STARPOINT GEMINI 2 AND GAS GUZZLERS EXTREME START WEEK-LONG STEAM SALE
Two Popular Games from Two Croatian Developers on Sale from March 10 to 17
Haarlem, The Netherlands – March 10, 2014 – Iceberg Interactive’s two favorite Croation development teams have jumped on Steam’s new flexible policies with significant sale prices today for the deep space simulation Starpoint Gemini 2 and the hectic arcade racer Gas Guzzlers Extreme. Starting at 10 am PST, Monday, March 10, and lasting until Monday, March 17, Iceberg’s Gas Guzzlers Extreme (PC) is on offer with a 60% discount, taking it down to $9.99, while the increasingly popular space sim Starpoint Gemini 2 (PC on Early Access) will receive a 33% discount, with a sale price of $15.40.
Developed by independent Croatian studio Little Green Men Games, Starpoint Gemini 2 is set to enter the Beta stage of its development phase on Steam’s Early Access program during the Game Development Conference (GDC). Iceberg has made it public that entering the Beta will be accompanied by a price increase and the end of the free inclusion of Starpoint Gemini 1, so this Weeklong Sale is really the best opportunity to get into Starpoint Gemini 2 at an advantageous moment.
Starpoint Gemini 2 is an open-world 3D space simulation game that provides powerful RPG mechanics with the frenzy of space combat. Taking place in Gemini, various factions are still fighting for power. Players have control of one ship at a time during the game with direct movement and combat controls as they explore new worlds, trade for greater power, and execute a high level of ship customization. Starpoint Gemini 2 features virtual reality implementation supported by Oculus Rift.
Fellow Croatian Studio Gamepires is working on both a Linux version and two new sets of DLC for Gas Guzzlers Extreme, showing an ongoing commitment to its spectacular combat racing game. Go check it out.
Gas Guzzlers Extreme features a variety of cars, from humble super-minis to full on giant Yank tanks, muscle cars, and more. Players will start with a low performance vehicle and quickly work their way into higher-powered and faster vehicles by earning money via a series of uniquely challenging races from big multiplayer arenas to wild, short-cut ridden race courses.
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ABOUT ICEBERG INTERACTIVE Iceberg Interactive is an independent video game publisher founded in 2009 by an international group of games industry veterans and is located in Haarlem, The Netherlands. While keeping its roots in the European retail games market, Iceberg has rapidly increased its focus towards the global digital games market, by building strong direct relationships with dozens of Game Portals. Staffed with avid gamers, Iceberg works closely with an international assembly of game developers, both midsize and indie. With a distinct focus on the strategy, action, simulation and adventure game genres, the company has garnered attention with acclaimed releases including Killing Floor, Wings of Prey, APB Reloaded and Endless Space among its 70+ game arsenal – with more promising games in the pipeline.
Lost Saga beta draws to a close as final steps are taken in readiness for launch
Nexon Europe’s highly anticipated multiplayer brawler well received by dedicated community
Luxemburg – 10th March, 2014: Nexon Europe is one step closer to launching the multiplayer online brawler, Lost Saga, as the closed beta comes to an end. Having seen enormous success, the beta engaged the rapidly expanding Lost Saga community in helping shape the title in the final stages before launch.
Providing an extensive cast of characters from the greatest heroes of our world and beyond, battling it out over a variety of maps, Nexon Europe welcomed a huge number of users testing the closed beta. Players took control of over 100 characters from myths, sci-fi, history and legends, coming together for relentless brawling action.
“From the reaction of the thousands involved in the beta, we’ve continued the magic of Lost Saga and satisfied a community that has long been looking forward to the title,” Minkyu Kim, Manager of Game Operations at Nexon Europe. “We want to thank everyone who participated in the closed beta, and assure them that all feedback will be taken into account to ensure Lost Saga is one of the greatest multiplayer online experiences ever come launch.”
With the exceptional feedback, Nexon Europe is looking forward to the official open of Lost Saga in 6 languages: English, German, French, Italian, Polish, and Turkish.
The official Lost Saga site can be found at lostsaga.nexoneu.com.
About Nexon Europe
Established in March 2007, Nexon Europe is one of the leading publishers of free-to-play MMOs in Europe. The company has brought the worldwide hit casual MMORPG MapleStory to Europe in May 2007, and the successful FPS Combat Arms in January 2009. With the launch of the 3D action MMORPG Vindictus in 2011, Nexon Europe has strengthened its position as a promising publisher in Europe. Next to these in-house franchises, Nexon Europe was also able to acquire and fully operate Atlantica Online, an innovative, tactical MMORPG; Dekaron, an authentic action MMORPG set in a grim fantasy universe; and the action-packed FPS War Rock. The newest additions to its growing portfolio are Navy Field 2 alongside the legendary FPS game Counter-Strike Online in Turkey. For 2014, the company’s first browser-based full-scale MMORPG Arcane Chronicles and fun-packed, action fighting game Lost Saga will join as new line-ups. For more information on Nexon Europe and its games, please visit the official website at www.nexoneu.com.
About WeMade Entertainment Co., Ltd.
Established in 2000, WeMade Entertainment Co., Ltd., (KOSDAQ: 112040) is an international game developer and publisher with some of the most popular mobile games in Asia. WeMade has grown from a handful of passionate game pioneers to more than 1,000 game enthusiasts including one of the most robust mobile game development teams in the world. WeMade’s first hit title “Legend of Mir 2” drew more than 200 million online PC gamers into its world. Since debuting in the mobile games space in April of 2012, WeMade has released 27 high-quality mobile games including “WIND RUNNER”, which became the most popular mobile game in Korea and Japan with over 30 million downloads combined.
Cube & Star: An Arbitrary Love is an indie game about exploration and colour. Players will roll around a grey landscape, spreading colour and life across the world. Along the way, players will discover the artifacts left behind by the ancient cubes that came before them.
Story
The player is set on a journey to spread colour in the grey world. As colour is spread across the world, journal entries and coded historical pieces begin appearing. The plot is surprisingly dark given the game’s light and colourful nature.
Gameplay
In the beginning, the player is presented with an entire world of grey, filled with trees and bushes with yet to be discovered colour. After knocking off the first bit of coloured fruit from a nearby tree, the player’s cube will absorb the colour and slowly release the colour into the landscape as they bounce around. The cube’s colour slowly becomes lighter as it seeps into the ground. As the land becomes coloured, the trees and bushes will assume their natural colour. When bumped, they release stars and more coloured fruit. Players can bump up against stone pillars scattered across the land to retrieve various gems. In the coloured land, journal entries, coded history snippets, ancient artifacts, and monuments that will bestow the player with new powers will begin to appear. As the world fills with colour, new and wonderful creatures will begin to appear, giving the world a feeling of life. The player can trigger the special powers to cause mass destruction or summon strange buildings that will spawn small little pyramid people.
Cube & Star: An Arbitrary Love is a unique game. It is a digital cross between a Japanese zen garden and blank canvas with tons of paint laying around. The game moves at a turtles pace, encouraging more of a meditative state. Cube & Star: An Arbitrary Love is definitely not a game designed for those with instant gratification in mind, as something more action packed like the most recent iteration of Call of Duty may be a better pick. Cube & Star is much better suited as a vehicle for relaxation. The coded history snippets are a fun little mini-game that provide some background on the world. Players will need to crack a simple code to make sense of the history left behind.
The controls in Cube & Star: An Arbitrary Love are simple. The game supports controllers and mouse/keyboard. I found using the mouse to move the cube was the most awkward of the three control schemes.
Visuals
Cube & Star: An Arbitrary love has a simple visual style that suits the game well. The simplicity puts a greater emphasis on the colours that are spread around as the game progresses. The map is disappointingly low resolution and fails to convey the rainbow of colours laid down by the cube. Though the game is not graphically taxing, there are no graphic options. The game is forced to run in full screen at maximum resolution.
Audio
Cube & Star: An Arbitrary Love has a wonderfully relaxing soundtrack and syncs nicely to the player’s movements. The game’s sound effects become an extension of the music, as the cube bumps into trees and uses special abilities. Unfortunately there is only one song in the game, which can get repetitive after long periods of time. Certain parts of the game have are voice acted, in the sense that a computer generated voice reads out the script. I found it really jarring and out of place. The game would have probably been better off without the voiced parts.
Overall
Cube & Star: An Arbitrary Love is one of those unique titles that could only be created by an indie studio. The game is the antithesis of the commercial video game. Cube & Star: An Arbitrary Love is played at a meditative pace. Instead of the perfectly polished presentation of commercialized games, Cube & Star explores a more artistic niche. It may not be a game for every gamer, but is definitely a must try for those looking to experience something new.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Unity Games has announced Space Noir, a new narrative-driven, space combat title for PC via Steam download and tablets. The game is headed by N-Fusion Interactive who previously developed Deus Ex: The Fall and Air Mail.
Space Noir is the latest in what seems to be a resurgent space genre, promising ship-to-ship combat and customisation, boss battles, planetary missions and a dark storyline.
Hal Markham, an educated man from a prosperous family, joins the Intergalactic Planetary Consortium only to discover that, rather than protecting colonies, he’s enforcing draconian martial law. Hal quits the consortium after a tragic incident and returns home to find his family dead, his fiance married to a ruthless politician and his life quickly falling apart. Hal finds work as a mercenary, traveling throughout the universe to collect bounties and pursue black market jobs. Space Noir begins in a long-neglected outpost world, as a deeply hungover Hal is awoken by his ship AI Rhonda only to find himself in the middle of a pirate attack.
The game is set for launch sometime during summer 2014. Check out the screenshots below and for more info visit the official Facebook page.
Respawn Entertainment’s new game for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows operating systems, Titanfall, is set to have a midnight release event in Sydney, Australia. Titanfall is a first-person, multiplayer shooter in which players can fight each other in mechs and as puny infantry with jetpacks… which I guess isn’t so puny. The game is slated to become the new flagship franchise for the Xbox One console and has had previous coverage by us, here. Fans are invited to attend the event at the headquarters of the fictional ‘Hammond Robotics Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation’ and hosted by the not-fictional: EA, EB Games, and Xbox Australia. Guests will be able to play the full game in 6v6 online matches prior to the game’s national release and opportunities to purchase the full game will be provided during the event by EB games as well as other merchandise. Inquiries about the possibility of purchasing a real titan for personal use were only answered with bemused laughter, so one assumes that they must be provided complimentary to guests.
With every purchase (of a non-titan item), guests will go into the draw to win various prizes ranging from Xbox One consoles, Collector’s Editions of Titanfall, and much more (possibly more titans… for your friends). Also during the event, every purchase of the game will come with a free shirt but only while they’re in stock (I assume that every guest will be guaranteed their own titan however). In between games and (I assume) riding around in your own titan, guests will be treated to food, drink, and other entertainment. The luxury taxi service, Uber, will be providing guests with a $50 voucher for the evening if they wish to be ferried home with their service. Invitations are only being extended to fans 18 years of age and over as I assume children will not be able to reach the piloting controls of the life-sized titans.
If you would like to be put on the guest list for the event, which will be held at Luxe Studios, 279-283 Liverpool Street, East Sydney on Wednesday 12th of March, register your interest at [email protected] with your full name and contact details. The full game will be available on PC and Xbox One in Australia on the 13th of March and the 14th of March for gamers in New Zealand.
Edit: Much to my disappointment, there won’t be real-life titans at the release event… I’ll have to console myself by playing Titanfall until real world technology catches up with my ambitions.
As Sio spent the early parts of last episode in a hospital bed, she received a small gift from an unexpected person: the Commander. A brief moment that expressed the idea that perhaps the head of DOGOO is more than just a stern figure. This week tkaes that concept and runs with it, as we receive a glimpse into the interesting life that the Commander has led these many years.
Long ago, when she was just a young girl, the Commander was left the sole survivor of an attack that decimated her village. It was at this point that the mysterious DOGOO (the alien) appeared and decided to utilise her in his quest for E-Genes. Now the first thing you might notice about this particualr encounter, is that it takes place in the year 248…yeah. I guess that makes the Commander a little older than she looks. Resigning to DOGOO’s ship/base/thing, she is placed in a glowing green tube (the same present in a number of previous episodes) and locked in suspended animation. Though awakening only briefly every couple of hundred years, we catch glimpses of the strange relationship developing between DOGOO and the COmmander. Though a crucial task in humanity’s existence, DOGOO never once forces her into anything, allowing her to serve of her own free will. It’s interesting to note that this is the same viewpoint she adopts as the head of DOGOO (the organisation), showing that perhaps the alien helped to shape her own beliefs.
What is the weight of a human soul?
At some point in their journey through time, DOGOO picks up Saint Germain, to serve as the Commander’s interlocutor. Though an impressive sounding title, it merely means that it is Germain’s job to talk to her. This expresses that, though an alien, DOGOO still understands that the Commander must be lonely and possess a sense of empathy towards his companion. IT is also at this point that we learn that Saint Germain was once a prisoner in his time…also that he’s immortal. Kind of a big deal that second part isn’t it? Though it remains unseen, it can only be assumed that during the Commander’s hundred year slumbers, that Germain continued to aid DOGOO in the search for special genes. Either that or they sat around doing nothing.
One of the most interesting things to note from this episode is the fact that it was actually the Commander who sought out the various “heroes” who would lend their genes to the fight for humanity. It is for this reason that the E-Genes chosen are so varied in nature. For example, when faced with countless brave and fearsome warriors, she opted to gather the genes of a man who possessed great speed (presumably Dai Zong). It is also this desire to choose skilled heroes that led to her eventual falling out with DOGOO. Desiring an army of great power, the alien sought to gather the essence of Nobunaga, a task we all know he succeeded in. However, the Commanders compunctions about enlisting the help of such a ruthless seeker of war, led her to run away, thus creating the need for DOGOO to approach Nobunaga himself (as we previously saw). Beginning their lives anew, we see a snippet of the time that led to the Commander and Saint Germain becoming so close, being the only family they have left. Unfortunately, history has a habit of repeating itself and, for the second time, the Commander’s home is razed during a siege. However, it is this traumatic event that steeled her resolve and forges her into the stoic leader we all know and respect. Though it was definitely nice to see that she too has a softer side, one not shown in the series thus far and one that will hopefully continue to shine through.
Behold the face of disbelief
It is also revealed that the alien who so strongly desires to protect Earth carries some sort of terrible burden. This mysterious element is strong enough that his very body is in the process of breaking down. It is for this very reason that the Commander placed DOGOO within the green tube where we most often see him, returning the favour of life he gifted to her long ago. Hopefully future episodes will delve further into DOGOO’s past, exploring his life before journeying to Earth. There’s still just so many mysteries.
Back in the present, DOGOO (the organisation) is in shambles as a plan is developed to defeat the menace that dwells within the tunnel. In the meantime, Jack decides to act anime savvy and asks Sio about her tactical acumen, with her having been the only one to anticipate the attack on the Clayton Forrester. He reveals that he knows her E-Gene has been speaking to her and explains that the spirit of Jack the Ripper himself is asking for her help, lending to his apparent skill at sensing danger and the best way to combat it. What’s interesting about this exchange, is the revelation that Jack tap into his E-Gene without his AU Weapons in hand, something that Sio achieved in the last episode. Though it still remains unknown if she is the only one capable of forming a weapon through willpower alone. We also see that her dance routine was not a one off and serves to focus her mind, allowing her access to Nobunaga’s memories.
A new hero arises
All this being said, the best part of the episode by far was watching Sio finally come into her own as a DOGOO operative. Though initially hesitant about explaining her thoughts to the planning committee, she taps into her dormant courage and almost outright states that they’re current plan is wrong. Now, am I the only one who thought it was awesome watching Vidocq sit in shock at the fact that he, the “smartest” E-Gene Holder of them all, made a mistake? Because it was pretty cool. It also revealed that, while his Easy Chair is able to crunch every conceivable number in any given scenario, he must first have a concept. An idea. Something which he occasionally misses, adding a human element to his statistical power. That being said, he did accept Sio’s conjecture and swallowed his pride for the sake of the operation. It was also nice seeing the other members of the First and Second Platoons praise Sio for coming up with such a thorough plan of attack. See, they do care about each other after all. Isn’t that sweet?
With Nobunagun’s latest plan set to launch, you better believe that next week will be action packed. Will her strategy pay off as predicted, or will an unexpected variable descend chaos upon our heroes? I guess we’ll have to wait another week and see how Operation Stone Forest plays out. Which, by the way, is most probably a reference to manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori (with “ishi no mori” being the Japanese translation of “stone forest”). That’s what you get for letting an otaku name your strategies…
Closing out the numerous licensing announcements from Viz Media recently we have another treat for fans of the company’s Shojo Beat label. The company has announced that they have acquired a brand new manga series named Yukarism which will start being released in December 2014, a number of additional Vampire Knight books and a Black Bird Complete Box Set. Now first let’s go over the new acquisition which is Yukarism, which follows the story of Yukari Kobayakawa who can travel back in time to live out his past life of a courtesan in the Edo period. As he ventures between the past and the present he begins to unravel a “karmic relationship” between him and his classmate Mohoro Tachibana.
Since the company has recently released the final volume of Black Bird, they are planning on releasing the entire box set, volumes 1-18, in October 2014 for $149.99. They are also releasing the final volume of Vampire Knight and they are giving it a limited edition release that comes with an alternate cover as well as a mini art book which will be available in October 2014 for $15.99.
Continuing with the Vampire Knight announcements we have the “Fleeting Dreams” collection of short stories which includes special illustrations and a color fold out that is set to be released in December for $14.99 and a second box set for the serise which contains volumes 11-19 for $89.99 which will be available in November and comes with a mini art book.
Viz has had a lot of announcements to make over the past week and it seems that they aren’t done yet as the company has revealed a few new releases which will please Hayao Miyazaki fans. The company will be releasing two new hardcover books related to the film Princess Mononoke.
The first license is for “The Art of Princess Mononoke” which will be priced at $34.99 US. This is a re-release that will be available on August 2014 and it features all new translation and presentation in a hardcover book that contains insightful interviews, concept sketches, character art and finished animation cels from the actual movie.
The second pick up is for “Princess Mononoke: The First Story” which is also priced at $34.99 US and will be available in hardcover sometime in October 2014. This release is planned to be an oversized illustrated storybook with original watercolor art from Miyazaki and contains the original Princess Mononoke story written back in 1980 long before he thought of creating the full movie. This version of the story follows a samurai who is lost after the war and stumbles upon a giant wildcat called a mononoke and after it saves his life, he must offer his daughter’s hand in marriage.
While this may be a rather odd sounding piece of news considering a number of titles don’t even break a sweat by hitting this milestone, but recently Grasshopper Manufacture has announced that since the game’s release back in June 2012 Lollipop Chainsaw has now sold a million copies worldwide, though exact sales figures for each region were not revealed Warner Bros. handled the title in North America.
The full announcement including various pieces of art can be found at the game’s official website here. As for the game itself, it truly deserves the amount of sales that it received, not just because of the fan-service in the game but because of how fun of a game it is and how off the wall it can be at times.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 will be receiving new content DLC starring Alucard on March 25th. The DLC entitled “Revelations” serves as a prequel to the main game. Alucard is preparing to battle Satan in the ultimate showdown. Players will get to use Alucard’s vampire abilities to dominate his enemies. Players will be able to drink the blood of their enemies to fuel skills like summoning swarms of bats, controlling time, and transforming into a wolf. Not only will the DLC bring new quests to complete, but also new locations to explore.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is available now for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows. No word how much the Revelations DLC will cost.
Closing out the 
