Some of the costumes you’ve downloaded for LittleBigPlanet will soon become accessible for LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet 2, LittleBigPlanet Vita and LittleBigPlanet Karting. You’ll only have to buy the costumes once for it to be available for all four games.
Not all the costumes will be cross compatible right away, but they plan to make them available eventually. Unfortunately, the only costumes that won’t be available for LittleBigPlanet Karting are the Ezio Auditore costume from Assassin’s Creed 2, and the April Fools Fragrance costume from Hessian Sackboy Fragrances.
LittleBigPlanet and LittleBigPlanet 2 are available now in stores and on the PlayStation Network. LittleBigPlanet Vita is set to launch September 25, and LittleBigPlanet Karting will be released on the PlayStation 3 November 6.
Producer Yuji Korekado posted on twitter today that the Metal Gear Rising Staff is working on a brand new demo and a new trailer for the Tokyo Game Show. Korekado is currently going back into the development scene this week after promoting the game in Germany. Korekado also reports waits up to four hours at Gamescom’s final day to play the game.
Metal Gear Rising is set to release Feburary 19th in North America and Europe while Japan won’t see it until February 21st. The title follows the character Raiden and his unique abilities with a blade. It is being developed in conjunction with Bayonetta developer Platinum Games.
Sony announced that Sports Champions 2 will be smashing into stores on October 30th. Sports Champions 2 was revealed back in May and includes skiing, boxing, tennis, golf, archery, and bowling. The game also includes a new Party Play mode along with the returning Free Play, Cup Play and Challenge modes.
On the PlayStation Blog, producer Jeremy Ray says that Sony is “giving the game one final coat of polish and squashing bugs right now” and has “surpassed many of our lofty internal goals”. Ray also says that the avatar feature “has turned out so much better than we envisioned” and could see post-launch support to improve it even further.
Football fans will be pleased to hear that Konami and UEFA have extended their partnership to bring the UEFA Champion’s League and UEFA Europa League to PES 2013 and beyond. George Richard of Konami Digital Entertainment had this to say:
“We are thrilled to continue our relationship with UEFA to bring The UEFA Champions League back to PES 2013 exclusively. As PES 2013 continues to innovate with new gameplay features, such as PES FullControl (FC), it’s important to align ourselves with the most respected club competition in the world and allow players to showcase their individuality on the biggest stage.”
In addition to the inclusion of these two globally recognised competitions, Konami also confirmed a multitude of individual and league licenses that will see over 150 licensed teams available, including Manchester United, the entire Spanish league, Bayern Munich, and more. Several international squads will also appear in entirety, with England, France, Italy and Germany already announced.
Madman Entertainment have announced during their huge panel at Manifest 2012 that they have acquired the license for several new series, which will see a release from Madman in the future. The following new titles have been acquired for distribution by Madman Entertainment:
Aria the Scarlet Ammo
Naruto Shippuden: The Will of Fire
Inuyasha: The Final Act
Code Geass: Akito the Exiled
Haganai
Michiko to Hatchin
Rurouni Kenshin: Shin Kyoto-Hen
Eureka 7: Astral Ocean
High School DxD
They only revealed details of the release of two titles of this list, Naruto Shippuden: The Will of Fire and Inuyasha: The Final Act. The Will of Fire is set for release in December on both DVD and Blu-Ray and The Final Act will see it’s release some time in 2013 in two parts.
What do you think of Madman’s Manifest 2012 acquisitions? Let us know in the comments section below.
During Manifest 2012, Hanabee, a relatively new company in the Australian Anime Industry held a panel in which they announced several new title acquisitions. The following titles have been announced to see a release from Hanabee in the future:
Arakawa Under The Bridge
Bodacious Space Pirates
ef: a tale of memories
It is currently unknown when these titles will be released by Hanabee, all that is currently known is that they now hold the rights to distribute these titles throughout Australia. Also during their panel Hanabee announced that the release date of the previously licensed Dream Eater Merry was confirmed for October 3rd, 2012.
What do you think of these title acquisitions from Hanabee? Let us know in the comments section below.
Fans of the Bizarre Adventure’s of the many generations of JoJos should be excited to see that preliminary artwork for the upcoming ‘definitive’ anime adaptation of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has been released.
The artwork shows off the character designs of the two lead characters, the stoic hero Jonathan ‘JoJo’ Joestar and his evil adoptive brother the villainous Dio Brando. Both characters seem to have been given a much more modern design change in comparison to their 1980s manga counterparts and I must say I am impressed by this take on the two characters that started it all 25 years ago.
You can check out the new character designs for Jonathan Joestar and Dio Brando below. The new JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime series is set to launch in October. Be sure to let us know what you think in the comments section below.
The unreleased and upcoming encylopaedia Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, has already taken the top spot on the Amazon book listing with two days of it being available for pre-purchase. The book on the top spot of this chart before that was the erotic literature fanfiction novel: Master of the Universe50 Shades of Gray, which has been available for 105 days.
This just goes to show the amount of buying power that the fanbase behind the Zelda series has. I know that us here at Capsule Computers will probably be buying a copy each at some point and you should all check out the Amazon top 100 ranking to see for yourself.
Users of the Raptr service may be interested to know about the latest offering in their Rewards program. The Raptr service is a service that follows gamers rankings in an online system that includes all platforms. This current reward in the rewards program is open to players in the top 80% bracket.
Up to 5,000 Users will be selected from this bracket to receive a Steam code for the arena-shooter, Nexuiz, for themselves and 4 friends; as well as a DLC code each for the upcoming duel-mode DLC. For players who do not know about Nexuiz, it started life as a shooter based on the Quake 3 source code, but after some internal scuffle, some of the lead designers left the project and then it was ported over to the beautiful Crytek engine, CryEngine 3.
The code will not give gamers the game for free, rather, they will be eligible for 75% off the titles price. The competition is on the 21st of August and players should check out the official site for more info.
Persona 4 Arena Developers: Atlus, Arc System Works Publisher: Atlus Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 (Reviewed) Release Date: August 7, 2012 Price: $59.99 – Available Here
Overview: If you asked a fan of the Persona series what they thought the next entry in the franchise would have been about, they may have guessed another RPG, or maybe another anime spin-off of some sort. One thing that most likely no Persona fan would have guessed would be the fact that the next Persona product out of Atlus would actually be a Persona fighting game featuring the cast of Persona 4 as well as members of Persona 3. Now that this fighting game has hit stores in North America, does this unexpected title earn the Persona name?
Story: It is a sad thing in fighting genre today that more often than not, this little section of the review would usually either be non-existent or barely worth mentioning. However with Persona 4 Arena, we not only see a full-fledged story mode but one that is actually quite lengthy and enjoyable, especially for fans of the Persona 4 series.
The story takes place two months after the events of Persona 4 and the Investigation Team has settled back down into a mostly normal life, with the main character from Persona 4, Yu Narukami, living in another city. However this group of high schoolers who grew close during the events of Persona 4 planned to meet up during their Golden Week holiday off of school to reminisce and spend time with one another again.
However, the day before they get together, the characters begin hearing rumors about the Midnight Channel starting back up. After checking out the rumors, the team quickly discovers that the Midnight Channel has indeed returned and this time around it is showing an advertisement for a fighting tournament called the “P-1 Grand Prix.” To make matters worse, not only does this ad show the members of the team fighting one another, but after further investigation they discover some of their friends have already gone missing.
In an effort to save their friends and put a stop to this new Midnight Channel, the Investigation Team once again enter the TV world to figure out what is happening. Inside the team will encounter not only past characters from Persona 3 but also a new fighter woman named Labrys. It is worth noting that Labrys and Persona 3’s characters are actually rather tightly knit when it comes to story development, which will be great for those who played Persona 3, though those only familiar with Persona 4 may be a little in the dark.
As for the story mode itself, the system is designed very similar to what players were presented in Arc System Works’ other popular fighting game, BlazBlue. The player will have to select one character at a time and then follow their story events as they unfold from the selected character’s viewpoint, with more playable storylines unlocked upon initial character completion. Along the way players will encounter a number of one-round, usually easy to win, battles though these fights are often few and far between the actual story itself.
The story is told in a visual novel style which means that at times there will be plenty of text to read and listen to. With only a few battles actually occurring within each character’s story this means that most of the storyline is presented with simple dialogue, though this seems rather standard considering at its heart Persona is still a story driven game. As such players will find themselves right at home with the long story sections in-between fights as Persona 4 Arena offers a storyline more compelling than most standard action games to date.
Unfortunately Persona 4 Arena does have a small issue which could become a glaring problem for some people. As mentioned earlier, while Persona fans will become enraptured learning more about what happened to their favorite characters and seeing them once again, those who haven’t played any Persona games are coming into a storyline that isn’t familiar to them. Only a minimal effort is given to explain why each character is in their current situation or even what the Midnight Channel is, so anyone invested in trying out Persona 4 Arena’s story mode should be well versed in at least Persona 4 for maximum enjoyment.
Despite this, as a standalone product Persona 4 Arena’s story goes above and beyond the call of duty for a fighting game by offering legitimate progression and even some character development, something practically unheard of in the fighting genre. All this makes Persona 4 Arena’s story one of the biggest draws of the title as it offers hours of game time without even touching the title’s multiplayer modes.
Visuals: When Persona 4 Arena was being developed, the animators must have quite literally went into overtime when they began creating the game. Practically everything within the title is of the best quality possible. The menus themselves and pre-fight introductions never get old while the story cutscenes, background art and character portraits (although lip-synch is practically non-existent) are like eye-candy with how stunning they appear.
The fights themselves feature highly detailed 2D sprites that are duking it out with one another featuring brightly colored and flashy moves that can take up the whole screen. Everything about Persona 4 Arena’s presentation is polished practically to perfection, making it one of the best looking fighting games to date.
Audio: For the purists out there, you have no reason to be concerned as Persona 4 Arena does feature both the Japanese and English dub, so those who prefer that option do have the ability to listen to it. As for the English cast most of the cast has returned to voice their characters, though a couple have changed since Persona 4. The voice actors provide perfect dialogue work which is great considering the game’s lengthy story mode.
Gameplay: Outside of the fleshed out story mode mentioned above, Persona 4 Arena has a number of other gameplay modes to keep players entertained. For a more condensed and lackluster story presentation players can jump into an Arcade Mode with each character. Players can also take on friends/computers in a Versus mode battle, attempt to set a high score in the absolutely brutal Score Attack Mode (always set to extremely high difficulty), attempt to work out 30 complex combo attacks for each character in Challenge Mode or even take the fight online.
Once the player actually chooses a mode to play, there are a moderate amount of fighters to choose from, though each and every one of them handles differently with completely different fighting styles and moves. Close up fighters may find Chie to their liking while ranged fighters could find themselves using Yukiko or Aigis instead. There is even an oddball character with strange moves in the form of Teddie, providing multiple options for the picky fighter.
Once the player enters into a battle with their chosen character, there are really only four attack buttons that the player will need to be concerned about, though these buttons also happen to control two characters. Two of the four buttons control the selected character’s attacks with weak and strong hits, while the other two control the selected character’s Persona attacks. This creates a small tag fighting mechanic that allows players to combine their character and Persona’s attacks into a powerful multi-hit combo. It is worth noting that Personas can actually be temporarily broken and made unusable for a small time, as they feature a four card HP bar that is dropped by one each time they are hit.
While the basis of Persona 4 Arena’s fighting is rather simple to understand, there are a number of more complicated tactics and mechanics to understand to truly master the title. These things include instant blocks, air-recoveries, all-out attacks, an Awakened state which provides more skill points for powerful attacks and even status ailments like poison, paralysis or fear which will limit player’s actions or cause other issues similar to what they would do in the RPG.
As standard with a fighting game, every member of Persona 4 Arena’s cast has their own special moves which mostly draw from the aforementioned Skill Point bar which fills up whenever the player deals or receives damage, there is even a finishing blow styled skill which provides a flashy finish to an already almost won battle. These special moves are actually rather simplistic to pull off with only minor stick twirling and button pressing. This makes special moves very simple for newcomers to understand and get used to while also offering more advanced fighters a chance to combine these flashy moves into complicated attacks.
Mastering some of these complicated attacks can certainly help a player once they enter Persona 4 Arena’s Online Mode. As one may expect, players can fight in ranked matches or simple player matches and thankfully the title’s netcode seems to work nearly flawlessly with fast match finding and barely any actual lag in the fights themselves. It is also worth noting that players can even set up their own title to be shown off to others online while they fight, giving players a small chance to create an online identity.
Overall: Persona 4 Arena is something that no one was expecting would come out of Atlus or Arc System Works but the finished product is one of the best fighting games that I have played to date. With a highly accessible control scheme and a deep story mode to draw them in, this fighting title provides a Persona fan with everything they could ask for.
As for non-fans of the series the tight fighting mechanics and varied roster will offer plenty of options for those simply coming for the fighting itself. Featuring an easy to learn but difficult to master system, fighting fans will find themselves entranced as they take their battles online in this beautifully presented game. Ultimately, Persona 4 Arena may not be what fans expected, but it is certainly a stand-out example of an amazing fighting game that will please both the fighting community and Persona fans.
