Last month the Boy Scouts announced that participants could earn patches in video game design. No, there wasn’t anything wrong with the version of Boy Scouts they were running, rather they could be awarded a ceremonious badge to attach to their lapel or sash showing they were proficient in designing games.
Women in Games International (WiGI) started work on creating the patch at GDC this year. WiGI are a group dedicated to promoting the advancement of women in the video games industry. The outcomes that they were hoping to achieve go beyond training young women to take roles in the industry later in life. Game development is seen as an avenue to get young people engaging in science, technology, engineering and maths.
In order to earn the badge the students will have to master Gamestar Mechanic, a tool developed by E-line. The platform is renowned for being the same tool used at the National STEM Video Game Challenge.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Entertainment have just revealed the latest Champion to jointheir brand-newmultiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game Infinite Crisis– Zatanna.
Zatanna is a stage magician with true magical abilities, who makes intelligent use of a myriad of spells to aid allies or fight opponents in her crusade against mystic threats. You can check out her Champion Profile video below for gameplay footage and a breakdown of her powers.
Infinite Crisis Champion Profile: Zatanna
For those who are unfamiliar, Infinite Crisis is being developed by Turbine – the award winning studio behind the free-to-play online game The Lord of the Rings Online. It delivers a heart-pounding, competitive player vs. player experience set in the legendary DC Multiverse – a world in which many DC Comics characters have been re-imagined in startling ways (see header image).
You will be able to control these twisted incarnations of your favorite DC Comics heroes and villains, such as Nightmare Batman and Gaslight Catwoman, amongst other well-known characters like Green Lantern and The Flash. The game is scheduled for release in Spring 2013 for the PC, but you can sign up for the beta right now.
Fangz Developer: Game Whizzes Publisher: Alexandre Ribeiro Platforms: iPhone (Reviewed), iPad, iPod Touch Release Date: April 16th, 2013 Price: $1.99 – Available Here
Overview:
Love vampires but hate Twilight? Are you a fan of gore and humour? What do you prefer; big guns or bigger guns? Depending on how you answered Fangz might be the game for you!
Story:
The story is very basic, very simple, almost non-existent; you’re Frank and basically you’re “just a guy” who’s found himself in this Vampire Apocalypse who’s looking for his family and really just trying to survive. It’s generic and simple but you really don’t play this game for the story, the story is just there as a set-up for what the game has in store. Really the only thing that is constant, story-wise, would be the quirky characters you meet along the way, mostly end up being enemies to kill or bosses to fight anyway but add comedic value to the game and makes you want to actually read the crappy dialogue in every tiny cut-scene, and the little premise for each level like having to look for your family in a certain area or having to kill a particular vampire to do a particular thing. Simple stuff that really doesn’t take away from the game at all, it’s just kind of there and it suits.
Audio And Visuals:
These are great, very vibrant, very colourful, very quirky but, I found, too cluttered. I love games that have their own style and this is one of them. The way that the devs mixed the old-school, cartoon-style vibe with the gore of blowing a Vamps head off with a shotgun was extremely effective because both added and took away something from the other; the childish colours and style mad this game feel nice, like you weren’t playing this game for any other reason apart from “I’m gonna just muck around with this game” and the blood and guts made it so you wanted to continue playing the game because even though you’ve been killed 8 times seeing their entrails blown out of their stomachs gave you some real satisfaction. All the characters and enemies are drawn and animated well and very stylized each with their comedic and annoying perks. Not only were the enemies good but Frank himself was probably the quirkiest of all, let me give you one example; Frank is a heavy set man, as you run and begin to fight he has his teeth clenched and is looking pretty angry but as you continue running and fighting he stars to breath heavy, it’s just something small that adds up to something big in the grand scheme of this game. Now to the part I found troubling: Although the actual gameplay visuals, like the health bar and the jump and shoot buttons, looked nice and is well suited I found it to really clutter up the game. I found myself covering a great deal of the screen just using my thumbs to actually hit the buttons. Now I DID review this on the iPhone and while doing so I couldn’t help but think that this game would be better played on the iPad considering it has a bigger screen and would be more stretched out in terms of clutter. One thing I was a bit disappointed with is that Frank never changed, even after making use of the upgrade and level up systems within the game, visually he stayed the same ‘ol Frank.
The Audio is exactly what you expect from a game like this; the music varies depending on that stage you’re in and what enemies you’re fighting and is kind of standard to say the least. It does a good job at mixing it up, I’ll use the first two levels as an example; during the first level you’re in suburbia just kind of figuring out what’s what and getting your feet set firmly on the ground so the music is very much like a tip-toe, great use of xylophone I have to say, and it makes you feel a bit weary and anxious. Now in the second level you’re based in the inner city and you’re most fought enemies are Vampire Rappers so as you could image the music is very Hip-Hop, RnB sounding and, once again, it suits well.
Gameplay:
The gameplay is your standard side-scrolling, shoot em ups (Beat em ups) that has you put up against hordes and hordes of vampires of different sizes and types (original, female, midget, rappers, mums, etc). Initially you are given three weapons; a pistol, a shotgun and a baseball bat, pretty standard, and you can switch between them mid-fight, this was cool until they become obsolete and that’s pretty early on, luckily the weapons and Frank himself can be upgraded using money and skill points from leveling up which, obviously, you do by killing Vamps. You’ll find yourself level grinding a bunch in this game and it does get hard, it’s not so much that the enemies are hard it’s more so that you have a whole lot of leveling up choices. I chose to level up Franks stamina, speed, power and his starting weapons and I still found it very hard to complete a level without rushing and getting frustrated. Another thing you will find is that each level has a timer and most of the time a big horde has to be taken down before you can resume traveling through the level, THIS can get frustrating. There are a whole bunch of weapons to unlock and upgrade from a Katana to a Laser Canon so there’s plenty to choose from.
Overall:
This game is great if you want to kill some time or just play something in between doing other things. It’s great and it can get really addictive yet at the same time it can get extremely frustrating. There really isn’t anything wrong with this game, at least nothing big enough to give i crap for. It’s just your typical, well-rounded, iOS game that you’ll go back and forth with; playing it all day one day, then not for a week, then a little bit on the train, then maybe all day again. It’s cheap and it’s good fun so if you’re looking for a game you can muck around with go and grab yourself Fangz
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
If you’ve played any of the other games in the Pokemon Rumble Series you’d know that certain passwords get released every week or so at the beginning of the games run, Pokemon Rumble U is no different. We’ve missed out on the first few couple weeks of releases but the passwords are still valid, and will be for a while, and we have a list of the up to date releases below:
Garchomp – 51830476
Hydreigon – 69283763
Serperior – 10986334
Dragonite – 11009560
Zoroark – 13540269
Piplup – 19876976
Chandelure – 94720173
Elektross – 28563923
Bulbasaur – 74465213
Stunfisk – 98993224
Snivy – 20448123
Snorlax – 71098343
Charizard – 26495673
Oshawott – 63664750
Nintendo has released details on the games file size, it will be 832.5MB big and the save game file will be about 16MB. This will allow the game to be downloaded on both the Wii U Basic edition as well as the Premium edition because it does NOT require an external hard drive to house the data. The game is planned to go live on Wednesday at midnight so keep an eye out on more news on the game as it comes.
Another week, another episode of CC Unplugged. This week, Dustin Spencer, Luke Halliday, and Travis Bruno come together to discuss a heap of Nintendo news, including the Virtual Console release of Earthbound and the upcoming sequel for “A Link to the Past“. For our topic, we talk about licensed games and how important they are for the industry, as well as go through some past history of the best and worst from the genre.
We also have yet another GIVEAWAY! For this episode, we are giving away a Virtual Console code for Super Mario 64. To enter, just listen to the podcast and send the answer of that magical question to [email protected], with a subject line that reads CONTEST ENTRY: SUPER MARIO 64 with your name in the email itself (as we will read the winner next week). Simple as that!
Get your license ready, tell your friends, and be prepared to get UNPLUGGED!
Special Mention to our partners over at Razer, us here at Capsule Computers we are geared by gamers, for gamers. Check them out on Twitter and Official Website.
God Mode Developer: Old School Games Publisher: Atlus USA Platform: PC (Reviewed), PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Release Date: April 20th, 2013 (PC/Xbox 360), April 23 (PlayStation 3) Price: $9.99 USD or 800 MSP Available here for PC and here for Xbox 360
Overview
God Mode is Old School Game’s third person co-op shooter for Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. The game is a throwback to old school shooters where players fought off hordes of the undead and demons instead of fighting a war in a generic Middle Eastern country.
Story
God Mode is light on the story, instead having a simple premise and a variety of darkly funny ways the player met their untimely end. The player has died and is now in Hades or “hell in a toga” explains the narrator. Now the players must navigate ancient Greek and Roman themed mazes while fighting off the undead hordes to escape Hades and become an immortal. Most of the stories of the player’s untimely demise range from “Wow, I feel bad chuckling at this” to downright funny, but a few fell into the not funny category.
Gameplay
God Mode is a simple third person co-op shooter. There are some extensive player customization options including a variety of skins, weapons, and abilities. All the classic weapons spanning multiple genres of shooters make an appearance in God Mode including the shotgun, assault rifle, plasma pistol, rail gun, and crossbow. The weapons have seven possible upgrades that are limited by level and cost in game gold. Each player has access to a variety of abilities that can be activated when the player’s rage bar is filled. The abilities effects are varied in their utility. Co-op players can choose teamwork friendly abilities like Salvage or solo players can opt for abilities like Shield that protect them for a limited period of time.
The weapons and skills require a hefty amount of experience and gold to purchase. Although I found it reasonable to hold back the weapon upgrades and skills until the player achieved a certain level, I found locking away the different weapons in the same manner was rather frustrating. Weapons of choice is an extremely personal decision. What benefits one player’s play style may hinder another. In the beginning, Players are stuck with a submachine gun and a double-barreled shotgun and slowly grind out the necessary gold and experience for other weapons.
Five maps ship with God Mode. Each map is broken up into several small sections where several waves of undead horde are thrown at the players. Being an old school styled shooter, the regenerating health system made popular by Call of Duty 2 is out the window in favour of traditional health and armour pickups. Health, armour, and ammo can be picked up at set places on the map or found from the corpses of dead foe. Occasionally bonus gold is appears on the map after a breakable object like a pot is destroyed or a large enemy like a Minotaur dies. At the end of each map, players are teleported into a peaceful temple with respawning gold pickups and friendly fired turned on. These either turn into a no holds barred firefight for every bit of gold or a polite run around the room.
There is a large variety of enemies to do battle against visually, but end up breaking down to mini bosses, chargers, melee, and ranged enemies. Although the player can roll out of the way of incoming attacks, the gameplay often boils down to backpedalling endlessly while firing round after round of projectiles into the enemy. Boss fights had very little to make them unique beyond being a bullet sponge.
God Mode has several modifiers that make the game more interesting. Each section of the maze has a Test of Faith modifier that can range from silly to helpful to downright deadly. Similar to Halo’s skull modifiers, Oaths provide an experience and gold bonus at the cost of a challenging modifier like less effective health pickups. These modifiers help breathe a little life in an otherwise bland shooter.
I am not sure if Old School Games set out to reinvent the wheel or never picked up a modern shooter made in the last 10 years when designing the controls. PC players will need to go in and change the default keys right away as keys as the default binds are non-standard. The slider bars seem to have lives of their own. One would expect that when clicking on a slider bar, the slider moves to where the mouse pointer is or the closest notch. Instead, the slider moves where ever it feels like and the mouse button needs to be held and dragged around until the slider falls into place. There is no rhyme or reason in the response of any slider in the options.
After the poor experience I had with the PC controls, I figured that maybe the controller would provide a better experience. I was sorely disappointed. Console shooters these days tend to follow three basic layouts, Call of Duty, Halo, or Gears of War. God Mode provides two layouts available in right or left handed modes, a strange default one and a FPS layout that vaguely resemble Call of Duty’s control scheme.
Visuals
God Mode looks good. Ancient Greek and Roman mythology heavily influence the design of the maps and enemies. The game runs smoothly on the PC without any frame rate drops. There are a wide variety of character customization options, but most of them are rehashed versions of a small handful of base designs and they are almost all locked away behind level and gold requirements.
Audio
God Mode’s audio experience is excellent until other players are involved. The narrator reminds me of Hades from Disney’s version of Hercules. The sound effects sound great and the background music works. However, the terrible VoIP implementation makes playing with random players extremely irritating at times. There is no option for push to talk microphone controls or way to disable the in game VoIP in favour of third party solutions like Teamspeak or Mumble. Instead the microphone defaults to whatever Steam uses as the microphone and transmits whenever it hears sound. Even worse is the fact players can only be muted in the lobby. I could not figure out how to mute players while in game. The crowning failure of God Mode’s audio is the fact the VoIP sounds laggy no matter how good the connection. Players cut in and out and carrying on a conversation is practically impossible. Considering the game is billed as a co-op shooter, the terrible VoIP is inexcusable.
Overall
God Mode had a lot of potential to be a fun arcade shooter. The ideas were sound, but Old School Game fell flat on their face on execution. Although the game has some sound ideas, the lousy controls, terrible VoIP implementation, and boring gameplay hamstrings God Mode.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Alongside Flowers of Evil, Sentai Filmworks also announced the addition of the first season of Uta no Prince-sama to it’s roster of anime. The plan for the 13-episode series is that it will be released and available on select digital outlets in the not-too-distant future and, like always, a home video release is slated for sometime later on this year.
Uta no Prince-sama features direction by Angelic Layer‘s Koh Yuh, series composition by Nodame Cantabile‘s Tomoko Kanparu, and character designs by Mitsue Mori.
The synopsis from Sentai’s press release:
When Haruka gets the chance to take the entrance exam for Saotome Academy for the Performing Arts, it seems as though she’s one step closer to her dream of composing songs for her favorite singer, Hayato. However, this is no gleeful high school musical experience, and Haruka’s hiding a dreadful secret that may silence her musical ambitions forever. And even if she does get into Saotome, the competition will be more brutal than going on Japan’s Top Idol! That’s because, as a writer, Haruka could be paired with any one of six radically different male singers. Will it be upbeat Otoya, serious Masato, flirtatious Ren, split-personality Natsuki, optimistic Syo, or the unapproachable Tokiya, who’s rumored to be Hayato’s brother? And just to make things more complicated and awkward, writers and singers are expressly NOT allowed to become romantically involved! Can one girl and six handsome young men learn to make beautiful music together in a strictly Platonic sense? They can if the oddball staff of Saotome, most of whom are current and former idols themselves, have anything to say about it in Uta no Prince Sama!
At the Infinite Stratos All Night Festival event, it was confirmed that the series is to receive a second season. It will be a continuation on the previously released season, adding the characters Takenashi and Kanzashi Sarashiki from the original light novels.
Yasuhito Kikichi will once again direct the series at Studio 8-Bit, but Kumi Horii (Zone of the Enders) will now handle the character designs. Mechanical designs will be handled by Takeshi Takakura and CHOCO, who also took over illustration of the light novels. The score will once again be produced by Hikaru Nanase. Overlap has also announced that they will resume the light novel series as a part of the “Infinite Stratos Reboot Project.”
We previously reviewed Infinite Stratos season 1 which you can see here. Check out the videos for season 2 below.
Announced during their panel at Supanova Pop Culture Expo Gold Coast, Madman revealed several new acquisitions. The series acquired are:
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU:
“Hachiman Jikigaya is a antisocial high school student with no friends or girlfriend and as a result has a distorted view on life. When Hachiman sees his classmates talking excitedly about their adolescent lives he mutters “They’re a bunch of liars”. And when pressed about his future dreams he replies “Not working.” However things start to change when a teacher forces Hachiman into the volunteer “service club” and he encounters the school’s prettiest girl, Yukino Yukinoshita.”
Sankarea:
“Chihiro Furuya is obsessed with zombies, to the point that he dreams of his first kiss being with a zombie girl. When he unexpectedly gets to know a sweet girl by the name of Rea Sanka they work together to resurrect Chihiro’s pet cat Baabu. But Chihiro soon discovers that Rea wants to escape from her responsibilities by becoming a zombie herself and plans to use his “resurrection potion” to do so.”
Psycho-Pass:
“It’s the near future where it’s possible to instantaneously measure and quantify a persons state of mind, personality and probability of committing crimes through a device installed on each citizen’s body called a Psycho-Pass. When a person’s “Crime Coefficient” index is too high the enforcement officers of the Public Safety Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Division are called in to pursue and apprehend the person in question, with lethal force if necessary. It’s the near future where it’s possible to instantaneously measure and quantify a persons state of mind, personality and probability of committing crimes through a device installed on each citizen’s body called a Psycho-Pass. When a person’s “Crime Coefficient” index is too high the enforcement officers of the Public Safety Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Division are called in to pursue and apprehend the person in question, with lethal force if necessary.”
(Check out some first impressions of episodes 1 & 2 here)
Madman will begin streaming My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU in the Madman Screening Room beginning April 25th. There has been no word on when the other series will be aired, other than that Psycho-Pass will be aired “in the near future.”
Attack On Titan has blown up in popularity recently with the introduction of the new anime, only in it’s third episode, and some awesome merchandise releases people are going absolutely nuts, so much so that people seem to have forgotten about the live-action adaptation that has said to have been in the works. The new project’s teaser site has confirmed the rumors of talks from last year and the movie is now pushed back to 2014 but it’s still coming! Hopefully nothing happens to stop it’s production…once again.
December of last year, Tetsuya Nakashima, director of the critically acclaimed movies Confessions and Kamikaze Girls was taken off of the project. Nakashima was removed due to disagreements between him and the films producers over the script.
In September 2011, the City of Itako website posted an October 3 casting call for 80 “healthy male and female extras to play the part of people fleeing in panic from giants who suddenly appear in a peaceful shopping district” which was seen as an early reveal of Nakashima’s existence when a local business man Tweeted about what was currently being filmed.
