The commented solo demo below shows an early story mission, tasking player protagonist Arno with assassinating a Templar with strong economic connections named Sivert. Demonstrated is the open approach to mission design that the development team at Ubisoft Montreal has taken with this instalment, as the player is given the freedom to tackle their objective in any way they see fit. The video also highlights the beautifully recreated Notre-Dame cathedral, built to scale.
Assassin’s Creed Unity Gamescom 2014 Commented Solo Demo
Assassin’s Creed Unity releases worldwide on October 28 for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
2014 must be the year of the turtle! (yes I know it is actually the year of the horse). Not only is Paramount Pictures’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set to release next month, but a week later on September 17th fans will be able to buy a brand new documentary: Turtle Power, that details the history of the franchise.
We have a little snippet of the documentary below that shows some of the key players in the creation of the Turtle’s franchise discuss their role in the worldwide phenomenon. Check out the video and let us know in the comments below whether or not you are going to be picking this one up. As always, make sure you stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the TMNT news as it becomes available.
At Gamescom, Ubisoft has revealed first gameplay of the last-gen only Assassin’s Creed: Rogue, coming out November 11, 2014. Rogue expands upon the already great naval gameplay found in Black Flag, while also providing new weapons for on-foot combat.
Directly below is the ‘River Valley’ demo, showing Shay’s templar arsenal in action as he utilises his air rifle and poison gas in clearing out a gang headquarters. Embedded at the very bottom of this article is the ‘Arctic Naval’ demo, showcasing the Morrigan’s – Shay’s ship – upgraded ability to ram through ice sheets, shoot an early version of the machine gun and lay down burning oil behind it for pursuing enemies.
With less than a month before its release, people everywhere are gearing up for Paramount Pictures’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. To keep us excited we have been given moving posters, trailers, and even music videos. Now, as if that weren’t enough, now we have a brand new browser-based game for players to get addicted to.
Teenage Mutant Turtles: Demolition Dojo will have you clicking away at Foot Soldiers in a shooting-gallery style mini-game. Simple, yet addictive this will surely keep people entertained for hours while they tick down the clock for the film’s release. To get in on the action, click hereto be taken to the game.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be making their way to the silver screen from September 11th, so make sure you stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the awesome turtles news as it becomes available.
Trion Worlds have declared that their MMO crossover of Syfy’s hit series, Defiance, is now free-to-play on Playstation 3; alongside the already free PC version and upcoming one for Xbox 360. To celebrate the second season of the show, Trion has rolled out a ton of new content to players, including new missions, enemies and regions for the co-op shooter.
Check out all the action below, in the latest NSFW trailer for Defiance.
For players who purchase a new box or digital copy of Defiance are granted the following bonuses:
A grant of 1,000 Arkforge, an in-game currency redeemable for resetting weapon mastery, upgrading a weapon’s power rating or even bumping an uncommon weapon to epic rarity.
4 Character Slots, 5 Loadouts, up to 75 Ark Keycodes and a minimum 70 Inventory Slots.
30 days of Paradise Patron status: boosts to skill, XP, scrip, salvage and reputation gain rates that stack with the matching boosts, a 10% store-wide discount and choice of one-hour boosts or Arkforge from Daily and Weekly Ark Hunter Bonus Lock Boxes.
Don’t miss out on this amazing deal and be sure to join the battle of Defiance online!
Naruto’s former enemy turned ally Gaara, the Fifth Kazekage of the Sand will be receiving a much anticipated new awakening in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution. Gaara will be able to summon the One-Tailed Beast known as Shukaku as a giant true awakening and unleash his devastating power against opponents in the heat of battle. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem young Gaara will be receiving the revamp treatment and will most likely have the same move set he had in Naruto Storm: Generations. You can check out some screenshots of the Shukaku in action below. Kankuro will also be receiving his Sasori puppet as his new True Awakening and will feature in a new Team Ultimate Jutsu with his sand allies Temari and Gaara.
Other new additions to the game include being able to accessorize your characters in the online mode to stand out from the crowd with different equipment such as a giant battle axe or wearable scrolls. Players will also be able to have their online characters fight for them in Network Clone Teams to have them train and gather items while players are away from the game. Continuing the trend set by Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, Storm Revolution will also be receving a PC release via Steam with the release date being confirmed for the 16th of September. The game hits the PS3 and Xbox 360 in Australia on the 11th of September. You can check out the newest trailer for the game below the gallery.
The mystery action sequel Psychometrer will be going on hiatus in Kodansha‘s Young Magazine. The sequel to the shonen manga Psychometrer Eji will make an announcement in this year’s 38th issue of the magazine with no specific date on when both of the magakas will return with the series.
The manga series revolves around high school delinquent Asuma Eji who uses his psychometric powers to help police inspector Ryoko Shima solve mysterious criminal cases.
Yuma Ando and Masashi Asaka have been writing and drawing the sequel since 2011, before that they worked on the original Psychometrer Eji from 1996-2000 which ran in Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine. The original manga has been published into 25 volumes with the sequel currently on its 14th. A new a spin off series of Psychometrer called Debusen will be serialized within the magazine, which will go on sale in Japan this month on the 18th.
Since the announcement of the anime, more information has been revealed about the cast and the crew for P.A. Works new original title.
The Shiro Bako official twitter account confirmed the names of those who will be working alongside director Tsutomu Mizushima for the series; Junri Kimura (Nagi no Asukara), Haruka Yoshimura, Haruka Chisuga, Asami Takano and Hitomi Ohwada have all been cast for the anime however their assigned characters have not been revealed yet.
Original Character design will be done by Ponkan8 with Animation Character Design assigned to Kanami Sekiguchi, Sekiguchi has worked on various projects including Fullmetal Alchemist and Ghost in the Shell. Series Compositor for No-Rin, Michiko Yokote, will be Shiro Bakos Series Supervisor and director Mizushima will also be in charge of Sound Direction.
More information about the characters plus a PV will be revealed during Comiket 86 tomorrow, keep your eyes on this site for more information as it comes in.
One of the big draws of Razer’s Nabu Smart Band is the ability to integrate with mobile apps for socializing and gaming. Razer and game developer TenCent announced their partnership at Gamescom 2014, which will see TenCent integrating the Nabu’s fitness capabilities into Timi Run Everyday. Using the Nabu’s fitness tracking capabilities, hours slept, calories burnt, and steps taken will provide gamers with in-game rewards.
Timi Run Everyday is a side scrolling platformer that is already partnered with the Razer Nabu’s first big partnership, WeChat. Both WeChat and Timi Run Everyday are wildly popular in China. A specially branded Razer Nabu will be available for Timi Run Everyday fans to purchase at the Nabu’s launch. The special edition will contain a code for exclusive in game rewards.
Razer continued their push for developers at Gamescom. Wargaming, Techland, Shortbreak Studios, and Halfbrick have all signed up for the Developer Program and are considering integrating the Nabu with their products. Razer announced a European-centric developer portal to help bring EU-based developers into the fold. The 500 attendees at Respawn 2014 will be able to pick up $1.00 Razer Nabu developer units. Those who missed out and qualify for the Nabu Developer Program can still pick up a heavily discounted Nabu through the official developer portal.
The Swapper was first released on PC in May last year, gathering a decent amount of press and strong reviews. A year later and it has made its way to all of Sony’s machines and has a Wii U release coming in November. That year long gap has been a good thing, as the PlayStation port (done by Curve Studios, who also had a hand in Velocity Ultra and Stealth Inc.) manages to bring an excellent experience safely to a brand new home.
It’s a side scrolling sci-fi puzzle platformer, but that predictable and oft used combination is exploited to the full. The Swapper is incredibly atmospheric, full of elegant puzzles and design, and effortlessly weaves a strange, almost frightening world around the player. I loved it.
Story
Although The Swapper has been around for a while I had no idea about the details of the plot, at least nothing beyond the fact that the main character uses a gun that can create clones and swap his (?) consciousness into them. Having completed the game that ignorance feels like a great starting point: there is an abandoned space station, you must explore it.
The story unfolds in a very organic way- The Swapper opens up and lets you poke around the world at your own pace rather than funnelling players into cut scenes. A lot of it is in your own head, and for someone who loves this kind of thing the opportunity to fill in the blanks was fantastic. The Swapper tells its story like a novel more than a game.
It’s a wonderful piece of science fiction too. It uses its main mechanic – the Swapper gun – to provoke massive head spins of thought revolving around life, the universe, and everything. Within ten minutes it had me pondering on the nature of thought, the value of life, what consciousness really is, and how defined we are by our physical selves. Games don’t tend to take anything from science fiction but the setting and window dressing, so it was a delight to find The Swapper so effortlessly thought provoking.
Gameplay
Strip away the story and The Swapper is still an excellent puzzle game. The main character is equipped with an experimental gun that can create up to four copies of whoever wields it. The copies can be created on almost any spot within the player’s line of sight, which is controlled separately from movement and represented by a beam of light.
Placing a clone then progresses to swapping into it, allowing the character to cross gaps between platforms that a traditional jump can’t clear. Swapping into a clone for the first time is an odd experience; is the body you left behind still you? If it dies does all of you live on? To add to that feeling of unease whatever movement the player makes is echoed by every clone on screen, opening up a bevy of tricky situations that make for fun and satisfying puzzles as well as complicated and heavy trains of thought.
The collection of obstacles is lean but well exploited- if an area is lit by blue light a clone cannot be created there, and a swap cannot be made in the glow of a red light. Purple light is a no go zone for both, and the character doesn’t survive well when falling from a height. Throw in a few switches and the odd moveable crate and you have the entire repertoire of The Swapper.
It has a beautiful difficulty curve that lures you in, builds up your ego, and then suddenly squashes it flat. The puzzles never feel like they’re impossible though,with solutions that don’t come immediately often hiding just a small change of perspective away. Twisting your brain into that new perspective might take two minutes or twenty, but it always comes accompanied by a satisfying rush.
Picking up the orbs at the end of each puzzle helps to open up more areas of the space station to explore. There’s no set order to the puzzles within any one area, and progression is usually possible without grabbing 100% of the available orbs. I was far too hooked on the experience to risk missing anything, backtracking through the station to solve every last puzzle for fear of missing out. That never usually happens in puzzle games, and it’s a testament to the game design that I didn’t bat an eyelid about trekking from one side of the map to the other.
Audio & Visuals
The Swapper looks like nothing I have ever played before. In fact it feels like nothing I have ever played. The art and sound are put together so damn well that it’s impossible not to sink in to the atmosphere. The space station is another world; a desolate but beautiful one that can completely capture the imagination. Screenshots don’t do it justice it all. Take a look at the box art -the light of it, the shimmering particles- and imagine that brought to life. Imagine it brought to life on a large screen in a dark room, with no sound but that of the game – sparse music, echoing footsteps- and you have the start of it.
This was all created by digitising real world clay sculptures, a technique that is beginning to pop up in games like the upcoming Vanishing of Ethan Carter. That game will be digitising real world buildings and environments rather than clay models, but the underlying idea is the same. It works to great effect in The Swapper, and as mentioned above, is best experienced alone in the dark!
Overall
There are a lot of great games out there, but most don’t leave such an immediate and lasting impression. The Swapper feels new, alive, complete; I really found no fault with it. It’s a wonderful puzzle game, a beautiful artwork, and a thought provoking experience. There isn’t much more to be asked for.
With this release the opportunities to play The Swapper have expanded from PC to handheld and the last generation, but if you have the chance then take advantage of the PS4 version (it’s a cross buy game to boot).
Just lock yourself away and play the whole thing in one go.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
