American McGee’s Spicy Horse Games Studio has partnered up with DeNA to bring a brand new game to mobile gamers that is called Hell Invaders.
This partnership means that Spice Horse’s game Hell Invaders will see release on DeNA‘s Mobage social gaming network for mobile devices.
“We here at Spicy Horse are really looking forward to our partnership with DeNA on Hell Invaders,” said Spicy Horse studio head American McGee. “It’s not very often we get a chance to suck magic knowledge of successful development directly from the brains of such awesome hosts. Combining their DNA with our already bizarre flaming horse form will result in something awesome or hellish – or both!”
Hell Invaders is currently the working title of the game and changes may be made. It is slated to hit the Google Play and iTunes App Store in the future. Stay tuned for more details on Hell Invaders as it comes to light.
Gameloft have today announced that the latest installment in their well known Modern Combat series will be launching later this year on iOS and Android. The Modern Combat is the mobile answer to the Call of Duty franchise, and offers incredible depth of gameplay and visuals that you usually don’t see in an iOS or Android game.
The previous game in the series; Modern Combat 4: Zero Hourwas a fantastic outing for the brand, and for mobile games in general, proving that just because we don’t have buttons and joysticks on our phones, that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy these amazing AAA-styled titles. Gameloft have given us a small teaser trailer for Modern Combat 5, and while it doesn’t show much, what it does show is quite amazing. The visuals alone are breathtaking for a mobile game.
Like its predecessors, Modern Combat 5 will be one of Gameloft’s premium-priced games, but as each iteration gets better and better, this pricing is more and more justified. If you want to check out the trailer for Modern Combat 5, then you can do so below. Like many of the big game developers, Gameloft will be making an appearance at this year’s E3 Conference, and we will be covering all the news, so be sure to stay tuned to Capsule Computers
The trailer reveals an intense action-packed sequence that follows a man free-running across an expansive urban landscape, to escape a deadly race of infected and vicious predators. Staying alive through the night will depend on the players ability to cache supplies and craft their own weapons to defend against an horrendous rampage of aggressive zombies.
Woodkid’s ‘Run Boy Run’ accompanies the trailer for Dying Light, a suitable choice for illustrating what it takes to prosper in the game and defeat the infected population. For all players Dying Light wishes you Goodnight, Good luck!
For those who dare to, check out the trailer below.
It has been three years since Despicable Me introduced a young audience everywhere to the middle-aged super-villain Gru, his three adopted daughters Margo, Edith, and Agnes, and his lovable yet hopeless Minions. The first film delighted and entertained fans of all ages, and when the sequel was announced, I know I personally couldn’t wait to buy a ticket, sit down, and watch the latest exploits of the Minions… Oh and the rest of the cast too!
Speaking of the cast, the voice acting in this film is phenomenal and really draws the audience in. One of Hollywood’s premier funnymen, Steve Carell reprises his role as Gru, and brings a lot of energy and emotion into the role, really becoming Gru. Joining Carell are other big names such as Miranda Cossgrove, Steve Coogan, Russel Brand, Kristen Wiig and Benjamin Bratt.
Story
The story continues on a little while after the events of the first movie, and follows the exploits of Gru (Steve Carell), who since his heist of the moon has reformed his evil ways and retired from the super-villain lifestyle to raise his three adopted daughters Margo (Miranda Cossgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Elsie Fisher), and start his own business – making home made jams and jellies. Gru’s life is pretty normal; trying to avoid being set up on blind dates by his crazy neighbour, planning birthday parties and loving his girls. However his life is turned upside down when the Anti-Villain League recruits him to help track down an unknown super villain who has managed to steal an entire lab out of the Arctic Circle.
So Gru goes undercover, alongside a feisty A.V.L. Agent Lucy Wilde. Through the course of the film, Gru has to deal with his feelings for Lucy, finding the culprit of the Arctic Circle heist, and living through what is undoubtedly his most difficult moment as a father; the day his daughter starts dating.
Despicable Me 2 is a kids movie through and through. If you are expecting an intricate plot filled with twists, turns and an ending you would never see coming, then this isn’t the movie for you. Same goes if you are expecting a whole lot of subtle adult jokes that the kids in the audience wont understand until many years later. Instead the film sticks to its focus – a fun and entertaining kids movie, and it pulls this off to perfection. As a testament to its writing, during my session, even the most mature of audience members were laughing themselves silly when the head of the A.V.L. introduced his name as Silus Ramsbottom, and one of the Minions pointed and chuckled “he he he bottom.”
Even though Gru is the lead, it really is the Minions who steal the show. Being as they don’t have any discernible language, the humor that can arise from them and their situations is nearly endless. Despicable Me grew in popularity with fans young and old due to these little guys and it is easy to see why. Illumination Entertainment created the perfect comic relief – characters who can perform slapstick comedy, hearing and sight gags all without saying a single word. In Despicable Me 2, they play a more active role than in the previous film, and they really do cause some of the movie’s biggest laughs.
The end of the film wraps up everything nicely so that everyone can leave feeling all warm inside and with a smile on their faces. The plot and as such its conclusion might be a little cliché, especially if you are older than a toddler and have grown up watching kids movies, but it is still an enjoyable experience and one that will have you laughing like you were 8 again (he he he bottom).
Visuals
Simply put, the movie looks outstanding. Illumination and Universal really pulled out all the stops in making this animated feature’s look feel as fun as its writing. The art style is unique onto itself, giving individuality and something special to every aspect, be it the characters or the settings. There is a lot of colour in the movie and it all stand out very vibrantly so as to engage the younger members of the audience. The vibrance and shine of it all works well in the film’s favour and adds to the sense of fun and excitement that you expect.
The Characters in Despicable Me 2 all look unique, even the most mundane of background extras. In fact, Characters are so distinct that even just seeing their silhouettes will let you guess who they are. Many of the Minions even have slight differences between them, from the slightest height difference, to the amount of strands of hair they have. The detail in character design really shines through.
While everything pops and shines and leaps off the screen on its own, it is definitely helped by the film’s 3d. Although you can see the movie and enjoy it perfectly well in 2d, it is easy to see that this really was a movie made to be watched in 3d. Illumination have mode many wonderful scenes where things look like they are exploding out of the screen, or characters are reaching out. It really helps immerse people into the movie and you can tell that serious time and care has gone into the effects instead of it just being added in as an afterthought.
Audio
The Audio in Despicable Me 2 is as fantastic as the visuals. The voice cast do an outstanding job of bringing life and energy to the characters, complete with a wide range of emotions. None of the performances sound stale, and you can feel that the actors were completely enjoying themselves while filming. A special shout-out should go to Benjamin Bratt, who only stepped in to the recording booth in May after Al Pachino left the project. Bratt’s performance like the others feels fun and energetic, which is especially notable due to how little time he had to prepare.
It isn’t just the actors that make the movie great to listen to, the soundtrack composed by Pharrel Williams, who brings his all to the soundtrack and gives the movie a life of its own. It retains some similar themes and tunes from the first movie but those are few and far between with much of the film’s musical accompaniment being completely original.
I know I have talked a lot about the Minions, but they get a special mention here too, as they have some of the funniest musical numbers in the entire film. Performing a completely gibberish version of the classical ballad, ‘I Swear’ then transitioning that into an up-beat rendition of Y.M.C.A. not only feels natural, but really sums up the entire feel of the movie.
Overall
Despicable Me 2 is a fun, colourful experience that is suitable for kids of all ages. It never takes itself too seriously and unless you have a heart of stone, you will be laughing along and enjoying the ride. There isn’t anything overly dramatic, and no real depth to the plot, so if you go in there expecting an emotional roller coaster like Toy Story 3, or one filled with subtle adult-themed jokes like Shrek then you will be disappointed. However, for those who are looking for a fun hour and a half, or something to entertain the kids, then I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Oh and just a heads up for everyone out there, the Minions are getting their own movie next year.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Ubisoft and Limbic Entertainment’s Might & Magic X: Legacy has entered the open development phase. A website has been set up to guide fans through the development of the game by voting on game elements and interacting directly with the development team.
Taking cues from other old school RPGs Might & Magic X Legacy (a reboot of the Might & Magic series) allows players to create their party of four heroes, choose their races, classes and skills, and determine the fate of Ashan.
After revealing recently that Worms titles are being released for Android in the form of Worms 2: Armageddon and Worms Revolution Collection for Xbox 360, it has now been announced by Team 17 that Worms Revolution: Deluxe Edition is coming to the Mac App Store. The title features all the content from the original version of Worms Revolution and three content packs including bonus content and updates. Featuring 3D graphics and outstanding 2D gameplay, Worms Revolution: Deluxe Edition is the latest addition to the series.
Worms Revolution: Deluxe Edition thrusts the Worms series into the 21st century. Gameplay features 52 single player missions, 25 single player puzzles, local or online multiplayer for up to four players, three multiplayer modes, customisation, worm classes as well as dynamic water and physics objects.
Some of the key features are listed below:
52 single player campaign missions and 25 puzzle missions to exercise your brain.
Local or online battles with up to four players using Game Center. Choose from three different game modes: Deathmatch, Forts or Classic mode.
Choose your team from four different classes of worm each with their own specific skill: Soldier, Scout, Scientist and Heavy.
Customise your worms using a huge variety of hats, glasses, moustaches, gravestones, victory dances, soundbanks and trinkets!
All new weapons and utilities alongside some old favourites to make the largest arsenal ever seen in a Worms game.
Award winning writer Dean Wilkinson provides the script, which is brought to life by the accomplished Matt Berry and Don Keystone.
Worms Revolution : Deluxe Edition is now available from the Mac App Store for £19.99 with an initial 25% launch saving price of £14.99.
Remember Me Developer:Dontnod Entertainment Publisher:Capcom Platforms:PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 (Reviewed) Release Date:June 4, 2013 Price:$59.99
Overview Everyone has things that they would like to forget and everyone has cherished memories that they want to hold onto forever. However as we age those memories may fade and important events from long ago can be remembered in only the vaguest detail. However what if there was a way to remember everything that you want to but forget everything terrible? Well Dontnod and Capcom’s Remember Me takes place in a world where citizens can do just that. However is Remember Me worth your time?
Story By the year 2084 a new technological development has caused a corporation named Memorize to rise to global power. What is the reason for their success? They possess the ability to preserve your best memories, remove negative ones, implant new memories and transfer memories from one person to another, allowing people to live a life-time of adventure without having to do any of it themselves. Needless to say this has become an exceptionally popular service and the populace is hooked on memory manipulation.
However for every bright side, there is always a dark side and when it comes to a major corporation possessing the ability to manipulate memories that evil is going to be rather drastic. As such, groups of terrorists that are called “Errorists” because it’s the future have devoted themselves to bringing the corporation down or at least revealing the dark side of it to the public which will lead to their downfall.
Players take the role of a female Errorist named Nilin. When they join Nilin, she has lost nearly all of her memory thanks to Memorize wiping her memory. Thanks to the help of a mysterious Errorist leader named Edge, Nilin is able to escape the facility with her life and slowly discover who she is. Thanks to Nilin’s special abilities as an Errorist, she can not only manipulate and take memories from others; she has the ability to learn various techniques to her advantage.
However the lost memories of who Nilin was will come back to haunt her and some of the most intriguing moments of Remember Me are when Nilin begins to remember who she is and what she has done in the past. Unfortunately there is a very large opportunity missed with story development and that is the fact that Nilin is nearly as evil as Memorize themselves. Thanks to her abilities to alter memories, she can cause some truly horrific alterations to people’s past memories which can cause drastic changes to how they act in the future.
This is an interesting mechanic and works well as a way to flesh out the story and other characters, but without spoiling much, many of the people Nilin uses this ability on are already operating in a gray area as it is and the consequences of her manipulations can lead to some terrible things which can ruin peoples’ lives. Then again, being an “Errorist” her mission is always the main goal and whatever gets in Nilin’s way is an obstacle to surpass.
This problem also leads into a number of characters that are introduced but hardly fleshed out which is a shame because the few characters that are given some decent development are a shining moment of the game’s storyline. Perhaps due to a limited time frame to work with the story some sacrifices had to be made and even with Nilin’s questionable actions and numerous side-characters dropped in and shuffled off, Remember Me’s story is certainly an interesting one and is definitely worth enjoying for what it is.
Visuals In Remember Me, players venture through the city of Neo-Paris and this setting is simply gorgeous. There environments you navigate through are a wonderful glimpse at the future. Even in the slums the world is nicely detailed and has a certain sheen to it that you wouldn’t expect. Thanks to how well the world is designed and a number of areas that are stunning looking, one would be remiss not to linger in areas simply to see what kind of a world Dontnod has created in Remember Me.
The same goes for the character designs. Nilin and the rest of the characters are nicely detailed with realistic proportions and emphasis on facial designs to convey emotions. It is worth noting however that Nilin’s combat animations, while somewhat fluid thanks to the game’s combo system, take far too long to play out which causes issues in combat and some of the climbing animations are stilted at best. As for the basic enemies you come across, they are rather run of the mill but are also given a nice level of detail which makes everything you come across in Remember Me something worth looking at.
Audio As far as voice work goes, Nilin’s voice is conveyed nicely and the multitude of side characters that the player comes across and manipulates are similarly well voiced though a few strikingly emotional moments come from these characters as you witness the before and after effects of Nilin’s memory altering abilities.
Accompanying satisfactory voice work is an amazing set of background music that makes some of Remember Me’s areas memorable simply due to the tracks accompanying the area or event. Nearly every track of music throughout Remember Me does wonders fot the game and in an age where background music is an afterthought, this is a nice plus.
Gameplay At its core, Remember Me is a title that features plenty of combat, climbing around on buildings and obstacles as well as the ability to alter, erase, steal or spy on memories of some of the people the player comes across. However where the game’s storyline, soundtrack and visual presentation were memorable, Remember Me begins to fall apart once the gameplay is in motion.
One of the things that makes combat unique in Remember Me is the ability to customize all of Niin’s attack combos via a Combo Lab. However being unique isn’t always a good thing and customization is ultimately rather sparse in the Combo Lab. This is because at any given time the player can choose to alter their combos, but they are always stuck with four combo strings at any given time. The moves, called Pressens for some reason, are limited in number and are unlocked in a rather linear manner, meaning that full customization is only possible once you’ve beaten the game entirely and choose to play through missions again with all of your attacks already unlocked.
Anyways, these pressens are basic attacks that provide little bonuses such as small health regeneration, stronger damage for that hit, faster S-Pressen regeneration and more. These combos are also rather strictly enforced by making players only use X and Y attacks in specific parts. For example your first combo string will always be three X attacks in a row and any use of the Y button will cancel the combo and enter into another one with only minor combo customization provided due to this rigidity. Because of this rigid system it is difficult to truly feel accustomed to thanks to its clunky implementation, Nilin’s overly long combat animations, her inability to stay locked onto enemies with any accuracy and the game’s horrible combo timing system.
This wouldn’t be too much of an issue if it wasn’t for the fact that enemies tend to simply swarm Nilin as you fight against them and while it is certainly possible to pull off long combo attacks, players will simply devolve into short combo attacks to finish off the enemies that are clustering around them while also dodging enemy attacks that often come from off-screen with the only warning being a small red exclamation point in their general direction.
Outside of combat, players must navigate through Neo-Paris usually by climbing along ledges, pipes and other things through a very basic climbing mechanic devoted only to the A button and analog stick. The game even gives little yellow arrows telling you where the proper ledge is at, taking away the risk of becoming lost or stuck but also the whole point of climbing along obstacles and up buildings in the first place.
As for Nilin’s memory manipulation ability, it is certainly nice in theory and it does make for a number of memorable moments throughout the game. However their implementation is once again flawed. One of the key powers Nilin possesses is the ability to manipulate memories of targets which usually involves seeing a cutscene play out, then rewatching the cutscene to see what type of small changes you can make which will affect the memory the proper way and create the desired result. This is usually done through trial and error as not every item manipulated will have a significant change in the memory and it is one of the standout mechanics of the game even if it becomes horribly repetitive trying to manipulate the same memory multiple times for the proper outcome.
Overall Remember Me has a lot of things going for it. An intriguing storyline, gorgeous visuals and a similarly impressive accompanying soundtrack but it is held back by overall bad implementation of it’s gameplay. Combat is interesting at first but devolves into a clunky mess, memory manipulation, while neat at first, becomes a repetitive slog and clambering over objects is nothing new at this point. Put that together with Remember Me’s nine hour playtime and you have a title that’s shine is tarnished by its moving parts.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
With the next generation console war heating up, Sony has fired another shot across Microsoft‘s bow with a teaser trailer providing bite sized snippets of some of the PlayStation 4 games that will be shown off at E3 next week. Titles hinted in the dubstep heavy trailer includes Diablo III, Watch Dogs, Knack, Infamous: Second Son, Drive Club, and Killzone Shadow Fall. Sony will be hosting their traditional press conference, playable game demos, and interviews with developers.
E3 2013 will be held from June 10th-13th at the Los Angeles Convention Centre in Los Angeles, California. Sony will be streaming live at the official PlayStation website.
Its a bird… its a Plane… its… another Man of Steel trailer. For those playing at home now this is the fourth official trailer for the film, which is only a week away. However, I am happy to announce that this isn’t just any ordinary trailer or TV Spot. To promote the Man of Steel, Warner Bros. have teamed up with Nokia for a global co-marketing partnership. Part of this deal is that Nokia gets their own exclusive trailer for the film, and it is AWESOME.
Nokia doesn’t just phone it in with their trailer (terrible pun I know. Sorry). Most of the footage shown in the 2 minute trailer is brand new stuff, and it really does the job of getting fans excited for the movie. Heavily emphasizing the action of the film, we see Krypton at war, Earth in peril, and Superman going to to toe with the tyrannical General Zod (and some absolutely sick looking heat vision blasts!).
Be sure to check out the exclusive Nokia Man of Steel trailer below. I think it is pretty safe to say that this co-marketing partnership is a match made in heaven, but a serious opportunity would be missed if the two didn’t somehow tie in Superman to the Indestructible Nokia 3310 internet meme. To check out some more Man of Steel footage, head over to the official Facebook Page. For all the Man of Steel news as it becomes available, be sure to stay tuned to Capsule Computers.
EA Mobile is kicking off this week’s announcements with the recent update to The Sims FreePlay. The new update is entitled Climate Control and gives Sims the chance to explore the very best and worst mother nature can throw at them. Snow, rain, and lighting can be triggered with the brand new Weather Machine. To celebrate the fluffy white stuff, winter activities like snowball fights and snowboarding has been added through the new Snow Park. Additionally, the game has added the ice skating hobby, new weather appropriate clothing, and housing accessories. The Sims FreePlay is available for free on iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon App Store.
EA is taking their popular Superhero City franchise to the mobile platform. Called Supreme Heroes, the trading card game allows players to create and arm their own super hero. The game features an extensive single player campaign, online clans called leagues, and over a thousand unique costume pieces. Supreme Heroes is available for free on iTunes and Google Play.
Finally, EA Mobile is celebrating a solid launch for their new title Tetris Blitz. The game is the most downloaded app on iTunes in sixty countries, launched to number one on the US charts in less than 24 hours, and has clocked in over 43 million played games in the first week. EA Mobile has released a detailed infographic with facts about their bite sized take on the classic puzzle game and a series of photos featuring some of TV’s biggest stars checking out the game at the Emmy Studio event. Tetris Blitz is available for free on iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon App Store.
