This weekend Viz Media released the latest issue of their digital Weekly Shonen Jump magazine and if you didn’t know, this happens to be the two year anniversary for the digital manga service and the company is honoring this date by including the debut chapter of the All You Need is Kill manga from creator Takeshi Obata.
While the original All You Need is Kill is a novel, described by some as “science fiction for the adrenaline junkie,” has already caught the attention of Hollywood as the novel is being turned into a sci-fi movie that is being called Edge of Tomorrow instead of All You Need is Kill and it is set to be released on June 6th in North America and sometime later around the world by Warner Bros. with stars like Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, and Bill Paxton filling some of the roles.
Today during the Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate Official Tournament 2013-2014, the producer of the game, Yosuke Hayashi, made the announcement that they are planning on releasing patch 1.04 to the arcade version of their game later this month and in more exciting news, he went on to saythat this same patch would be hitting the console versions of the game sometime in February with a major addition.
This patch will include the release of Marie Rose for the console version of the game as well as fix some bugs and apparently add some new features that were not detailed by Tecmo Koei during the announcement.
It looks like fans of Activision‘s latest entry in their yearly FPS series will be getting their first set of serious DLC soon. Thanks to a GameStop store putting up their display early, a Twitter user managed to tip off the internet to Call of Duty: Ghosts’ first map pack DLC.
Expect the DLC to drop on January 8th for the Xbox Live Marketplace first, with other platforms getting it at a later unspecified date, and it will feature four multiplayer maps called Fog, Containment, Ignition, and Bayview, an Extinction episode called Nightfall, and a new gun called the Maverick AR & Sniper Rifle.
Episode 1 – Sakura Coloured Beginnings & Yakisoba,Verandas And Girls
The 2014 winter anime season is upon us and I can already see the cherry blossoms, some of you may think of them as elegant and breathtaking but for me I find them only quite amusing at best. Okay so obviously I’m not taking about the actual flowers but rather a show that bears the name, with that said I invite you all to join me as I take a look at that the anime Sakura Trick.
Before the OP starts we get an introduction to our two main characters; Haruka Takayama, who is excited about her first day at high school, is woken up in the middle of the night by her best friend Yuu Sonoda. What important matter made her call up Haruka at 12:34 am you may ask? To find out if she packed her pencils… no really, that’s the reason. Yuu rings up a second time to remind Haruka to check what class she will be in and not to show up with food on her face. We are then treated to a zoom into a photo of the two together with three other friends, followed by Haruka falling on her bed saying “Yuu-chan’s the nicest friend ever.”
The first half of the episode “Sakura Coloured Beginnings” is used to establish both the main characters and introduce us to the other supporting characters; Iizuka Yuku, Ikeno Kaede, Kotone Noda and Shizuku Minami. Although Haruka and Yuu are the ones that share the special kiss (we will get to that shortly), the other four girls are also paired up. Iizuka is best friends with Ikeno and Kotone introduces Shizuku to everyone. Haruka and Yuu’s relationship starts to develop when Haruka suddenly runs away after seeing other people linking arms (or as she puts it, her treasured spot) with Yuu. After finding her in an unused classroom Yuu suggests they create a memory by doing something they wouldn’t do with anyone else, finally arriving to the long awaited kiss, the 30 second long kiss to be exact.
Although only some moments were lightly humorous, the first half does succeed in showing each character’s personality. Haruka is the more sensitive/romantic of the two whilst Yuu is more realistic in her train of thoughts, not really what I was expecting considering she is smaller and cuter then Haruka. The balance between pairs can also be seen the supporting characters with Ikeno winding up the serious minded Iizuka, and the outgoing nature of Kotone helping the more reserved Shizuku is a nice friendship in the making.
The second half of the episodes titled “Yakisoba, Verandas and Girls” is based around Haruka and Yuu trapped in the same unused classroom where they had their kiss. To avoid being caught by some incoming teachers they decide to hide outside on the veranda, once they think the coast is clear they walk back in to discover the teachers had locked the classroom door.
There are still moments where the humour is just weak/ stupid, but there are three golden moments that occur that put this story far ahead of the first one, making it a great way to end the entire episode. The overall goal of delivering yakisoba to Iizuka and Ikeno is a great set up; it frequently shows scenes of the two girls waiting for Haruka and Yuu to return and ends in a nice, unpredictable way. The tone Yuu uses for one line after she kisses Haruka is just hilarious and the story has the most awesomely impossible way to jump across verandas I have ever seen, I couldn’t help but admire what a ridiculous yet enjoyable scene it was.
One thing that did bother me about this episode was the amount of fan service that was used; there was only one scene where chest grabbing was essential to a joke and although it was used periodically, it didn’t add anything to either story plot. There are a few fan service bits in the opening theme so I recommend skipping it if you are in company. The theme song does fit the overall tone of the show as it is light hearted, upbeat and does put you in the mood for a light comedy show. The ending is also joyful and leaves you in the same state of mind you had when you first entered the show, again a few fan service scenes are added and some will find the chibi versions of the characters adorable.
Overall I found the first episode of Sakura Trick to be good; nothing to write home about, but also not bad enough to put you off watching the show. The first half gave us an insight into each character and the second half gave us that wonderful veranda jump (seriously it’s just straight out funny), an average show that does have its moments.
Paul Walker’s sudden, tragic death left multiple production studios scrambling to re-cast his planned roles, and in the case of Fast & Furious 7, stop filming and re-write the script. One of his upcoming roles that needs to be re-cast is that of Agent 47 in the character-titled sequel to Hitman, released in 2007.
Rumours are circulating that Fox International Productions, in conference with Square Enix, have offered the role to Homeland‘s Rupert Friend. The British actor previously starred in The Young Victoria (2009) and Pride & Prejudice (2005). Relativity Media’s The Best of Me is also in need of a replacement lead, and apparently James Marsden (X-Men, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues) is in the running there. What do you guys think of these rumours? I actually can visualise Friend embodying the character more than I ever could Walker, although I do recognise he was an underrated actor as evidenced by his stand-out performance in Running Scared (2006) and the posthumous praise he is receiving for Hours.
Wizards of the Coast and The New Zealand Mint are teaming up for a very special collector’s product – new Magic: The Gathering Collector Coins. The coins are being minted from one ounce of 0.999 silver and feature a prominent figure of the Magic multiverse painted on. The first coin will feature the hugely popular Planeswalker; Jace, The Mind Sculptor.
These collectors coins are different to medallions in that they are legal tender. The New Zealand Mint has the right to produce national currency, and so these coins, despite their odd shape and design will be exchangeable for $2.00 in the Pacific nation of Niue (granted, nobody would ever sell them as they will be worth a fair bit more than $2).
The current going rate for 1 ounce of 0.999 silver is ~$20 which means that barring any insane markups, the sterling silver coin featuring Jace will actually be cheaper to buy than the card itself. Let that sink in – one ounce of silver is worth less than a piece of printed card.
There will be a strict 5000 of these minted so stocks are sure to go quickly. There is no set price yet for these coins, but pre-orders will be available from retailers soon for their March 1st launch. For a little more info on the coins then check out the New Zealand Mint page on the product. Do these coins interest you, or could you not care less? Let us know in the comments below and as always be sure to stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the Magic: The Gathering news as it becomes available.
Razer made quite the impression at CES 2014, with both the Razer Nabu smartband and Project Christine, a modular PC concept. For the third year straight, the company won “Best of CES” awards from Engadget, the official awards partner of CES.
The Razer Nabu was selected as the “People’s Choice” by way of public vote, while Project Christine won a “Best PC” distinction. In 2013, Razer earned “People’s Voice”, and in 2013 took out “Best of Show,” “Best Gaming” and “People’s Voice” once again. Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder, CEO and creative director, had the following to say;
Razer is not just a gaming company – we are a company that designs products for gamers. Our continued success at CES really speaks to the gaming lifestyle as a global phenomenon. We’re just a start-up, but our worldwide community of gamers and what we do for them positions us shoulder-to-shoulder—albeit uniquely—with the largest tech companies in the world.
But those weren’t the only accolades Razer received, as the Razer Nabu won the Popular Mechanics Editor’s Choice Award, the Tom’s Guide Readers’ Choice Award, and the Digital Trend’s Best of CES in the Sports and Fitness category. Project Christine also ran away with Tom’s Hardware’s Best of CES in the Outside the Box category, and PCWorld and TechHive’s Best of CES Award in the Best Prototype category. Click through on the link at the top to learn more about the two products.
Paramount Pictures have released another clip for Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones – the anomaly of the series, being the only one releasing outside of October and not following the main story arc of the franchise.
This time we get to take an extended look at a scene dubbed ‘Into the Basement’, of which a shorter cut was released at the end of December. It’s pretty self-explanatory what exactly you should expect from the clip.
There should be a horror-survival class taught somewhere in the world. One of the first lessons – don’t go into the basement! Electricity goes out? Don’t investigate or look for the breaker box! Call an electrician from your mobile!
Anyway, you can watch the clip in question embedded directly below. Also check out the last one entitled ‘Chasing Oscar’ here. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones releases on January 23 nationwide.
Heaven, Hell and everything in between. The Bible can be translated and perceived in many different ways; it can be used as a guide in which a person may live, it can be used to teach lessons to the masses or it can be used as inspiration for an epic movie/game/comic with kick-arse action and a divine protagonist that gets fans of the supernatural into an excited frenzy. Black Tower Studios alongside Unity Games have jumped onto this bandwagon with the release of their new action game “Archangel” which puts you into the holy boots of a soldier working for the lord as he is tasked with a mission that revolves around the cleansing of a darkness-filled plane of existence. Boasting fantastic graphics and an innovative control systems, “Archangel” has been presented as the game to end all mobile games but does it truly hold it to hype?
Story
As I mentioned above; the story revolves around an Archangel (a well-ranked angel of God) that has been deployed into an area of existence that has become occupied by the forces of darkness and evil, clearly the almighty has seen that this darkness will soon spread and has sent one of his “top men” to eradicate the threat. This is basically all you are given to start off with and it sticks with you for a while because the story doesn’t entirely have a nice pacing to it so you grasp the idea of being a holy soldier and you keep it in your mind as you begin to play the game. As you play through the game you realise that no new or exciting information has been delivered to you, every couple of levels you’re met with a small piece of text that says something profound about your mission or what exists in the area you’re currently in but nothing that really has any hold on the audience.
It has such a slow pace, it leaves a lot tot the imagination but it may have left too much to the imagination, it gave us a jumping off point but then never really gave us anything else. If you’re clever you can pick up the story from the small pieces of unspoken dialogue that appear throughout the game but they’re few and far between. I quite enjoy the idea of an angelic battle against the demonic, it is movies like “Dogma” or “Legion” that pique my interest so you can imagine I was actually quite ready to dive head first into this game and unfortunately I was met with something below my expectations. Fantastic idea for a game that, although somewhat generic, would have been incredible had it been executed and paced properly. it is unfortunate but it is the truth.
Gameplay
The gameplay is where “Archangel” made its second mistake, I could honestly see what the development team were going for when they implemented this style of gameplay but it came across as, somewhat, lazy and it really wasn’t as effective as I assume they first thought. Basically it is a game where you are forced to “tap” to do most things, this includes walking and attacking enemies. “Archangel” is very gesture-heavy, alongside tapping, it has players make symbols and shapes to execute moves; flicking across the character will have him dash forward with his shield ahead of him knocking enemies away, drawing a line across the ground will have the character summon a wall of fire that damages enemies walking through it, it is things like this that are actually kind of nice to play around with but quickly falls to pieces when you’re met with more than three enemies at a time.
The different gestures constantly confuse themselves of each other, sometimes swiping a line near my character wont make a wall of fire but instead it will dash into an oncoming enemy and vice versa.Though I actually enjoy the idea of gesture-based gameplay I don’t think it works in a game like this, not when you’re expected to fight many enemies at once and react to them as quickly as possible, you’re also faced with obstacles that you must overcome which is terrible when the character has to be signalled to walk with a tap, this means there’s no such thing as quickly ducking out of the way of a speeding arrow or fireball which I can only assume is what has been expected considering the creation of these levels were not done by accident.
There were a lot of unlockables, weapons, armour, spells, etc that you could get your hands on throughout the game which actually played a fairly big part statistically, giving you more defence or more attack with some equipable items being part of a set that could be obtained and used for an all around boost. They did that extremely well but it would have been a lot more enjoyable that the actual gameplay allowed for it to be. Another thing I both enjoyed and resented was the way the health system worked; you begin with standard health and standard attack power but the more combos you built up and the more enemies you defeated, the more health and more power you would earn. I found that quite interesting but ultimately underwhelming simply because you can be brought from maximum health to half health with nothing more than a standard attack from an enemy, it’s odd to punish a player after putting in so much work and that is exactly what it felt like. Look, put simply; if your car is a lemon, customising it with all the flashiest accessories wont make it any less of a lemon.
Visuals
Black Tower Studios clearly went all out when it came to the visual side of “Archangel” and I say that because the graphics were absolutely amazing! The entire game looked well-polished and a majority of screenshots one would take in a level would probably make for an incredibly good-looking wallpaper, if only the gameplay was as fantastic as the aesthetics of the game. Let me start by going on the all around design and theme of the title: Because of its “otherworldly” setting, the development team made the levels as ancient, beautiful and somewhat daunting as they possibly could. I’d compare the style of this game to that of, let’s say, “God of War” or “Dante’s Inferno”, fans of those games will know exactly what I’m talking about when I compare them, I don’t believe this to a clone of those game but I do believe there was a sense of inspiration that came from those titles.
It was all very mythological yet divine and because of its “break away” level layout it did seem like the area WAS decaying. When I say “break away” I refer to the look of the levels, it looks as though the stages were built in the middle of the air so paths don’t always lead onto other paths, sometimes a pillar may be floating next to a ledge or a huge piece of rock would be hovering next to a large piece of land you can actually walk on, I would almost compare it to the way the game “Bastion” looked bar the “being built as you walk” style in which that game employed. The animation was great too, though it did often glitch and the character would fall through the ground or vibrate half way off a ledge before eventually just dying and respawning at a checkpoint.
Audio
The music throughout “Archangel” can actually be described in quite a similar way to the visuals of the game. I’ve used this word a few times but the music does indeed seem to have a sense of divinity about it though something else you could say is that it has a, kind of, creeping sound where you’re lead to believe you’re in an are or a situation which calls for you anticipate or fear, it’s quite a daunting sound that suits the game to a tee. As for things like sound effects I can’t honestly say any of them made a real impact on me but on the same token I can’t say they did nothing for me either. the best way to categorise or to put a label on the sound effects of “Archangel” is that they were…expected, which is actually not a bad thing to say.
The good thing about the sound effects were that they properly conveyed the message that they were intended for and, after playing through the game only for a short time, you can already tell what sound means what which is great for times where you’re surrounded by enemies and you’re trying to use a spell but don’t know why it isn’t working, the sound tells you that that move cannot be used, it’s something so small but it is also something you pick up on. I had no problems whatsoever with the audio of this game, it was done just as will as the visuals which gives it a nice big tick in the “pros” column.
Overall
The game is good at best, it talked the talk but it couldn’t walk the walk. It boasted a great deal of things that I never actually witnessed while playing through as much of the game as I could bare and its gameplay style made me put it down several times out of pure frustration but I cannot speak for everyone, there may be many people out there who enjoy this type of game and you reading this might actually be one of them.
If you have a spare $4.99 to spend than maybe you could try this game out for yourself but I wouldn’t suggest it to anyone that is NOT forgiving enough to put what it lacks aside and enjoy it for what it is which is, essentially, a good looking game but, for me, looks aren’t everything when it comes to a game. I highly suggest that, if you do plan on playing this game, it is probably better to play it on a system like the iPad rather than the iPhone or iPod Touch, the larger screen gives you a better idea of just how good the game looks and the already difficult gameplay will be less difficult on a larger machine. Neither Heaven nor Hell…this game resides somewhere in Limbo.
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This serves as a fairly big reminder for those of you out there who have been playing the latest Nintendo/Game Freak masterpiece, Pokemon X and Y. Months ago we brought you the news of the very first Pokemon distribution event for the new generation of Pokemon games and it was that of a very special Torchic that came with its very own “Blazikenite” which gave it the ability to eventually transform into a Mega Blaziken, well it seems as though time is almost up for those of you who are yet to get your hands on this dangerous little chicken.
The distribution event will be ending on the 15th of January which is only a few days away so I suggest you jump onto your game now and grab it before it is too late, this Torchic isn’t obtainable through normal gameplay and I’d say this is one of the easier ways you could get your hands on one. To get the Torchic head to the “Mystery Gift” section of the Pokemon X and/or Y main menu, there you will find a selection that reads “Receive Mystery Gift”, click on that and you’ve got yourself a fiery Torchic!
This weekend Viz Media released the latest issue of their digital Weekly Shonen Jump magazine and if you didn’t know, this happens to be the two year anniversary for the digital manga service and the company is honoring this date by including the debut chapter of the All You Need is Kill manga from creator Takeshi Obata.
