If you were delighted to hear that you would have the ability to watch a number of Viz Media’s English dubbed anime many months before they were actually released to stores via Neon Alley, but didn’t own a PlayStation 3 then you were unfortunately out of luck. However that is all about to change.
Today Viz Media revealed that they are planning on bringing Neon Alley to the Xbox 360 sometime early in 2013. Currently the company could not provide a slimmer time-frame than that; however this is great news for 360 owning anime fans. As for the service itself, Neon Alley is subscription based and costs $6.99 a month to subscribe. Recently I provided my thoughts of the service, which can be found here, and found it a rather enjoyable service, albeit one lacking any user input or control.
EA have forwarded us a link to their latest episode in the Crysis 3 video series, 7 wonders. In this episode of Crysis 3 – 7 Wonders, we see the character Prophet taking on a group of CELL soldiers. The episode is titled ‘The Hunt’ and it has a bit of hunting, of enemies, in it.
It seems that EA are really pushing this whole Bow and Arrow thing in Crysis 3. The trailer showcases almost exclusive gameplay with the Bow, with the main character facing multiple forms of enemies with the weapon. The Bow is called the Predator Bow and signifies a new look for the franchise.
A second DLC pack for MOBA game Guardians of Middle-Earth has been released today with Monolith seemingly putting a large focus on getting out all their planned Guardians as quickly as possible. While this pack includes no new map to play on, gamers will find themselves with some signature characters from the upcoming movie, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (and of course the original book).
The two newly available Guardians are Thorin Oakenshield the Warrior and Great Goblin the Defender. Some attentive watchers may notice that this appears to be the same Goblin from The Hobbit, which argues over how best to cook the party of adventurers, eventually falling prey to similar cooking by the Sun itself. In the game however, I very much doubt that this will occur, unless as a reference in the death animation or something… which would actually be really cool.
Guardians of Middle-Earth along with its first two DLC packs is available now for purchase and enjoyment, with this particular pack costing 160 Microsoft Points/$2.50 for each individual Guardian or of course, absolutely nothing if you own the Season Pass. If you’re still unsure of the original game’s quality or are just sitting on the fence waiting to be pushed either way, feel free to check out our in-depth review of the game here.
Today Taito has revealed that their latest game in the Cooking Mama series has been released onto the iTunes store and anyone who wants to try out the game can do so, thanks to a free version of the game being released alongside the “Pro” version. This Cooking Mama title is called Cooking Mama Seasons and not only does it feature a number of new recipes and new recipes set to be released every month, but the game’s graphics have been updated as well.
The free version of Cooking Mama Seasons can be downloaded herewhile the paid version, Cooking Mama Seasons Pro, costs $6.99 and can be bought here.
If you wanted to see how Lightning’s new outfit will look in action outside of a basic scan of her image, then you are in luck because despite the fact that the video was originally meant to be released at Jump Festa this weekend, some Japanese website broke embargo with the trailer and a fan managed to rip the video.
As such the debut trailer for Lightning Returns can now be seen below. In the video we see how the game’s apparently solo battle system will work out, some town exploration, details about the game’s storyline and a better look at Lightning’s apparently backless new leather outfit.
K-ON!! Season 2 Collection 2 Studio: Kyoto Animation Publisher: Madman Formats:DVD, BD (Reviewed) Release Date: Out Now Price: $64.95 (Buy Here)
Overview
K-On!! follows the story of an all girls highschool light music band called After School Team Time, or Hōkago Tī Taimu in Japanese. The series is a lighthearted comedy based around the life of this band. This particular collection covers the story of the girls’ dilemmas for when it is that they’ll be leaving highschool and moving on into college.
Much like the rest of Kyoto Animations previous works, this series is over the top in cuteness. Is this the series for you? Does this particular disc warrant a purchase, or does it see the show fall into slump? Read on to find out.
Story
The second half of this season deals with the impeding loss of Azusa’s fellow band members After School Tea Time due to their finishing off their final year of school. During this period of time between just before the start of the school festival and the girls leaving we see them do a lot of things that they would have to do.
The stories told in this disc primarily deal with the school festival up until the school girls leave for college. What I really liked about the story was that while each episode seemed to have its own story going on, each of the episodes were tied together in a continuous story.
One of the main things I didn’t like about this particular disc was there weren’t enough actual performances by the girls in the light music club. I think that in the entirety of the series they perform all of one actual performance and only play a couple of others in their practice room. As a series thats main draw is cute girls in a band playing music, it honestly felt more like cute girls in a band doing cute things and occasionally playing music. Not that that’s a bad thing, but if you’re watching this for only the performances then you probably should avoid the majority of the episodes.
However, each episode is always highly entertaining and the girls of HTT (Hōkago Tī Taimu, After School Tea Time) are always doing things in a comedic manner. I dunno, there’s just something about watching cute animated girls doing things that makes it both entertaining and cute. I can see why this show has such a large following. I will say though, that if you’re not the kind of person that likes these kinds of shows, you will probably absolutely hate K-On!!.
What I didn’t expect to happen over the course of this second half of a second season is to, not fall in love per se, but to have gained some kind of reactionary feelings towards these characters. The whole time during the series I was feeling the girls highs, their lows and I could sympathise with their positions at certain times. Note: My only previous experience with the franchise is from the movie which you can read here. Actually, the way the movie is merged into the series is pretty well done, I didn’t notice it at the time, but after watching the show; I was able to point out the segues.
I’d say that overall, the story is pretty good and filled with a bunch of entertaining moments. There needed to be more performances, but for what the show is, it works.
Visuals
KyoAni are notorious for their cute girl Anime designs. If you’ve watched any of their past or present series’ you’ll kind of have a good basis on what to expect from K-On!!. For this kind of series though, I think it fits really, really well. This is not just in regards to the majority of the series, but for the very few performances as well.
I quite liked how each girl has her own unique look and feel that tells you at a glance what each of their character traits are. You’ve got the obviously shy girl that everything thinks is cool, the tomboy girl, the negative girl, the sweet girl and the air-head. I’m reasonably certain I’m not missing anyone.
The animation is quite fluid, especially for me. I didn’t have any issues with the way cells were merged or anything, it was all pretty good.
Audio
The opening and ending themes for this particular part of the season are great. I also really loved the songs performed during the series, even if they were few and far between.
The one thing that made this experience different from my previous viewing of K-On!! was that the series includes an English dub track. Now normally, cute Anime girls done in English voice are absolutely annoying as all hell and immediately want me to rip out my eardrums and feed them to a lazer shark. Fortunately, the dub cast for K-On!! were brilliant at portraying their characters. While sometimes it does seem like the cute was put on just a little bit, most of the time the characters sound pretty natural.
The Japanese dub, I found, was about the same as the dub found in the movie. For my comments on how well the audio worked in regards to the Japanese character dubbing, read the review linked in the above Story section.
The background score was also really pretty awesome, I found it as enjoyable as the rest of this shows audio. K-On!! really is an audio feast.
Extras
Listed extras include only Textless Songs. However, I would probably also include the additional OVA episodes as an Extra as well. These are set in between episodes of the main story and don’t really drive it forward, but they do supplement it.
There also your standard Madman trailers for upcoming and released series’. The cover also has some nice artwork printed across its backside, so that’s also a nice addition.
Overall
Overall K-On!! Season 2 Collection 2 is a fantastic watch. I feel that even without the previous episodes you will still find much entertainment in this package. However, I’d definitely recommend picking up the earlier seasons before buying this one. If you already have the previous packages, then there is no reason why you shouldn’t grab this package.
If you noticed something missing from the front page of Steam today then you have probably noticed that The War Z is no longer available for purchase on Steam. The game cannot be purchased anywhere from the service, though apparently the removal is only temporary according to a response by Valve to Kotaku.
Why these problems you ask? Well ever since Hammerpoint released The War Z on Steam it was discovered that the company had lied about a large number of features the game offered and faked many of the images used to advertise the title. After that the company removed complaints from the game’s boards and banned anyone who continued to complain.
Currently Valve is offering refunds to anyone who bought the title and although it is worth noting that Hammerpoint does seem to be trying to fix some of the issues blatantly apparent to anyone who tried the title, it will be difficult to convince anyone to try out their game again.
Playstation owners that are members of the Playstation plus service will find that in January, Sony will be adding a bunch of great titles to the service. Of these titles, the most talked about is the sequel to the great Bioshock, Bioshock 2. However, there are a bunch of other quality titles coming to the service.
In addition to Bioshock 2, players can expect a few titles to launch slightly earlier than January, and slightly later. Launching alongside Bioshock 2 is Guardians of Middle Earth. But long before that we have Knytt Underground, which will be made available on the 22nd of December until the 23rd of January. After that we have Jet Grind Radio (Jet Set Radio) on the 17th of January and Pinball Arcade on the 24th of January.
In the period between the 20th of December and the 13th of January, players are able to subscribe to the Playstation Plus service for a full 25% off the signup price. Players that are already members can also take advantage of the offer by renewing their accounts early and adding the time on top of their existing subscription.
Today Tecmo Koei announce that anyone who pre-orders Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2 from GameStop will receive a special pre-order bonus. What is this bonus you ask? Well in North America you will receive a DLC pack that will include an extra costume for each of the eight playable characters in the game while Europeans will receive the same, though no specific pre-order location was mentioned by Tecmo Koei at this time.
Besides those costumes players will also receive a kick-ass shade-wearing version of Kenshiro, who can be seen in the screens above and below. As for the other costumes, they have been gathered together in one image that can also be found below. Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2 is currently set to be released in North America on February 5th while Europeans will receive the title a little bit earlier on February 1st.
Today Namco Bandai and Level 5 released the second behind-the-scenes video for their upcoming title, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. This time around the behind the scenes video features Studio Ghibli where we hear from Yoshiyuki Momose, the studio’s director of animation, as he discusses how Ghibli helped contribute to the game’s development and how the process was actually similar to creating one of Ghibli’s classic animated films.
The video can be seen below while Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch itself will be available January 22nd in North America and January 25th in Europe exclusively on the PlayStation 3.
