You have to give it to eager fans, they sure know how to track down information. A number of PS3 gamers on Gearbox’s forum have discovered information on the game’s latest patch which reveals that Borderlands 2’s next piece of DLC will be called “Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt.”
Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt will offer at least three new trophies/achievements, though unfortunately that is all the information that has been discovered at the moment. Perhaps this piece of DLC will be the one to include the raise in level-cap that many Borderlands 2 fans are keeping an eye out for.
If you were concerned that the latest console iteration of Earth Defense Force wouldn’t be making its way overseas then you will be happy to hear that, today, D3Publisher revealed that they are bringing Earth Defense Force 4 over to North America under it’s new name Earth Defense Force 2025 sometime in 2013.
Earth Defense Force 2025 will be released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and will feature a number of new giant insects to face off against like the Retiarius Spider and Wing Diver. Some may recall that D3Publisher is also planning on bringing over the Vita Earth Defense game,Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable, to North America sometime in February. Check out some screenshots of Earth Defense Force 2025 below.
Every good party needs a class that can not only take a beating but also dish one out. As such you should always put your trust in the swordsman in your party and Atlus USA has decided to demonstrate that fact with their latest promotional video for Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan.
In the video below the company focuses on the Landsknecht class, which is basically the swordsman class. As for the game itself, Etrian Odyssey IV is a Nintendo 3DS exclusive and will be released both to retail (art book and soundtrack CD available to pre-orderers) and as a digital download on February 26 next year.
Even with Dead Space 3 set to be released on February 5th, EA still has some new features to show off and today a couple of new features were revealed. First it was revealed during by EA that the game will feature couch co-op where players can navigate through the frozen wasteland together with a friend and the second happens to be Kinect compatibility.
While playing the game players can say various commands such as “share ammo” and they will immediately provide their co-op partner with extra ammunition. There will be over a dozen different voice commands available as well as a few hidden commands as well. Alongside these reveals a new video demonstrating the game’s co-op can be seen below.
Remember yesterday when it was discovered via a listing on Amazon that Square Enix was planning on releasing a Hitman HD Trilogy? Well today Square Enix took it upon themselves to officially announce the product which was unceremoniously revealed by the online retailer.
Their official confirmation states that the game will indeed be coming to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on January 29th for North America and February 1st for PAL gamers. The HD Trilogy will contain Contracts, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and Hitman: Blood Money in HD for a paltry price of $39.99. Check out some of the HD screenshots below to see the graphical improvements to the game.
Funcom’s MMORPG The Secret World has dropped its $15 monthly subscription fee, thereby joining up Starwars The Old Republic in growing free-to-play MMO market…almost. While players will no longer have to pay a monthly fee to play the game, new comers to the game will have to purchase the game for $30.
However, players can still choice to pay the $15 monthly subscription to gain access to exclusive in-game content and perks, such as the Time Accelerator, $10 worth of Bonus Points, item-of-the-month gift and a 10% discount to everything in the in-game store.
Access to currently existing Secret World DLC content will be available to all free players, including the upcoming 5th DLC pack. However, for new players that purchase the game after December 31st they will have to pay $5 to access the Issue #5 DLC.
Launched in July this year, The Secret World explores the secret societies, myths, conspiracy theories and urban legends hidden in today’s modern society.
At a preview event earlier this week, us here at Capsule Computers had an opportunity to sit down with the Communications Manager of Metro Last Light, Jeremy Greiner. During our chat, we discuss the upcoming Metro Last Light video game and take a look at some of the workings behind the games technical engine and more.
We have, in the past, interviewed Jeremy before. You can see our Video Interview with him for Darksiders II here. You can also check out our preview of the game at this link. It looks like an excellent follow up to Metro 2033, check it.
Could you introduce yourself to everyone at home?
I am Jeremy Greiner, Communications Manager on Metro Last Light.
So today we’ve taken a little of a look of the game and seen a few of the levels, could you tell us a bit about each of the levels and their significance?
What we’re really trying to do is show a rough vertical slice of the game. So we wanted to exhibit some of the cool things that exist in the game, establish some of the world and the atmosphere and show it to you guys. So We started in Camp 2, which was to show Human to Human combat. You had the choice to choose between stealth and gunplay. Alternate routes through to try and work out which best suits your playstyle, or if you need to manage your resources; which you will need to do in this game to save ammunition – there are different ways to do it.
I demonstrated a lot of improvements to the AI system, a lot of improvements to the controller mappings and where things live on the screen and obviously you saw that we’ve kept true to the Metro experience and it’s up to the User to find their way through, we don’t have all these things blinking on the map and mini-maps and all these UI pops and all these HUD elements too to make things easier. It’s challenging for a reason and I’m glad 4A have stuck to that.
Do you want me to jump into the next level? So the second level was called Venice, which was one of our station cities that fans of Metro 2033 will recognise. That’s to show the world and how life still exists and a lot of choices that you can make a as player.
The final level was Swamp, which was all above ground and out doors. With a lot of mutants all over and it was very much survival horror and with a lot of tension and you’re not sure where you’re getting attacked from. It’s core representation. The only thing we didn’t really show off was horror within the Metro where you’re kind of creeping in the dark, but there’ll be a lot of that I’m sure.
In comparison to the First Metro, has the AI been improved or is it the same or?
Vastly Improved. It’s been one of the key focuses, in fact the team is going in and debugging ti now. As I mentioned there are various alert states now, there are retreat mechanics, ssurrender mechanics; they never go back to an idle state when you raise an alarm, like when you raise there awareness. Even to the extent of if they’re unaware that you’re there and you kill them they drop quick, whereas if they’re aware they have adrenaline in their veins and they don’t drop as quick.
What are the differences between the difficulties?
The key differences are that they AI are going to be more accurate and do more damage. As you go up the difficulty tree, the more simulated the experience will become. Like not a virtual sim, but they’re trying to deliver on the atmosphere and immersion and simulating that is something really cool. And as you go up the difficulty curve it’s going to become more and more realistic.
As you go up in the difficulties, does it add more enemies or just more smarter and accurate?
Like I mentioned before, its not like it’s a Congo line of dudes that just keep coming and coming and coming and coming because I haven’t hit that invisible barrier and then they stop. There’s a finite number of people living in the Metro (that are still killing each other, I guess we didn’t learn our lesson) but that’s how it goes.
When we saw the game, it was incredibly pretty. Was this build at maximum detail or is there a prettier setting?
I can tell you right now that I grabbed this build on December 3rd and it his not gone through a polished phase. I showed you guys the laptop I’m on, I’m on an Alienware laptop with, I think an nVidia 500 series card, its not a super-cool super computer. The engine 4A created, the 4A engine it sings, it just sings graphically, absolutely sings. And we’re going PC to TV here and it looks graphically pretty because that’s what the game is and its amazing at what the engine and studio can do.
Could you run us through some of the unique things about the engine?
The 4A engine is a proprietary engine for 4A. They can do improvements and changes in real time, there’s a lot of engineers there, a lot are from what we call the old world. There’s destruction, there’s dynamic weather, dynamic lighting. If there’s lighting in the area it’s because there’s a light source, not because there’s a god light source coming from above. The engine can slow down and speed up the game, which I showed you guys, which is really cool because when you speed up the game things still stream in. Like normally when you’d have textures stream in at that speed they’d usually be like flat and grey boxes almost, so yeah the ability that they have to put all the detail into the world, the engine is really decorative.
The weapons have a lot of detail in them, was there much research that went into their designs?
It’s incredible, most of the weapons in this game are handmade weapons and actually the engineers prototyped them out, sketched them out, did the math behind it, the physics behind it, to make it worked in real life. So yeah a lot of effort went into that to make it realistic. Again it’s just that incredible level of detail concerning everything in the world that makes it the experience that it is.
So obviously the first game is adapted on the 2033 Novel, is Last Light based on any sequel novels?
Dmitry Glukhovsky wrote 2033 and we adapted that into the video game. Dmitry and 4A obviously talked about 2034 which he wrote, and decided that taking the path from 2033 where Artyom destroyed all the Dark Ones was a great way to take the game franchise and decided to create an alternative story in succession to 2033. It was collaborative between the author and the studio and they all unanimously agreed.
It’s about time to wrap this up, are there any closing comments about the game you’d like to share?
I think for a guy like me, just to be frank, I work on more of your traditional shooters; more of your run and gun, more of your action packed set piece ones. This experience, working on this game, and I’ve only been on since September, has been pretty enlightening for me as just a gamer. Not professionally, but as a gamer. Because, you know, I think everyone who plays this game is going to have a kind of “Aha” moment with this game where you ask yourself ‘Why am I doing these things on a certain way”? Because I think at some point you’re frustrating and it’s like “why can’t I do this?” and then you start realising that its because “I have to do this and this”. And then you realise “why did I do that before” and you start questioning your own behaviours and I think that we’re all so preconditioned now to play shooters a certain way that it’s super-super refreshing to be challenged to think differently. I think that’s what your viewers or readers should be taking away from this.
Lets hope we are able to hold off the impending Worm invasion as the guys over at Team 17 have announced they are getting into the spirit of Christmas by offering their entire iOS range at hugely discounted prices. With all iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad games at $0.99c its the perfect time to grab a bargain and get your hands on some of Team 17’s chart topping hits. For the iPhone and iPod touch we have Worms and Worms 2 Armageddon as well as Worms Crazy Golf and Alien Breed and for the iPad a similar lineup with some HD versions replacing the standards.
To accompany the sale, Worms 2 Armageddon has been given a Christmas makeover including 3 new Speechbanks and Gravestones as well as 10 new Forts and 7 new Hats including Santa, Reindeers and Elf.
Click for more information on Worms and Alien Breed. Also check out all of Team17 titles on iTunes here.
A Certain Magical Index Season 1 Part 1 Studio: J.C. Staff Publisher:FUNimation Format: DVD Release Date: December 11, 2012 Price: $64.98 – Available Here
Overview: Over a decade ago, many anime fans were lucky if a company managed to produce an English version of the show shortly after its release in Japan. Nowadays it has become somewhat commonplace for many anime series to be released in English within a year or at most two thanks to various advancements in technology and working relationship between studios.
However thanks to a number of issues involving the Japanese side of things, one series called A Certain Magical Index (Toaru Majutsu no Index), which originally aired back in 2008, met with many delays. Now the first season has finally come to North America courtesy of FUNimation in two separate parts. Does Part 1 A Certain Magical Index’s first season kick things off well? Let’s find out.
Story: In Japan there exists a technologically advanced city known as Academy City where many students from around the globe are gathered. What makes Academy City so special however, is not it’s advanced technology but the fact that many of the people who live there are “espers” or people possessing supernatural abilities. The city ranks these espers with level one being the weakest and level five being the strongest. Now A Certain Magical Index’s story follows a very unlucky boy named Kamijo Toma who happens to be the lowest of the low, a Level 0 who has no powers whatsoever.
However unbeknownst to nearly everyone in the city, Kamijo does indeed possess a special ability, something which is eventually called the “Imagine Breaker.” You see, his right hand can dispel any supernatural power regardless of where it originated from. Kamijo’s life suddenly changes when he discovers a hungry nun hanging on his balcony rail. This nun is named Index and she is on the run from a magical society with ties to the Church. The church wants Index because she happens to hold 103,000 magical grimoires within her memory and even one of those grimoire could cause devastation on a massive scale.
With magicians from the church closing in on Index, Kamijo must face off against forces he never even thought existed just a few days before, however even within the scientific Academy City, threats begin to rear their ugly head and Kamijo must do everything in his power to not only save Index but also stop the machinations of those around him. Can his Imagine Breaker shatter the enemies’ plans?
A Certain Magical Index is formatted in a way that makes each story arc within the series individually contained for the most part. There are two and a half arcs presented here in Part 1 of the series and each arc manages to stay relatively separate from one another, with only character relations staying true between each arc transition. While this does help keep Kamijo on his toes as he must face off against not only magic but also science as he helps those around him, it does mean that the story can be a little disjointed thanks to these transitions.
The series does feel a bit cliché at times thanks to the fact that Kamijo seems to always be the underdog in these situations as he faces off against everything from giant firebeasts, skilled sword users and even people who can bend reality to their will, and, at least so far, he also seems to attract many of the women around him and each story arc in Part 1 focuses on helping a damsel in distress and the only one who can help her is Kamijo and his miracle shattering right hand.
On the other hand, that is what makes the series very enjoyable so far. Now while that may seem contradictory, it is far from it. The reason for that is because it takes these clichés and makes them work through plenty of exposition and some complicated, but well-explained, systems unique to the series. While Kamijo usually solves things with his right hand, the way that he manages to figure out an enemy’s weakness usually involves some thought on his part. Rather than just charge in blindly, Kamijo often manages to figure out exactly what he needs to do to try and overcome an obstacle.
This leads to plenty of emotional scenes and a few plot twists along the way that are then explained with heavy amounts of dialogue. A Certain Magical Index Part 1 is loaded with exposition and explanations which are handled well and easy to understand though it would be understandable if a few viewers managed to get lost in the sea of exposition that makes up many of the story arcs in part 1.
That being said, there is still plenty of action and a nice dose of humor (usually involving Kamijo being the butt of the joke) laced throughout the first half of the series and the show manages to find a nice balance between talking and action. In fact many action sequences usually involve a mild amount of exposition, which actually makes the fights more enjoyable as the emotions of the fighters are brought to the surface and each fight feels more intense thanks to the amount of dialogue exchanged between the combatants.
Now A Certain Magical Index Part 1 ends smack dab in the middle of a story arc, and cruelly enough the story arc it ends on is one of the most interesting ones introduced in the series at the moment thanks to the dark and cruel turn the arc takes right from the get-go. It is worth noting that the first two story arcs are not bad by any means, though the middle arc is weaker than the first, this is a great cliffhanger for fans who don’t immediately pick up Part 2 alongside the first half.
Visuals: A Certain Magical Index Part 1 is a gorgeous anime at times, especially when it comes to action sequences but it still has its faults. Anytime that the characters are not in the middle of a battle the visual quality in the characters’ faces drops in quality, especially when it comes to mid-range shots of the characters.
That being said, any scenes that focus on one or two characters only and any action sequences feature some great animation and visual splendor. The powers displayed by the magicians feel nice and powerful and even Kamijo’s Imagine Breaker, despite being simplistic, always has some great impact whether it is to punch someone out or block an incoming attack.
It is also worth noting that the character’s that are introduced in Part 1 feature some very memorable designs and each one seems to step out of the norm in some way or another and their facial animations in combat are handled gloriously. As for the environments, many events seem to occur at night or in dark areas which serve to provide a nice sense of foreboding.
Audio: As one would expect from a FUNimation release, A Certain Magical Index Part 1 features both the original Japanese voice track as well as the brand new English dub. The English dub cast manages to fit well with the characters and Michah Solusod’s portrayal of Kamijo’s various emotions is worth noting and the same can be said for Monica Rial’s work with the energetic Index, especially whenever she has to drop to a monotone voice for the character. For fans of the original Japanese voice work, it is worth noting that the Sister dialogue displayed in Part 1 does match the original Japanese, where Brittney Karbowski includes the “says Misaka” part at the end of each statement.
A Certain Magical Index features some rather impressive background tracks throughout this first half of the season with memorable tracks for comedic scenes as well as action scenes. The opening music for Part 1 of A Certain Magical Index is “PSI-missing” by Mami Kawada which serves as a great rock opener for the series while the ending song is “Rimless~Fuchinashi no sekai~ by Iku. Iku’s closing song is more melodramatic and calmer and serves as a great way to end many of the dramatic scenes the first half of the show loves to end an episode on.
Extras: As far as bonus features go for A Certain Magical Index Part 1, there are your standard fare of extras in the form of a textless opening and closing song, trailers for other FUNimation shows and episode commentaries for Episode 3 and 6.
Episode 3’s commentary features Monica Rial who handles the voice work for Index, Jad Saxton the voice of the little teacher Komoe and Micah Solusod the voice of Kamijo Touma. The three have great chemistry in the commentary and there are plenty of humorous moments as they discuss work and their time with the show. The three comment often on the events of the episode and have plenty of “d’aww” moments whenever Index or Komoe are on screen.
Episode 6 features commentary by Zach Bolton, the voice director, Robert McCollum the voice of Stiyl the flame magician and Cole Brown who voices the “Frog-Faced Doctor.” This commentary follows the episode heavily and contains plenty of explanation, mostly thanks to the fact that a lot of elements of the series have to be explained to the (new to me at least) Cole Brown. While this is a bit entertaining, the commentary is rather sub-par and could be passed up without missing much.
Overall: A Certain Magical Index Season 1 Part 1 manages to not only take cliché elements and make them exceptional, it does so by finding the sweet-spot on the balance between exposition and action. While there are some drops in visual quality throughout the first half of the season, each battle is well animated and thought out well. With great characters and story arcs to kick things off and a killer cliff hanger leading into part 2, it appears that when science and magic collide, a great anime is born.
Fans of the Metal Slug series will be pleased to hear that SNK Playmore have announced the release of the groundbreaking Metal Slug for both iOS and Android devices. For those who cant remember, Metal Slug has had 10 installments and was responsible for bringing the NEOGEO console into popularity with its state of the art pixel like graphics and addictive gameplay. Such is the demand that they have also decided to release Metal Slug 2 and Metal Slug X in the near future.
Now mobile users can enjoy a perfect arcade port complete with bonus features such as Mission Mode as well as a massive array of weapon upgrades and bonuses all nicely rounded with precise customisable controls. Players can also connect with friends through bluetooth and battle together or check their scores out in the online rankings to see where they place.
Metal Slug is $1.99 and is available now through the itunes and Google Play App Stores.
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