Castlevania will be seeing another title added to its repertoire says Konami Digital Entertainment. Titled as Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate (long title), the game is to be released exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS on March 5th, 2013 in North America.
What can we anticipate to see in this upcoming title? Well, as the title implies the story will begin 25 years after the events of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Mirror of Fate will exclusively look at the mysterious background of Trevor Belmont, the son of Dracul. With the return of Dracula, Trevor departs from his son – Simon – on a quest to enact vengeance on his mother’s murderer, his father. But before he departs from his son, Trevor hands him a pendant containing a part of the Mirror of Fate.
Be sure to stay updated on the latest “Lords of Shadow” news by checking out Castlevania’s Official Lords of Shadow Facebook page.
Focus Home Interactive and Spiders Studio must be very unimpressed with the state of game trailers today as when releasing the first non-teaser trailer for their upcoming Mars: War Logs, they make it a point of mentioning that it is in fact 100% Dubstep free. Instead opting for the much slower “Feel the Sunshine” that sets the mood on the mostly red dust planet.
The trailer doesn’t offer too much, but it does show off a little bit of some of what the game will hopefully offer in terms of combat. Showing a little physical, gun, and cyberpunk-style Technomancer ability as lead Roy Temperance faces off against some seemingly low level guards. While pretty sparse it will be interesting to see how all those combat elements come into play when out and about in the full RPG world of Mars.
Mars: War Logs will let players fill the role of Roy on the water devoid planet to side with the renegades his been labeled as in Spring 2013 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or PC. Players can check out the first trailer embedded below.
Today Activison has revealed that Call of Duty: Black Ops II will be getting a balancing patch very soon for the Xbox 360 and the PC and right now actually for PS3 users and while a number of things have been fixed up in patch 1.04, the most notable changes are the nerfs to two items in the game.
First all SMG weapons have been given higher levels of recoil when fired from the hip and reduced bullet penetration to reduce the complaints of their powerful close-combat capabilities. Secondly the UAV scorestreak will now require the player earn 425 points rather than the 350 points that were originally needed.
The rest of the patch notes can be seen below.
New Features & Feature Improvements
Added support for posting Live Stream URLs to Twitter.
Improved audio/rumble responsiveness when hitting enemies with gunfire.
Improved overall communication of Double XP when enabled.
AAR better communicates how much XP was earned in each match.
Added the ability to “View League Teams” from any player’s Playercard.
Added the ability to “View Playercard” from League solo leaderboards.
Added a number of security system enhancements.
Added Hardcore Kill Confirmed playlist to the Hardcore category
Issues Addressed
Fixed a rare hang (“Awaiting Textures”) upon loading into maps when joining a session in progress after fresh boot.
Game now resets the Care Package for a non-owner if the owner re-rolls the package using the Engineer perk.
Players with Black Hat PDA can no longer hack a Care Package faster than the owner can capture it.
Addressed an exploit where modified console hackers could maliciously spread infected films to other users.
Added a fail-safe to prevent spawn trapping in CTF.
Increased sight checks on turrets to improve spawning algorithms.
Fixed a number of new UI error messages reported by users.
Addressed a number of issues that would cause friendly/enemy color indicators on equipment and scorestreaks to display as the wrong team.
Improved overall Theater and Live Streaming stability.
Improved film rendering stability and made progression bar more accurate while rendering a film.
Addressed issues which prevented some master challenges from being completed.
Precision challenge “Wet Work” will now unlock with 10 kills.
The wins challenge will now account for all FFA modes when ending a match with a tie (if you are in the top 3).
Players that help with the “Synchronized Attack” challenge now get credit for it.
Players will not be able to manually take control of their AGR if they die at the exact moment that their AGR deploys.
Emblem Editor no longer closes the current emblem when discarding changes.
Players using Ghost will no longer be invisible at all times in Custom Games with the mini-map option set to “constant”.
Players using Ghost and a Suppressor attachment will no longer appear on the enemy’s minimap while shooting and moving while a UAV is up.
The median for the K/D graph in the AAR is set to 1.0 instead of 0.0.
Players can no longer get on top of the shrubs in Nuketown 2025.
Thermal vision overlay no longer appears using the VTOL glitch.
Kills from the explosion on the explosive crossbow bolt now count towards challenges.
Counter UAV no longer remains for the rest of the game after a host migration.
Clan tag is no longer locked immediately after prestige.
Offline profiles can no longer be exploited to join online games when an online profile is also signed in.
Multi-team games no longer count as a tie if an entire team quits.
Fixed an area in Express where K9 Unit dogs could get stuck.
EMP grenades no longer affect the CODcaster HUD.
Party Privacy count no longer affects how many bots will spawn in Combat Training.
Shadows seen through sniper scopes now render more correctly.
Players can no longer stand on invisible collision in Carrier.
“Drop Shot” medal is no longer awarded after standing back up.
Players can now copy a custom class to the extra prestige slot.
Gameplay Balancing:
Scorestreaks:
UAV: cost increased from 350 to 425.
Lightning Strike: added 750ms delay
Equipment/Grenades:
Bouncing Betty: increased the grace period between trigger and activation by 200ms.
Sensor Grenade: increased the range (now 1000 units), frequency (now 800ms between pings), and amount of time (now 6s) that players appear after explosion.
Concussion Grenade: decreased movement penalty and turn speed penalty when hit.
SMGs:
All: increased hip fire recoil.
All: increased max hip fire spread from 4.75 to 5.
All: reduced bullet penetration.
MSMC: increased recoil slightly.
PDW-57: increased recoil slightly.
Assault Rifles:
All: reduced idle sway for more reliable long-range aiming.
XM8: reduced lethal range of 3-hit kills from 250 to 50 inches.
XM8 + Select Fire: increased recoil.
FAL OSW + Select Fire: increased recoil.
SWAT-556 + Select Fire: increased recoil.
MTAR: Made auto aim values consistent with all other assault rifles.
It’s shaping up to be a great week to be a frugal gamer. Maybe not as great as a Steam sale week, but pretty close.
The Weekend Deal this week are two great indie games. First up is Hotline Miami at %50 off. This top down shooter is reminiscent of an older simpler age in video gaming and is an absolute steal at $4.99 USD. Pick up your copy here. Next we have FTL: Faster Than Light priced at $5.99 USD (40% off regular price). This rogue like space exploration game is great to play in short bursts but be warned, its extremely addictive. I personally supported this game back when it was on Kickstarter and I don’t regret it at all. I highly recommend picking up this game here.
GreenMan Gaming is running a Winter Voucher week by releasing a new 25% off code that will be valid between 1200 GMT Friday December 7th and 1200 GMT Friday December 14th. These can be applied to most titles on the GMG store on top of any sales. Additionally GMG will be releasing daily codes that provide large discounts on many recently released games. Major deals include 30% off Guild Wars 2 Digital Edition, 35% off Hitman Absolution, 40% off Skyrim, 30% off Fary Cry 3, Assassin’s Creed 3, and the Borderlands 2 Season Pass. The most impressive deal will be on Thursday the 13th of December when Chivalry will be 50% off plus an additional 25% if the coupon is used. Check out the full listing of discounts at GMG and the 25% off code here.
GMG is running a few major sales. I recommend picking up Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition at $4.98 USD, Bastion at$4.49 USD, and Hitman: Blood Money, Tropico 3, World of Goo, Defcon: Everybody Dies all at $1.99 USD each. These prices do not include the extra %25 coupon that can be found in the link above. Most of these games should be eligible for the extra discount. These games are a mixed bag of Steam and GMG Capsule downloader, so read carefully. Check out our review of Bastion here.
Get Games is running a sci fi sale with games up to 75% off. Titles of interest include Deus Ex: Human Revolution for Steam at $7.49USD and Bioshock 2 for $4.99 USD. Check out the full sale here. Read our review of Deus Ex: Human Revolution here and our review of Bioshock 2 here.
Finally, GoG.com is running a Myst themed weekend promo, knocking down the price by %60 for DRM free downloads of the Myst series, Uru Complete Chronicles, and The Manhole: Masterpiece Edition. The Myst series is a video gaming classic that should be considered a must play for every adventure and puzzle game enthusiast. Check out the sale here.
Many people were disappointed that Rayman Legends would not be a launch title on the Wii U and even more were disappointed that the game wouldn’t even be hitting in the console’s release window. In fact, until now Ubisoft had left fans with only a vague “Q1 2013” release window.
Well today the company chose to be a bit more specific with the game’s release date as Ubisoft announced today that the game will be released on February 26 in North America while gamers in the UK will be able to access it on March 1st. Ubisoft also revealed that a Rayman Legends demo will be available for download on the Wii U eShop on December 13.
If you thought that Bioshock Infinite’s release date was finally set in stone for February 26 then you are unfortunately very wrong. Today Irrational Games boss Ken Levine revealed to the media today that BioShock Infinite was delayed once again and will now be released on the PC, Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 on March 26 next year.
Levine went on to say that “The game has to be the best game it could possibly be,” and that the delay was to make sure that everything in the game was polished and bug fixed. While this delay is certainly disappointing for fans, these gamers would likely prefer the most polished experience possible rather than a buggy experience.
Hip Hop icons Big Boi and B.o.B. were originally tapped for the game’s theme song “Double or Nothing.” Now the two artists will be participating in an exclusive Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel pre order bonus at select retailers. The Hit Makers Kit will add a special T.W.O. contract mission that will star Charles “Chuy” Rendall voiced by Big Boi and Anthony “Baker” Barnes voiced by B.o.B. Each character sports weapons and masks designed by their voice actor. “Partnering with B.o.B on the Army of TWO The Devil’s Cartel theme song and inside the game has been a blast and I can’t wait to load it up, hear the song and see myself in the game,” said Big Boi.
Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel is slated for release on March 28th, 2013 for the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360. Check out more about the game here.
EA Mobile has two great pieces of news about The Sims on mobile devices. First off, The Sims FreePlay is celebrating their first anniversary with a giant infographic with interesting statistics about the game. Additionally the Christmas content update has been released bringing the 12 Days of Christmas Quest line where players will get into the holiday spirit by helping Santa complete important tasks. Player’s efforts will be rewarded with a secret present on Christmas day. Additionally new activities like fishing and fashion design are now available for Sims to earn extra simoleons. Check out The Sims FreePlay on iOS here, the Google Play Store here, and the Amazon App Store here.
To celebrate the holidays, EA Mobile is knocking down the price of The Sims Medieval to free for a limited time. Grab your copy on the iTunes App Store here.
Big surprise, not really, Xbox 360 remains the top selling gaming console in the US with 1.26 million units sold in November. That’s Microsoft’s 23rd consecutive month as the highest selling console, according to Microsoft’s Chief of Staff for Interactive Entertainment Business Aaron Greenberg who took to twitter to announce the news:
#NPD reports Xbox 360 sells 1.26M consoles in Nov, nearly 2x all other consoles & >WiiU+Wii combined
Over the Black Friday weekend alone, more than 750,000 units were sold; a figure that was no doubt fueled by the recently release of two of biggest games of 2012, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Halo 4.
Those two games respectively, topped the highest selling games of the month in the US. Heck Black Ops 2 made more than $1 billion in returns just 15 daysafter its launch on November 13.
Queue Dr Evil…(but billion rather than million)
Microsoft is also reporting total retail spending on the Xbox 360, hardware, software and accessories included, reached $1.2 billion in November reached $1.2 billion.
Though overall, that figure was down by 13% year-on-year.
Siren Visual, an independent DVD and Movie retailer of the interwebs are having a massive 20% off everything sale. As stated the sale covers everything the online store sells, from animes to documentaries, everything you can possibly find in their store is currently on sale. One of the most well known distributors of anime in Australia, Siren Visual has existed selling music since 1987, bringing in video distribution in 1994.
To access this sale all you have to do is put in the code “DECEMBER2012” presumably on the checkout screen. This sale is for the entire month of December and looks set to take advantage of the many shoppers around leading up to Christmas. Products like “Perfect Blue”, “Un-Go” and “Number 6” are available on sale plus many, many more; so go over check out their website here.
