SEGA Europe Ltd and SEGA of America, Inc. have confirmed the worldwide release of Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse on September 4, 2013. The highly anticipated re-imagining of the classic genesis platformer, will be available for digital download on Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation Network and Windows PC for $14.99 USD, 12.99 EUR or 1200 Microsoft Points.
European gamers who pre-order Castle of Illusion on PSN from August 21 to September 3 will receive the following exclusive content, accessible from the launch:
a novel dynamic skin
three avatars only reserved for pre-orders
downloadable emulated version of the original Mega Drive game
Don’t miss out on Disney’s amazing HD adventure, starring Mickey Mouse! Check out SEGA’s official site here for further information and post your thoughts on the game in the comments section below.
Senior game Designer Bryan Williams and Interactive Marketing Manager Aubrey Sitterson spent almost an hour livestreaming footage from their upcoming wrestling game WWE 2K14. They streamed three full matches featuring Randy Savage vs Ultimate Warrior, Ryback vs Dolph Ziggler, and John Cena vs Daniel Bryan. The pair show off some of the new moves and features added in the game.
WWE 2K14 is the latest installment of the long running wrestling franchise and the first title in the series to be published by 2K Sports. The game will be released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 29th in North America and November 1st in Europe.
Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, Pepsi and Coca Cola, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, Battlefield and Call of Duty, what do all of these have in common? They are all famous rivalries! With the recent Call of Duty Ghosts Multiplayer Reveal video, EA and DICE are raising the stakes with the new “Real Players, Real Gameplay” videos. These videos feature player reactions and gameplay footage from Battlefield 4‘s focus group testing.
Battlefield 4 is set to be released on October 29th in North America, October 21 in Australia/New Zealand, and November 1st in Europe. The game will be available for Windows PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
Only in Battlefield 4: “Crash In Guns Blazing”
Only in Battlefield 4: “I Stabbed Him in the Water”
Only in Battlefield 4: “Taking Out Tanks Left and Right”
Activision is proud to claim the publishing title of this year’s stellar line-up for the most highly-anticipated games at Gamescom 2013.
CEO of Activision Publishing, Eric Hirshberg stated, “With the next-generation of consoles on the horizon, this is obviously an exciting time for gamers. And there’s no better place to share the incredible slate of games we have coming than Gamescom, where our fans can get hands on with the games and really experience them. With Call of Duty: Ghosts, Destiny and Skylanders Swap Force on our slate, we think we’re going to have some of the most talked about and anticipated games at the show.”
The Activision booth will feature an interactive “Show Mode” experience, displaying video action and gameplay footage of these next-gen games, in a stunning panoramic 190° cinematic theatre experience. Activision’s line-up at Gamescom 2013, includes:
Call of Duty: Ghosts –attendees will get the first global opportunity to play the game and watch gameplay footage from the best pro-players across Europe in the Multiplayer Showcase event, streamed live on Xbox 360 from 18.00 CET on Wednesday, August 21
Destiny –visitors will see a seven-player live-demo, set in Old Russia in Gamecom’s biggest ever demo-theatre, create Destiny photo moments, buy exclusive game merchandise (t-shirts, trading cards) at the GameStop info booth and receive a copy of the new ViDoc entitled, “Out Here in the Wild,” with behind-the-scenes access to the creators of Destiny’s rich universe
Skylanders SWAP Force –attendees will be able to play the game on PS3 and PS4 at the SONY Computer Entertainment Deutschland booth and will have the chance to win one of three exclusive T-shirts created especially for Gamescom at the Activision booth
Check out Activision’s booth, located in Hall 7.1, in the Koelnmesse GmbH Exhibition Centre in Cologne, Germany from August 21-25.
EA have announced that their EA Sports branded title NHL 14 will be getting a demo released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners next week on the 22nd of August, 2013.
NHL 14 won several awards at the E3 expo for best sports title on show. The game runs on the incredible EA Sports technology and provides gamers with what is undoubtedly the best hockey experience in a video-game the NHL game series has seen to date.
Be sure to pick up the demo for the hotly anticipated NHL 14 next week when it launches for free download on the Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network.
EA have just released a plethora of brand new screenshots for the hotly anticipated racing game Need For Speed Rivals. The screenshots highlight the game’s incredible personalisation features, allowing you to swag up your ride with a distinct and personal look unique to you.
The personalisation feature came about due to the fact that players will constantly encounter one another in the online open world of the game. The developers decided some level of personalisation would be appreciated in order to distinguish and set yourself apart from the rest of the racers.
You can check out some screenshots in the gallery below to see what the game’s personalisation feature offers. Need For Speed Rivals is slated for release on November 21st, 2013.
While we’re frothing over the robot shenanigans of Pacific Rim, Japan is preparing its own, somewhat more down-to-earth film in the form of a live-action Patlabor adaptation.
A new and fairly awesome visual has been posted on the official website for the film during the Taiwan International Comic Expo. A detailed, life-sized prop was curiously spotted by onlookers in Tokyo before the reveal and now we can see exactly why.
Titled The Next Generation -Patlabor-, the movie adapts the original concept of the classic series Mobile Police Patlabor which consequently spawned two OVAs, a TV anime and three anime films. Audio and CGI studio Omnibus Japan is apparently co-producing the project with a portfolio of Ghost in the Shell and the Evangelion movies under its belt.
Brace yourselves for a trailer sometime in the near future as more info comes out ahead of its 2014 release. In the meantime, just look at that stunning promotional poster below!
From the producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious, Jason Blum, and the director of The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Scott Derrickson, comes Sinister – a supernatural horror film starring Ethan Hawke as a washed-up true crime writer who moves house to pursue a new, most disturbing mass-murder tale. Icon Home Entertainment has brought the home media release to Australian shores under its ‘Insomnia’ line. But as is the benchmark for the best horror films…will Sinister actually cause you to lose sleep?…
Story
Talk about setting a tone…when a movie starts off with Super 8 footage of a family being hung from a tree in their own backyard, you learn what to expect from that film on the spot. Months after this occurrence, Ellison Oswalt (Hawke) moves his family into the victims’ home, with them being none the wiser. But it wouldn’t be necessarily be a shock to them if they found out, as Ellison – a true-crime author – is guilty of previously convincing the family to move in pursuance of a story. When his wife, Tracy (Juliet Rylance) asks “we didn’t just move two doors down from a crime scene, did we?”, he assures her no…with the dramatic irony of the audience knowing that this is the murder house.
The family’s house-warming period isn’t as smooth as they’d hoped, with their night terror-prone son Trevor (Michael Hall D’Addario) re-experiencing his frightful fits in the first nights. Their other child, daughter Ashley (Clare Foley) is settling in more peacefully, being allowed to draw on her bedroom walls to help make it her own. Soon after moving in, Ellison find a box in the attic filled with Super 8 film reels, and a projector to play them on. They are labelled “Pool Party ’66“, “BBQ ’79“, “Lawn Work ’86“, “Sleepy Time ’98” and “Family Hanging Out ’11”. They sound like innocent enough home movies, and at first they seem like it, but Ellison quickly discovers them to be home video of multiple triple/quadruple homicides.
Through viewing these recordings, Ellison discovers a couple constants: an unknown symbol painted somewhere on every crime scene and a dark, unsettling figure present in each. Later, Ellison finds children’s drawings referring to the unidentified presence as “Mr. Boogie”. From this point on, Ellison journeys to discover everything he can about this…’thing’, the cult-like imagery and what ties the murders together. Along the way to doing this, he comes across a helpful and somewhat awestruck Deputy So-and-So (what he actually refers to him as in person, and on his mobile contact) played by James Ransone, and reaches out to a local professor whose expertise lies in the occult, named Jonas (Vincent D’Onofrio).
Sinister relies on a consistent sense of tension and dread, with a few pop-up scares thrown in for good measure. Though many readable, common horror movie tropes abound – such as the spooky photographs and supernatural interference – many are subverted, and the premise is definitely unnerving, helped along by the impressive production. The disappointing thing with movie-marketing and advertising is that too much is revealed pre-release, and with Sinister, half the scares have been included in promotional trailers. For that reason, maybe Sinister lost some of its effect on me, and I therefore don’t consider it to be a truly terrifying movie, but the film is so well made and features a brilliant performance by Hawke that I appreciate it on those fronts.
Visuals & Audio
Sinister is very dark, not just in tone, but in lighting and composition. The film is muted in colour, and was shot with rarely anything more than natural light, meaning that night-time scenes relied on being lit by the glow of the projector screen Ellison becomes obsessed with, the moonlight beaming through the windows or some other secondary source such as a laptop screen or iPhone flash (the official screens included in this article have had their brightness/levels adjusted for visibility). This results in a real-life feel without the need to resort to using shaky cam or found footage techniques; Scott Derrickson has now given all future horror directors the blueprint.
Audio-wise, Sinister is understated; quiet during the day scenes, but as soon as night falls and Ellison decides to turn on the projector for one more bout of observation, or is investigating strange sounds (as you do?) the eerie and ominous music kicks in, filled with buzzing, static noises, rumbling and low, pulsing bass. The dissonant underscore by Christopher Young amplifies the foreboding with these low-frequency effects. Specifically, during the death-scenes in each video, this distorted singing or chanting can be heard that is unbelievably frightening in its own right. Overall, Sinister has one of the best audio treatments I’ve heard in a long time.
Extras
This blu-ray release from Icon Home Entertainment holds only two special features. True Crime Authors (9:16) is an interesting feature that has numerous individuals in the field – the majority of them writers themselves – talking about the profession, the effect it has on someone’s psyche and more. Living in a House of Death (11:31) looks at the history of murder houses in America, how real estate companies can continue to sell them, and who exactly feels comfortable living in such haunted properties. Although the extras are scant in quantity and don’t focus on the film’s production itself, they are relevant, fairly meaty and fascinating.
Overall
Sinister features some classic horror genre tropes (creepy little girls anyone?), with a somewhat slow burn to a creative two-part twist, although half of that equation was more than hinted at beforehand – it was flat out stated. Yet, Sinister is definitely more creative than 90% of the “horror” that has been churned out in the last decade. It’s not a remake, it’s not shot in shaky cam, and it features a fresh villain – albeit one heavily inspired by The Ring. The blu-ray transfer is great, but I was disappointed to see the commentaries and deleted scenes from the U.S. release cut. All things considered, this blu-ray is a solid release for a solid film.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
The updated build promises various improvements and additions from the original version including the ability to level up your character and upgrade pins. The indie game is currently playable in its alpha stage, or alpha-funding, if you pre-order the game for $17.99USD on Steam.
The game’s description states, “Full Mojo Rampage is a rogue-like game that takes place within the confines of the Voodoo reality. In this realm only the most powerful rites and powers can provide a safeguard against evil. Dying is not the end, only the beginning to becoming a stronger voodoo soul!”
We recently had the chance to preview the unique indie game and we walked away impressed. Check out the trailer too in case you missed it!
This week’s deal of the week goes to the Humble Origin Bundle. For $1.00, buyers can snag a copy of Dead Space, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Crysis 2 Maximum Edition, Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space 3, and Medal of Honor. For a larger purchase price, buyers can snag Battlefield 3 and The Sims 3 with a few DLCs. All the games are for Origin and those that are available on Steam also come with Steam keys. EA is making no direct profit from this bundle. Their share of the profits are going to support five great charities, so I personally encourage frugal buyers to donate as much as they can afford.
This week’s theme is EA and Sega titles. If you are too frugal to purchase Rome: Total War II at full price, consider purchasing one of the older Total War titles instead!
Once again, GMG is running a 20% off digital games coupon this weekend. Try adding the coupon GMG20-4B9NY0L4FEN to your purchase for an extra 20% off your price. There’s no harm in trying!
This bundle contains pretty much every single Total War game and DLC ever released on Steam. If you’re a huge fan of strategy or willing to take a risk on the series, this is probably the best price you’ll get for all the games.
For those unwilling to buy all the DLCs and expansions, try the Master Collection. For half the price, buyers can get all the base Total War games then purchase the DLCs and expansions for the games they like separately.
For those looking for something a little more light hearted without going to Saints Row level silliness, check out these older titles. Grand Theft Auto Vice City is considered to have the finest soundtrack in the whole series.
If you are looking to play the legendary Day Z mod, you will need to purchase ArmA 2 and ArmA 2 Operation Arrowhead. ArmA 2 Combined Operations contains both titles which makes this bundle the cheapest way to play Day Z.
