After a small wait, Gamemill are now ready to share the official release date for the first ever country music-themed dance title for the Kinect, and that game is Country Dance All Stars. On March 27th, players will be able to dance along with tunes from artists such as Carrie Underwood, Blake Shelton, Miranda Lambert, Brad Paisley, and many more as this southern grilled title hits stores.
Thus far, Country Dance All Stars already has a mapped out DLC schedule, which is sure to enhance the already handsome list of 30 routines and songs already on the disc. You can check out the official trailer and the complete setlist here, and mark your calenders if your a fan of everything country as Country Dance All Stars is now just under 2 weeks away from launch.
Rainfallers, it’s time to celebrate one more time. After already seeing Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story brought to the region, Nintendo have now officially announced Pandora’s Tower for the Wii. As many of you know, this marks the final of the big 3 for the Operation Rainfall movement, and saying mission complete this time has never sounded so sweet.
There still are many that have did little research on the upcoming RPG though, so here is brief rundown on what to expect from Nintendo themselves:
In Pandora’s Tower you take on the role of Aeron, a soldier, as he battles to save his beloved friend Elena from a mysterious curse that is gradually transforming her into a demonic creature. Only by battling through the towers of a nearby fortress can Aeron save her from her gruesome fate. Using his sword and the magical Oraclos Chain, Aeron must defeat the creatures that lurk there and harvest their meat to feed to Elena. Only by eating all of the “master flesh”, harvested from the largest monsters within each tower, will Elena be fully cured of the curse and free from its monstrous grip.
By returning to Elena to feed her meat from the smaller monsters, you can slow down the transformation – but only temporarily. You will need to carefully judge when it is best to return to her, as not coming back in time could lead to Elena’s permanent transformation into a demonic beast.
Multiple possible endings and a New Game+ mode means that Pandora’s Tower has great replay value and by mastering the unique relationship system you can change Aeron and Elena’s fate. You must not only decide when to return to Elena to stem the tide of her curse, but also what items to give to her. After spending time speaking to her you will become more familiar with her plight and leaving her to continue your quest may become more difficult. Taking the time to build a bond with Elena could even change the ultimate ending of the story.
While exploring the labyrinthine towers you’ll come across a wide variety of items. Mavda, a mysterious travelling merchant who can upgrade your weapons, can create special new items by combining two or more items that you have found on your journey. The items that you have discovered while exploring the towers can be given to Elena as gifts to strengthen your bond or be used to help you on your quest to battle the 13 masters – the choice is yours.
Pandora’s Tower features an epic storyline with multiple endings affected by the decisions you make. Explore 13 challenging towers on a mission to save your friend, set to a powerful soundtrack consisting of some of the most popular classical music in the world, including composers such as Verdi and Tchaikovsky. Every decision you make will affect your ultimate success. The choice is yours.
Yes, that’s quite a bit of information, and with a release date so close, it seems that Nintendo of Australia were holding this release’s announcement back so that The Last Story could have time to thrive. I would also guess that this means that a North American launch for the game is also imminent, whether Nintendo of America publish it, or someone like XSeed step up and take the reigns. Either way though, get ready Aussies, as April 12th will be the date that you get the next great RPG on the Wii. Man, it feels great saying that.
THQ has just pushed out a new trailer for Darksiders II. Behind the Mask: Death’s World previews some of the beautiful environments and enemies Death will battle through in the upcoming Darksiders II along side of some developers commentary and concept art. The trailer previews The White City, the home of the angels, and The Dead Plains, where the lords of the undead rule.
Judging by the trailer, the game environment looks humongous and epic in scale, vastly improving on the already large, looming environment found in the first Darksiders game. Darksiders II is slated for June 26th, 2012 in North America and June 29th, 2012 in Europe.
Fans of Kid Icarus have something to keep them busy while they wait for the release of Kid Icarus Uprising on the 3DS. As of the 14th of March – The Original 3D Animation series will be available on your Nintendo 3DS, via Nintendo Video, a total of six Kid Icarus anime videos will be available. Produced by three top studios, Production I.G, Studio 4°C and Shaft Inc., the 3D animations will be presented in six clips on a weekly basis.
Here is a list of the clips and a description for each that Nintendo have announced so far :
Thanatos Rising features the angel Pit and his battle against Medusa’s minions.
Medusa’s Revenge tells the tale of Medusa, the Goddess of the Underworld, and her rivalry with Palutena, which stretches from far into Pit’s past right up to the present day.
Palutena’s Revolting Dinner centres around the Goddess Palutena and her attempts to deal with a great catastrophe in her Skyworld home.
Don’t miss these exciting 3D adventures set in the world of the game – Kid Icarus: Uprising. Stay tuned to Nintendo video as new content is released regularly.
For more info check out the Kid Icarus official site here.
Available now for free download is the 33rd album published by OverClocked ReMix – Maverick Rising. The album contains 62 tracks, by 42 artists spanning across 5 discs totaling at a whopping 4 and a half hours of remixed music. The music is comprised of arrangements from the Mega Man X game series – which, as fans will already be aware, has a life-span of 12 years. For you Mega Man fans out there, just click the link here, head over to the music section and download away. Watch, or listen rather, to the trailer below to get an idea of what is waiting for you at the end of the previous link.
Visual Effects and Cinematics focuses on what makes Max Payne 3 a uniquely cinematic action game, thanks to a series of presentation innovations that move the game seamlessly from cutscene to gunplay and from one chapter to the next, resulting in an immersive experience that keeps the player locked in Max’s dark and twisted story.
Watch it here at Capsule Computers or at the official Max Payne 3 website tomorrow.
Ever wanted to see your name in the credits for a video game? Whilst developing their debut PC release Triangle Man, Australian award-winning indie developer Convict Interactive have created a Pozibledonation page, hoping to raise $1000 to help complete Triangle Man in time for his scheduled April release.
Those who donate $5 or more can also claim some seriously freaking awesome rewards! For example, if you donate $25 not only do you get a copy of the existing prototype, a final copy of the game AND offer to participate in beta testing but it will ALSO get your name listed in the credits. How cool is that?
Incentives to donate get even more epic though – if you donate $100 not only will you get all of that listed above but also a Triangle Man plushie, t-shirt, poster and best of all Convict Interactive will work with you personally to create your very own level to appear in the game. Now that’s what I call fan service!
All funds raised will go towards employing a 2D animation artist, as well as adding polish to the game with improved artwork, but the funds pledged will only be processed if they raise the money by the 13th of April. What’s most impressive however is how quickly the team have been raising cash; at the time of writing $725 of the $1000 goal has been pledged within in less than 24 hours! So what are you waiting for? Don’t you want to help create a video game and have your name appear in those fancy scrolling credits? Go pledge a donation NOW!
The full list of rewards and incentives for donating includes:
$5+ Free copy of the existing prototype.
$10+ Free copy of the final game plus the rewards listed above.
$25+ Get your name in the credits, can participate in Beta testing and all rewards listed above.
$50 Free Triangle Man T-Shirt & all rewards listed above.
$100+ Triangle Man Plushie, Triangle Man Poster, the team will work with you to create your own level to be featured in the game & all rewards listed above.
$500+ Special thank you in the credits, Convict Interactive T-Shirt (as well as the Triangle Man one listed above), T-Shirts & Poster will be signed by the core development team & all rewards listed above.
Confrontation is a new tactical RPG from Cyanide, the guys who are working on the Game of Thrones title. We got our hands on the preview version; a 2-level trip through a tutorial and then on into a full-on dungeon filled with numerous and varied bad guys, and culminating in a glorious battle with a giant half-beast-half-machine monster.
The gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of the “pause and play” style of the Dragon Age series. While you can drag a box around everyone and right-click an enemy to start auto-attacking, where the game really gets interesting is in the paused mode. Each unit has 6 unique abilities, mapped nicely to the easy-to-reach QWE and ASD keys. They’re even laid out in the same two lines of three fashion, making it very easy to get used to which key you’re looking for. Some abilities will be targetable, in which case you can click a target; and some let you click to set the AoE (Area of Effect).
If you hold shift while selecting your ability, or it’s target, it will be added to the character’s queue of actions, after-which it will revert back to auto-attacking a nearby enemy. You can even queue up movement, basic healing, or change-weapon commands. Once you get the hang of it, the system is very easy to use, but lets you have a good tactical grip on the actions of your units.
You’ll be gaining XP per character as you defeat your enemies, letting you add to a unit’s stats each time it levels up. There are 6 attributes to level, each with a well written and clear description on how it will affect the unit’s performance when using various actions or abilities. Some attributes will enhance certain colour abilities, for example, each action’s colour, or type, clearly visible as a background to it’s button.
As you explore a level, you may find a Weapon and Armor cache. By collecting it’s contents, you can then spend Weapon and Armor points across your units as you see fit. This upgrade and levelling system, while letting you fine tune your different unit’s strengths, is really straightforward to use, once you get the hang of it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t too much about this in the tutorial, but you can figure it out easy enough.
In a lot of RPGs, there’s an unofficial list of roles, something along the lines of Tank (to absorb damage), Healer (character who casts supportive spells and such), and DPS (Damage Per Second, a character who focuses on the “real” attacks, usually ranged). The game embraces this aspect of the strategic RPG genre fully, giving each unit a natural position within the party, which will determine where in the diamond formation they will naturally gravitate towards as you move the party around; which you can set yourself, swapping people around with each other. There is also a small icon next to each character’s health bar, revealed when you mouse over them, that shows the character’s natural type, hinting at their most effective use within the party.
The graphics are pretty cool; featuring gnarly creatures and badass enemies. The dungeons are dark and gloomy, and the outside world is bright and desolate. The world is great to look at; everything detailed and doing a great job of supporting the lore and story for the particular mission you’re playing.
The animations are decent, but the spell effects are spot on. While they aren’t all that bright and colourful, they fit right in to the more realistic feel of the world they’re going for.
The story, as far as I could make out, was the whole world’s at war with each other. And you are some dude in that war. There was a lot of text, and all of it was voice-acted, which was a nice addition, but something about it, maybe the delivery of the voice actor or just the copious amount of info-dump going on, left me not actually getting anything out of the story. The voice-acting in-game, too, particularly the acknowledgements for when you command a unit to do something, were pretty over the top.
But those are minor gripes. Once you get into the feel of the game, and the gameplay itself, all that becomes background noise that your consciousness can easily brush over. And once you get to the point of really getting the strategy down and wiping the floor with bigger groups of enemies that once wiped the floor with you, this game is really, really fun.
For anyone who likes detailed RPG worlds and lore, or anyone who prefers the more strategic, unit-command focused games, there’s definitely fun to be had with Confrontation. And with 4 playable factions available in the full game, I can’t wait to get my hands on the full version!
Outside the main game, there’s also an “Army Painter” option, allowing you to tweak and customize the colours of a given unit. You first select a faction, and then a unit within that faction (and my there a lot of cool units in this game!)… Then, you are shown the unit’s 3D model, standing amongst paint and glue pots, along with some cool looking Confrontation cards – showing the game’s roots in classic table-top roleplaying. You may then edit the colour scheme of the character, selecting a background and foreground colour for each collection of areas in the model. You can also, of course, rotate the view, and even have the unit switch weapons if they support it.
From the looks of the preview, this game is going to be a great play, and undoubtedly with a hefty amount of gameplay. The playing of the game has just the right amount of strategy but the player feels in control of his units at all times. I think this title will be a blast to play for die-hard fans of the genre and newcomers alike.
Confrontation is set for release April, 2012 for PC. Find out more on the Confrontation site.
We’ve seen many Dead or Alive games before, in fact we’ve seen more than 5 of them despite the fact that Tecmo Koei’s upcoming Dead or Alive 5 is numbered as such. However Dead or Alive 5 is the best looking Dead or Alive game we’ve ever seen. Not only that, but from the looks of the trailer released today featuring a battle between Ayane and Hitomi it is also the most brutal.
While we’ve seen some battle footage already from the game already, none of it has the same intensity level as the video seen below. Though I’m not entirely sure how poor Hitomi is going to walk away from that fight…
There are plenty of playable characters in Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, but a few of the characters players run into aren’t able to fight in your party. Or at least they can’t quite yet. Both Falcom and Cave can be met by players and if players want to have them join their party as a fighter, they may want to keep reading.
Next week NIS America will be releasing two pieces of DLC that cost $2.99 a piece and these are the Cave License and Falcom License. Purchasing these will allow you to use Falcom and Cave (pictured above) in battle. Those who wish to see the full (and long) list of DLC that is meant to be released or already is released for Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 can see the entire list here. Take note of all the free packs that are already available and upcoming as well!
