Indie Gala and Capsule Computers launched Indie Gala Every Monday Bundle #43 today. This week brings seven indie games for an extra low price.
Aztaka– An action RPG inspired by the Aztec legend, players will conquer 21 levels in a quest to reunite the seven phonograms.
Eleusis – A cult in Greece seeks to summon an evil being, but their plans are soon disrupted when the player stumbles upon the village they call home.
Final Dusk– A two phase action puzzle game. Players will open up a safe path in the first phase, then guide Vampire Princess Mina to safety in the second phase.
Sweet Lily Dreams– Lily loves books, but the Realm of Dreams is now under invasion by famous literary monsters like Dracula. With her two faithful pets at her side, Lily must battle against the darkness and stop the monsters from destroying the Realm of Dreams.
Tesla Breaks the World!– A side scrolling puzzle platformer starring Nikola Tesla and his famous rival Thomas Edison.
For the first 24 hours of the sale, all seven games can be purchased for a stunningly low $1.49. Be sure to head over to Indie Gala to grab your bundle before the price rises.
Come one, come all to the world’s most exciting and entertaining (we hope) news program; Xbox Newsbeat. What makes us so exciting and entertaining? Well, the fact that we deal with all the latest and greatest news out of Microsoft HQ for starters! With the new year comes new news and this week we have three killer Xbox One headlines for your viewing pleasure (I’m guessing that 2015 will NOT be a big Windows Phone year). So sit back, relax and enjoy!
Xbox One February system update: Game hubs and TV updates now in preview
If there is one thing that can be said about Microsoft, it is that they are not stingy with the Xbox One system updates. The console is already far more versatile and customisable than it was at launch, and yet they keep making it better. Here is what you can expect from the upcoming February update (which is presently in preview for some lucky gamers):
Game hubs –New in preview this month, game hubs are the go-to centres for all sorts of interesting content around your favourite games. Every Xbox One game will have a game hub where you can see which of your friends are playing the game, compete with your friends in game leaderboards, dive into the coolest game clips and game broadcasts, and follow the game’s VIPs and top players.
To get to the game hub for your favourite game, find a game in your pins, recently played list, or My games and apps, then press the Menu button and select View game hub. You can also search for any game in the Xbox Store and click on the game hub tile from the game’s store page.
Custom backgrounds and tile transparency – After listening to your feedback, Xbox have added additional tile transparency to the Home tiles to make your background images more visible. As a reminder, to set a custom background, go to Settings > My Xbox> My background. Note: some items can’t be made transparent due to usage rights/restrictions for certain images.
TV updates – We’re releasing a lot of updates to the live TV experience and features are being released to additional countries in preview this month:
OneGuide for the Netherlands – Support for OneGuide will continue in preview for the Netherlands and the missing channels for the Netherlands OneGuide listings will become available over the next few weeks.
TV trending in OneGuide – As you scan the detailed OneGuide TV listings, you can see which shows are trending by a “Trending on Xbox” note and associated icon. Xbox – live TV trending is based on the number of Xbox One owners currently watching that show in each country, pulled from anonymous data collected at a national level. Currently, Xbox TV trending is available to all members in the U.S., UK and Canada.
Live TV trending (new countries) –France, Germany, Brazil and Mexico will begin seeing live TV trending data in Xbox OneGuide.
Improved control of TVs, set-top boxes and audio/video receivers – Xbox One will work even better with more devices. This month’s preview release contains updates to the IR blasting database for new models and addresses issues reported by our fan community.
“Trick play” with Xbox One Digital TV Tuner – Preview members with the Xbox One Digital TV Tuner in supported countries (UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) will now be able to see video frames when fast-forwarding or rewinding paused TV on your Xbox One consoles.
Live TV streaming on Windows Phone and Android – Xbox are continuing the preview of live TV streaming on Windows Phone and Android devices for Xbox One Digital TV Tuner owners in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
What’s in Week 3 of the Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta?
We recently previewed the beta for 343’s upcoming Halo 5: Guardians, but as we mentioned then the beta was operating in a sort of episodic format, where every week new content was being added and expanded upon to give players a real sense of what to expect. Here is what got added over the past week:
New Game Mode: Stronghold – Building off the strengths of team-based Slayer mode, Strongholds features three control zones placed around the map that your team will need to control in order to dominate the enemy. But take note! Only the team that controls two Stronghold zones can score points: the first team to score 100 points, wins the match. Try to control all three zones and you’ll be spread too thin, so your team will need to strategize and stick together to hold the combination of two Strongholds that establish map control!
New Weapons –Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher, Energy Sword and Prophet’s Bane
New Map: Pegasus – The winner of the fan vote over Orion, features long sightlines, perfect for marksman weapons. Holding down the raised area with the Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher or Light Rifle gives a team excellent presence, and the ability to lock down huge swathes of the map. However, this spot is vulnerable to grenades and flanking routes that the opposing team should use to retake the high ground.
Pre-Order and Pre-Download Evolve on Xbox One
After running a successful beta over the past weekend, 2K and Turtle Rock Studios monster hunting shooter, Evolve is now available for preorder and preloading on Xbox One. By going through the Xbox Store, players can preorder one of the two following versions of the game:
Xbox One Evolve Pre-Order Edition – available for $99.95, includes the standard game, plus a Monster Expansion Pack, Team C and Wraith.
Xbox One Evolve Deluxe Edition – available for $126.45, includes the standard game, plus a Season Pass, a Monster Expansion Pack, Team C, and Wraith.
So there we have it folks, another week has come and gone and with it a bunch of Xbox news. Did any of this week’s headlines grab you? Let us know in the comments below and remember to stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the Xbox news as it becomes available.
Let me tell you about the prerelease for Fate Reforged, the excitement and storm of magic players battling with dragons, all determined to prove their clan is destined for greatness. The most popular choices for the latest Khans of Tarkir expansion this weekend, were Jeskai and Abzan – however, I would not completely dismiss the likes of Temur, Mardu and Sultai.
Fate Reforged brings a variety of new and old elements into the playing field, with the return of hybrid mana for casting card effects and the addition of manifest, (which replaces morph) for summoning a face down 2/2 colourless creature. The most exciting features are the modal cards, which present players with a choice when their spell is cast, as well as the new mechanics; bolster for Abzan and dash for Mardu.
Bolster enables players to empower their creatures overtime, by adding X 1+1 counters to target creature with the least toughness. Whereas, dash speeds up the attack phase, with creatures entering the battle with haste and returning to their owners hand at the beginning of the next end step. Of course, the original mechanics are just as powerful and strategic for the other clans: Jeskai with prowess, Temur with ferocious and Sultai with delve.
For the prerelease event, all participating magic players received a prerelease pack with five boosters (four Fate Reforged and one Khans of Tarkir), a ‘seeded’ booster pack, D20 life counter, clan pin, info and activity card of their clan choice. Players are tasked to assemble a 40 card deck from their booster packs (with 40 being the minimum) and compete in four rounds that are based on the best of three games. Each local gaming store offers players two flights, competitive or casual, which determines what prizes players receive at the end of the tournament.
Jeskai vs. Abzan – an intense match for Tahnee and Bryce.
A special promo ‘Time Shifted Cards’ was included at the Fate Reforged prerelease, to illustrate how the plane of Tarkir has changed over time. All players received an ‘Ugin’s Fate’ booster pack, containing a Token, Land card and a few ‘Time Shifted Cards’ from a pool of 40 holo foil stamped cards with different artwork.
Fate Reforged hits shelves this coming week on January 23 – you can check out the epic 180 card gallery on the Wizards of the Coast official site here. Be sure to get your pre-orders in early for the Fate Reforged fat pack and booster box! Let us know your suggestions for the best deck build for each of the clans and what cards stand out for you the most in this expansion.
During their Otakon Las Vegas panel earlier today, FUNimation announced that they have now acquired the home video release rights for Dragonar Academy, Date A Live II, and No-Rin. While Date A Live II was a sure pick-up as the company has already released the first season in English, the fate of the other two series was unknown until now.
The company went on to say that they will be releasing both Date A Live II and Dragonar Academy on Blu-ray/DVD combo sets later this year, though they did not say how they will be handling No-Rin as more details will be revealed later.
For those who are unfamiliar with these series, Dragonar Academy follows the story of Ash Blake, a student at the Dragonar Academy that bears the mark of a master of dragons. However despite this mark he is incapable of controlling any dragons until one appears in the form of a young girl. As for Date A Live II, it continues the story from the last season with Shido continuing to seal Spirits’ powers while No-Rin is a romantic comedy that follows a group of students at an agricultural school only for a now retired famous idol to transfer into the class.
Overview Naoki Urasawa has created a number of award winning manga series such as Monster and 20th Century Boys, but he has also spent time working on another series that is just as well known and that happens to be Master Keaton. While disputes and controversy exist on who wrote parts of Master Keaton, as Urasawa started to claim that he wrote some of the story after a dispute with the original author caused him to take over the story and the artwork, but it is clear that his influence is still shown through the artwork in these early chapters.
Anyways, now that Master Keaton is in English for the first time since the series’ original run from 1988 to 1994, is this first volume worth picking up?
Story Taichi Hiraga Keaton is the son of a Japanese zoologist and a British noblewoman and although he may spend some of his time in Japan as an Archeology lecturer in a Japanese university, he is a man with many occupations. What Keaton usually does is work as an insurance investigator for Lloyd’s of London as well as attempt to help those he comes across when they are in trouble. Keaton’s low-profile personality that leads his students to take advantage of his laid-back attitude and causes issues with his now divorced wife and teenage daughter may be who he is on the surface, but below that surface Keaton is a man of incredible skill.
While few details have been revealed in Volume 1, Keaton is not only highly intelligent, with time spent at Oxford, but also skilled in combat and tactics thanks to his time enlisted in the British Army’s Special Air Service. Thanks to this particular set of skills, Keaton is capable of not only coming up with historically accurate facts on the fly but also surviving dangerous encounters with make-shift weaponry and handling impossible odds by using ingenious survival techniques.
It is worth noting that all of the stories contained in Master Keaton Volume 1 are one-off stories that usually end at the conclusion of that chapter. Keaton can go from investigating the suspicious death of a man with a life insurance policy of one million pounds to attempting to surviving in a desert after being left for dead by locals due to the ineptitude of an excavation crew and then shifting to helping a strange surly old woman with a mystery that he only had just met. There are a few slight hints about certain events that may appear in another chapter and Keaton’s also divorced father and daughter regularly appear throughout this volume as we learn about the divorce from his wife though this is only barely explored. This lack of a consistent story is disappointing, especially since (despite how wordy many descriptions tend to be) many of the stories are wrapped up in a rushed manner with very little extra explanation or long lasting development.
The lack of continuity appears to hurt the series even worse when you compare the one-off chapters to the two storylines in Master Keaton Volume 1 that last for more than a single chapter. While the simple stories tend to be well told and interesting enough on their own, these stories that span two or three chapters give readers plenty of extra information not only about Keaton’s past but also some insight into the people he is trying to track down or foil the plans of.
As mentioned, Master Keaton is a bit of a slow read thanks to the descriptive nature of the series and when you combine that with the slow start of volume 1 and the episodic stories you have a story that isn’t exactly for everyone. The stories that are told are still interesting in their own right and seeing how Keaton will manage to survive or figure out the motives of certain characters makes for an enjoyable read, but one that is lacking in action since Keaton or other characters generally end fights instantly or any real development
Artwork Although at this point Naoki Urasawa may not have been writing the storyline, he was handling the illustrations and throughout the volume viewers will be treated to his crisp detailed artwork. The way that he designs his characters makes even the standard looking Keaton stand out in surprising fashion, though this also is thanks to the way that every character has a distinct look about them and plenty of detail into their outfits and expressions.
Since the volume jumps from story to story and Keaton travels to numerous locations readers will be shown plenty of detailed areas ranging from cities in Japan, Greece, Italy, and more as well as desert ruins and various other sites that feature a number of extremely detailed backgrounds that really have a chance to shine in this larger Signature release. It is also worth noting that, to preserve the manga artwork, all of the sound effects have been left untranslated in this release but Viz has included a glossary in the back with these translations.
Extra Content Viz has handled Master Keaton Volume 1 the same way they handled Naoki Urasawa’s Monster series, giving the volume a faux dust jacket as well as a handful of color pages at the start and the middle of the volume. These color pages are printed on the same material as normal pages and it is neat to see the color slowly diminish every page until the manga enters its standard black and white form.
Overall Master Keaton Volume 1 is a manga series that may not be for the average reader thanks to the way it handles it stories, but those who do pick up this release will be in for a fascinating manga that is unlike most other series on the market. Keaton’s unique way of handling situations and seemingly endless pool of knowledge that helps him against even the shadiest members of society makes this a series worth reading for those who can overlook its current shortcomings.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
A little under two weeks ago Sekai Project announced that they would be helping Winged Cloud, previously known for their work with Sakura Spirit, bring another visual novel named Sakura Angels to Steam through Steam Greenlight. Well it seems that not only has Sakura Angels successfully made it through the process but it is actually now available for purchase.
This surprise release of Sakura Angels comes with a temporary 25% discount bringing the standard price of $9.99 down to $7.49 until January 23rd. Sakura Angels is compatible with PCs, Macs, and Linux computers and can be purchased here. For those who are unsure about the game, Sakura Angels follows the story of a lonely protagonist who is accosted by an ancient evil that his ancestors sealed away long ago and only two girls blessed with magical powers can save him.
During their Nintendo Direct yesterday, Nintendo revealed that they will be releasing the New 3DS XL in North America on February 13th for $200. While this is great news for those who want to upgrade to the latest Nintendo handheld, those looking to buy their very first 3DS may need to have other plans.
This is because while Nintendo stated that they will be releasing the New 3DS XL, they also made it clear that the $200 New 3DS XL will not come with a charger of any kind in North America or Europe, meaning that if you don’t already have a charger from a past handheld such as a DSi or 3DS, are giving the handheld to someone as a gift, or a parent buying one for your child, you will need to buy a charger separately.
Speaking to Polygon, Nintendo stated “Rather than raise cost of New Nintendo 3DS XL by charging consumers for a component they may already own, we are giving them the option to only buy if they need an AC adapter.”
Considering the handheld’s release is less than a month away, it is likely that Nintendo will not change their minds at this point so those of you looking to acquire the New 3DS will need to plan accordingly.
As we’ve previously reported, Koei Tecmo is working on an enhanced version of their latest Deception game, Deception IV: Another Princess. Today was the first time that they have released a trailer showing off the game, though it is more of a teaser trailer than anything else.
In this trailer that you can check out below you will see Valgyrie in action as well as a look at how each of the past Deception heroines will look once they appear as enemies in Deception IV: Another Princess’ new Quest Mode. Deception IV: Another Princess will be released for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PS Vita in Japan on March 26 and at the moment no Western release for the title has been announced.
It has been announced by Famitsuthat two more fighters have been added to Nitroplus’ crossover fighting game Nitroplus Blasters: Heroine Infinite Duel. These fighters are Ignis, a demon hunter from Jingai Makyo, and Anna, a life-sized doll with amnesia from Gekko no Carnevale.
It has also been revealed that five more support characters have been revealed for the game. These new characters are Mitsurugi Yoshi from Phenomeno, Aoi Mukou from Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi, Mugen Yoguruma from D.Y.N. Freaks, Althea from Hakubo no Dendoshi, and oddly enough Angela Balza from Expelled from Paradise.
It does seem a bit strange that, considering Expelled from Paradise has only just been released in Japan that Angela is being kept as a support character. Anyways, Nitroplus Blasters: Heroine Infinite Duel is currently set to be released in Arcades in Japan later this year and is being developed by Examu, the same team behind titles such as Arcana Heart and Aquapazza.
While we have been introduced to Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance’s main hero Killia as well as the big bad Void Dark, Nippon Ichi Software hasn’t had much to say about the rest of the characters. Well that changed recently when they released a new trailer for Disgaea 5 focusing on the game’s heroine, Seraphine.
In the trailer below, you will see that Seraphine makes use of guns with heart-shaped barrels, and since she is a succubus most of her attacks involve hearts of some sort as you can see in the trailer below where many of her special attacks, including a large attack called Heart Orchestra, feature such images. That being said, it seems that she is joining Killia’s quest for revenge against Void Dark has something to do with her father, though whether her apparent closeness with Killia is simply due to their shared goals or another reason has yet to be seen.
Currently Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance is set for release in Japan on March 26th for the PlayStation 4 and NIS America has already stated that they will be bringing the title to North America and Europe later in 2015.
Indie Gala and Capsule Computers launched Indie Gala Every Monday Bundle #43 today. This week brings seven indie games for an extra low price.
