Chillingo, one of the big publishers for mobile, most famous for publishing such games as Cut the Rope and Angry Birds, has partnered with iFun4all to bring a new arcade puzzle game. Developer iFun4all, whose games include Paper Wars: Cannon Fodder and Fish Tank, is excited to be working with Chillingo, as they work to support the game’s development at every stage.
The game, Wake Up Buzii, doesn’t have much information out about it yet, but is set to feature hand-drawn visuals, realistic physics, and how spider webs work. Planned to release for both Android and iOS, Wake Up Buzii will star a sleepyhead and should come out at the end of the year.
It seems that when Sony had nothing to say back when a major character leak occurred for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, it was because they wanted to simply show off all of the brand new characters themselves when the time was right.
Today it was revealed by lead game designer Seth Killian that Raiden from the Metal Gear series would be entering into the battle royale with his new look look from Revengeance. Raiden’s strengths lie with his air combos and one on one attacks and actually features one of the largest move sets in the entire game. Interestingly enough, his level three super traps other players under boxes in true Metal Gear fashion.
The Last Driver Developer: Cristiano Bartel Publisher:Chillingo Platforms: iPhone (reviewed), iTouch, iPad Release Date: August 30, 2012 Price: $0.99
Overview
The game, The Last Driver is an action arcade title that plays like Temple Run. You are the last person who is able to drive and you have to fight your way through horde after hordes of zombies while you have to deal with a UFO and a T-Rex to top it all off.
Story
While there is no ‘official’ story for the game, it is quite easy to tell what the whole game is about in general. You are the last driver and you have to fight your way through aliens, dinosaurs, and zombies. This is one of the big parts of the game that just isn’t right. They could have added an actual story to the game through short cinematic or animated scenes showing how these events unfolded to provide a bit of backstory, but that kind of content just isn’t here.Overall, The Last Driver fails at delivering plot and that truly does hurt the game.
Gameplay
The gameplay is very similar to the hit iOS title, Temple Run. You will go around driving your car and your goal is to just drive for as long as you can. The controls are pretty easy to get used to as you have four standard controls which are maneuver left, maneuver right, jump, and shoot. Now jump and shoot are quite interesting actually because you only get a certain amount of jumps and ammo before you run out. That being said, there are crates that will appear when you reach a certain distance and they will give you two of the power ups to choose from. These can range anywhere from extra health to additional bullets.
There is also an upgrade shop in the game where you can customize and enhance your car. The upgrades consist of armor, ammo, jumping, tires, and last but not least, power ups. These upgrades are easy to achieve for the first few levels of each of them but you will have to begin to put in a serious amount of the coins you collect while playing as you progress through customizing your car. You can also upgrade your gun, which will allow for more zombie kills and other cars flying past your car. Speaking of which, if you are interested in some dramatic changes in your car performance then you can purchase one of the other two car options that are available to you.
Yes, all of these different upgrades are available to you and may sound very cool – but sadly, it feels too much like the upgrading from Temple Run.You might be asking yourself, why is this a bad thing? Well, there are too many games like Temple Run as it is so this just takes away the original feel from the game that the player truly wants to have.
Visuals
The graphics the game has aren’t the best but they do get the job done. With the environmental effects used in the game like flowing lava or the alien spaceship that flies over your head every once in a while, they successfully make you feel like you are actually experiencing the aftermath of an apocalypse.
There are some difficulties though. I had some lag issues when I first loaded up the game after the thirty minute mark/ The textures could have also been done better because when you look closely at the zombies or the car, you can tell that not much detail was put into them.
Audio
The audio is just what any person should expect. The sound effects are very fuzzy and the sounds that you are supposed to hear the car make are covered up by the loud rock music that plays in the background while you ‘keep on trucking.’ Sadly there is no way to set the sounds to a preferred level so you have no choice but to suffer through the loud rock n’ roll.
Overall
The Last Driver does have the potential to be good but as of right now, the game has a lot of issues. With no story, crummy visuals, and some overpowering sound issues, the game has many updates ahead of it before it will be listed on the top 25 in the app market place. The other problem is that it feels too much like Temple Run. Hopefully, Chillingo will make some revisions and some more enhancements if they do decide to make a sequel.
Thought Gintama was dead? Yeah, me too. But no, although the series has been cancelled two times now and had ‘ending’ episodes, the series is set to once again return from the dead for it’s third season.
The series has been confirmed by TV Tokyo to be returning on Thursday the 4th of October at 6.00pm. Coincidentally this time-slot is currently held by SKET Dance. It is unknown at this time whether SKET Dance will end or simply move time-slots. I for one hope that SKET Dance is not being bumped off TV in place of Gintama. I hope that TV Tokyo still has a place for both series.
What do you think of Gintama returning yet again? How long do you think it will be before it ‘ends’ again? Let us know in the comments section below.
Are you excited for the third season of Bakuman? Well it would please you to know that you will once again be able to watch the tale of Muto Ashirogi as they try to make it in the manga business come October 6th, 2012, when the third season will finally begin airing.
The series itself is based upon the popular Shonen Jump manga by Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ohba of the same name. It follows two high school students as they attempt to become mangaka published by Shueisha.
This particular season of Bakuman focuses on Muto Ashirogi’s struggles with serialisation of their manga PCP. What do you think of a third season of Bakuman? Are you excited? Let us know in the comments section.
The Temple of Time stands still against the backdrop of Hyrule Castle town. The children often pass by the temple as it’s fertile grounds and well kept lawn are ideal for playing such childish games. This temple though, is not just a religious monument, it has a purpose.
This purpose is one that shall become apparent once the alleged Hero of Time shall appear from the forbidden forest to the south and only then shall it’s fabled Door of Time be opened. So join us as we take a quest through the history of Hyrule in this weeks podcast.
Cast: Dustin Spencer, Luke Halliday, Travis Bruno, David Partin, Philip Federico; hosted by: Benjamin Webb.
Music for this podcast is from: F-Zero GX, Bayonetta
Thanks for listening and let us know what you think!
Send all your video game or podcast questions, hints, suggestions, answers to questions and feedback to [email protected]
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
And the contest is back open now we’re playing prizes by ear. So pay close attention to future casts.
Each week, thanks to Razer, we will be giving away a prize a week competition held through Capsule Computers Gaming Podcast.
To win, simply listen to the podcast for the weekly question and SPECIAL CODE, once you have it send us an email with your name and address to [email protected], make sure you include the secret code. At the end of the week, a winner will be randomly selected from the pool of entries. The winner will then be announced on the next podcast.
Thanks for listening. Copyright Capsule Computers Pty Ltd – All Rights Reserved.
All Other Samples Are Copyright And Property Of Their Official Copyright Holders.
Higurashi No Naku Koroni Kai Studio: Studio Deen Publisher: Siren Visual Format: DvD Release Date: July 19, 2012 Price: $49.95 (Buy Here)
Overview
The Watanagashi festival of the town Hinamizawa has had some rather disturbing events associated with it over the last four years. Each year a person has been found dead and another has disappeared entirely.
In the year of 1983 a boy named Keiichi moves into town and is assimilated into a club full of girls of varying ages. However, through this group, he is lead into a town full of mystery. What is the curse placed on the village, why do people die and go missing during the time of the festival? This is only something that you will learn by watching the series.
Story
In this particular part of the story, we looks at the final story events that lead into the finale of the series. By this time in the series, we’ve learned what it is that needs to be changed about the events in the main characters (Rika) life now and the main cast have started to put this into motion.
One thing that I found with this half of the series was that it was a lot less mysterious than the first half of the series. This is because Rika has essentially worked out everything that has needed to change in order to defeat this loop in time.
This part of the series also takes a look at the main villains backstory and the reasons as to why she is doing what it is that she does. It all kind of ties back to her own childhood and you get to see what it is that messes her life up to cause her to lead down the path that she does. It’s actually kind of twisted in this regard because you’d think after going through what it is that she has, that she’d be a little more compassionate in her resolve.
And really, that’s what Higurashi is at it’s core, a twisted series that often makes you rage. One of the best examples in this half of the series is when one particular character is in an orphanage and every adult there purely exists to beat the crap out of the kids and make them suffer. As someone who is -incredibly- anti-abuse, this show literally made me rage so bad. No show has ever done that to me before…
Visuals
Visually the Anime series is fairly good. It does a good job at portraying each character, location and scene in a manner that most people will enjoy.
What I particularly liked about the visuals though, was how well the town Hinamizawa was portrayed within the series. The art direction really portrayed what it would be like to live in a small and tight-knit town which, I believe, was an essential part of the the series dynamic.
However, in contrast to this, the visuals can get really brutal at times. For instance during many of the more abusive scenes, the animators really show you whats going on and it might be quite sickening for some people to watch through.
I’m usually not one to enjoy the cutesy look of an Anime cast, but for this series, having all of the characters look cute and innocent only served to heighten the impact of some of the scenes within the story. So visually speaking, the characters served a purpose other than looking cute to attract perverts.
Audio
What was unusual for me was that this package didn’t include an English dub of the series. I mean the first half of the series didn’t either, but it is still a little strange seeing such an excellent series not include an English option.
So what does this mean for you at home? It means that you will either need to learn Japanese, or read subtitles as the show progresses. As someone who is used to watching and reading at the same time (SBS w00t!), this wasn’t particularly challenging. However, fans of the genre who are unable to read quickly may lose their pacing or find themselves pausing the show to keep up with dialogue.
Also, what of the quality of the subtitles? As someone who can’t understand Japanese, I was reliant on the subtitles being accurate. I’m going on the assumption that they actually are, but there were still a few moments that left me feeling a little iffy. It is painfully obvious that this edition of the series was translated here in Australia (whoops my bad, just heard from Siren Visual that it was actually translated in Britain where our colloquialisms originate) with a lot of colloquialisms making it into the final cut of the subtitles.
The thing about Japanese audio that usually turns me off is the overly cutesy sounding characters with their high-pitched shrieking and their really annoying catch-phrases. Higurashi had both of these, but for some reason it didn’t come off as annoying. This was incredibly strange for me because I have been known to stop watching series’ a couple of episodes in or dropping an ongoing series as soon as such a character was introduced. However, the most enjoyable character in this series was Hanyu and her adorable ‘auauauauauau’.
Also, I am absolutely in love with the creepy opening song.
Extras
Across both discs I encountered very minimal extras. In fact, the only extra that I could find was located on the second disc. The included extra was the textless version of the opening song and that’s it. I would have liked to have seen more on disc extras from this series.
However, the disc themselves come in a fairly nice package. Normally when buying Anime shows, you’ll just get your standard case with a standard print-out cover that’s slid in there. With Higurashi, you get that, as well as a nice slipcase to house your new DvD. What’s even cooler is that the DvD cover and the slip-case cover both feature different art work. This was something that I thought worked well.
Overall
Higurashi no Kuni Koroni Kai is an amazing series that any matured Anime fan will appreciate. It touches on some topics that many people will probably find a little uncomfortable and as such is not advisable for children to watch. Fans of mysteries will definitely enjoy this series. I’d recommend grabbing this second part along with the first for the best experience.
ABC has ordered a pilot for a S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series from Avengers director Joss Whedon, with Firefly, Dollhouse, and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer creator credentials under his belt.. This heralds Whedon’s return to television after Dollhouse, who had worked on Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog and various Marvel comics before taking the helm to direct Marvel Studio’s hit, The Avengers.
Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, also known as S.H.I.E.L.D., is the Marvel Universe’s peacekeeping division, headed by director Nick Fury, who, in the movies, have been played by Samuel L. Jackson – whom the Ultimate Nick Fury is based off of. It is unknown as of yet what the TV series will consist of, if we will be getting cameos from the figureheads of the Avengers movie or not.
Production of the S.H.I.E.L.D. tv series marks the first live action tv series under Marvel Studio’s belt, with Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Tancharoen writing, and executive producing together with Jeffery Bell and Marvel TV’s Jeph Loeb. Whedon also set to direct the pilot, if his schedule permits.
A couple of the amazing developers over at Firaxis showed off over an hours worth of footage of their upcoming tactical strategy game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The developers commentating the show are Jake Solomon and Garth DeAngelis.
The stream started last night whilst most of us Australians were sleeping and as such may have missed out on the initial airing. Fortunately, there is a replay of this video available for everyone to watch over on twitch.tv.So fans of the XCOM franchise, as well as anyone who is interested in this amazing game should definitely check out that footage here.
You are probably scratching your head at that title, wondering who is Harley Pasternak and what exactly is a Hollywood Workout. To answer both questions, Pasternak is the famed brain behind Hollywood’s 5-Factor Fitness program, which requires partipants to follow a specific workout for just 25 minutes a day, 5 days a week.
Like many gurus in the fitness world, Harley is now getting the video game treatment, with Harley Pasternak’s Hollywood Workout for the Kinect and Nintendo Wii, which will launch September 18th. A follow along workout experience with a detailed calendar that tracks workouts, points earned per day, estimated calories burned, and time left in your program can be found on the disc, and for those who are wanting to shed some pounds, the game itself looks pretty solid. You can check out some screenshots down below, and get those Smart Waters ready as this title is just under a month away from hitting shelves.
Thought Gintama was dead? Yeah, me too. But no, although the series has been cancelled two times now and had ‘ending’ episodes, the series is set to once again return from the dead for it’s third season.
