Pumped for Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel? Well you would be excited to hear that the demo for Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel is now available for download on the Xbox Live Arcade Marketplace and PlayStation Network.
Alongside the demo release was the launch of a special music video for the game with a song called ‘Double or Nothing’ by Big Boi and B.o.B. You can check out the music video for the song ‘Double or Nothing’ below.
Be sure to download the demo of Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel and let us know what you think of it in the comments section below.
Those looking to add some horror back into Dead Space 3 will be pleased to hear that the game’s first piece of story DLC has now been made available for download on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. The DLC will cost $10 on each platform, with the MSP value obviously being 800 points or something similar depending on the region.
In Dead Space 3: Awakened, Isaac Clarke and John Carver must try to escape from Tau Volantis and get back to Earth. This chapter brings back the psychological horror that single-players may have missed when they played through the original game. In case you’re curious about whether or not the vanilla version of Dead Space 3 is worth downloading, you can find our review of it here.
Did you ever think that what Assassin’s Creed 3 really needed was invisible wolves? Well if so you’re in luck as Ubisoft has revealed through a brand new trailer that as part of the Tyranny of King Washington downloadable content Connor will not only be able to turn invisible himself when wearing a wolf hide coat, he will also be able to command a pack of invisible wolves himself.
You can check out the ‘Wolf Power’ trailer for the Tyranny of King Washington DLC below. Be sure to let us know what you think of the invisible wolves at Connor’s command. Do you like the wolves or do you have a different opinion on them? Let us know in the comments section.
Battle of the Planets Complete Collection Studio: Tatsunoko Publisher: Madman Format: DVD Release Date: Out Now Price: $79.95 (Buy Here)
Overview
Gatchaman is an Anime series from an era long before I was born. If my ether-memory serves me correctly, the series first aired in Japan in either the late 70s or the early 80s. Since then, the series has been adapted many times by different groups as a few different shows and each being on a different level of faithfulness to the original Gatchaman story.
A couple of iterations of adaptations aired within the same period as each other, Battle of the Planets and G-Force. Whilst G-Force was a kind of more faithful adaptation to the original Gatchaman Anime series, in this review we will be looking at the less faithful adaptation called Battle of the Planets.
Story
In Battle of the Planets we have a team of biologically enhanced humans called G-Force. G-Force consists of a handful of members including a leader and his subordinates. One of these subordinates is a child named Keeyop who, it seems, had his entire personality wiped by the team that adapted the series and turned him, essentially, into a child with a sub-60 IQ.
Anyway, the main point of the story in Battle of the Planets is that a group of bad guys from another planet are hellbent on taking over the Earth for it’s supply of some kind of rare element that the people of Earth happily just give away to other races and cultures across the galaxy. Now I’m not entirely sure why this is the case as it is never fully explained, not even by the robot 7Zark7 that was spliced into the series because it is clearly evident that the producer wanted a show with robots.
If you have seen Battle of the Planets, as either a new viewer or a returning one, you will know that 7Zark7 rarely ever features in the actual plot of anything that goes on in the series. Instead the show will just cut into the underwater base of 7Zark7 and have him info-dump all of whats going on to the viewer. What’s even worse is that he does this at the beginning and end of each episode and explains who all the of the G-Force members are and who all of the bad guys are and why it is that the bad guys are attacking and everything else.
This is pretty bad storytelling in my honest opinion, simply because it’s like the producers are treating its audience as though they are Keeyop, rather than anyone with any actual semblance of intelligence. Any show that treats me like I’m a moron is not worth my time. Although, for some reason, I just had to keep pounding away at this series. probably because the parts with 7Zark7 were actually good… at least until Keeyop said something anyway.
Each episode in the story seemed to be some random event that just happens so that the G-Force team have something to entertain the viewer with for 20 minutes or so, rather than each episode being an integral part of the plot. In fact, outside of bad guys attacking Earth or some other planet every day, there doesn’t really seem to be too much of a plot to be had. If there is a link between episodes, it is tenuous at best. To be quite honest, it feels sort of like the producers cut out any actual story progression in favour of a useless robot so that they could have new viewers jump in at any moment. While I don’t agree with this technique, it is a valid one.
Battle of the Planets has a fairly entertaining method of storytelling. Whilst it isn’t the greatest, and certainly not up to modern standards, it still works at what it sets out to achieve, which is being entertaining and accessible for anyone wanting to jump right in. However, I think the concept has a great amount of potential for a modern reboot using more traditional storytelling techniques.
Visuals
If you follow me on Twitter, you will have seen the amount of Tweets I put out when I first started watching this series expressing how interesting I found the art style. But for those of you that do not, I will look a bit further into what I was talking about below.
Battle of the Planets easily has a visual style and depth of detail that is simply missing from modern animation (sans Anime). The detailed backgrounds and simple, yet realistically proportioned, character designs make this stand out even today.
What I found particularly enjoyable about this series is that whenever a character had a closeup of their of their faces, you could see how much detail the design team put into each character. While the faces weren’t 100% realistic, they were still amazingly detailed which is something that you do not see in modern cartoons or even Anime. Also panty-shots. Lots of panty-shots.
Audio
Battle of the Planets had some rather decent audio during the actual show in regards to sound effects and voice acting. However, the opening and closing themes were absolutely atrocious.
Expanding on the voice acting point, outside of each character sounding sort of stereotypical, I have to admit that the show had amazing voice acting for the quality of script that was given. The only exception to this is Keeyop. Seriously, whomever it was that wrote that characters lines needs to be removed from this industry retroactively. Like damn, really, who’s idea was it to have the child make random and annoying sounds before and after everything he says? The following quote is an example of Keeyopese:
Ootototototooottotooo-Moby Dick.
I also like how this is really a snapshot of the time it was written in. This especially true whenever you hear one of the male team members of G-Force talking to the female member of G-Force. Like really, I don’t think anyone that even remotely supports feminism should watch this show, lest their panties be caught in a bunch.
Extras
Battle of the Planets Complete Collection comes with an amazing amount of Extras. Like damn, so, so many. Too many to even list.
On each third disc or so, you’ll find a significantly fewer amount of episodes than on previous discs but you’ll also notice a button that will take you to the special features on the disc. And then you go into that menu. The amazingly large amount of extras on each of these discs is phenomenal, you’ll have a lot of fun watching all of them.
As a bonus, to house all 15 discs of this series, the Battle of the Planets Complete Collection comes in a nice collectors sleeve made out of cardboard with some pretty awesome artwork on the cover. Definitely adds to the overall value of the product.
Overall
Battle of the Planets Complete Collection is a package designed for people that are massive fans of the Battle of the Planets franchise. While anyone that hasn’t seen the show already can jump in at any point, the packaging is clearly designed to appeal to those that have already got an interest in the series. This is not a bad thing. However, any new fans looking to get into the series should pick this package up as it is a great value for money and if it turns out to be not your cup of tea, you will still have a pretty cool looking package to display.
A couple of weeks ago it was revealedvia a small little announcement in Dengeki PlayStation that a new Neptunia title called Hyperdimension Idol Neptunia PP was in the works. At the time, little was known about the game but now it has been detailed a little bit more in the latest issue of Dengeki.
Hyperdimension Idol Neptunia PP is set to be released on the PlayStation Vita in Japan on June 20th, but currently no details as to what type of game this one is have not been revealed as of yet. Considering the “Idol” part of the name, many have guessed that the title could be a music game. It is worth noting that so far, NIS America has localized every Neptunia title so far and is in fact releasing Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory next week, so there is a pretty good chance this one will venture overseas as well.
We have some great news for those of you who loved the original Drakengard games on the PlayStation 2. Today it has been revealed in the latest issue of Famitsu that the team behind Deadly Preomition, Access Games, is currently developing Drakengard 3, or as it is known in Japan, Drag-On Dragoon 3. This is a change from the original developers, Calvia, but the title will still be published by Square Enix and is currently a PlayStation 3 exclusive.
Scans from various Japanesesourceshave revealed that Drakengard 3 will continue to be an action RPG that stars a female main character called Zero who has a younger sister named One. A flower is growing from Zero’s right eye and her left arm is artificial as you can see in the scans below. Both Zero and One are something called Utautai, which are people that can control magic through songs.
Drakengard 3 is supposed to continue the game’s high-speed action and fighting both in the air atop of a dragon as well as on the ground against normal soldiers. It is written that Drakengard 3 is currently 60% completed, though a release date has not been announced. An official Japanese website for the game will launch within 24 hours and can be accessed here when it does launch.
It looks like the long quiet Phantom Pain will be returning to the public eye later this week. Today it was teased by Geoff Keighley that on Thursday night Moby Dick Studio’s Head CEO will be appearing on GameTrailers TV.
He took to Twitter to tease fans with this update, saying first “This should be interesting. Heading off to interview Moby Dick Studio Head CEO Joakim Mogren” and following that one up with a tweet stating that “The Mogren interview will be on GTTV this Thurs night. He said he has something new to show me.”
Ever since the game was first revealed and it was said that a man named Joakim Mogren was the company’s CEO, it has been widely believed that the CEO is actually Hideo Kojima and that The Phantom Pain is actually a new Metal Gear title that has been kept under wraps.
A single image has been released by Dishonored developers, Arkane Studios today for their new downloadable content, The ‘Other Side of the Coin’. Players will either take on the role of one of the infamous Whalers or possibly even their leader, Daud himself. While little is known about the DLC currently, it has been confirmed by a trophy leak that this new story-based content will in fact place players on the other team.
The image above (click for a larger version), shows off what looks to be one of the very first scenes of the game, Corvo’s meeting with the Empress, which as we all now know doesn’t exactly go as planned. The Whalers have taken up a position of overwatch, looking ready to strike at a moments notice. Arkane Studios has not commented on the image other than to write “Soon”, and that more details will become available later today.
Are you excited for this new story based DLC? If you haven’t yet checked out the amazing Dishonored take a peak at our slightly favourable review here.
No this has nothing to do with deep sea fishing, this is the world famous board game Abalone which has sold close to seven million copies across the globe, now arriving to a device near you! Coming to the App Store and Google Play, Abalone is a hardcore strategy game that’s easy to pick up but exceedingly difficult to master. Play against the computer AI or a friend in this electronic port developed with the full support of original creators Laurent Lévi and Michel Lale.
“We were both proud and delighted to lend our support to the project and take part in the development of the Abalone app. The app perfectly captures the spirit of the board game, with its simple learning curve, its non-age-specific design and the endless fun that comes from playing with others.” Michel Lalet – Laurent Lévi.
Featuring a Challenge mode, which delivers 60 increasingly difficult challenges to master the game, a Freeplay mode that allows for over 30 different variations, as well as an additional 15 extra secret levels to be uncovered by only the most dedicated Abalone players. Include achievements and a fun multiplayer mode to compete with friends and rivals and this tactical game looks set to bring some much needed content.
Releasing on March 21st for iOS and Android, Abalone will cost just $2.99 to get your hands on the title and voted “Game of the Decade” at the International Games Festival, you may just want to look out for its impending release. Check out some intense screenshots down below.
If for some reason you can’t log into the SimCity server to play your single player game that requires online connection at all times, you now have a place to find out why! Today EA and Maxis have launched an official SimCity server status page because that is what things have come to now.
The page can be found here, and at least at the moment it looks like Maxis and EA have managed to put an end to most of the problems that were plaguing their online servers. Of course… if the company had made the single player game available for players offline, this would never have been an issue in the first place.
