If you have plans to be in the New York area of the weekend, you will definitely want to head over to Nintendo world this Saturday as Nintendo will be hosting an impressive launch event for this year’s most anticipated Wii release. Attendees will have plenty to take part in, including the unveiling of a Master Sword replica, trivia challenges and a special The Legend of Zelda historical showcase. Those who attend will also be able to purchase Skyward Sword at the event, getting the game one day before it hits retailers.
So what time do you show up? This Zelda celebration takes place on Saturday, November 19, 2011, from 9am to 1pm and at 10am the Master Sword replica will be revealed. Make your travel plans now, as this event is sure to be an epic experience for Zelda fans everywhere.
Sly Cooper is coming back in Sly 4: Thieves In Time. As the title suggests, the game will feature the ever so popular plot device known as time travel. With that in mind, it is no surprise that members of Sly’s family will appear in the game. Sony has revealed one of these characters (pictured above). He goes by the name of Rioichi Cooper.
Rioichi Cooper was introduced in the first Sly game all the way back during the Playstation 2 era. His levels will be set during the time period that he was most prominent, which happens to be Feudal Japan. He has various techniques, such as the Leaping Dragon technique, which allows him to scale large distance. He can also use the ninja spire jump. If you look at the character selection screen below, then you many notice the character amomg Sly and his clan:
Yes, after you complete his levels, then Rioichi will be available for what may be the rest of the game. More ancestors will be revealed over time. Sly 4: Thieves In Time will be released in 2012.
Fans of DaGeDar rejoice! Gamemill have now released DaGeDar for the Nintendo DS. If you are unaware of this growing franchise, DaGeDar involves the racing of “supercharged ball-bearings”, with each featuring their own distinct look and character within. This DS romp has players taking their racing balls throughout 30 different raceways, where they can loop, drop, climb, and bank their way to the end while avoiding hazards such as gaps and blocks along the way.
Much like Bakugan, the many variants (over 100) of racing balls can also be acquired by trading with friends, which adds even more life to the game as a whole.
Additional Features Include:
Collectables: Unlock and collect up to 100 DaGeDar racing balls, for collectable and trading fun! Special limited edition, cool characters available too!
Unique Race Abilities: Each ball carries abilities of Acceleration, Top Speed, Defense and Attack modes.
Rewards: Earn DeGaDar points at the end of every race for special rewards and bonuses!
You can pick up DaGeDar for the Nintendo DS wherever videogames are sold and check out the new batch of screenshots down below.
Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom is Aksys and North America’s first otaku game for the Playstation Portable. Set in 19th century Japan, players will control Chizuru, a young woman searching for her father in the city of Kyoto, only to be sucked into the political unrest characterised by the shogunate. Fortunately, she is placed under the protection of the Shinsengumi, who is also searching for her father. So, Chizuru has to find her father, protect herself from the violence and even try to find some romance. So, why is the game rated M in the United States? Maybe this description from the ESRB may clarify the rating:
“This is a role-playing game in which players follow the story of a girl searching for her missing father in 19th–century Japan. As the storyline unfolds, players make choices that affect interactions between specific characters. Some still-frame cutscenes depict violent acts: a woman getting bit on the neck; characters getting attacked with swords. These scenes are sometimes accompanied by cries of pain and flesh-impact sounds. Text descriptions include violent references such as “I heard the wet slice of two blades cutting into human flesh” and “. . . . [A]s I watched, the blades kept falling, carving deep lines into the corpse.” Characters are sometimes depicted with large blood stains on their bodies and/or clothing. During the course of the game, the dialogue contains some sexual references (e.g., “Didn’t think I’d be getting pushed down into bed tonight, least of all by you” and “Tell me…How is it? On top of me. Does it feel good?’); in one sequence, a man is depicted lying on top of a woman (both fully clothed) before having sex. The words “f**k” and “sh*t” appear in dialogue.”
Speaking of the romance, Aksys has revealed another man that will be possible to romance. He goes by the name of Souji Okita. He is a captain of the Shinsengumi and quite the exceptional swordsman, described as taking swordsmanship from a craft to an art. A more detailed look at the character is in a form of a digital magazine on the official webiste, hakuoki.com. Aksys promises various wallpapers on the website which will be updated each week until they are all released. Aksys also promised more goodies for the website. Sounds like an interesting game, to be honest. It is a mix of history, romance and action, all set in the Land of the Rising Sun. The game comes out in February 2012.
An exiting new trailer has been released for the upcoming shooter, Syndicate, developed by Starbreeze and published by EA. The game is a reimagining of the classic squad-based tactical strategy by the same name and will feature a few key missions from the original.
Fans of Sci-Fi shooters, in particular Deus Ex, are likely to enjoy this game with it’s sci-fi/conspiracy themes and high-octane shooting fun. If players will recall in the original Syndicate game, corporations kidnap people and brainwash them completely, erasing their past selves and using them as agents to do their, often evil, bidding.
Be sure to check out the trailer “New England” embedded below.
Bigpoint, a large online game service, have announced that the applications for the closed beta of The Mummy Online are now open to players around the globe. Players wishing to join in on the testing of this title can jump on the waiting list at this location.
The beta potion of the game currently allows for players to access the single-player tutorial levels before allowing them to select their allegience (to either raiders or cultists) and their playable class. Classes for this game are as follows: Gunslinger/Assassin, Brawler/Enforcer, or Scholar/Priest. I’m assuming that those are split by faction.
The most interesting portion of the press release –
Battle across Cinematic Environments
Based on the existing terrain of Egypt, players can explore the map of Amarna with several PvE regions that include the Dunes, River, Maze, and Rocky Fields. Here, players will confront a range of monsters, including several types of scarabs, scorpions, pygmies, Anubis warriors, and mummies. Within the PvP areas of the Tomb, Oasis, and Ruins, players can battle against players of opposing allegiances and capture ancient obelisks to dominate the playing field.
With the closed beta expected to last several weeks, Bigpoint will unlock player accounts in waves to ensure game stability and performance. At the conclusion of the closed beta period, Bigpoint will review all feedback, optimize virtually every aspect of the game, and ready The Mummy Online for the official open beta launch.
The Mummy Online looks like it will be fun to try out. As a fan of the films, you might be catching me roaming around at launch.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Developer: Bethesda Softworks Publisher: Bethesda Game Studios Platforms: Xbox 360 (reviewed),PlayStation 3, PC Release Date: November 11, 2011 Price: $59.99 – Available Here
Overview:
In the video game world, there are titles who claim to be open world and offer plenty of exploration, however none of these titles could claim to have such mastery over the open world RPG than The Elder Scrolls series. It has been five years since we explored the land of Cyrodiil in Oblivion, and now perhaps the largest and most expansive title in the entire Elder Scrolls series has taken us to the icy land of the Nords, Skyrim.
Now reviewing a title such as Skyrim is not only a daunting task, but something that can be seen as one of the biggest challenges for a video game reviewer. The reason for this is that the title is just so expansive and contains so many different details and experiences to be held that the best that can be done is to dive right in and enter a world of dragons, swords, sorcery, snow and adventure.
Story:
A couple hundred years have passed since the world had to suffer through the Oblivion Crisis and now the land of Skyrim has fallen into a state of civil war. The player begins his adventure in Skyrim bound in the back of a wagon along with a number of other prisoners with his/her crime only being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You see, Ulfric Stormcloak, the leader of the rebellion is bound and gagged right next to you and he faces execution for assassinating the High King of Skyrim. Since you were captured alongside this man, you too face execution.
As you kneel down on the execution block and stare at the executioner’s axe about to descend upon your exposed neck, a creature of legend and power descends upon the small fort where you are being held. This is just the beginning of perhaps the largest and most involved storyline that I have ever seen. Rather than unfold at a set pace, the story in Skyrim unfolds at a slow pace no matter how quickly you decide to follow the main path, but let’s face it… you will be too busy exploring everything else and getting sidetracked on literally hundreds of side quests and side stories.
There are nine main hub towns that get a lot of focus and for most of these towns you will find multiple side quests and miscellaneous missions that will demand your attention. While the main storyline is always there calling for you to complete it, the fact that there is so much to do and so much to explore is just too much of a temptation to ignore. To make things even better, at times you will be unsure of what the main storyline actually is, could it be taking sides in the civil war? Finding out more about the dragons that are rising throughout the world and wreaking havoc?
With multiple story paths to be explored and plots to discover, Skyrim’s storyline intrigues me more than any other Elder Scrolls title and more than any other title I’ve played in recent memory. To make things better, while some dragon encounters are story related and will happen after you either make it to a certain mission or reach a certain destination, most of the dragons you encounter are completely unscripted. This means that unlike Oblivion where you always had to do the same type of exploration to shut down an Oblivion gate, you will constantly be surprised to hear the roar of a dragon and the beat of its wings as it circles around you.
This provides a massive amount of replay ability for the title as well. While the story and exploration is absolutely massive, there is always going to be some form of new content for those who want to start over and take a brand new character through the story. This includes a branching civil war storyline where you can choose to take a side and swing the battle for the Stormcloaks or the Imperials. But why restart from the beginning when there is a new Radiant storytelling system to constantly keep new content flowing.
While you may finish a main guild or cities quests there are always likely to be new adventures of some sort there for you the next time you visit the area. This is due to a procedural generated quest system which makes various miscellaneous objectives to keep you interested and provide a reason to go explore that cave in the distance you didn’t want to venture through the first time.
With the vast variety of the quests, multiple plotlines spanning across easily a hundred hours of gameplay there is tons of story to be found in the world of Skyrim, whether it is history, main events, side events or even the happenings of some small village in the wilderness. The massive world to be explored along with the amount of story to be found will keep players invested for longer than they could ever have dreamed.
Visuals:
With Skyrim Bethesda created a new engine specifically for the title. This engine is called the Creation Engine and it allows for dynamic weather, textures that add weight to various objects and allow for distant terrain to look better, which is a necessity being that Skyrim’s sprawling landscape is one of its greatest features. Thankfully the Creation Engine does everything perfectly. Venturing through the world of Skyrim is one of the best features of the title and the landscape surrounding you is absolutely beautiful. This is especially noticeable during one mission where you are literally above the land of Skyrim and can see the entire world beneath you clear as day.
This includes a number of details that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. The characters in the world move fluidly, the sky itself is breathtaking at times; snowfall can vary from a small flurry to a literal blizzard obscuring anything more than ten feet away. That being said sometimes the snow looks rather bad on rocks with noticeable gaps in the snow cover, but as a whole everything looks breathtaking. Plus, even playing on the Xbox 360 I didn’t notice any issues with textures nor any problems with objects not loading properly. On the very rare occasion I would notice a clipping issue with the ground or a wall where a character would stand partially inside a wall or object however.
Those concerned about the way that characters look in Skyrim have no reason as all of the characters, whether they are male, female, Khajiit, Human or Argonian look amazingly diverse and more realistic than ever before. The Khajiit and Argonians appear completely different from how the more Human like races look and the elves also share a unique appearance that makes talking to new people a delight.
Besides the major graphical changes a few tweeks have been made in other areas as well. For example when you speak to characters the view will no longer zoom in on their face and rather show their whole body language. Also the in-game menu has changd which allows for navigation through a quick and simple four-directional menu screen. Players can acess their skill trees, magic, items and map all separately through swift and fluid movements. The item screens are all broken up into neat categories and shown clear as day in a 3D image preview section for fully rotational item viewing which is a nice touch.
Overview
Over the past five years, the Call of Duty series has went from a run-of-the-mill first-person shooter to the best selling video game franchise of all time. Like all successes in the industry today, sequels are a given and every year fans are treated to a brand new entry to hold them over for another 12 months. This time around, Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games are back to deliver Modern Warfare 3, setting out to improve upon that famous and fluid formula found in Modern Warfare 2. On top of a few new goodies for multi-player and a brand new Survival Mode, players can also expect to see a continuation of MW2’s campaign. There is without a doubt a lot packed in this time around, but does this follow-up deliver enough to be considered a worthy upgrade? Here is my review for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Story
Starting right where it’s predecessor left off, Modern Warfare 3 throws the player in the role of Captain Price’s elite squad as they hunt down Vladimir Makarov in the midst of a heated war between Russia and the United States. As usual, players take turns swapping between squads and completing missions, with all the stories intertwining as you progress further and all leading up to one big finish at the end. Since it’s an all out World War 3, there is a lot more happening in each plot this time around as well, with missions consisting of rescuing a kidnapped President, getting a downed comrade to safety during heavy gunfire, and even doing battle on a crashing airliner…just to name a few.
Let me start by saying that this story is very easy to follow and is certainly one of the most exciting and engaging narratives the series has had to date. Players will instantly recognize Price, Soap, and several other past faces from the Modern Warfare saga, who have all retained their past personas to perfection. Most of the time, you as the player will take the role of either Frost or Yuri. Yuri has quite a backstory to be discovered and is certainly the most mysterious and intriguing protagonist of the lot. Frost on the other hand is mainly just used as a tool to tell “the other side” of these events, with the plot during his sections barely involving him whatsoever. I am aware that the Campaign mode has always switched between a few different soldiers to lengthen the story, but the characters on Frost’s team were so underdeveloped it was hard for myself to actually care about any of their fates, making the narrative as a whole feel lop-sided. Yeah, there is a lot to take in on each mission and most of which are sure to pull the player closer to the screen in excitement, but each time I took the role of a filler protagonist, I just felt like rushing through to get back to the true meat of the campaign.
Even though I personally think Modern Warfare 3’s Campaign offered the most gripping plot featured in a Call of Duty title to date, there are still a few moments that seemed a bit out of place. I think anyone who played the infamous “Airport” level in Modern Warfare 2 will forever remember the powerful feelings of shock and emotion that flowed through them as they proceeded onward. It was quite gripping stuff, and Modern Warfare 3 tries it’s damnedest to top that. Unfortunately, the game spends a good portion of the time trying too hard and we see a lot of “controversial” moments that fall flat. I’m sure that many will still be entertained by what’s offered up to create a shock value, but it’s a bit obvious that Infinity Ward tried a little too hard in this area and by the end of the game, that one powerful moment just didn’t feel as special as a result.
Gameplay
If you go into Modern Warfare 3 expecting a ton of changes to the gameplay, you might be a bit disappointed as the whole experience feels exactly like it did in MW2. That’s not a bad thing at all though as this formula still feels relevant by today’s standards and even plays a bit smoother overall. The control scheme has been completely retained, with running being controlled by the left stick, turning with the right, jumping with A…you get the idea. It will all be very familiar for all CoD fans out there and those new to the series will easily be able to pick this installment up without much skill required due to the accessible nature that the franchise is famous for.
Just because the controls and actual feel of Modern Warfare 3 have stayed more of the same doesn’t mean that the game has nothing new to offer. In my opinion, some of the best moments can be found during the Campaign. Most titles in the genre (and even other CoD titles) stick to the same routine of running through a set location while taking out a wave of enemies and then doing it all over again with a new backdrop for the next mission. Modern Warfare 3 completely shatters that image though as it never stops trying to introduce new methods of gameplay while players are emerged in the story. There are still waves of enemies to fight, but each mission changes the way you go about defeating them all by offering up at least two or three gameplay variants during a stage. For instance, one of the most memorable romps has the player start out in a plane while taking down a few Russians. In just a few minutes time, something goes wrong in the cockpit and turbulence launches the player into the air, where you then must properly time shots at the said foes while floating and attempting to progress further on the aircraft in the process. After a harsh crash landing, you must then fight a wave of enemies on the ground and fight your way through turrets and heavy gunfire. Yes, it’s as exciting as it sounds, and that’s just one mission of many.
After last year’s huge success of Zumba Fitness, Majesco have now released Zumba Fitness 2 for the Nintendo Wii. As many of you know by now, this sequel improves greatly upon it’s predecessor by offering up all-new routines, hit music, customization features and 24 dance styles, which is more than any dance game has ever delivered to date.
Majesco have released an official statement, along with a new list of features players can expect to see in the game to celebrate this release:
“We’ve realized phenomenal success with our Zumba® Fitness franchise and we’re proud to answer the overwhelming demand for more by bringing a fun, high-quality interactive experience to market,” said Jesse Sutton, CEO of Majesco Entertainment.
Get Lost in the Beat – 32 electrifying new routines and contagious music tracks with international beats that now include hits from today’s hot artists: Pitbull, Nicole Scherzinger and Yolanda Be Cool & DCup.
Shake it in Style – From fan favorites like Salsa and Reggaeton to all new styles like Bollywood, Ragga, Latin Pop and Pasodoble, players can learn 24 different dance styles from all over the world. That’s more than twice the number in the original best-selling game!
Customize Your Experience – Select your favorite routine in Single Song mode, take a class designed by Beto, Gina Grant or Tanya Beardsley, or craft your own playlist in Full Class mode. You can even take it slow in Learn the Steps tutorial mode before you dive into the choreography.
Join the Party – Invite your friends to join the fun in multiplayer mode that supports up to four players.
Location, Location, Location – Dance it up in five dynamic new environments, from a Miami Yacht to a Los Angeles nightclub.
Superstar Instructors – Dance and interact with top Zumba® instructors Beto, Tanya Beardsley and Gina Grant.
Dance Hands-Free – The exclusive Zumba® Fitness belt is included inside every box so you can holster your Wii Remote™ and naturally move to the music.
Majesco Entertainment has teamed up with 24 Hour Fitness, the nation’s largest privately owned U.S. fitness club chain and a health club industry pioneer, to offer fans an exclusive promotion. Every copy of the Zumba Fitness 2 video game includes a free seven-day pass to try a live Zumba class at a 24 Hour Fitness location. In addition, 24 Hour Fitness is also featured within the video game in the dynamic rooftop environment.
You can now find Zumba Fitness 2 wherever videogames are sold at the price of just $39.99. While you ponder on snagging up your copy though, you can check out the brand new launch trailer for the game below.
Last night, copies of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary hit store shelves worldwide, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the original Xbox classic.
Dan Ayoub, executive producer of publishing had this to say about the game’s release:
As a studio, we’re incredibly thankful for the enthusiasm and support our fans have shown for this project. We know many of them have been waiting years for a remake of the original ‘Halo,’ so we’re elated to deliver a faithful remastering of the original classic that breathes new life into the legendary adventure.
Developed by 343 Industries, and partnered with Saber Interactive and Certain Affinity, the game remasters the graphical look of the original Halo campaign, as well as adding new multiplayer and cooperative features to the game, including Kinect and 3D support, and is labeled the “definitive” Halo: Combat Evolved experience.
