So we now know who is the voice of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider – Camilla Luddington. I for one think she will do a good job because she seems to be quite used to playing sexy women, after all it is a role she plays everyday… in real life. Heck even Capsule’s Ghost Editor in Chief MasterCage is excited to see Camilla voicing Lara. Err.. maybe a little to excited Nic…
Other than that, we got to head to the OZ Comic Con 2012 for the first ever Comic Con in Australian history. Unfortunately MasterCage was too busy ogling Camilla Luddington to make an appearance at this historic event. Thankfully there was a bunch of great guests to make up for his absence.
Capcom has released 2 new gameplay footage one, feature Leon, the other featuring Sherry and Jake, and the Ustanak. Both videos have Japanese commentary in them, and this time around there isn’t as much footage as the last gameplay footage. The Sherry and Jake footages shows off the new crossover feature in the game Where characters from the other campaigns will join up for some 4 player co-op. The Leon gameplay video shows Leon going through an abandon subway, dealing with hordes of zombies alone. What do you think about the footage? Resident Evil 6 is Available October 2nd in North America and October 4th in Pal regions, and Japan.
Capcom has shared out another great and fun addition to their Umbrella Corporation website. If you’re a fan of the Resident Evil series you will certainly want to create your very own Umbrella Corporation Recruitment Badge, which once you’ve created can be download to your PC, printed out and made into a fake ID which you can try and trick your friends with, you can share it on Facebook and also Tweet it out to all your followers.
As you can see Capsule Computers has also signed up as an Umbrella Recruit. Our recruitment process was tough, we had to get finger and toe printed, eye scanned and also had to run 10 miles on a tread mill for our physical evaluation while playing Resident Evil Revelations on the 3DS BLINDFOLDED! We can proudly say that we passed with flying colors and now are part of the Umbrella Corporation. (Clearance #54DK – Janitor department cleaning the toilets)
If you want your very own Umbrella badge follow the link here, it wont be anywhere near as hard as what we had to do to get ours so get going and make yours before the Nemesis gets you!
Everybody loves a good 007 game, and 007 Legends is shaping up to be just that. This title ties together five classic Bond movie-inspired missions, and one extra mission from the upcoming Bond flick – “Skyfall”. Today, ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE has been revealed as the next mission in the game, and things look pretty exciting by the looks of it.
Here is a brief synopsis to chew on:
True love is hard to find but James Bond has finally found his equal in the beautiful Tracy di Vicenzo, the daughter of European crime syndicate head Marc-Ange Draco – Bond’s key contact for tracking down criminal mastermind Ernst Stavro Blofeld. After wooing Tracy and their ensuing whirlwind romance, they jet set off to the Swiss Alps as Bond pursues Blofeld. It’s here, in a picturesque Alpine setting, that gamers encounter an avalanche of action. Blofeld is aware of Bond’s undercover ruse and kidnaps Tracy, luring Bond into a rescue mission involving a fast-paced downhill ski chase and a confrontation in a high-flying cable car, which also uncovers Blofeld’s master plan to release a deadly virus in five of the world’s largest cities. With the help of Tracy’s father, players must infiltrate Blofeld’s private research facility in the Swiss Alps, thwart the release of the virus and save Tracy before it’s too late.
007 Legends launches on October 17th, but stay tuned, as these missions are sure to be detailed more as we grow closer to that date.
Halo 4 will make it’s debut later this year, but coming with it will be a brand new digital series titled Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. As you might of guessed, this series will give us a much more in-depth look at Master Chief, taking place at the beginning of the Human/Covenant war.
Here are a few more details on what to expect with this new offering to the massive Halo Universe:
Created in partnership with top Hollywood talent from film, television and new media, “Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn” brings a brand new “Halo” story to life on a scale never before seen in the “Halo” Universe. The series will debut this October on Machinima Prime and on Halo Waypoint as a five episode series. The “Halo 4” Limited Edition will include access to the “Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn” Special Edition via Halo Waypoint, with never-before-seen bonus footage, as well as exclusive fiction and behind-the-scenes content.
More stuff for your collectors edition is always a good thing, and as an avid follower of the series, I can easily say it’ll be nice to see a much younger Chief. While the full trailer won’t be shown until Comic Con, you can check out the teaser for the series below, which debuted on Machinima and Halo Waypoint as of recent.
During their pre-e3 event, Konami gave us a good number of things to look forward to, and the publisher is ready to go into more detail at Gamescom. Of course the star of the show will be Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which will be hitting shelves come early 2013, but there is a lot more to look for this year.
All news, announcements, interviews, and trailers will be broadcast through KONAMI OnAir during the five day event, letting fans that are not in Germany get a better look at the event through live streams, Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. This will get everyone more involved, so that you all can connect with Konami and voice your feedback through several outlets.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow will also be on full display, with both the console and 3DS title (Mirrors of Fate) being shown off. There will also be a playable demo for the latter, which will let the world get a more close up look at what the Belmont family has to offer this time around. PES 2013 is the last of the offerings this year, and seeing how the soccer favorite is due out this fall, there is sure to be a lot of news coming from that area as well.
Gamescom takes place on August 15th-19th, so stay tuned until then!
Robot Entertainment will be teaming up with Valve next month to make their hit mobile game Hero Academy available on Steam!
Hero Academy is a tactical strategy/battle game playable on the iOS. It is free to download from the app store and features more content that you can pay for in game with real currency. These items mainly consist of avatars and team expansions that allow you to play as different races such as Night Elves and Dwarves who have their own unique units. The gameplay is very easy to understand, fun and fast paced, until you have to wait for your opponent to finish their turn of course. Hero Academy has received critical acclaim with a Metascore of 75 and 4.5/5 stars on the App store.
If you are already familiar with Hero Academy and have enjoyed playing it with your friends on your iPhone or iPad you will be happy to know that the Steam version will be cross-platform providing multiplayer between PC users playing on Steam and folks still using Apple products to play on the go. Also featured in the Steam release will be characters from Team Fortress 2. The familiar mercenaries will be unlocked as a playable team with their own unique features and abilities. That’s not all, for every hero team purchased in Steam, a special item will be unlocked in Team Fortress 2! All this will be available next month on August 8th.
Ben 10: Ultimate Alien – Ultimate Alien Rescue Publisher: Cartoon Network Price: FREE – Play Game Online Here
Overview:
Ben 10: Ultimate Alien is the most recent series in the Ben 10 television series’, having ended in March of 2012. Featuring a 16 year old Ben Tennyson, the series sees Ben with an improved Omnitrix, called the Ultimatrix, as well as becoming known worldwide for his power and abilities. Becoming known for being a superhero has it’s downsides though as Ben continues to face bigger threats, but also gains the ability to use improved Ultimate forms of some of his alien forms.
Ben 10: Ultimate Alien – Ultimate Alien Rescue is an online flash game made for the series and is available on the Cartoon Network website. As with most flash games based on a series, it attempts to fit into the story of the series or is based on one or more episodes. With Ben 10 being such a hot property does the game live up to what fans of the series would expect?
Story:
The story this time around is that 5 aliens, after having crashed onto Earth, are on their way back to their homes when they get captured by the evil Aggregor. Technically, this happens in the Ultimate Alien series proper, but the way it is executed makes the game pseudo exist between the episodes “Fame” and “Escape from Aggregor”, in that Ben 10 luckily finds out about it and heads up to save them, but in the end as Aggregor puts it “No one escapes me.” What this does is that ultimately what the player does in the game feels unimportant, but on the other hand doesn’t upset any canon of the actual series, so it is really a trade off.
Unlike other games, Ultimate Alien Rescue features an opening and closing, as well as dialogue in each level albeit incredibly limited. This is actually pretty nice to see in a flash game where many others have maybe a few panels explaining the story in the best case. These are not by any means overly in depth, but each of the characters appears to actually have character, instead of just stating “Thanks, now save the next guy” four different ways. Who knows maybe a flash game for the next Ben 10 series will actually have voice over dialogue.
Gameplay:
The game plays like a standard platformer for the most part, where players get to utilize Swampfire or sometimes even Ultimate Swampfire. In addition to, since playing as Swampfire, the mouse can actually be pointed at enemies and fire fireballs while moving along. This is a solid concept in theory, but all of the enemies in the game have a lot of health, and many fire back, so trying to kill everything will generally end with be killed unless dodging constantly. Making the best course of action to simply jump past and around enemies and attacks, only utilizing attack itself in boss fights.
The design in each level is pretty much a maze, which scales bigger and more branching in later levels. Unfortunately, the game is designed mostly linear as Swampfire can only really head to the key, which opens a door, which has a key for the next door, etc. until reaching the alien on that level. So, younger players will probably run around a lot taking different paths until finally actually find the one that has the next door and key, making for a longer game where the only excitement is avoiding all the things enemies are firing at them. There are a few boss fights as well, which instead of having int he same maze style room arrangements simply is in an open arena, which makes it easier to dodge attacks and fight away at them, but can be hard to dodge different attacks, luckily dying doesn’t revert boss health to ease these battles for the younger crowd.
Besides keys and thankfully health pickups, Swampfire can grab 1ups for extra lives and Ultimatrix pickups which power the ability to turn into Ultimate Swampfire. While hitting harder, the power will drain away while playing as Ultimate Swampfire until back as regular Swampfire again and it’s really a good idea to just use it when even possible as getting hit as Swampfire drains Ultimatrix power as well as health. A good way to break up monotony, but not necessary to get through the game.
Audio and Visuals:
This time around there is no voice over work at all, but players are only using Swampfire and Ultimate Swampfire in the actual game so it’s fine as he probably wouldn’t have all that much to say. It would have been nice if the short little dialogues were voiced over, but I suppose it was more surprising that they were there and that might be asking too much. Music on the other hand works out pretty well, it changes throughout different scenes, so there’s less likely to get stagnant unless stuck in the same level for way too long, but since the music is really the only audio, besides attacks and pickups, muting is an option, no literally you can just click Mute at the top.
The visual style is generally good with Ben 10 games as the art style is easy to match and this is no different. Unfortunately, because the entire thing takes place in the same spaceship visuals get old pretty fast. After seeing one maze and the 4 different enemy types, you’ve seen all of them. It does look nice, but it would have been nice to see a little bit more as there were 5 different levels and 2 boss fights, which where practically the same.
Overall:
Really the only thing outstanding in the game is that it had some semblance of a story and not just one copy pasted from one episodes, but kinda filling a one off between two of them. It’s a solid platformer though for those interested in constant avoiding take fire from lots of different directions, though gameplay can become a bit repetitive nearer the end, which might be worse depending on how quickly one can progress through. Ultimately, I give Ben 10: Ultimate Alien – Ultimate Rescue
Firefly is a massively popular franchise, despite the fact that it had far less episodes than a lot of television shows. Sean Maher played the doctor of the show, Simon Tam, and we were lucky enough to see him in a panel at Oz Comic Con 2012.
Sean Maher talked about how Simon had changed through the timeline of Firefly, and in Serenity. He seemed quite keen on his development of the character, and cited his favourite episode as being Ariel. Both as a general episode, and due to his character growing.
It sounded like Firefly had the most amazing cast with a hugely family feel. He talked about how his relationship with Summer Glau was actually quite like their off screen one, and in fact fed into it. When the cast all found out about the cancellation of the show they met at Nathan Fillion’s house to sort through that shock and the disappointment at the cancellation of a show that had so much promise. The fact that it had been granted a movie was something that Maher had been skeptical of right up until the table reading, which must have been the most powerful moment and even upon recalling it he seemed to have had some emotion about it.
When asked what character apart from Kaylee that he’d like to have Simon have a ‘will they won’t they’ relationship with, he answered Jayne. Once the initial laughs died down, he assured the crowd that he wasn’t in fact being sarcastic, and upon second thought that relationship would certainly be an interesting one and their chemistry could have certainly gone that way, considering the thin line between love and hate.
Sean Maher also has a role in Joss Whedon’s new project, Much Ado About Nothing, where he plays the villain as Don John, which he really enjoyed because it was the first villain he played. This is definitely a movie to keep an eye out for, if it does happen to be given a theatrical release, although I’m sure that it will find some way to be released, given that it’s a Whedon creation.
Check out the rest of our Oz Comic Con coverage on the rest of the site, including impressions, more panels, and interviews!
One of the most eminent television and movie actors involved in massively popular science fiction franchises, as well as a comic book franchise, is Sir Patrick Stewart. Not only was Sir Patrick Stewart in the panel, but he was accompanied by his son Daniel Stewart. This was one of the few panels that had two people doing the panel at the same time, and they had a fantastic chemistry going between them on the stage, which is no surprise since they are father and son.
Patrick Stewart was asked about the voicework he’d done for Seth McFarlane on Family Guy, American Dad and the new movie Ted, given that it was so different from his usual work and very far from his classical work he’s done a lot of. Which, it turns out, is the reason he chose to do such roles.
One of the big upsides of having a father-son team on stage was that they talked about some of their family stories, such as how they used to play board games with the family and Patrick Stewart would be the only one allowed to read the rules, and would make them up as they went, so he’d never really let the children win. Which led to Daniel Stewart’s somewhat skeptical and hilariously insulting personality.
In addition to this, Sir Patrick Stewart was gracious enough to offer a story about how his brother had trained his six year old niece before her first games day and how, when she stopped and waited for the rest of the field to catch up, his brother had been raging on the side lines. And that was why he had grown up to be ultimately competitive. It was actually amazing to hear such stories like this from Sir Patrick Stewart, and I’m sure the rest of the audience felt the same. He actually had the most awesome and warm personality that was so different from his characters that he had played. At one point a small boy in a Hulk suit asked him a question and he was absolutely lovely towards him.
Sir Patrick Stewart had actually never seen the original Star Trek series, although his son Daniel had, and he had to get briefed on what the show was about. But it clearly became a huge part of his life after that, and he cited the saddest part of his time on Star Trek, as a character and an actor, was when he said goodbye to Commander Riker when he was promoted to Captain and given his own ship. The one line where he says “No Number 1, the honour is all mine” was apparently a very difficult line to deliver because it carried a lot of weight, not only for the character, but for the actors.
Overall, it was one of the more enjoyable panels, because of the chemistry between the two on stage. Almost all the questions were solely directed towards Sir Patrick Stewart, but Daniel Stewart took it beautifully and managed to have just as much of a stage presence and provide just as many laughs with his personality and wit.
Check out the rest of our Oz Comic Con coverage on the rest of the site, including impressions, more panels, and interviews!
One of the most eminent television and movie actors involved in massively popular science fiction franchises, as well as a comic book franchise, is Sir Patrick Stewart. Not only was Sir Patrick Stewart in the panel, but he was accompanied by his son Daniel Stewart. This was one of the few panels that had two people doing the panel at the same time, and they had a fantastic chemistry going between them on the stage, which is no surprise since they are father and son.