Yakuza: Dead Souls is quite a unique take on the whole zombie genre as a whole, because not only do the zombies invade an entire town rather than a mall, but this time around the zombies have to deal with the even more terrifying yakuza. While Yakzua: Dead Souls is set to be released on March 13th in North America, the 15th in Australia and the 16th in Europe, we have yet to hear about what pre-order bonuses would be available for those who just can’t wait to put their money down on this zombie thriller.
Well if you live in the UK and pre-order the title at select retailers will receive the Densetsu DLC pack which includes 8 new unlockable weapons, 14 new weapons for your lovely female friends and 8 new hostess outfits and a whole slew of new items to help the player out against the zombies.
Those who live in France will be able to pre-order the title at Micromania and will receive a special Steelbook Edition that will also come with the aforementioned Densetsu pack and a Tattoo sleve. Germany on the other hand will receive the same exact thing, minus said tattoo sleeve. Those in Spain will simply receive a Limited Edition that includes the Densetsu pack and that is all.
North American pre-orderers will receive the aforementioned Densetsu DLC pack if they pre-order exclusively at Gamestop and they will also end up receiving the “God Bless America” DLC pack. The God Bless America package will feature bonus costumes for each of the main characters and bonus karaoke modes for Majima and Kiryu, a few bonus items for casinos and even new cutscenes. What are you waiting for? Get out there and pre-order this because these bonuses are too big to pass up.
Unfortunately for fans of classic first person shooters, DOOM was pulled down from the Xbox Live Arcade over a year ago due to “expiring rights.” Well it has taken some time but Bethesda and Zenimax have finally placed the game back up for download on the XBLM.
The game will be available for the paltry sum of 400 MSP and it features both co-op and an online versus mode. What are you waiting for? DOOM isn’t called one of the grandfather’s of FPS for no reason, the game can be downloaded here. Or if you just happened to delete the title since it has been removed from the XBLA, you can re-download it now for free.
While some people just love to watch cars race around a track or race through the streets, other people simply watch cars going fast so that they can see the disastrous crashes that will likely happen at any given moment. For those type of people there is a game coming to the PlayStation Network just for you.
On February 9th Version 2 Games will be releasing Smash ‘n’ Survive, a game where players will be able to choose from 30 “brutal concept cars, including muscle, agile, monster, buggy and SUVs,” and do combat on ten different maps and attempt to destroy each other with plenty of fancy weaponry including flamethrowers. It will include a number of different game modes including a few team modes and something called “plant the bomb.” The title will also include a campaign mode, two player split screen and a six player online multiplayer that will be available in April 2012 as free DLC.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has had a very rough time in development. At times it was thought to have been canceled and at one time it nearly was until Platinum Games chose to step in and handle the development instead. As such it appears that Platinum is handling the title much better than Kojima Productions because in an interview with Famitsu, Hideo Kojima has revealed that Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance will have a playable demo available at E3 this year.
This is big news as many fans are quite interested in seeing how this title turns out, especially since there is absolutely no stealth element in the game now that Platinum has taken over, in fact it was the first thing removed said Platinum CEO Tatsuya Minami.
A very interesting title has appeared on our radars, and that is an upcoming XBLA title named Deadlight. However if you were to ask us much more about the title we would unfortunately be unable to give you much of a response because the title has just been announced by developers Tequila Works and publishers Microsoft Studios.
Supposedly the title is meant to be released sometime this summer and Tequila works has described the game as an “original cinematic puzzle platformer.” The game focuses on the journey of a man named Randall Wayne who is one of the last survivors on the American West Coast after a pandemic in 1986 wiped out the rest of the population. Color me interested.
One of the biggest additions to the Nintendo 3DS courtesy of the last firmware update was the fact that the 3DS would be able to play downloadable demos in the near future. As such, the Japanese eShop has been given demos since the beginning of December, but the rest of us have had to wait until now. Also available is the demo for Cooking Mama for those who are frightened by zombies and just want to try and be better than mama.
Tomorrow the demo service for the Nintendo 3DS will begin and gamers will be able to download a demo of Resident Evil: Revelations. On January 26 Sega will follow with their own demo for Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D and Rayman Origins will also see demos but those currently do not have a specific release date.
Silversword Publisher:Gaida Internet Services Developer: Mario J. Gaida Platforms: iPhone (reviewed), iPad, iPod Touch Release Date: 23 December, 2011 Price: $5.49 (HERE)
Overview
It’s not everyday that a hardcore game comes out for iOS devices. When I say hardcore, I mean not only a game that doesn’t involve cartoon farm animals, but those far-too-easy so-called “hardcore” games like Infinity Blade. You see those types of games aren’t as rough and full of adventure as older RPGs like the original The Bard’s Tale.
Or at least, that’s what the one-man development team behind Silversword thought. He sets out to capture the old, die-rolling RPG adventures of the 1980’s and in that light, the game is a massive success. But there’s a reason games like those were abandoned two decades ago, and those become all too apparent in this iOS attempt at recapturing a lost era of RPGs.
Gameplay
The game begins with very little in the way of context: You are in a camp, in a party of rogues, wizards, and warriors, and you must travel south to aid a besieged city.
In the camp, you start with some randomly generated party members, but can create quite a few more, though you can only haul around seven of them with you as you explore the world. There’s quite the amount of classes and races to choose from, each with its own party-related benefits and unique stats. These party members have no characterization however, and why they are all fighting together is beyond explanation. They are there to serve the gameplay, nothing more. They’ll level up, carry gear, and help you to bags of loot, but don’t expect them to make you care… or even talk to you.
Based on how much experience you have with games based entirely on random number generators and statistics, this process can be a quick breeze, or it can take hours. I created a Paladin, named him Foromir and left the camp after a bit of a simple tutorial.
Oh, but he wasn’t in the party. I hadn’t realized that after creation you had to battle through the clunky user-interface to add him to the party. So I had to trek back to the campfire in the northern corner of the castle to go ahead and add him.
Here we come to one of the major problems of Silversword: despite coming with a 40-page instruction manual, it never fails to explain to you the most basic of concepts (such as movement or combat), but instructions on how to cycle through character inventory, move the order of a character in the party, and a plethora of other important gameplay nuances always seem to lie forgotten somewhere in the ether.
I’d read that in the older RPG’s, local area maps didn’t exist and that players had to map out with pen and paper the in-game layouts. Thankfully, that’s one tradition that Silversword does do away with, and there’s a very handy map on which points-of-interest, walls, doors, and the like are all simply presented. And that’s endlessly useful, as the road south is littered with dungeons to explore and monsters to fight.
The feeling of possibilites as you step out of the starting area is akin to that which you’d experience when playing Skyrim. The only problem is, you can’t see what challenges lie ahead as enemies appear out of the blue to attack. There’s no tall grass here, any square has the potential of housing an unseen foe. Further, enemy appearances are randomly generated, which means you can have cleared the top level of a dungeon, decide to turn back, and have to fight through the whole thing over again. Only this time your party will be weaker, as they’ve all taken damage and your mages will be running out of energy.
How old school and hardcore.
More old school features: Non-regenerative health (mages or shrines have to heal you up), no auto-save, magic only regenerates during the day, traps are invisible unless you have a special detector in the party and they respawn (that way you get to worry about them several times instead of once), traps actually do significant amounts of damage, combat is left entirely up to the rolls of invisible die, a user-interface whose buttons are either massive or too small for the small iPhone screen, puzzles whose clues pretty much require you to look up the answers on the game’s official website, a number of questionable decisions regarding how the user interface works (such as the constant reshuffling of the party when a member is killed and then revived), to see in the dark a spell has to be cast by a mage, and, despite the game’s emphasis on regularly saving, there’s no quick-save button (every time you have to go into the settings, save the game, and then confirm you want to overwrite the past save file). I’m all for pausing the game and planning your next move, but there’s far too much time spent in the interface and not enough actually enjoying exploration and dungeon-running in the game.
I hated these design decisions, but I was born on this side of 1990’s and my first RPG was Pokémon Yellow. There’s no nostalgia to pull me back into an almost forgotten age in video games.
The game does deserve credit for that sense of exploration it breeds. You’ll alway wonder what’s around the next corner, and if you’re the kind of person who thought Dragon Age: Origins wasn’t hardcore or old-school enough, this will definitely appeal to your sensibilities.
Audio & Visual
The iDevice screen is two-thirds interface, and one-third game world. While this emulates the original Bard’s Tale to a tee, it’s not really appealing to look at. Does the list of people in my party and each of their stats really need to take the entire bottom half of the screen when I’m out and exploring? The world itself is graphically rendered for first-person exploration and though it doesn’t look spectacular and the draw distance is atrocious, it’s serviceable enough at presenting a world ripe for a good looting.
There’s not much sound design to speak of. Birds chirp as you explore the world, dice roll when combat takes place, and a merry tune plays upon winning a battle.
Overall
Silversword is the kind of game I wish I could give two scores to, because I understand that it is attempting to recreate what some people consider as the golden-age of RPGs in the 1980’s.
It does. If you loved that type of game and you’d like to have a portable version to carry around, I strongly recommend you buy this game. It will provide you with hours upon hours of gameplay that accurately recaptures an otherwise lost era (and you can always try it out beforehand with the Lite Version).
If, however, you, like me, never experienced or loved 80s role-playing games this app will give you the occasional moment of, “I can’t wait to find every corner of this dungeon,” but most of the time, you’ll be juggling with the interface, getting exasperated at the backtracking which involves fighting enemies you’ve killed two minutes ago, or realizing your last save was an hour ago and “oh boy, there goes the last guy in my party.”
The fact of the matter is that this game is based on the design philosophy of the 1980’s. That’s 20 to 30 years of advancements and streamlining that it generally ignores. The game can be generally boiled down to mild exploration and heavy menu-surfing; the visual payoff is never enough and the interface isn’t even a simple one to navigate.
If inducing nostalgia is this frustrating for everyone not in on it, then perhaps it’s time to leave the past where it belongs.
Gamers wanting a taste of Mass Effect 3 listen up! Bioware has officially announced that the demo of Mass Effect 3 will be released on February 14 (just in time for Valentine’s Day). The extensive demo will feature both single player and the new co-operative multiplayer mode. In the demo’s Single Player, players will experience a bit of the campaign with the Reaper’s opening attack on Earth. Players will gain a sense of scale of the galactic war and level of customization options available in Mass Effect 3, over in the demo’s co-operative multiplayer mode.
If you’re lucky enough to have Battlefield 3 Online Pass, then you’ll early access to Mass Effect 3’s co-operative multiplayer mode right from the start when the demo launches on February 14. But for everyone else, you’ll have to wait just a few days to get your hands on Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer on February 17.
Mass Effect 3 is set to be released on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC in North America on March 6, 2012 and in Europe on March 9, 2012.
A new trailer for Ubisoft’s along awaited survival game I Am Alive has today been released. Survival is a must in this game and when it’s not the post-apocalyptic environment trying to kill you, it’s the other survivors. Learn the best strategies to survive, managing your resources and how to fight the inhabitancy of the post- apocalyptic city in the latest video below. Players will need to utilize all these skills in I Am Alive if they wish to see another day again.
I Am Alive will be part of Xbox LIVE’s House Party 2012 promotion and is set to be released on February 22 simultaneously on both Xbox Live and Playstation Network.
Order Up!! To Go Publisher: SuperVillain Studios Platform: iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone (reviewed) Release Date: January 19th, 2012 Price: FREE (ad-supported. $0.99 to remove)
Overview:
Back in 2008, SuperVillian Studios released “Order Up!” on the Wii and was received well in the industry. They then followed up in late 2011 with PS3 and 3DS versions. And finally they are bringing the franchise to iOS.
Basically, it’s a cooking game with time management elements mixed in. But it’s not just another Cooking Mama clone; it’s gameplay actually bears some resemblance to actually being a restaurant’s chef, managing which customers to serve first and timing the different dishes to cook to perfection and not set the place on fire.
Story:
You’re a chef, and you’ve just flown in to some sort of island resort in search of a job. Starting out in “BurgerFace”, a fast-food drive-in restaurant, to learn the trade and prove your chops (sigh), you then move onto bigger and better dining establishments.
A lot of aspects of running a restaurant have been covered, including buying ingredients before the day starts, impressing the local critic to get more customers, and adding new dishes to the menu.
Gameplay:
The gameplay largely involves cooking. You’ll take orders from customers and commence chopping, frying, and stirring, doing your best to deliver dishes quickly, still hot, and to a high level of culinary excellence.
To start preparing the food first you tap on one of the dish orders displayed across the top of the screen. Then you pick one of the ingredients you want to prepare first. Some will simply sit on the hot-plate, others will drop into the deep fat fryer, whilst veg and the like will wait for you on the chopping board.
Each activity requires some sort of interaction, a gesture or rhythm-based action, to prepare the food in question. They each have a meter letting you know how the preparation is progressing, and how well you are preparing the ingredient. Once the ingredient is ready, you hit the plate button to put it aside and then swipe across the bottom of the screen to continue finishing off the rest of the elements of the dish.
So for example, a burger meal consists of a burger, lettuce, tomato, and a portion of fries. The burger takes a while to cook through, but you have to flip it half way through. The fries take about half as long to cook but can just sit in the fryer until ready. The lettuce leaves need to be peeled, and the tomato needs to be chopped. Each have their own timings and gestures, so after a few goes at a dish you figure out the most efficient way of preparing that particular meal.
Once you’ve finished the order, tap the dinger to deliver it to the customers. Each customer will pay you based on the quality of their dish. Then there are the “regulars”… special, particularly colourful characters that will pay extra if you spice their meal just the way they like it. They don’t just straight up tell you, though. They’ll hint at the kind of thing they like and you have to figure out what particular spice they’d like.
Once a day is finished, you’ll get a “Yarp!” grade, based on things like quality of dishes, average time to make an order, things like that. All the items are clearly marked and explained. Some are a little cryptic… but clearly cryptic.
You can pay to upgrade your kitchen to cook things faster, clean up the restaurant to avoid visits from the Health Inspector or a rat infestation, or hire “wacky” assistant chefs (currently unavailable). There’s also a telephone booth that will let you play a selection of minigames (also currently unavailable).
Whilst I’m not usually into these types of games, the combination of simple gesture-based cooking and management of preparing the different ingredients of an order, makes this a joy to play, and somewhat addictive at that.
There are (mostly) static ads displayed in the loading screens, with an option to pay to remove them on the main menu. The game also has integration with the Crystal social gaming network with achievements and leaderboards built-in.
Audio & Visual:
The visual style is very much in the same vein as the game’s predecessors; a bold, colourful, cartoony look with humorous character designs and a simple and helpful user interface. The state of each preparation is easy to see and understand, and everything has been carefully designed to make it obvious what is going on; an essential requirement for a game with so many components the player needs to juggle.
The voice acting is great, too, though only the waiters, waitresses regulars, critics and Health Inspectors actually speak. The sound effects are also spot on, with each type of preparation having it’s own, instantly recognisable sound to go along with it.
And then there’s the luscious in-game music. Created by Robb Mills, the guy behind the Fat Princess soundtracks, the music fits the gameplay perfectly and serves to make the whole experience that bit more enjoyable.
Whilst the gameplay is of course paramount in a game like this, the look and feel of “Order Up!!” makes it easy, even inviting to play.
Overall:
I give this game a hearty recommendation. If you like the time-management style of game, or are a fan of Cooking Mama and the like, then you’ll absolutely love this game. And if you’re not into either of those two genres, the carefully balanced combination of the two might just work for you.
