In anticipation of the upcoming third instalment in the offbeat shooter series, Far Cry, set for release later this year, Ubisoft have released a new trailer for the game. The latest trailer focuses on Far Cry 3’s gameplay aspects, giving gamers a closer look at what the game’s got to offer.
You can check out the Far Cry 3 gameplay trailer below. The game is set for a release on September 4th for North America and September 6th for Europe and Australia. Far Cry 3 is said to return to the franchise to it’s tropical island routes as seen in the very first Far Cry game, except this time you play as a guy with a Mohawk.
Let us know what you think of the Far Cry 3 gameplay trailer below in the comments section.
The Skylanders Tower Case turned out to be a No#1 selling accessory for the Summer, selling out quickly across most stores in Australia.
But we have great news for all you Skylanders fans out there! New stocks of the Skylanders Tower Case have just arrived and will be available again in retail stores all over Australia over the next few months. One such retailer will be EB Games who are now a major stockist for the product. If you don’t have an EB Games in your area the Skylanders Tower Case will also be available from : Big W, Target, Harvey Norman, Dick Smith, and Toys R Us
If you missed out the first time on this this must have Skylanders accessory I’d suggest picking one up this time around as this might be your last chance at doing so before it disappears forever from retail shelves.
For anyone that is not familiar with what the Skylanders Tower case is all about check out the description, video and images for it below :
The official Skylanders Tower Case unfolds to keep 8 Skylander figurines and your Portal of Power ready for action. A special spot on top stores your Portal of Power during gameplay. And when it’s time to move, everything tucks inside and fastens securely, with a collapsible handle on top making transport easy.
Defenders of Ardania Developer: Most Wanted Entertainment Publisher: Paradox Interactive Release Date: March 14 Platform: XBLA (reviewed), PC Price: 1200 Microsoft Points (HERE), $14.99 – PC
Overview
It’s not every day a new tower defence game comes out…
HA! Now that joke’s out the way: It’s not every day a tower defence game that also has an emphasis on tower offence comes out. Defenders of Ardania puts you in control of a small, defensible area, and it’s up to you to defend your castle from oncoming waves of enemies while having to destroy their fortress at the same time. Does this twist make the game worth your while, or is this a castle that should be burnt to the ground and forever forgotten?
Gameplay
Spoilers: Yes, it really should be.
Defenders of Ardania is a painful game to play. It can hardly handle the mechanics of basic tower defence, much less the addition of an offensive facet to the concept.
A round of Defenders of Ardania starts much like any tower defence game. There’s your castle, your pool of cash, and a variety of towers to build and upgrade. I was pleasantly surprised at the outset, as playing tower defense on Xbox can usually feel a little clunky, but the towers can only be placed on certain points of the map’s grid, so navigation and placement is quite simple. Little did I realize the long-term implications of such a design decision.
See, there’s a limit on the number of towers you are able to build per level. That means that about five minutes in, your strategy with regards to tower placement becomes limited to upgrading and remaining aware of the occasional pathing change of enemy units. And because you are also responsible for destroying an enemy castle (a castle which has a health bar comparable to your own) rather than simply having to survive a set number of waves, an individual level of Defenders of Ardania takes a ridiculous amount of time to complete.
Long matches aren’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as the game encourages dynamism in strategy and variety of play style, but you’ll find neither in Defenders of Ardania. The half-hour minimum it takes to complete a singleplayer mission generally involves setting up your towers and then continuously spamming units towards the enemy’s base.
It’s not even like there’s a great variety of units either. The most effective strategy is to just spam the super slow tank units or the quick rogues. Either way, the units that do get to the enemy castle do negligible amounts of damage.
In a game like this, the “bug bites” manner in which you take down the castle means the pace of play slows to a crawl, even if you use the option to speed up the game. I literally fell asleep while playing, but because the waves sent at you are so static and repetitive, I woke up after my unintended nap to find my castle still standing and the round unfinished.
Multiplayer only exacerbates these issues, as all the players are capable of repairing their castles. Which means an already tediously lengthy match is now extended to the point of ridiculousness.
Defenders of Ardania takes an interesting concept (a concept which has had some success in the past, particularly within the modding community for real time strategy games) and fails utterly in the delivery of that concept. The use of indomitable, massive health bars for castles destroys any semblance of urgency, the units rushing towards you require little change in tactical acumen, and the spammy nature in which you must attack enemy castles borders on more repetitive than repeatedly bashing your head into the wall (it just hurts less).
Audio & Visual
In all fairness, the environments of Defenders of Ardania don’t look bad. There’s a variety in locations and there’s a fair amount of detail on each indvidual map. However, the unit design is bland and the animation is simply lacking. Oh, and good luck differentiating your towers from your opponent’s because there’s so little contrast in the tiny identifying banner on each tower that you’ll have to move the cursor over each individual one to see if it belongs to you. There’s also the occasional frame rate stutter, which by itself isn’t horrible, but compounding it with the already frustrating nature of the game makes for some very loud swearing and/or thrown controllers.
The sound design is average; so better than the rest of the game. The music is nothing to write home about and neither is the voice acting for the game’s very loose story, but it’s a tower defence game, I wasn’t expecting a rendition of Hamlet. To its credit, some of the writing for Defenders of Ardania can actually involve funny satire of the fantasy genre, but it falls flat as often as it’ll make you chuckle.
Overall
Do not buy this game (unless you enjoy increasing your Gamerscore while napping). Yes it looks pretty, yes the concept is interesting, but in the end there’s only one question that a game has to answer: is it fun? Between the tedious, never-ending gameplay and the simmering frustration at all the little things that are just not right, the answer is absolutely, unequivocally no.
Nothing says new Silent Hill release like a bloody giant pink bunny am I right? Well, even if you don’t agree with that it doesn’t chance the fact that the classic Silent Hill series has returned with a collection of two of the fan favorite games with an HD upgrade. The Silent Hill HD Collection has hit stores today and brings with it both Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3, delighting fans who may have just put down Silent Hill: Downpour.
Not only have these two games received a visual upgrade, but the audio has been re-mastered as well to enhance “the storytelling and ambient music” that was already found in these titles. Also, as these games are showing up for the first time on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 they also come with a slew of Achievements and Trophies for all those hunters out there.
This means that everything you did for fun and for a challenge in the original games will now net you a visible award as you gloat over your friends who were to scared to enter Silent Hill once again!
Unlike most titles from Tecmo Koei, Warriors Orochi 3 wasn’t privy to a very long time to distribute information for potential buyers with various details and press releases. As such it seems that they have chosen to make up with lost time by cramming nearly every feature available in the game into one launch trailer.
You can check out the trailer below and also on your PlayStation 3 as yesterday on the PlayStation Network in North America. Xbox 360 owners will have to wait a little longer than others, though they will benefit from an actual physical release which will occur next week. While some may claim that the various Warriors titles can be a bit too similar to one another, with time travel, new characters and a fresh story mode it seems none of those claims will apply to Warriors Orochi 3.
Noboru Ishiguro passed away at the age of 73 on Tuesday, March 20th. He may be best known for directing the Space Battleship Yamato anime series, or Star Blazers in the West, as well as The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, The Super Dimension Century Orguss, and the movie Macross: Do You Remember Love? for the Macross/Robotech anime series. This year also marking the 30th anniversary of Macross.
Founding Artland, Inc. in 1978 , the studio would go on to co-produce many of the series he directed in addition to Mushishi, Katekyō Hitman Reborn!, and Demon King Daimao. Ishiguro’s latest work had been directing the Tytania anime series, which was adapted from novels by author Yoshiki Tanaka. He had previously directed Legend of the Galactic Heroes, another adaptation from the same author.
Noboru Ishiguro was a major contributor to anime for the past 50 years and his presence will be missed.
The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love? Blu-Ray and My Boyfriend’s a Pilot 2012 Playstation 3 game are being released together in a Hybrid Pack that includes a bonus disk filled with content, as well as a 30th Anniversary Box edition which also includes an assortment of physical material, from booklets and miniature posters to actual film.
Macross: Do You Remember Love? is a film based off the TV series The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, better known in the West as the first series in Robotech. The film was made by Macross creator Shōji Kawamori and Macross director Noboru Ishiguro, who recently passed on March 20th. The subtitle referring to a song sung by Macross character Lynn Minmay.
My Boyfriend’s a Pilot 2012 will seem reminiscent to fans of the series as being another of Lynn Minmay’s songs. Other then that, the game features the same staff as the games in previous Hybrid Packs, so can be expected to be in the same vein as those.
Everyone is playing Mass Effect (except for Alexis), but no one is playing the same game. We have Phil doing Game Show this week and get into Xbox Gamerscore glitches, Phil Harrison moving about, Double Fine breaking records and a new indie game that needs your help, Triangle Man.
Cast: Alexis Ayala, Philip Federico, Dustin Spencer & Michael Irving
Music for this podcast is from 8bit Chris
Thanks for listening and let us know what you think!
Kung Fu Rabbit Publisher: BulkyPix Developer: cTools Studio Platforms: iPhone 3GS+ (reviewed), iPod Touch 3rd Gen+, iPad Release Date: March 15th, 2012 Price: $0.99 (Buy Now)
Overview
Kung Fu Rabbit is a fun little platformer from BulkyPix, makers of Jazz (read our review of it here), and it shows. The art style and controls are very similar to those of Jazz, and to the game’s credit.
Story
Some bad blob thingies have captured a load of little bunnies, and you’re on a mission to save them. Oh, and there’s some ufos involved. Or soemthing. The story is told through a few static comic panels at the start of each “world”. And while they look pretty, in BulkyPix’s cartoony style, it’s hard to figure out what’s actually happening in them.
But whatever. It’s a platformer. How does it platform?
Gameplay
It platforms pretty well. You’ve got left and right arrows on the bottom-left of the screen, allowing you to move the Kung Fu Rabbit left and right. These buttons kinda follow you around somewhat, letting you forget about where they actually are, and concentrate on controlling your character, a nice little tweak to the usual virtual buttons. You can also touch above the buttons, reaching all the way to the top of the screen, making it infinitely easier to find the controls. The character controls fairly well, although there are some odd moments when, if you’re standing anywhere near the edge of a platform, the game might just decide that you’re going to fall off.
There’s also jump button on the bottom-right with similar properties. You can slide down walls by falling near them and pushing the relevant direction button to lean into the wall. You can use this to jump away from the wall, and so bounce up parallel walls to reach higher areas, or just to slow your descent for a tricky jump you need to pull off. For some reason you can also keep leaning into the wall and jump to slowly crawl your way up, which feels a bit odd at times. Like you’re cheating or something.
There are 3 carrots and one golden carrot to find in each level, which are then used to buy consumable power-ups from the armory at any time from the pause menu. One such power-up is basically a “continue”. You can place it down at any time, using the button in the top-left of the screen, and are essential if you are to make it through some of the tougher levels without pulling your hair out. But it kinda feels like the game is cheating you out of your hard-earned carrots. Other games just have continues; buying them feels like you’re being ripped off.
Other power-ups, such as “Power Aura” and “Death Ray” help you handle the enemies wandering around each level, clearing the level of bad guys, and such. But these are kind of expensive, and only work until you inevitably die due to some slip up, or the game deciding you slipped up. So all-in-all, youll probably end up just buying a ton of “Soul of the Rabbit” power-ups (the continues), and giving up on the others.
Each level is carefully layed out, with goo stuck to walls, and an array of enemies peppered liberally throughout. The enemies can be taken care of by touching the lit blue areas on particular parts of their bodies. Hit any other part, though, and instant-death for you. The wall gunk, similarly, means instant death. And with some of the levels being quite long, you’ll definitely be reaching for the continues, or suffering the start-from-the-beginning consequences.
Remember I said it platforms “pretty well”? Yeah. Pretty well. The controls work… until the game decides to throw a wobbly. And the levels are well made, though without a built-in checkpoint system, it feels like they are way too long. And the majority of the power-ups are kinda useless.
So… the gameplay is okay, but there’s a few annoyances and bugs that keep it from really shining.
Audio & Visual
The art direction in this game is nicely done. It has a simple, cartoony, oriental kinda feel to it; with a limited, though bright, pallette, that changes as you move onto the different worlds. The animations are also simple, but effective.
The music is pretty cool, fitting the oriental style of the game in general, as well as fitting the various world mileux. The sound effects are cutesy, also fitting the game’s stlye. The pitter-patter of rabbit feet is a great little soundbyte, keeping up the fun and cute atmosphere.
Overall
This game looks and sounds fine, the controls being easy to pick up, as opposed to getting in the way of actually controlling the Kung Fu Rabbit. But the few oddities that pop up in-game from time to time are really quite frustrating. And the power-ups are hardly worth using, apart from the continue item, which is so necessary to complete levels it’s strange they didn’t just have it included in the game.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 has become quite a DLC loaded game, with plenty of costumes and coliseum battles available for download already. However one piece of DLC on the way is moving far away from your standard JRPG genre, instead it is opting for some space age tech.
Today Famitsu revealed the above image, revealing how Mass Effect 3’s Commander Shepard’s armor will appear when it is equipped by Serah and Noel. The DLC pack is set to be released on March 27th for 300 yen or 240 MSP and is going to be called the “N7 Armor.” Currently Square Enix in America has not revealed this piece of DLC, but considering nearly every other piece of DLC has been released at the same time worldwide, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to expect this in the United States next week as well.
