Warner Bros announced today that their upcoming DC Comics-focused MOBA, Infinite Crisis, is getting another new champion on December 18. The Joker’s side-kick Harley Quinn is already in the game, and now it’s time for the Dark Knight’s right hand, Robin, to take the stage.
Tim Drake, the new Robin, is a solid support character. With skills that are meant to lend heavy assistance to a partner (such as Batman), he can help keep the fight going while providing surveillance. He can also use his fantastic bo skills to deflect damage and his acrobatics to zip in quick for a distanced flip kick.
To see the full Robin trailer, be sure to check out the video below this article.
The zombie mod Day Z finally entered the much awaited Early Access program today. After several delays, the game is now in open alpha status. The developers believe the core of the game is in place and ready for widespread testing. The standalone alpha features persistent player profiles, crafting, weapon customization, improved visuals, and 40 player servers. Players will explore the country of Chenarus in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. There are no rules and the other players can be just as dangerous as the merciless zombies.
Day Z can be purchased by the general public for $29.99 on Steam. The game only runs on Windows PCs.
Here we have it, people! The Pokemon X and Y Anime has been running wild with fans all of the world absolutely loving the way the series is both animated and the way it seems to be panning out in general so it’s no mystery that a Pokemon X and Y movie has already been announced.
So far no actual information regarding the story of the movie has been released but what we do know is the name of the film will be “Cocoon Of Destruction” which, if you ask me, sounds down right fierce! The picture you see to your right is a scan from the CoroCoro magazine regarding the new movie, as you can see a fair few of the Mega Evolutions from the new generation are shown and that leads us to believe that they may have a place in the new movie alongside the legendaries that were shown in the trailer.
Speaking of which, you can actually see the short trailer in our Featured Video Section below so head down to have a look at what’s beginning to seem like the start of something Poke-awesome! This will be the 17th movie and is to be released on July the 19th of next year (2014) which should be followed by an English release that wont be too far behind.
When Drakengard 3‘s first bit of gameplay was shown off it would be a bit of an understatement to say that the game looked rough. However with the latest trailer for the game, which you can see below, we see that a lot of the graphical issues have been fixed up and now 2014 can’t come fast enough.
The trailer shows off the various Utautai sisters, gives us a taste of what the game’s Japanese voice cast will sound like, and an amazing soundtrack. Currently Drakengard 3 is set to be released in Japan on December 19th for the PlayStation 3 and while Square Enix has said that they are planning on bringing Drakengard 3 to the West, they have not announced anything outside of a 2014 release window.
The collector’s edition comes with a forty page hardcover art book featuring images from the world of Spira, five lithographs of artwork and characters from the game, and the game’s soundtrack that includes over six hours from music and will be available on a Blu-ray disc.
The company also announced that there will be a special 2-in-1 retail pack for the Vita version of the game, though while Final Fantasy X HD will be available on the game card, X-2 HD will only be available as a download voucher. Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster is set to be released on March 18th for both the PS3 and PS Vita.
Last night we reported that the man, Hirofumi Watanabe, suspected for writing numerous threat letters to Kuroko’s Basketball‘s mangaka and various events for the series was arrested. Today some more details about his arrest came to light as the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper has released an English version of their report.
In the report the thirty six year old man stated to police that he was “jealous” of the success of the author. According to the report the suspect is not an acquaintance of the author and they do not have a clear motive for his threats. When Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested Watanabe his backpack contained twenty more threatening letters that he was prepared to mail out, including letters to threaten the upcoming Comiket as well as a high school basketball tournament.
Overview
In recent years adventure games have found themselves with some stiff competition, especially in the episodic model of releasing games. The Raven – Legacy of a Master Thief is an adventure game that saw its three episodes release to computers and mobile over the course of time, but now it has found its way onto XBLA all available from the get go. While that certainly helps out those that start and want to finish off the adventure title and solve all the mysteries therein, we need to take a look at how the three episodes work and come together to see if they are a worthy experience.
Story
Opening up on the heist of a famous gem, an eye of the Spinx, The Raven is able to set an appropriate tone through its use of style and characters. It’s hard to question the title when seeing a man parading around in all black with a raven mask dropping feathers about. But, the story itself is not centered on this crime, instead using as an excellent jumping off point. The story of the game itself kicks off with a Swiss Constable named Zellner aboard a train, in a short dialogue sequence that allows players to get an appropriate amount of backstory if they wish and get an idea of who this cheery Constable reading detective novels is.
While one Eye of the Sphinx was stolen from a London Museum, the other is travelling on its way to Egypt to go on display in its home country with a decent entourage to protect it, including the famous Inspector Legrand who made a name for himself shooting and killing the original Raven years ago. The character dynamic between Zellner and Legrand is played out very well, showcasing their contrasting personal motives that adds good depth to both characters and the world in which they reside. From train, to ship, to Egyptian museum, the story folds a fairly grand adventure that gives players a little extra to do outside the main storyline, piecing together smaller mysteries helps add nice tweaks to filling out the detail in the story.
The most interesting aspect of the story however is the fact that it reaches its resolution point about halfway through the second episode. While this would certainly hamper some games, as there is not much else to tell, The Raven goes in an interesting fairly unique direction and allows the player to see the events from a different point of view, in fact the thief’s point of view. This adds a lot to the story and helps fill in every gap that Zellner is not able to deduce on his own, plus introducing this in the middle of Episode 2 allows it to hook the players for the rest of the the tale. With all of this together The Raven is able to provide a good story that adventure fans should enjoy.
Gameplay
Playing a lot like a traditional adventure game, being ported from computer and mobile makes it a bit interesting to control the game with a controller. While other games have done this in a few different ways, The Raven picks a method that works for the most part, but doesn’t put it in a position for much praise. Zellner and later playable characters are controlled by the left stick to walk around and look at different objects, unfortunately only objects in range and eye-line of the character are usable creating somewhat of a problem when trying to re-position. On top of that the walk step is tediously slow when trying to move about, creating a somewhat haphazard experience simply getting from place to place, which coupled with loading screens from room to room makes the game experience go very slowly.
While moving and selecting objects to interact with do not work out so well with a controller, the inventory system does fare much better. The inventory can be pulled up, cycled through, and allow objects to be combined very easily. On top of that all the puzzles and objects to use are very intuitive with logical sense. When getting an object it is easy to figure out what it is and what to do with , which does a little bit to balance out how the load zones and walking speed slow down the gameplay. Though puzzles involving talking to characters spread out across several screens may fill the player with dread about how long it will take to actually get around to talking to everyone and solving the puzzle itself.
There is also a hint system should things prove somewhat difficult to have to solve on their own, however these are in the Notebook, which is never actually formally introduced. With all of these problems that the gameplay suffers it may seem like a big hurdle to get into the game, but the later episodes find less of these problems and provide a more satisfactory experience. Later locations have fewer, but larger screens to explore allowing more to do with less transitions and when playing as the thief players have the benefit of having a general idea of how they will be handling some of the solutions.
One of the biggest issues that The Raven suffers from however is instances of getting stuck. Not in the sense of what to do to progress, but literally being unable to do anything because of a glitch or bug that requires reloading the last save. These seemed to stem from the controls themselves as on one occasion Constable Zellner got stuck in the floor of the train and couldn’t walk anywhere, as well as multiple occasions of permanently selecting one object and not able to choose anything else. These were far between, but did happen across all the episodes, though reloading quickly fixed it and not much was lost in the process, so they don’t make the game unplayable just get in the way of trying to enjoy the other aspects of the game.
Visuals
With an nice adventure game art style and nice looking characters, The Raven paints an interesting world that fits well with the Xbox 360 power, though some of the characters can be a bit disturbing to see talk. Mrs. Miller for example has a few problems with how her mouth looks when talking, which even gets worse when she’s wearing her scarf around her face, additionally I witnessed three cases of scary jaw in the first episode. Watching a character’s jaw windmill through their face is not a pleasant thing and fairly outstanding bug especially seeing it three times, but luckily these only occurred in the first episode and was thankfully absent in the other two episodes.
There is a fair amount of detail, even for things that don’t get very close inspection, but there are a few problems here as well. One of the biggest are very dark areas, having locations that are too difficult to see are problematic when the solution requires exploring those areas and being unable to see the character at all. Add in the context based interactions that are tied to facing a certain way can lead to trouble finding the right way, until literally fumbling in the dark with the character.
Audio
With the issues that The Raven suffers from thankfully there is one area without them, as it does have voice acting which has been very well done, especially for having been translated and dubbed over into English. Zellner, Legrand, and the other passengers all sound not only suitable, but with proper accents to give a nice addition to all cast of characters that cover a nice range of nationalities. The music as well does a fantastic job with a wide variety of songs that changes quite a bit from location to location as the trip goes from train, to ship, to museum as well as Switzerland, Mediterranean, and Egypt. The effort that is paid to the audio doesn’t quite make up for all the other issues, but it definitely does not hurt.
Overall
Unfortunately, The Raven – Legacy of a Master Thief does not have what it takes to be a great adventure game, but it definitely has what it takes to be a good one. There are issues that plague the game, especially being forced to reload saves to get unstuck, but the story is fantastic and definitely does not fall into the traps of predictability or being completely random. Fans of adventure games that are willing to face the game’s problems and get into the later episodes may find something they will enjoy in the lengthy experience The Raven has to offer.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
When Square Enix was finally able to announce the release date for Final Fantasy X|X-2 HD Remaster, they were only able to do so the for PS3 version of the game, with the PS Vita release date left unstated and a mystery. But, it seems that the time for them to reveal its coming has now arrived as news has just come with that very information.
Those worried they would be forced to choose one of the other based on which ever released first, needn’t worry though as it turns out they will be releasing the same date. That’s right, Remaster will be hitting PS Vita at the same time, so players can pick whichever platform they prefer, either digital or retail.
Both digital and retail versions of Final Fantasy X|X-2 HD Remaster, as well as both PS3 and PS Vita will be priced at £29.99 and available in Europe on March 21st, 2014. Though some features for the retail version of the PS Vita will require online connection to download.
So, players will be able to enjoy the international versions of both games in HD, with the updated soundtracks and trophy support on PS Vita the same day as PS3. Plus, those that get both versions will be able to carry over their save game data between the two systems via the PSN, making a great benefit for those that can never have too much Final Fantasy.
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is just about ready to release its first single player DLC, so that players can continue the journey and see what becomes of Edward Kenway’s former quartermaster Adewale. Setting the DLC 15 years offers up plenty of time for Adewale to have gone a long way on his own path and with these 9 new missions, player will be able to explore it themselves.
With the “Freedom Cry” DLC set to come out this week for Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4, and PC it makes sense for Ubisoft to put its launch trailer out now to show off just what players can expect. Showing off Adewale giving hope to his people as they strive for independence, as well as him in action with his machete and blunderbuss, the trailer seems like a good primer for the action players themselves will be taking in game.
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag itself has met with some good review scores for both past and new gen consoles, so we’ll see if this DLC can live up to the quality when it releases Tuesday on Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC and Wednesday for PS3 and PS4.
The popular sandbox game Minecraft is planned to be released on December 17th for the Playstation 3 in North America. Mojang, the developers of the successful game, recently stated on Playstation Blog that the building adventure game is also porting to the PS4 and PS Vita, though the exact release date is unclear. Players can expect it to be released some time in the next year. The game is being ported over to the Playstation platforms by 4J Studios, the company that ported Minecraft to the Xbox 360, which sold over 10 million copies. An Xbox One version of Minecraft is also in development, and all of the ports to different platforms will be handled by 4J Studios. Here are some of the questions that Mojang developer Owen answered on the PS Blog.
Q: Does Minecraft: PS3 Edition feature everything from the other versions of Minecraft? Minecraft: PS3 Edition comes with everything present in other console versions. They’re pretty much identical to play, and will be developed in tandem from now on.
Q: Will Minecraft: PS3 Edition feature DLC texture packs and skins? Downloadable skins and texture packs will be available from PSN soon after release.
Q: Will there be PlayStation-specific content? PlayStation-specific skins and texture packs would be cool! Fingers crossed, eh?
Q: Will Minecraft: PS3 Edition feature Remote Play or compatibility with the PS4 or PS Vita editions? We don’t know yet, sorry. We’ll let you know as soon as we do.
Q: Does Herobrine feature in Minecraft: PS3 Edition? Probably not.
Make sure you mark your calendars for the 17th of December. PS3 users will finally be able to access their pickaxes and shovels from their PlayStation 3 units. Just don’t forget to keep the Creepers away from you when you first start playing it on their newly ported consoles.
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