If you’ve been eager to get your hands on the awesome looking online features of Crytek‘s latest title, Crysis 3, then now is the time to take the hunt directly to New York. Crysis 3’s multiplayer beta has now officially seen the light of day for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC; with players taking on the role of Nano enhanced special forces in their battle for domination across a devastated urban jungle inside the New York City Liberty Dome. Crysis 3 allows players to use a variety of powers and enhancements far beyond the capabilities of ordinary soldiers including things like increased agility, strength and reflexes.
In this Beta you can expect to find two different game modes as well as two separate maps for increased variation, with gamers able to reach up to Rank 10 before being capped off in this demo. Don’t worry though, as you’ll have the full potential of levelling up to Rank 50 when the full game is released.
The first game mode is the highly publicised and (in my opinion) most interesting type, Hunter. Across five matches a team of two Hunters with infinite Stealth Energy and armed with Compound Bows are set loose on a squad of regular CELL infantry, whose only goal is to survive until the end of the round. Hunters are tasked with eliminating the entire CELL squad, with each kill resulting in that player returning as a Hunter for the rest of the game. Some tips for this mode include:
When playing as a Hunter remember that you need to pull back and charge your bow for maximum damage, while keeping track of said targets remains easy thanks to all Enemies appearing on Hunter Radar.
As a CELL trooper your task is to outlast the Hunters, with audible motion trackers (Alien style) and a vast range of weaponry available across each load-out. Stick together, play as a team and always check your corners as the augmented Hunters could be anywhere.
The second game mode is Crash Site, a standard Take-and-Hold game with each consecutive point being released from a moving drop ship and eventually self-destructing after a period of time. To get the most points your entire team needs to remain on location, fighting off all those who seek the site for themselves. Remember to:
Always use grenades first on an already entrenched enemy team, this way you put yourself at minimal risk while effectively disrupting enemy lines.
Use the available shields from Drop Pods as defensive tools when holding points or throw it as a lethal weapon when enemies get too close.
Both these modes are available on Museum, a now flooded and overgrown locale that allows for plenty of verticality and sniper play; and Airport, a once bustling terminal turned plane wasteland, with a mix of long lines of sight and close quarters areas.
An in-game feature known as the “New York Feed” allows players to see how their friends are going in comparison to themselves as well as check out challenges that reward bonus XP and receive news directly from developer Crytek. Similar to previous “AutoLog” systems this will ensure that you always know how you’re going in the grand scheme of things, did your friend just complete a hardcore challenge or earn some ridiculous XP for their last game? Time to show them up next time around.
Did any of this get you excited for the upcoming release of Crysis 3? If so then make sure to pick up the game at its release on February 19th for Europe, 21st for Australia, 22nd for Europe and March 7th for Japan; available across the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC platforms . If you’re still not convinced then feel free to try out the brand new open Multiplayer Beta, available for download now across all aforementioned platforms.
Crysis 3’s Multiplayer Beta trailer can be viewed down below.
Both Epic Mickey and Epic Mickey 2 were released to less than stellar public opinion. Though they were much lauded for the creative mind behind them, Warren Spector (the creator of Deus Ex and Thief), the games were unable to generate enough steam to gain much ground, and were ultimately not commercially successful enough to self-sustain.
As it is always unfortunate to hear, it was confirmed that Junction Point Studios, Spector’s development studio, has been closed down by parent company Disney.
Said Spector in a letter on his Facebook page:
“Yes, it’s true. The Junction Point journey is over. To all those who’ve asked, or want to ask, I’m sad but excited for the future.
JPS had a good eight year run. I got to work with some amazing people on some amazing projects. I’ve had some of the most magical times of my life, fulfilling several life-long dreams. I’ve gotten to know Disney fans and Disney cast members, gotten hands on with Disney’s history, walked where Walt walked… “Magical” really is the only word.”
All MMOs have patches. Players have come to terms with the thought that they’re going to have to wait for that download bar to fill every so often. Every now and then, though, a patch worthy of some more thought comes out. For Guild Wars 2 players, one of those major content patches finally came.
On January 28, a major patch was released that included what is referred to as the “Flame and Frost: Prelude,” the first entry in a full story series moving forward. The description according to the patch notes say:
A mystery presents itself in this first entry in a multipart Living Story series. What could be causing such discord in the foothills of the Shiverpeaks? All those poor homesteaders and ranchers displaced with nowhere to go calls into question if the storms could be that bad—or if there’s something more sinister stirring up the flame and frost. The ground is shaking, and the sky is falling in northern Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau. Norn and charr refugees, crawling from the wreckage of their homes, are fighting their way to shelter in Hoelbrak and the Black Citadel. Many are in shock and wounded; most have only what they can carry on their backs. A call has gone out for volunteers to assist them in their time of need, when the environment itself seems to have become their enemy.
You can get all of Guild Wars 2 patch notes and read up on everything we couldn’t cover at the official Guild Wars patch notes here.
Call Of Duty fans on the PC and Playstation 3 might feel a bit shafted by this news. Activision have once again partnered with Microsoft for exclusitivity of DLC for a limited time. Coming today, we saw the release of the first DLC map pack for the game: Revolution. The only problem here is that Xbox 360 owners get to enjoy the content there is no word on when or even if PC and Playstation owners will get access to content at all in the future.
On the game a representative from Activision gave this shocking statement:
“We always strive to give our fans great new content and gameplay experiences,” said Mark Lamia, Treyarch’s Studio Head. “On the multiplayer and Zombies fronts, we’ve delivered the most expansive DLC offering in our studio’s history, with experiences fans have never seen in the franchise before: from four maps in exciting new locations with dynamic environments, to a new Zombies mode of play, to a new bonus weapon in multiplayer – it’s all there and then some.”
You strive to give your fans great new content? What about Playstation 3 and PC owners? Are they not fans? I think that a game with this large a fanbase might just give the gaming industry the push it needs back in the right direction. Be sure to check out the Official Site for more details.
What do you think of this news? Let us know in the comment section below.
We recently had the opportunity to interview the director of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Tommy Wirkola, and its producer, Kevin Messick, as part of a roundtable media event. We got in pretty much all of our questions, and received some great insight into the making of the film. Before reading the interview below, here is a quick background on the two:
Tommy Wirkola (Far Right) was born in Alta, Norway, but studied film at Bond University here in Australia. He was first widely recognised on the global film-making scene for his 2009 zombie-comedy Dead Snow. His deft blending of comedy and horror, very much in the vein of Sam Raimi – who Wirkola sites as an inspiration – got him noticed by some great Hollywood producers. Kevin Messick was one such producer. Now, Tommy has seen a decade-long dream come to fruition with Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.
Kevin Messick (Far Left) is one of four producing partners at Gary Sanchez Productions, alongside Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy. He has worked on many projects, including the hilarious The Other Guys (2010), Casa de mi Padre (2012), this month’s release Jack Reacher, and now Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. Upon being pitched the idea for the film, Messick was immediately keen to get this project made and the rest is now history.
Without further ado, enjoy the interview!
Thanks for this opportunity guys. Now, Kevin, was it something about Dead Snow in particular that attracted you to the prospect of working with Tommy?
Messick: It was awesome and I had no idea what to expect. I was at that Sundance Film Festival with a small drama that a buddy of mine had written and directed, and he was the one that was like “there’s this crazy Nazi zombie film, it’s a midnight, c’mon!” and so he kind of dragged me along to it. And it was sold out; people were fighting trying to get in! And it played like a concert film; the audience was laughing, screaming, talking back to the screen – it was just a really fun ride! It reminded me of those early Sam Raimi films. So I was coming back to L.A. and was just starting with Adam McKay and Will Ferrell as a producer for their company and tracked down Tommy through his agent, met him and he told us this idea of what he wanted to make next…
Wirkola: Well I told you five ideas! But, I saved this one for last…
Messick: Yeah, on the way out the door – “got anything else?” (Laughter)
Wirkola: I had a friend do some early artwork to go along with it too. I was just warming them up with the others.
Messick: We sold it within a week to Paramount and started working on the script right away. From a timeline perspective, we look back and it’s still pretty remarkable – two years later we were in Germany in pre-production building Augsburg.
It’s rare to hear about a quick turnaround like that…
Wirkola: It was a lot of… [Searching for the right word in English]
Messick: Perspiration? …Sweat, blood, tears?
Wirkola: No, when things just fall into place. Timing wise, there were rumours of other fairy-tale movies being made and Paramount wanted to be first. We ended up shooting first, but actually releasing last, which I think worked to our advantage. It was a crazy process. I still think, to this day, “how the hell did this movie get made?î Because it’s not a classical studio movie. It’s very R-rated, it’s got a mean sense of humour that you either love or hate and it took balls from Paramount to green-light it.
So, what do you think it was that made the initial pitch so attractive to studios?
Wirkola: I think it’s strong because everyone who has heard the fairy-tale, hopefully like me, has always wondered “what’s happened to these characters?” because the fairy-tale leaves them at such a fun place. They are left in the forest by their parents to die and they get trapped by a witch who tries to eat them but they end up burning her alive. For two young kids…I mean, that’s a great first act for any film, and it leaves the characters in such a great place. So I was just, hopefully, spinning on the curiosity of what happened to these two kids.
Messick: They grow up with a big beef! (Laughter)
Wirkola: I think it’s fun if you can take something everybody has a relationship to and put a fun little spin on it that hopefully gets everyone curious and excited.
How important was it for you to cast, for the majority, Scandinavian/German actors?
Wirkola:It was really important to me, and also to shoot it in Europe – I pushed very hard for that because I didn’t want it to feel like an American or Americanised world. I wanted Hansel and Gretel to have an American accent because I wanted them to feel like the outsiders and also to feel a little bit more modern compared to the rest of the film’s world. But yeah, there are Germans, Finish, Danish, Swedish and a lot of Norwegians actually.
Messick:It’s very uncommon for a big studio film, and because we were shooting over there, there was a great talent pool that we were able to pull from locally, which was also good for the film financially. But, weirdly enough, as with Famke and Peter Stormare, who also have European roots, the sum total of the cast does have this great European vibe that hopefully lends itself to the fairy-tale world we created.
Wirkola: And being from Norway, I got to use a lot of, who are considered great Norwegian actors in tiny parts, because I thought it’d be fun. Bj¯rn Sundquist, who plays Jackson, is considered to be Norway’s answer to Jack Nicholson. He’s won tons of awards and is a very serious actor, a great person…
Messick: And in our movie, he blows his head off. (Laughter)
Wirkola: He just thought it’d be fun to do something crazy like this. He told me on set, “you know Tommy, these last 20 years I’ve just been sitting and talking in movies, and finally I get to do some action, I get to kick ass!î So it was fun, and I’m really happy and proud that I got to use so many Norwegians and Scandinavians, and Pihla Viitala, who plays Mina – we just, by chance, found her in a German casting office and saw a tape of her and was blown away. She’s beautiful and strong and now hopefully she can use this to do something more in Hollywood.
We had heard that Noomi Rapace was tied to the film, and actually that the role of Gretel may have been written with her in mind. I don’t know where that came from…
Wirkola: It actually says that on IMDB, did you see that? [Directed at Kevin]. It came from Jeremy, that’s the funny part…
Messick: Yeah, it was at the Venice Film Festival.
Wirkola:Yeah, and I know Noomi a little bit and she was someone that we talked to for a while, but it just never came into play. She went on to do Prometheus, and then we found Gemma after that. And as soon as we saw Gemma, there was nobody else.
We loved the film,but had this not been green-lit, would you have put this out in some other format – maybe a book or a comic?
Wirkola: Maybe a comic book would have been the way to go then. I think it would have translated really nicely to that actually. I also thought for a while, if I couldn’t get it done in Hollywood maybe I could get it made back in Norway, but I don’t think I would have ever gotten the budget for that. You know, it’s funny when we pitched it, we pitched it as a very tiny movie, and eventually it grew bigger and bigger. The studio really believed it and we ended up with a pretty decent sized movie.
Messick: But we had a back-up plan; we were ready to develop something else as a movie, but now that will be the next one.
Wirkola: A time-travel western (Laughter)
Could this possibly be a franchise? We’ve heard talks about that possibility already…
Messick: Yeah, it’s an obvious question that does come up, and we’ll see how it does. There are so many things that need to fall into place. We’re just happy that this film turned out as well as it did. If the conversation comes up, it’s a fun world and we loved the gang that we made it with – the actors I think would all have a good time.
Wirkola: It’s certainly a fun world to do more stuff with. And now that we’ve established the main characters of the world, we have big opportunities. But it’s up to the people and if they want to see more.
Messick: But for the guys I work with, Adam and Will, we just want to make another movie with Tommy. So if the conversation of a sequel lingers, we have other plans for other fun movies, hopefully that we can make right away.
And if it looked like it was going to happen, do you have any ideas about where the sequel would go, or would you have to sit down and really hash it out?
Wirkola: Um, I have some loose ideas, but I have some things in Norway I might do and some things in the U.S. I might do…it’s been a long time since I’ve actually directed something so I want to get back into now because this was a long post-production process. And hopefully that’s soon.
With the direction of the action sequences in the movie, we noticed it went and was shot very smoothly, if that’s the right word to use…
Wirkola: Yeah, the fight choreographer Sam Hargrave and 2nd unit director David Leitch, who’s done a lot of big movies, and I just clicked straight away and knew exactly what we wanted to do. I wanted to go in more of a classical route with the action, and not use shaky cam as much as it’s used these days and go back to cutting, getting tempo through the cutting and storyboarding and choreographing the hell out of it. I did want a slight retro feel to the action too.
Messick: It was all well planned out and it was pretty fun watching him and Dave Leitch work. He had a big warehouse in Berlin and all of the stuntmen and women would take the sequences that Tommy had storyboarded and would literally bring them to life – they filmed them as these video visualisations and cut them together with blood effects. Dave and Tommy would then literally go with the stuntmen in sweats with cardboard boxes and prop guns and design the sequences so that by the time it got to the day with the actors, they were pretty well honed.
Wirkola: Yeah, and again it’s about collaboration and I was so lucky that I got to work with these actors…they just loved the idea of doing a fun film and I think a lot of people were like “we can do what we want!”, of course within certain parameters, but they just went crazy, along with me!
So in terms of the sets, were the towns used real towns? How much had to be built?
Wirkola:We built a town on the backlot in Babelsberg, outside and…
Messick: There was only one real town, where they walk away from the funeral pyre, which is a town called Braunschweig.
Wirkola: But other than that we really went out into locations in the forests of Berlin and outside of Berlin and we built sets.
Messick:We built the farmhouse in the forest, we built the candy house in the forest, we built the tall witches house in the forest…
Wirkola:It’s just because I think, especially when you’re doing a fairy-tale movie with fantastical creatures, you have to ground it wherever you can. And I wanted to do that amongst nature and those surroundings. The exterior set we had to build was the stone circle at the end because it was impossible to find the right place.
Messick: We did look, and we scouted this spot in Saxon that had these big, craggy peaks that ended up being the basis for its look.
Wirkola: Yeah, it just would have been too hard. As much as I can, I will also use practical stuff and do location shoots. I think, unfortunately, so much these days filmmakers use CGI when they don’t have to. I think CGI is best only when it’s used to polish what you’ve captured on camera. For me, no matter how perfect CGI is…and that’s the problem with it for me, I think in general it’s too perfect. It’s too glossy, too clean and I think it’s something in your gut or in the back of your head that you feel it somehow as less dangerous. Obviously, great examples of CGI are Gollum in Lord of the Rings, but in general it’s relied on too much.
Along with Dead Snow and now this, is this comedy-horror genre work becoming your niche now and do you see yourself branching out?
Wirkola: Well, so far! (Laughter) Well, we’re planning on doing Dead Snow 2, hopefully soon, so I won’t be going away from that. But of course I want to do some other stuff as well. I think there will always be that sense of humour in my work, um…
Messick: I think it’s an attitude. The action script that he wrote for us, another project that he wrote for us at Paramount, whatever genre he goes into there’s this attitude and point of view to it.
Wirkola: Yeah, I would certainly like to branch out. Now, I don’t see myself doing a musical or something like that in the near future, but I am attached to a couple projects in Scandinavia that might be a little outside what I normally do. But, I’m not planning on leaving this stuff. I love the mix of genres, and when I was growing up, it was seeing Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi’s earlier stuff that was an eye-opener for me…because I was a horror geek growing up and I watched ‘Friday the 13th’, ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘Halloween’. And sometimes all these movies were scary and extremely gory, but it was somehow still a fun ride to me. I was blown away by that – ‘Braindead’ especially, I remember fondly. So that’s something I truly love and hope to continue doing.
Okay, finally, we must ask…was the Candy House made of real candy?!
Wirkola: Just a very tiny part of it! The door had some little candy parts in it, and one of the hanging icicles. The rest was probably very poisonous and you would have died if you tried to eat it. The kids had very strict directions! (Laughter)
Well people should look forward to Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters’ nationwide release February 7th. Awesome, thank you both for the interview!
Capcom will be releasing the latest Resident Evil (Or Biohazard) game on the PC on the 21st of March, 2013 here in Australia and New Zealand. What makes this release interesting is that the Capcom team are announcing an exclusive Mercenaries mode that “ramps up the gameplay to 11. More enemies on screen than ever before will provide a greater challenge, but also the opportunity for players to use their skills to rack up even higher combo scores. ” This game mode will be called The Mercenaries: No Mercy. What’s also interesting is that Capcom will be releasing a new Benchmarking tool to make sure your PC can handle the most graphically capable Resident Evil game so far.
For console owners, you can look forward to a new gametype called Siege. In siege, one team of zombies must hunt and kill an AI BSAA agent while another team of humans must find and rescue this same agent. The previous three expansion packs will also be available for download on the Playstation 3 console in February. PC Owners will get access to the additional content some time after March.
The latest Doujin game licensed by Nyu-Media, Croixleur, needs some assistance in making it onto the Steam platform. The publishers of the game have released the following statement, urging players everywhere to assist in the promotion of the title onto the mass distribution platform.
It’s been just over a year since we released our first game (SATAZIUS by Astro Port) and our little company has now localized & released nine (NINE!) doujin games. This is all thanks to the gamers who have supported our games, so on behalf of everyone at Nyu Media & our development partners, THANK YOU!
Our latest release, the hack-&-slash action game Croixleur (by circle souvenir circ.) released yesterday and I’m writing to ask for your help to bring Croixleur out on to the world’s biggest games distributor, Steam.
Croixleur is 60 FPS of frenetic 3D hack & slash action, featuring 3 modes, 20 in-game achievements, widescreen and HD display modes (brand new to the English version!) and great value at only $4.99!
If you haven’t checked it out yet, please visit http://croixleur.com for all the details, screenshots, a trailer, demo & more.
Presently, Croixleur is sitting at 90% toward the Top 100 on Steam Greenlight & we’d like to ask for YOUR help to push it over the edge. If you haven’t voted for it yet on Steam Greenlight, please take a minute to visit its page and vote YES for it. The Croixleur Steam Greenlight page is located here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=114203390
If you have voted for it already, thank you (again!) and please continue to help us spread the word!
Thank you for your support to bring Croixleur to Steam! We hope you’ve enjoyed our work so far and we plan to bring you more great doujin games in the very near future!
Any players willing to assist the team should be commended. I know that I will be assisting. Will you be? Do your part and have some decent games that would otherwise be overlooked accepted onto the platform.
With the release of Dead Space 3 in the next week, Capsule Computers were lucky enough to get our hands on the first three hours of Dead Space 3 and speak with Dead Space 3 producer John Calhoun on Dead Space 3’s differences from its previous games and some of the concerns fans may have on its new setting.
As a video game producer what’s your role in the making of Dead Space 3?
So the producer’s role, we have five producers on the team and it’s our job to make sure that the entire development team – which is distribute in three different groups, in three different countries, all share the same vision. Dead Space is a big game and it has a lot of lore to it. We only have one creative director and he can’t be in a hundred different studios at once, so it’s really our job to make sure we’re all sharing the same vision and working towards the same goal, being the voice of the player, and the voice of the audience. Just because something is done well from a technical perspective, doesn’t mean it’s done from a fun perspective.
Has there been much fan feedback from the previous games? And how has it shaped the development of Dead Space 3?
Absolutely, we have a very vocal community in a good way. They criticise us constructively and tell us what they like and don’t like. In fact one of the reasons we’re doing drop in drop out co-op in Dead Space 3 is from feedback we’ve had from fans. We’ve heard the game is too scary to play by your self, people who played Dead Space 1 told us that. “It looked great, had fantastic audio but it was too dark, I didn’t have enough ammo and frankly it was just too scary, I played it for three hours and put it down, never touched it again” – we’ve had people come up and tell us that.
The fans have been telling us for a long time what they like to see in the game, and the great thing is that it lined up very well for the dev team because we wanted to do the same for a long time, so it was a perfect opportunity to build a game that was drop in drop out co-op.
Did the development team approach co-op differently from the previous single player Dead Space games?
It the most challenging thing we’ve done to be honest. To have an AI companion when you’re playing single player is a technical challenge because you have to make the AI for it, but it’s not a creative challenge because the game always can assumes there will be two people there. What was hard for us was making a game that can adapt dynamically to the presence of a second player at anytime point. So it was a creative challenge, it more then doubled the about of dialogue we had already, we have to do a lot more motion capture, we had to hire an actor who was the same calibre as Issac Clake so that he didn’t feel like a secondary character in the game but rather one of the main protagonists. Then we had to build the technical specs and frame work to support the drop in drop out functionality.
One of the key things we learnt that we initially didn’t originally include in our design was the persistence inventory would be, so with drop in drop out co-op your friend plays for 20 minutes and you two come out, that 20 minutes needs to be valuable for your friend. So we made sure that any progress you made in the game, not matter where you are, will be saved and be part of your experience. So if you played Dead Space 3 all the way to the very end, and your friend picks up a copy he can join you at the very end even though he’s never played it before. Anything that he does in your game will be remembered and saved to his profile. He can go back and play that one chapter or play though the full game. So the game knows if there’s any gap in the story, so it will pick up from that chapter if you want to.
Do you think that might ruin the game in terms of spoilers if my friend joins me at the very end?
We don’t think it is, we think about it in terms of player choice. What would ruin the player experience is if you tried to join my game and the software wouldn’t let you. It always better to allow players to do something then say “Well it’s not the way we wanted the game to be played, so we won’t let you do it”. Some people don’t care about the story, there are some people who just want the achievements or to finish the game as quickly as possible, and if you’re one of those types of players well we’re not going to say no. The right answer is always yes, it’s better to be welcoming than to push players away.
Will there significant changes game’s overall story when played though co-op?
The goal is the same, but the tone of the game is changed. You’re not going to miss anything if you play single player, all the major things are there. What changes is the tone from one of isolation and individual survival. When you’re playing co-op it’s about two people who come from very different backgrounds – engineer and a solider who have to rely on each other to survive. They talk to each other, they disagree, they yell, but they also share in their triumphs and successes so that’s very different tone and changes the way the game feels. While it’s not true to say the game’s story is completely different, it’s true to say that the game feels different and players will experience it differently.
From what we’ve seen in the trailers, is it fair to say that Dead Space 3 looks more like an action game rather than a survival horror game?
No it’s not an action game, a lot of people ask us that. They see the demo and previews, which are geared towards two-three minutes of being on youtube that are made for short attention spans. The moments of creeping dread where 15 minutes go by, you don’t see any enemies go by but you hear them – they don’t demo well. The ratio to action to tension has not changed in Dead Space 3, it’s the exact same formula. We like to say it’s in our DNA to make a game that takes you though peaks and valleys, sort of like a roller coaster.
It’s just that the game is so long, it’s about twice as long as Dead Space 2 so we just have so much content that we’re just showing the high action moments but as you’ve seen in the demo your fighting on the Luna colony and you’re using military weapons because that’s what Carver gives you but you still have your plasma cutter, by the time you get to the lost flotilla and derelict ships – you’re out of ammo, and every bullet counts. It’s a long claustrophobic ship. The entire game feels that way, it goes light, it goes dark, it goes loud it goes soft, it goes high intensity, low intensity. We’ve managed to stretch those moments out, were we only had 30 minutes of high intensity in Dead Space 2, we can now afford to do an hour followed by an hour more traditional gameplay simply because of the length of the new game.
Speaking of the game’s setting, as it’s set on a frozen planet and not on the dark corridors of a ship, will the game have any open-world elements?
It’s not open world but it will have room for exploration. A lot of people have been mistaken about that, but the game world is big and there are places to explore and go off the beaten path. One of the things that we haven’t really talked about much is all the optional content and missions that you come across. As you play though the story you’ll come across locked doors or a cavern, places that are just off the main road. All our optional content is just that – it’s optional, it’s a great place to find parts and recourses but also it makes the world feel more rich and immersive. In Dead Space 2, we made a couscous effort to be more linear than Dead Space 1 but in doing so we lost that sense of exploration and player impulse so we wanted bring that back in Dead Space 3.
Can you explain a bit about the new Weapon Craft feature and the different types of weapon combinations?
We’ve done the math several different ways, if you’re going to be the most liberal and go with every possible combination there’s hundreds and thousands of combinations out there. In reality, the ones I think that will matter to the player it’s in the low thousands but that’s still a huge number. And that includes the different engines and tips that players may choice. You can have new military weapons combined with traditional plasma weapons or kinetic weapons combined with ripcore weapons as well as the different attachments, which acts like buffs.
Are there plans for future Dead Space spin-off games or upcoming DLC for Dead Space 3?
We’re talking about any of our future projects at this point, simply because as believe it or not we’re still busy supporting Dead Space 3 so when it launches it can be the best possible game it can be. We want to make sure that from day one when you put your disc in everything goes smoothly and painlessly, we’re still really busy making Dead Space 3 in a way. After the game launches and we had time to breath a little bit and think about the future, then we’ll announce future projects.
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Developer: Level 5 Publisher: Namco Bandai Games Platform: Playstation 3 Release Date: 31st January, 2013 Price:$59.99 – Available Here
Overview:
Studio Ghibli are known worldwide as the Disney of Japan, having created masterpiece after masterpiece, nearly everything with the Ghibli name attached to it ends up receiving a great deal of fanfare. Such is the case with Level 5’s latest RPG adventure into a magical world that could only come from Ghibli called Ni No Kuni.
There has been so much hype surrounding Ni No Kuni with some of the more extreme fanatics calling it the next Final Fantasy or Tales before it was even released in English. Don’t get more wrong now, Ni No Kuni is a truly magical experience, one that will not soon be forgotten. It is by no means the next Final Fantasy, it’s not even the next Tales. What it is however, is the first Ni No Kuni.
Story:
Ni No Kuni features a very Ghibli-esque tale of adventure through a child’s eye, albeit one with a slightly different flavor to what we are used to from the legendary studio. As you’d expect the story won’t be conveyed as straight-forwardly as a film with everything playing out before your eyes, instead you have to play out the events yourself, which does leave a feeling that some of the pieces of plot are lost along the way.
You get the sense that Ghibli had more to tell than what is seen despite there being a large quantity of fully animated cut scenes. This is a game of course and as such a lot of the steps of plot are passed over as you simply go from one plot point to the next. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just feels odd to see a Ghibli story represented in this way.
The plot itself revolves around a young boy named Oliver as he travels into a magical world in order to save it form the evil Shadar following a huge tragedy befalling him and turning his life upside down. He is ushered into the other world by Mr Drippy, who might I add is the standout character of Ni No Kuni, with the promise of being able to restore his old life.
It all makes for a very classic adventure story filled with discovery and excitment, but it is hard to not feel as though some of the heart and spirit Ghibli is known for was lost on the video-game medium.
Gameplay:
This is where Ni No Kuni shines. This is a game that is best likened to the RPG cult classic Guardian’s Crusade. Both this game and Guardian’s Crusade feature a protagonist that is compelled on his journey by a creature companion (Drippy in Ni No Kuni and Baby in Guardian’s Crusade) and both feature a collectable creature aspect of gameplay (Familiars in Ni No Kuni, Living Toys in Guardian’s Crusade). This isn’t the end of the similarities though, Guardian’s Crusade is a game that was far ahead of its time and I strongly feel that Ni No Kuni will be looked back on in that same regard, there is a lot at play here that takes a while to wrap your head around, but it is what makes Ni No Kuni so enjoyable.
The battles of Ni No Kuni is of course a major focus of the gameplay as this is honestly a grind-heavy RPG with a lot of fighting and leveling to be done. What sets Ni No Kuni apart however is its combat mechanics, it mixes the turn based creature summoning combat of Guardian’s Crusade with the real-time action mechanics of the Tales franchise. At first it feels somewhat clunky and difficult to get a grip of. Afterall the game lets your run around in real time, but halting combat and switching between party members and familiars is a large part as well. This puts Ni No Kuni in an odd predicament, it is seemingly undecided on whether or not it wants to be a turn-based RPG game or an action RPG, instead just opting for the odd middle ground. It feels fresh and indeed it is, but the problem is that it has a relatively steep learning curve as it is not something many RPG gamers are accustomed to. There are flickers of past games we have seen but when mixed together it doesn’t glue all too well. Once you get the hang of it though, Ni No Kuni can prove to be an immensely satisfying RPG adventure that is the perfect mix of challenge and fun.
Besides the combat mechanics, it is very interesting to note that Ni No Kuni takes another page out of the Guardian’s Crusade playbook with seamless graphical transition between the overworld, towns, dungeons and battles. This may seem trivial in this day and age but there are still a lot of RPG games that don’t implement something as simple as this. Despite that Ni No Kuni does something that they don’t, it makes its world feel truly immense, it seems almost endless. No matter how far you travel the world just keeps on growing. This makes for a world that you just have to journey through, for a game with such a heavy focus on adventure, this is a necessity.
While some elements of gameplay may feel a little clunky at first, with some time they will come to click with you and become second nature. Ni No Kuni does a lot of things that haven’t been done in a long time which hearkens back feelings of RPGs of old as well as giving it a certain fresh flavor that you just don’t come by these days. Weighing in at easily 60 hours, there is plenty to see and do in Ni No Kuni. It may not be Final Fantasy or Tales but it is something special.
Visuals and Audio:
Ni No Kuni aesthetically lives and breathes Studio Ghibli, that instantly recognizable style of art that has enchanted anime fans for decades. In fact it is hard to imagine Ni No Kuni without Ghibli behind it. It certainly wouldn’t be half as magical as it is and the world of Ni No Kuni wouldn’t be half as fun to explore.
Ghibli and Level 5 have created a beautiful world to journey through and memorable character designs that won’t soon be forgotten. The sheer visual delight of Ni No Kuni is enough of a reason to give this game a look in as it is utterly gorgeous.
Not only is the art stunning, the soundtrack for this game is simply a masterstroke by Joe Hisaishi. He has composed he greatest score since Princess Monoke with this game. Each track is intricate and detailed telling a story without words. This soundtrack is a credit to Hisaishi and will be remembered as a high point of his career.
Overall:
Level 5 and Studio Ghibli came together to make magic and they succeeded. Ni No Kuni is an enchanting experience that will resonate in the hearts of gamers with its charm and romantic affection for adventure. It is a game that the world may not be ready for, with ideas that may not be fully embraced just yet, but it is still a game overflowing with creativity. While it owes a great debt to its forefathers like Guardian’s Crusade and Tales, Ni No Kuni has stamped out its own identity. It may be many things but more than anything it is what it is – Ni No Kuni.
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Corpse Party: Book of Shadows Developers:5pb., Team GrisGris Publisher:XSEED Platform: PSP, (Playable on Vita) Release Date:January 15, 2013 Price: $19.99 – Available Here
Overview: There have been many casualties in the horror genre of video games over the last decade. Franchises long seen as scary or even terrifying have become less prevalent in the industry and have been transformed into action titles. However the horror genre is not dead, and XSEED showed North American audiences this when they released 5pb’s Corpse Party in English in 2011.
The move may have been a risky endeavor at the time, but it obviously paid off well thanks to a number of stellar reviews and enough sales to bring the game’s sequel/expansion, Corpse Party: Book of Shadows. Now that the title has been released on the PSN (and is playable on the Vita as well), is Book of Shadows the terrifying experience gamers have been searching for since the last time they ventured through the halls of Heavenly Host?
Story: Before we begin, it is worth noting that familiarity with the first Corpse Party title is heavily recommended for anyone who wants to enjoy Corpse Party: Book of Shadows. The reason for this is that Corpse Party: Book of Shadows’ storyline is told through eight different chapters, each one focusing on a different student or group of students trapped inside of Heavenly Host. It is very important the player at least has a decent amount of knowledge about Corpse Party’s story before trying the game, as nearly everything that makes Corpse Party great revolves around its story telling.
The game begins at the household of Naomi, one of the few survivors who managed to escape from Heavenly Host Elementary. Unfortunately while Naomi’s escape may have saved her life, her mental state has become severely unstable. As such, her mother is desperately seeking help for her daughter who is obsessed with a girl who doesn’t exist. However for Naomi, this girl was her best friend in the entire world.
Now while the game may start from here, this is simply a little bit of after story to add emotion to the events the player is about to experience. The first chapter does go over a little bit about how these students found themselves in the cursed school, where a group of students hold a ritual for their transferring friend so that everyone will be friends forever. However this time around, one boy reacts violently to the charm and tries to stop it from happening but ultimately he goes along with it.
Thus these doomed souls are transported into a world of despair where any wrong move could spell their death. Now it is worth noting that Book of Shadows’ chapter storytelling means that there are actually eight separate storylines that focus on various students or people trapped within Heavenly Host. As such these chapters are often expansions on off-screen events, “What if?” scenarios, new stories focusing on new survivors. There are even some tidbits of information leading into events that occur after the first game and into a sequel.
Thanks to the new style used for Book of Shadows, players usually only change their story route through the answering of questions which usually involve what your character is going to do at any given moment. This, along with the fact that players can now save anytime they want to (even at a decision screen), makes it easier to avoid the game’s “wrong ends,” which I will discuss later, though it is still possible to lock yourself into a bad route with a poorly-chosen save file.
Now I choose not to go any further into detail about the game’s storyline than this, at least as far as plot goes, because doing so would be a disservice not only to the player but to the story itself. But let me say this, players already know the desperate struggle that some these characters have had to experience just to survive and even know the gruesome fates that await many of them. That being said some of the chapters are less impressive than others, though their inclusion still serves a purpose.
Book of Shadows manages to ensnare the player’s emotions with ease and I found it impossible not to feel hopeful during positive situations and desperate whenever things turned for the worse. The high level of emotional manipulation found within the story of Book of Shadows will be hard to find anywhere else. Therefore, the expansion of these characters’ storylines and the potential fate-changing decisions that can be made throughout these chapters is something anyone who has tried the first Corpse Party should not pass up and doing so would be as foolhardy as some of the decisions that can be made within the game itself.
Visuals: Corpse Party: Book of Shadows takes a number of queues from its predecessor with gorgeous character portraits, anime images and creepy atmosphere. However with the game’s new point-and-click adventure style, all sprites have been removed from the game and instead gamers are presented with dilapidated hallways, classrooms and school facilities presented from the first-person perspective.
The hallways appear rather similar to one another, minus an corpse here and there, though each classroom and unique area features a different design often with things that have to be explored. The first-person perspective does give the title a creepier vibe than the previous top-down presentation and when combined with the game’s quality atmosphere, simply venturing the halls can be a worrying experience.
Now Corpse Party: Book of Shadows isn’t for the weak of heart or those with paper-stomachs even. While there are a number of happy and even a few fan-servicey images, most of the anime artwork presented in the title is of something terrible happening to the characters. This can be anything from graphic hanging, strangulation, evisceration and more and many of these are presented for the player to see, though some are given a black screen but more on that momentarily. Along with these gruesome images, the halls of Heavenly Host are home to plenty of horrifying ghosts which can and will scare the hell out of the player.
Audio: Now earlier I mentioned that some bad ends and events that occur within Book of Shadows happen to a black screen. Whether this is due to the extremely graphic nature of the events occurring or something else, it should be noted that this is not due to XSEED’s censoring, and in fact these events are made even more horrible because of the black-screen. Why you ask? Because everything in Corpse Party: Book of Shadows is voiced.
Everything from you’re standard dialogue to narration is voiced by the original Japanese voice actors/actresses and you will need to hear them to believe them. The voice work is superb for the title and the emotions of the characters appear real thanks to this fact… and because of this, the screams and cries of the victims being torn apart or murdered in horrible fashion can haunt you long after any image would.
Any horror title needs great atmosphere to pull off a believable scary story. Thankfully, Corpse Party: Book of Shadows pulls this off well. While the speakers on your standard game system will work well enough, it is personally recommended to play through this game with headphones on as the binaural audio makes every experience feel real. The sound effects of the ghosts around you and the well-selected music create an unsettling experience that is nearly impossible to come by in today’s basic horror genre.
Gameplay: Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, as I’ve mentioned earlier, departs form the exploration style of the previous game and instead takes on a first-person point and click adventure title. Players will venture through the halls of Heavenly Host in a first-person view and have to use the analog stick and X to check out various parts of the screen that need to be examined, such as items to pick up or environmental objects to interact with. It should be noted that the search reticule will appear blue over objects that can be interacted with, as to make things a bit easier for players.
As you venture through the halls, you’ll do so using a map that displays the basic layout of the school and where you can go. Players can choose to search area by area, but can travel long distances if they feel like. Thankfully any events along the way are triggered automatically and stop the player in their tracks, so they will not have to stop at a specific place or fall into a bad-end by moving too fast.
Ultimately, that is all there really is to the gameplay of Book of Shadows. While there are a few puzzles that can hardly be named as such, players will mostly be playing hide-and-seek with various events within the game. It is interesting to note that not everything is as simple as go here and do this and some events require repetitious movement or a specific amount of “Darkening” to trigger.
This Darkening is a new and mildly interesting feature for Book of Shadows, as players are free to explore and examine whatever they wish, however doing so may not always be recommended. You see, the more terrible things that the character goes through, the further they are to losing their mind. This means that a high darkness percentage can affect the screen and even some other special events.
Outside of adventuring, the only other aspect of the title is either decision making or the visual novel dialogue sections. These are handled in a rather standard way, though those who have experienced bad ends will be glad to see that it is possible to skip through dialogue to avoid listening to conversations multiple times. That being said, the exploration can be very tedious and monotonous at times and only truly enjoyable during the first few chapters while everything after feels like a chore to access the game’s exceptional story.
Overall: Corpse Party: Book of Shadows is a truly terrifying experience. Though this trip down terror alley may require the price of knowledge, fans of the first game would be finding themselves in a sad end of their own to not answer many of the unanswered questions and expand their knowledge from the first title. That being said, the first title is always there for newcomers to try out and is just as worth of a purchase.
While some of the gameplay changes made for Book of Shadows are for the worse, this horrifying journey contains a smattering of unlockable content such as images, voices of the characters, creepy commentary by the Japanese voice actors and of course, a collection of your unlocked bad and proper endings. Corpse Party: Book of Shadows not only proves that a visual novel can work in the West; it also proves that a great story does not need the best gameplay to succeed.
