Today at Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Asia Press Conference 2013 GungHo Online Entertainment and Grasshopper Manufacture revealed that they are planning on releasing their next game, Lily Bergamo, onto the PlayStation 4.
The game will be an action title that will feature a female protagonist. Development on the game is being headed by none other than Suda51, Goichi Suda, himself. There will be an emphasis on playing online and the title is currently set to be released in 2014 with more details coming from Tokyo Game Show next week. Grasshopper Manufacture’s most recently released title, Killer is Dead, was released last month in North America and our review of the title can be found here.
During Sony Computer Entertainment Japan’s 2013 press conference today it was revealed by Spike Chunsoft that they are working on another Danganronpa title called Danganronpa: Another Episode. However rather than being a mystery game where players will need to solve puzzles and other things to try and survive, it looks like the game will be something similar to a third person shooter.
More details are set to be revealed in the next few weeks. As for the Danganronpa series, NIS America is currently planning on releasing the first Danganronpa title on the Vita sometime in early 2014, which raises the questions of whether this one will also head West sometime in the future.
Today a new Phantasy Star game has been revealed during Sony Computer Entertainment Japan’s 2013 press conference. Sega has revealed that they are working on Phantasy Star Nova which will be released on the PlayStation Vita sometime in 2014.
The game is being developed by tri-Ace and it will share the same world as Phantasy Star Online 2 minus the online elements. Sega also showed a giant monster called Gigantes and that the game can be played with up to four players and more details are set to be revealed at Tokyo Game Show next week. Though with gamers in North America still waiting on Phantasy Star Online 2, a Western release for this may be up in the air.
Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Asia Press Conference has revealed that Namco Bandai is bringing a new Mobile Suit Gundam game along with the The Idolmaster to PlayStation 4.
It’s likely that these will be exclusive to the PS4 given the outlook of the Xbox in Japan, but we’ll see what Namco decides to do. It’s also doubtful whether we will see these games outside Japan, as there has never been an Idolmaster game in the West (ignoring Shiny Festa for a second) and Gundam rarely makes an appearance unless it’s part of the Dynasty Warriors line up.
The final titles for these games aren’t confirmed, nor are the release dates. We’ll have more news as new info comes out further down the line.
Today a few more details for Deep Down were revealed by Capcom at a presentation held by Sony today. These details concern the game’s setting, which will be set in 2094 New York. In the game players will collect memories from others inside of dungeons which are automatically generated from the bottom up, including monsters, items, equipment and even how terrible things look in the world.
As for the game itself, you can check out some brand new gameplay footage below and keep an eye out for the game sometime in the future when it is released as an online only title for the PlayStation 4.
Sony has announced a new gadget that will be released for the PS Vita later this year on November 14th in Japan. The gadget is called PlayStation Vita TV. It is a version of the Vita that allows players to play Vita games on their television screens without the need to actually own a Vita. PlayStation Vita TV is not only capable of playing Vita titles but also PSP and PSOne Classics.
To add a bit more to this gadget, PlayStation Vita TV also allows players to stream PS4 games to another TV in the house and will support video services such as hulu and NicoNico in Japan. The gadget is set to cost 9,480 yen in Japan for just the system itself, while a Value pack that costs 14,280 yen which includes a Dualshock 3 controller and an 8GB memory card will also be available. At the moment no Western release has currently not been announced.
Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing Part 1 Studio:Gonzo Publisher: FUNimation Format:Blu-ray/DVD Combo Release Date: September 10, 2013 Price:$64.98 – Available Here
Overview Gonzo used to be a well-known anime studio that produced numerous hit anime every year. Despite having some rather popular creations and adaptations, over their history, Gonzo has recently fallen on hard times. Lately the studio has been on the rise once again, but for a few years they struggled to produce even one anime a year. During this time frame they brought out a series many anime fans may have seen before, Last Exile.
Eight years after the first season aired, the studio brought Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing to anime viewers, and now a full ten years after the series’ debut, FUNimation has brought the series to North America. After being away from the spotlight for over a decade, does this second season of Last Exile manage to successfully continue the story?
Story A few years after events of the first season, Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing Part 1 takes place on Earth where two girls are working with Sky Pirates in an effort to simply get by and enjoy life. Fam Fan Fan and her navigator Giselle are considered the best pair of pirates in the organization; with the two of them paired together they have managed to snag numerous flying ships with no casualties and great rewards.
Living the life of Sky Pirates, the two are able to enjoy life as it is, paying little attention to the movements of the world powers. However when the Ades Federation, a powerful nation consisting of people who remained on Earth when many others fled the planet when things started going to hell, violates negotiation terms and ruthlessly attacks the Princesses of the nation of Turan.
Seeing not only the chance to land a massive score in the form of Turan’s flagship, but also leave the nation of Turan indebted to them, Fam, Giselle and the rest of the Sky Pirates make an attempt to save the Princesses, however they only are able to save the youngest princess, Millia, from the grasp of the Ades fleet. Despite their best efforts, the Ades Federation razes Turan to the ground, slaughtering most of its people, including Millia’s father.
With Millia being the last remaining member of the Turan royal family not dead or held captive, Fam swears that she will use her pirating skills to not only acquire Millia a fleet of warships, but also a chance to take her homeland back. However when their first target turns out to be one of the most mysterious ships in the world, the three find themselves with a stronger military might than they may have ever dreamed of. However with weapons capable of destroying cities and enough influence to slaughter naysayers in an instant with little care for the consequences, the Ades Federation proves to be an insurmountable obstacle in their path.
With only a paltry eleven episodes in part one, though a recap episode is included to try and balance things out a bit, pacing is a major issue with Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing. Rather than have transitional episodes or building storylines, the plot ricochets from place to place. While this is great since it makes use of the limited amount of time available to build the world and characters in the series, it does create a whiplash that may leave viewers double checking whether or not they missed something between episodes or skipped ahead on accident.
However thanks to the jumpy nature of the plot, Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing Part 1 has managed to establish a living and breathing world full of different kinds of people, numerous interesting tidbits to add to the mechanics of the plot and more. By focusing heavily on world building throughout this first half, viewers learn of the various nations that come into play and most of the reasons for their actions, making the Ades Federation worldwide conquest seem all the more grander thanks to the amount of effort put into establishing the world.
However thanks to the grand scale of things, the series’ focus of Fam, Giselle and even Millia at times feels like a bit of a waste. By presenting viewers with numerous moving pieces and establishing a well-developed world, these three and their goals feel small in comparison. Through this first half Millia’s quest for vengeance and the rebuilding of her nation feels half-hearted at best, especially with how quickly things go south for them at the end of this half of the series. By leaving viewers with a flashback into a whiplash of a cliffhanger outside of the flashback, things appear to be revving up for Part 2, though whether or not that will be the case has yet to be seen.
Visuals At times, Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing Part 1 is gorgeous to behold with its steam punk take on flying ships, however other times everything feels very clunky and poorly blended together. You see, there is quite a bit of CG used in the series as every air ship is specially designed in CG and then the characters and the rest of the world are drawn using standard animation techniques.
Thanks to this, many of the aerial battles can leave you at the edge of your seat as Fam’s smaller ship navigates around behemoths with cannons capable of demolishing cities. Outside of the battles, most of the scenery is nicely detailed and the characters are nicely animated, though there are some noticeable drops in facial animations in these non-combat scenes.
Audio It is worth noting that by the time Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing Part 1 hits stores in North America, it is almost ten years after the series was first released in North America. As such, FUNimation did not manage to retain the same voice actors for the few returning characters from Last Exile and instead they have been recast. That being said, the English dub is nicely handled for the most part, though Greg Ayres’ portrayal of Dio leaves a lot to be desired. One nice touch that is worth mentioning is that there is some Russian mixed in with the English dub when the characters begin interacting with the northernmost region.
As for the first half’s soundtrack, there are numerous background tracks which are quite striking and these are used efficiently for dramatic sequences. The opening theme “Buddy” by Maaya Sakamoto and the ending theme “Starboard” by Hitomi Kuroishi are fitting for a series such as this, especially when a special version for the ending theme is used.
Extras Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing Part 1 comes with a number of on-disc bonus features, though it is worth noting that nearly all of the content is original Japanese promo material. There are textless versions of the ending themes and opening theme, a commercial collection, a 3 minute long “Friday Night” anime CM series in Japanese, a promo video from the Fam Event and trailers for other FUNimation releases.
Alongside these standard inclusions there is the first part of an Anime Expo 2011 interview with the Japanese staff of the series and two episode commentaries. Episode 1’s commentary features voice director Christopher Bevins, Leah Clarke who voices Giselle, and Carrie Savage who handles the voice of Princess Millia. The second episode commentary is for episode 11 and featuers Jad Saxton, the voice of Fam Fan Fan, Jamie Marchi who voices Liliana and Duncan Brannan, the voice of Luscinia. Both of these commentaries are rather enjoyable to listen to and mostly include on-episode discussion.
Overall Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing Part 1 helps establish a detailed world full of various nations and spices things up with some exciting and intense combat sequences and ludicrous but ultimately successful planning by the main characters in these situations, if only they felt actually integral to the story rather than simply moving within it. The series’ limited length leaves a lot to be desired in the way of pacing and character development, but lays the groundwork for plenty of developments to occur throughout the second half of the series.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Ever feel so confident about your keyboarding skills that you thought you could climb mountains? Well limber up, download Cubic Climber, and put those skills to the test. Using various “holds”, you use your keyboarding skills to scale a mountainside; racing the clock and improve your qualifying times in 5 unique levels.
We nabbed an interview with Ondrej Angelovic, one of the founders of Simplicity Game Development Studio and lead programmer for Cubic Climber.
Can you tell us a little about the team that worked on Cubic Climber?
There were altogether 3 people working on this project, including me, so I will tell you something about every one of us. I am the programmer of Cubic Climber and I basically came out with the idea for this game and I somehow managed to realize it. Next person is Tomas. He is the co-founder of Simplicity game development studio and also good friend of mine. He handled all textures,icons and stuff like that. Last one is Chase. I know him only for something about 3 months. We was looking for someone who can create some tracks for the game and we came across him.
Is Cubic Climber your studio’s first release? If so, what lead to the decision of developing Cubic Climber?
Yes it is. At first it was only something like a “weekend project“ but when I started to work on it I saw the potential so I decided to delay our other project and focus on the Cubic Climber.
So far, how would you say your experience with Desura has been? Why’d you choose to distribute over Desura?
I must say that It was great. Sometimes they got swarmed by work so they didn’t reply to emails or check new versions of the game so fast but otherwise they were really helpful. I chose It because it is possibly the best option for unknown indie developers to get highlighted.
Did you always plan on making Cubic Climber free to the public?
Yes I always did. Later, when I realized that the game was better then I had thought it would be, I came out with the idea to add donator version of the game to Desura. So people can support our work if they want to. There are no special features in it. It’s same as normal free version.
Where did you draw most of your inspiration for Cubic Climber? Any real world locations?
I can’t say that I drew inspiration from some particular location but I spend a lot of my free time climbing on climbing walls or rocks so the majority of ideas for the game just came from my real life. Not the one to climb without rope thought.
You mentioned a patch coming soon. How long are you planning on supporting Cubic Climber? Any new content coming?
Yes there will be a patch with some bug fixes and audio control as people think that the in-game music is pretty loud. I plan to support the game until I fix all bugs. No new content coming any time soon, but If I see that people like the game and they play it I will think about adding something new.
How would you say the development process has gone for Cubic Climber?
There were times when it was pretty difficult. I didn’t know anything about MySQL, PHP and I didn’t know how to connect the game to a database neither. So I just had to learn everything. Development was also slowed down several times because of school and other stuff. Basically real life got in the way but in the end I managed to finish it and release it so for me personally it was a big success.
As an Indie Developer what advice would you give to those looking to get into the industry?
I am pretty new to this so it’s hard to give some sort of advice. I am sure that the most important part of game is the idea. It’s nice to have pretty graphic and great music in it but if you want people to play it you have to come up with something new. Game scene was never so accessible for new indie developers like right now.
How would you say your experience has been working in Unity? What made you pick Unity over its competitors?
I have run into some small problems when I converted the game from Unity 3 to Unity 4(I have bought the license). Otherwise it was great. I picked Unity because its really easy to learn and in the time I started my work on Cubic Climber I have already known how to work in it so it was the ideal choice.
Where do you plan to go from here? Any new projects underway?
I just want to support Cubic Climber for a while. Some people have already bought the donator version of the game what is really great. It’s nice to see that some people like our work and they want to support it. I will decide what’s coming next really soon. I may complete one delayed project or I can start to work on my Ludum Dare 27 entry and try to make a solid game of it.
We’d like to thank Ondrej Angelovic for his time and prompt response. Cubic Climber has been released on Desura, after being in development for over a year. It is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux with updates planned soon.
Two versions of the game are ready for download; a free and donator version (Both versions have access to the same content). The donor revision, stated by Simplicity Game Development Studio, “is for all the people who want to support our work and our future projects” with a “big thank you” to anyone who does support them.
A conference in Japan is happening today in the capital city of Tokyo and a new PlayStation Vita model has been announced. The new model is called the Vita 2000 model and will come in six different colours (as pictured above) and is thinner and lighter than the original model. The data transfer connection has been changed to a micro USB connector and battery life has been extended by an hour. In addition, 1GB built in memory will be included for save files. Interestingly, the 5 inch OLED screen has been replaced with an LCD screen. The new Vita model will launch on October 10 for the price 18,980 Yen. Some bundles are also being announced, one being a Gundam Breaker bundle with a special Vita design. Hopefully this can spark some life into the struggling Vita sales. A 90 day trial download code will come with all purchases of the new Vita model.
A new 64 GB memory card is also being made avaialable. Sony is noting these announcements are specifically for Japan but I am not doubting that both the new Vita model and memory card will also be making their way overseas in the near future. Stay tuned to us for all the new announcements coming out of the Japan conference.
Once again three gamers Dan Camilleri, Mark Dawes and Luke Wigley will marathon through 20 of the worst video games ever made for 24 hours non-stop live on the Internet for all to see.
Yes you read right, NON-STOP 24 HOURS of some of the worst games ever made, streamed live on the Internet.
And why would three grown men put themselves through this monumental task, you ask? It’s all in a bid to raise money for UNICEF, an excellent charity organisation that protects and promotes the rights of children all across the world.
Last year saw The Lame Game Marathon raise a massive $7,300 in donations. And previous to that in their first year, the lame gamers exceeded their modest target of $2,000 to raise a massive $5,500 by end of the marathon. Let’s hope they can smash the record once again.
While a the line up of lame game has yet to be announced, previous years have seen likes of Superman 64, Big Rigs, Barbie Horse Adventures: Mystery Ride, Babysitting Mamma, Sukeban Shachou Rena, Iron Man, QWOP, and Grey’s Anatomy: The Video Game….you get the idea.
The entirety of Lame Game Marathon’s madness will be streamed live online via their website and Twitch.tv account beginning 10am, Saturday October 26. Meanwhile you can keep up to date with all the antics of the Lame Game Marathon via their Facebook and Twitter.
