Ubisoft have unveiled the collectors editions for the latest Splinter Cell game, Black List. The game is set to some with a few different sets for consumers of varying levels of fandom and wallet sizes to enjoy. Each set has its own interesting additions which can lead to many players probably wanting to own more than one set.
Splinter Cell is a franchise that has been around for a while now and features the covert operative Sam Fischer who must do espionage and the like. The game franchise is labelled under the Tom Clancy brand and, as such, is subject to the Tom Clancy levels of quality.
The following is a quote containing all of the information needed on each package:
The 5th Freedom Edition:
This prestigious edition includes-
A Sam Fisher figurine (24cm)
A steelbook case
A 96 page graphic novel, Splinter Cell Echoes®
Single and Multiplayer Co-op maps: Dead Coast and Billionaire’s Yacht
Unlockable digital items:
5 pieces of gear: Gold Goggles and Amber Goggles, Ghost Boots, Armoured Boots and Tactical Gloves
5 suits: Elite Digital Ghillie Suit, Spy Suit, Mercenary Suit, Upper Echelon Suit and Eclipse Suit
Players who pre-order the game will receive exclusive in-game unlockable content. The 5th Freedom Silver Edition can be pre-ordered exclusively on Uplay: http://shop.ubi.com/promo/92574600
Overview
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow debuted in 2010 and changed everything we know about the age old franchise. Yes, learning Gabriel Belmont’s new tale lead to one entertaining reboot, but many fans cried fowl due to the more action-oriented – or “God of War like” take on the franchise. Honestly, I thought it was a great burst of fresh air, pumping new life into the archaic structure that had been relatively the same for years. Well – like it or not, we now have a follow-up for the 3DS by the name of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate. This title keeps it in the family, bringing together three familiar protagonists as they work together to achieve one common goal. Does this “Mirror of Fate” reveal a healthy future for the series, or would it be better off taking a stake to the heart? Let’s find out.
Story
If you have followed the Castlevania franchise, Mirror of Fate is going to be either a trip down memory lane – or a predictable, yet pleasing romp with three famous characters. That is because this title sets out to bridge the gaps in-between three major plot points, furthering the narrative of the Belmont clan. Players start the game as a young Simon Belmont – shortly after the events of Lords of Shadow in which Gabriel turned to darkness and became Dracula. Not too long after, we then take the role of Alucard, while later filling the shoes of Trevor Belmont. Seeing a trend? Well, that is because these three arcs flow backwards, each ending to set up the fate of the next character.
I imagine this way of storytelling won’t click with everyone, but the writing is exceptional within this handheld Castlevania and because of it – Mercury Steam have executed the task effortlessly when it comes to intertwining these tales into one cohesive plot. Each story is driven by emotion and handled with grace, so even though you won’t be spending a ton of time playing as Simon, Alucard, or Trevor due to the 8-10 hour length of the overall experience, you will still feel that great impact as fates become reality.
If I had one gripe with anything here, it would mainly be that this is a very predictable game. Going backwards, it’s not hard to figure out where the next character will end up and even though the plot points stand strong on their own, Lord of Shadow – Mirror of Fate does kind of make many revelations obvious – taking a bit of wind out of the many “shocking blows” that are delivered much later. Yes – it’s still Castlevania and die-hard fans may have a few frustrations accepting these new plot devices, but those who go in with the word reboot still fresh in their mind will come out quite pleased with the excitement this handheld sequel has to offer.
Gameplay
When you attempt to take two methods of gameplay and blend them together into one experience, it can be a tricky thing to pull off. That is what Mercury Steam have went for with Mirror of Fate – and for the most part, it works quite well. You see, this title blends together the classic 2D stylings of the older games with the new action-oriented combat to make up one nostalgic yet fresh result. While each character features different special abilities and skills, the core fighting comes down to the whip that can be used for close or ranged combat. If you enjoyed the hack and slash fare from Lords of Shadow, you will feel right at home here as that is the main course of the gameplay.
Thankfully, each hero’s whip performs like a champion – but that in itself may also be it’s greatest downfall as the standard foes in the game rarely require anything more than a differently ranged shot to take out. Sure, there are plenty of special skills that are added as you gain levels, but rarely is it required to do anything other than tap away and watch your powerful toy destroy everything in sight. There is some strategy involved when it comes to tackling large groups are handling flying enemies due to the two different ranged buttons and button combinations for larger attacks, but for the most part, the combat with the whip stays relatively the same, which is fine for the weapon itself – but not so great for those lesser used pick-ups found as you progress onward.
One of the biggest changes to expect with Mirror of Fate are the platforming portions. Trevor, Allucard, and Simon are controlled with the circle pad, which allows for much more fluid movements. Unlike the past Castlevania games, the D-Pad is now used to change secondary weapons, so this method is your only way of traversing to the next area. Platforming is rather simple for the most part, as climbing ledges, repelling, double jumping, and performing almost any input based on movement can be executed just fine, but players have to be extremely careful, as the circle pad is also used to run based off sensitivity. This means that if you don’t take it slow, you will find yourself falling from a ledge or overshooting a platform quite often. Dodging also requires a combination of the shoulder button and a tap backwards, and must be handled with the same diligence to not risk rolling back into the path of a swarm of foes. Now, I didn’t have a lot of trouble with this after practice, but I do feel that at least the option to use the D-Pad as a back-up for these sections would have been more ideal.
I remember also when Lords of Shadow was released, a lot of controversy arose due to the heavy usage of quick-time events. Those QTE’s are still very relevant in the follow-up, but are mainly used for boss battles. Now, don’t let that scare you off, as these epic showdowns don’t all include a timed-button mashing theme. A good portion of the time, players are required to use their special skills and take advantage of their large moveset to conquer a boss, while wrapping up the bout with a QTE to deliver that finishing blow. In my opinion, this isn’t even an issue as not one bit of excitement has been taken away from boss battles due to the quick time endings, but these definitely are much easier than other areas of the game thanks to the many…and I do mean many checkpoints. Whether it be in the main game or during a big fight, checkpoints are granted to keep the player from starting over, and that form of hand holding just makes things much easier than they should be. Yes, this extra dose of accessibility is welcome when it comes to action titles of any kind, but from a franchise as old as Castlevania, the lack of challenge can definitely kill that rewarding feeling of standing tall at the end of what could have been a more awesome encounter.
The highlight of Mirror of Fate comes in the exploration and puzzles that keep you moving forward. Now, these puzzles mainly involve lining up lasers, reordering platforms or flipping switches to continue on – so they’re not really overly difficult, but the combat is so well paced with the bits of brain usage that each come off as a refreshing breather compared to the hack and slash fare. Completionists will also be happy to know that each character’s story runs off a percentage rate, and with a castle looted with scrolls, secrets, and a leveling system that keeps unlocking techniques, there is plenty of reason to go back in for more once the first set of credits roll.
Visuals and Audio
In my opinion, the best part of Mirror of Fate are the gorgeous visuals. Most cutscenes utilize a stunning, cel-shaded art style that looks wonderful on the 3DS, allowing players to see a new side to characters we have all grew up idolizing. In game, the production values are still cranked up to max, with beautiful, 3D scenery that makes every area come alive due to the heavy usage of detail and shading. Have you ever had one of those moments where you just wanted to stop and take a look around to appreciate you setting? Well, that is a common occurrence here, as even though it is just a 3DS offering, Mirror of Fate knows how to capture it’s atmosphere to perfection with it’s dark and inspired world that we as the players get to explore.
I went into this title expecting for my nostalgia buttons to be pressed with remixed tracks from the classics. I mean, after all – this is Castlevania. Well, there isn’t a lot of that, but instead we are treated to what is now my personal all time favorite soundtrack for the franchise. Even though some of the tunes were reused from Lords of Shadow, hearing these powerful and ambient melodies fill every crevice of the game sets the mood that you are playing something bigger – and that is definitely a good thing when it comes to a game as ambitious as this portable offering. The voice acting has also been given a spectacular treatment, with each actor capturing the role of their character wonderfully, making these faces come alive with emotion and feeling.
Overall
Sure, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate has a longer name than it should, several hiccups in the gameplay department, and may not fit the cookie cutter image that fans expect, but it’s still a damn fine product at it’s core. Seeing this type of presentation on the 3DS is a spectacular sight and though predictable, the story is so well executed that it can be easy to lose hours just falling into Mercury Steam’s new vision of this old favorite. Just like the times, things have to change. Sure, the “Metroidvania” stylings that fans grew up with may be a thing of the past for now, but this portable offering proves that there is a bright future ahead for the Lords of Shadow series. Go ahead and take a look into this Mirror of Fate, as it serves as a reflection of what was and what will become of one of the greatest franchises of all time.
As you may have already heard, NIS America is bringing Disgaea D2 over to North America sometime this Fall season. However gamers in Japan only have a week until the game is released by Nippon Ichi Software and to commemorate the game’s imminent release, the Japanese company has released the game’s opening anime sequence.
The theme song for the opening is called “Cradle Over” and features the singing voice of Minori Chihara. In the opening itself we are treated to a number of beautiful anime sequences which show just how great a modern Disgaea anime would look compared to the original, as well as various plot points that will appear in the game, including Laharl’s sister and Laharl turning into a woman.
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:Â $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.
