And we’re back for another edition of Laike’s PC Download Deals. Christmas is drawing near, so if you’re looking to load up on some cheap games for a Christmas present for yourself or you forgot to buy a gift for that special gamer in your life, there is still time to save yourself!
First up is the Steam Midweek Madness Sale. We have grand strategy game Crusader Kings II on sale. Everything but the most recent few DLC is 75% off. If you’re a huge fan of grand strategy games and political intrigue, Crusade Kings II is a great game to play at a starting price or $7.49. The Stronghold franchise is also 75% off. Stronghold 3 Gold Edition is also $7.49. I personally suggest Crusader Kings II over Stronghold 3 Gold if you must choose between the two. The Steam Midweek Madness sales ends on Thursday at 10 am PST. Also, the Daily Deal is Jade Empire Special Edition for $3.74. I highly recommend this RPG game. I believe it is Bioware’s most underrated game, if you like KOTOR, give Jade Empire a try.
If you haven’t played bought Battlefield 3 yet, GameFly has it on sale for $13.99. Its a fantastic game, although it doesn’t recapture the original Battlefield 2 charm, it does a great job of updating the franchise to modern standards. Battlefield 3 activates on Origins. Check out our review of Battlefield 3 for PC here.
Get Games has Spec Ops: The Line for $7.49 for Steam. Although the multiplayer isn’t anything to write home about and the gameplay is pretty bland, Spec Ops: The Line has an amazing adult story that is worth the price. I highly recommend this piece of social commentary if you are looking for a story more potent than the Call of Battlefield popcorn action movie type stories.
Greenman Gaming has Dishonoredfor half price. Unfortunately there are no active GMG voucher codes, so there is no extra discount to be had here. I highly recommend this game, especially if you’re a fan of the Thief series. Dishonored activates on Steam. check out our review of Dishonored here.
GoG.com has the Defend & Conquer bundle on sale today. The bundle is a mix of tower defense and strategy games including Defender’s Quest, Anomaly Warzone Earth, Uplink: Hacker Elite, Defcon Darwinia, Multiwinia, and Spacechem. These games bough together are 75% off at $17.68. When the games are bought separately, they are only 50% off.
Coming on January 25th is the Planetside 2 Ultimate Empire Showdown event where players must choose a factions leader to follow into war against the other factions in the game. The leaders are current gaming icons in the Planetside 2 gaming sphere. From what I can gather, these leaders are players that have gone out of their way to create media content based on the franchise, like training videos and the like.
For the New Conglomerate team, we have the leader: Seananners who seems like a pretty cool guy. On the Terran Republic, we have the leader: Total Biscuit, who wears a nice suit. And then on my team, the Vanu Sovereignty we have: Tobuscus who seems to be more interested in goofing around than being useful.
For more information, be sure to visit the Ultimate Empire Showdown page and the Official Video, embedded below.
RedLynx has been busy with their second DLC for Trials Evolution. They announced the release of RedLynx TV Season 2 Episode 5 showing off some extensive video footage of Riders of Doom. The video shows off the ten new skill games, the new Trials bike, a new base world with 100 new objects for the level editor, and the 40 new tracks and tournaments. Buyers who do not own the first DLC will have access to all the level editor objects and features that was added in the first DLC. The Riders of Doom DLC will be available soon for 400 Microsoft Points.
Additionally, the RedLynx TV includes the results of last episode’s contest, intense scooter racing around the RedLynx offices, and the next 2100 MSP contest. Check out the video below.
In case you’ve been living in a cave (or Australia, where the game is banned), The Walking Dead by TellTale Games has been something of hit, with the multi episode adventure snagging itself multiple game of the year awards and oodles of critical praise.The game has been released on consoles and PC, but the iOS version is now enjoying a Christmas special where you can pick up ‘A New Day’ , the first episode of the game, for absolutely free.
Lee’s journey through the zombie outbreak is not to be missed, and this freebie offer is a great way to dip your toes into the water to see if the story can ensare you in its portable form.
Telltale have also discounted many of their other iOS titles, including the individual episodes of Jurassic Park and Back to the Future.
Nothing like a free game especially to get into the Christmas Spirit, so head on over to the iTunes App store and download Last_Defender, free courtesy of Waterise and available now for a limited 24 hour period. You are the last defender, solely responsible for defending the city gates, the country and all of its people and their homes from the merciless attacks of the evil Orcs and armies of undead. Us your arsenal of arrows, pistol and rolling stones to name just a few, as well as setting up cunning traps outside the city walls to stall enemies and increase your chances of victory. With a huge skill tree as well as as 3 different difficulty settings set across 50 levels, Last_Defender is perfect for anyone looking for a challenge as well as those looking for a casual experience.
To download Last_Defender for free head on over to itunes and grab a copy before the sale ends
Madman Entertainment will be bringing the English world premiere of Studio Ghibli’s From Up On Poppy Hill to Dendy Portside in Brisbane for a limited time started December 20th, 2012.
This is great news for fans of Studio Ghibli films but missed out on seeing the film during the REEL Anime festival earlier this year in September or just those who want to see it in English language format.
From Up On Poppy Hill will screen at the following theaters starting December 20th, 2012: Cinema Nova (VIC), Dendy Newtown (NSW), Dendy Canberra (ACT) and Luna Leederville (WA).
You can check out our review of From Up On Poppy Hill here. Be sure to let us know what you think of this film screening at Dendy Portside in the comments section below.
Cardcaptor Sakura Collection 1 Studio:Madhouse Publisher:Madman Entertainment Format:DVD (Subtitles Only) Release Date:November 28, 2012 Price:$59.95 – Available Here
Overview:
After 70 episodes of magic Cardcaptor Sakura reaches it’s conclusion in yet another jam-packed uncut DVD release from Madman Entertainment. Without a doubt this series has been one of the most heavily requested by Australian anime fans, so does Cardcaptor Sakura Collection 2 continue the trend of pure quality set by the first or does it fall off?
Story:
Cardcaptor Sakura Collection 2 features the series conclusion and the entirety of the second half of the series, from episode 36 to episode 70. Throughout the course of this second collection Sakura Kinomoto and friends go through a great deal of struggle, failure and triumph. But what is it that sits at the heart of this series – what defines it’s soul?
Early on in the series particular in Collection 1, the story for the most part focused on Sakura capturing different cards and what not, but by Collection 2 things have developed far more to the point that she isn’t simply just capturing her cards, they have really changed her life completely in some ways for the better in others for the worse. But this is what the heart and soul of Cardcaptor Sakura, sometimes something incredibly magical happens and your world as you know it changes.
For Sakura the cards have a profound effect on her life. She once lived a simple life of a young school girl, but now she has a means to be more than that. She can be special, magical even. But the price of that is an almost ever present danger, both from the cards and people with a stake in the matter.
Sometimes magical things happen, we don’t quite understand why they do, but they do and it soon becomes hard to even remember life before it all. Despite the incredible life-changing experiences she is still searching for that one thing that will make her life complete. She may be stuck in a dangerous yet mystical life, but she isn’t alone and it is in the bad boy Syaoran Li that she finds love, albeit unconventional love.
Sakura is a girl that at her core has a sense of loneliness that she does not outwardly portray, she desires connection and purpose and through a little bit of magic she finds it. The soul of Cardcaptor Sakura is the thought that magic can really happen and for Sakura it does.
As the series comes to it’s final moments there is a lot of twists along the way that will leave you enthralled. There is such an incredible depth to the writing in this series and the cast of characters are as colourful as they are well-defined. There is a lot to like here and Madhouse really made a name for themselves with this series, it showed an incredible amount of variety for what they could do as an anime studio and still to this day is an excellent shojo series that hasn’t aged a day since it first aired more than a decade ago.
Visuals and Audio:
Cardcaptor Sakura still holds up incredibly well in this day and age, animation-wise it was far ahead of it’s time. It pulled off visuals that wowed audiences at the time and was sublimely animated with an incredible amount of fluid motion from bell to bell.
The character designs are great and it Sakura’s everchanging wardrobe deserves a mention for creativity and artistic flair. Some of her costumes are jaw-dropping beautiful and no doubt excite a lot of the female fans interested in what clothes she will wear next.
In terms of the soundtrack the series gains two new openings and ending themes in this portion and sadly all of them aren’t too crash hot compared to the instant classic ‘Catch Me, Catch You’. They do a decent enough job though despite not being as strong as the original opening theme.
The voice acting is simply superb with Sakura Tange as Sakura Kinomoto deserving an honorable mention for what is an incredibly varied and at time moving performance as the titular cardcaptor. She really steals the show in every scene, it’s utterly captivating.
Extras:
Much like Collection 1 there is not much more you could ask for from a release that features 30+ episodes, but Madman decided to go right on ahead anyways and throw in some extra goodies anyways. On this release there is of course textless opening and ending themes, but there is also an interesting interview with Sakura Tange herself. The interview was conducted at SMASH! con in Sydney. However the interview is not a video and instead is simply text based, which admittedly is a little hard to read.
Interestingly enough I was also lucky enough to interview the legendary voice actress of Sakura Kinomoto at SMASH! 2012. You can read my interview with Sakura Tange here. The Madman interview covers similar topics albeit they are a little more general. It is still a good read none the less for fans of this series.
Besides the interview with Sakura and the textless opening and endings however there is very little in the way of special features, this isn’t a bad thing though as the release is pretty jam-packed as it is, even if it doesn’t have an English dub.
Overall:
Madman have worked magic here. Like Sakura learns, sometimes magic really does happen and indeed it has with this brilliant release by Madman Entertainment. The series concludes in glorious fashion and this is without a doubt a must-have for any Cardcaptor Sakura fans. Alongside Collection 1, this makes for the most definitive English language release of the Cardcaptor Sakura anime series and for that I must applaud Madman for a job well done. This is pure fan-service and there is nothing wrong with that. Whether you are a fan of Cardcaptor Sakura or yet to be initiated into the magic of Cardcaptors, I wholeheartedly recommend this product. This is about as good as an anime release gets and for that reason Cardcaptor Sakura deserves a place on any anime fans shelf. Magic really does happen and there isn’t much more you can ask for than honest to goodness magic.
As many of you may already know, Borderlands 2’s next piece of DLC has been confirmed to be called “Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt” and while almost no information about what the game will actually involve has been released yet, a few sources have discovered various images of the items players will find within the DLC.
Examiner and MP1st have each posted a number of images showing off some new weaponry as well as some new character customization items for each of the characters, including the Mechromancer. Unfortunately no information about new enemies or locations has been discovered yet, though an official announcement from Gearbox will reveal any information currently lacking.
It is the season of giving and Tecmo Koei is planning on giving fans plenty of Santa outfits as long as you plan on giving them some of your money! Today Tecmo Koei revealed a second set of Santa costumes which have been broken down into three sets and a final fourth set containing all of the outfits contained in this second holiday pack.
Those curious about how the costumes look in Pack #1 can find them here. The first pack is the Nice Girls 2 set which contains Santa outfits for Kokoro, Helena and Sarah while the Naughty Girls 2 pack gives Mila, Lisa and Pai some adorable Santa outfits. The guys are also given a nice bundle in the Lil’ Santas 2 set which contains outfits for Zack, Eliot, Brad Wong, Gen Fu, Rig and Bass who get’s the only different outfit in the form of a black Santa outfit.
The packs can be bought for either separately $2.99 or 240 MSP depending on your console of choice or all together in the Christmas Set 2 pack which costs $7.99 or 640 MSP. Each of the costumes can be seen below. Update: High-res versions of the images have been released and the images below have been updated with the high-res versions.
The recently released retail and downloadable title, Guardians of Middle-Earth, has received its first piece of downloadable content! The pack allows gamers to play as two new Guardians, Bilbo Baggins the Striker and Bert the Tactician (who honestly doesn’t look like he’d make the best strategist). In addition to the release of this DLC, is a free update for the main game which adds in the Shire as an additional playable map. Guardians of Middle-Earth has so far only contained two arenas for combat and so this update will surely satisfy those looking for more variety in their Tolkien based MOBA game.
Guardians of Middle-Earth pits two teams of five players against one another in epic tug-of-war style deathmatches. Players can choose from over twenty different heroes and villains from both the original Lord of the Rings trilogy and the upcoming Hobbit movies. The Bilbo and Bert Character DLC for Guardians of Middle-Earth is out now and can be purchased for 160 Microsoft Points or $2.50 each off Xbox Live and PSN respectively; or for owners of the Season Pass, absolutely free.
The two new playable Guardians are actually based off characters from the upcoming tie-in movie, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which releases on December the 26th. For our thoughts on Guardians of Middle-Earth however check out our review here.
Madman Entertainment will be bringing the English world premiere of Studio Ghibli’s From Up On Poppy Hill to Dendy Portside in Brisbane for a limited time started December 20th, 2012.
