Last night, a few of our editors (myself included) and community members attended the first ever Australian Mario Kart Tournament event held by Nintendo. And I have…not so great news…we didn’t win. But more on who did later.
The event started at 6:30pm and was held on Level 4 of the Hotel CBD in Sydney, and there were many members of the Australian video game press, from various websites attending. Among us were representatives from Gamespot, AusGamers, GamePlanet, Stenivor, MMGN, Another Castle and Kotaku AU (sincerely sorry if I missed anyone), and and some community sites as well Game Arena, Aussie-Gamers, Vooks and GamePlanet, and throughout the night the hall filled up with upwards of 90 people. There were free drinks and free food being shuffled around on platters too – Nintendo knows how to treat us!
There were four stations, each housing a different console with their respective iteration of Mario Kart. These included Super Mario Kart (SNES), Mario Kart 64 (N64), Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (GameCube) and Mario Kart Wii (Wii). There were also multiple 3DS handhelds sprawled across a few tables for us to enjoy Mario Kart 7 on, however once the finals started, they were taken away from us. How dare they?!… Before the scheduled qualifying time trials, we had time to play at our leisure, but it wasn’t long before the competition was under way.
The dominant top three prize winners!
The top two players from each of the four versions would continue on to the championship round, which consisted of three different courses on Mario Kart 7 on the 3DS. Whoever led the pack of 8 at the end of the final three games won the tourney. I regret to inform our readers that we did miss out on qualifying (barely), with the leader boards being dominated by MMGN and Another Castle. When all was said and done, all the turtle shells had been thrown and the virtual dust had settled, it was Brian from MMGN who took home the Gold, a 3DS XL and that sweet (and kinda heavy!) replica trophy! Sorry guys…we tried! All in all, a very fun event, and we’d like to thank Nintendo for holding it and inviting us! Let’s do it again next year?! If so, we’ll definitely get some more practice in to do you guys proud.
For pictures from the event, take a gander at our gallery below!
Dexter’s always been a really organized person, so it’s no surprise that this episode (‘Swim Deep’) starts with him cleaning the boat and feeling calm about it. He’s having a deep and meaningful with his dad about how Deb knows and is adjusting to the situation, with Harry expressing doubt at that. During his cleaning Dexter finds the blood from Louis’ kill, something that perplexes him entirely.
Back at the station Masuka is freaking out and interrogating everyone about whether or not he’s being fired because LaGuerta is using another lab to process the bloodslide. Which leads to Deb questioning LaGuerta, and LaGuerta bringing her in on her side project of finding out if the Bay Harbor Butcher is actually dead. Deb does a pretty good job of keeping her feelings inside, exploding when she gets into an empty elevator and using some really choice swear words to express her frustration at the matter.
Deb goes straight to Dexter with the issue and asks if any of LaGuerta’s suspected victims are his. Out of three pages he picks three victims, all of which are having their family and friends interviewed. Out of the three, only one has family in Miami, Barnes, and Deb says she’ll cover his family interview. Barnes was a wedding photographer who preyed on young, out-of-town women at weddings, snapping pictures for memories. Nice, bro.
Dexter has other things on his mind though, with Louis’ death confirmed on his boat. He heads back to his apartment (does he actually work?) to find the curtains drawn and instantly knows that someone has been in his apartment. Being an organization freak certainly has it’s ups, because sitting in his apartment is Isaak with a whole bunch of funky tools.
Instead of going in, Dexter calls his answering machine and leaves a message pretending to be someone else reminding him of a lunch date. Sneaky Dexter is sneaky! Isaak packs up his tools, like a date who’s been stood up, and heads over to the lunch place. He passes Dexter’s car and Dexter remembers him from the Fox Hole and gleans that he’s from the Brotherhood, and why Isaak is after him (i.e. Viktor’s death).
When Isaak arrives at the lunch place he’s given the phone by a waiter and shares a conversation with Dexter about why he’s stalking him. Isaak confirms that it is because of Viktor, and threatens the police and Deb.
Dexter meets Deb in a parking garage, very Deepthroat of him, and warns Deb about Isaak’s threat. He explains the Viktor situation to her, including the fact that he botched the investigation in order to do so, and she gets furious about how he did that. Dexter calms her down and suggests they go to a hotel, yeah I’m sure last season Deb would have loved that.
Dexter begins to stalk Isaak to try and find more out about him, and discovers that he’s a boss, not a hitman like he previously thought. Mid-stalk batista calls him into the station saying Hannah McKay is coming in to talk them through the killer roadtrip she and Wayne took.
She takes them through using the random trophies that they have to explain the timeline of what happened. Dexter watches her closely as she talks about these murders, something is going off in his Lizard Brain, and he starts to suspect that something else is up.
That night Deb and Dexter are in the seediest motel ever, Dexter trying to come up with a plan to rid them of Isaak. They start reminiscing about past hotel room experiences from when they were kids and how Dexter has always kept an eye out for her. It looks like she’s trying to figure out what was real and what wasn’t between them, and she’s getting to the more sweet childhood memories.
The next morning they’re on a dig site trying to find the bodies that Hannah told them about. At the dig Hannah and Dexter start talking about the first time they saw blood (although Dexter’s experience wasn’t quite his first)
Hannah: Look at us talking blood and gore like we’re on a date sharing our first sexual experience.
Mhmm, yeah something’s definitely up with her. After that comment Dexter goes off to do some ‘work’. Or just get away from the woman who relates blood experience with a sexual one.
Meanwhile, Deb is getting ready to interview Barnes’ family when LaGuerta shows up to join in. Figures that it would be for this particular one. Barnes’ son seems over the moon about his father’s disappearance, and also wants to help make sure he never comes back (something pretty common in Dexter’s victim’s family reactions). He gives them some photos from Barnes’ last wedding gig, one of which has Dexter in it, and Deb quickly flicks past it and suggests they take a better look back at the station. You can almost hear her thoughts screaming ‘I f**king told you so, Dex!’ The haste with which she says it, and her slightly suspicious behaviour when investigating this with LaGuerta gives me the uncomfortable feeling that LaGuerta’s going to start suspecting her.
At the dig site, they’ve uncovered the bodies that Hannah told them about, a married couple. Dexter starts describing the story that the blood tells him and stops abruptly when he gets to the wife and looks straight at Hannah.
Hannah approaches him afterwards and asks why he stopped, and he says that he knows she killed the wife. Using a whole bunch of evidence and logic, he basically proves that Hannah killed her. Hannah just smiles at him and reveals that she has immunity because of her testimony. Then gives him some sex eyes and slinks off. This chick is crazy! I’m quite sure she’s above the crazy-hot line, well into the crazy side.
Isaak is pointedly follows him from the crime scene and Dexter decides to use this opportunity to enact his plan. He leads him to a Colombian bar (the enemies of the Brotherhood), with three angry looking Colombians, and escapes out the back. Unfortunately this doesn’t work out the way Dexter planned, with Isaak managing to take down all three Colombians with only a superficial wound in return. Still, that blood allows them to pin the three murders on Isaak and send him to prison. Unfortunately for Dexter, Isaak is a patient man and can wait to wreak vengeance, Dexter is a bit shaken, especially at Isaak’s performance at the bar, but he leaves with his head high.
Batista tries to convince Deb that Viktor is Andersen’s killer and that they need to go after him. Deb pulls rank, acts like LaGuerta, and shuts Batista down. It’s a big moment, especially since she’s always treated him like an equal, or even a superior.
Deb and Dexter have a wrap up at his place, with Deb showing him the photo and proving that he would have been screwed without her. In doing this she also extricates herself from the situation, saying she doesn’t want to be a part in it, but she won’t do anything against him either. It’s a don’t-ask-don’t-tell sort of situation, with them agreeing to keep that bit of distance between each other.
Dexter: As kids Deb and I would try to outrun the waves, but I’d always end up diving under them. I’d swim deep because I could withstand the pull of the tide. But Deb was always safest at shore, from here on out I’ll face the depths by myself.
Next week on Dexter: Dexter stalks down Hannah trying to find out more about her, and Quinn gets in deep with the Brotherhood.
Ever since the Hunter x Hunter: Phantom Rouge film was announced there has been a lot of confusion surrounding the film, so I see it fit to round up everything that we know about the film thus far in one nice little package for all of you Hunter x Hunter fans out there. For those of you who do not like spoilers, do not read on. You have been warned.
First of all the film will be an alternate version of the York New City story arc, which Yoshihiro Togashi penned himself over 10 years ago when originally writing the York New arc. The manuscript of this film ultimately went unreleased and he went a very different way with the manga. Due to the fact that the film is an adaptation of Togashi’s original manuscript it is being considered canonical to the world of Hunter x Hunter similarly to how Strong World was to One Piece.
The film follows an alternate reality of the York New arc in which Kurapika has his eyes stolen. In this alternate version Hisoka does not appear to be associated with the Phantom Troupe instead the original 4th spider is still alive and well, in comparison to the manga version in which he was killed and replaced by Hisoka in order to infiltrate the Troupe.
The 4th spider is named Omokage, he features a distinctive gothic archaic appearance (see below in the image gallery) and his spider tattoo is on the palm of his right hand. He is set to be the major antagonist of the film and is said to have a strong connection to the Kurta Clan massacre.
Other characters to be featured in the film are Kurapika’s childhood friend Pairo. Kurapika had long thought Pairo to have been murdered during the infamous Kurta Clan massacre. However in the alternate reality of the Hunter x Hunter: Phantom Rouge film, Pairo is shown to be alive and kicking and seems to even have a score to settle with Kurapika (the trailer for the film shows them in the midst of combat). The final new character is a mysterious puppeteer that Gon and Killua befriend that will be voiced by Aya Hirano.
The most comprehensive trailer to date shows several scenes of great importance, such as Killua fighting Uvogin, Kurapika’s nen not working, Pairo and Kurapika fighting one another and also riding on a large chicken (which is featured on volume 4’s cover), Nobunaga seemingly protecting Gon and an interesting scene of Leorio and Pairo running down the side of a cliff. You can check out the trailer below.
Also confirmed is the film’s theme song (which is also scheduled to be the new ending theme for the anime series) will be ‘REASON’ by J-Pop folk duo YUZU. A short snippet of the song can be heard in the latest trailer for the film which aired during a variety show on NTV, the channel which airs the anime series. You can listen to a portion of ‘REASON’ by YUZU in the trailer below.
Hunter x Hunter: Phantom Rouge is slated to premiere in theaters across Japan on January 12th, 2013. The manga is expected to return around this time but no official confirmation has been made. You can visit the official website of Hunter x Hunter: Phantom Rouge here for more information. Be sure to check out the image gallery below for a look at what to expect from the film and let us know what you think in the comments section.
Yesterday while most of us were out celebrating Halloween, FUNimation was revealing important news concerning a certain vampire anime. Today the company not only revealed the English dub cast for Blood-C but also provided a short trailer showing off how some of the characters will sound when the series is released on January 8th.
The English voice cast and staff can be found below:
Saya Kisaragi – Alexis Tipton
Tadayoshi Kisaragi – Bill Jenkins
Fumito Nanahara – Robert McCollum
Nene/Nono Motoe – Lindsay Seidel
Shinichiro Tokizane – Scott Freeman
Itsuki Tomofusa – Chris Burnett
Yuka Amino – Martha Harms
Kanako Tsutsutori – Lydia Mackay
Dog – Todd Haberkorn
ADR Director – Jerry Jewell
ADR Engineer – Alyssa Galindo
Head Writer – John Burgmeier
Lead Writer – Jamie Marchi
The company also provided a small synopsis of the story which you can find below:
The creators of Blood – the Last Vampire and Blood+ team up with renowned powerhouse CLAMP to inject beauty into a chilling new addition to the Blood line. Horrifying beasts with a hunger for human flesh prey on the citizens of a quiet town. In moonlit twilight, Saya slays the monsters and returns home drenched in blood. As the attacks increase in frequency and intensity, her enemies relay cryptic messages about a broken contract. Limbs are torn from flesh and skulls are crushed and devoured while the huntress struggles with paralyzing visions and gaping holes in her memory. When the humans Saya promised to protect reveal the sickening truth about her role in the violence, she learns her mission isn’t as clear cut as she thought-and her most sadistic foe of all is so close she can taste it.
Clan of Champions Publisher: NIS America Developer: ACQUIRE Corp. Platforms: PC (Steam), PSN Release Date: October 30, 2012 (PC), TBA (PSN) Price: $39.99 – Here
*Special Promotion on Steam: 20% off until November 6, 2012*
Overview
Genre is becoming harder to define as most games bring forth elements from multiple genres to increase the game’s integrity. Clan of Champions is one of these mutts as it defines itself within the action category but presents a multitude of role playing and strategic elements. Does Clan of Champions collectively work with these elements combined? Let’s find out.
Story
Presentation of a storyline is very important as it will grasp the player’s attention and allow the player to immerse into the created world. And this is where Clan of Champions fails to deliver. As you begin the missions, a mission debriefing is given to the side of the mission select screen. However, the debriefing can be missed or skipped entirely with the player not needing to know the background information of the mission. I admit that I gave up reading the mission objectives and selected the next mission without knowing what to expect.
During the missions the story is lost to concentrating on a single objective of destroying targets. If you destroy all targets in the area, you are going to continue to the next mission. There is an off chance that there will be a “VIP” battle where you need to eliminate a prime target (boss) or there is a person that needs to be protected throughout the course of the fight. But don’t expect too much out of the story unless you read the debriefing beforehand.
Gameplay
At the beginning you experience three separate fighting styles: sword & shield, duel wield, and close combat. All three separate styles pose different advantages and disadvantages. For instance, the sword & shield fighting style offers the most defense of the three styles. Deciding when to block and strike will prove effective against multiple foes. Duel wielding weapons will give the advantage of jumping into the fray with more damage potential. However, the duel wielder is more vulnerable with longer recharging special attacks and no shield to parry attacks. Finally, the close combat style offers the brawler with quick effective strikes that can recharge faster than the previous styles. Using both feet and fists may not deliver a ton of damage but can break down armor fairly quickly with subsequent strikes.
One of the most interesting characteristics of the gameplay is that you may pick up anything that is dropped from yourself, teammates, or opponents during missions. If your opponent’s helmet is knocked off – and it just so happens to be better than yours, you may pick it up and trade it with your own equipment instantly. The again you can also equip the helmet to your hand and bash foes in the face with it. Weapons can be exchanged as well but altering the weapon will also change the battle style in combat. If you begin with close combat fighting style and pick up a sword, you will automatically switch over to duel wield.
Additional to weapons and battle styles, special moves can be learned by building experience in using the individual styles. For instance, a close combat brawler could learn a special move called “Double High Kick” which causes the player to target an opponent’s head with two subsequent kicks. In effort to make the moves do more damage and to gain special effects, they must be used frequently during the missions. Leveling up in a stance will grant you with points to spend on special moves and even magic.
Magic can be found upon the completion of missions in the form of ancient scrolls named grimoires. These ancient scrolls hold powers that can burn, heal, and even immobilize targets. Increasing the magic’s effectiveness works the same way as building up special moves. Such effects could include increased damage or even area of effect. After using a spell long enough in missions, you can attain passive skills specifically for that spell. An example of this would be to attain a passive skills for Fireball that reduces the cost of the spell by 40 magic points. Other passives can reduce the time to cast or recharge the spell.
One of the downsides of finding all the armor and weapons on the battlefield is that you cannot take the spoils for free. All items found can be purchased at the end of each mission or discarded. Even when your player finds unique scrolls – grimoires – you will have to purchase them back at the shop. This system seems a little funny due to the fact you can pick up weapons mid-battle and basically claiming them as your own. I agree that items should be given a money value but charging a player to buy equipment that they slaughtered others for is a little bit more than ridiculous. If anything the inventory allowed of a player should be decreased, and player should be able to see any item they decide to pick up from battle to the shopkeeper. In addition, the shopkeeper could have premium items for sale that would take a moderate amount of coin to purchase – giving a prestige outlook. More role playing elements could be initiated especially with the upgrading system to include specific weapon bonuses causing the player to decide whether or not to sell items for cash or material for upgrading.
Audio/Visuals
Character customization is extremely important when it comes to creating a character. Being supplied with ample amount of choices, a player can really define a role for his character. Clan of Champions allows players to achieve this gratification by defining a character’s race, attributes, and appearance. The developers went as far as creating a range of hair color, face types, and even voices to encompass the detailed customization.
Cinematic entrances provide no action with only visible words accompanied by a working musical score. To invigorate a player to be excited about the game, more action or animations could be included in the introduction alongside the provided music. While the words in the opening cinematic explain the backstory, visual aids along with special effects in visual transitions could intrigue the player more.
An important aspect that the developers did not miss was in making the battles come alive with both visual and audio effects. It is extremely important to render animations at specific moments with palatable sounds to capture the true essence of battle – sword clashing on a shield. If these renderings did not occur at the same time, our playing experience would be damaged by inconsistencies. Part of the fun in any game is investigating how sounds and actions reflect one another.
Overall
Clan of Champions shows promise in some key areas. The game provides role playing elements such as upgrading weapons and armor. Such elements make the player want to search for material to upgrade items to have the most prestige weapon or armor in the game. Another aspect is that characters can openly switch combat roles in a mission by simply picking up a new weapon. A noteworthy implementation is the use of magic and that it can be used alongside each of the three combat roles without penalty. And finally the leveling system allows players to identify what skills and stances to upgrade during their progress.
However, there are a few aspects that could be built upon or altered for overall enjoyment. The story seems to fall back behind the scenes and never truly surface with any importance to the title. This can be noticed by selecting a new mission and begin playing without even reading about the mission description. A lack of variety in character models may propose a feeling of repetition in missions. Grinding against the same enemy for a few hours will definitely deter you from having a good experience. Buying and selling equipment could be changed to let players have more of a role playing experience via bartering/haggling with the shopkeeper.
Overall, Clan of Champions provides a mediocre experience that can become quite repetitive after a several missions. The title may become increasingly more challenging as the difficulty is raised, but the drive to complete missions on all difficulties is muffled by undeveloped game mechanics that have much potential. Clan of Champions is a prime example of a game that could benefit from an open beta to gather public influences before being released.
Today Ubisoft Montereal released a new video for Watch Dogs and this time around it is a developer diary which plays double duty as a recruitment video for various jobs within the company. In the developer diary some of the game’s developers talk about how successful their showing at E3 was as well as their direction with the game.
For those who don’t know, Watch Dogs follows the story of Aiden Pearce who is able to hack into any system no matter what it is. In fact he can manipulate anything within the Central Operating System of the city and use it as a weapon to help him survive. Currently Watch Dogs has an estimated release window of 2013.
Today Activision released a new trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops II and this one is focused on showing off the special pre-order bonus multiplayer map ‘Nuketown 2025.’ As you can see in the trailer below this map that was a huge hit back with the original Black Ops has seen a number of aesthetic improvements and looks to be just as compact and action packed as before.
Now as mentioned before, this map is only available for those who pre-order the game and considering the fact that Black Ops II is set to be released in under two weeks on November 13th then now would be a good time to put some money down and secure this multiplayer map.
Today Capcom released a slew of new screenshots for Ninja Theory’s reboot of the Devil May Cry series, DmC Devil May Cry, as well as a few new pieces of information concerning the game’s difficulty level. Thankfully there looks like masochists will be able to experience some truly difficult gameplay as the hardest gameplay mode actually kills Dante in one hit. Either way the four difficulty settings are:
Son of Sparda: Remixed enemy layouts, tougher enemies and enemy behavior throughout.
Dante Must Die: As above, but contains the strongest enemies and insane attack waves.
Heaven or Hell: Another remixed mode, but everyone and everything, including Dante, dies after one hit. Supremely satisfying!
Hell and Hell: The same as above, but only Dante dies after one hit. For serious contenders.
Unfortunately each difficulty mode will be unlocked as you beat the previous difficulty so this means that you will not be able to instantly jump into Hell and Hell mode if you feel like it. The game itself will be hitting store shelves on January 15th next year.
Today EA revealed that the next game in the Army of Two franchise is going to be hitting stores next March. To be a little more specific, they revealed that Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel is going to be released on March 26th in North America and March 29th in Europe. Anyone who pre-orders the game will automatically be given a special Overkill Edition of the game will will include three special contract missions not available in the basic game.
Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel is being built with the use of the Frostbite 2 engine and is being developed by Visceral games for the first time.
The newest Awesomenaut to join the crew is the gun loving Raelynn, who is available to use as of now. She is a gun toting, Scarface quoting and damage dealing badass, so beware if you come across her in the field of battle. To play as Raelynn you must have the latest update (1.8), but then how you would play online without the update anyway I have no idea…
Here is Raelynn’s official lore description: “Raelynn loves big guns. After highschool she went straight into the E.L.F. army to fight against the invading robots, just before the first AI war. She was trained by the best and excelled in long range weaponry. Within a year she was given the honor of joining an elite squad called the SkyCrows, where she met the love of her life: her Protorblaster “Cuddles”. For years they did covert missions together as a team to disrupt robot production and steal robot technologies. They were feared by all robots (well…the ones with emo-chips). Until that one deep space mission to AI station 404 in the year 3009, where she ran into a robot ambush, and “Cuddles” was brutally taken away from her. Raelynn was put into cryostasis. Decades passed until a small mercenary team found her hidden on the planet. There she was rejoined with “Cuddles” and many warm ‘hugs’ were given that day to all robots on 404.”
Raelynn’s Abilities:
Snipe- Take aim and deal a powerful and very long shot, that pierces through enemies.
Time rift- Throw a deployable verticle rift that slows time.
Pulserifle – Raelynn fires her protoblaster ‘Cuddles’.
Jump – Normal human jump
Check the video out below the break to watch this femme fatale in action.
Sorry to tease…but this did not happen. *Sigh*
The dominant top three prize winners! 
Ever since the Hunter x Hunter: Phantom Rouge film was announced there has been a lot of confusion surrounding the film, so I see it fit to round up everything that we know about the film thus far in one nice little package for all of you Hunter x Hunter fans out there. For those of you who do not like spoilers, do not read on. You have been warned.
