LA-MULANA is one title a lot of us thought we would never see appear on the Wii, but thankfully, it has been released in all of it’s glory and can be downloaded for 1000 points, which is fantastic price considering the exploration romp clocks in at over 40 hours of gameplay.
Next up, a surfing sim of sorts has hit the 3DS by the name of Rising Board. Yeah, it’s a bit odd to see such a title, but for $2.99, there is little risk and the game itself looks decent enough as it stands to warrant a look. UFO Interactive have also launched their LED handheld inspired retro-pocket, which includes 8 different games to partake in that are sure to give Game & Watch fans a nostalgia trip for the $4.99 price-tag.
Other than software, this is the last call for downloads of Pokedex 3D, which will be ending it’s run on the 3DS soon for it’s much more advanced kin that will be launching closer to the release of Pokemon Black & White 2. A demo is also available for THE “DENPA” MEN: They Came By Wave, which is an interesting little RPG that launches on the service on September 27th.
In what could be a great sign for all Killer Instinct fans yearning for more from the long stagnant cult-hit fighting franchise, playXBLA has revealed that the trademark for Killer Instinct has been renewed. No solid news has been heard of Killer Instinct since the days of the Nintendo 64, on which the last entrant in the series, Killer Instinct Gold, was released.
PlayXBLA is organized and run by Microsoft Studios, and is a hub for official Xbox Live Arcade news. An official quote given by Microsoft on the Killer Instinct trademark reads; “We have either renewed or refiled a trademark application in various jurisdictions.” Though the K.I’s rights were originally held by game developer Rare, Rare was bought out by Microsoft in 2002. And given the fact that Nintendo – Rare‘s previous part-owners – did not create Killer Instinct themselves, Rare would have retained its trademarks going into the buy-out from Microsoft.
This development does not necessarily signal a sequel…it could very well be Microsoft protecting its brand. However, considering that playXBLA are the ones who broke the news, chances are that we will be seeing Killer Instinct on the Xbox Live Arcade, most likely as a remake or re-release of either of the two main titles (or maybe both). It’s better than having no Killer Instinct at all, and could potentially build to a long-awaited sequel if any uninitiated Xbox 360 owners play it and become new fans, creating an extended fan-base clamoring even louder than ever before. It would be hard to ignore.
Anyone a Killer Instinct fan? Would you buy a K.I. or K.I.2 remake/re-release? If so, I’m not even going to ask if you want a sequel…that’s obvious.
In what might seem like an unlikely announcement, Mortal Kombat co-creator John Tobias has been hired by mobile gaming juggernaut Zynga. Tobias is now the Zynga San Diego studio’s Creative Director. This comes alongside news of another acquisition; California-based A Bit Lucky will now work under the Zynga banner.
These acquisitions serve as further steps in Zynga’s venturing into the “mid-core” market. The 20 person plus team at A Bit Lucky were already working on a multi-platform, multi-player title called Solstice Arena, and will continue to do so at Zynga. As for John Tobias – the ‘Saibot’ of Noob Saibot – Zynga states that he “is already working on a cool new mid-core game”. And he’s exactly a stranger in a completely new territory as former Midway colleague Mark Turnell will undoubtedly set him at ease with a familiar face to work with.
Tobias has been “out of the game” for a while now, more specifically since closing down his development house Studio Gigante back in 2005 after releasing Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus and WWE Wrestlemania 21 for the original Xbox. What kind of influence do you think this “purveyor of video game violence” will bring to (the decidedly PG by comparison) Zynga?
We’ve already heard before that Capcom is planning on making Dragon’s Dogma a full series after the success of the first game and now it seems that they are going to be doing just that. Today during Tokyo Game Show Capcom revealed that they will be releasing a new Dragon’s Dogma game called Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen sometime in the future. It is worth noting that the player character in the first title was called “The Arisen” so start guessing about the plot now.
Currently there are only a few small details out about the game, such as the fact that it is in fact a full game and it will be coming out on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Those who played the original Dragon’s Dogma will be able to transfer their saved data across, though what exactly will be transferred has not yet been revealed. Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen has been announced for Japan only, though an international release is highly likely at this point.
Update: The teaser trailer shown at TGS has been uploaded by Capcom and can be seen below.
Mark of the Ninja Developer: Klei Entertainment Publisher: Klei Entertainment Platform: Xbox Live Arcade Release Date: September 7, 2012 Price: 1200 MS Points ($14.99) – BUY NOW
Overview
Klei Entertainment first caught our attention a few years ago with N+, and garnered further attention for themselves with their critically praised Shank series, which released on digital platforms not too long ago. After a short hiatus, Klei is back with a pure stealth experience starring yet another ninja, by the name of Mark of the Ninja. When I first heard of the 2D ninja game, the first thought I had was…”Well, here’s another one”. If you were like myself in that thought however, you would be wrong. Mark of the Ninja nails nearly everything it attempts, and is definitely one title that everyone should be paying attention to after a slow summer on both the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. Why, you ask?
Story
In Mark of the Ninja, players take the role of an unnamed assassin who is out to get vengeance on the big bads who hurt his allies. There is certainly more to the plot than that, but the game doesn’t really put enough emphasis on it’s story for the player to truly follow along as intended. That’s not a bad thing, really, as the dark, shadowy environment and assistance of the lovely and mysterious Ora do a lot to entertain the player along the way, giving those cutscenes a reason for existence and setting the stage for all of the killing (and hiding) you will be doing along the way.
Yeah, I want to say I remembered everything about Mark of the Ninja’s story, but like most ninja games, the gameplay is where this experience shines and the plot really is only there to get you from point A to point B with a bit of a clue as to who your enemy really is.
Gameplay
When a game is so effortlessly captures the genre it’s in and makes it’s modern competition seem shallow, you know you are playing something special. That is exactly what Mark of the Ninja does in comparison to the likes on Ninja Gaiden and even Metal Gear Solid…to a degree. You see, Mark of the Ninja is a stealth driven, 2D action title that relies on having our nameless ninja hide in the shadows and slash through foes in order to make it to the next area.
Think of each room like a puzzle. A guard is watching the door like a hawk, and your main objective is to get inside the room and save a fellow ninja who has been abducted. Several other guards are patrolling the area, so you can’t just jump in or your short amount of life will be diminished within seconds (you are not invincible, after all – just highly skilled at parkour and wall clinging). Within a few seconds time, you must use a throwing knife to take out the lights, climb through a nearby vent, and then pounce down and kill the guarding foe without being noticed by the other distracted enemies, who are so busy looking at the smashed light that they have not realized an intruder has quietly entered the room. After a quick gesture, the ninja is free and our hero zips out of harms way and on to the next area, where a new challenge awaits. That is how this beast of a stealth game plays, and it’s so well paced and fluid that almost every encounter feels as equally thrilling as the last.
Sounds good, right? Well, that’s really just the core of the game. The controls make life easy for players, and I would best compare the layout to the likes of a faster Metroid mixed with a bit of Ninja Gaiden. Players move throughout each stage by crawling through vents, jumping on lightposts and other structures with a grappling hook, and simply tiptoeing among the shadows in order to not get caught by the baddies in-between. The concept is simple, but this ninja title makes up for it’s lack of depth in one area in others completely by letting players get that genuine ninja experience with the tools of the trade.
From the start, only the ninja’s jumps and athletics will get him by along with the environmental hiding spots, but as the game progresses, new abilities can be learned in order to make life a little easier as you go on. Tools like noisemakers can be tossed to distract guards, smoke bombs can be set off to cause confusion and shut off deadly lasers, and even cardboard boxes that allow for quick hiding can be obtained throughout, which are all part of a genius little leveling system within the main game, adding a large layer of strategy and making each room different from the next depending on your own creativity. Pulling off the tricks of the trade would mean nothing if it weren’t for the rather smart AI of the foes that stand as obstacles in your path as well, and thankfully, the game as a whole (dumbfounded henchmen and all) remains smart until the end.
You see, sound and visual cues play a large role in staying hidden. If you make a commotion by doing something such as killing a guard or breaking a lamp, a sphere of color will appear, meaning that a nearby enemy has heard a sound coming from that particular area. It’s easy to be detected, so the player must constantly think of ways to distract and disarm the enemies around them, without causing a scene in the process. Throwing knives are one of the most useful items, as the player can stop time on the fly and ting a pole to make a noise to distract a guard, and then sneak in quietly, hopping into a shrub or piece of shade that is nearby in order to go unnoticed. This kind of thinking will rack up points, and staying alive is really the only objective you need to focus on for the most part during each stage. If a large group hears you galloping about like a madman, there is no other choice but to run and flip out of the way, so finding a route out and pre-planning a chain of events is the best way to get the most out of Mark of the Ninja, as this game rewards you for your victories with progression, and punishes your failures with a lesson.
Visuals and Audio
The graphics in Mark of the Ninja are not overly impressive within the game, but get the job done effectively and make everything look the part. The ninja himself is well animated and runs like a well-oiled machine, giving little room for error when it comes to slip-ups unless you, as the player miss your mark during an intense encounter. Kills are usually not flashy, but the enemies do spew a bit of blood and feel very much alive in this shadowy world as they pace nervously through hallways, and the lighting is also very effective at producing all sorts of hiding spots and danger zones for the player to watch out for. Cutscenes may not matter all to much due to the lacking story, but they are wonderfully portrayed with a stunning art design, which carries over in a smaller package into the main game itself.
I know there was a little bit of music within Mark of the Ninja, but it will be the last thing you pay attention to while actually playing the game. Hearing the voicework is very important, as audible cues such as “I think I heard something” can lead to your own fate quickly. The acting that went into these voices are done decently as well, and never come off as stiff or forced like many of the older stealth titles of the past. The sound effects are a very important part of the experience here, so playing the game on mute would literally be impossible, and the quality of all of the attention to detail is just to good to be ignored as it stands anyway.
Overall
Before I played Mark of the Ninja, I really didn’t sit and think about how much we were missing from the stealth genre. Games these days are so worried about the flashy kill, that they hardly ever seem to be concerned about the thrill that made the genre famous so long ago. It’s all in the details, folks. Mark of the Ninja is the very definition of the genre and while the story is forgettable, the raw, stealthy experience in-between makes for an intense and enjoyable atmosphere that puts the big guys to shame due to how well Klei Entertainment ties everything together. Sure, you can look more like a ninja by playing a game produced with an uber budget, but our nameless protagonist outclasses the competition in every other way where it counts, letting the player embrace and unleash the true representation of the iconic assassin.
In a rather surprise announcement from Tokyo Game Show today, mostly a surprise as no one in the West probably even knows this series exists, we have NIS America announcing that they will be bringing Generation of Chaos 6 to the PlayStation Portable in North America and Europe under its new name of Generation of Chaos: Pandora’s Reflection.
Pandora’s Reflection is meant to be a RTS styled game where players will have to move their units on a battlefield and take over various locations to set up weaponry and all that. Players will be able to upgrade their characters and weapons with Alchemy Points which are dropped from defeated enemies. Currently the game is meant to be released in February 2013 as a digital download and you can see a few small screenshots put together up above.
Quick, name a company to bring Persona 4: Golden to Europe. Do you have your company already? Well, it is wrong. In what can only be seen as a rather surprising announcement, NIS America revealed during Tokyo Game Show that they would be bringing Persona 4: Golden to European Vita’s sometime in 2013.
It is worth noting that Persona 4: Golden will be released in North America on November 20th so while European gamers will still be getting the game, it is certainly delayed compared to the North American one. Currently NIS America (NIS Europe?) hasn’t detailed their release plans of the game yet, though with a special “Solid Gold” edition available in North America, it will be interesting to see if NIS America will do something similar for Europe.
While Superbot is busy with the Playstation 3 version of Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale, Bluepoint Games have been behind the Vita version. While the two versions have different development teams, Bluepoint’s Senior Producer Daryl Allison has assured that the Vita version will be identical to the Playstation 3 version of the game over on the Playstation Blog. He does not just mean features. He adds that they want to bring out the true potential of Cross Play multiplayer by allowing local and online multiplayer across both platforms.
The visuals are also a point he divulges into. The team at Bluepoint wanted to re-create the visuals instead of providing a “reduced graphical experience”. He assures readers that the game will run at 60fps at all times, the same amount of frames for the PS3 version. They also check bandwidth and network connection to maximize online play and make sure games run quite smoothly.
There is also a new trailer out that was released as part of the Tokyo Game Show. The trailer doesn’t show off any new characters (although it is expected that some will be announced before the show ends), but it does show off some gameplay of the characters. The trailer can be seen below. Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale will hit the Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita in late November.
Today is a big day for Neptunia fans, because not only has NIS America announced that they will be localizing Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, but they are also going to be bringing a certain little iPhone app over to the West as well. The official name of the app is currently unknown though the rough Japanese translation calls it God App Neptunia.
Before you get too excited, this app is not an actual game in and of itself, but as you can see from Compile Heart’s official website for the app, it is actually an app that lets you interact with Neptune and Noire, two popular characters from the series. As the player uses the app, Neptune and Noire will say different things and give them special messages on certain holidays. It is also possible to use the app as an alarm clock and a picture mode has also been revealed. Currently it is unknown how much the app will cost or when to expect it, but it certainly is a strange little addition to the Neptunia line-up but one that fans will be all over.
This may come as no surprise, given the fact that the first Hyperdimension Neptunia games have already made their way to the West via NIS America, but today during Tokyo Game Show the company chose to reveal that they will be bringing the latest game in the series to North America and Europe sometime in the Spring season next year.
Hyperdimension Neptune V which was released last month in Japan is now going to be called Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory. For those who don’t know, Neptune will be the main character in the game once again rather than her sister Nepgear and she is transported back into the ’80s. Not only will past characters return as allies, Neptune will meet a couple of new characters such as Yellow Heart and Iris Heart who will try to help her return back to her time.
![Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen announced as a full title[Update]](https://www.capsulecomputers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/dragons-dogma-dark-arisen.png "Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen announced as a full title[Update]")
Today is a big day for Neptunia fans, because not only has NIS America announced that they will be 
