oh was released by Koei Tecmo for the 2015 PlayStation Experience and this time around we are treated to a little over a minute of new gameplay footage showing off the hack-and-slash game that Team Ninja is developing.
In Ni-Oh players will be controlling a warrior named William who is skilled with swords but also capable of summoning spiritual allies to aid him in combat, such as a wolf spirit that is shown in the trailer. Currently Ni-Oh is set to be released on the PlayStation 4 sometime in 2016 and it has been confirmed for worldwide release.
With Megadimension Neptunia VII set for release on the PlayStation 4 in North America and Europe sometime in early 2016 fans will likely want to keep an eye on the Japanese DLC that is coming out for the title and a bit earlier Compile Heart released a new trailer showing off a brand new character for the game called Nitroplus-chan, who, as you may guess, is based off of the company Nitroplus.
Nitroplus-chan will have a cool and calm personality and is cuteness fraught with insanity. You can check out the trailer below and as for the DLC, it will be released in Japan on Decemeber 14th.
After being announced at E3 this year, Final Fantasy fans have been eager to see and learn more about the Final Fantasy VII Remake and Square Enix game them just that during PlayStation Experience 2015 as they revealed some of the first footage of Final Fantasy VII Remake where more than a few stylistic changes have already been revealed.
You can check that out below, but that wasn’t all that Square Enix had to announce. The company also announced that the PC re-release of Final Fantasy VII is now available on the PlayStation 4 and if you download it, you’ll net yourself a special PlayStation 4 theme as well.
Fans have been hoping for a sequel to the very popular Ni no Kuni and it looks like their hopes have been fulfilled as Bandai Namco and Level-5 have announced Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom for release on the PlayStation 4. The story of Ni no Kuni II will follow an “all-new cast of charming characters, an emotional storyline, and innovative gameplay design that will delight and challenge players.”
Currently no release window for Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom has been revealed, thought the game has already been confirmed for release in the West, but you can check out the debut trailer as well as some screenshots below.
Capcom has announced the final character for the Street Fighter V launch roster and it just so happens to be the last of the new fighters for the game and here we are with a strange new fighter named F.A.N.G. who is described as a member of the evil Shadow Organization who utilizes a tricky and deceptive fighting style to put an end to his opponents.
That wasn’t all Capcom had to reveal though as the company also revealed the first six post-launch fighters that will be released as DLC. These characters happen to be Alex, Guile, Balrog, Urien, the popular Juri, and my favorite, Ibuki. All of these characters can be unlocked in the game through normalplay by earning Fight Money but if you don’t want to try and grind away for the DLC characters and special outfits, a Street Fighter V Season Pass will also be released for $30 and grant access to these characters, a premium costume for each, and a special PlayStation 4 theme.
Fans of the Yakuza series have a couple of reasons to celebrate. First and foremost Sega has announced that the long awaited release of Yakuza 5 is set for next week as the title will be released on December 8th in North America and Europe through the PlayStation Store. However the biggest news happens to be the announcement that Sega is continuing to support the Yakuza series in the West by announcing that Yakuza 0 is going to be released in North America and Europe where it will be available both physically and digitally.
Currently no release window for Yakuza 0 has been given but Sega has provided the below rundown of the story:
We’re bringing the back the 1980s by localizing and releasing Yakuza 0 in the Americas. Set in Tokyo, December 1988, players will have a chance to see where it all started for series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu. Follow Kiryu, not yet the Dragon of Dojima, as he tries to regain his honor after getting blamed for a botched debt collection that ended in murder. Additionally, for the first time in a numbered game, gamers will be able to play as Goro Majima, the Mad Dog of Shimano, as he tries to rejoin his clan. Each character will posses their own unique fighting style and abilities that can be utilized to kick some rival Yakuza butt.
In the 1980s, Tokyo was filled with decadence, greed, sin, and above all else, cold hard cash. C.R.E.A.M. is the motto, and everyone wants in on the action. Thankfully Kiryu and Majima are the “entrepreneurial” type and will have plenty of ways to make, spend, and take money.
