NCSoft are excited to announce Infinite Odyssey, the next free content expansion for their longest running MMO – Lineage II. Set for release this spring, Infinite Odyssey will include new hunting zones, a raid boss, and skills as they continue their quest to expunge evil from Aden.
To celebrate the 11th anniversary for Lineage II next month, a new chapter is being added to the ongoing saga. With the arrival of the Ertheia, the latest race to join in the war to protect Aden, the heroes of the world have gained new allies. But even with their numbers bolstered and their forces strengthened, they may not have enough power to defeat what lies in wait for them.
Following the announcement, NCSoft is giving Lineage II players the chance to take part in the ‘Name that Skill Contest’ up until March 31. Winners will get to name five new high-end skills for the upcoming expansion, which will be announced on April 7. For more information on how to enter, click here.
What’s this? An installment of Xbox Newsbeat on a FRIDAY! Well lets just say that I love each and every one of you all and wanted to give you a little treat before you head off on your weekend adventures. There were a couple of cool things happening in the world of Microsoft this week, so lets sit back, pop on our reading glasses and enjoy the beat!
Get Xbox One Plus Four Free Halo Games, All for $499
Still don’t own an Xbox One? Well now might just be the prefect time for you to get one. Starting from the 18th of March, Australians will be able to purchase a brand new Xbox One console for $499, which will include a digital redemption code for Halo: The Master Chief Collection. That’s a collection of four Halo games for virtually nothing, so you can play through all of the epic Halo campaign before Halo 5: Guardians releases later this year.
Save the Dying Forest of Nibel in Ori and the Blind Forest
Ori and the Blind Forest is an interesting little game, the story driven adventure will have you gripped and invested from beginning to end (or so I’m told) and now you can get in on the action. If you want a little bit more info on the game, check out the video below that shows off the game’s launch as well as some interviews and little extra tid bits:
Xbox One March System Update: Party Chat Improvements, Screenshots and More Now Available
This week, Microsoft rolled out a massive new system update for the Xbox One that brings with it a slew of new features, most notably the ability to take screenshots on your console. Here is an official rundown on all of the new things you can do with your Xbox One after the update:
Screenshots – While playing a game, you can now take screenshots on your Xbox One console by simply double-tapping the Xbox button on your controller to capture a screenshot and pressing Y to save the screenshot. You can also say “Xbox, take a screenshot” to take and save a screenshot.
The upload app has been updated so that you can manage your screenshots in addition to your game clips. To set a screenshot as your background, go to upload, open the screenshot full screen, press the Menu button, and select Set as background. You can also use upload to share screenshots to your activity feed, attach them to messages, add screenshots to your showcase, share to Twitter, and post to OneDrive. Additionally, your game clips and screenshots will be shown in a new area on your profile.
Suggested friends –Everyone can use new friends! Suggested friends will include people you might know, so you can add more friends to game with and top community broadcasters and clip creators so you can get more great content in your activity feed. To find new friends, go to Friends and look for people under the Suggested friends heading or select the ‘Suggested friends’ button. Or, if you don’t have a ton of friends yet, just check the Friends area of Home.
Sharing your name – There are now two new ways to share your real name: with all of your friends, or to everyone in the Xbox Live community. You can also continue to share your real name with select friends or no one, if that’s what you prefer. Gamertags are still the primary method of identifying yourself on Xbox Live, but sharing your real name helps people recognize you who might not know you by your gamertag.
Party chat enhancements – They have added two new icons to party chat to show each participant their own microphone status. The Kinect icon means the Kinect is being used as the mic and the headset icon means the headset mic is being used.
Tile transparency –You can now vary the level of transparency for your background images.
Report spam – The Messages app has an added option to notify Xbox when you receive spam. To report a message as spam, select it, press A on the controller, select Report, and then choose Spam.
Live TV & OneGuide in Australia – Support for OneGuide is now available to all users in Australia for free-to-air TV listings. Additionally, the OneGuide app will be pre-pinned for users in Australia a few days after the March system update goes live.
Xbox One Digital TV Tuner in Australia – Xbox One owners in Australia can pre-purchase the Xbox Digital TV Tuner at the online Microsoft Store, Availability of the tuner is planned for March 25, 2015.
So there you have it, another sweet installment of Xbox Newsbeat. So what are you waiting for? Go out there and take those screenshots! Upload them to YouTube and send your coolest ones over to us here at Capsule Computers so we can all share in this awesome new feature.
Deep Silver is proud to announce that they’ve turned over production of Homefront: The Revolution to their in-house development team Deep Silver Dambuster Studios. A new logo and website for Dambuster Studios has also been launched. The acquisition of the license for Homefront as well as critical assets and staff from Crytek UK bode well. The troubled title will continue development with only minor disruption from the transition.
Homefront: The Revolution has had the release date pushed to 2016 from 2015 in order to allow time for Dambuster to fully tune the game. Deep Silver has high expectations for the open-world FPS, and expects the title to become a best-seller. Homefront: The Revolution will be released for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Wargaming has announced that it’s upcoming historical naval battle game World of Warships has now opened for Closed Beta sign-ups. Interested players are invited to join up to try their skill and tactics using 50 different US and Japanese WWII era ships across five different maps.
World of Warships offers four different classes of ships in order to provide different tactical advantages. Nimble cruiser, balanced destroyers, powerful battleships, and recon-based aircraft carriers will all be available to players. Players will also be able to improve a number of skills and abilities within both their Commanders, Crews, and by improving their ships with Modernizations.
World of Warships deploys with a 3 on 3 battle mode, with more modes to release upon full launch. To become involved with the beta, visit their Asian, North American, or European sign up page.
The first major content update for the Playstation 4, is soon to roll out and Sony have given us a brief rundown of what is to be expected. the software, titled Yukimura, will update the console to version 2.50 and brings with it the following new features:
“Yukimura” makes it more convenient than ever to play on the world’s most powerful console with the introduction of System Suspend & Resume functionality. This feature allows Players to seamlessly suspend their PS4 during gameplay and resume playing from exactly where they left off*1 at the touch of a button, putting PS4 into standby mode without interrupting long sessions of play.
Another standout feature of the update is the ability for Players to stream both Share Play and Remote Play at 60 frames-per-second.This jump in streaming quality offers Players with high-speed Internet connections a loss-less experience when playing through a secondary device, maintaining the lightning-quick performance that Players have come to expect from PS4.
Making all aspects of gaming a more social experience, “Yukimura” improves trophy integrationby automatically capturing a screenshot at the moment each is earned, making it easier than ever for Players to share their greatest gaming moments on PS4 with friends. This process has also been streamlined with the ability for trophies to be shared via a press of the Share button on DUALSHOCK 4 wireless controller.
Another major addition for “Yukimura” is the ability for subaccounts to be promoted to master accounts via PS4for those Players who are over the age of 18, giving full control to the account holder whilst retaining their existing PlayStation®Network profile, complete with trophies and entitlements. Players who turn 18 will be prompted via the PS4 UI to provide the updated information required to graduate to a master account.
Ensuring PS4 is the most socially connected console experience; “Yukimura” also introduces the ability toimport your Facebook friends directly onto your PS4 friends list, giving players greater opportunity to find each other and play together. When sharing standout PS4 moments via the Share button on DUALSHOCK®4, “Yukimura” also allows Players to upload directly to Dailymotion,providing more choice of services and options to share their PS4 game play moments.
“Yukimura” also introduces a wide variety of supporting features designed to heighten the user experience on PS4, including inverted colours on screen, text to speech, enlarged text, a bolder fonts, higher contrast user interface options as well as the ability to zoom for displayed pictures . Users will also be able to assign custom button configurations for the DUALSHOCK 4 wireless controller to suit their particular needs, ensuring all Player’s have a control setup that fits their habits and play-styles.
So there we have it, the new update brings a tonne of new content to your PlayStation owners out there. Which of the updates are you most looking forward to? Let us know in the comments below and remember to stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the Sony and Playstation news as it becomes available.
Fans, including myself, have been waiting and it looks like the time for monster girls to debut on the air waves will be coming this summer. The seventh volume of OKAYADO’s Monster Musume manga has revealed that an anime adaptation has been green-lit and will debut sometime in July though currently no information regarding the animation studio has been revealed. The full announcement flyer can be found below courtesy of Yaraon.
For those who are unaware, Monster Musume follows the story of Kurusu Kimihito in a world where monster girls such as harpies, lamias, and centaurs have recently become commonplace. After a mishap with the Cultural Exchange program, he finds himself living with Miia the lamia and that is only the start of what has become a very popular manga series that is currently being released by Seven Seas Entertainment in North America with the sixth volume being released last week.
Arc System Works has released the opening movie for XBlaze Lost: Memories and you can check it out below. For those who are unaware, XBlaze Lost: Memoriesis the sequel to XBlaze Code: Embryo, which is itself a spinoff of BlazBlue, and continues the story from where the last game left off and follows the original cast while introducing new characters and plotlines.
XBlaze Lost: Memories is currently set to be released on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita on April 9th in Japan and Aksys Games has already announced that they will be bringing the game to North America sometime this summer.
Fans of Uncharted will have to wait until April 2016 to get their hands on Nathan Drake’s next adventure; Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. The game, which was originally slated for release this year has become too ambitious for developers to complete in time, so rather than rush the game out they have decided to allot a few extra months to make sure it comes out just right.
Personally, I think this is great news because it gives me another 12 months to finally get around to buying a PS4 so I can enjoy what will no doubt be an absolute spectacle. Not only that but Nathan Drake’s story is one that many fans will want to see done properly, and it is awesome that Sony and Naughty Dog are doing just that.
Overview When Nippon Ichi Software first announced htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary, people were surprised to see that the company was going to try and take a minimalistic “indie” style approach to a video game. They were also rather surprised by the extremely odd name but it certainly does help make the game stand out in a certain way. Now that the stylized htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary has been released, is this Vita title worth acquiring?
Story htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary begins with a green firefly named Lumen finding a young silver-haired girl with antlers/tree branches in her hair. Lumen, along with the purple darkness firefly Umbra, wake Mion from her slumber and work together to try and help this young girl navigate through a world full of dangerous traps and shadowy monsters.
The game takes a very light touch with its storyline as that is all players will have to go on from the start of the game. Instead it is up to the player to try and piece together pieces of the story by noticing various things in the environment while also gathering memory fragments that are scattered across the levels as these memory fragments serve as flashbacks that reveal more of Mion’s story. This means that to get the most out of the actual story players will need to track down these collectibles and, despite the difficulty of this feat, a rather dark but interesting story is revealed.
Gameplay Now since I just mentioned that gathering collectibles in htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary is difficult and there is a good reason for that. The main premise of the title is that players will need to make use of the Vita’s touch screen to guide Lumen, the light firefly, and rear touch pad to control Umbra, the shadow firefly. Players only ever have complete control of Lumen while Umbra must be navigated through the shadows existing in a level or cast by the light from Umbra.
As you move Lumen around, Mion will follow. This means that to move left, Lumen must be somewhere to the left of Mion or above her to make her climb up on a box or up a ladder. Lumen can also be used to signal Mion to activate switches or interact with other objects to solve puzzles while Umbra can directly affect certain aspects of a level by activating various things out of Mion’s reach which generally open up new paths.
While simple sounding, the actual execution of this touch screen follow navigation is excruciatingly painful at times thanks to the way that Mion is designed as well as the poorly implemented controls. You see, everything that can possibly end up with Mion dying, whether it is something falling on her, her stumbling into a pit, a monster eating her, walking into a trap, or something else can and will happen numerous times. So much in fact that htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary is one of the hardest games you’ll find simply due to the amount of times you will need to go through the exact same tasks over and over again because, even if you know how to solve a specific puzzle, you’re at the mercy of the controls and Mion’s responses.
Being difficult is never really a bad thing, but thanks to the frustrating nature of the level design and Mion’s lethargic movement it puts a real drag on the game. Mion never moves faster than a stroll, perhaps due to muscle atrophy, and even when a monster is chasing her and it looks like she is running, she isn’t actually moving any quicker. Plus, unless you tap Mion to sit her down or place Lumen directly on her location she will wander in the firefly’s general direction, usually to her doom. Combine her slow speed with the delay that comes with Mion having to recognize where Lumen is to move in that direction and you’ll find a recipe for disaster when it comes to navigating through areas that require precise timing to survive.
It is worth noting that the use of the touch screens can make things more difficult than they should be, thanks in part to Umbra occasionally taking more than one or two taps to activate, but those who wish to alleviate some frustration can swap the control scheme to one that allows players to use the analog sticks instead. This change makes the game easier to handle at times and is almost suggested thanks to certain levels requiring such precision to complete that navigating using a touchpad will result in countless insta-fails.
It is worth noting that there does come a certain sense of accomplishment when you are able to finally clear a stage, especially if you happened to obtain a memory fragment while doing so (though stages can be revisited to try and gather them again). This is by no means a sign of the game being rewarding as much as it is a sign that players feel accomplished for overcoming Mion and the control scheme’s limitations to complete an area.
Visuals & Audio Nippon Ichi Software designed htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary with a minimalistic approach featuring simple but gorgeous looking stages riddled with traps to avoid and objects to interact with to help Mion survive her journey. There is a real sense of foreboding in many of these stages due to their dark design and some of the twisted and ominous things players will see scattered around some stages.
This foreboding feeling is helped by an impressive set of sound effects and use of music to keep the tense and creepy atmosphere alive throughout the game. The real contrast in style comes when the player enters a flashback where everything is not only presented differently but also far brighter than the usual game.
Overall htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary is an odd game in the way that the game’s level design is just difficult enough that it is satisfying to overcome however it is made far more frustrating due to the way players must guide the hesitating and slow moving Mion through each stage using iffy touch controls. This makes puzzles that may be simple to solve take forever to complete due to constant deaths. So while htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary makes for a challenging puzzler, it will be one met with more frustration than praise.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
The Evil Withinwas one of last year’s solid horror titles to make its way to consoles but its ending left a lot to be desired. A lot of questions left unanswered and a lot of plot threads still unraveling. Well, now Bethesda has released the first DLC chapter titled The Evil Within: The Assignment, which follows Julie Kidman in a tale that runs parallel to the main story.
The Assignment is the first of two planned story DLC (with a third DLC focusing on The Executioner creature coming at a later date) which will be followed up with The Consequence. You can grab all of the DLC in the game’s Season Pass for $25.95, or individually for $13.95.
Check out the short gameplay trailer below that shows off some of Kidman’s story in action. Also let us know if you plan on getting the add-on, or if you already have it! As always, stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all The Evil Within news as it becomes available.
