Today 2K Games revealed that they will be including a new gameplay mode in WWE 2K14 to commemorate WrestleMania 30 and the mode will simply be called ’30 Years of WrestleMania.’ In this mode players will take part in a campaign as they play through numerous iconic WrestleMania matches spanning the three decade long history of the event.
There will be more than 45 matches available and while not all of the matches have been announced so far, it will include the Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant match at WrestleMania 3, The Rock vs Hogan at WrestleMania 18 and the WrestleMania 28 main event of The Rock against John Cena, the first time, not the second time.
These matches will be played through as a campaign with authentically recreated arenas, Superstar entrances and ring attires and they will even be presented in the television quality of that era, meaning some screen filters will be added to older matches to recreate the feeling from that era. The full roster for 30 Years of Wrestlemania will be revealed during WWE SummerSlam Axxess this Sunday.
While we were given a look at the Xbox One controller back when the company showed it off during their console reveal, they never went too in-depth with the various changes that they have made to the controller and what makes it different from the Xbox 360 controller.
In fact, not too much has been changed on the surface level, but according to the General Manager of the Xbox accessories group at Microsoft, Zulfi Alam, there are over forty improvements to be found in the Xbox One controller. The biggest change includes the way that the d-pad is now designed, since one of the few complaints gamers had about the 360 controller was the way the D-pad was designed. Anyways, check out the video below to see a full look at the relatively pricey controller.
(Left to right) Kate Winslet as Adele, Josh Brolin as Frank and Gattlin Griffith as Henry inLabor Daydirected by Jason Reitman to be released by Paramount Pictures and Indian Paintbrush. Photo credit: Dale Robinette
Paramount have given us our first look still (seen above) from the upcoming Jason Reitman-directed film, Labor Day – which started principal photography back in June– starring Academy Award-winner Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road, The Reader) and the Academy Award-nominated Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men, True Grit).
Here is the official synopsis for the film:
Labor Day is based on Joyce Maynard’s novel of the same name, centering on 13-year-old Henry Wheeler (Gattlin Griffith), who struggles to be the man of his house and care for his reclusive mother Adele (Winslet) while confronting all the pangs of adolescence. On a back-to-school shopping trip, Henry and his mother encounter Frank Chambers (Brolin), a man both intimidating and clearly in need of help, who convinces them to take him into their home and later is revealed to be an escaped convict. The events of this long Labor Day weekend will shape them for the rest of their lives.
Labor Day will have its world premiere at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival in September, with an Australian release scheduled for February 6th, 2014.
It slightly underperformed at the Australian box office, but over-performed worldwide
Apparently, images of your country being destroyed by a zombie threat is appealing after all, as World War Z has just passed the $500 million mark in worldwide box office earnings.
World War Z has, in the process, become Brad Pitt’s highest grossing film in his storied career, surpassing Troy‘s total of $497.3 million globally. Here is the official breakdown from Paramount:
After setting a personal best with a $66 million opening on June 21, World War Z has gone on to total $197.4 million in the U.S. The film delivered Pitt’s highest grossing domestic release of all time (besting Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s total domestic gross of $186.3 million), and the biggest opening weekend of his career (beating Smith’s $50.3 million opener). The film has earned $305.2 million at the international box office, to date.
We, having enjoyed the film – with it exceeding our expectations – are glad to hear that it has yielded a profit after troubled waters with its complete re-write and mammoth marketing campaign (which can sometimes cost more than a movie’s actual production!) Could we have a sequel in our future? Let us know if you would be down for that in the comment section below.
It’s always a joy finding gaming and pop culture mixed in with other mediums and occupations; artists, jewellers and musicians are some of the few that can really bring out the true beauty of characters and key aspects from a series.
Now we can add Blacksmithing to this list as the newest Man at Arms video was released last week and has already gained over 857,00 views and 36,900 likes on YouTube. The latest video shows the creation of the most popular of all video game weapons, Links Master Sword from The Legend of Zelda!!! With a blade of spring steel, sand casted bronze hilt and finished with sky blue spray paint this sword really is a work of art.
Man at Arms is a series on the YouTube Channel Amaze Wow and Educate Me which shows experienced blacksmith Tony Swatton recreating iconic weapons from video games and TV shows. Previous weapons include Cloud’s Buster sword from Final Fantasy, Sora’s Kingdom Hearts Key blade and even the Sword of Omens from Thunder cats. The Master Sword is a sight that would make Ganondorf shiver, but my personal favourite has to be Raphael’s Sais from TMNT which are sharpened, elegant looking and bad ass awesome.
Click on the below video below to see the sword being made, and check out the other awesome vids on the AweMeChannel.
Yesterday Balloon 27 (B27) announced their newest game Hill Billis available now for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices.
Hill Bill is a hill-billy game that follows Hill Bill on his quest to become the next Evel Knievel. Players take on the role of Hill Bill as masters jumps and tricks that get crazier daily. Gamers must master jumps and tricks on home-made ramps, until it becomes time to take on death-defying jumps, over greater distances at Race Tracks, Mud Rallies, and even the Circus! Jump on Hill Bill’s trusty third-hand garage-sale bike and master 60 death defying levels before attempting to master the greatest stunt-jump of all; the Grand Canyon.
Hill Bill is B27’s first game on the App Store. Featuring exhilarating jumps, gorgeous environments, new bikes and outfits, it’s a perfect combination of quirky, fun art style, authentic sound effects, exciting gameplay and colourful environments that provide hours of engaging and addictive gameplay, which is sure to keep iOS gamers coming back for more.
Purchase it here on the App Store for $1.99. Be sure to also check out our weekly iOS suggestions for other great iOS games to play!
Immortal Empire Developer: Tactic Studios Publisher:Tactic Studios Platforms: Internet Browsers (PC, Mac, Linux) Release Date: May 20, 2013 Price: Free – Play Here
Overview
With what feels like a recent resurgence of isometric strategyRPGs (like Harebrained Schemes‘ Shadowrun Returns) the engines are primed for the genre to make a comeback. Enter Tactic Studios and their free-to-play browser-based game Immortal Empire. The game has been in the works for quite some time, but has it released during a proverbial gold rush? Should it be inexplicably slaughtered or forever raised on high? Let’s find out.
Story
You are an immortal. You’ve been brought back into the world by the elder you’re tied to, but the purpose behind it all is not yet clear. Following his guidance, you must accomplish missions. On one of these missions, you soon run into some other folks and learn that there is much more to your existence and its significance in the world that you ever would have thought possible.
Gameplay Immortal Empire plays like you would expect most standard turn-based strategy roleplaying games to. There’s a definite rhythm to the cadence, though, and it can be easy to let yourself keep rolling between missions.
Before a mission starts, you’ll have the briefing with whichever NPCs fit the bill for the storyline at that point. It doesn’t always flow as smoothly as it could, but overall the storytelling and dialogue are solid.
After you’ve received your marching orders for the upcoming mission, you can manage everything to prepare your team for what lies ahead. This includes getting getting or upgrading skills, purchasing and equipping gear, enchanting equipment if you want to, comparing your stats to everyone else in the world, and making any real-money microtransactions you want. You’re also welcome to jump into a chat room and chat it up with everyone else playing at the same time.
When you go out to the world map, there will be pins placed where you can travel to. Each location typically has five story missions that will be carried out on it. Playing a location will take you to the last map available to you on a given pin, but you have the freedom of joining games with other players for some assistance.
Once you’re in the mission, everything swaps to an isometric view with your team placed in front of you. You can choose to move any number of your team at the same time, though if someone will run into an enemy only one is typically sent out. Each character is given a specific “time” allotment per turn, and everything from walking to attacking and using skills takes time. When your party’s time runs out, any allies you have go and then enemies take their turn.
The game, rightfully, leans quite heavily on forcing the player to think strategically. Are you going to put your caster within range of a group of enemies so she can hit them or will your tank be out front absorbing the damage? One wrong move could lead to the death of a teammate, and the game itself is quite unforgiving. You didn’t mean to click that spot? Too bad, because your unit is sitting there now for better or worse. It can become frustrating, but it also encourages that you think before you act, and that’s a good thing.
You’ll start with only one immortal. Each type of immortal has a unique set of skills to play off of, so mixing and matching is a fun exercise as you learn what suits your playstyle best. As the story and your level progresses, you can earn additional party members. This offers up a unique choice, since experience is gained as a squad. Do you diversify your team, or keep building up the warriors already in your party? It can take a while to bring a latecomer up to everyone else, but that could make the difference in victory and defeat down the road.
There are several forms of currency in the game. Defeating enemies and completing quests will reward you with “pure source.” This is essential your experience points. They’re shared between your whole team, so you’ll have to decide which characters need to level up to best contribute. On top of pure source, you can earn gold to purchase gear and “radiance,” which will let you purchase some unique items. Radiance is also the real-money currency, should you decide to spend your hard earned cash on the game.
As you work through the game, you’ll come to realize that you don’t have to play alone. If you want, you and three friends can all jump in and command your squads together to work through the story. This offers a fantastic way to play cooperatively while still getting a solid single-player experience. For those with a little more bloodlust, you can jump in and play competitive matches against other folks.
Visuals
By virtue of the fact that the game is restricted to internet browsers, the visuals are pretty tightly limited. No matter how large you grow your browser, the game window itself will never get bigger than an 800×600 resolution. This leads to a few inherent issues.
First, there’s only so much that can be pressed into that amount of space. For the general play area, that’s not a problem. Each mission, though, is equipped with a minimap that’s tremendously helpful. It’s quite small with no way to resize, though, and it can become busy quickly. Second, it lacks graphical fidelity. Nothing in this game looks as sharp as, say, Shadowrun Returns (which allows 1080p). Fortunately, the 16-bit art style works really well for Immortal Empire. Colors pop really well and everything looks distinct, in spite of the low resolution.
Apart from the limitations of the browser environment, Immortal Empire has solid graphical design. The menus you’ll switch through between missions are intuitive and crisp, with sharp looking icons representing each of the items and spells at your disposal. NPCs looks decent as well.
Audio
Tactic Studios are quite proud of the soundtrack they’ve created, and they should be. They’ve put together a solid orchestral fantasy soundtrack you would expect to hear accompanying a Dungeons & Dragons game or fantasy film like Willow. It runs the gamut from deep and mysterious to light and warm with a tinge of whimsy.
The sound effects are fit their job well, too. They craft the feeling that your habitation in the world is more than just that of an observer. It’s even more impressive when you realize such a small studio did all of the audio work from the ground up by themselves.
Overall
Overall, Immortal Empire is a surprisingly rich strategy RPG experience. The fact that it’s currently bound to a browser shouldn’t overshadow the solid gameplay experience that lies within. Though the graphical fidelity feels constrained, the game has a unique sense of charm. The sound design does a solid job immersing you in the world. Whether by yourself or with a group of friends, Immortal Empire is definitely worth a look.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
As you may have already heard, all first-run copies of Killer is Dead will include free ‘Smooth Operator’ DLC along with a number of other extras such as a hardcover art book and soundtrack CD. Today XSEED Games released some screenshots showing off what this DLC will have to offer players.
As you can see below, there are alternate costumes for Vivienne and Mika, a bonus Gigolo Mission with Betty, an extra episode focused around a vampire named Sebastian and an in-game item called ‘Gigolo Glasses.’ Killer is Dead is currently set to be released later this month August 27th in North America and August 30th elsewhere.
Sanctum is Coffee Stain Studio’s tower defense/first person shooter crossover series. Super Sanctum Tower Defense is a retro take on the series that was released alongside Sanctum 2. The FPS perspective is replaced with a traditional isometric view and the three dimensional graphics now features SNES graphics.
Story
Super Sanctum Tower Defense is a casual take on the series. There is no plot in the game and the Core Guardians have an extremely small part in the game. The units and buildings will be familiar to players who have played the other Sanctum titles, but no effort is made to introduce new players to the Sanctum universe.
Gameplay
The tower defense mechanics play exactly like the Sanctum series. The player is presented with a blank level and is allowed to build walls to control the movement of the incoming enemies. The enemies will take the most direct route to the player’s core. Each enemy that reaches the core will do a certain amount of damage to it. When the core’s health reaches zero, the game is over. Each map is a different design, which force players to create the most effective maze possible based on the landscape.
The players can only choose up to four tower types and four active abilities to use in each map. The player starts with a small amount of money to buy towers and gains more money by killing enemies, picking up crates of cash randomly dropped by enemies, and successfully completing levels. Towers can be upgraded twice to provide great range, firing rate, and damage. Just like the full game, augmenting the towers and active abilities are a variety of perks that can be purchased between levels. The perks can improve certain types of towers, improve active abilities, improve money flow, and provide some general advantages.
Super Sanctum Tower Defense is a deceptively difficult game. There are two levels of difficulty and two modes of gameplay. Survival mode will throw an endless stream of enemies at the player’s defenses. The longer players can hold out, the higher their ranking on the online leaderboards. The regular mode will pit the players against a set amount of waves. The normal level of difficulty can be beaten by players of any skill level, but a perfect level will challenge tower defense veterans. There are a large variety of towers to choose from, each with an optimal condition for use. Players will need to create a working strategy and choose a skill tree build that will best suit their plan of attack to succeed at the game.
Almost all of the enemy aliens in the Sanctum universe make an appearance in Super Sanctum Tower Defense. The player will encounter a large number of generic Walkers, but special aliens like the quick groups of Runners will test the flexibility of the player’s defenses. The game throws a larger wrench in the machine by throwing flying units that fly over walls and take the most direct route to the core at the player. Certain towers only fire at air or ground units, which forces the player to make difficult choices during pregame tower selection. To provide players a chance to counter these units, each tower can be given specific targeting instructions, such as preferring to shoot at the healthiest enemy.
The controls in Super Sanctum Tower Defense are relatively simple. The game can be played with the mouse only, with players dragging and dropping abilities and towers into the right spot. However, since active abilities have a small time window where they are more effective, Super Sanctum Tower Defense is best played with a mouse and keyboard. The four towers are bound from keys 1-4 and the active abilities are bound to Q,W,E, and R. Unfortunately, there is no way to change the key binds, so left handed gamers may find themselves frustrated.
Visuals
Super Sanctum Tower Defense is retro 16-bit take on the series’ sterile visual style. The visuals are a departure from the series’ three dimensional graphics, but are instantly recognizable as Sanctum with its white and blue colour scheme. The whole series has been reimagined as an SNES game and looks great to boot. My only complaint is that the game is locked at a 1024 x 768 resolution. There are no options to tweak the visuals.
Audio
The audio follows the retro theme with blips, bloops, and chiptunes. The music isn’t bad to listen to, but it isn’t the greatest thing. I found myself turning off the music and sound effects after a while out of audio boredom.
Overall
Super Sanctum Tower Defense is a solid game to play on a coffee break or a laptop while on the train to work. At $4.99, the game is a little pricey. The game does strip out the unique FPS mechanics from the Sanctum series, but is still an entertaining tower defense game that stays true to its roots.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf series of books have sold over ten million units worldwide since 1984. Now, the long running series is breaking into the mobile market with the help of Forge Reply and Atlantyca Lab. BulkyPix will be providing their publishing expertise as they have already brought classics like Asterix to the mobile market.
The game will be entitled Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf: Blood on the Snow. It will be released for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. The game will be a fusion of interactive fiction and RPG gameplay. The first act of the four act game will be released in November 2013. More information about the title will be announced at GamesCom 2013.
