It doesn’t take too much to have an unannounced game be revealed to the world. In fact, all it takes is a simple ad listing on Amazon.com and have it be discovered by Geoff Keighly and the cat will be out of the bag. Such is the case with the listing of Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse which was discovered last night.
For those who don’t follow Family Guy, it appears this game may be based around the episode “Road to the Multiverse” which followed Stewie and Brian as they traveled across multiple universes featuring different themes. Currently Activision has not made an official statement about this listing, but it is worth noting that the listing is still available now and can be seen here.
There are plenty of games already released in Japan for the PlayStation Vita that gamers in North America may never have a chance to play. The fact that the PlayStation Vita has so few decent games at the moment and such a thin release schedule over the coming months makes the aforementioned information all the more depressing for Vita owners.
However gamers shouldn’t despair that much longer, because XSEED Games has just revealed that they will be bringing Ragnarok Odyssey, an impressive looking action RPG, to North America sometime later this year. Also revealed, on Twitter, was the fact that Ragnarok Odyssey will be a full retail release so gamers don’t have to be concerned about managing their memory card data quite yet.
After being revealed yesterday and more details expected to be revealed in Game Informer’s it only makes sense that those details have already been leaked online at NeoGAF. According to the information the game has already been in development since 2007 with a team of 250 people working in that time span.
The game will feature full voice acting throughout the entire game and will be played in a third-person perspective, which is a change from the standard first-person play Elder Scrolls games are known for. Players will be able to explore nearly all of Tamriel though some areas will be locked off for future expansion pack releases.
The development team is trying to keep a good balance between the Elder Scroll series and standard MMOs with 100 vs 100 player vs player battles, hotbar access for skills and factions. Zenimax Online has also released a slew of concept art and images from the game itself which can be seen below and more details will be revealed officially in the July issue of Game Informer.
Cyanide Studio and Focus Home Interactive are making an ultimate edition of Blood Bowl to release in September, called Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition, so they have released new screenshots to show some of the new content with the ultimate edition game. Chaos Edition adds in 3 new playable races, making a total of 23, and adds an additional stadium in the tropical jungle, which is featured in the below screenshots.
Blood Bowl is an adaptation of Game Workshop’s board game, which draws it’s inspirations from the Warhammer universe. Players can recruit teams of different races to participate in a violent arena of one of the bloodiest sports around. Featuring both a single player experience and a World Championship, players can go online when they are done playing solo to work their way from national, to continental, to world games. Players can join the already more than half a million players with Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition when it comes out in September.
In their continuing effort to bring the ZX Spectrum faves to the modern masses, Elite have now announced their next title by the name of “Head Over Heels”. Originally developed by Ocean Software, this puzzle platformer features an isometric view, as well as controlling multiple characters with unique abilities; apparently the first of its kind.
As with their other titles, Elite have included their new iDaptive control system, allowing you to customize the appearance and positioning of any keys required to play the game, or even use your iCade to play! You can also choose to play it in portrait or landscape mode, and your progress will automatically be saved when you exit the game.
Head Over Heels is set for release May 11th, 2012 for iOS devices, and you can read more about it on their site.
May the force be with you! May 4th is unofficially known as Star Wars Day because it sounds very similar to phrase “may the force be with you”. To celebrate, Star Wars Pit Droids is free until May 6th.
Pit Droids is a puzzle game featuring the pit droids that make pod races happen. Anakin Skywalker could not have raced to victory in the pod races with out the support of the pit droids! Watto, the Toydarian junk dealer needs to guide is droids to safety as they run aimlessly into danger. There are 95 levels to keep you occupied for a very long time.
Developer: Kedlin Company Publisher: Kedlin Company Platforms: iPad (Reviewed), iPhone, iPod Touch Release Date: May 1st, 2012 Price: $0.99 Get It Here
Overview
Anyone who has flown in recent times has probably been on the receiving end of the tight security measures required to fly. Kedlin Company now offers you a chance to be on the other side of the x-ray machine in their new game Airport Scanner. Scan through passengers’ luggage and keep those dangerous objects off the plane!
Story
There is no story in Airport Scanner. So once again, you will have to make one up if you require a story to play a video game. I suggest an intense 24-esque scenario involving a conspiracy involving flooding passenger luggage with weapons to overload the TSA with work. Maybe throw in a conspiracy inside a conspiracy for good measure.
Gameplay
Airport Scanner is a game that will test your observational and management skills. Players will have to keep an eye for dangerous goods on an airport scanner that moves progressively faster as levels go by while ensuring passengers get on their flights on time. To make matters more complicated, players will also have to adjust barriers to ensure flight crews and first class passengers make it to the front of the queue while those boarding later flights are delayed. Extra points are rewarded for long combo chains of successfully identified illegal goods. To make it easier, special power ups are available in the store that are purchased with in-game currency earned from playing the game. At the end of the day, players will then be able to choose the harshness of punishment on passengers caught with illegal items. Lighter punishments means guaranteed fines but less money, harsher punishment rake in higher fines but players risk being sued.
Gameplay starts out at a leisurely pace, but quickly picks up to be a fast and furious affair that emphasizes time management and smart use of power ups. As the game progresses, players will need to shuffle the queue to delay passengers on later flights and move up first class passengers and flight crew. This adds an incredibly challenging dimension to the game play. Often I would find myself so distracted by the x-ray machine I would get dinged on time penalties from delaying the flight crew. As the levels increased, time for flights shrunk, passenger bags zipped across the conveyer belt faster, and passenger bags contained more and more illegal items. No longer could I get away with just tapping on the luggage and letting the TSA guards find the illegal items. Tapping all the items was vital to save time and I needed to start using the power ups I purchased from the store. Power ups range from highlighting illegal items to changing the speed of the conveyer belt. Figuring out effective combinations is an important part of succeeding in Airport Scanner. Combined with managing the passenger queue, I was both surprised and impressed at the level of depth involved in Airport Scanner. This is not a game to judge by the icon by any means!
A short mini game occurs after every day played in game. All the passengers hauled aside for carrying illegal items are put in a line and players are allowed to choose the harshness of their punishment. The lightest guarantees a payment of $15 to $100 dollars per person, while fair justice does not guarantee a payment but ranges from $100 to $300, while harshest judgement will ranges from $300 to $1000 dollars. However, the harshest payment not only chances no payout but a penalty of $100 to $1000. This mini game adds a much appreciated little extra to the game play.
The controls over all are solid for the exception of a few hiccups. Swipes are sometimes mistaken as taps which can cause passengers to be accidently hauled aside, wasting precious time. I think having a separate button to speed up the conveyer belt instead of swiping would solve these problems completely. When things move extremely quickly, hit detection can be sketchy. I noticed this only happened on later levels with the speed power up enabled. I found this was a rare occurrence but an annoying one when it happened. Airport Scanner is an incredibly fun game that takes a simple premise and flies with it. Although it struggles with a few hiccups with its controls, the challenging and addictive game play more than makes up for the rare difficulties.
Visuals
Airport Scanner is a great looking game. The graphics are cartoony and the x-rayed luggage is well designed. Like real airport x-ray scanners, objects leave a coloured shadow. Airport Scanner manages to balance these items to be visually attractive while keeping the game challenging. The cartoony style of the game allows for some great animations including TSA guards punching passengers off screen and TSA guards furiously rummaging through passenger luggage.
The graphics look great on both the iPad and the iPhone’s Retina screen. Personally I enjoyed playing on the iPad’s screen more. Although the game is very playable on both platforms, it is much easier to spot items on the larger screen. Overall, Airport Scanner manages to pack a visually appealing game that looks great on all sized screens.
Audio
Airport Scanner continues to impress with its audio. The music is a modern take on classic arcade type tunes. Although only one song plays, I found it to fit the game and didn’t get repetitive after long periods of time. The sound effects are fun and finish the whole cartoony feel of Airport Scanner. Airport Scanner presents pleasant audio that players will have no problem listening to as they scan through luggage for hours on end.
Overall
Airport Scanner is a deceptive game in a really great way. The idea of the game is dead simple and could be easily written off as another bit of shovelware on iTunes. But those who write it off are missing a fantastic and addictive game. Kedlin Company manages to take a simple concept and add enough twists to make the game frantic and challenging. Add a great cartoony atmosphere and a modern take on arcade tunes and you have a fantastic deal at $0.99.
Friday, April 27th marked the opening of the Guild Wars 2 beta to those that pre-purchased the title and/or signed up for beta events. Delivering the impressions of the first open beta for Guild Wars 2 are Linkage Ayexe and The Poid Pipper.
The Poid Pipper
Being a role-play fanatic, I found myself enjoying the open beta on multiple fronts. I will be exposing the truth behind Guild Wars 2 player customization and storyline quests.
One of the most interesting aspects of Guild Wars 2 is player customization. There are a plethora of ways to make your character distinguishable from other players, and one way is strictly based on appearance. Paying homage to the original Guild Wars, players are once again able to colorize their beginning garbs. For experienced players this will not matter, but the initial color swatches sets an initial identity for starting players. Even further detail can be applied by adjusting facial features as well as personal affects of the character’s race and class. For instance, the Charr have horns that can be adjusted according to the user’s liking. My female Charr character happens to be a necromancer, thus allowing me to choose from three available masks that further develop my individualized background story.
Creating a character is a long process that helps you develop a personality for your new character. After you have attained a palatable appearance, you will be asked a series of questions to define your character’s identity. As the questions progress, a choice will be discerned among favoring ferocity, dignity, or charm. When faced with a question about my closest ally, I responded: “Death”. I was aiming to role-play a disease necromancer, so I decided to base my answers using wisdom rather than being blood hungry or seductive. Being a seductive necromancer would be wrong – just wrong…
Moving beyond the creation phase, players will begin at their racial starting areas. As I have created a Charr character, I can tell you first hand about that experience. Charr have maintained and recreated the prosperous city of Ascalon. Mastering technology is the Charr’s strong suit, but even now there is traitors among the ranks of each clan. As I had chosen the Ash Legion, I accepted a quest to spy on a warring clan and deal with them quietly. Needless to say spying was the easy part, and I “forgot” how to be quiet. The most interesting part about this series of quests was that they occurred initially in the open environment then transferred to an instance – similar to original title.
Even thought storyline quests require jumping into instances, dynamic quests can be found in the open environment. While was wondering around killing poor defenseless drakes, I noticed an emanating golden glow from my mini-map. Upon entering this area, I noticed a new quest to defeat an evil summoner. The cool part about entering these type of quests is that your experienced earned is based on the total contribution you have given in the fight. Yes, entering the tail end of a fight will still yield some experience.
Linkage Ayexe
The main thing I want to talk about in these impressions are the World vs. World PvP and the conclusive event that ended the Guild Wars 2 Beta weekend. These were two parts of the Guild Wars 2 experience that I had touched on in more depth during my play-through of the game.
The World vs. World PvP arena in Guild Wars 2 is, from what I can tell, a persistent battleground with three factions vying for control and domination over the other teams. These factions come in three colors, the Blue team, the Red team and the Green team. Each team has it’s own area that it must defend on a massive map while also attacking other teams territories to seize victory over them. Players capture specific keeps and other areas areas of interest across the map in order to seize them from the enemy and to eventually eliminate them. In my playthrough I actually got to see the Blue Team get eliminated from the game.
The typical battle consists of players battling each other over a piece of contested land that is usually from either somebody attacking something or somebody defending something. Generally these battles involve around 10 or so players on each side and this causes a large amount of mayhem on the battlefield. What makes these battles even more epic is when you get some seige weapons going. Players hand in supplies as they progress through the battle and use these to buy siege weapons. These make busting into a keep so much faster than it is without them. Believe me, it takes FOREVER to bust down a gate with just skills.
Overall I found the WvW PvP to be quite enjoyable and it is likely that players will be playing this just as much as the PvE side of the game, if not more. It’s fun, it has scale and you really feel as though you have a purpose. Well done Arenanet.
The second thing I’m talking about is the end of Beta event. This event started in the first area that the Norns go through after they’ve completed their first mission and are now free to explore the world. In the first few minutes, there was much confusion as to what we were supposed to be doing, so we attacked various critters to increase our servers score. Fortunately, someone on our server had an Arenanet contact and was able to guide us through the event slightly and we found our way to a small rabbit that we had to kill. A white one. And nobody had a Holy Hand Grenade. In fact, there were many Monty Python jokes being thrown around at that time.
After that we zerged our way Northward, further into the Shiverpeak Mountains. There we found a small keep with an evil Black Moa bird inside. Players of the Guild Factions campaign will remember this bird being at the end of a very tedious quest. Trying to tame this beast was quite the chore. So what does Arenanet do, they make more of them and they make them strong. Thanks guys, you must really hate the playerbase :P!
After a few hours of hunting critters the servers closed and it was time to go. And that concluded the Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend.
Conclusion
All good things must come to a close, and sadly the administrators for the beta closed down the servers leaving us testers with only the opening screen for Guild Wars 2. I was sad to see such an epic night of battling Champion Black Moas and Pigs finally draw to a close. No matter what level you were, people were there to partake in the event to slay champion creatures. I feared that I would die too often when embarking in high leveled areas climbing up the Shiverpeak Mountains, but players were more than gracious to revive one another. And my good friends that is what makes Guild Wars 2 the richest MMO beta I’ve played yet – the community.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Alpha is the prequel film to Ghost Recon Future Soldier. Today, the trailer detailing the relationship between Ghost Recon Alpha and Ghost Recon Future Soldier was released. This 25 minute film follows the Ghosts as they are dropped behind enemy lines to assassinate a war criminal wanted around the world. The film features the four playable characters in Future soldier and takes place on one of the maps available in adversarial mode. As a bonus, a secret code is hidden in the movie that can be imputed into Ghost Recon Network. This code unlocks a exclusive weapon in Ghost Recon Future Soldier.
Ghost Recon Alpha has Academy Award winners and nominees working on the film including Hervé de Crécy and François Alaux who earned Oscars for Logorama. The film will be available on www.uplay.com on May 13th and the DVD will be part of the Ghost Recon Future Soldier Collector’s Edition.
In an announcement that equates to an earth shattering explosion, Madman have confirmed that Transformers: Prime, which they licensed as part of their Hasbro deal, will be crash landing onto the prime real estate that is DVD, in case you didn’t expect that when they licensed the title.
They plan on rolling out the first volume of Transformers: Prime on the 20th of June at price of $19.95. This release of Transformers: Prime looks to be more than meets the eye as this DVD will pack the punch of 110 minutes of unbridled Transformers madness that would excite anyone who has ever been interested in the colossal franchise that tends to transform with each new iteration. This particular iteration boasts some impressive CG visuals that of course suits Transformers to a tee because it features transforming robots (a staple of CG visuals).
This first release of Transformers: Prime will feature 5 episodes of the extreme new take on the Transformers franchise. Also the first volume will bare the subtitle ‘Darkness Rising’ and will most likely involve the darkness of the Decepticons rising in some manner in an attempt to create some kind of bother for those lovable rapscallions, the Autobots.
Be sure to roll yourself out to stores of June 20th to pick up your copy of the hotly anticipated Transformer: Prime Volume 1: Darkness Rising. Let us know in the comments section below how excited you are for this huge release that is undoubtedly more than meets the eye, because it features robots in disguise. See what I did there? If you did, let us know in the comments below!
It doesn’t take too much to have an unannounced game be revealed to the world. In fact, all it takes is a simple ad listing on Amazon.com and have it be discovered by Geoff Keighly and the cat will be out of the bag. Such is the case with the listing of Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse which was discovered last night.
