Genre-defying Shooter Bedlam Launches for PC and Console
Gaming love-letter packed with innovative retro action blasts onto PS4, Xbox One, PC and Mac
London, 13 October 2015 – RedBedlam in association with Vision Games Publishing, today announced that the genre-defying FPS game, Bedlam, is launching for current-gen consoles and PC. The game, with a script by acclaimed author Christopher Brookmyre adapted from his best-selling science-fiction novel of the same name, has released for PlayStation®4, PC, and OSX with the version for Xbox One, the all in one games and entertainment system from Microsoft, arriving on Xbox Game Store on Friday, October 16th. All versions are priced at £14.99 in the UK.
“As a lifelong gamer, Bedlam is the love-letter to gaming I’ve always wanted to write, and the team at RedBedlam have done an astonishing job bringing my ‘gameverse’ to life” said Christopher Brookmyre. “It’s a great feeling to know that gamers can now explore the world of Bedlam via a totally different medium.”
RedBedlam also released a brand-new launch trailer which showcases the innovative retro-gaming inspired action players can expect to experience first-hand in the game.
(Contains explicit content)
In Bedlam, players take on the role of Heather Quinn (aka Athena), a programmer at medical scanning developer Neurosphere, who finds herself transported into the world of Starfire: a nineties FPS she remembers from her teen years. Searching for an explanation and a way home, she ventures beyond Starfire to discover a vast realm of interconnected game worlds documenting the evolution of the FPS genre and of video games in general. As Athena, players move through numerous game settings while battling against a digital conspiracy that seeks to destroy the game worlds and their characters. A fast-paced and authentically unique FPS,Bedlam serves up a dizzying variety of genres from fantasy RPGs to classic 2D arcade games to WWII shooters in an innovative journey through gaming nostalgia.
About RedBedlam
RedBedlam Ltd. was founded in 2001 in order to create virtual worlds and to realise virtual economies. The company spent approximately five years developing its proprietary virtual world and virtual economics technologies alongside its first commercial virtual world, Roma Victor®, which was released in 2006. RedBedlam’s other MMORPG, The Missing Ink, launched in beta in 2012. RedBedlam’s virtual world technology is licensed by a number of clients including the popular kid’s virtual world and social network – www.dpals.com. RedBedlam is a fully independent privately held company. www.redbedlam.com
About Standfast Interactive
Vision Games Publishing is the publishing arm of Standfast Vision, a Guernsey based fund specialising in the video games industry, investing across genres, business models and gaming platforms. Vision Games Publishing offers sales, marketing and production assistance, working closely with developers to help take their game to market.
Are you tired of playing Gwent with the same people over and over again? Are you already more than half-way through your New Game+ playthrough? No matter what your answer to these questions is, it doesn’t matter because there is some awesome new Witcher 3 goodness to go around!
The brand-new Hearts of Stone expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is available now on all platforms through digital download or via physical edition in stores.
To go along with the launch, Namco and CD Projekt Red have released a kick ass new trailer that you can check out below. We will be posting our review of the new content in the coming days so make sure you stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the awesome Witcher news as it becomes available.
Overview
Around a year ago, Koei Tecmo brought us Samurai Warriors 4 for the Playstation 4, which was a rather traditional Warriors title – but still featured quite a few elements to bring the franchise into a new generation. The visuals were the greatest change, now bursting with color with silky smooth models and animation alike. Yes, it was great to see- but after a year comes Samurai Warriors 4-II. No, this is not a sequel, but a “complete edition” with a few extra characters, a couple of new stages, and a little more finish overall. How does this title stand up? Let’s find out!
Story
Its been a while since we tread on the Sengoku period of Japan’s rich history, but Samurai Warriors 4 is intent from the start on becoming your history lesson of the era. I know, a Warriors title teaching accurate history is like a Mario title teaching kids how to be plumbers, but oddly enough, Omega Force nailed the feel for the era and have brought us some rich characters who are swept up in ugly wars, slowly peeling off layers as the player progresses and bringing true intentions and motives to the surface. War is serious, but light undertones come out frequently to give the player a chuckle, and while the game isn’t 100% true to its source material, its hard not to walk away from the many intertwining narratives satisfied, as while not all of our character’s tales are satisfying, quite a few leave a lasting impression. As you can see through a bigger picture – the story is about the same. This title does feature new character-driven scenarios, but there isn’t a lot of new meat to be had overall with this product as the upgrades are in the gameplay – more or less.
Gameplay
As you would expect, Samurai Warriors 4-II is not too far away from its other kin in the franchise, as it still has those same hack and slash roots showing, and does little to feel different from the other titles aside from a few unique features. Players can take advantage of a character-switch option, and go into the battlefield with two characters, where they are able to swap at the tap of a button. We have seen this before in Samurai Warriors: Chronicles for the 3DS, but the method is perfected here, as the transition is instant and seamless. The controls are tight as well, still coming off as accessible but opening up a bit later on for further techniques as the player transitions through the story. Yeah, not a lot has changed outside of a bit more polish since the third installment on the Wii (most of the 55 characters have been seen before, and no new faces truly stand out_, but racking up thousands of combos in minutes is still as exciting as it ever was, and performing the abilities on the battlefield amidst the chaos still feels like a spectacle.
The big new element of this title comes in the form of the Hyper Attack. The player can unleash a powerful, crowd-sweeping maneuver greatly assists in breaking up the slow tread of you standard hacking and slashing as you watch crowds fall quickly while you rack up kills. Rage Mode has a separate gauge, and once filled – will allow players to slow down time and perform greatly enhanced versions of their normal attacks with greater damage attached. If you perform a special attack while in this mode of combat, a more ultimate attack can be utilized, devastating the HP bars of officers, bosses, and so on. Of course timing plays in with how useful these new attacks work in your favor (as you don’t want to activate Rage on a small set of foes), but with a bit of your own strategy applied, you can definitely move at a much faster pace in this fourth installment thanks to the two new enhancements.
Speaking of strategy, this title requires it. Though early stages start out with the standard “Kill the officer fare”, later levels require the player to take out flag bearers who power up groups of enemy soldiers. It sounds small, but as the game progresses – so does the difficulty and killing that man with the flag will definitely save you some time and effort as you move on to your next locale. When it comes to modes, the standard, story-based fare is found within the chapter based Story Mode (go figure). One or two players can tackle this mode (over the network or local split screen), and for the most part, there length here is rather padded out with plenty of varied missions to partake in. I say padded as the combat never changes, but Warriors fans should not find themselves in tedium very often due to the constant streams of unlocks and new weapons that come into play. Free mode is also back, and is just a nice replay with the ability to utilize the character of your choice to take on a good number of levels. Chronicle Mode features some more original fare, with the player taking control of a custom character through a large, branching story.
So why is there a “II”? Well, that comes in with the new characters and stages. I would be lying if there were not some other upgrades as well such as a new menu to unlock abibities, endless castle mode (basically survival 2.0), some tweaks to hyper mode, and other elements that frankly feel like patchwork. Samurai Warriors 4-II is a great game and that isn’t going to change, but someone does need to let dear Koei know that putting a 2 in your title usually means sequel – rather than upgrade as this title feels like a very minor upgrade at best, as it just doesn’t have enough content to warrant a re-release.
Visuals
Samurai Warriors 4 holds its own during combat. Hundreds of enemies can appear on the screen at once, and I never noticed the classic disappearing act of models or any slowdown on the Playstation 4. That being said, the models themselves are not too much more detailed than Dynasty Warriors 8 – so if you expect a huge improvement, you might want to wait until the next installment as far as visuals go. I would have to say that I was most impressed with the stunning environments within the game. Players are greeted with beautiful recreations of Japanese locations, full of color and activity. There are a few bland textures, but most of the time you will not notice them as they are covered with booming cherry blossom trees and all of the soldiers who stand in your way as you head to the next objective. The subtitles are fine, but there was a few times that dialogue sequences would block something on the screen, but alas, this can be controlled by the player to turn off these tutorials and subtitles in the options. There are also new menus and polish as well, which are indeed visibly pleasing and give the feel of a mostly new experience.
Audio
The soundtrack captures the essence of classic Japan well. It isn’t anything too memorable by any means, but these melodies are fitting and in a title where you are not going in for a lot of atmosphere, it is nice to get a good pinch from an otherwise average collection of tunes. The Japanese voices are just that, and while I personally know very little Japanese, you can still feel the emotion and at times campy over-acting from these faces in true 16th century turmoil. The general sound effects also do the job, as the sounds of a great number of blades can be heard clinking as combat is ongoing, adding a nice feeling of realism to the fight.
Overall
I guess Samurai Warriors 4 deserved a complete edition just as much as Dishonored or any other title that did well in the past without being completely groundbreaking. However, Samurai Warriors 4-II doesn’t have a ton of extra content to offer and is a bit tricky with its name, so if you already have the greatness that is Samurai Warriors 4, think about your purchase for a moment before plunging into the game great experience with a nice little facelift. Samurai Warriors 4-II at the end of the day is worth your money as it is based of one of the finest Warriors games to date – its just a shame they couldn’t have called it Samurai Warriors 4 Complete or something a bit more honest when bringing it to the west.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
HD remakes and re-releases seem to be the flavor of the month don’t they? Developers are almost constantly remastering some of the best selling and highest critically rated games of last generation and giving them a new life on the PS4/Xbox One. Well, with Uncharted 4: Thief’s End just around the corner, it is no surprise that Naughty Dog have jumped on the bandwagon and released the three Uncharted games in one brand new package titled Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. Does the gameplay and Hollywood-style story of these games hold up on new hardware? Lets find out.
Story
Part Indiana Jones, part Lara Croft; Nathan Drake is the suave, scruffy, globe-trotting treasure hunter who is always looking to solve a riddle or two and get his next big score. The Uncharted games all put Drake into increasingly insane situations, like jumping out of a cargo plane in the middle of a desert to fighting ancient werewolves all over the course of a game. A lot of inspiration has been drawn from classic Pulp Magazines where the protagonists were put into similar situations.
If the Uncharted trilogy has one defining characteristic, it is its characters. All of whom are engaging, lovably and memorable. A few moments into Drake’s Fortune (the first of the three games) when we think that Drake’s longtime companion Sully has been murdered, you feel a prang of pain and heartbreak; despite the fact that newcomers have only known Sully for all of five minutes at that point. It is a real credit to the writing team that they managed to create such a bond between the two characters that becomes apparent from such a short amount of time on-screen.
When I first played Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, it completely changed how I viewed video games forever. The Hollywood blockbuster style presentation is something that, at the time hadn’t really been done before and even since has been hard to for any other studio to replicate. The other two games in the trilogy just meet and exceed the already high bar set by the original and frankly are a litmus test to how to do storytelling in a digital medium.
Gameplay
The Uncharted games are a series of third-person shooters that put you in the shoes of Nathan Drake as he battles against pirates, gangsters, scarab beetles, werewolves and a whole slew of other enemies. The game is broken into two main elements; combat and exploration, with chapters leaning more towards one or the other.
Combat is relatively standard for the third person genre; hold a button to zoom in on your enemies and pull the trigger. One thing that I did notice was the original games had a tendency to make use of the PS3’s motion controls to throw grenade which no longer seemed present (by default) this time round.
Exploration is the other main focus of the game, although that may not be the best word to describe it. The three games are quite linear in design, but Drake needs to use rock climbing, parkour and other various survival skills to move through the world. There is a surprisingly amount of verticality to the world of Uncharted and each aspect of the environment seems well planned. One of my favourite sections in any video game is when you have to cling to a building’s suspended sign, and aim around it to take out opposing forces.
If The Nathan Drake Collection has one major flaw, it is that the games all act and play almost identically to their original editions. Now that might seem like a little bit of an odd criticism, but hear me out. With each iteration, some controls and features were changed and updated between it. Uncharted (3): Drake’s Deception plays a hell of a lot more differently than Fortune, and it would have been nice for there to be a more unified and cohesive method of gameplay in this collection.
In terms of differences, there aren’t too many. A few extra difficulty modes have been added to the game in the form of “Explorer,” (think really, really easy mode) and “Brutal” (think really, really, REALLY hard). In addition there is a new Speed Run Mode that keeps track of how long you are taking to play the game and compares that to your PSN friends. These additions are nice, but don’t really add all that much to the overall experience.
Also, I will say that I personally am a little disappointed that the PS Vita exclusive prequel – Uncharted: Golden Abyss wasn’t included in the collection. While it isn’t an integral part of the Uncharted saga, the collection would have been a great place to release this often-overlooked gem.
Visuals & Audio
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune came out in 2007 and was an absolute technical marvel at the time. It was such a marvel that even now eight years later, with little more than a few tweaks here and there it still looks absolutely incredible.The lighting, environments and enemies all still look great, and the other two games in the collection have aged just as well. By the time I got to Uncharted: Drake’s Deception, I was really taken aback at how good a last-gen game could still look on the new hardware.
Audio is Uncharted series really thrives, especially the voicework. Since 2007 the voice cast have all gone on to become household names in the gaming world. Nolan North’s portrayal of the sassy, cocky Nathan Drake is just done so perfectly. Having the games brought across almost identically to how they were originally released means that this incredible voice work is maintained, so fans new and old can enjoy an incredible narrative experience filled with characters who have a real chemistry among one another.
Overall
Let’s call the Nathan Drake Collection what it is – a HD rerelease of three incredible games. There is no arguing that Naughty Dog’s globe-trotting treasure hunter is one of the PS3’s flagship mascots and it is easy to see why. With such an epic scope, lovable characters, brilliant voicework and downright solid gameplay 0f the Uncharated games will forever go down in history as examples of how to do blockbuster-styled games.
That being said, I would have liked to see more out of this collection. More behind the scenes footage, more interviews, more anything. The whole package just feels a little lackluster and a disservice to the franchise. Although, I have to admit when my main gripe with something is that there isn’t enough of it – well you just might have something truly special on your hands.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Idea Factory International has announced that they will be releasing the previously announced PC version of Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth3: V Generation on October 30th. Previously released, and reviewed, for the PS Vita, this version of the game will feature higher resolution graphics as well as all of the additional content that was found in the Vita release.
During the game’s first week of release on Steam Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth3: V Generation will be available at a 40 percent discount. To go along with this announcement a handful of screenshots for the PC version of the game have been released and can be found below.
With Halo 5: Guardians going gold less than a week ago it only makes sense that Microsoft and 343 Industries begin to hype the game as much as possible with the highly anticipated first person shooter set to be released exclusively for the Xbox One in two weeks.
As such they have released a new three minute long “gameplay launch” trailer, found below, for Halo 5: Guardians that features a split of story cut-scenes and gameplay footage showing off plenty of action sequences, all of which are set to some very familiar music, that players will be experiencing once the game drops on October 27th.
A few months ago Bandai Namco announced that they would be releasing Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth in the West and today the company has decided to announce exactly when gamers in North America can expect the title to be released for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita.
The PlayStation 4 version of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth will be released digitally and at retail on February 2, 2016 while the PS Vita version will be a digital only release. Those who pre-order the PS4 release will obtain a few special bonuses such as black color variants for both Agumon and Gabumon, Cherubimon and Beezlebumon (both of which are exclusive for the Western release), a couple of costume sets, and some bonus starting items.
LOVEABLE POCKET MAPLESTORY MOBILE ACTION RPG HEADS TO MORE MARKETS IN SOFT LAUNCH
Seoul– 13th October, 2015 – Fans of real-time online multi-player games can now rejoice as NEXON Co., Ltd. (“Nexon”) (3659.TO), a worldwide leader in free-to-play online and mobile games, through its Korean subsidiary, NEXON Korea Corporation, aggressively expands the soft launch rollout of the highly anticipated iOS and Android game, Pocket MapleStory. The side-scrolling action Mobile RPG developed by Nexon’s internal studio gives Android players in Australia, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden the chance explore and experience epic battles through the lands of Maple World before the game’s worldwide launch.
Heralded as the definitive version of the original PC game, Pocket MapleStory allows players to craft the perfect hero squad and master each character’s skills and strengths to battle their way through a grand adventure like no other on their mobile device. Pocket MapleStory features:
A complete MMORPG experience on a mobile device featuring more than 1,500 quests
The first mobile version with real-time online multiplayer that enables network party play
Three different heroes, Duel Blade, Angerlic Buster and Demon Slayer each with different skills and fighting styles
Fun rivalry with the Dungeon and Guild system to compete with friends online
Personalization of characters and items
Bright and colorful graphics reminiscent of the original PC game
“Pocket MapleStory has enormous global appeal and recognition as a beloved game for fans of the original MapleStory PC online game and MMORPG titles, generally,” said Myoung Il Kim, the Director of Pocket MapleStory, NEXON Korea. “The continued rollout in new countries will give even more fans access to an unforgettable mobile experience they can take with them wherever they go.”
Pocket MapleStory is now available for download via mobile device from Google Play (link) for Android in Australia, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Following the soft launch and testing of the game, Pocket MapleStory will release in markets around the world.
Additional Information for members of the press:
About NEXON Co. Ltd.
NEXON Co., Ltd. (“Nexon”) (3659.TO) is a worldwide leader in free-to-play online and mobile games. Founded in Korea in 1994, Nexon developed one of the world’s first graphics-based massively multiplayer online games. Nexon also pioneered the concept of microtransactions and the free-to-play business model, setting a new standard in which play is free, and users have the option to purchase in-game items to enhance their experience. Nexon currently services nearly 150 titles in more than 150 countries. The Company is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and its shares are listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
A little more than a week ago Atlus and Vanillaware released their first character trailer for Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir and it happened to introduce Gwendolyn. Now the company has decided to double down and release two character trailers at once.
The first trailer happens to be for the princess of Ringford, the fairy kingdom, Mercedes. She is a bit timid but won’t hesitate to do something reckless and after becoming the next queen she quickly adapts to her new situation.
The second trailer is for the prince of Titania, Cornelius. One day Cornelius wakes in a strange new land and finds himself transformed into a furry animal and is fearful that his love, a foreign princess named Velvet, will stop loving him if she sees what he has become.
With Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel well in development for console release in Japan on December 10th a new trailer for the game has been released which focuses on showing off the game’s many playable characters and partner characters as well as plenty of movie footage that may or may not be part of the opening video for the game, and more when it is released on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3.
You can check out the trailer for Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel below and keep an eye out for the North American release of the game sometime this winter by XSEED Games.
