Ubisoft have just released the launch trailer for their upcoming game Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. This is the same Ghost Recon game that is going to be hitting local stores on the 24th of May this year. This title is going to be rated MA15+ here in Australia which means that parents should be vigilant in the safeguard of their children when purchasing this game.
The story beings when a Nuke is intercepted on it’s way to a friendly city and is traced back to Russia. From there the Ghost Recon dudes are sent in to kill stuff and be awesome, at least from the looks of the trailer. So be sure to pick up this game when it’s released.
You can view the Official Launch Trailer below, where it is embedded for your viewing pleasure.
Sports games face an ever increasing challenge: how do you sell a product year after year when by definition it must stick to a certain rule set? EA, masters of a good chunk of the sports game market, have just released new information about what’s going to make FIFA 13 so special despite it’s unlucky moniker. The big changes this year are coming in the form of five new or improved features, aiming to make the FIFA experience that little bit truer to life:
PC and HD console versions of FIFA 13 will ship with a more sophisticated AI, giving players the intelligence to capitalize on openings the moment they appear. This ‘Attacking Intelligence’ will see players pull defenders out of position and generally work harder to win the advantage – it will be interesting to see just how much of a difference this will make to the games difficulty level.
In order to counteract that increased AI ability, FIFA 13 has taken Lionel Messi as the inspiration for Complete Dribbling, adding precise touch control to 360° mobility with the ball. Players will be able to pull off more inventive and dangerous moves in one on one situations thanks to a system that is quicker and more comprehensive. Backing up that system is the improved 1st touch control system, which has removed the players ability to automatically make a perfect first touch nearly every time. An element of unpredictability will give defenders more chances to win back possession, with success affected by factors such as ball trajectory and the speed of the pass.
Adding a bit more of a real world feel to player interaction is the second gen Player Impact Engine, which will now allow players to make contact even when neither has possession. Defenders can use their physical strength and size to force opponents into making poor touches. And when you’re giant defender steps on someone, the new Tactical Free Kicks will come into play, allowing players to position up to three attacking squadmates to make use of dummy runs and other more elaborate tricks. Opponents won’t be without their own defence, and will be able to make changes to their wall.
Whilst no official release date has been announced, expect FIFA 13 to arrive in September/October this year.
Because there clearly was not enough hype for the next instalment of the Tales franchise already, the producer of the iconic RPG franchise Hideo Baba was interviewed by Famitsu today and of course made some hype inducing statements and revelations.
First off Baba revealed that unlike previous entries in the series, the next Tales game will feature a ‘modern feel’ as opposed to the ‘fantasy feel’ that embodied previous titles in the franchise. He further stated that he feels this is what the series needed to be taken to ‘the next stage’. What that means however is a mystery in itself.
He then went on to reveal that the main story and themes of the game will revolve around it’s tag line, which is “Are you prepared to destroy the world for the sake of a girl?” Apparently this phrase will play a large part in the game and will most likely be said many times throughout it.
The game is set to be formally unveiled next month at the Tales of Festival in Japan. So, what would you do for a girl and what do you think of the next Tales game’s implied direction? Let us know in the comments section below.
Unbelievably it’s been six months since the announcement of Naughty Dog’s next project The Last of Us. The post apocalyptic tale centres on two survivors; Joel, a seemingly ruthless character, and Ellie, a fourteen year old girl who despite being an old head on young shoulders has no memory of the world before the apocalypse. Things have been a bit quiet on the news front for The Last of Us recently, so this clip is sure to get fans of the Uncharted developer talking once more.
The video released today show something of the events that occur when Joel and Ellie visit an abandoned city. It’s only a small cutscene but it manages to tell a lot about the two characters and their perspectives on the utterly destroyed world they find themselves in. Naughty Dog are sure to reveal more about the title at E3 in a few weeks time, but for now feast your eyes and ears on the video below.
Mass Effect 3 Razer Vespula Manufacturer: Razer Device: Mouse pad Price: AU$49.95 Purchase:Razerstore
It is no small secret to the gaming community that one of the best ways to help the promotion of a particular title is to supplement the release with a variety of additional products and peripherals. Regardless of whether these products are made of functionality or aesthetic appeasement, as long as they are flaunting the colours or symbols of a particular video game franchise, gamers WILL take notice. So naturally, as one of the biggest and most critically acclaimed titles of 2012, Mass Effect 3 has experienced no shortage of attention when it comes to gaming add-ons for the modern PC gamer.
Razer, one of the largest and most reputable brands in the gaming accessory market currently has a small collection of much ME3 branded products that are soon to be released to Australian retailers. We were fortunate enough to get our hands on several pieces of this collection early, specifically the Razer Chimera headset, the Razer Imperator mouse, the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard and finally, the Razer Vespula mouse pad. Click on the afore mentioned links to read our other reviews of these products.
The Razer Vespula mouse pad jumps out immediately as an aesthetically appealing piece of hardware. It is an add-on that many will not deem necessary to alter gameplay, but appeals due to the visual design and the player being part of a wide reaching fanbase. Odds are that many gamers who take a look at a product like this at face value will assume that the appeal is in looks and looks alone. And while it can’t be argued that the mouse pad has a very cool visual design, there are other features that I just can help but find appealing as a Mass Effect fan.
The Razer Vespula has been branded with the familiar ‘N7’ symbol, which for all intents and purposes serves as the trademark sign of a Mass Effect related product. The use of the ‘N7’ symbol, which represents the elite soldier program in the ME universe highlights that the design of the mouse pad has clearly been fashioned with Commander Shepard in mind. In addition to the symbol, the dark colour and material weave visual are quite reminiscent of Shepard’s amour. Coloured primarily a dark grey with a black finish and complimented by a red military stripe, I couldn’t help but be reminded not so much of Shepard alone, but also of Legion and the piece of N7 armour grafted onto his arm.
It is the small design touches like this that shows that the hardware designers really care about the intellectual property they’re handling. This is often what makes the subtle difference between ad-on products that do appeal, and those that don’t. If hardware designers rush out a product without too much thought given to the story, characters, universe, visuals and the game itself, then the product itself will reflect this. If it is sapped of any strong relation to the game, then players are not going to be drawn in to buying it as it would not offer something that the fandom can relate to. Thankfully, Razer has had plenty of practice in designing peripheral products in the past, and products like the Vespula reflect the fact that the designers really know what they are doing with the creation process and are passionate not only about their work, but their games.
In a similar regard to the mouse pad’s red stripe, the ME3 Vespula also boasts a dual sided design, allowing the player to flip and easily change the upward facing design of to one of their preference. The mouse pad itself is consisted of two separate pieces: the soft under-layer attached to the wrist rest; and the solid over-layer, which houses the interchangeable faceplate. The contrast between the two designs is quite striking. While the basic face up design appears like a relatively undamaged and clean piece of N7 armour, the flip side is identical in base design, but is completely covered with white scratches and impact marks. Because the tarnished faceplate is the one that is side up when the box is opened, it really hammers home the notion of destruction, which ties in very cleverly with the plot and tagline of ME3: “Take Earth Back”.
At this point it should be mentioned that the ME3 Vespula mouse pad is more than just a branded product with aesthetic value. The mouse also features a functional element, one which can directly influence gameplay flow. Of course, the surface of the mouse pad is sleek and solid, providing a wide range of motion for the hand and a clean, crisp sound to compliment mouse movement. However, the real benefits are to be found in the wrist rest and the interchangeable faceplate materials.
The soft wrist rest is located at the base of the moue pad. This feature allows for the player to rest their mouse arm comfortably for extended periods of play. When a game is as addictive as Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, little features like this can make a big difference to personal comfort. A subtle benefit, but worthwhile. The Second functional benefit can be found if you were to look closely at the two different faceplates of the mouse pad. Dubbed separately the untarnished “speed surface” and the seemingly battle worn “control surface” the two faceplates have a distinctly different feel about them. If one were to look closely, the material composition of the two sides are different, with the battle-worn control side offering a little more resistance and friction with mouse movement. For anyone thinking of purchasing one of these for themselves, it’s definitely worth experimenting with both sides to find the one you prefer to play with. And while the placement of the faceplates on the soft under-surface does not make changing the faceplates a quick process, this is a minor compliant in comparison, and one which can be easily overlooked.
It is also worth noting that, like the other Razer products in this Mass Effect 3 series, the Vespula also comes with a Collector rifle DLC code and multiplayer equipment packs. For those that like these sorts of freebies. Which is effectively EVERYONE.
Overall, the appeal of something like the Mass Effect Razer Vespula will come down to the individual player. For all the functional benefits that it offers, most are liable to observe only at a face value when looking at it in a shop window. From me, it comes recommended for any Mass Effect fan, but ultimately it depends on how deep your fandom runs. If this is your first time playing a Mass Effect game or any kind of Bioware title, then odds are that the mouse pad won’t appeal too greatly, and you have some MASSIVE catching up to do on some quality gaming. But for those of us who have shaped Shepard’s exploits from the beginning, reloaded save files to ensure 100% survival on the suicide mission and those who have spent several minutes witnessing the back and forth conversation of “Shepard.”, “Wrex.” in-game, then this mouse pad is for you.
Manga Entertainment has come to the Xbox LIVE Dashboard as a free app for Xbox LIVE Gold members. Anime fans on Xbox Live now have more to choose from in terms of anime, besides the pay subscription apps like Netflix and Hulu Plus; as well as the other free app Crackle, but as Manga was just added today the selection so far is fairly limited.
Currently, Manga has a total of 24 series and movies, but they made sure to inform users that they should check back on Tuesdays for more anime. The 24 include several Robotech series and movies, some Star Blazers series and movies, Dead Leaves, Gurren Lagann, Monster, and others. Though some anime fans will sad to hear all the shows are only available in their English dubbed versions, which is sometimes a deal breaker for more avid fans.
But in terms of just the free apps, Manga does definitely offer a different line-up of shows than Crackle, so we’ll see what more will be added to better broaden the anime selection available for Xbox LIVE Gold.
Things have been very bad lately for THQ, minus a few bright rays of hope the company has mostly been seeing layoffs, salary cuts and the loss of various licenses over the past few months. Now the company has revealed that they lost $239.9 million over the last fiscal year which ended on March 31, 2012.
This is now the second year in a row that THQ has experienced a losing year, with 2010’s fiscal year featuring a loss of $136.1 million. However don’t count the company out quite yet, as president and CEO Brian Farrell said the following in a THQ earnings statement. “We have made significant changes to our business, and are on track to execute our strategy of delivering quality connected core gaming experiences, beginning with the sequel to the award-winning Darksiders in August.” With the original Darksiders seeing only mild success, can Darksiders II put the company back on its feet?
Today NIS America had some bad news for gamers who were hoping to explore Arland one final time with Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland next week. Originally the game was set for release on May 22nd but it appears that the manufacturing process suffered some delays. As such Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland will instead be released on May 29th in North America. Those in Europe will not have to worry about the delay and can still expect the game on the 22nd.
You shouldn’t blame the manufacturing company too much however, any fan of the Atelier series should know that manufacturing things, namely alchemical things, can sometimes turn out bad results. But how could you possibly be mad at Meruru up there. She looks quite sorry don’t you think?
From Xbox Cheif Robert Bach has went on the record with claims that the success of the Xbox 360 was due to the stupidity of Sony’s approach to the release of the Playstation 3. He makes the quite realistic claims that if it weren’t for the mistakes of Sony in regards to the PS3 the Xbox 360 would not have done as well as it has.
He released the following statement on the subject at the Northwest Entrepreneur Network event, “Some of the success of Xbox was due to the fact that Sony did some really not so smart things.They mismanaged their 70% market share. It’s a long conversation. The transition to PlayStation 3 was really, really bad. And really hard. They mismanaged their partners, they mismanaged their cost structure. They made their next platform so complicated that developers couldn’t develop for it.”
It’s hard to dispute his claims, especially when you compare the absolutely shithouse performance of the Playstation 3 as a whole in comparison to the Xbox 360. There are a number of different factors that added to Sony’s failure, such as their thought pattern that the average schmoe could afford to give an arm and a leg for a shiny new Playstation or that Sony thought they could simply just rest their bare asses on their laurels because the Playstation 2 sold well. And you know what they say about resting on your laurels… Well whose ass is bleeding now Sony?
What do you think of Robert Bach’s comments on the success of the Xbox 360 and the failure of the Playstation 3? Let us know in the comments section below.
Take your time, I know you may have to pick yourself up off the floor after bursting into laughter at the title. So you may have heard already that Capcom’s big crossover fighter, which they expected to have sold 2 million copies of, only sold 1.4 million which is roughly 72% of what they estimated.
Why did this happen according to Capcom? Well a Capcom executive had this to say during an investor meeting. “Sales of Street Fighter X Tekken have fallen short of our plan. We believe one of causes is cannibalism because of the large number of other games in this genre that were launched within a short time.”
The way that this Capcom executive chose to word his response was certainly interesting. The fact that he believes that there are tons of fighting games on the market may be a bit true. For example, Skullgirls released digitally a few weeks ago, the Blazblue series has grabbed a decent following, but the perhaps the worst culprit to releasing a large number of fighting games is none other than Capcom themselves, what with there being about five different versions of Super Hyper Street Fighter IV Unlimited Arcade HD on the market with only a few months between each release. Also I’m sure there were plenty of other reasons that fans chose not to pick up the title as well, though I’m sure we’ve all heard enough about on-disc DLC lately.
From Xbox Cheif Robert Bach has went on the record with claims that the success of the Xbox 360 was due to the stupidity of Sony’s approach to the release of the Playstation 3. He makes the quite realistic claims that if it weren’t for the mistakes of Sony in regards to the PS3 the Xbox 360 would not have done as well as it has.