Kalypso Media has released a new trailer for their upcoming RTS title, Grand Ages: Medieval, today. The trailer is a look into an impressively large world, showcasing some of the terrain and natural disasters which can occur in-game. The in-game world looks beautiful, even in it’s early alpha status. The strategy game will be coming to PC, Mac, and Linux.
The game is an ambitious take on the RTS genre, offering players the ability to freely explore and develop their own Empire across a hugely sized Europe. Based on the features listed below, the game looks to be a more in-depth game than titles such as Civilization, focusing more on strategic placement of cities and trade routes across Europe.
Features:
Explore a gigantic game world of over 20 million square kilometers, plot strategically where to found important cities and defend your kingdom against foreign powers
Raise an army and fight your opponents with knights, archers and cavalry
Produce and trade 20 different goods to meet the demands of your citizens and soldiers: such as coal, fruits and pottery
Research and utilize 50 major technological advancement of the Middle Ages: including the three-field crop rotation, the low warp loom or the longbow
Face devastating natural disasters like storms, fires, volcanoes, droughts, earthquakes… or even the Black Death
Challenging Multiplayer Mode for up to 8 players via network and online
Warfare and technology trees also are to play a large role in the game, which takes place from the year 1050 A.D. onward. Players will start as a mayor of a small township, and progress to as large an empire as they are capable of building. The star of the new trailer is of course the large-scale recreation of Europe. We’ll certainly see if it can live up to the title of a “civilization simulator” once this game is launched in 2015, although Kalypso has had much luck with it’s “dictator simulator” series, Tropico.
A new website has been recently created for the next anime movie project done by acclaimed director Mamoru Hosoda, this is great news for fans as it will be the first film he’s done since Wolf Children.
The movie titled Bakemono no Ko or The Boy and the Beast, takes place in a world where a human realm and monster realm both exist, but don’t ever cross. When a human boy gets lost within the monster realm he is discovered by a monster called Kumatetsu and quickly becomes his disciple.
The front page of the official website shows the boy and Kumatetsu standing in front of a crowd, both wielding swords and bearing fierce expressions on their faces. The website also has a tab that features a 32 second long preview of the film which you can check out by clicking on the video down below. Hosoda plans on releasing The Boy and the Beast next year on the 11th of July, keep your eyes on this site for more information as it comes.
Wolf Children was released back in 2012, it was received with praise and got a North American release by Funimation.
Japanese scans always bring us the best news and it has now been confirmed that Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 will be releasing sometime in the next year. Details are slim at the moment but the game will include the mature Naruto from Naruto: The Last Movie as a playable character and the story will cover at least up to the end of the Ninja War. Expect a trailer at the upcoming Japanese Anime and Manga event Jump Festa or at least some off screen footage of the game as the scan indicates a demo will be present at the event which takes place on the 21st in Japan. There are a couple of screenshots in the scan and judging by how good the last few storm games looked on the last gen consoles, I think we are in for a visual treat with Storm 4.
Interestingly, the scan lists PlayStation 4 as the only console to be receiving the game but we expect more platforms to be announced in the future. The release date is listed as 2015 so we expect a September release which is common with the Naruto games. We will bring you more info as it comes but for now the first reveal scan is available below.
Platformers are the quintessential gaming genre which have survived from the earliest days of the medium in the classic video arcades. They’re a game type which is a staple amongst the bigger studios, but they are also making a splash in the indie scene. The games from these smaller developers are (generally) targeted towards an older audience who can take pleasure in the punishing difficulty curve they normally possess. Into this comes The Sun and Moon, which was the winner of a 48 hour game jam called Ludum Dare (Latin for “to give a game”) in April of this year. With this accolade behind it, I eagerly dove into the game to see these merits firsthand.
Story
You play as a living blob who traverses each level, collecting orbs spread about before exiting through a wormhole. There are also malevolent clouds which can chase you around a level, but their motivations (amongst other things) remain unknown. As you might be able to tell already, there is no story in this game (as far as I can tell). I generally do appreciate narratives in games, but I understand that a game such as this would be difficult to design a story for and so we move on…
Gameplay
Here we come to the meat of this title. The mechanics are fairly simple, almost deceptively so, as you are able to move left, right, and jump. Holding down a button adds to this plethora of options by allowing you to dive into normally solid objects. This also swaps the direction of gravity as you begin to fall up instead of down. Momentum as you move from one substance to another is maintained so you can fly up from below ground at speed to make really big and high jumps into the air. It kind of reminds me of a ping pong ball being pushed to the bottom of a container with water before flying up to the surface and into the air from buoyancy. The way the game simulates these forces feels very natural to me and I commend the developers for using the physics engine in such a creative manner.
The levels themselves are similarly interesting with plenty of opportunity for the player to practice lateral thinking as they attempt to figure out how to traverse the level. You have to avoid spinning blades and falling off the edge (or through the edge if you’re slow on letting go of the button), but death isn’t punished and you just immediately restart the level. The game rewards you for completing a level within a set time limit, but you can still clear a level by simply making it to the end. By clearing levels you unlock newer and more nefarious levels to play in, with some featuring some very clever designs which make great use of the game’s unique mechanic.
My one gripe is that it feels that the aforementioned mechanic is the game’s ONLY mechanic with which I have to contend. Theoretically, this means players can go about mastering and developing in-depth techniques for this one element but effectively I lost interest fairly early. Certainly, the levels make good use of this mechanic and there were many times when I was stumped for a solution (which shows that this game does provide a reasonable challenge). It was, nonetheless, difficult for me to build up the motivation to play this game. I found the gameplay to be too simplistic for my tastes and I felt increasingly disengaged as time went on. I imagine for some players, the desire to do better and achieve better times would be a significant motivator but it was not strong enough for me in this instance.
Visuals & Audio
The visuals are fairly minimalist with a high contrast between the player-character-blob and various objects within the environment so you can always see what hazards are around you. Across the various stages, there is little variation beyond the colour of the background and foreground (as far as I could tell). I’m not overly focused on aesthetics, but I do prefer my games to have a bit more visual candy.
The game soundtrack is actually quite enjoyable, but I think I may just have a special place in my heart for soft, eight-bit, synth-electro as it’s essentially just the same chords played again and again (with some variation amongst zones). Nonetheless, the sound design is as minimalist as the rest of the game.
Overall
I had a hard time enjoying the very restrained design of this game, which isn’t to suggest that I dislike games with a minimalist bent… but comparing my experience of this game to my experience with Deepest Dungeons of Doom, which was similarly toned down in its gameplay, and I find The Sun and Moon to be very shallow. I feel that not enough has been done to move this game beyond its ‘flash-game’ origins. There’s plenty of content, but the lack of any more polish means it quickly loses its appeal for me. I could see this game having an appeal in bite-sized play sessions, to help keep things fresh for longer, but it really wasn’t my kind of thing. I could not recommend this game for anyone who isn’t already a connoisseur of platformers and even then I could probably think of some other examples I had more fun with.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
It has been almost five years since the original Cities XLwas released. Since then, the franchise has been updated with Cities XL 2011 and Cities XL Platinum. Now, Focus Home Interactive is announcing a brand new chapter with Cities XXL.
Announced with a teaser trailer on YouTube, Cities XXL builds on the previous titles’ city building mechanics and adds improved Steam Workshop support, more than 70 new maps, region specific roads, over 1000 buildings, improved graphics, and new environmental options to help your city go green.
Cities XXL does not have a solid release date, but Focus Home Interactive hopes to have it released on PC sometime in Q1 2015.
This new trend of retro has brought back some useless things, like fedoras, gearless bicycles and sepia photo filtering. But every now and then, we get something good come back to the spotlight, like Queen, vintage cars and most importantly, classic games. Most of us having never stopped treasuring the games that we played as kids, whether it was a Gamecube or the first PlayStation. Nintendo has picked up on this and is bringing some really old styles to the Wii U with Life of Pixel.
Nintendo has already been going this for a while, bringing their old N64 games to the 3DS, with the next one being Zelda: Majora’s Mask. However, they are taking it a step further with Life of Pixel as it will be bring 8-bit back. So whether you are the generation who remembers them the first time round or the younger generation playing them for the first time, Life of Pixel is the game to discover (or rediscover).
Life of Pixel is an epic platform adventure game,with challenging gameplay, fun characters, stunning 8 & 16-bit graphics and a lot of heart. It follows the story of a little green pixel that was tried of being part of the crowd so set off on an adventure. This cute clever game sends you on a journey through video game history, as you have to collect bit-gems to unlock levels, each representing a different classic console from the early Atari 2600 to SNES and more. If you’re interested, but only go for PC games, Life of Pixel has already been release on Steam for a low pirce. Life of Pixel will show you the coolness of console video gaming and the history of where it all began and how it evolved.
Sony is expanding their business to the People’s Republic of China. After a 14 year ban on foreign consoles was officially lifted earlier this year, Chinese gamers will finally be able to get their hands on officially supported PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita units on January 11, 2015. The PlayStation 4 will cost 2,899 RMB and the PlayStation Vita will cost 1,299 RMB. Since this is an official launch, Sony will have an service network in place to service local PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita units.
Over 70 developers and publishers will be supporting the Chinese launch. Some developers are China-based teams, and others are big name multi-national brands like Ubisoft. Ubisoft has revealed a few of the titles they will be launching in China, including Trials Fusion and Rayman Legends.
Techland is rewarding players who pre-order their upcoming parkour based zombie FPSDying Lightwith some neat swag. Those who pre-order can register at the Weapons Dockets site to get a docket every week. Once Dying Lightlaunches, players can trade in these dockets at the quartermaster for top-tier weapons. This promotion will run for the next eight weeks leading up to the game’s launch, so those who pre-order early will get more weapons.
Dying Light is an open world action-survival FPS. Kyle Crane is sent to Harran, a city under quarantine after a zombie outbreak. Now he is trapped with factions fighting tooth and nail to survive the zombies and the power struggles between the survivors. Dying Light launches for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows on January 27, 2015 in North America, January 28th in Australia, and January 30th for the rest of the world.
Ready to start getting the most out of your Season Pass? Well, Activision have just the thing for you. If you own Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and own an Xbox One, you can now download the Havoc weapons pack, adding AE4 the directed energy assault rifle and its custom weapon variant, the AE4 Widowmaker, combine a versatile firing mechanism with all-around movement speed and handling.
Not too shabby at all for those looking to add some futuristic guns to their online or offline experience. You can watch the new trailer for the Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare DLC down below, and expect more content to be approaching in coming months.
Square Enix announced at the recent PlayStation Experience event that, in addition to porting the remastered version of Final Fantasy VII to the PS4, the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster will also be ported to the PS4. The games will be available digitally in Autumn 2015, with the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster also receiving a physical release. The Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, originally released on the PS3 and PS Vita, will feature system-exclusive features that have not yet been revealed.
Final Fantasy VII will be priced at $15.99, while the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster will be priced at $49.99. It is not clear if the $49.99 price tag is for the physical release as well as the digital release.
For more information about Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, visit this page. For more information about Final Fantasy VII, visit this page.
