Colossatron: Massive World Threat Developer:Halfbrick Publisher: Halfbrick Platforms: iPhone (reviewed), iPad Release Date: December 19, 2013 Price: $0.99 – Available Here
Overview
Every once and a while a game comes along with such a colossal amount of hype that it comes into question, can it live up to the hype or does it result in a colossal failure? Such was the situation that Colossatron: Massive World Threat finds itself in. Coming from Halfbrick, the studio behind some of the greatest mobile games to ever grace the platform, all eyes have been on Colossatron to be the next big thing. Unfortunately that is not to be, Colossatron: Massive World Threat turns out to be nothing more than a massive disappointment.
Gameplay
What made Halfbrick’s other games so very good was the addictive gameplay that could be played by anyone. Halfbrick was generally light-handed when it came to in-app purchases making them an option rather than a necessity to enjoy the game. The reason why Colossatron is so disappointing is because it is the complete opposite of those things.
As far as gameplay goes, it is incredible difficult to find some sense of enjoyment in this game. It is a truly passive experience that gives you next to no control over what plays out on screen. All you are tasked with doing is moving coloured blocks onto Colossatron to make him bigger. You don’t control Colossatron at all, instead taking a deciding inactive role in what happens on screen. The player effectively moves coloured blocks onto him until he eventually destroys everything on screen. It is far from fun and barely feels like an actual game at times.
The fact that you cannot control Colossatron is a major misstep by Halfbrick. If the game allowed you to control the monster snake it would’ve proved to be a much more enjoyable experience, unfortunately you are nothing more than a bystander helping Colossatron occasionally.
To make matters worse, the game is very heavy-handed with its in-app purchases. It pushes the purchases at every turn and forces you to either pay to revive Colossatron upon death or start over from the very beginning of the game, almost forcing you to actually pay to maintain your progression in the game. It is just bad and completely disappointing from Halfbrick.
Not only that but during my time playing Colossatron I was subject to several crashes and freezes, with the game being barely stable at times. God forbid you did an in-app purchase at the time of a crash as you would’ve lost all progress, something that happened to me multiple times.
This is clearly not a game that Halfbrick thought through very well. It is half baked at best and flat out terrible at worst. This is a disappointing effort by Halfbrick and one that is ultimately best to avoid.
Visuals and Audio
Cluttered is the best way to describe the visuals for Colossatron: Massive World Threat. At times there is simply too much happening on screen that its near impossible to tell what is even going on. The only highlight in the visual experience is the anime styled cutscenes telling the ‘story’ of Colossatron.
The soundtrack however is actually quite a decent foray of tunes that stands out as a highlight in this overall weak gameplay experience. There is also some solid voice work here for the news reporter characters that is impressive for an iOS game to say the least.
Overall
This is about as half baked as mobile games get and the fact that it shoves in-app purchases down player’s throats does it no favours. Halfbrick made a colossal mistake with this game. It just isn’t fun, it is plagued with bugs and it pushes micro-transactions with heavy hands. Basically it is everything you’d expect not to see in a Halfbrick game and that is a damn shame. Colossatron: Massive World Threat is a massive disaster.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Starting today Viz Media has placed the anime series K on the free version of Hulu and Hulu Plus. The complete thirteen episode series will feature an English dub and it will be available on the servicefrom now until January 15th.
Those who find themselves liking the series will want to keep an eye out for the series when it is released in North America on February 25th where they can buy a basic version of the release as well as a $69.99 limited edition bundle that will come with an 80 page art booklet featuring individual episode synopses, character profiles, poster art, translated song lyrics, an exclusive KANAME☆ K cosplay photo gallery, and more.
Fightback Developer: Ninja Theory Publisher: Chillingo Platforms: iPhone (Reviewed), iPod Touch, iPad Release Date: 19th December 2013 Price: Free – Available Here
Overview
Ninja Theory are a game developers studio that have done a great deal of good within the gaming industry in the past. Their most recent project, and by far one of my most favoured games, DMC remade the world of Devil May Cry in a way that gamers around the world really loved despite not taking to the idea of a remake in the first place. Well the team behind DMC have decided to hit mobile devices with a game that has just been released at this point in time and that game is titles Fightback. Fightback is a beat-em-up title that doesn’t take itself too seriously and borrows a lot of its themes and settings from cheesy 80s action flicks, something that I think Ninja Theory can do extremely well. We’ll soon see wont we?
Story
Within Fightback you play as a man named Jack; he’s cool cat with a short temper and a “rockin’ bod” that he seems to have developed while serving time as some sort of military man, that much wasn’t really too fleshed out. It seems as though this Sylvester Stallone look-alike has had his sister kidnapped by a gang that apparantly has a great deal of control in the city where the game is set, the gang is lead by a mysterious man named Drago who has a fairly deep connection to Jack that seems to stretch back way into his past. Clearly Drago wants revenge for something that Jack did to him and has targeted his only weakness which just so happens to be his younger sister.
Jack gets suited up with a plain white singlet, worn-in jeans, some tough boots and one mean pair of sunglasses which is all he needs to both save his sister and clean the streets of these maniacal gangs. The story is obviously very tongue-in-cheek and I don’t believe it’s meant to be taken that seriously, fact is, Ninja Theory didn’t lay it out in a way that would force you into taking it seriously, everything that the character of Jake does is so very much over-the-top and extremely reminiscent of those 80s action flicks that I mentioned above. The great thing about the story behind Fightback is that it is very basic, very cliché, fairly silly and it is just enough of a story to justify you playing the game because, at the end of the day, even though it doesn’t seem like you’re really heading anywhere you actually are.
Gameplay
Now this is where Fightback really began to shine as in incredible mobile game. It’s your typical beat-em-up/sidescroller but with a major twist so, despite the fact that it is quite basic, it is actually very clever…clever enough for me to call it clever. Basically you’re met with waves of enemies, you tap both the right and left sides of the screen separately in the respective direction you want to attack, so if your enemy is coming from the left…you tap the left side of the screen and vice versa, I probably didn’t need to go over that but I like to be thorough. Swiping up will have jack jump, swiping down will have him crouch and swiping diagonally both up, down or across will result in different forms of attacks. Very simple. I love that about this game, it’s so easy to just pick up and play then put down once you’re finished and you don’t feel bad for doing so partway through a level because of how easy it is to just pick up from where you left off. There are a great deal of upgrades, equipable items and weapons for you and Jack to use throughout the game, some can be picked up and used while in a fight and others like a bulletproof vest are purchased beforehand and used within.
What else ruled about this game was the upgrading system, EVERYTHING could be upgraded and if you were actually half decent at the game it wasn’t that hard to grind for money. The game play in and of itself was absolutely fantastic but here comes the kicker…ads and in-game purchases were like a plague on this game. You could not even open the game without having three floating bubbles with adds for other games drifting across your screen, it constantly badgered you to link the title up to your Facebook and continuously asked for real-life money for in-game items. All that stuff was semi-avoidable and I understand that, to most people, this isn’t a big deal…for me it was.
I would honestly be a great deal happier with this being a game I could buy for more than the standard $0.99 and have NO ads or in-game transactions at all than to constantly be bother with this little annoyances that interrupt me from actually becoming immersed in this game. Dying in-game then having to wait five minutes to be healed is quite silly, you can revive yourself with in-game money but if you have no in-game money you can be sure they’ll ask if you want to use real money, so get good at the game and get good quick. It would have been a straight up perfect release if not for that.
Audio AndVisuals
Fightback looks freaking fantastic, the graphics are actually fairly good but what looks the best about this game to me is the way that the characters move while in action. Jack as a fighter is incredibly kick-arse, the way they animated his movements were, pretty much, the coolest part of this game and considering Ninja Theory seemed like they were going for the “cool” factory, THAT’S the biggest compliment I could give. The animation was so fluid yet rough much like Jack’s character, each enemy moved around in a different way and actually looked good. Look the designs for the characters were fairly basic but it fit in with the whole “cheesy 80s” theme so I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they were intended to look a little basic.
There wasn’t a great deal of voice acting in this game so I can’t really focus on that, what I heard of it was great so no complaints there but I’d like to focus more on the music and how it tied in with the overall theme of the game: It was basically all dark, synthesizer music much like what you’d hear in the game Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, the music was great, not because it was just god music but because it fit in so damn well with this gangland setting and Jake himself. I also did enjoy the in-fight sound effects, they were very well done and extremely satisfying especially when you pummel an enemy who has just finished beating the crap out of you.
Overall
Fightback is an absolutely fantastic game, there’s no doubt about that at all. The action is good, the visuals are great and, as a whole, it really holds up and stands its ground against other games of its type. With Fightback, as I mentioned, I believe it should have been a paid game instead of a free game that has you consider paying money to do simple things that should be doable regardless but, like I also said, they are ignorable and you can easy bypass them by just not caring, it does take away from the game though, it isn’t entirely without its faults. Either way the game is great for anyone that loves 80s action, cheesy characters and a game that knows what it is and likes to make fun of itself through what it does, just be ready for a few little annoying things to tick you off. I beg that you do give this game a good go because, once you get past those little things, it is actually a very enjoyable game.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Last week Capcom announced that the first piece of DLC for Dead Rising 3, Operation Broken Eagle, would be hitting the Xbox One on December 24th. Well it seems that that is no longer the case. A Capcom representative has stated that the DLC, where players will play as a Spec-Ops agent searching for the President, is now going to be released on January 21, 2014.
In the statement about the delay, the representative stated “Adding new content to the massive open world of Los Perdidos is a major undertaking, and to ensure we provide the best possible experience for players, we are putting a few additional weeks of polish and testing into the episode before it’s released.”
While FUNimation has released the first season of A Certain Magical Index last year, it has been a long time since the second season of the anime was released and the company has yet to make an announcement about whether or not they will continue with the franchise.
Well today FUNimation announced that not only have they picked up A Certain Magical Index II but they have also picked up A Certain Magical Index the Movie for English home release sometime in the future. As such, the company will begin streaming the series on January 14th to subscribers and on January 31st for non-subscribers.
Fight for exclusive import rights at Los Santos International in one of the new Capture mode Jobs in Grand Theft Auto Online
After the addition of Deathmatch and Race creators, Rockstar‘s latest update to GTA Online adds ‘Capture Mode’ – a collection of 4 team-based game-types featuring 20 new jobs. Putting a Grand Theft Auto twist on the tried and true ‘Capture the Flag’ match type is interesting indeed. Check out the official notes from the developer listing their favourite parts of the 4 included modes:
RAID
In Raid, you’ll have to fight your way into your opponents’ base and steal a package, then deliver it back to your base to score points. Reach the target score, or deliver more packages than your opponents do in the allotted time to win the match.
“Beachin”
Legal highs and bad t-shirts aren’t the only things being pushed on Vespucci Beach. Four factions raid each other’s stashes for control of the area’s ‘tourist trade’. Take product back to your spot and it’s yours.
“Wargames”
Like any military operation, when things kick off at Fort Zancudo Air Base, they escalate pretty quickly. Teams stockpiling weapons to sell on the black market raid each other’s bases at either end of the facility. If they get the goods back, they’re banked. Nothing’s off limits to be used here, including the fighter jets.
Compete to get buses back to your base in ‘All Abhorred’
HOLD
When playing Hold, teams must collect and store as many packages as possible in their base. Packages can either be found on the map, or stolen from the opposing team’s bases. Reach the target score, or hold the most packages when the time runs out, to win.
“Block Party”
Gang violence escalates in Chamberlain Hills, as block fights block at close quarters. Four factions with two packages each try to raid each other and protect their own stuff. If they get someone else’s product back to their turf, they’ll have to protect it.
GTA
As the ubiquitous acronym might suggest, GTA mode tasks players with stealing target vehicles located all around the map, before bringing them back to their respective bases. Each team must fight to steal more vehicles in the allotted time than their opponents.
“My Maibatsu”
Four East Los car thief outfits compete to get hold of a shipment of Sanchez dirt bikes, and store them back at their bases, while preventing the other teams from doing the same. First place to look would be the Maibatsu Factory.
“Field of Screams”
A tractor shortage in Grapeseed leads to farmyard chaos. It’s harvest time, and two rival gangs compete to bring a Fieldmaster tractor back to their bases. Farming is a deadly serious business in Blaine County.
The contested package at the heart of a firefight
CONTEND
In Contend, there’s only one package, situated in the middle of the map. Teams must fight to bring this package back to their respective bases, and once the package is captured it respawns in the middle of the map and is up for grabs again.
“Salty Snatch”
Dog walkers and surfing talent agents look out – two import operations at either end of Chumash Beach are fighting over a shipment that’s landed on the pier. Any product they can get to their spot in the sand is theirs to keep.
Capture is available now as part of an automatic update for GTA Online, which also includes a host of fixes and dynamic tuning updates. For details on those please check out the Rockstar Support page.
Crytek is adding to the diversity of Ryse: Son of Rome‘s multiplayer Gladiator Mode with two new level events, available right now for free. There is also a paid DLC add-on for the Microsoft Xbox One exclusive launch title called the ‘Colosseum Pack’, available to download from the Xbox Games Store. Below is a breakdown of the new content. Check out some screenshots in the gallery at the bottom of this article.
Free Game Update Adds New Content to Gladiator Mode
Two New Level Events. As you slay barbarians in the arena, two new level events will occur randomly across a variety of maps. In the first, a new enemy turret will appear and bombard your Gladiator with deadly arrows until destroyed. In the second, Reward Statues of Roman deities will emerge from the sands and can be activated as a one-time bonus to boost your Gladiator’s Health or Focus.
New Arenas and Gladiator Skins Available with the Colosseum Pack
Two new arenas: Henge and Ascension. Henge tasks Gladiators with seizing an ancient forest shrine from hordes of barbarians and securing it for Rome. In Ascension, combatants must fight their way through the burning embers of Hades’ lair up to the lavish surface world.
Two new Gladiator skins: Commodus and Centurion. Don the opulent golden breastplate of Commodus, the twisted son of Emperor Nero, or the battle-tested armor of a Roman Centurion.
Today XSEED Games released a handful of new screenshots for Ragnarok Odyssey Ace which is currently set to be released sometime early 2014 for the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 3 with all launch copies of the Vita version coming with a soundtrack CD containing 25 songs.
As for the screenshots, you can find them below. The screenshots show the Tower of Yggdrasil which is an all new dungeon in Ragnarok Odyssey Ace where all of the floors are randomized and players will need to take down bosses from the original Ragnarok Odyssey and a number of new villains with only a new NPC named Norn that will help players at rest points.
Overview
The subject of Power Rangers is somewhat of a special topic for me. From the age of six, I have been following the long-running Sentai hybrid, bearing through all of the cheese to be thoroughly entertained by teenagers fighting in spandex. My fondest memories of the fandom came in the form of the classic Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis beat-em up titles, which were rather solid and have not aged all too terribly. The concept was simple. You got to be the hero, and whatever moved, you beat to death. It was silly, but a ton of fun to a young kid who had only been playing games for a few years at the time.
After a ton of cash grabs in the industry since (and yeah, some were decent enough over the years), Saban are back running the show and Namco have delivered a fresh start for the franchise in video game form. Power Rangers Megaforce takes the latest season of the hit and inserts the player into the experience as they take down the latest evil that is attacking the planet. A photo morphing ability, classic beat-em up gameplay, and original voice acting? It was too good to be true. I wanted to love it from the start, but shortly in, I discovered why licensed games are still a market that fans should approach with caution.
Story
Starting off, and as a Rangers fan, I can easily say that Megaforce as its own product is my least favorite of all the Sentai adaptations. This is a series that is trying to recapture the essence of Mighty Morphin’, but failing miserably due to how forced everything is. The allies such as Gosei come off as unimaginative, and the villains – while admirable in design, don’t bring enough depth to the table. Yeah, this is just Power Rangers, but after the “In Space” arc from years ago, I know the potential of the namesake and feel that we as fans deserve to be a bit snobbish to the brand if needed.
The game itself carries all of what I mentioned into a generic story about saving the world yet again from takeover, and for the most part, it is told decently with semi-voiced cutscenes. I say decent loosely however as this is just another Megaforce plotline and while this title sticks strongly to its roots, it is still poorly written and those bland, vanilla faces on both sides are still at the forefront of the experience. On the other side of the coin, I also remember back when Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie for the Sega Genesis released, the pasted together story did not even matter as I loved the subject material. This title is honestly handled better by narrative alone, and kids who are into this new team are sure to get that same feeling of excitement as they watch their own heroes battle it out on screen.
Gameplay
Battling it out is really what Power Rangers is all about. Megaforce is no different in concept, as the objective of nearly every stage is to get your hands on some beat-em up, side-scrolling action, with plenty of enemies to defeat along the way to each goal. That sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, it would have been – if there weren’t so many poorly executed ideas running parallel to the core experience. Starting out, the player has to take a photo of themselves to watch that photo morph into a ranger after picking their favorite color. Well, it would look like that, but instead of going the extra mile, it seems the developers preferred to just drop the entire top half of a picture over your own, and we just have to consider that a morph for this gem. Making matters more confusing is the fact that the player can swap between any one of the team by tapping on the screen, meaning that first choice has now been rendered rather pointless.
I know I am already sounding negative, but there are so many bad ideas within Megaforce, it would be hard for even a child to ignore the flaws. I love beat-em up gameplay in any game as it honestly is hard to do wrong. Here however, the combat is clunky at best – despite being easy enough to control, and the AI do nearly nothing to cause damage as they don’t react with enough speed or smarts to seem like a viable threat. We already have five rangers that have their own HP bars as it is, so to say this game is overly easy is putting it lightly. The stage design is also convoluted, as each of the five areas are broken up into six sections and those six sections are basically broken up into various objectives that break the flow of the overall gameplay.
One minute, you will be hammering away at foes, while the next area of a level will have the player doing nothing but cheap platforming as they break boxes and environmental objects to find cards. Again, I know this is Power Rangers and the audience is intended young, but Namco should know that most who play this title are going to be looking for some nostalgia and are smart enough to understand what proper level design is. Those cards I mentioned do have a small purpose as collecting enough will unlock a great, powerful attack to take down a good amount of enemies at once. The attack animation however breaks the illusion however and takes far too long for an attack that can be and in some cases that is required to be utilized multiple times in one level.
Zord battles are not much better, as the rock-paper-scissors gameplay comes across as boring, and even the extremely hyper voices (which we will get to in a moment) can not liven up what should be much greater experiences. If I enjoyed one element however of Megaforce, it would be the bonus content. Players can scan cards (one is included within the box) to unlock bonus content, such as slideshows and templates to take photos in. This sounds simple enough, but seeing nearly every generation of rangers and being able to line up for a photo with an actually morpher is indeed nifty, but not quite enough to warrant a purchase.
Visuals and Audio
There isn’t a ton to say about the visuals. They do their job and everything certainly seems fitting. The monsters also are designed well in the small cutscenes, so compared to Super Legends, there is a lot more eye candy at large if you’re one of those fans who are looking for further detail. Environments are bit more rough, featuring dimly lit areas that fall flat to engross the player, and all look about a generation or two behind the times. When you have a decently rendered model running across the screen in what appears to be a backdrop for a Super Nintendo title, things just feel out of placed and rushed. I also had a few boss run-ins where the game would start to stutter, which is odd considering that the 3DS is far more powerful than this one game.
I remember when I thought voice acting was great in video games. It truly adds a bit of life to each title, even if it is done wrong. We do have the cast adding their voices, which I guess is a plus. The gigantic sized minus is that they never shut up. Phrases like “I HEAR BIRDS” and “BREAK THAT BOX!” are just two of many lines you will hear shouted from the team as you make your way through, and this dialogue is repeated so much that it is almost impossible to hear anything else. Sure, it would be fine, even if these lines were repeated in moderation, but the idea that someone looped these clips that much is mind-boggling as it rips the entire concept of even having audio in two, making the player shut that volume off as they play or be harassed about boxes and cards throughout each stage.
Overall
Power Rangers Megaforce is a terrible game. There is no getting around it. The audio is atrocious and the gameplay mechanics are too convoluted to enjoy in the short, messy level design provided. I love the Power Rangers as much as the next fan, but if the extras are the only shining beacon within the entire game, it is a broken game and simply needs to be avoided. It is a rare thing to see a Power Rangers title released on a portable anymore, but if you have to get your fix, wait for something better or stick to Super Legends, as this 20th Anniversary has brought us one of the worst 3DS games available and a sad, shallow entry into what could of been a pixelated celebration of power.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Kirby‘s arrival on the 3DS was already very exciting to this super fan, but now, news has arrived that make the circumstances even sweeter. During today’s Nintendo Direct, it was announced that two modes will be featured as extras within Kirby Triple Deluxe, and you might recognize them a bit. “Kirby Fighters” allows the pink fluff and three others to go head to head in a Smash Bros. like fashion with abilities in tow. The other mode, “Dedede’s Drum Dash”, has shades of Harmoknight and has a nice rhythm/action gameplay mechanic where players must jump to the beat of several legendary tunes.
I will say that Kirby Triple Deluxe is looking to be just the appetizer to hold us over until Super Smash Bros., and with a similar mode in tow, it could definitely be a sleeper hit for the 3DS next year. Check out the new screenshots for the game down below.
