“Focus Home Interactive” and “Spiders” (the game studio NOT the creepy insect) have today released the launch trailer for their upcoming fantasy/RPG title “Bound By Flame“. The game – which puts players in the shoes of a character under the influence of demonic possession who must now choose between good and evil whilst also battling against the forces of a dark army – is set for a release in a few days, the 9th of May to be exact, and to celebrate that occasion it looks as though we’ve been given a brand-new trailer to sink our teethes into with the hopes that it’ll sustain us for a few more days before the game is released.
The trailer, once again, introduces audiences to the theme of the title which is demonic possession and the fight between good and evil. Showcasing both gameplay and cinematic, the video does a fantastic job at hyping the game. It’s set for a release on the PlayStation 4, the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the PC through “Steam”. Unfortunately there’s been no word on an Xbox One release so it looks as though it may be one of the few consoles to NOT get this game. Head down to our featured video section below to watch the launch trailer for “Bound By Flame” and be sure to let us know what you think of the game by leaving a comment under the article.
Let’s update our world! GALAX is the latest social app to sweep the world by storm. Make friends, play games and help save the world, there isn’t anything that GALAX can’t do. But this great social app might cause more problems than it solves when people become involved with the CROWDS system, a self-empowering side app to GALAX. Providing ordinary individuals’ unprecedented power and led by a half-crazed individual named Katze, who wishes to destroy the world as its creator – trouble is surely afoot. But there’s one more line of defense before it all turns to chaos and they’re known as Gatchaman. Hidden superheroes with unique powers, they will solve all of our problems.
They’ll save the world if they don’t accidentally kill each other first. Through the necessity of space exploration, advancements have occurred to both mechanical and genetic engineering. The outcome – genetically modified individuals who can endure the difficulties that can occur from space. Team Rabbits, a rag-tag group of teenagers, part of the genetically modified generation, are tasked with being Earth’s first line of defense to the sinister Wulgaru forces. These invaders are absolutely brutal and with far superior weaponry at their disposal, all odds are stacked against them. But leader Izuru is nothing but optimistic and that may be the only thing in their favour in this all out war.
Each series will be made available on both DVD and Blu-Ray from August 6th. Each series will also feature a dual language selection (Japanese and English audio, with English subtitles) and number in at 12 episodes each. For more info, visit the official site. Also feel free to check out Hanabee’s videos, such as the one posted below. I wonder what series they could be talking about?
KONAMI-developed Star Wars™: Force Collection offers 5-Star celebration for Star Wars™ Day on iOS and Android
Konami Digital Entertainment B.V. announced that in celebration of Star Wars™ Day, it will be gifting a special in-game 5-Star character card to all players of the KONAMI-developed Star Wars™: Force Collection, a card battle gamemobile app.
All current Star Wars: Force Collection accounts created before May 5th, 2014, at 6:00 pm (AEST) will receive the special celebratory gift. Qualifying players receive the special card simply by logging in to the game on, or after May 4th.
Additionally, to highlight the accomplishments of Star Wars: Force Collection’s loyal fans, KONAMI has published an infographic detailing many of the gameplay statistics generated since the game launched in selected countries in September 2013. The statistics include such topics as the number of battles fought, trusted leaders, and the number of character cards pulled from card packs.
Star Wars: Force Collection puts players in command of more than 300 heroes, villains and vehicles from Star Wars Episodes !-V!. Players will cross the Star Wars galaxy completing quests, fighting battles and collecting powerful cards and upgrades. As players progress, their actions will determine whether they join and fight on the light or dark side of the Force™ during global player events. Star Wars: Force Collection can be downloaded via:
KONAMI CORPORATION was established in 1973, and became a holding company of the Konami Group on March 31, 2006. KONAMI CORPORATION covers the fields of “Digital Entertainment Business”, “Health & Fitness Business”, “Gaming & Systems Business” and “Pachinko & Pachinko Slot Machines Business”. KONAMI CORPORATION went public on Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1988, the London Stock Exchange in 1999, and the New York Stock Exchange in 2002. Home Page URL: www.konami.co.jp. Konami Digital Entertainment B.V. is a wholly-owned subsidiary, responsible for popular franchises like Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill and Pro Evolution Soccer amongst other top sellers. Konami Group is also the manufacturer of the wildly popular Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME, which has sold more than 25 billion cards worldwide. For more information concerning Konami Digital Entertainment and its products, please visit www.konami-europe.com.
Yesterday was the annual Free Comic Book Day, and if you were like me you would have traveled through the horrid conditions to your closest comic book store to get your hands on free samples of what’s to come (and hopefully snagging a bargain or two along the way at one of the many sales). What you may not realise though is that the REAL fun and excitement of FCBD happens after dark! Luna Park played host to this year’s Free Comic Book Day After Party. A late night celebration of everything geek culture has to offer. From the giant projection of Godzilla to the Cosplay parade, it was the perfect place to spend an evening.
The main attraction was definitely the Cosplay Parade, where some of Australia’s most talented cosplayers took centre stage and showed off their hard work. I have a lot of respect for the amount of time and effort these guys put into their costumes and showcases like these are a great place for them to strut their stuff. From couples costumes featuring Jack Sparrow and Angela to a book-accurate Judge Dredd, all of your favourite heroes and villains from all over pop culture came to life right before your eyes.
While the cosplay was the focus of the event, everyone’s jaw hit the ground when the lights turned down low, and Tom Baker’s Doctor stepped out of the T.A.R.D.I.S. and started stripping! Yep you read that right, a burlesque troupe who specialise in cosplay performances made a special appearance at FCBD and showed off some of their stuff. The performance was a little risque without being too over the top, and everyone in attendance got a great laugh out of it.
As if that wasn’t enough to make a great evening, then the floor got opened up to a massive dance party. Nova 96.9 were in attendance, giving out prices to the best dancers on the floor. In the spirit of the event, the prizes were all double passes to see the upcoming Godzilla film due out in a fortnight’s time. As cool as dance parties were, the event was held at Luna Park which means rides galore! Seeing your favourite superheroes scream their lungs out while going down a rollercoaster is a sight to behold… Almost as much as walking past a ride and seeing Freddy Kreuger just sitting on it with a big smile on his face.
A big shout out goes to Kinokuniya and Luna Park for hosting the event. Those guys sure know how to throw a party! We have a few choice shots from the night below but to see even more of the action, search for the hashtag #LunaFCBD on Instagram or Twitter. After the awesomeness that was Free Comic Book Day, there is hardly a break before Supanova Sydney kicks off so make sure you stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the comic, anime and pop culture news as it becomes available.
Never put all your good eggs in one basket. We were introduced to Sidonia’s finest pilots at the end of the last episode, a group of four men led by Akai. Recognised as being more skilled than Kunato’s team, the team which includes our main character Nagate, these guys are meant to be the first and last defence against the Gauna which happens to be speeding its way back to the colossal vessel.
Episode 3 begins with the Gravity Festival, Sidonia’s take on a traditional Japanese festival but with a giant robot tournament along with candy apples. As pilots from various teams compete against each other we learn that the Type 17 Garde which Nagate used in his first battle against the Gauna is an old model from the previous century, requiring more pilot input and skill than the largely automated Type 18s that everyone else uses.
Yuhata Midorikawa is the one who realises that Nagate is not an average pilot just by reading the post-battle status of his Type 17. We also learn Yuhata’s brother is in the Akai team.
The arrogant, silver-haired Kunato loses his fight in the tournment to Akai while our hero takes time off with a potential love interest, Shizuka Hoshijiro. Funnily enough, Nagate’s not-male-or-female friend, Izana, has clearly taken a liking to Nagate but his hopes are dashed when he sees him laughing with Shizuka. I’m not exactly sure what this show is intending to do with Izana, whether he will gain a gender depending on his interest in Nagate or they might just kill him off which can be done in a really tragic way I think.
On the bridge of the ship, the captain’s advisor suggests that Yuhata’s strategic genius is enough to replace him as he believes that he should fight the Gauna alongside the pilots. The captain has no intention of having him leave her side, however.
Kunato, still mad from his defeat, proves to be a terrible person by shoving Izana to the ground when they bump into each other, cause the stick of the candy apple to impale in his leg. Nagate comes to help and confronts Kunato who calls him a “subhuman”. When Nagate places his hand on Kunato’s shoulder, it’s almost broken in the ensuing struggle.
Nagate and Izana are invited by Akai to see Sidonia’s ocean, a vast and hidden reservoir of water that covers 1/4th of the ship. They dive in in these awesome bubble crafts. Once again I gotta applaud the designs and detail in this anime. Here Nagate learns that team Akai is set to be deployed against the incoming Gauna.
Which takes place the next second. As each pilot takes off, cheered on by the other pilots who look on via video link, we’re made to think they can handle this. Obviously it won’t be that easy since it’s only episode 3. After the initial skirmish, the Gauna core is exposed by the Higgs cannons mounted on the Gardes but their female pilot, Momose, is caught by the tentacles. Akai makes an on-the-spot decision like a true leader and sacrifices himself to free his lover but the mission is now in chaos.
HQ orders to prepare the quantum cannon once again as each member of the legendary Akai team is taken out, with Momose being the final victim after recklessly charging the Gauna for killing Akai. Here’s a good example of why relationships in combat situations shouldn’t be allowed.
So the Gauna still lives and I expect a hectic next episode as Sidonia musters its defences, probably in the form of Nagate and his Type 17.
Check out more Knights of Sidonia Impressions HERE.
Overview While any form of entertainment can appear light-hearted on the outside, there is always some form of drama to help push the story forward and among visual novel developers, Key is best known for creating emotional stories that are hard to forget. In Little Busters! Collection One a large number of the cast was introduced but only a few of them were given much depth. With Little Busters! Collection Two set to wrap up this series, does the story continue successfully from where it left off?
Story When we last left the Little Busters they were still trying to gather enough people to flesh out their baseball team while also overcome a few past tragedies with their new friends. Riki had already managed to find a number of new friends to join the team including Yuiko, Haruka, Kud, and Komari while also taking on a few small challenges that happen in school life and also helped Komari deal with a trauma involving her brother.
However while Komari’s trauma mostly involved denial, his newfound friend Mio is something else entirely as she is a girl with no shadow. When she is suddenly replaced by a girl who looks just like her named Midori, Riki finds out that everyone around him acts as if Midori has always been there and that a girl named Mio had never existed. After being told by Midori that he too will forget about Mio, Riki is determined to do everything in his power to hold onto his memories of Mio.
To deal with this Riki learns more about Mio’s past all while Midori continues to play with his memories before finding out what has caused Mio’s magical seeming situation. After this things only continue to get more complicated as Haruka’s issues with authority and the student council comes to a head. With Haruka’s family matters being incredibly complicated and her torturous past coming into the light Riki and the rest of the Little Busters band together around her in support as they try to help their friend overcome this harsh ordeal.
Even with Haruka’s issues seeming dark, it is only with Kudryavka do things continue their shift towards darkness. With her mother set to be sent into space as a cosmonaut, Kud is separated from her friends as she must return to her homeland once the worst occurs only for her to have to face a terrible set of events alone. With everything that is happening, the group still does their best to rally together and even manage to hold their first baseball game once everything is said and done.
Or is it? Now the first half of Little Busters! introduced tasks that, if Riki and Rin could complete them, would reveal the secret of the world. Throughout the first half the secret was nothing more than an afterthought compared to Komari’s problem and organizing the team but in this second half the secret becomes something that is always in the back of the viewer’s mind. The tasks brought by the cats are still sparse, but they seem to grow increasingly more relevant to the events at hand and whoever is writing them knows of certain events before they happen.
Things grow ever darker around the group as numerous hints are dropped throughout the second half of the series. While the first half was mostly light-hearted, the tone in Little Busters! Collection Two remains dramatic almost throughout. There are a few minor episodes included between character arcs to provide some light-hearted moments but outside of one specific episode mostly focused on Riki getting messed with by the girls, even these episodes have importance to them as they reveal important details that are called upon later in the series or drop dark omens of what may unfold later.
Little Busters! is a series that can easily be watched a second time through to catch certain moments where a major hint was dropped that can give you the chills. There is much more happening in this world than meets the eye and with hints of magic here and there the secret of the world is ever present and nowhere does it become more evident than when Kud despairs that she must get back to help Rin and Riki.
The Little Busters’ baseball group is a perfect example of everything presented to the viewer. For a baseball team to succeed all of the players must work together and believe in one another and in Little Busters! these characters are all strong enough to pull the team together. In many other series a character such as Haruka who is always joking around and messing with people suddenly undergoing a serious shift with her past being revealed wouldn’t have worked or a ritual with Kud and Riki that could have been simply played off as fan-service actually being something meaningful. However thanks to how Little Busters! has established these characters and has told its story it manages to pull it off exceptionally well.
The same can be said regarding the tone of the series as it swings wildly from laughter to tears as characters experience hardship and grow. While the series is full of heartfelt moments of success it is also mixed in with dramatic moments of failure and the dark side of the world and it is because of this that the tone shifts work so well. However with everything that has been hinted at and revealed so far and memories seemingly forgotten, it seems the worst has yet to come for this tightly bound group of friends.
Visuals It appears that somewhere in the second half of the series J.C. Staff decided to work on their animation department a bit as the animation and character designs have been improved in Collection Two, though they still are a bit of an issue at times. The issues remain however with characters’ faces occasionally looking out of proportion or slightly deformed in group shots which is unfortunate.
As with the first half of the series, the series remains bright and colorful and the amount of detail put into crucial scenes has been increased with some impressive looking moments, especially during Kud and Haruka’s story arcs as both of these feature dramatic moments made more impactful through visual effects.
Audio As with the release of the first half of the series Little Busters! Collection Two includes both an English voice track as well as the original Japanese voice work. The voice actors have all retained their roles and continue to fit them perfectly, which remains a bit surprising since Riki is voiced by a female voice actress. It is worth noting that with the focus highlighting Kud a number of times throughout this second half, a lot of Russian words are used throughout and her voice actress has handled her speech patterns quite well. She even begins to use Kud’s Japanese “wafu” phrase a number of times later on in the release.
The issue regarding the voice work not matching up with the mouth flaps that the last release had did not seem to occur in this release as the voice work matched the character’s mouth movements almost perfectly. The background music throughout the series remains the same as what was found in the first half and both “Little Busters!” and “Alicemagic” from Rita remain the opening and ending themes, although a few different ending themes are used at the end of character arcs.
Extras Little Busters! Collection Two features some rather basic bonus features in the form of Japanese promotional trailers, a clean version of the opening theme, unfortunately it features the same animation found in the first half of the series and not the one used in the second half that features different animated scenes highlighting Haruka and Kud, a clean version of the ending theme, disc credits and trailers for other Sentai Filmworks anime.
Overall Little Busters! tells a beautiful story of friendship and overcoming challenges no matter how painful they may be and Collection Two finishes up the story arc viewers were left off with as well as explores a number of other characters while continuing to pull on your heartstrings with dramatic moments. Few shows can pull off what Little Busters! does but this series does it beautifully. Yet even when everything wraps up in a heartwarming moment, viewers are left with dark omens of the future and of frozen time that will begin to move once more as the story continues in Little Busters Refrain.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
NIS America has recently released a new set of screenshots for both Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection as well as Mugen Souls Z. The first set of screenshots, as seen below, are for Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection which is set to be released for the PS Vita on June 3rd in North America and June 6th in Europe and follows the player as they manage the lives of the four CPUs as they try to become idols.
This second set of screenshots, seen below, are for Mugen Souls Z, the sequel to the previously released Mugen Souls, which is set to be released on the PS3 in North America on May 20th and in Europe on May 23rd.
As you may have heard, Activision has announced their next entry into the Call of Duty series and they aren’t going to be bothering with any past conflicts or even modern warfare. Nope this time they are moving into advanced warfare with a fight that will take place during the year 2054 where PMCs have begun to emerge with powerful weaponry and exoskeletons that provide their soldiers with high-tech gear and special abilities.
If this is catching you off guard a bit, they recently released an announcement trailer a few days ago and in it Kevin Spacey introduced the game which is being developed by Sledgehammer Games and is coming to the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Now to follow that announcement Activision has released a few new screenshots which can be seen both above and below.
Currently Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is set to be released on November 4th and since this title will not be held back by trying to squeeze itself onto last-gen consoles it will certainly be interesting to see what type of power Activision will be able to pull out these new consoles.
Coinciding with the current broadcast of the highly popular anime adaptation of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3: Stardust Crusaders, Viz Media have revealed through a tweet that they are reprinting their release of the Part 3 manga with stock shipping out soon.
@noimjory@dolphinuppercut We already have. Every volume should be in the warehouse by the end of May.
This is of course spectacular news for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure fans who have had a tough go at tracking down the English language volumes of the manga series. Some could even speculate that this may be the beginning of Viz Media possibly releasing the series in its entirety (a huge undertaking to say the least) should the series reprint do well in sales due to renewed interest in the series.
Stay tuned for further developments on this story as they come to light. Be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
Despite being around for as long as the series has been, the Dynasty Warriors series has always been a game that could only be played on consoles and occasionally on handhelds. Well that will soon change as Tecmo Koei has announced that they are planning on releasing Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition on the PC through Steam. This is the first time that the series will be available on the PC and it will be released on May 13th.
To go along with this news the company also released the minimum requirements that a player’s PC must meet to play the title and these specs can be found below:
Operating system Windows Vista / 7/8 / 8.1,
main body CPU: (i7 860 or more recommended Core)
Core2Duo 2.4GHz or more
Memory : 512MB of RAM or more ( 1GB or more recommended)
Recommended Display : 1280X720 pixels or True Color display (can display 16:9)
Hard drive space: 18GB
Video card : VRAM256MB or more ( 512MB or more recommended)
3D acceleration corresponding to pixel shader 3.0 and above
