Today the teasing for CD Projekt Red has come to an end as today the company revealed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Interestingly enough, when the company announced the game they stated that it will be released sometime in 2014 on the PC as well as on “all high-end platforms” suggesting that it will appear on the next generation of gaming consoles.
Outside of that, CD Projekt Red’s studio head Adam Badowski stated that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will contain an open-world that will be 30 times larger than The Witcher 2 and that each region in the game will feature it’s own population with different customs, problems and story development.
Badowski went further saying that “Imagine playing a dark fantasy game with the same great non-linear story as in the previous Witcher titles, but now told in a world you can explore freely with no artificial boundaries. The war-ravaged world is so huge that to reach farther places you will need to ride a horse or sail a boat to get there.”
Skulls of the Shogun Developer: 17-BIT Publisher: Microsoft Studios Platforms: XBox Live Arcade (Reviewed), Windows 8, Windows Phone, Microsoft Surface Release Date: January 30, 2013 Price: 1200 Microsoft Points ($14.99) – BUY NOW
Overview
Founded in 2009 by a veteran of the games industry, developer 17-BIT set to work developing their first title, Skulls of the Shogun. Fast forward to 2013 and we finally have the anticipated indie strategy darling in our hands. Does it have a true command of the battlefield as all warlords should, or have Sun Tzu’s deception techniques thrown us for a loop? Let the battle commence.
Story
As the game begins, we are introduced to General Akamoto. Victorious and standing on the precipice of achieving the title of shogun, warlord ruler of all Japan, he is suddenly taken unaware by a blade to his back. When he awakens, he is aboard a sailing vessel bound for the Shores of the Dead, flesh missing but mustache intact.
Upon landing, he is ordered to wait in line for entry into the afterlife, but the guards obviously have no idea who he is! Refusing to wait his turn and demanding vengeance for his untimely demise, Akamoto soon rallies a small army of bored soldiers to his cause and begins his journey to the gates of the afterlife and beyond to exact his revenge and become the Shogun of the Dead.
Gameplay
There are two ways to play Skulls of the Shogun. While the single player campaign will take you on a 8-10 hour journey across the seasons of the afterlife, the multiplayer will gives you a few different options to enjoy a competitive match. These include 2-4 player games of online, couch, and asynchronous play across several different Microsoft platforms.
After an initial play session or two with Skulls of the Shogun, it could be easy to start drawing comparisons between it and Intelligent Systems’ Advance War series. Each army involved in the conflict begins with a given set of units, there are locations on the map that you can capture to call in reinforcements, and each side is commanded by a military officer, but Skulls of the Shogun goes so much deeper.
Where the Advance Wars titles are grid-based, Skulls of the Shogun drives all of its movement from a circular sphere of movement for each character. Each round, the active army is granted five scrolls, each representing the movement and actions of a single soldier. This lends more weight to the actions your soldiers take, since no matter how many troops you have on the field, only five can ever contribute on a single round.
There are three basic archetypes of soldier: General, Samurai, and Monks. Between all three archetypes there are still only a handful of different individual soldier types, but each is used to great effect. First and foremost, each army has a general to command the troops and dole out some extra damage. If you lose your General, it’s game over. More often than not, missions will come down to eliminating your enemies’ general while keeping yours alive. Watching the general work feels like watching a superhero go to work on the goons around him.
The Samurai, which include infantry, cavalry, and archers, are the backbone (pun intended) of your army’s work force. Infantry are a bit heartier, cavalry can travel long distances, and archers have great range damage but will fall to pieces in close combat. With proper tactics and patience, the Samurai caste will win your wars, and you’ll feel like a boss for helping them get you there.
The Monks are a special class of soldier in Skulls of the Shogun. They will only join your forces if you haunt their shrine. There are three types of monks. The Fox monk focuses on healing magic, the Salamander monk breathes fire and focuses on destructive magic, and the Crow monk utilizes wind and trouble-making magic. Each can be very effective in a given situation, and when they’re missing from your army, you’ll definitely notice it.
Over the course of a mission, every unit has the potential to get stronger. When you defeat an enemy, their skull is left on the ground. Instead of utilizing an action, a unit can decide to consume the skull of the fallen. The general and his samurai will gain health (both as a heal and to boost overall capacity) with each skull consumed, where each monk will gain a new spell with each skull eaten. When a unit has eaten three skulls, they transform into their “demon” form, granting each unit a particularly useful skill. A demonized general, for instance, can perform up to three actions per turn instead of just one, or a demonized fox monk can resurrect dead soldiers.
As an added bit of strategy, soldiers can stand next to one another to form what is known as a “soul wall.” This gives the units in that wall added defense, but it also has an added benefit in that no unit behind the wall can be targeted. This is great for setting up archers or letting your general meditate.
Most maps also have several features built into them. There are rice fields your soldiers can “haunt.” Once taken, each field will give you rice (the primary form of currency) for up to six turns, and then those resources are forever gone. You can use that rice to summon new units to the field or perform special skills. Also built into the terrain are bamboo and brambles. Knocking an enemy back into the brambles will cause extra damage, while hiding your units in bamboo gives them a little extra chance to dodge an attack.
Visuals and Audio
Skulls of the Shogun is an aesthetic joy to experience. The art design of the characters feels reminiscent of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy or some other Saturday morning cartoon. Bright, vibrant colors adorn each army, while the Asian-themed environments add a sense of place and feel to the world. The music in the game is a mix of traditional Asian with modern pop music, though it’s ultimately fairly forgettable. The theme that plays when you complete a mission, though, will take you right back to the days of your childhood, conquering a Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis game.
Overall
Strategy game fans with the means to get Skulls of the Shogun would be doing themselves a disservice to pass it by. The art is bright and enjoyable, the humor will have you chuckling along, and there is a great strategy game at its core as well. The multiplayer has 17 maps to keep you occupied and the 8-10 hour long campaign is a lot of fun, though the faint of heart may want to set the difficulty to casual and just enjoy the experience. While it may not appeal to all audiences, folks who have been looking for a great strategy game on consoles for the past few years need look no further.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Entertainment invite you to determine the ultimate hero or villain of Injustice: Gods Among Us. Enter the Battle Arena!
Each week for the next 2.5 months, specified match-ups will be made and you, the fans, will get to decide on who the winners will be. Each victor will be glorified in a victorious gameplay video at the end of their week. The new combatants and match-ups will be revealed on the Tuesday of each week, introduced via a video package. These videos will detail the skills and attributes of each individual fighter.
They will also include man-on-the-street and celebrity explanations on their own personal choices. This week’s celebrity opinions come from none other than the voice of Batman himself, Kevin Conroy, comedian Wayne Brady, the voice of Harley Quinn, Tara Strong and last, but not least…the “King of the Nerds”, Kevin Smith along with his “Dashing Sidekick” Jason Mewes.
Here is a quick video that explains the competition. Oh yeah, did I mention there are prizes to be won? Check it out for details.
There is a voting period to be adhered to by the week, so if you want to vote you should get your submissions in early. This week’s match-ups have been introduced in the video below. Watch it, and then enter your vote at the dedicated Battle Arena webpage.
Skylanders has made Activision a ton of money during the past few years, and it looks like that wallet will continue to grow. Today, it was announced that Skylanders: Swap Force will be the newest version of the popular toy-based adventure, which will let players literally swap out parts from their figures to create new abilities that can be used within the game.
Details? Well, here is some information from the big “A” themselves”
SWAP Force builds upon the success of the franchise’s signature gameplay with an all-new innovative play pattern — swapability — that gives kids more choice than ever before by letting them swap the top and bottom halves of the toys to create their own characters. The game lets Portal Masters reconfigure 16 SWAP Force characters into more than 250 unique combinations. Kids can mix and match characters’ powers and moves, and then bring them to life in the game. Fans of the franchise also can play Skylanders SWAP Force with their entire collection of characters from both Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure and Skylanders Giants, now with the added capability of jumping.
“With Skylanders, we didn’t just create a beloved new franchise, we actually created an entirely new category that brings the world of physical toys and video games together like never before. And now with Skylanders SWAP Force, we are pushing the genre we created forward with another big innovation: customization,” said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, Inc. “The idea that kids can customize their own characters in the physical world, and have their unique combinations recognized in the virtual world, is an idea as big as the concept of bringing toys to life itself.”
In Skylanders SWAP Force, Portal Masters embark on an all-new adventure in the mysterious Cloudbreak Islands, home to a mystical volcano that erupts every hundred years to replenish the magic in Skylands. During an epic battle, a brave group of Skylanders were caught in the volcano’s eruption, which blasted them apart and sent them to earth. But, the magic of the volcano gave these heroes a remarkable new power — the ability to swap halves – turning them into a special team known as the SWAP Force. Meanwhile, Kaos is back with a new evil plan. And now, Portal Masters everywhere must reassemble the SWAP Force — in their original form or in new combinations — and send them back to Cloudbreak to save Skylands!
This is great news for fans of Skylanders, as underneath all of that marketing and toy buying, there is a solid product that shows no signs of age as of yet. You can check out the new trailer down below, and let us know if you plan to cave in and swap out for a new breed of Spyro later this year. Those in New York can check out this new game at Toy Fair 2013, February 10-13 at the Javits Center in New York City.
While we all know of Sony’s mysterious February 20 press conference on the future of the Playstation, and the heavily rumoured Playstation 4. Don’t forget that this generation of consoles is not over…well not yet anyway and to prove this Sony’s Playstation 3 Super Slim is getting a make over.
The Playstation 3 Super Slim will now be available in two brand new colours blue and red; or if you want to be really fancy Azurite Blue and Garnet Red.
The two new consoles will be of the 500GB variety and will sell for a RRP of $399.95, however numbers are limited.
The new blue and red coloured Playstation 3 Super Slims will be available in Australia from February 21.
Pokemon fans down under will be happy to know that a new distribution event is headed their way. Starting March 4th, the Forme-changing Melody Pokémon Meloetta will be available via download from specific retailers, available to all who own a copy of Pokemon Black/White or Black 2/White 2.
So what does Meloetta have to offer?
Striking a chord between its two distinct Formes, Meloetta hits all the right notes in battle. Meloetta fights as a Normal- and Psychic-type Pokémon in its Aria Forme. Though Aria Forme is powerful in its own right, Meloetta can change mid-battle to its Pirouette Forme, taking on new strengths and weaknesses as it becomes a Normal- and Fighting-type Pokémon. Meloetta is the first Pokémon able to change its Forme and type during battle using a specific move, and its Pirouette Forme is the only Pokémon with a Normal- and Fighting-type combination.
You can find Meloetta at selected EB Games and Target stores in Australia, and selected JB Hi-Fi stores in New Zealand, from March 4th until April 19th, so mark your calenders and get ready to add another notch to that Pokedex. Requirements for this event can be found below, and you can find a list of participating locations here.
To receive Aria Forme Meloetta during the distribution time period, fans will need the following:
• A Nintendo 3DS or Nintendo DS system
• A copy of the Pokémon Black 2, Pokémon White 2, Pokémon Black, or Pokémon White game
• The Pokédex within the game
• No more than 11 Wonder Cards in their possession
eFusion MMOG, a European publisher of massively multiplayer online games, revealed today gaming media will be the targeted recipients of Closed Beta keys for the upcoming Dragon Nest Europe.
Beginning February 12, everyone will have the opportunity to get a beta key from Dragon Nest‘sofficial website. Players interested in possibly getting an early beta key can check out their Facebook page. A little bit of incentive is being tossed at the community as well. If there are more than 8,000 concurrent users in the beta, the databases will not be reset when the game officially launches on March 6, 2013.
Dragon Nest is a free-to-play online action RPG. It was developed by Eyedentity Games. It features dynamic action oriented gameplay. With the game being released in several countries, it has drawn more than 200 million gamers worldwide with 800,00 concurrent players.
PopCap has recently launched the beta for their Facebook title, Hidden Agenda. And I have acquired much needed information from the stealthy hands of Hidden Object Executive Producer, Kurt Busch. Hidden Agenda has been discovered!
Question 1: I would first like to begin by asking, “Who are you, and what is your role in the creation of Hidden Agenda?”
I’m Kurt Busch, the Executive Producer for Hidden Object games at PopCap and the General Manager of the Vancouver studio. My role in the game was to build a team to take everything we learned creating successful HOG franchises like Mystery PI and Vacation Quest and bring this sort of fun to Facebook. About a year ago, we built a small team around Rick Davidson, the Game Director, and started experimenting with what worked best.
Question 2: According to the initial screenshot release, animals were depicted as the community population. What drove the theme of animal characters?
This was suggested by Nelson, our Lead Artist on the project. His idea was to make everyone animals but treat them as regular characters – no corny animal names or gags. As soon as he did this, everything seemed different. Characters immediately became more sinister, or silly, or endearing.
Question 3: Continuing from the previous question, is there symbolism behind the chosen characters and the roles that they play?
We were working with the idea of two competing families and – as it worked out – all the members of the progress-driven family wound up being carnivores and all the members of the traditional family were herbivores. This wasn’t intentional, but it shows the kind of message you can get across about a character just by trading on what different animals represent. When the head of a family is an apex predator, you know you should really watch yourself around him. Incidentally, we weren’t entirely consistent on that division.
We leave it to the player’s imaginations as to whether the characters are actually animals, or if this is a metaphor for their human personalities. We’ve found that players have an immediate rapport with the characters without requiring a lot of description or dialogue. When you see a lion, you immediately assume he’s forceful and aggressive and at the top of the food chain. Then to add a layer of depth, we created a hidden agenda for every character in the game – something that each character is hiding but the player can discover.
Question 4: Will Hidden Agenda be exclusive to Facebook? If so, why was this venue chosen over the more traditional PC/Mac release?
It’s launching as a Facebook exclusive and it was designed specifically for the way people play Facebook games. In our regular PC/Mac titles, the Hidden Object experience is very casual and relaxed. It’s all about taking your time to discover all the visual little nooks and crannies of a scene. On Facebook, it’s more about dropping into this little world a few times each day and making progress on unraveling the town’s many secrets. Also, we wanted to try building a game where we could roll out new content and mysteries every week instead of every few months.
Question 5: Since the title will be released on the social network, how will interactions between friends help propel a player’s progress? Will there be rewards for helping others like “energy boosts” to extend the playing experience?
You can help out your friends in a number of ways. If you choose to join a crew to inspect a crime scene, you’ll make progress in finding clues more quickly. In the town meta-game, you’ll be able to find specific items for your friends. Eventually, we’ll give you the chance to hide objects in your friends’ towns. We also have some very creative ideas that will definitely help you out if you’re playing with friends who are around the same level as you.
Question 6: Being free-to-play will guarantee more casual players to dive in Hidden Agenda. What is the affordability for the premium content?
Hidden Agenda is divided up into Jobs and Cases. Jobs are sort of scavenger hunts in the town that let you earn currency, energy and special investigative gear like fingerprint kits and security camera tapes. You can always buy these items if you want to do fewer jobs.
Cases are mysteries made up of multiple Hidden Object scenes. Each case has an additional premium scene, meaning a special Hidden Object Screen. Finding all the clues in it will give you access to special graphic novel pages that tell you more of the backstory behind the characters and the case.
Question 7: I haven’t heard of this game being developed in rumblings anywhere, and it is being released in early 2013 – not far away. Has there been a hidden agenda for Hidden Agenda?
Well, we ARE a Hidden Object Games studio! We should be able to hide stuff. We started doing prototypes with a small team back in late 2011. We tried a Blitz model and decided that didn’t work. Then we tried a more traditional, case-based PI game and we felt we were a lot closer. When Rick and his team joined in late January, he started exploring the idea of creating a world where EVERYTHING – the scenes and the town and the tasks – became a Hidden Object Game. We tinkered with a town-building mechanic and decided it got in the way of the whole-world-is-a-HOG approach. Then we just kept our heads down and worked away. We’ve been in closed beta within PopCap for the last few months and just started opening it up to the public recently.
Question 8: Like other hidden object games provided by PopCap, can we expect cameos from Bejeweled and other titles?
Yes you can. Don’t be surprised if you find a Zombie on your lawn.
Question 9: Beyond the hidden object content, how many types of alternative mini-games will be available?
Every part of the game is a Hidden Object experience, but that doesn’t mean every moment of gameplay is a traditional Hidden Object scene. The entire meta-game is made up of different types of scavenger hunts throughout the town, and these weave in elements of memorization, matching and general hunting around.
In terms of the traditional HOG scenes, we’re launching with a conventional seek-and-find mode and a Blitz mode. We’re implementing a Spot-the-Difference mode for early in the year. We have a couple other modes that we’ll roll out later in the game.
Question 10: Hidden object games are not necessarily known for having extensive playing time. How will Hidden Agenda combat repetition and extend the playability for its players on the social network?
Most Hidden Object games on Facebook have turned the HOG experience into a sort of memory game to promote repeat playability. This has turned into some fun moments in some games, but we approached it differently. We make the repeated investigation of the scenes an opportunity to uncover new clues to advance the case. And the team brought the HOG experience out into the town, with repeated quests to find objects, suspects, friends and characters. When you’re exploring the world in Hidden Agenda, you’re always trying to find something.
That concludes the interview with PopCap’s HOG Executive Producer Kurt Busch. Since you have gathered some classified “interrogation” information, go on over and check out Hidden Agenda on Facebook (here).
THIS is our Hitman?! Meet the new Agent 47 everyone!
So, it was announced today, via Deadline, that the Hitman film reboot is going into full motion with Paul Walker cast as Agent 47…
The script is being written by the screenwriter of the first film (which was a critical failure), Skip Woods, as well as Mike Finch. It will be directed by commercials director Aleksander Bach in his feature-film debut. (Now, I just want to iterate that the following is my opinion alone here, and I am not necessarily representing the site’s overall opinion.)
It’s funny because, according to the article, Fox International Pictures sees this film as a potential hit, especially in the international market, based on the video game series’ sales numbers in those overseas regions. But, they haven’t seemed to consider that those same fans of the franchise might not be receptive to this casting choice…and I think I’ be safe in saying that’s an understatement.
Of course, the first film broke $100 million and people were complaining about Timothy Olyphant being cast back then too – I personally think Olyphant is an amazing actor though. So, there’s a good chance that this “reboot” will still make it’s production cost back in box office sales, and possibly make a profit, thanks to the average movie goer (and teenage girl). But, why alienate the very audience that put the games – the source material – on the map?
Why not cast a great actor, who can carry an action film (alone) and has been proven to be able to play a bad-ass, like Mark Strong. Mark Strong is one of the busiest actors in Hollywood for a reason; he’s that good. And he looks almost exactly like the character design for Agent 47! I usually give the benefit of the doubt, but you could be blind and still see this is a mistake. End rant. Let us know what you think about this casting news in the comments below. Have any alternative choices in mind?
Playstos has released a demo version of their upcoming title – Real World Racing. The title is a top-down racing game that features real topographic maps taken from satellite imagery. The developers have done this to give players the feel of racing in our physical world. Touched up with 3D environment effects, racing from a bird’s eye view will have you looking at cities around the world in a different perspective.
RWR Open Beta Demo Features:
Online Multiplayer up to 16 players
3 Tracks from the final game, set in Rome, Berlin and London
6 Cars from the middle point class in the final game
Single Player Arcade Mode
Time Trial Mode
Garage for car browsing and customization
To gather further analysis of Real World Racing take a look at our preview of the title (here). Play the open beta demo by downloading the title at the Real World Racing website.
THIS is our Hitman?! Meet the new Agent 47 everyone!
