Mad Catz made two major announcements ahead of CES 2015 today.
First, the F.R.E.Q. 9 Wireless Surround Headset is shipping to retailers and customers who purchased through Mad Catz’ web store.. The closed over the ear headset is driven by two 50mm Neodymium drivers. The Bluetooth headset supports the AptX codec for near lossless sound quality over a low latency Bluetooth connection and the AM3D Audio surround sound technology used in F-16 Falcon jets to warn pilots of incoming missiles. The F.R.E.Q. 9 Wireless Surround Headset comes with a Bluetooth adapter box that accepts digital optical and analogue sources.
A microphone is built into the headset, allowing for communication on mobile devices, consoles, and computers without the need for a boom mic. The F.R.E.Q. 9 uses Digitally-controlled Active Noise Cancellation technology to keep background noises out and binaural monitoring to prevent players shouting into their microphone.
A special app for iOS and Android devices allows users to check on the 20 hour battery and manage features like noise cancellation.
Mad Catz also announced the F.R.E.Q TE Stereo Gaming Headset today. The latest addition to the Tournament Edition line is designed to be light weight and tuned for competitive e-sports. The headset uses a universal 3.5mm jack that is found on all computers. Memory foam-padded ear cups helps cut out background noise, while the 50mm drivers are tuned for picking out sound cues.
With CES 2015 about to kick off, Logitech is firing the opening shots with the announcement of the UE MEGABOOM mobile speaker under the audiophile-oriented Ultimate Ears brand.
The larger sibling to the UE BOOM, the UE MEGABOOM is a wireless Bluetooth ready speaker weighing under two pounds. The speaker provides 360 degrees of sound and can be linked up with another UE MEGABOOM or UE BOOM unit to deliver stereo sound. The UE MEGABOOM is rated at IPX7 for water proofing and is stain resistant for those really wild parties.
The UE MEGABOOM can pump up an ear blasting 90dBA with its two 2″ drivers. A replaceable lithium ion battery is capable of providing up to 20 hours of battery life and is charged with a micro-USB cable in about 2.5 hours.
The UE MEGABOOM is priced at $299.99 USD MSRP and is available in four colours.
Overview What happens to workers who find that they are no longer needed? They usually find themselves struggling to adapt to a new job that they are ill-suited for and this is especially true when it comes to soldiers. In what has become a trend of anime adaptations of light novels with ridiculously long names, Yu-Sibu: I Couldn’t Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job puts a fantasy spin on the concept. So now that Yu-Sibu has been released in North America, is this comedy worth picking up?
Story Fighting against Demons has always been common place in the world and the demon king always seemed to destroy any hero who tried to put an end to his reign of terror. Due to this fact, humanity has established a Hero Training Program where numerous youths are trained from a young age to slay demons and become heroes. Raul Chaser happened to be the strongest hero-in-training in his class but that all came to an end when the demon king was slain and the program was shut down since it was no longer needed.
Now unemployed and with no skills other than slaying demons with special finishing moves, Raul found himself lost and struggling to find a job in a world with no need for heroes. After finally finding a job, Raul has been working at Magic Shop Reon where instead of facing off against the undead and beasts of unimaginable terror, he now has to fulfill orders, deal with customers, and other issues that come with working in a retail store. Considering there is no electricity in the world of Yu-Sibu as everything is instead powered by magic that can possibly go out of control and many people using various monsters as transportation, this is far from your standard appliance store.
That being said, this is far from his ideal choice of work and Raul languishes in the store until a new girl named Fino Bloodstone is hired as his junior. While new hires are fairly standard, the fact that Fino is actually the daughter of the now deceased demon king is a big issue as she barely knows how things work in the human world and constantly talks to customers like she is a mid-level dungeon boss greeting soon to be killed explorers.
Tasked with training the demon king’s daughter, the failed hero Raul is in for quite a challenge as he teaches Fino the ways of the world. While the idea of a demon king and a hero working together isn’t exactly new, thanks to the focus of the series being on Raul and Fino as well as their interactions with customers, fellow co-workers, and friends Yu-Sibu’s take on a failed demon king as well as a failed hero is certainly refreshing, even if it really doesn’t try anything special.
Most of the cast is interesting and some have a few secrets that are merely hinted at, such as who exactly the store manager is, but of them all the character that shines the brightest in this group is Fino. While she is extremely naïve and unfamiliar with everything ranging from customer service to even wearing clothes properly, her non-stop energy and up-beat personality make her the star of the show and by pairing her with Raul Yu-Sibu creates an great couple that develops over the course of the series as both characters grow through their interactions with one another.
Most of the events involve simple tasks that come from working at an electronics and appliance store, such as repairs, installations, handling down-time with co-workers, and spending time with friends, both new and old, outside of work, things do take a bit of a turn in the second half of the series when a rival big-box store arrives on the scene threatening to put Reon out of business. In fact, the arrival of this rival store brings with it another aspect that forces both Raul and Fino to confront their pasts as they must deal with those who are unhappy with the way the world has turned out since the fall of the demon king.
As mentioned before, thanks to the way that Raul spends so much time teaching Fino and watching her grow, the feelings that seem to develop over the course of the series into something more than simple co-workers feels natural. Of course, being a romantic comedy like this, there are some rival girls that have their eyes set on Raul but their unrequited feelings and Raul’s denseness is played for laughs with few harem antics coming into play.
All in all Yu-Sibu gives us a unique enough story that is a lot of fun even if it may have a rather simple sounding setting. Thanks to a likable cast of side-characters, most of which are rather useful and have some stand-out moments of their own, and of course the main heroine Fino, Yu-Sibu is a blast to watch especially if you have a good sense of humor since many of the jokes rely on Fino’s inexperience with human society, Raul’s reactions to her, and plenty of RPG clichés.
Visuals Yu-Sibu begins with an excellent looking action sequence that masks the real nature of the series and although the overall quality does take a bit of a drop after this sequence, Yu-Sibu still remains an excellent looking series. The background scenery throughout the series is quite impressive and although there are times that characters might look a bit strange while idle or at mid-range, detailed character design and the use of vivid colors makes each character stand out.
One thing that Yu-Sibu has plenty of it is fan-service. One of the first discoveries that Raul makes about Fino is that she is a girl, which happens after he unzips her top only for a pair of bouncing breasts to pop out. There are plenty of doses of fan-service scattered throughout the series with nearly every named female character being naked at some point in time, though Fino is generally the one exposed thanks to her air-headed nature. Thanks to the design of the characters and the way that the fan-service is handled, anyone who enjoys panty shots or exposed breasts will find plenty in Yu-Sibu.
Audio Sentai Filmworks’ release of Yu-Sibu comes with only the original Japanese voice track and while this is a bit unfortunate for those who would have preferred a dub, the Japanese voice actors do a great job here. Especially since one of my favorite things throughout the entire series happened to be Fino’s amazing sounding laughter.
The background music throughout the series is fairly standard and unfortunately does little to stand out. One thing that is inserted often into the background is the ending theme “Sticking Places” by Sphere as they are inserted into the title as an idol group. This ending theme is fitting for the series but doesn’t really stand out while the opening theme “Extra Revolution” by ZAQ is a memorable little song that not only fits but is paired with some goofy but fun animation.
Extras As for the release of Yu-Sibu, Sentai Filmworks has included the standard extras that are clean versions of the opening and ending theme, disc credits, trailers for other Sentai Filmworks releases, and the OVA which is counted as episode 13. This OVA features Raul’s sister coming to visit him while he puts on an elaborate ruse to try and convince her that he is still a hero, which ends up devolving into plenty of comedic and fan-service heavy moments.
Overall Yu-Sibu: I Couldn’t Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job may not have the most original concept but it is still an enjoyable workplace comedy with tons of great humor set in an interesting world. It is thanks to Fino’s delightful personality and over exuberance that everything works so well in the series as she is a perfect fit with Raul as these two failures come together in a series that is full of silly comedy and a few serious moments and is far better than its extremely long name might let on.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
With Sekai Project becoming a very familiar name for visual novel fans, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that they have recently announced that they are now in the process of planning the localization for Alice in Dissonance’s fault milestone two on PC.
The company had just recently released the first milestone (episode) on Steam back on December 15th and although the first episode did have its faults, we mentioned that there is potential to be tapped in subsequent episodes so it will certainly be interesting to see how the story will go from here, especially since the image for fault milestone two, shown to the right, hints at an event near the end of milestone one. You can read our full review for fault milestone one here.
While fans of the series wait for fault milestone two, they can also keep an eye out for the eventual PS Vita and Android port for milestone one which was funded back during milestone one’s Kickstarter, though at the moment no exact release date for these ports have been announced.
If the name Sakura Angels sounds familiar and the artwork in the image above is reminiscent of another title recently released through Steam and other marketplaces, then you likely are familiar with Winged Cloud’s other work, Sakura Spirit.
If you happened to like that fox girl filled title then you’ll be happy to hear that Sekai Project is helping Winged Cloud once again by adding Sakura Angels toSteam Greenlight. Currently no release date nor price has been announced for Sakura Angels but a trailer and a story summary for the game can be found below. Once it is released, Sakura Angels will be available for PC, Mac, and Linux.
Two girls, blessed with magical powers, are faced with the task of saving the lonely protagonist from the clutches of a mysterious witch and ancient evil, sealed away long ago by his ancestors. What does this sorceress want from our protagonist? Find out more in Sakura Angels!
Those of you hoping that Sen no Kiseki, the most recent game in The Legend of Heroes series of titles, would be localized may have some hope. After finding that Corpse Party: Blood Drive’s domain name was registered by XSEED, the Marvelous USA forum users also found that the company had registered a domain name under TrailsofColdSteel.com which doesn’t directly fit the Sen no Kiseki title which translates roughly to Trails of the Flash.
This would mean however that XSEED would be skipping over a few other titles in The Legend of Heroes series, Zero no Kiseki (Trails of Zero, Ao no Kiseki (Trails of Blue), and Nayuta no Kiseki (Trails of Nayuta) but Sen no Kiseki is not only the most recently released title (2013), it was also released for the PS Vita and PS3, making it the most likely title of the bunch.
Of course, as this hasn’t been confirmed this may simply be XSEED covering its bases or a new title completely unrelated to the Legend of Heroes series.
All it takes is someone to scratch the surface of a discovery before they find much more beneath that and that seems to be the case with XSEED‘s domain registrations. The members of Marvelous USA’s forum have found that a domain called CorpsePartyBloodDrive.comhas been registered by XSEED and considering that is the exact name of the PS Vita continuation of the Corpse Party series that XSEED Games has localized two titles of so far, it isn’t too much of a stretch to assume that this means that Corpse Party: Blood Drive will be heading West.
Of course this could simply be the company covering its bases, but with the horror title released in Japan back in mid-July we can only keep an eye out for an announcement.
It seems that XSEED Games is kicking off the new year by registering some domain names and thanks to this we have some hints as to what they may be announcing soon. First found by members of Marvelous USA’s forum, one of the domains registered by the company is LordofMagna.comwhich is an extremely close fit to the strategy RPGForbidden Magna that was released in Japan back in October by Marvelous.
The potential for a name change is very understandable and since the director of the game, Masahide Miyata, has worked on the Rune Factory games, there is a very good chance that XSEED will be making some sort of announcement for the title this year.
You can check out the videos below where you will not only see Ein, Mora, Al Azif, Ruili, and Saya in action but also a number of the partner characters. Currently this fighting game is only scheduled to be released in Japanese arcades sometime next year, though the chances of an eventual Japanese console release are quite high.
Overview In the past year Sekai Project has earned themselves quite a reputation as being a company willing to not only bring English speaking fans some of the highest demanded visual novels through Kickstarter but also help release a number of smaller visual novels that may have otherwise been overlooked. One of these visual novels happens to be fault by ‘ALICE IN DISSONANCE.’ So now that milestone one (episode one) of fault has been released, is this visual novel worth beginning?
Story The Kingdom of Rughzenhaide has come under attack by an unknown force. As the people are slaughtered by unknown Shadow Warriors, a couple members of the commanding force reach the location where Rughzenhaide’s princess, Selphine, is supposed to be hidden away. Unfortunately for them, the Princess’ royal guard Ritona is an incredibly skilled fighter capable of wielding powerful manakravte (magic) and when it becomes apparent that they are at a disadvantage, Ritona uses a risky technique to teleport both Princess Selphine and herself away.
With no knowledge of who laid waste to the kingdom, Ritona and Selphine find themselves in an unknown land as something went wrong with Ritona’s teleportation. The only thing they do know is that this strange land’s manastreams are not only small, they are also extremely difficult to access. With difficult access to their battlekravte (combat magic) and in an unknown place, the two will need to find their way home, but first they must find out where they are and how they can manage to survive in a land where the people have turned to science to make up for the lack of their mana.
Now although the basis of the story is obviously set around Ritona and Selphine, the focus quickly begins to shift away from their plight. You see, while the visual novel follows the pair as they explore a close city, quickly learn the language, find out where they are, as well as obtain some local currency, the core plot focuses on a strange new girl calling herself Rune. Rune offers the pair help navigating the city and although she may not have any underhanded motives, there is much more to Rune than she lets on and players will quickly recognize this as the story unfolds over what becomes an interesting and enjoyable read that is hurt by a drawn out narrative that takes forever to explain simplistic terms and events and a lack of focus.
Considering this is the first “milestone” in the series, it is good that the writers chose to spend a decent amount of time building the world and explaining certain aspects of how manakravting works and the various illnesses and threats that Ritona and Selphine will need to watch out for. That being said the title already offers an encyclopedia of basic terms and almost everything that is introduced is explained to an unnecessary level. This problem is worsened by the fact that the writers have an issue keeping a set perspective.
The story isn’t told through the eyes of any specific character and shifts from third person to first person rather often as we read what a character is thinking. Unfortunately more often than not, the narrative jumps so quickly between these forms and doesn’t properly label who is even supposed to be talking. While this is easy to figure out, the writing lacks focus. In fact this lack of focus is all the more apparent when it comes to the main storyline of Ritona and Selphine.
Although the beginning of fault -milestone one- is handled well enough, the main focus of the story is instead on Rune, the mysterious girl who first assists the pair. In fact, outside of the very beginning and the very end of milestone one, Ritona and Selphine’s story and what is happening to their kingdom takes a complete backseat to Rune’s backstory and who she is.
To make matters worse, although the world is developed and explained nicely, the characters themselves are as standard as they come and very stereotypical. Neither of the two main characters are given any meaningful development nor are we given a reason to care about them other than the fact that their kingdom is destroyed and they are stranded somewhere. Rune’s story makes us care about her and I will say that the writers have done a great job handling her past, even if it feels like the whole issue is resolved in a rather simple manner in order to wrap up the milestone with a cliffhanger that tries to swing the main story back into focus.
Gameplay Now although fault -milestone one- is a visual novel, it is a kinetic visual novel which means that there are no real player choices or different routes to be taken. There is a very specific story to be told here so far and although there is one choice, the only thing that changes is a little bit of dialogue and nothing else. Instead players will simply click through the story as one would any other visual novel, though you can make use of simple features such as auto advance or skip if you’ve already read the dialogue before.
One thing that is lacking however is a way to hide the text box, which isn’t too much of an issue as all of the CG in the game can later be viewed in a gallery but it is something that is strangely omitted. It is worth noting that if you so wish; you can change the text from English to Japanese.
Visuals & Audio For the most part, fault -milestone one- features some nice looking character portraits with most of the main characters featuring multiple portraits for different emotions. That being said, there are a number of character portraits for side characters, albeit ones that show up often, that have oddly proportioned heads and other strange looking features. The CGs are nicely designed and so are the backgrounds, though it must also be said that since the players only visit a few areas in milestone one, you will be spending a lot of time looking at the same backgrounds.
It is worth noting that fault -milestone one- does not feature any sort of voice work, which generally isn’t an issue but in the case of this visual novel it does make most of the drawn out dialogue boring to read through. As far as the background music is concerned, there are a number of different tracks that are nicely varied and fitting when they appear. The title also features a nice and fitting opening theme called “Modus Operandi” by Midorizaka Aaya.
Overall fault -milestone one- is off to a fairly decent start here as the writers have managed to build up a rather fascinating world, now they just need to try and make readers care about what will happen next to Ritona and Selphine because at this point, the only reason we would have to care about them is because they are interacting with Rune. With character designs ranging from decent looking to odd and a nice soundtrack, there is some potential in fault but whether or not they will be able to take advantage of everything they spent so much time building up and focusing on is yet to be seen.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
A microphone is built into the headset, allowing for communication on mobile devices, consoles, and computers without the need for a boom mic. The F.R.E.Q. 9 uses Digitally-controlled Active Noise Cancellation technology to keep background noises out and binaural monitoring to prevent players shouting into their microphone.
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