After months and months of ‘December’ vagueness Trine fans finally have what they’ve been waiting for – a concrete, day specific release date, and it’s pretty damn soon.
For once PC and Mac gamers will get the good end of the deal, and will be able to purchase the full game from December 7 worldwide, whilst XBLA will universally get the title on December 21. PlayStation owners in the US will see Trine 2 on December 20, but the rest of the Sony world will have to keep holding it’s breath – a European/Asia/Pacific release date hasn’t been announced quite yet. A Linux version is to follow in 2012.
Stay tuned for a review of the PC version from Capsule Computers, and write those dates down in your gaming diary.
It’s safe to say that Rayman Origins is a pretty unique game when held up against the rest of this seasons releases. This latest video from Ubisoft takes a look at the small development team behind the game at Ubisoft Montpellier, and explores the two year creation period in a light and breezy seven minutes. Amongst the talking heads is Michel Ancel, creator of the series, who talks about bringing Rayman back to his roots whilst keeping every game in the series a surprise. Composer Christophe Heral laments that he couldn’t fit an entire symphony orchestra into his house, and the team reveal their favourite of the various barmy worlds of Rayman Origins.
Time to get excited again Golf fans as EA sports have revealed the cover art for Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 13, once again with the great Tiger gracing the cover, this time joined by the exciting Rory McIlroy on the standard edition (AU and NZ) and the coveted jacket adorning the collectors edition. Being the only game where you can compete in the Masters in an attempt to win the prized green jacket, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR is a treat for all golfing fans around the world, and a franchise that all involved in are very excited about.
The famous Green Jacket was first awarded to Sam Snead in 1949, and has since become an icon of the golfing world, putting the names of those who wear it in the record books forever. For another nice little touch of nostalgia, the famous Calamity Putter will also feature alongside the Green Jacket. The Calamity Putter was made famous by Bobby Jones, an amateur golfer and tournament co-founder, Â in the 1923 US Open (which he went on to win), when Jones holed a 30 foot putt with his first stroke.
Featured within the Collectors Edition will be a new Green Jacket presentation ceremony that was specially developed only for winners of the Masters. Additionally it will also have every course available in the standard edition, as well as five extra courses to hone your skills on, Augusta National’s Par 3 course, a world class Tournament practice facility and much more.
Last year saw the introduction of the Masters into the Tiger Woods PGA TOUR franchise, and Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 13 will only continue on this success, also adding some background on Tigers phenomenal accomplishments. It will be the first controller-free, voice-enabled and body tracking simulation game to support the Kinect, something which will really enhance and give the franchise a more realistic touch.
After a fairly lacklustre entry into the world of RTS with Game of Thrones Genesis, George Martin’s fantasy epic is getting the RPG treatment. Whilst the political manipulations and constant subversive war between houses found in the novels does lend a bit of bite to the RTS idea, a role playing title has always been the more tantalising prospect. After all, Martin’s novels provide a huge and immensely detailed fantasy world that is ripe for exploring – it’s a ready made universe packed to the brim with characters and kingdoms, with insignias and armies, swords, sex, and dragons.
It’s certainly a big task to take on – and arguably Game of Thrones has to compete with the biggest fantasy RPG of them all – Skyrim. So, who has taken on this great quest? It’s Cyanide Studios again. The developers behind Game of Thrones Genesis are having a second stab at the Thrones universe, this time bringing a thirty hour RPG to PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. By the developers own admission, it is the most ambitious project they have ever worked on. Focus Home Interactive will be handling European publishing duties, and had this to say about the game:
Now, this sort of thing has been said before. Genesis sounded promising but failed to deliver a true Game of Thrones experience – will the RPG fare any better? One interesting cause for hope is a greater recognition of the TV series. Genesis was no doubt already far into development by the time the HBO show made its mark, but the RPG has no excuse to ignore what has been one of the biggest hits of the year.
As a result, characters like Cersei, Varys and Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch Jeor Mormont are faithfully reproduced from the TV series – Mormont looks pretty spot on as you can see above. HBO’s logo is nestled on the game’s website, and the title text for the game is the same as that of the show. The screenshots on offer so far show off a familiar enough world, and the sharp eyed will no doubt have spotted a certain titular chair nestled in the background. What remains to be seen is how this licence will be put to use – will the similarities be more than skin deep?
The game has been written ‘under the supervision’ of author George R R Martin (also true for Genesis) and has players take on the role of two new characters. Mors is a sworn brother of the Night’s Watch, and Alester a Red Priest of R’hllor who has returned to Westeros after a long exile. So whilst full character customisation is out, Cyanide have at least opened up the potential use of magic, which whilst a part of the Game of Thrones world, isn’t commonplace. Fans of the books will know just what the Red Priests can be capable of, so it should be interesting to see which of their rather unique abilities make their way into the game. Although the characters are to some extent predefined, players will still be able to pick a class and develop their abilities to suit their play style. In addition to the swordplay players will also be able to talk their way out of situations if particularly silver tongued, so it’s nice to see that the more political skills have not been forgotten.
Details on the plot are a bit scarce, but the two characters will find themselves thrown into an adventure just as the Hand of King Robert Baratheon has passed away – the very same event that kicks off the books. The game will have to tread carefully around already established ground, so expect to see little from major players like the Starks- although there is always hope for some cameos. Cyanide have previously stated that there will be no direct interaction with the main plotline from the novel, but players will see those events shape the world around them instead. The screenshots don’t give much away, but who could that menacing face standing before the Iron Throne be?
So once again, this Game of Thrones title has all the makings – all the potential – to be a hit. There are a lot of elements that need to be perfectly balanced to make it a success with fans and newcomers alike and still a lot of questions to be answered before the game’s release in early 2012. Will it be a free roaming game? How much of the world will be open to explore? Will King’s Landing be called King’s Landing instead of Feudal Home? There will no doubt be a steady stream of trailers and a screenshots now that the publisher has been announced, so stay tuned for more on next year’s big ‘fingers crossed’ RPG.
It has been confirmed that Dynasty Warriors Next will indeed be a launch title for the PlayStation Vita, at least in Europe. Tecmo Koei has revealed that the Omega Force developed title will be released alongside the Vita on February 22nd. This marks the first Warriors title on the Vita and also takes full advantage of the handhelds features to create the most unique Dynasty Warriors experience yet.
In the screenshot below and above you can see the touch pad in action as the game will feature players having to tap the front or back touch pads to perform various attacks or win combat engagements. Dynasty Warriors Next will also take advantage of the Vita’s six-axis detection allowing the player to touch or shake the handheld to perform certain abilities. Plus, although there are 65 total characters to choose from the much loved Edit Mode also returns to allow full customization of the players’ own warriors.
Last week we caught wind that Tecmo Koei and Omega Force were going to include a couple of Dead or Alive ninjas in their upcoming Musou Orochi 2 title, and today the two companies have released another promo trailer that not only shows tons of action and features in the game, but also shows off the various characters that have crossed over from other Tecmo Koei titles into this one.
In the trailer we see both Ryu Hayabusa and Ayane show their abilities as well as a number of new characters and more. Currently the title is slated for release in Japan on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on December 22 but unfortunately has yet to see any news of a North American localization. Catch the video below.
Rather than wait until the next issue of Game Informer is dropped on your doorstep, the users at NeoGAF have gathered a collection of every tidbit of information that is revealed inside about Obsidian’s South Park RPG. Now while everyone, including myself were surprised that the South Park title would be an RPG, it seems that Obsidian knows what they are doing.
First and foremost, the title will use the Dungeon Siege III engine and the main character will be a silent protagonist that is fully customizable and allows for players to choose one of five classes which are: Adventurer, Rogue, Paladan, Wizard or a fifth class made up by Cartman. There is even a weapon augmenting system and a summon system, though this was not detailed heavily.
As far as the story goes, the player will be the new kid in town who joins the other kids in a live-action-role-playing session which somehow turns into a real adventure. More details can be found at the NeoGAF forums, but be warned there are also a few spoilers, then again aren’t there always?
It seems that EA just can’t catch a break, but after what you are about to read perhaps they really shouldn’t get much of a break. Out of perhaps all of the current developing market in the video game world, no company is as ostracized or despised for their business practices as Electronic Arts, and banning players just only seems to make things worse.
Now considering EA’s whole Origin system, any bans that are levied on their forums ban customers from playing games they actually paid for, sort of like putting the customer’s games in a safe for a week or two. Now it appears that EA has banned a gamer known as Aaron whose only fault was that someone else was swearing at him on the forum. In a classy move from EA, they banned both the swearing offender as well as Aaron because why not? This caused quite an outrage on various forums as well as outrage through the press.
Despite the 1.2 patch for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim being released it appears that not everything that was supposedly fixed in the patch actually was. The biggest detrimental part of this, is that the PlayStation 3 version of the title still suffers from nearly frozen gameplay as the player gets further in the game and their save file grows larger and larger.
To be more specific, the Digital Foundry has explored the detail further and it appears that the issue is memory management. “The bottom line is that Skyrim is an unbounded game world running on a space-constricted system – and this applies regardless of the platform you play it on, hence reports of the PC version running out of address space and displaying solid colours instead of textures,” says Digital Foundry’s Tom Morgan. “The PlayStation 3 is unfortunate in that it’s the platform with the most oppressive RAM issues (in addition to the split-pool set-up of the memory, the OS has a larger footprint than its 360 equivalent) so it makes sense that it has the most noticeable issues.”
This has caused the company to see unprecedented levels of lag, being that this is “the first time our performance analysis tools have ever recorded a 0FPS reading.” The only way to regulate this is to save and restart the title every half hour to try and continue further in the game.
Well, at least it seems like most negative Vita news is usually countered by something positive about the system. In a discovery by Thrifty Nerd through Sony representatives at the Mills Mall in Woodbridge, VA where they are letting shoppers get a hands-on with the device before release. In their report, they have learned that North American digital games would be released at a significant discount compared to those sold at retail.
A third-party Sony rep told Thrifty Nerd that the discount would roughly be around 40% compared to what would be found at retail. Japanese digital Vita titles are discounted only 20% so this would be a significant discount for those in North America. However, being as Sony themselves have not confirmed this fact as of yet, this information is best taken with a grain of salt.
