With Nintendo’s Wii U console set to be released roughly a month from today in North America, the company has chosen today to announce that they will be dropping the retail price for the Wii another $20. So now the console will be sold for $130 rather than the previous price of $150.
It is worth noting that this new price also means a new Wii bundle which Nintendo says will be in most stores by October 28th. The bundle includes Wii Sports Resort as well as the standard inclusion of Wii Sports, a black Wii console, black Nunchuk and black WiiMote Plus.
In what should be a surprise to absolutely no one, Microsoft has announced that they will be issuing permanent Xbox Live bans to anyone who has already started playing Halo 4 through various leaks and piracy. MCV is reporting that people who have pirated the game are now receiving emails explaining the situation and why they were banned. It is said that the reason for the ban in the email is due to “illegitimate prerelease title play.”
Considering the only way to play pirated games is to hack your console, it is likely that a ban was already being levied against most users regardless. It is worth noting that this is something that this is not the first time Microsoft has done this, as they performed similar actions when 2010’s Halo: Reach was leaked to the public before release.
If you were hoping to get some actual storyline content for Sleeping Dogs before the end of October, then you are not only very specific about your DLC schedule but also in luck. Over the weekend Square Enix revealed at New York Comic Con that they are planning to release the first piece of storyline DLC for Sleeping Dogs on October 30th.
The DLC is called “Nightmare in Northpoint” and will add a new horror-themed game mode which appears to be similar to what was found in Undead Nightmare for Red Dead Redemption. When a fellow gang member is tortured and killed, he comes back to life and leads an army of undead gangsters and only Wei Shen can put them back in their graves. Shen will be able to gain magical abilities such as lightning fists through items and face off against Jiang Shi, which happen to be chinese vampires. Currently no price has been announced for this content, but this DLC is certainly not what most people were expecting to say the least.
Over the weekend FUNimation announced at New York Comic Con that they had acquired the license to the anime movie Wolf Children and Toriko. FUNimation is currently planning a theatrical release for Wolf Children sometime in 2013 as well as a retail release afterwards, while the first release of Toriko on DVD is currently scheduled for January 8, 2013.
FUNimation’s licensing of Wolf Children shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, though if any surprise is to be had it would be that the company took so long with the series considering it has been released in other territories already, in fact you can read our review for the Australian release of the series here.
For those who don’t know, Wolf Children follows the story of a 19 year old college student named Hana who falls in love with a “wolf man.” After marrying this man, Hana gives birth to two children and eventually moves to a rural town away from the city after her husband dies.
As for Toriko, it is a shonen anime where the story follows Toriko, a gourmet who happens to travel the world in a hunt for various animals and plants needed to create the best meals. This license should also not come as a surprise, considering the company has been providing a stream for the series since last year.
Great news for everyone who loved the absolutely gorgeous anime Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko which aired last year. The series is going to be making its way over to North America courtesy of NIS America! Over the weekend during New York Comic Con the company announced that the anime will be released sometime next year and will be called Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl, which is probably the best English translation they could come up with for the show as the literal translation makes little sense.
For those who don’t know, Denpa Onna tells the story of a high school boy named Makoto who moves in with his Aunt and meets a strange girl named Erio who happens to be his cousin. Unfortunately for him, his cousin believes she is an alien herself and spends all her time wrapped in a mattress. As one would expect, the series will be given NIS America’s premium edition treatment and considering how beautiful the show is, the premium edition will likely be just as amazing.
Update: NIS America has provided the more specific release date of January 8, 2013 and has also released the below preview of what the premium edition packaging will look like.
Today Gust released a rather large sampling of screenshots for Atelier Totori Plus: The Adventurer of Arland which currently is set for a Japanese release date of November 29th. As many of you already know, Atelier Totori Plus is similar to the PlayStation 3 version of the game in every way, except it features a bunch of new content, some of which is shown in the below images.
As you can see below, new costumes and accessories have been revealed for the game, including a maid outfit, glasses and an Angel and Devil swimsuit. Also shown off below are some of the PS3 version’s DLC characters that will be included in the vanilla version of Atelier Totori Plus. Currently no announcements have been made concerning a Western release for this PlayStation Vita exclusive.
A new trailer for the upcoming hack-and-slash game, DmC Devil May Cry has just been released. In it we see some new combat and moves as well as the newly revealed Gauntlets finally getting a piece of the action, with only concept art of the weapons being seen until now.
The Devil May Cry series is widely popular thanks to its particular emphasis on style and looking cool while you’re fighting the many denizens of hell from the game (of which there are indeed many). It’s crazy mix up on traditional hack-and-slash being a well known trademark of the series. While fan reaction to Dante’s new look has been less than positive, I for one am very excited to get my hands on the game upon release.
Hopefully with the weapons and actual fighting living up to the huge standards of DMC3 rather than the miniscule ones of DMC2…
DmC Devil May Cry is set for release on January 15th 2013 in North America, Europe and Japan. If you’re hungry for more DMC info check out our interview and gameplay for DMC from Tokyo Game Show here.
EA and Criterion Games’ newest addition to their racing game collection, Need For Speed Most Wanted, has just laid out some new information as to what all will be included in terms of features for the game with a new trailer. Lone wolves and solo racers hold your horses though, this trailer is specifically slated for all those new features for multiplayer.
So what new additions are they bringing to one of the best known racing series in video games? Challenges for one, but cooperative races are another. From Drifting, to Near Miss, to Park Up where players have to ramp up and stop in various locations. Another gameplay mode gives players 90 seconds to try and score the highest top speed, longest drift, or longest jump. Even more in-depth, players can now switch out cars and parts on the fly to adapt to changing racing situations, without even having to pull into a garage.
Those are just some of the features for multiplayer, so players that want to get an edge right away can check out the trailer embedded below to see the near features in action.
The expansion to the highly popular free-to-play MMO, Lord of the Rings Online released today. Fans will be able to explore the largest single land mass yet available for the game. If you’re going to be doing all that adventuring however, you’ll need one of the many new Rohirin War Steeds available just for this expansion. As well as this, mounted combat has also been added in, which will drastically change the way you fight across Rohan, the country well known for its fierce horse lords!
“We are really excited to launch Riders of Rohan, our fourth major expansion to the game,” said Kate Paiz, Executive Producer of The Lord of the Rings Online. “This is our biggest expansion yet and we’re very excited about the introduction of the industry’s best mounted combat system, which brings a whole new form of gameplay to MMO players.”
Players can now level up to 85 within the game, bringing a whole new assortment of high end gear and epic skills to add their repertoire.
The Riders of Rohan expansion pack is available through the Lord of the Rings Online website and is available as of today in North America and Europe.
Cargo Commander Developer: Serious Brew Publisher: Digital Tribe Games Platform : PC (reviewed), Mac Release Date: 1st November 2012 Price: $9.99
Overview
Coming to a reputable digital distributor near you is Cargo Commander, a PC and Mac only title from Serious Brew, a tiny two man team from the Netherlands. It’s an arcade title of a platforming nature, with a little bit of strategy thrown into the mix with randomly generated content.
The aim? To survive your first day at work, to keep hold of a monstrously large coffee mug (it makes you move faster) and to collect cargo, to scramble through containers filled with mutants and mazes, drag it all home and level up to CARGO COMMANDER.
Gameplay
Of course the main aim is to traverse your way through the crates as quickly as possible, gathering all the cargo that you can before the containers are all sucked away by a marauding wormhole. Aiding you in your task are (put on an awesome man voice to say this) the Platform Drill and the FistCannon, which can drill through pretty much anything and be used to lethal effect respectively. Using this trusty man tools, you can drill through platforms and walls, fling yourself into space, whip around a container and drop in on the other side – assuming you don’t run out of breath first. The physics of the game is very neat and tidy, and some of the containers even feature gravity switches to add another dimension to play.
Burrowing into the containers, you never quite know what you’re going to find, especially when you make your own door! Monsters might lurk within, a labyrinth, an annoyingly placed flamethrower – you just never know. Given the speed with which you aim to fling yourself through these things, these extra elements and surprises add a bit more of a challenge – some of the mazes can stump you completely if you’re not thinking on your feet. Should you push ahead to the furthest container and risk a long trip through open space or methodically pick up every bit of cargo? Take on the enemies or burrow past them? There’s some light strategy involved for sure.
The cargo you’re collecting is a bunch of amusingly named junk of varying rarities, and gathering all of the different types gradually grants you promotions -which come with various ship upgrades. An upgrade bench is quickly unlocked so you can improve your weaponry, speed and health, and later unlocks fulfil other nifty functions such as spawning health and repairing your ship if you’ve been a bit too drill happy.
Stage progression is handled by splitting things into sectors – you can even name and generate one yourself – and to unlock and travel between them you need to find a sector key somewhere within the containers. Although there is no multiplayer, the high scores of other players are tightly integrated into the game, cleverly framed within the employment setting by using them as a kind of ‘Employee of the Month’ system – if you have the highest score in the sector you get to sport a rather nifty gold crown.
There are no hitches with the gameplay as such; rather your relationship with Cargo Commander will rest on how willing you are to become addicted to something for the sake of high scores and unlockable swag. The gameplay is fun in itself, but aside from a few weapons and upgrades, nothing really changes, and the randomly generated nature of the levels means that any difficulty curve is more of a squiggle. There is something of a story driving you to the highest rank so you can go home to the wife and kid, but it’s kept firmly in the background via emails that pop up on the space ship’s console. Thankfully the game goes in for character instead of story, and has a funny bone of the quirky variety that seeps into some of the design choices and the overall feel of the game.
Audio & Visual
Presentation wise Cargo Commander does a solid job. Things mesh together well and although there are no fancy destruction animations going on, what’s going on is always clear. Being able to zoom in and out to such a large degree is also of huge benefit, and reveals pleasant little details in some of the environments. Spend some time checking out the space ship in particular and you’ll detect a game made with care.
The cartoony style is well suited to the gameplay, with some nice lighting and strong colours making for a vivid world. Those aforementioned little details go a long way, with little oddities like the cap wearing enemies (caps are the game’s currency so in some lunatic way killing monsters for cash finally makes sense)more entertaining than any extra textures or polygons ever could be.
The promised bluegrass soundtrack is a great idea not perfectly executed. The tone of the stuff is perfect for the whole working man set up and energetic and different to boot, but there aren’t enough tracks to keep things fresh and so it becomes far too easy to mute and replace with your own.
Overall
Of quality build and potentially addictive, Cargo Commander has a neat idea at its core, along with a small but essential dollop of soul. The gameplay isn’t instantly bewitching nor anything particularly new, but there’s nothing offensive here either. It feels like a portable title, or failing that, something to sit snugly on the desktop somewhere between Minesweeper and Skyrim.
