The special 2015 double issue of Big Comic Spirits went on sale in Japan recently and within its pages was the debut of a new manga series created by the author of Ichi the Killer, Hideo Yamamoto.
The mangakas’ new title, Hikari Man, features a high school boy as the protagonist who loves to play games and possess a strange electrical ability.
Not only is the first chapter published in the double issue, but you can also read the first ten pages online through aspecial preview websitecreated by the magazine. The pages aren’t translated to English however there are enough illustrations to give you the basic idea of what is going on, each panel is wonderfully detailed and there is a great used of red on the forth page which makes the manga even more intriguing.
The last series Yamamoto created was Homunculus, which ended four years ago, although it didn’t get a North American release, his previous works Voyeur and Voyeurs Inc were both published by Viz Media in the US. Check out the first chapter and leave a comment down below telling us what you think about Hikari-Man.
Ubisoft announced the Assassin’s Creed Roguepack for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Phantoms. The pack contains Assassin’s Creed Rogue themed items for all three classes. Players will get helmets, tactical suits, and six weapons. Ubisoft released a giant infographic featuring all of the equipment in the pack.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Phantoms is a free to play third person tactical shooter. The game can be downloaded on Steam for Windows PCs.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue bridges the American-based Assassin’s Creed titles with the brand new Assassin’s Creed Unity set in France. Assassin’s Creed Rogue is available now for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A PC port will be released in 2015.
Rogue Factor released a major content patch for their strategy RPG game Mordheim: City of the Damned. The content update introduces The Sisters of Sigmar, who are joining The Mercenaries of the Empire and The Skaven of Clan Eshin as playable factions. The Cult of the Possessed will be the next faction to be added in the next content patch. Additionally, the patch introduces the Warcamp hub to manage units and equipment customization.
The city of Mordheim is full of warring factions trying to control the Wyrdstone fragments that litter the city after a twin tailed comet crashed. Players will need to carefully manage their units, as injuries and death are permanent. Mordheim: City of the Damned is based on the Warhammer franchise from Games Workshop. It is currently part of Steam Early Access while in beta testing.
I am just about the least coordinated person I know and have close to zero talent for shaking my hips, so I usually steer clear of dance games (or motion games in general). With that in mind, I picked up Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved not knowing what to expect, but I can happily say that I was pleasently surprised. In lieu of traditional dance-based gameplay, Fantasia ops for a slower, more methodical conductor’s roll of the music which is a surprisingly fun take on the formula.
Gameplay
As you have probably guessed, Fantasia: Music Evolved is very much a Kinect game. In fact, after you have set up the screen brightness you don’t use your controller at all. You point your arms in different directions to navigate menus, and the entire game is played with only a few simple hand movements in front of the screen.
The goal of the game is to conduct your way through a series of classic and modern pop tunes. Where as other games will require precise movements and perfect timing, Fantasia is a little more lax. The whole game only comes down to swiping in a direction or punching forwards (and sometimes even a mixture of the two). The simple controls mean that anyone can get in and have a go without the fear of making a fool out of yourself. Not only that, but the game gives you ample warning as to which movement you should be making, and when you should make it.
There is also no hard and fast rule about which hands you should be performing which movement with, or where on the screen you need to be aiming. The game is very accessible and while it gives you visual cues and suggestions, really it is up to you. Just because an icon appears in front of your right hand, doesn’t mean you need to use your right hand to make the movement.
Relying so heavily on the Kinect is a bit of a drawback however, as despite how good the device is, it is by no means perfect. There were times when playing that the game would fail to recognise a movement or a punch and I would be penalised for it by losing my hit-streak or in some cases failing to hit the score multiplier at the right time. In any game control problems can weigh down, but here they were especially notable. Luckily for the most part the game just runs smoothly.
One of the cooler things you can do is remix songs on the fly. After attaining a certain amount of points in a given song, you are given the option to change which instruments play the tune. So you can be conducting along to Lorde’s Royals before switching it up and exchanging the modern instruments for some sweet jazz-inspired brass instruments. Changing up the tune also increases your score multiplier. At the end, you can save your remixed track and share them online for others to enjoy.
What most impressed me with Fantasia was that at every point in the game I felt like I was in control. Interacting with the music, the menus and just about everything else gave this sense of magic and power. A lot of this boils down to how the Kinect integration works, and even though it falters at times it is for the most part fluid and responsive.
Visuals & Audio
Visually, Fantasia is very minimalistic, setting the player against dark-coloured backdrops so that they aren’t distracted by things off in the distance. This works incredibly well, as when playing I never even cared about what was going on behind the music and the colours. When you play through the game’s campaign, each “world” has a different backdrop that fits the tone and theme. Even these are unobtrusive and just fill out the blank spaces in the background.
As for voice work, there are only three characters in the whole game that speak – the narrator, Yen Sid, and his apprentice Scout. Yen Sid is one of the older characters in Disney’s catalogue, so it is good to see him again outside of Kingdom Hearts. Sid is a mentor to the player and is voiced powerfully by Corey Burton who reprises his role from the Kingdom Hearts series (although, I will admit that his Yen Sid sounds pretty much identical to his Clone Wars Count Dooku, so if you are a fan of that series it might be hard to reconcile his voice as anything but a villain).
As for the music itself, it was a little jarring for me for a game called Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved to not actually feature any Disney tunes. Instead the game uses a mix of classic rock (like Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody or Jimi Hendrix’s Fire) and modern pop music (like Imagine Dragons’ Radioactive or Niki Minaj’s Super Bass), which I believe is a missed opportunity. By no means are the songs bad, and if I’m completely honest you could make a pretty killer playlist out of the included songs, but I would have liked to see some of the Disney Classic tunes here. Things like Prince Ali, Can’t Wait to be King or even Do You Want to Build a Snowman would have been amazing to conduct and possibly open the game up to a larger audience.
Overall
When it is all said and done, Fantasia: Music Evolved is a fun and interesting take on the music and motion game genre. Instead of requiring precise dance moves or pitch-perfect singing, Fantasia’s slower-paced, conducting mechanics mean that someone as uncoordinated as I can get in on the fun and have a great time. The lack of Disney-themed music is a little jarring for a game that prides itself on being a Disney property. Regardless, the magic and wonder of Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 is very much present here and despite its flaws it is a genuinely fun experience.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
While there are always plenty of more serious fighting games out there, it seems that “waifu” style fighting games have been on the rise and it looks like Nitroplus and Examu are ready to bring another one of these anime fighting games to arcades.
Examu, the developer behind the Arcana Heart and Aquapazza titles, is going to bring “Nitroplus Blasters: Heroine Infinite Duel” to Japanese arcades in 2015 and it will feature characters from many of Nitroplus’ titles. The game will feature a system that will allow players to choose two partner characters that will provide assist attacks and change up combo attacks depending on the combination.
So far a couple of scans and some screenshots for Nitroplus Blasters: Heroine Infinite Duel have been released and you can check those out below. As for the current roster, the announced characters include Saber from Fate/Zero, Nitroplus’ mascot character Super Sonico, Sansei Muramasa from Full Metal Daemon: Muramasa, Ein from Phantom of the Inferno, and Mora from Vampirdzhija Vjedogonia as playable characters. The current partner characters are Spica from Star Mine Girl, Natsumi Aihara from Hello World, and Dragon from Dra+Koi.
It seems that the most recent Deception game, Deception IV: Blood Ties, did so well that we won’t have to wait a decade this time for the next game to be released. From a quote in the special issue of Dengeki PlayStation Koei Tecmo‘s Keisuke Kikuchi, the producer for Deception, has revealed that a new game is in the works.
“We’re currently well into the development of a new title in the Deception series. We’re currently preparing to make an announcement for it soon.”
The most recent trap oriented title was released earlier this year in North America for the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita so it will be interesting to see where the series will go from here. Of course given Koei Tecmo’s recent habits, it might be Deception IV Plus for the PlayStation 4.
From this week’s special 20th anniversary PlayStation edition of Dengeki PlayStation, a number of quotes from various developers were included in the publication. One such quote happened to from the creator of Drakengard and Neir, Taro Yoko. Since finishing Drakengard 3 for the PlayStation 3 he has been working as a freelance developer and now he has stated that he is working on a new title.
As for what game he is working on, he couldn’t go into detail as he said “If I talk about the new title now, I’ll get killed by all kinds of people, so let’s just keep it a secret for now.” Considering the quote is in Dengeki PlayStation, it will likely be for a Sony platform but of course at this moment all we can do is wait for more info to be revealed in the future.
The first piece of story-based DLC for Sunset Overdrive has been revealed by Microsoft and Insomniac Games and it happens to take place on a “floating playground” called the Mooil Rig. This rig is stationed just off the shores of Sunset City and when a distress signal comes from the rig, the player must go and investigate only to find themselves stuck in the middle of a violent turf war between the well-armed workers on the rig and the aquatic mutants rampaging throughout the area.
This DLC not only adds a number of new missions, quests, challenges, weapons, traps, amps, and Chaos Squad objects but it will also include two new travel methods. Water Dive, the ability to dive underwater, and Water Slam Bounce, an ability that allows players to smash into the water and then fly up into the air.
This DLC will be released on December 23rd where it can be purchased for either $9.99 or it will be included in the Season Pass that can be purchased for $19.99 where it will come with additional DLC in the future and previously released weapon packs.
Siren Visual has just announced a release date for their DVD release of Queen’s Blade: Beautiful Warriors. The six-episode OVA series, taking place chronologically between the first and second seasons, will be released on February 20, 2015. The set will contain the textless opening and closing animation and feature dual audio. A Blu-ray release for the series has not yet been announced.
Siren Visual provided a synopsis of the OVAs:
The Queen’s Blade tournament may be over, but the stories of the contestants have barely begun. Unaware that fate is already conspiring to pit many of them against each other in the arena of war, the sword maidens scatter across the lands in search of fame, fortune, and adventure.
For some that comes sooner than expected, as Leina finds herself drawn to aid her sister, Elina, who’s been captured by Echidna. Tortured by the Swamp Witch, Melona focuses her anger on the absent Airi and plots an insidious revenge. But when confronted with their common enemies, how long can it be until they both seek to reunite with Menace?
And if that’s not enough trouble to be forming on the horizon, Nanael manages to get herself banished from Heaven and her goal of forming a harem of servants for herself proves to be anything but angelic.
Finally, to provide the beasts to go along with the beauties, both Alleyene and Nowa and Tomoe and Aldra each find their separate journeys marred by encounters with different forms of tentacled monsters!
Time to stop grinding and head back into the wild frontier that is outer space. Bungie and Activision have proudly announced the release of The Dark Below, the first of presumably many major content expansions for their hit MMO/FPS Destiny. Destiny: The Dark Below adds new content to just about every facet of the Destiny experience, including:
New Loot – Earn new weapons, armour, and gear, including new Legendary and Exotic items.
Level Increase – Raise your Light Level to 32
New Story Missions and Quests – Journey through new Hive-themed story missions and quests where you are tasked with stopping the resurrection of an ancient god, Crota
New cooperative Strike – The Will of Crota, pits you and your Fireteam against Omnigul as she works to expand the Hive army at the command of her master, Crota
New six-player Raid – Assemble your six-player Fireteam to attempt Crota’s End, set deep within the depths of the Hellmouth with all-new gameplay mechanics and enemy bosses
New competitive multiplayer arenas:
Pantheon – Set in an ancient Vex temple inside the Black Garden that features Vex-designed landscapes and tight corridors
Skyshock – An old interplanetary defense array that offers engagements for both vehicle and infantry
The Cauldron – An abandoned Hive ritual site that offers close-quarter combat
New EV-30 Tumbler Sparrow – Players that purchase and redeem the Destiny Expansion Pass or Destiny Expansion I: The Dark Below by January 15, 2015 will receive the EV-30 Tumbler Sparrow, enabling its riders to drive fast, take flight, and perform a set of mid-air tricks
PlayStation Exclusive Content – PlayStation players will also get access to an exclusive cooperative Strike, TheUndying Mind, and exclusive exotic weapon, The 4th Horseman shotgun
So that is a TONNE of content. Players can grab The Dark Below content for $24.95, or as part of the Destiny Expansion Pass which will include the next expansion, for a discounted $39.95. Will you be playing through all of the new Destiny content? Let us know in the comments below and make sure you check out our review of the base game if you haven’t already.
