This week’s issue of Famitsu, courtesy of Hokanko, has revealed that the first PlayStation 4 Hyperdimension Neptunia game, Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II, will be released in Japan on April 23rd. Gamers in Japan who pre-order Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II will be given a special art book.
The issue also revealed that the game features music by 5pb founder Chiyomaru Shikura and that the opening theme is performed by nao once again and is called “Sotai-sei VISION.” Currently no localization announcements have been made for Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II but we considering how quickly Idea Factory International has been jumping on the series lately, we can likely expect an announcement sometime next year.
Atlus USA had a lot to reveal for their most recent acquisition, Etrian Mystery Dungeon. Not only did they reveal the box art for the game, which can be seen below, they have also released their first English trailer for the title, also found below. Considering Etrian Mystery Dungeon was announced and revealed less than a month ago in Japan, Atlus has been extremely quick with this title.
Alongside this information came news that anyone who pre-orders or picks up a first-run copy of Etrian Mystery Dungeon will be given a soundtrack CD. Currently Etrian Mystery Dungeon is set to be released on the 3DS in Spring 2015.
Earlier this year Bandai Namco announced that they were working on a third game in the One Piece: Pirate Warriors series and over the weekend they announced that not only will One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 be heading to the West in Summer 2015, it will also be released on PC through Steam.
One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 follows the original story of One Piece and follows Luffy’s departure from Fuschia Village all the way up to the most recent Dressrosa Arc and features characters like Sabo, Fujitora, Ace, and Doflamingo. Check out some new screenshots as well as a new trailer for the game below.
It was said that it wouldn’t be possible, that Bandai Namco would never be able to organize all of the licenses for Western release similar to Project X Zone, but it looks like they have pulled it off. Bandai Namco has revealed that they will be releasing an enhanced version of J-Stars Victory VS., featuring an Arcade Mode, in North America and Europe in Summer 2015.
When J-Stars Victory VS+ is released in the West it will be available for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PS Vita. For those who never followed the game previously, J-Stars Victory VS+ features fifty characters from thirty-two different Shonen Jump titles though a number of these characters are simply support fighters. It is currently unknown whether Bandai Namco will be able to retain the entire cast when the game is released in the West but let’s hope so.
This weekend during Jump Festa Square Enix released a new trailer for Final Fantasy Type-0 HD and now they have released an English subtitled version of the trailer which you can check out below. In this video, we are presented with mostly new gameplay footage set to impressive sounding background music as well as new cut-scene footage showing English subtitled dialogue.
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is currently set to be released on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 17th and those who pick up a launch copy of the game will be given access to an exclusive Final Fantasy XV demo.
T’was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring… Except for Mickey Mouse. The Disney Infinity news has been a little bit quiet for the past few weeks, but in celebration of the holiday season, the guys over at Disney have given us an early present in the form of two free downloadable Toy Box Maps for Disney Infinity 2.0: Marvel Super Heroes. Based on snow, Christmas Carols and of course delicious food, you can get the following Toy Boxes right now, totally free:
Mickey’s Christmas Carol– The Toy Box Community Team forgot to send you a Christmas card, so they decided to build you a Toy Box instead! Enjoy this Toy Box, and take on the beloved Disney classic, Mickey’s Christmas Carol.
Snow Park Challenge – Hop on the snowmobile and race to find all the pastry collectibles as fast as you can!
So whether you’ve been playing Disney Infinity 2.0 since launch or you are expecting it under the tree this week, you will be able to get into the Christmas spirit with Mickey, Donald, Spider-Man and the rest of the Infinity figures.
Bandai Namco Games Europe and CyberConnect2 have release a trailer today for the upcoming Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4. The game is based off the popular Naruto anime series, and boasts an impressively large roster of characters. The quality of the graphics is very impressive, as suits a game being launched on the latest generation of consoles.
Cyberconnect2 claims that the combat will be extremely fast paced; if it’s faster than prior games in the series, then this is true. The Ultimate Ninja Storm series has always had high quality combat, and with a no-doubt increased roster, this one will be no exception. I’ve enjoyed the combat and number of characters in prior titles. I expect with the series now complete, this game will have the definitive character roster.
Online and offline modes will return for the title, and Bandai Namco Games Europe has stated that it will join the STORM League.
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 will be released on PS4, Xbox One, and Steam in 2015. See the launch trailer below.
This week’s bundle has a bit of a Christmas theme in honour of the holidays this week! For one price, gamers can snag six indie games in the Indie GalaEvery Monday Bundle.
Cyto – Cyto is an adorable little ball with amnesia. Players will have to conquer 104 levels of puzzles to help piece together his lost memories.
Flower Shop: Winter in Fairbrook – A dash of Harvest Moon mixed in with the classic Japanese dating sim, Flower Shop: Winter in Fairbrook picks up where Flower Shop: Summer in Fairbrook left off.
Boson X – Test your reflexes in a massive particle accelerator by colliding into other particles in the quest for the legendary Boson particle.
Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa’s Rampage – After years of dealing with greedy children, elf unions, and generally being forced to be a merry guy, Santa has gone bezerk and slaughtered everything in sight. Now you’re the poor janitor stuck cleaning up after him.
Pixel Hunter – A side scrolling platformer in a 3d voxel style. The game features five worlds and epic boss battles to conquer.
Koya Rift – An action platformer that randomly generates everything, including your weapons, your enemies, and the level.
Grab your bundle at Indie Gala before the price rises. It’s only $1.89 for the first 24 hours!
Gamers have long bemoaned that Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri never received a sequel. Although not a true sequel, Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth serves as a spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri, while bringing the Civilization series to space. After a great tragedy strikes Earth, humanity sends out colonists to distant planets in hopes of saving the species. To survive, players will need to outsmart the alien creatures that inhabit the world and the other competing colonists.
Story
After “The Great Mistake,” the regional organizations and countries sponsor special space ships to be filled with colonists and sent to distant planets. These colonists hope to establish bustling civilizations in attempt to save the species and possibly the humans still left on Earth. There are is a small journal entry displayed during the loading screen from the leader of each sponsored group, but that is about it. The plot really is in the meta-game.
Gameplay
Like most 4X strategy games, Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth is a meaty game with plenty of mechanics and strategies to learn. Compared to many games in the genre, Civilization: Beyond Earth is one of the more newbie friendly titles with its advisor capable of providing a full walkthrough of almost all mechanics, along with links to the relevant Civilopedia articles that provide more information. That being said, Civilization: Beyond Earth is definitely not for the faint of heart. There is still a large amount of reading and experimenting to be done to really learn the game.
The Civilopedia is organized well and has a much needed search function. Almost all the entries are well written and very clear. The only weak entry I could spot were the entries detailing the victory conditions. They did not provide step by step instructions on how to achieve them. To find that information, I had to go through the victory pane in the quest tab.
Civilization: Beyond Earth plays like a pretty standard 4X game. Players will start their empire out with their capital city and slowly expand by building colonies that will eventually grow into cities. There are three affinities in the game based on the direction players want to lead their new civilization. The affinities will influence how their units develop and provide a variety of bonuses. At the same time, players will complete a variety of quests which will provide extra bonuses, research new technologies, gain Virtues through culture, maintain a spy network and manage diplomatic relations.
Combat is similar to Civilization V. Much to some veteran player’s fury, unit stacking has not returned. Only one combat unit can occupy a hex, though non-combat units can share the space. Players will get a quick preview of the combat, which will help new players decide when to engage. Units vary for technology based weapons of war to tamed aliens, providing a huge variety of units.
As with all 4X titles, there are multiple ways to win. However, the methods are less diverse than previous Civilization titles. There is a much greater focus on the research tree, as all three Affinity victories require technological research to complete. The remaining two victory methods is the traditional military victory and a contact victory that mixes technological research and exploration. I was rather disappointed to see that there is no victory based on diplomatic, cultural, or economic prowess.
Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth’s controls are very good. Most of the menus are well organized, easy to navigate, and clear to read. The only portion of the menu that drove me nuts was the “Play Game” button. After a couple decades of gaming, play game has always meant continue from your last save to me. Instead, the button kicks off a new game with default settings. I would have preferred to see this option renamed to “New Game.”
Modding makes its return in Civilization: Beyond Earth. Firaxis has integrated Steam Workshop into the game, making it very easy to find, install, and update mods. With the vibrant modding community, several projects are already underway to improve the game’s balance and tweak the UI. Of course, there are plenty of mods that also add new content to the game, including factions from Alpha Centauri.
Although there was nothing game breaking, Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth has some bugs that need to be ironed out. There was the odd time a certain piece of land could not be purchased or an explorer was unable to create an expedition. Usually these problems disappeared after reloading the save. These are not major bugs, but obvious enough to be annoying.
Visuals
Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth looks great. Each of the three affinities bring unique looking units and the models and animations are solid. The UI works on a sci-fi palette of blues and greys, while the world itself is colourful.
Hardware wise, the game has a DirectX 11 and AMD Mantle flavours. The hardware requirements aren’t particularly taxing, so low end laptops should have no problem running the game. The graphics scales nicely in ultra quality. My only complaint is that the borderless window mode is not very clear. The game seems to run in full screen as a borderless window, but the options do not explicitly say this. To play the game with a multi-monitor set up, gamers will actually need to go into the interface option and remove the frame lock on the mouse cursor.
Audio
Following Sid Meier’s Civilization V’s Grammy award winning soundtrack is understandably difficult. Although not quite getting there, Civilization: Beyond Earth does a respectable job. The soundtrack hits the right notes to compliment the game’s themes of isolation and hope, all while having an epic feel to match the depth of space and the complexities of the game. There is a little bit of voice acting in the game for the leaders of each sponsor organization and for the assistant that provides players advice. The actual lines are a little limited, but the acting is decent. Like the voice acting, there are not many sound effects, but what is there is very good.
Overall
Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth is an interesting new or maybe old step in the Civilization franchise. There are still some kinks to work out and the learning curve is still a tad steep. However, it is solid on all fronts and it worth a try for all strategy fans and newbies willing to do a little leg work.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Bronies are people who enjoy watching My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic that are outside the target demographic. They have been around for a few years now. Maybe it is just a passing fad, or maybe it is going to be around for many more years to come. Either way, these people are looked down upon by society because of their choice to watch a show aimed at young girls. If you are curious to find out what it is they see in that show, you may be interested in watching this documentary, but is A Brony Tale the best tool to help you understand why bronies are so passionate about the show?
Content
Ashleigh Ball is the voice of Apple Jack and Rainbow Dash in the series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, a part of the fourth generation of My Little Pony. She had been doing voice work for several years before auditioning for a role in the show. Not knowing what to expect, she auditioned for the role of a young male character but ended up getting hired to provide the voice of two female ponies. She had no idea that she was going to end up becoming famous amongst a group of older people known as ‘bronies’, or ‘bro’ ponies’. Having only met a few bronies before, she was surprised to be invited to BroNYCon 2012 after the production of season 3 finished. Faced with the decision of whether or not to attend the convention as a guest of honour, she set out on a journey across North America. Inserted between shots of her journey are interviews with bronies of many different shapes and sizes and an insightful interview with two psychologists who researched the brony culture.
Although the documentary’s title suggests that it will focus mainly on bronies, it is also about Ashleigh’s journey from hearing about a group that sounded creepy to her to actually meeting them and understanding why they are so passionate about the show. From two psychologists, we find out why people become bronies and the ages and sexual orientations of those people. Some may find a comparison of bronies to hippies a bit far-fetched, but the comparisons to other fandoms are accurate and make an excellent point: why belittle a group of people who are able to find joy in watching something, even if that something is primarily aimed at young girls? This is something that Ashleigh learns, along with the viewer.
All of the interviews in this documentary provide fascinating discussions about masculinity, which will interest anyone who believes that the gender roles society forces people into are outdated and inappropriate. Many people subscribe to the traditional belief that men have to be ‘macho’ and that they have to be interested in the ‘blue’ toys, not the ‘pink’ toys, however bronies prove that this does not have to be the case. One interviewee states that they are far away from the harmonious world of Equestria, because even though they are creating a new form of masculinity, many others do not accept them or their type of masculinity. This shows that bronies do not believe that they are in some fantasy world and they are not trying to escape from reality like some people may suggest.
A common theme throughout the documentary is that people who found it hard to make friends and people who got teased about their interest in Friendship Is Magic are able to make friends with those who do share their interests. This is where the appeal in the show lies: in the messages that the show gives them about positive values such as friendship and harmony. From this, it is easy to see what makes them appreciate it so much.
Visuals
The camerawork here is average. There are two different types of shots used throughout, one with a camera in a single fixed position and one with a handheld camera. The use of the handheld camera is not particularly distracting, but it is not smooth either. A very noticeable visual flaw occurs when scenes from Friendship Is Magic are shown; the watermark and rating information from the television broadcasts are present, something that would not be expected in an otherwise high quality, professionally-produced documentary. It is not explained why the producers used broadcast recordings of the show instead of taking clips directly from the source, but it detracts from the quality of the documentary. Dozens of fan-art images are shown in montage sequences during the film, so not only will people who have never seen Friendship Is Magic get to see just how inspired and passionate about the show bronies are, bronies themselves will get to see many pieces of artwork of their favourite characters that have been drawn by skilled artists.
Audio
The soundtrack is suitable and not overused. It is largely made up of techno music, but it works as a backdrop to the film. At the beginning of many scenes, a short segment of one of the songs plays at a noticeably louder volume than everything else does. That is not to say that the audio mixing is a major problem, but viewers should note that the documentary will become loud at times. Fans of Ashleigh Ball will be treated to a demonstration of voices she has provided for other animations, again making this documentary not only appealing to those interested in bronies but bronies themselves.
Overall
A Brony Tale is as much about showing Ashleigh’s journey from beginning as a voice artist to attending BroNYCon as it is about the bronies themselves. Some may find that disappointing given that the title suggests that it will focus more on bronies, but others will find it eye-opening and appreciate the use of unintrusive interviews as a way of explaining why society’s idea of bronies is unfair. Ashleigh’s journey from being worried about what bronies are to reaching an understanding of them is worth watching, because bronies are just ordinary people who love a show that happens to be primarily aimed at young girls. Whether you simply do not understand the appeal of Friendship Is Magic or are someone who subscribes to the negative beliefs about bronies, this documentary may be the best tool to change that. I cannot say for sure that it offers a correct interpretation and discussion of the brony fandom, however, not being a part of the fandom myself.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
