Alternate Cold War history game Wargame: AirLand Battle released five new screenshots showing off the US units. The M50 Ontos, multiple Humvee variants, the Supercobra, the F-14 Tomcat, multiple F-15 Eagle variants, the F-16 Fighting Falcon, and the F-117 Nighthawk are all represented in the new screenshots. The United States will have access to over 150 units in AirLand Battle, making them a flexible and fearsome force to contend with.
Wargame: AirLand Battle is the sequel to Wargame: European Escalation. The game features over 750 real life units from the Cold War in an alternate history where the Cold War erupted into a very real war. A multiplayer beta began last week. The game is currently in early access Beta and will be released for PC in May 2013.
Rambo: The Video Game will recapture some of the most intense missions from the first three Rambo films. The game will mix first person shooting action with quick time fighting events, epic boss fights with classic Rambo film villains, fixed gun and vehicle scenes. Players will have the option of stealthily picking off enemies one by one with Rambo’s signature bow and knife or going loud with the M60 and explosive tipped arrows.
Rambo: The Video Game will be released for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows PCs in 2013.
Razeris expanding beyond e-sport with the announcement of ten new athletes being added to Team Razer’s roster. Anan Anwar, Pavels Petkuns, Shaun Wood, and Jason Paul, Nik Lentz, Daniel Wedemeijer, Geng Jakkarin, Daniel Grant, Guy Tanaka, and Padiwat Jaemjan representing the sports of freerunning, mixed martial arts, BMX, skateboarding, and wakeboarding join the likes of Team Liquid and Evil Geniuses.
“Since the creation of Razer, the term ‘gamer’ has expanded, and we’re proud to continue to play a big role in this movement,” says Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder, CEO and creative director.“We’re developing Team Razer to incorporate a whole variety of persons at every level to complement our already dominant worldwide roster of professionals. We hope others will take note and support gaming outside of its current confines.”
Joymax have made yet another announcement for their exciting Digimon MMORPG, Digimon Masters, this time announcing a brand new server for the game.
The new server is called ‘Beelzemon’ which is of course named after the powerful Digimon of the same name. ‘Beelzemon’ is the third server for Digimon Masters and the first to be opened in a year. The server opens on the 7th of May and will allow new players to jump in on the fun with the new ‘Beelzemon’ server should they choose to.
For more information on the ‘Beelzemon’ server check out Joymax’s official website and the Digimon Master facebook page.
Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine Developer: Pocketwatch Games Publisher: Pocketwatch Games Platform: Windows PC (Reviewed), Xbox 360 Release Date: April 24th, 2013 Price: $14.99 USD Available Here for PC
Overview
Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine follows a band of eight criminals as they attempt to pull off a chain of heists before escaping Monaco for safer lands. The game won top awards at the 2010 Independent Games Festival.
Story
Our band of merry thieves start as a small team breaking out of prison. New characters are slowly introduced to group and their early goal of leaving Monaco is repeatedly postponed for bigger and bigger heists until everything goes to hell. The plotline reads like a classic heist film with all the right archetypes and plot hooks. Short conversations before each heist tells the story of Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine. The writing is short and effective, building a tense movie style heist plot.
Gameplay
Monaco is a top down action stealth game. The game can be played in single player or multiplayer co-op. In single player, the gamer is given four lives to complete the heist before the level ends in failure. In multiplayer, there are no extra lives, but players can revive fallen teammates. Multiplayer can be played locally with multiple controllers or online over Steam or Xbox Live. The simple and effective controls use either the mouse and keyboard or an Xbox 360 controller.
Each of the eight members of the heist team have a special ability based on their backstory. For example, The Locksmith can break locks quickly, The Hacker is able to send worms into the security system through power outlets, and The Lookout can see the location of all guards by standing still. The class system adds an extra layer of strategy to the game, encouraging single players to think of the best order to complete a heist and teams to consider the synergy between classes.
Each level has a variety of coins, stacks of cash, safes, cash registers, and trophies to steal. Blocking the crew’s way are a variety of guards and security systems. The player can arm themselves with a variety of tools that can be found scattered through the level. Ammunition is limited, but can be replemished if enough coins are collected. Players can only see what is in line of sight of all the characters in play, which gives a large advantage to multiplayer teams. Although the four lives does counter the disadvantage of pulling off a heist alone to a certain degree, the game is much easier and more fun with friends.
The gameplay in Monaco is fast and furious. The stealth action is more reminiscent of modern stealth shooters than old school sneaking games. Although it is perfectly possible to wait out every guard and sneak through the levels unseen, the game encourages fast and efficient gameplay by ordering the leaderboard by time. A penalty is given for coins left behind on the map.
The level design is the heart and soul for a game like Monaco. Pocketwatch Games pulls off the level design perfectly. The layout of the maps are realistic and make sense. There are plenty of ways to break into an area and there are few choke points that make escape impossible. Even if the guards are alerted to your presence, a quick thinking player almost always has an option for escape without relying on tools.
There are two campaigns in Monaco, the first being the easier version of events as told by the police and the second being The Locksmith’s exact recollection of events. The game starts out at an easy difficulty level but quickly ratchets up as more security and more difficult goals are added. By the end of the first campaign, I found myself ditching the perfect “Cleaned Out” scores in favour of just getting out alive in single player. The second campaign is fiendishly difficult and completing them perfectly will challenge the best and most organized players. The developers have included some interesting plot twists as a reward for the brave and dedicated souls who manage to complete Monaco’s fiendishly difficult second campaign.
Visuals
Monaco’s visuals are deceptively simple. The game’s design is older NES generation graphics updated for a modern era. The colours are intense and contrast well with the dark colours of the map itself. When the area disappears from character’s line of sight, the game replaces the map with a blueprint of the area. This is done so subtly that I didn’t notice until much later into the game. I thought it was a wonderful touch that help build the feeling of being a criminal.
Audio
Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine is scored with piano music that adjusts itself based on the action. Quiet moments sneaking past guards keeps at a music at a tense low while escaping alerted the guards builds the music into a frenzied flurry. The system works very well and the genre of music is a perfect choice for the Monaco setting. The sound effects in Monaco are equally good, though take a more subtle role compared to the music. Every action has an appropriate high quality sound effect. I appreciated the fact that guards react in French, even though the game itself is in English. It was a nice touch that reflects the setting of Monaco.
Overall
Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine easily proves that it was a deserving winner of the Indie Game Festival in 2010. It is frantic, intense, and just pure fun. The game is one of the most fun co-op games released in years. It is the perfect title to play with friends at a party. Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine is fantastic example of indie gaming at its best.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Tiger & Bunny: Volume 1 Author:SUNRISE Illustrator: Mizuki Sakakibara Publisher:Viz Media Release Date:April 9, 2013 Price: $9.99 – Available Here
Overview: The Tiger & Bunny series originally debuted as an original anime back in 2011 that turned out to be so popular that not only are two movies being made for the franchise, but a manga adaptation was created as well. With Viz already releasing the first half of the anime in English, they have now brought the first volume of the manga to North America as well. The question is however, is the manga as great as the anime it was created from?
Story: In case you happen to be unfamiliar with the series, Tiger & Bunny is set in a world where some humans have begun developing special superpowers. The origin of these mutations is unknown and the people with special abilities such as this are called NEXT. With a number of people developing these abilities, a few of them have turned to crime and what is the best way to take down a super powered criminal? Well with a super powered hero of course.
That is where Hero TV comes in. The city of Sternbild is rife with criminals of all kinds and a number of heroes have been cleared to capture these criminals and turn them into the police and also the ability to enter dangerous situations to save those in danger. The actions of these heroes are broadcasted live to the world and they are ranked via a point system that awards points for capturing criminals, saving civilians and more with a “King of Heroes” title being awarded every season to the hero with the most points.
One of these heroes is Kotetsu Kaburagi, also known as Wild Tiger and although he is a veteran who has been a hero for a long period of time, his desire to act on instinct and put the safety of the people first has placed him second to last in the Hero rankings. To make things even worse, a new hero with the same abilities as Kotestu named Barnaby has entered the scene and he must partner up with him in the first ever hero pair. However with Barnaby set on earning the most points possible and trying to please the fans and become popular, his style of being a hero clashes heavily against Kotetsu’s. Can this odd pairing possibly work well together?
The Tiger & Bunny manga follows the events of the anime almost to a letter. The chapters contained in volume one cover the events of the first two anime episodes which means that it not only introduces the reader to the city of Sternbild and the world, but also a brief intro to each of the heroes. It is worth noting that there are a few extra tidbits added in here and there, but there are also a number of scenes missing, including those that focus on Kotetsu interacting with those around him.
Thankfully the comedic nature of the odd-pairing of Kotetsu and Barnaby still works well in print form and although we are only given a brief introduction to the cast, they are introduced in a decently enough. While unfortunately short on content, it does provide a nice sampling of what may be the most comic book style manga to be released in the West.
Artwork: For the Tiger & Bunny manga the artwork is being illustrated by Mizuki Sakakibara and anyone who has seen the anime will be amazed at the amount of detail that has been put into the artwork in these panels. One thing that especially stands out is the fact that almost every panel has some nice detailed background scenery with only a few blank backgrounds here and there.
As for the characters themselves, it is worth noting that unlike the anime; nearly all of the heroes have been scrubbed of their advertisements. Outside of Kotetsu’s first costume which contains a fake company advertisement, almost none of the logos originally presented in the anime have been included in their manga designs. That being said, the characters both in and out of costume are extensively detailed to match their anime counterparts.
Thankfully, Viz has done an excellent job with their translation work and insertion of text. All of the Japanese sound effects have been completely translated into English with no whited out artwork or panels blocked with black text bubbles and any text that is placed over the artwork is cleanly inserted with no white borders obscuring the text.
Extra Content: As far as extra pieces of content inserted in this volume, there are a number of color pages at the start of the manga, with three color pages featuring Kotetsu and Barnaby and one page featuring the rest of the heroes in their hero outfits.
The manga then closes out with Mizuki Sakakabira’s Image Sketch which has a number of character sketches of Kotetsu and Barnaby some extra character information about them, a small teaser for the next volume and then ads for other Viz releases.
Overall: Tiger & Bunny: Volume 1 kicks things off well by following the anime almost to a letter and presenting readers with gorgeous artwork. Although a few scenes are missing and a few extra details are missing on the character designs, there are a few new scenes added in. Despite this, there isn’t too much progression here in Volume 1 but it does a great job world building and giving readers a taste of the potentially great content to come.
Ubisoft have released a brand new trailer for the upcoming stealth action game Splinter Cell: Blacklist. This trailer in particular focuses on ‘Spies vs Mercenaries’ and the differences between the two of them, which appears to be a major focal point of the game.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist is the seventh installment in the enduring stealth action game series Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. The game is slated to release for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii U and the PC on August 22nd, 2013.
You can check out the awesome ‘Spies vs Mercs’ trailer for the upcoming Splinter Cell: Blacklist below in all of its high-octane action glory below.
While Nintendo deny any detection or physical proof of unauthorized applications running on their new Wii U console, the hacking group responsible for making piracy possible on the original Wii are arguing a different case. Recently the Wiikey Group, who have also released a similar product for the XBox 360, announced on their website that they have reverse engineered enough of the Wii U’s guts to allow the system to boot games from an external HDD, which is really the first stepping stone to allowing pirates to run illegal backups.
Only a few lines of code have so far been released and if Nintendo are really overly concerned about the issue it certainly doesn’t show, and nor should it. They didn’t even bother fixing the exploit in the Wii OS section of the Wii U, essentially allowing hackers the ability to play pirated material through the same exploit they already were using on the older console. The legitimate homebrew users will always be there as will the pirates, hiding behind the guise of using their consoles for homebrew App’s and other legal reasons, just waiting for a console to be compromised so they can start collecting free games. These are generally not the kind of gamers who would have forked out hundreds of dollars for new release games, and in a nutshell to equate number of downloads to lost revenue is a biased and unrepresentative statistic, but that’s cause for another debate.
Nintendo have commented on the news with the following, “Nintendo is aware that a hacking group claims to have compromised Wii U security,” the company said in a statement. “However, we have no reports of illegal Wii U games nor unauthorized applications playable on the system while in Wii U mode. Nintendo continuously monitors all threats to its products’ security and will use technology and will take the necessary legal steps to prevent the facilitation of piracy.” If the news is right,Wii U owners should expect a major system update from Nintendo that will more than likely remove the exploit or in cases similar to the original Wii, have the potential to brick and destroy the system altogether, something the good folks at Microsoft probably should have learnt how to do a long time ago.
Nintendo have announced that the wacky and wild fun of Game & Wario will be unleashing all of its addictive gameplay on the Wii U come June 29th, 2013.
That is right, Wario and his crazy group of friends are back for some zany mini-game action. Ever since his original the beginning of the WarioWare series, Wario and friends have looked for new ways for gamers to play, whether it be with the Nintendo DS touch screen functions or the Wii’s motion controller. Now they take on the Wii U’s amazing GamePad device with a collection of games designed specifically for the controller and TV combination.
There are a multitude of gameplay options with Game & Wario that are sure to excite gamers. The single-player mode will feature twelve games to play that make great use of the Wii U’s capabilities by turning the GamePad into a number of different items. Players can expect to turn their GamePad into a variety of things such as a Camera and even a Handheld console.
Not only will there be a number of awesome single-player modes but there will also be many fun multi-player modes such as Disco which gets the party started with dance-off action and Artwork which tasks players with becoming artists and sketching up a storm. The Artwork game will also be integrated with the Miiverse which allow you to share your creations with the rest of the world.
Game & Wario is slated for release exclusively for the Wii U on June 29th, 2013. Get ready for all the crazy fun and mischief of Wario and friends as they get the party started on the Wii U with games that will quite simply blow your mind.
Exato Game Studios and Reverb Publishing like to say that they are “blocked and loaded” (how cute!) with a brand-new video for Guncraft, showing how players can build in the heat of battle to gain the upper hand.
Unlike similar games, Guncraftenables players to strategically build during multiplayer matches, crafting structures and walls block-by-block to use as immediate cover for instance. Alternatively, players can create any prefab structure to drop in immediately. No other shooter gives players this much flexibility to transform the arena in which they play. Check out the video directly below to get an idea of how this works in-game.
Guncraft In-Game Building
Also, Guncraftfans are being asked to help vote for the game on Valve’s Steam Greenlight. Vote today to hopefully see the game become available on the popular platform.
Ubisoft have released a brand new trailer for the upcoming stealth action game 
