Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge for the Wii U will launch tomorrow, May 11 2013, as a digital download on Nintendo’s eShop, according to Nintendo Australia.
As detailed in our review, Razor’s Edge offers a marked improvement over the original Ninja Gaiden 3 such as the return of dismemberment, playable Ayane, character progression, more weapons, Ryu and Ayane playable in co-op mode, Test of Valor battle areas and an all-round harder difficulty.
Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge was one of the first games in Australia to be given the adult R18+ rating due to the level of violence and gore, following a revision of the nation’s classification laws.
US based (Stamford, Connecticut) publishers Digital Tribe Games, in partnership with publishers XYLA, have recently revealed that they are ready, set, and raring to release Rush Bros. (an intense blend of platform racing action, competitive and immersive multiplayer and original music from internationally acclaimed artists Infected Mushroom) for PC and Mac platforms on May 24th of this year.
The title will feature select tracks from Infected Mushroom’s musical repertoire as players experience more than 40 levels of fast-paced side-scrolling action (including a bonus stage where the player may play as Infected Mushroom founders and producers Erez Eisen and Amit Duvdevani. (Infected Mushroom is an Israeli psytrance/electronica duo formed in Haifa, in 1998.)
Gameplay features will include:
40+ pulse-pounding, music-infused, platform racing tracks packed to capacity with puzzles, obstacles and power-ups.
Single Player Mode offers Time Trial and Ghost Car features.
Two Player Local Split-Screen Play
Online Multiplayer that boasts Cross-Platform play between PC and Mac gamers.
Play stages using your own MP3 or OGG music library
Reactive level design fits traps, obstacles and more in real time to whatever music is used.
Updates will be released offering new Level Packs, Game Modes and more.
Full Steamworks™ integration (including Big Picture, Leaderboards and Achievements.)
Select musical tracks by Infected Mushroom complete with bonus themed levels and characters.
Digital Tribe Games’ John Kaiser III, said this regarding the new release:
“We’re excited to be working with XYLA on launching Rush Bros. and to finally announce the inclusion of the Infected Mushroom themed level and music…The multiplayer is as addicting as it gets.”
Today Square Enix announced that gamers in Australia and New Zealand will have a chance to play Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix two days after North Americans and one day before Europeans. In case you haven’t been keeping up on things, this means that the title will be coming to the land down under on September 12th.
It was also announced that anyone who pre-orders the game from a select retailer will be automatically upgraded to the above special limited art book edition which features artwork for each of the titles that are bundled up in this release, including Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories as well as cinematic story videos from Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days.
The third installment to Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller – The Oracle – quickens its approach with a release date of May 16th. The Oracle will dive into Erica’s as well as the killer’s past to uncover their mysterious connection. How does this killer know Erica so well, and why has he left a murderous trail for her to follow?
Check out our previous reviews for each prior episode: Episode 1 – The Hangman & Episode 2 – The Wise Monkey. For an inside look at the upcoming episode, take a look at the screenshots and trailer below. How many more people will die before our Boston FBI Agent can find peace?
Paramount Pictures have released a brand new trailer for the hotly anticipated action comedy Pain and Gain, which stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Mark Whalberg.
Pain and Gain is directed by Michael Bay and is based upon Pain & Gain – This Is a True Story which in and of itself was based on a true story. You can check out the very funny trailer for the film below, which features Australia’s own Rebel Wilson in some very comedic scenes involving chocolate-covered raisins.
Be sure to check out the trailer for Pain and Gain below, the film is set to hit cinemas on the 8th of August, 2013.
The official twitter account for Attack on Titan revealed on April 30th that there are plans to release a portable or console game of the series. One twitter follower asked those in charge of the Titan manga, at Bessatsu Shonen Magazine, about plans for a future video game release. Bessatsu noted that a social game, titled Shingeki no Kyojin – Hangeki no Tsubasa (Attack on Titan: The Wings of Counterattack), has already been launched by the company Strategy and Partners. They noted that though there are plans for a video game, they cannot release any details.
The series itself has become a sleeper hit, gaining a massive surge in popularity outside of Japan. There are also plans to release a live action film next year.
A free demo of Trials Evolution: Gold Edition has now been made available for digital download on PC via Steam. In addition to this, the full version of Gold Edition will be on sale as well. Now with a discount of 25%, the price for the full game will be lowered from US$24.95 to US$18.71. The sale will last from May 10th to May 13th, so hurry before you miss your chance to save a little cash and have a lot of fun.
To download the game, visit the Steam store and if you feel like learning more about the Trials franchise, visit the portal.
The Behemoth has been developing games for almost a decade now, starting with Alien Hominid for the GameCube, PS2, and original Xbox; continuing with Castle Crashers for the XBLA, PS3, and PC; and now their latest game BattleBlock Theater for XBLA. They have successfully put out what have become fan favorites with the release of BattleBlock Theater we took the chance to speak to Dan Paladin to learn a bit more about the game and The Behemoth.
CC: Thanks for letting us get an interview. Could you introduce yourself and what you do at The Behemoth for our readers?
Dan: Hi, I’m Dan Paladin and I’ve done the majority of the artwork for the Behemoth. I am one of our co-founders and I make a killer White Russian. My dog’s name is Winston and he screams at immobile skateboards.
CC: Now with BattleBlock Theater, The Behemoth has now gone 3 for 3 with their console release. What do you attribute the high rate of success to?
D: Most important one would be word of mouth from the players (thank you everyone!). Really keeps the ball rolling, and keeps us alive.
Aside from that? A good helping of luck, being infinitely naive and stubborn, being open-minded throughout development, and refusing to ship anything until we’re confident about it.
CC: Alien Hominid, Castle Crashers, and BattleBlock Theater all share the same art vibe, but differ in terms of actual gameplay, how does The Behemoth maintain their quality through different genres where other developers tend to stick to a single genre?
D: I’m not so sure..
If I had to guess I’d say our group tends to be diverse enough that no decision is necessarily the ‘right’ decision until we’ve experienced a compromise and all parties are happy. I think that this might be what resonates with players.
Players are likely to land under one of our own differing mentalities, so in a way, we’ve sort of compromised with many of our players before they’ve even touched the game.
CC: BattleBlock Theater has been in development some time, with footage shown as early as 2009, how much then has the game evolved through the years until reaching the finished version?
D: Its overarching details were constantly morphing as we sought out what people enjoyed the most, but the baseline for everything has stayed the same. I think we definitely ended up adding more combat than we were initially expecting.
Screenshot from User Created Level
CC: The multiplayer features many standard modes, but with a unique BattleBlock Theater twist, what process did you use to come up these twists?
D: We don’t really have a process aside from the angle of ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if…..’.
Random interjections and organic improvisation are what fuel the majority of our time here. After we had a few of modes functioning I tried to find a gradation for the rest that players would enjoy, from the less direct combat modes all the way to the more in-your-face ways of playing.
Some modes discourage or disallow fighting while others are the only reason you’re there and some modes land in the middle of both.
CC: The opening cinematic has also changed since it was first shown back in 2011, has the evolution of the story stemmed from changes in gameplay or natural progression over the years?
D: We made changes to the intro for a few reasons. The biggest reason being the story was reworked. Another because it was rather awkward to have the 2 friends introduced but then we show 2 playable characters that aren’t either one of them. We had to include the rest of the crew on the boat and made the boat much, much larger.
CC: Speaking of the story, BattleBlock Theater features what has become one of my all time favorite narrators in a video game, were the lines a group process or mainly Will Stamper himself? The dialogue itself includes several moments of near vulgarity, but always saves itself in time. Was this designed as part of the humor of the title or an attempt at making a more family friendly game?
D: Will Stamper wrote 99.9% of every single line. Anyone familiar with his personal work will know he’s no stranger to pushing the audience’s buttons and then some. He may have had to self censor here, but I don’t personally know if he did that on this project or not. Half of the lines were ad libbed and half of them were meticulously planned.
I’m proud of the work he did for us and proud to call him my friend. We used to be roomies 8 years back and it was always hilarious times. He’s a really nice and selfless guy with a strong work ethic.
CC: The inclusion of User Created Content is new for a The Behemoth game, how has it been working out so far, is it being utilized more or less than expected?
D: Back in 2004 the spiritual role model for BattleBlock Theater named ‘PDA games’, which was a minigame in Alien Hominid, allowed users to make and save their own levels. There was no sophisticated way to share them back then but I suppose it’s still comparable.
It’s been really amazing to see all the things people have made and bonk through each level. Some are devious while others are carefree. You can really get the sense of the person who made them after going through a few. Every week we feature a new playlist someone has made and every two weeks we pair features with a new star category prisoner, and we’ve had a pretty great selection to choose from. We’ve tried featuring some of the tougher ones and some of the nicer ones to see how the community responds.
Right now we’re doing a thing where we’re asking people to point us to their favorites. Seems to be going pretty smoothly.
Overall it’s been a lot of fun to be even closer to the players. Feedback from players has been the key for every bit of any success we’ve had.
CC: With the Furbottom’s Features, Special Characters, and your recent Live Stream, The Behemoth seems currently focused on building the community of the game, how does this differ/what are you doing different than what you did for Castle Crashers?
D: You’ll have to understand that when Castle Crashers launched it was a different time and also a very different game from BattleBlock Theater. Back when Castle Crashers first launched in 2008, we had a smaller team and social media wasn’t what it is today. Twitter and Facebook pages have grown in popularity tremendously and it’s given us an extra outlet to connect with our fans on top of the development blog & forum we’ve been maintaining on our site since Alien Hominid days.
Twitch TV is something we’ve just starting using this year. We’re trying to stay connected with the community in ways that make sense with our game and live streams seem to be very popular these days.
Screenshot from User Created Level
CC: Castle Crashers has received DLC in the form of additional characters, while BattleBlock Theater has plenty of characters from the start, but are there plans for DLC in some other form, such as additional official levels?
D: We don’t have any current plans for DLC.
BattleBlock has a stream of Furbottom Feature characters and user generated content that will hopefully keep people satisfied for the time being. There are currently 320 characters to unlock and over 400 levels from us alone and much more in the Community Theater section. It’s the longest story we’ve ever made with the most content you can get, so I do hope people aren’t waiting too impatiently!
CC: After developing a side-scrolling shoot-’em with Alien Hominid, an action-adventure beat-’em up with Castle Crashers, and now a platformer with BattleBlock Theater, are there other genres The Behemoth is interested in tackling?
D: We always love looking to another genre! I don’t know if there’s any particular genre out there we wouldn’t try. I’d almost say that you should expect that from us. We really like trying our hand at something new and unexplored in our corner of the world.
CC: Thanks again for taking the time to answer our questions, but as a final question without being too prying. Is The Behemoth already looking forward to their next game or going to focus on BattleBlock Theater for awhile?
D: We’re prototyping stuff right now and we have a couple very strong leads. Nothing official yet, though!
And so our interview with The Behemoth’s Dan Paladin comes to a close, but those wanting to find out more about The Behemoth and their going ons can find their website HERE. Those wanting to know how amazing BattleBlock Theater is can check out our review of the game HERE. Have opinions on the interview or otherwise? Leave them in the comments below.
The recent Steam release, action-platformer Zack Zero has received three new videos showcasing abilities & powers, enemies & bosses and the environments.
Developed by indie studio Crocodile Entertainment, Zack Zero was initially released for the PS3 on PSN. The game’s PC version on Steam features improved visuals with crisper textures, new animations, levels and promises a better player experience. Check out the videos below.
Abilities & Powers
Enemies & Bosses
The Environments
The game is also currently 25% off on Steam at $7.49 (normally $9.99) until May 14. See what we thought about the game’s earlier PSN release here in the meantime.
Auto Club Revolution brought to you by Eutechnyx has announced that they will be having a ‘May Madness Sale’ beginning May 10th 6:00 AM EST / 3:00 AM PST. The racing simulation title is planning to massively discount plenty of cars through E-Buck purchases to give players a healthy set of vehicles to store in their personal online garages. Not only can players use the E-Bucks to buy vehicles but they can also upgrade vehicle components such as weight modifiers, tires, and engines.
The sale will be great for those just joining the ranks as cars from the RA Class all the way down to D Class will receive daily discounts for this two week period. You can follow the deals on their twitter @AutoClubRev.
