The creeping chaos that always crawls up to you with a smile has returned once more in North America as NIS America has just released the second season of Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! on Blu-ray. The series has been given the classic premium edition treatment that includes a fully illustrated hardcover art book as well as an oversized chipboard slipcase.
Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! Second Season continues to follow Mahiro who now shares a house with Nyaruko, Kuko, and Hasuta, all of whom are aliens named after the nightmares from H.P. Lovecraft. While the first season saw the group face off against numerous strange creatures, this second season features even more odd monsters and even a person from Kuko’s appears to cause trouble. Those interested in seeing what we thought of the first season can check out our review here.
About a year and a half ago NIS America announced the acquisition of the poorly named Genshiken Second Season and now the company has a release date for the title which has also been given a more fitting title of Genshiken Second Generation.
Genshiken Second Generation will be released in North America on February 3, 2015 and will be given a premium edition that includes a sixty four page hardcover art book featuring episode guides, character info, and more, the series itself and sixteen minutes of bonus shorts included on two Blu-ray discs all contained in a chipboard slipcase.
For those unfamiliar with the series, NIS America has provided the below plot synopsis:
It’s a new semester at Shiiou University, and for “The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture,” AKA Genshiken, that can only mean one thing—new freshman recruits! Originally founded as a club for otaku to discuss their unabashed love of anime, manga, and video games with one another, the current president of Genshiken, Chika Ogiue, may have bitten off more than she can chew by recruiting a bunch of yaoi-obsessed fujoshis, a.k.a. “rotten girls,” to join their ranks! Meanwhile, the original members of Genshiken who have since graduated find themselves coming to terms with their new lives as productive members of society.
Those of you who have had itchy trigger fingers ever since the last iteration of Activision‘s Call of Duty failed to impress have probably already run out to the store to pick up the newest game in the series, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. For those who haven’t, well now you know that the game is available worldwide.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has been in development for three years and now features an exoskeleton in an attempt to revolutionize the series by providing players the ability to boost, double jump, dodge, and make use of various special abilities provided to them by their exo suits. Using the power of futuristic weaponry, players will take part in a story where PMCs wield more power than most countries and soldiers fight not for patriotism, but for money.
With Tales of Hearts R set to be released next week on November 11th in North America and November 14th in Europe, Bandai Nacmo has released a handful of new screenshots for the game that focus on showing off the “Spiria Nexus.”
In Tales of Hearts R, Spiria is an essence that governs a person’s soul and when the epidemic called “Despir” spreads across the land, the only way to get rid of it is for a “Somatic” to purify the core. This is accomplished by performing a “Spiria Link” and entering the nexus which is made up of a person’s Spiria where they must battle difficult enemies in order to reach the core.
Overview In a world where most video games come in different shades of gray and brown, only certain titles try and stand out from the rest by taking advantage of a varied color palette. While most of these titles happen to be developed by Japanese studios, occasionally a Western developer will try something different. In the case of Insomniac Games, they have a bit of history when it comes to making unique games and now that Sunset Overdrive has been released, is it worth picking up?
Story When a game begins with saying that the player is “Totally Screwed” you know you are in for a different experience. In the world of Sunset Overdrive a megacorporation with enough power to silence an entire city has created a brand new energy drink called OverCharge Delirium XT and the player happens to be working as a member of the clean-up crew during the early launch of the drink in Sunset City.
The rave party seems to be a big hit but quickly turns into a riot as those who started to drink the new OverCharge have mutated into strange creatures that are dubbed the OD. These mutants are out for blood and will kill anyone they come across, including the player who must run, grind, and bounce all the way back to their apartment to hide before joining a group of survivors who are trying to escape the city.
While the base storyline may have a few serious sounding tones to it, Sunset Overdrive is about as far from serious as you can get. Instead what players will find is a game that offers a crazy over the top experience with numerous jokes, references, self-aware ribbing, and fourth wall shattering moments. The humor may be a bit hit and miss for those who don’t like zany games but for those who do you will be in for quite a treat as this game is about as rapid fire as it comes with its comedy.
Everything in Sunset Overdrive is a joke of some kind, including the design and names of weaponry, the collectibles you gather throughout the city, almost every sidequest you go on and, and even the respawn animations make for a great time at almost every moment. However there is just so much going on at times that it can be a bit off-putting, as too much of a good thing is also a bad thing and there are moments that the writers feel like they are trying too hard to make something funny only to fail.
Gameplay The “awesomepocalypse” that occurs in Sunset Overdrive is all about making sure that the player has the time of their life, as emphasized by the fact that almost every survivor you come across is enjoying the new freedom the OD outbreak has caused. This means that Insomniac Games has created a number of fun systems to take advantage of and numerous ways to dispatch not only the OD enemies that appear, but humans and robots as well.
While players can obtain simpler weapons such as a revolver and assault rifle, most of what Sunset Overdrive has to offer comes in the form of weapons that shoot exploding teddy bears (or kitties at one point), guns that fire ricocheting records, flaming bowling balls and more, all giving players a chance to take out opponents however they wish. To top that off these weapons all have various effectiveness levels against types of enemies and players can continue to add abilities to their weaponry by leveling it up (by killing enemies) and equipping “Amps.”
These Amps are various combat abilities that can be equipped to weapons to add various status effects to weapons and much zanier options and even enhance their other abilities. These Amps are activated whenever the player plays with “style.” By performing various acts such as grinding rails, bouncing on cars, or generally making use of the game’s impressive free roam parkour you will raise your Style gauge which unlocks the power of your Amps.
This system is designed to make sure that players are always on the move, which is essential and quite easy to pull off in Sunset Overdrive as the city is lousy with rails and cables to grind and hang on and various objects that can be bounced on. Killing enemies while performing these acts also increases your Style gauge and considering a number of enemies can easily pick off slow moving players. This creates a chaotic atmosphere that is as intense as you can imagine, with the player running on the side of a wall to leap off and grind on a rail before jumping to a lamp post to swing onto a cable to hang from using a crowbar, all while shooting enemies.
The chaotic atmosphere does do a number on how easy it is for players to grasp the navigation system though. Since there are so many objects in any given area and numerous actions are performed with the same button, there will be many times where your character will perform the wrong action which can be frustrating during challenges and whenever you are trying to collect an item. That being said, the game does reward the player with little tokens whenever they perform certain actions such as wall running, bouncing, killing certain types of enemies, etc. which can then be used to unlock “Overdrive” upgrades that help boost the effectiveness of the player’s equipment and parkour moves.
Although this makes it sound like aiming would be a major problem, thankfully Insomniac has included a very simple lock on system that allows the player to hit enemies by simply pointing the camera at them and allowing the targeting reticle to pull up. This may be a bit simple for some but it is honestly the best way this system could have been handled considering how fast things unfold.
Being an open world game, Sunset Overdrive offers collectibles to gather as well as side-quests and challenges to complete. The fun thing is that these missions all have their own style added in and actually have a purpose. Gathering toilet paper from a lamp post or stinky sneakers from cables may seem useless, but they can then be used to turn into Amps for ridiculous reasons and make gathering these items something worthwhile rather than simply gathering trash.
When you want to try out the online mode, players can access the “Chaos Squad” mode at various locations in the city. This mode puts the player with a number of other players as they take part in various co-op missions throughout the city, voting on which missions they wish to do next and building up a Chaos meter which determines how many enemies they will have to face off against in the Night Defense mission that are as fun as they are chaotic as the OD enemies put up quite a fight, requiring intelligent use of traps and player communication. As an added touch, everything unlocked online can be taken into the single player mode and vice versa.
Visuals & Audio Rarely do larger titles take advantage of colors that aren’t shades of gray and brown and Sunset Overdrive benefits greatly thanks to its vivid color scheme. Sunset City is designed using vibrant colors and polished to such an extent that everything looks cartoonish but believable. As for the player, customization is everything in Sunset Overdrive and at any time players can change the gender, body type, face, and clothing of their character with a wide range of outlandish looking clothing available in the game letting players be whoever they want to be.
As for the voice acting, thanks to the comedic over the top nature of the game most of the voice acting comes in the form of yelling but it never really becomes too much. When the characters aren’t yelling at the screen, they are voiced suitably well with the player character making numerous comedic quips throughout the game.
Overall Sunset Overdrive is the type of action game we rarely see nowadays. With its vibrant color palette, an in your face sense of humor, and mostly fantastic gameplay there is much to love in this game that allows players to run rampant throughout a city infested with energy drink filled mutants. There are still a few flaws here and there and the attempts to stretch the comedic aspect do fall flat at times, but they do little to hamper the fun you will have in Sunset City.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Time to rejoice my fellow Sims players, as finally EA and Maxis have released a patch that brings back one of the most popular Sims features that was missing from The Sims 4 – pools. You read correctly, the next time you load up your game you will be able to deck your Sim out in swimwear and then build an impressive array of pools and water features for them to exercise, relax or just host a party in!
The new pools addition is a free patch that will be added to your game the next time you load it up, but if you need a bit of an advanced look at them in action, then check out the new trailer below. The reintroduction of pools adds a lot to an already jam packed game, so make sure you check it out and remember to stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the latest Sims news as it becomes available.
Flying Wild Hog are no strangers to the FPS genre and last year they brought one of 3D Realm’s old classics; Shadow Warrior back to life with a new coat of paint, and we really enjoyed our time with it. Well now all of the politically incorrect humor, demons and first person swordplay has made its way to consoles. While it isn’t a perfect game, it is a great throwback to a bygone era of gaming that we seldom see these days.
Story
Players take on the role of Lo Wang, a modern-day “shogun” working for Zilla Enterprises. Wang is an over the top, comic book collecting, utter jerk of a character who doesn’t even try to endear himself to those around him (or the player for that matter).
The plot of Shadow Warrior feels very much like it was lifted straight from a 1980s B-movie and features rival corporations, demons and a magical sword; The Nobisura Kage. Wang is joined by a wise-cracking demon Hoji, who is seeking the sword and grants him with a series of mystical powers to help him on his journey.
While the plot is pretty lackluster, the writing was surprisingly refreshing and fun. Wang’s “I don’t give a shit,” attitude to everything leads to some genuinely funny moments, and the fact that the game isn’t at all apologetic about its almost racist humor helps it stand apart from many other games who may not be brave (or stupid, depending on how you look at it) enough to toe the line with this style of humor. Although the humor and racial stereotypes are definitely toned down from the original 90s game.
Gameplay
Shadow Warrior is, putting it simply an old-school style FPS. Faster paced and a little harder than many gamers would have seen in some time. For those of you expecting to just pick up the game and play “Call of Duty with a sword,” will be in for a real shock. The first thing that I really noticed (and loved) was that your health doesn’t regenerate, relying the player on the old fashioned health packs to replenish their HP. This turns your health into a valuable, and limited resource so you can’t just go in guns blazing and then hide until your health bar replenishes. Careful shots and strategy is definitely important here. The controls feel really good on console and the only issue I had with my playthrough was getting used to the over-sensitive look/aim controls. These can be toned down in the settings but even at their lowest it felt like I was moving way too fast.
Another major departure from newer games is the fact that there is no effective way to zoom. Holding down the fire button half way allows you to look down the sights of your gun and while it is definitely a useful tool, it doesn’t provide any cross-hairs or much of a zoom at all. There are a tonne of different weapons available to the player, and each offers its own strengths and weaknesses.
While gunplay is a valuable part of the Shadow Warrior experience, the game is centered strongly around the katana. slashing, comboing and slicing enemy limbs clean off their body make up the core gameplay. Despite the katana’s versatility it is important for players to balance using it with the guns in the game and to know when each weapon is most viable. The katana really helps Shadow Warrior feel different from other FPS titles.
The last, vital part of the Shadow Warrior gameplay is the ability to cast spells. Once you have progressed far enough into the story that you join up with Hoji, you are given the chance to unlock a few spells (with more becoming unlocked as you go through the game). These spells do a variety of things but are almost always combat centred. That it is why it is a little annoying that you have to stop what you’re doing and perform a Street Fighter-esq combo just to charge up your attack strength. The fact that Shadow Warrior wants you to be always moving and avoiding damage makes it cointer-intuitive to stop in your tracks for a temporary buff or one-off attack.
I should also mention that the console release of Shadow Warrior includes all the previous Limited Edition content as well as all the DLC and expansion packs from the PC release. That means you can just charge your way through the game’s arena mode (basically, horde mode) and special guest weapons like the sledgehammer from Serious Sam 3.
Audio & Visuals
I was pleasantly surprised with how Shadow Warrior looks. I was expecting a game that barely deserved to be on the next-gen consoles, but instead I got a really nice looking title. FPS games are usually filled with drab greys and browns, so the brightly coloured backdrops in Shadow Warrior are a nice change of pace. You can really feel the inspiration of Kill Bill and older popcorn samurai flicks on the landscape and the enemy selection throughout the game.
Wang’s katana, can do some seriously gnarly things to enemies – including a LOT of decapitating. Arms, Legs and heads are removed from their bodies as you swing around your blade, and the act also causes the walls and floor to be coated in blood. The game almost borders on Tarantino-style over the top violence and it really works for the tone and setting.
The Audio work is just as pronounced and the voice actors do a terrific job, even if their Asian accents are enough to make you stop and wonder if they are parodying Asian film dubs. While most games will reuse dialogue over and over again, Wang seemed to have a different, snappy comeback for each situation in the game.
Overall
I don’t normally play FPS games, and I didn’t really grow up with Shadow Warrior (Duke Nukem was more my style) but I actually had a lot of fun with this new version of an old classic. The throwback to old kung-fu flicks, mixed with a dash of Tarantino really made for an enjoyable albeit short experience. The gameplay itself feels like a love letter to a bygone era of gaming and Flying Wild Hog have done a great job resurrecting a franchise that was long since thought dead.
In celebration of the upcoming enhanced versions of Grand Theft Auto V, coming to the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 in two weeks, and PC on January 27, Rockstar have collaborated with Mass Appeal Records to release limited edition CD and Vinyl soundtrack collections.
The Music of Grand Theft Auto V limited edition collections include 59 songs featured in the game, including original tracks from A$AP Rocky, ‘Tyler, The Creator’, Twin Shadow, Wavves, Flying Lotus, Yeasayer and more. Additionally, the original score composed by Tangerine Dream, Woody Jackson, The Alchemist + Oh No, and mixed by DJ Shadow, will also be included, along with other great music found on the GTA V radio stations. The vinyl collection will hold a total of six vinyl records, a full color booklet and an exclusive lithograph poster in a classic box-set. The CD collection includes three discs along with a branded Grand Theft Auto V gold brick-shaped USB Drive, artwork and poster all sealed in a special die-cut package.
Each edition will be limited to a production run of under 5,000 units worldwide, so come December 9 at top online and physical record stores, you better secure your copy fast. On a related note, for those who are unaware, adding to the enhanced content of the re-release of GTA V, multiple DJs from the game are recording new radio content for their respective stations, including Big Boy, DJ Pooh, Nathan and Stephen from WAVVES, Kenny Loggins, Twin Shadow and Cara Delevingne as well as a few of the dial’s biggest chatterboxes – Dr. Ray De Angelo Harris and Duane Earl.
Ubisoft have netted a massive name in the music world to compose the soundtrack for Far Cry 4; that man is Cliff Martinez, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer as a former member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and film composer on Traffic, Contagion, Drive, Only God Forgives, Spring Breakers and more.
Cliff worked closely with Ubisoft Montreal’s own Music Designer Jerome Angelot, as well as their Music Supervisor Simon Landry and Audio Director Tony Gronick, to bring the world of Kyrat to life, along with its crazy, insane, eclectic inhabitants. The dichotomy and contrast of ruthlessness and beauty in the land is something the team needed to highlight and get just right, as a glue for the entire experience. Gronick and Martinez made the following comments about the process;
Bringing Cliff on board was a no-brainer. Collaborating with him was a dream. He has the remarkable ability to portray compelling emotions and elevate the mundane into extraordinary with his musical talent. Cliff delivered everything I hoped for. I’m so proud of the music in Far Cry 4 and am thankful for the opportunity to work with him. – Gronick
It was an honor to be asked to write the music for the Far Cry 4 game as my first full-length video game soundtrack. It was exciting for me to be asked to take my usual minimalistic cinematic approach to the immersive game world. Any game where you can ride on a rampaging elephant is a project you can’t turn down!– Martinez
The Far Cry 4 Original Game Soundtrack digital edition will be available worldwide on November 4; the limited 2 CD edition will release on December 2 in North America and on December 9 in Europe; finally, the limited 3 LP edition will release in January 2015. The game itself will launch November 18 in the U.S. and on November 20 in PAL regions for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC.
Have you beaten Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and am looking at something different to do in your next play-through? Well 2K Games have you covered with the newest update, that lets you play as the main man himself; Handsome Jack… Sort of. The new Handsome Jack Doppelganger character is ready to jump into the action and can summon additional Digi Jacks that grant bonuses while in Fight for your life and gains bonuses for every dollar he collects.
The Handsome Jack Doppelganger pack will be available from November 11th, and those of you who own the Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel season pass will be able to download the Handsome Jack Doppelganger pack for free, while the rest of us can shell out $9.99 for the extra character. Are you bad-ass enough to play as the main man himself? Let us know in the comments below and make sure you stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the awesome Borderlands news as it becomes available.
