Its that time of the week, Nintendo loyal! The eShop has updated with a good handful of titles this week, with Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate’s demo being the highlight of the lot. As you would expect, several condensed portions of the game have been made available for a sampling. The main title launches on February 13th, so snag this one up and make up your mind if the next installment of the franchise is worth your cash.
Next up for the eShop are a few Virtual Console releases. Game & Watch Gallery 3, which first debuted on the Game Boy Color is available for the 3DS, bringing Egg, Turtle Bridge, Green House, Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong Jr.- amongst other titles together in one nostalgic package for $3.99. On the Wii U we have Dig Dug and MappyLand, both available for $4.99. Interestingly enough, Dig Dug is listed as just $1.00 right now, so for that price everyone should be ready to take the plunge.
Also new this week is the pre-install for Kirby and the Rainbow Curse – due out February 19th, as well as three new titles for the Wii U’s eShop. Dolphin Up can be flipped upon for $3.99, Puzzle Monkeys for $2.99, and Tri-Strip for $1.99. The 3DS eShop also has the paper folding KAMI for $2.99, which is odd, yet intriguing.
As far as DLC goes, the final chapters of Moon Chronicles have become available today for the 3DS, bringing the package full circle. Hyrule Warriors‘ The Majora’s Mask Pack is also out for the Wii U at just $7.99 – and just in time for the remake.
Not a bad little collection, folks. Definitely a good time to put on those nostalgia goggles and dive in.
Later during their massive thirty plus hour streaming event for Persona, Atlus revealed some important details for Persona 4: Dancing All Night. Earlier we saw the reveal of the main theme song for the game and now we know that Persona 4: Dancing All Night will be released in Japan on June 25th and that there will be numerous special editions available including a custom designed PS Vita.
Also revealed were a few new characters for the game, or I should say the addition of a number of other Persona 4 characters to the cast. The stream revealed that Persona 4’s Nanako Dojima, Naoto Shirogane, and Yukiko Amagi will be playable in the game alongside the previously revealed characters and that many of the songs in the game will be remixed versions handled by popular artists.
Its great when two solid developers get together to create something big, and today it was announced that N-Space and Digital Extremes would be coming together to create an unannounced RPG. Now, to get you a bit caught up, N-Space are mainly known for making a handful of licensed titles, worked on some of the Skylanders series, and brought us the awesome FPS selection on the original DS – such as Goldeneye 007 and all of the Call of Duty spin-offs.
Digital Extremes assisted with the first two Bioshock titles, Warframe, a decent chunk of the Unreal saga, and even The Darkness II. There is quite a bit coming to the table here in terms of knowledge of the industry, and with this new RPG set in a “world-renowned fantasy franchise”, the two studios are sure to raise a few eyebrows in the next year.
Here are the official statements on the news:
“Even with our 20-year history of successful work-for-hire projects, we have never been more proud,” said Dan O’Leary, Co-founder and CEO, n-Space. “We are working on one of the best IPs in the world with a talented, passionate team that will help redefine the future of n Space. Our friends at Digital Extremes are the perfect partner in this, having travelled a similar path through the industry. Leveraging their expertise in self-publishing allows us to focus on delivering an amazing RPG to gamers later this year.”
Over its 21 years, Digital Extremes’ history boasts a portfolio that includes co-creation of Epic Games’ blockbuster Unreal® franchise, work on the BioShock® series, development of The Darkness II and now, the incredibly successful and consistently top 10 Steam game, Warframe®.
“Our contribution to n-Space’s game is simple and straightforward. We’re a developer that can successfully develop, self-publish and support an international hit. We proved as much with Warframe and its 14,000,000 players. We learned many valuable lessons along the way and now have the means and talent to help another independent developer achieve a level of success not possible with conventional publisher relationships. And so that’s what we’re doing,” said James Schmalz, CEO, Digital Extremes. “To support n-Space on this unannounced title — and if you’re a fan of RPGs, you’re going to flip when you see it — is a real privilege. Our company spent 20 years making games for other people. We stepped into the wild with Warframe and earned our success. Now we get to help others take those same steps.”
I am honestly very excited as while both studios have decent track records, they are very dedicated to listening to feedback, and seem to genuinely enjoy everything they put on the market. Stay tuned, as this little story is just developing, with the announcement taking place of just what we shall see on February 12th.
Recently Idea Factory International released a number of new English screenshots for Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed and Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart. The screenshots for Neptunia U focus on showing off the Vita game’s self-aware dialogue as well as Famitsu and Dengekiko while the Noire screenshots show off some of the status effects that can be inflicted in battle, such as petrification, 8-bit pixel, zombie, tofu, and more.
A pair of trailers for Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart have also been released showing off the special moves of both Blanc and the new guest character Estelle.
We are now on the road to Wrestlemania, and being that close brings some new content to WWE 2K15 from 2K Games. Sure, the Season Pass has been more of a discount tool in some ways – rather than the all in one we are used to due to a few omitted features such as NXT content sold seperately, but I am certain there is a market for those with an itch for some DLC love.
The “One More Match” pack includes Christian and Orton’s famous feud, following the controversial year for Captain Charisma, and in my opinion, the swan song for both he and Edge as mainstays in the company. You can also swoop up some extra Superstars as well, all of which are listed neatly below. Watch the new trailer and get to downloading if you have the pass, as “One More Match” has graciously been included in the Season Pass bundle (take that as you will). Follow this link for the full listing of DLC.
2K Showcase: One More Match
Story focused on the rivalry between WWE Superstars Randy Orton and Christian in 2011;
Playable WWE Superstars (2011 versions): Christian, Randy Orton, Edge, Mark Henry and Sheamus;
Playable arenas from 2011: SmackDown, Extreme Rules®, Over the Limi® and Capitol Punishment;
2K Showcase: One More Match is available for a suggested price of $13.45, as well as through the Season Pass program.
Dontnod (most famous for creating Remember Me) are quickly becoming known for creating interesting stories involving strong female protagonist, and their latest title follows suit, centering around shy photography student Max Caulfield who has just started at a prestigious photography academy to follow her passion.While Remember Me placed you in the futuristic dystopia of Neo Paris, Life is Strange put’s you in an equally unsettling yet familiar setting, High School. Does Episode 1 of this five part story manage to ‘capture’ your interest or does it need a little more time to ‘develop’? Read on for our full review.
Story
No more photography puns I promise. Our main protagonist Max Caulfied has just moved back to her home town of Arcadia Bay in Oregon to attend the best photography academy in the country. The academy is full of young students, all who seem to have their own classic teenage issues such as drugs, peer pressure etc. I won’t go into detail here as to not spoil any of the story, but the conflicts between other students, yourself and those students and Max’s own inner struggles make for an interesting plot full of drama. The pacing is very well done, with a great mix of peaceful lulls and more intense moments.
A missing girl called Rachel who was very popular around town is the focus of the games primary side story. The constant missing posters and effects that Rachel has had on a lot of the students does manage to intrigue your interest. While this first episode doesn’t go to deep into her disappearance, you can tell this will be a big plot point during one of the future four episodes, especially with some of the later revelations. The Rachel subplot and the revelation of Max’s time control powers bring an element of mystery to Episode 1 that aids in expanding on the story of this small town and helps the game shy away from being a re-imagining of Mean Girls crossed with Degrassi.
Max has just turned 18 but the characters you encounter including Max all seem to be about two to three grades younger with their dialogue and very ‘clicky’ personalities. All your high school stereotypes are here. The jocks who wear their collegiate jackets and bully the nerds, the quiet girl who keeps to herself, the emo kid, the prissy rich kid and the mean rich girl complete with her two underlings who only exist to praise their queen. Despite this, characters are all pretty fleshed out and all have their own agenda making them feel like real people. The games writing is normally pretty spot on, however you will find some oddities in character’s personalities and language that will make you question if the character is really like that or the writers (who probably aren’t teenage girls) just misunderstood a phrase.
A fantastic edition to Life is Strange is all the optional story you can read up on through text messages, diary entries and character biographies. The game does a great job at providing you with the necessary information to understand the main story upfront, but for those who are interested in really delving into character histories and past events and Max’s thoughts on everything you can do just that. The journal is presented in this cool scrapbook style, really making it feel like an art students diary. If you look carefully through the journal and the world you will notice heaps of small references to pop culture, particularly video games. I myself found a Pokemon and Super Mario reference which was fun to see.
Gameplay
Life is Strange will rightfully have many people drawing comparisons between itself and Telltale games, as well as titles like Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. Life is Strange and those games are for the most part very similar, perhaps being more similar to the latter titles as you can freely move around your environment.While you search the environment there are heaps of things you can look at and interact with, all accompanied with some inner thought dialogue from Max.
You make choices from up to four options in conversations (normally just two), some of which look like they will have a major impact on the story. Some do have slight repercussions immediately within Episode 1 but it feels like many of these will have heavier consequences within the coming chapters. These decisions do feel important and I struggled with some of them for up to 30 seconds before making my choice. It’s always fun pulling the strings in a game and the choices presented do a great job at making you feel like you have great control over Max and can invest your own personality and responses into her, making the story your own. There are also a lot of smaller decisions to make that will reward you with additional pieces of dialogue that aren’t wholly important but cause characters to react and show more of their personality.
Early on in the story, our protagonist Max discovers her unique supernatural ability, the ability to rewind time. This is used to solve puzzles all of which require some thinking on behalf of the player but are aided from a few hints from Max’s thoughts. The puzzles fit seamlessly into the world around you and require some literal thinking, with most requiring you to work out the correct order in which to carry out your actions. There is no limit to the amount of times you can rewind time so you can try many different ways of coming up with a solution. This fits the game perfectly and avoids things like game over screens whilst taking away any form of punishment for those who are a little slow in solving these puzzles.
The time functionality has been implemented excellently by Dontnod and is a strong point of Life is Strange. It is not only used to solve puzzles but allows players to reverse decisions they may wish to take back (permitted they don’t leave the area). People that love to see every possible dialogue option play out will loves this feature. If you do rewind through a conversation, next time you have that conversation you can simply use the skip button so you don’t have to listen to the same line again. Another nice touch is an auto rewind for your most recent function you can activate with a simple button press.
My only gripe with the whole system is that there is no way to cancel the last function I mentioned if you press the button by mistake which happened on a few instances as I was still getting used to the controls. There are also some times where you can’t use the rewind function where it feels like you should be able to, which takes away a bit of the control you feel you have over the game which is unfortunate.
Visuals
The visuals in this game are kind of like a 3D water colour painting with lot’s of soft tones and visible brush strokes. It looks great and details on characters and the environment are impressive for an art style that appears simplistic on the surface. Homes and bedrooms in particular are incredibly detailed and really resemble what a teenage girls room would look like. PC has plenty of options for visual settings and my version suffered no frame rate drops except in the ending sequence where the whole scene seemed to be rendered in 30FPS as opposed to 60FPS.
The interface is very clean and has this whole ‘Juno’ feel to it for those familiar with the film. White squiggly line drawings pop up to represent objects you can interact with and also when the game is saving or you have made a consequential decision. When you perform a rewind the visual effects used are really powerful, user friendly and aren’t slow or clumsy. The same can be said about performing a fast rewind or skip and put polish on the already near perfect time control system. The freedom of the camera movement is fun to play with and allows you to set up screenshots in lieu of a proper photo mode which seems like an odd omission for a game based around a photography student.
One big negative that is not easy to overlook however is the lip syncing. This is an issue in a game with a lot of dialogue where the camera is focused on someone’s face a lot of the time and it doesn’t stand up to the standard set by similar story based titles such as Heavy Rain.
Audio
The game doesn’t have a big soundtrack, with most of the games music being diegetic and playing through headphones or a CD player. I mentioned Juno as a reference before and the audio here also takes some inspiration from the film, with the indie acoustic songs heard here giving off a pleasant, relaxing vibe that compliments the game perfectly.
The voice acting is really good for the most part, with lines delivered well and character’s voices matching their personality from the shy Max to the hard ass veteran security guard. No sound effects are out of place and complete the wonderfully detailed world. There is a tendency for music to randomly stop playing for a short while during room transitions which is a little jarring, but apart from that there are no major technical issues.
Overall
Episode 1 is a great introduction to the world of Life is Strange. The drama filled high school setting sets up an interesting story filled with fleshed out characters and the option to read up on back story is much appreciated. The influence you have over Max’s dialogue and actions feels meaningful and the excellent time travel mechanics add some nice challenge and variety to the game. The wonderfully detailed world is represented beautifully by a unique graphical style and the soundtrack compliments the visuals perfectly. A few small technical issues and bad lip syncing aside, if you enjoy story based games with heaps of drama and an air of mystery, Life is Strange is a game you should definitely snap up.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Discotek Media has just made several announcements, including the signing of a contract with Crunchyroll.
The complete Earl and Fairy series and complete Shining Tears x Wind series will be released with Japanese audio and English subtitles.
The complete series of SeHa Girls (Sega Hard Girls) was announced however no information about this release is currently available.
Night on the Galactic Railroad will be released on DVD this year with dual audio, with a Blu-ray release to follow at a later date.
Both Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge and Robot Carnival will be released with dual audio. No more details about these releases are currently available however Discotek stated that they have been trying to obtain the license to Robot Carnival for years.
Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust and Street Fighter II: The Movie were announced for DVD and Blu-ray. The Street Fighter II USA TV series was also announced however no tentative cover-art or information has been revealed yet.
Finally, Discotek Media has made a deal with Crunchyroll to bring even more anime titles to home video in North America. All of the following series will be available on English-subtitled DVD this year: Free! Iwatobi Swim Club (season one), Recently, My Sister is Unusual, Galilei Donna, Arpeggio of Blue Steel and Strike the Blood. Free! Iwatobi Swim Club may receive an English dubbed release after the subtitled version is available. More details about these releases and all other Discotek releases will be made available in the future.
Discotek also posed a question to classic anime fans on their Facebook page. Their idea is to put up titles for pre-order on their website which will be released if they receive enough pre-orders. Everyone that pre-orders one of the hypothetical releases will be credited on the DVD as a supporter. They would potentially do two of these releases per year, and will only be doing titles from the 1970s, 1980s or maybe 1990s that would not get a home video release otherwise. Blu-ray releases are possible but most releases would be DVD only.
Interested in this idea? Be sure to let Discotek know on their Facebook page. Readers should note that throwing money at your screen for Discotek will not actually accomplish anything, despite this having been attempted by many people.
It is a gloomy afternoon here in Sydney, so really I mean there is no better time than to sit in front of your computer and read some kick-ass news headlines, am I right? Yeahhhh I’m right! Anyway! Welcome to Xbox Newsbeat, your one stop, Friday-afternoon shop for all the news and tid bits coming out of Microsoft HQ. So make sure you boil the kettle and pour yourself a cuppa because its time for the Newsbeat!
“Halo 5: Guardians” Multiplayer Beta Records 2.5 Million Hours and 20 Million Matches Played
Recently players got their first taste of the upcoming Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer via a multi-week, semi-episodic beta. Well today 343 Industries have given us a look at some of the data they have collected, and it is absolutely staggering. Instead of me rattling off figures, check out the slick little infographic below for all the awesome stats you Halo guys managed to pull off:
DJR Team Penske extends partnership with Xbox for 2015 V8 Supercars Championship
The DJR Team Penske #17 Ford Falcon driven by Marcos Ambrose will roll out onto the track in the Xbox livery it ran as a ‘wildcard’ entry at the 2014 Sydney 500 when testing begins in earnest for the 2015 V8 Supercars Championship this weekend at Sydney Motorsport Park. Now a lot of words in that sentence don’t make too much sense to me but it sounds exciting none the less! What is MORE exciting is the fact that Xbox will be featured on Ambrose’s car at every event this year as an associate sponsor.
As if the Xbox brand wasn’t big enough already, this is sure to get it in the sights of a LOT of people. How many people even following racing? I have no idea but I’m sure it is as staggering a number as some of the earlier Halo stats.
Forza Horizon 2 Top Gear Car Pack Now Available
Ahh what would Newsbeat be without some Forza news? A lot shorter and easier to write up that’s for sure! All jokes aside, Microsoft have taken a brief break from their Forza Motorsport 6 promotion to release the Top Gear Car Pack for their current racer; Forza Horizon 2.
The included cars are: Lexus sport coupe, the 2015 RC F, which is one-part luxury, one-part pavement shredder. Next, the BMW M235i brings lithe form and an impressive rear wheel drive engine to bear. If you’re in search of a land speed record while driving in exotic style, the Jaguar XJ220 awaits. Extreme cross country events will never be the same with the presence of the “Rambo Lambo” and the heraldic trumpeting of the Ferrari 458 Speciale will bring glory to practically any setting.
So there we have it, another short but oh so sweet installment of Xbox Newsbeat (especially if you are a car enthusiast). Which of today’s headlines got your attention the most? Let us know in the comments below and make sure you stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the awesome Xbox news as it becomes available.
The Pokémon Bank is one of the greatest things that Nintendo has done for the Pokémon franchise. The ability to store your monsters online and retrieve them through any of the 3DS games has made completing the Pokédex a whole lot easier. Well Nintendo have decided to sweeten the pot even further and are giving away free Pokémon to everyone who uses the service.
Starting February 27th, Players will be able to receive the three fully evolved Johto staters; Meganium, Typhlosion, and Feraligatr. While you can get these in-game and through trading, the ones that you get off the bank will have their hidden abilities – the first time they have been legitimately obtainable.
This is the second time that Nintendo have given away a free Pokémon for Pokébank subscribers, when the service launched last year everyone who signed up got a free Celebi for their trouble. Hopefully this is the second of many similar distributions.
Drumroll please…. After the Avengers, some super villains, Donald Duck, Tinker Bell and the leads of Big Hero 6 it is time to see the final two Disney Originals characters for Disney Infinity 2.0: Marvel Super Heroes. Coming all the way from the Grid to your game are Sam Flynn and Quorra from the hit TRON franchise! With Light Cycles, Identity Discs and a digital katana, these two are ready to kick all kinds of butt in the Toy Box.
The characters are being handled a little bit differently to the rest of the Disney Infinity family. Firstly they are available RIGHT NOW, however that is because they are digital-exclusive characters with no figures. Secondly, the characters are currently only available for the iOS version of the game as well as making their way to the PC version in March. The digital duo can each be purchased in-game for $3.79.
Reception to the announcement has been… mixed to say the least. Some sides are for the digital-only characters, while others are firmly against it. In the midst of this announcement we want to know what YOU think! Let us know your thoughts on the new characters in the comments below and remember to stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the Disney news as it becomes available.
The characters are being handled a little bit differently to the rest of the Disney Infinity family. Firstly they are available RIGHT NOW, however that is because they are digital-exclusive characters with no figures. Secondly, the characters are currently only available for the