One of the most entertaining platformers of this generation has finally reached the shores of Australia and New Zealand. Rayman Origins sees a return to fine 2D form for the limbless wonder and his pals, and has been picking up fantastic reviews all round. In case you’ve missed all the coverage, the game supports both single player and up to four player co-op, has delicious hand drawn artwork and some of the best platforming around.
Fans of the original PlayStation title will have a ball with it too, as Origins is packed full of the character and ideas that helped launch Rayman all the way back in 1995. It’s 2D and cartoon style gaming at it’s finest, so make sure and check it out.
Players of Gears of War 3 will be pleased to know that the “Versus Booster Map Pack” is now free to download on Xbox Live. The DLC map pack features five multiplayer maps including Bullet Marsh and Clocktower along with Azura, Rustlung and Blood Drive which were previously available in the paid “Horde Command Pack.”
Epic Games have also teamed up with Paramount Pictures’ Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol to deliver an “Impossible Mission” for Gears players which will unlock exclusive “Ghost Protocol” weapon skins for the Lancer, Hammerburst, Retro Lancer, Gnasher Shotgun and Sawed-off Shotgun. Players need to watch the Mission: Impossible trailer on Xbox Live and complete the game’s campaign on insane difficulty to unlock these weapon skins. If you’ve already beaten the game on the hardest difficultly then don’t worry, you’ll automatically receive the weapon skin on 31st December.
So if your playing Gears of War 3 go ahead and download the “Versus Booster Map Pack” – Remember it’s free
System 3 has announced that classic gaming character Putty will be gracing the launch of the PS Vita through a re-imagining of popular Amiga game Putty Squad.
Next year not only marks System 3’s 30th anniversary but the 20th birthday of Putty Squad itself, so the celebrations are kicking off in style. The game’s scheduled for a Q1 2012 release and is planned to launch alongside the PlayStation Vita’s European launch.
Every background, bitmap, enemy and ally has been redrawn and re-rendered to take advantage of the VITA’s new display, and many features of make use of the handheld’s innovative new features. For example, it will feature multiplayer game-share, meaning only one person needs a copy of the game in order for their friends to be able to experience a small part of what Putty Squad has to offer.
Red vs. Blue: Season Nine Studio: Rooster Teeth Publisher: Siren Visual Release Date: November 15, 2011 – Available Here
Overview:
Red vs. Blue is the poster child of Internet success stories, owing to its creative use of the emerging machinima medium and its snappy writing. Over the years though, it’s drifted away from half of that equation – the writing is as funny and clever as ever, but as more traditional animation methods are employed to present these stories, some of the charm that permeated the original Blood Gulch Chronicles is missing from the latest instalment.
The transition has been gradual over the last few seasons, but season nine is where the change is most pronounced. The divide is right down the middle: half is done in machinima, using the Halo: Reach engine to tell the story of Church and Tex in the capture unit’s virtual world, after the events of season eight. The other half is entirely CGI animation, and acts as a prequel to the whole series, detailing Project Freelancer and the creation of the AI units.
But for all the flashiness and epic scale of the animated prequel, in the end the simpler character story, the classic machinima charm and the parallels to the Blood Gulch saga, make the sequel story the stronger aspect of the season.
Story:
As Rooster Teeth’s popularity exploded, their visuals followed suit, and the capacity for telling stories grew proportionately. They could do things they never could with straight-up machinima, but it’s always grounded in the same style.
As I’ve already mentioned, season nine’s story is divided into two parts. The Church story has him arrive in a familiar Red base/Blue base setup, but things are a little off with the Red team. Donut’s in charge, Sarge is a good listener, and Grif is productive and efficient.
The Red vs. Blue turf war is more pointless than ever, as the land is rocked by a series of strange earthquakes, and Church tries to find Tex to figure out what they need to do in this virtual world.
Meanwhile (well, many years earlier), the agents of Project Freelancer undertake various missions of espionage, beat up countless faceless soldiers, and all sorts of spy clichés. It feels more like an excuse to show off the awesome new animation, with hand-to-hand fights, car chases and ‘splosions aplenty. Don’t get me wrong, it all looks really good, but it feels somewhat shallow. Personally, I kinda got sick of the whole AI story seasons ago, but I can see the need for a larger narrative context for the hapless soldiers to battle and bicker in.
Cut together, the two stories complement each other fairly well, with their different tones and styles of animation. The Freelancer bits are almost non-stop action, done seriously with a light sprinkling of humour. The machinima bits are the exact opposite.
All up, it’s an exciting and satisfying package (bow chika wow wow) that paves the way for an intriguing tenth season.
Visuals & Audio:
I might have been a bit hard on the prequel story, but I need to stress how incredible it looks. Even when they aren’t doing fly kicks and cartwheels, the characters have more fluid movement and feel more natural, thanks to the motion-capture tech.
But obviously, the highlights are the massive and exciting action sequences, far beyond what’s seen in previous seasons. They couldn’t really do fifty-person brawls before, or car chases, or dynamic gunfights. Now that they can, it may be slightly overdone, but it’s executed well enough to distract you from caring.
It’s “shot” and edited in a more cinematic fashion, and surprisingly well done. Particularly noteworthy is the epic highway scene, as the camera spins around to keep up with the action across several vehicles without cutting. It would be an impressive scene in any medium, and serves to highlight how far the series, and the team, have progressed over the years.
That’s not to discount the look of the concurrent machinima scenes though. By its nature it’s more rigid, but much of the appeal is in the creativity employed to overcome the style’s limitations. That, and the fantastic characters we’ve grown to love. They help.
While the sound in the first few seasons was quite rough, it has improved to studio quality, and the addition of professional actors to provide the voices of other characters was a wise decision. The voices of the Director and the Counsellor are particularly distinct.
Music-wise, Trocadero’s mark is still present, particularly in the machinima sections. Project Freelancer seems to have its own musical style, with varying success.
Extras:
Continuing Rooster Teeth’s tradition of generosity with bonus features, season nine includes a metric ton of special videos, deleted scenes, outtakes and behind the scenes stuff. There’s even a second disc containing a six-part Grifball saga, but I suspect that different members of the team worked on that: it lacks the humour and polish of everything else.
That one little stumble aside, the rest of the extras complement the main feature quite well. The special videos, including some PSAs, are fantastic, bite-sized samples of the main series’ wit. If ever you’re trying to show someone RvB for the first time, these PSAs are a perfect place to start. In particular, the Halo: Reach campaign montage, dubbed with Caboose’s voice, is utter hilarity.
If you’re interested in how it all comes together – and you really should be, it’s fascinating stuff – there’s a lot of behind the scenes features to clue you in. It details how character and environment assets from the Halo: Reach engine are used in CGI animation, as well as the more traditional live-action filmmaking techniques used in machinima.
Overall:
The series has grown healthily through the years, and season nine is by far the biggest, but I’m reluctant to call it the best. It’s the imperfections of machinima, and how these can be overcome, that make it such an interesting medium. Moving further into plain old animation may make it look better, but some of the magic is sacrificed in the process.
Earlier today we saw the English trailer for NIS America’s soon to be released sequel to Hyperdimension Neptunia. Now we actually have a full release date for the title. It was originally rumored to be released sometime very early in 2012 and it seems that it still will be falling within that time slot as the current release date for Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 is some point in February 2012.
Besides the release date, NIS America also released a ton of new English screenshots which cover not only the new characters we will be seeing like Nepgear, Neptune’s younger sister, a whole slew of returning characters such as Compa and IF, but a bunch of changes that have been made to the title including a free roaming battlefield system and much more.
Ever wanted to play conceptually brilliant games that take innovation to a new level, while at the same time being able to choose how much you pay for the game and how it will be distributed amongst developers and other parties, then look no further. Humble games have announced the Introversion pack, that comes with 4 games, 2 prototypes and the chance to unlock 2 further games by paying a tiny bit over the average. Oh and just to add a cherry to the top, you also can choose to donate part or all of your payment to charity.
Included in the Introversion pack is something for every aspiring warlord and cyber criminal as you take on roles ranging from an international hacker in “Uplink”, through to DEFCON master, waging war on all those who oppose you. Also included in the pack is Darwinia, the award wining arcade strategy set in a virtual world and its multiplayer companion, Multiwinia, allowing up to 4 players to compete.
Check out the trailer to get an idea of what these marvels entail and if you also want to add Aquaria and Crayon Physics deluxe to your arsenal, be sure to give a little more than the average bear when paying for your games. Any to anyone who wants to know, the average price for these DRM free games on Windows is a paltry $3.25 so excuse for not helping out a studio that has raised over 2.5 million dollars so far.
NIS America knows that fans can’t wait to see more about their sequel to last year’s video game world referencing video game, and now they have released a new trailer for Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 to satisfy curious minds. Now the first title, for those who don’t know, imagined characters based loosely around the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and the Wii as they competed with one another until a terrible threat to them all forced them to work together.
Now this sequel offers more than a few changes to the original, and all appear to be for the better. The battle system will offer free roaming of the battlefield, characters are more customizable and fighting is more streamlined. Also it appears the characters can now have more “personal” interactions from the looks of it. NIS America is aiming to release Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 early next year, but until then see if you can recognize any of the mascots shown in the trailer below.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is something of a sleeper title at the moment, but it certainly shouldn’t be. From what I’ve seen of the title already it appears to have the scope of an older Elder Scrolls title combined with the fighting style of Fable. You will see what I mean when you see the video that was released today for the combat of the title.
The developers themselves provide a bit of a walkthrough on how various skills and abilities can be put together to create devastating chain attacks. Of course combat also revolves around the fate mechanic which is being pushed heavily for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. We’ll be seeing much more of this title in the months to come as it is scheduled for release sometime early 2012.
While we may not know yet as to how Lightning got to where she is now in Final Fantasy XIII-2, it is quite obvious she is an important person there. Square Enix has released a two minute video where we are treated to quite an epic looking battle that takes place in Valhalla. In the video it appears that Caius, the bad guy, is invading Valhalla with an unknown force of soldiers.
It also appears that this guy has powers to outdo even the final bosses of Final Fantasy XIII. Also, those wager to see the quality of FFXIII-2’s CG work should be happy to see that it is still top notch. Final Fantasy XIII-2 will land in Japan on December 15th while those in North America have to wait until January 31st to tackle the next Final Fantasy tale.
The Black Eyed Peas Experience Developer: iNiS Publisher: Ubisoft Platform: Xbox 360 Kinect (Wii) Release Date: 11th November Available Here
Overview:
This time last year Michael Jackson: The Experience made it onto Wii, before Kinect was later supplied with a version in April 2011. Now The Black Eyed Peas are giving you an experience with them. I must admit, initially I was a bit sceptical about the whole thing. I’m not questioning The Black Eyed Peas’ popularity as most artists would come out second best when compared to Michael Jackson, but he’s a tough act to follow and on paper it appeared to simply be a move to make a quick profit. I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a decent dance game, then.
The BEP are big; Where Is The Love topped the charts in many different territories worldwide and announced their arrival to the music scene, and they have since moved with the times musically, following the trends and producing a much more ‘dance’ sound. This new sound works in their favour, though, as the new tracks are more suited to dancing to. That’s not to say there isn’t any of their older material on the game, though. In fact, scrolling through the setlist of 28 songs and seeing all the album art, you realise just how many records The Black Eyed Peas have released over the time they’ve been active, with songs from older albums like ‘Elephunk’ and ‘Monkey Business’ as well as their latest album ‘The Beginning’.
Gameplay:
Of course, gameplay is made up almost entirely of dancing, with Kinect tracking the movements of your arms and legs and your body position to see how well you are following the moves. Your execution of each the dance move is judged with ratings of almost, good, great or incredible, with your final standings represented with a exam-style grade: ‘C’ or above is classed as a pass. The two modes are ‘dance party’, catering to your instant action needs if you’re playing with friends, or the more progress orientated ‘deluxe experience’ in which the grades you get have more weight, as a C or above will mean clearing the stage/song so that you can move on.
Depending on the mode you’re playing, your onscreen guides will either be the Black Eyed Peas themselves, or a set of backing dancers while you learn the routines before the main performance. Whoever your main guides, your in-game avatar will be standing onscreen facing them from the same perspective as you facing your Kinect. There’s also usually plenty of other dancers dancing away in the background to give the locations some added activity. All this contributes to a feeling that you are in a Black Eyed Peas music video, almost as the choreographer standing out of view and facing the group, except from the fact that you are following their moves, not the other way around.
The deluxe experience mode has a wonderful way of teaching you the dance moves; before you perform the main routine for each song, it makes you work through three steps. Each step contains three dance moves, making for a total of nine different moves in the real thing, where they are thrown together in a order you won’t have come across. By forcing you to work your way through these practices it simplifies the final routines and you end up doing them far more accurately than you would if you jumped in without preparing. You actually feel like you are learning the dance moves and doing the choreography correctly, an aspect that most other dance games overlook with the exception of the Dance Central games.
Satisfying clinking sounds and glinting visual cues accompany the tracking and scoring of each dance move, but success is also measured in another way. Well-executed moves earn followers, and the deciding factor on whether you pass a song or not is whether you have reached the required amount of followers by the end. Your rewards outside the song are also based around the amount of followers, because as the number continues to grow you upgrade and unlock venues, and unlock new clothing to dress your character in.
Multiplayer allows a second player to enter the fray with ease, simply by stepping in and being given their own character. It is also here that the singing sections of the game come into play, although the game can be enjoyed very well without them and they are best ignored. Those looking for a karaoke game should go elsewhere, as The Black Eyed Peas Experience is better for just dancing. In addition, you can create your own choreography in a dedicated creation mode which encourages you to share routines with friends, although it manages to simplify it to the point where you can’t achieve the effect you want, while still overcomplicating it so that the compromise isn’t exactly easy either.
Visuals:
The graphics manage to convey the likenesses of each member of the group, capturing some of their personality in the movements. Much of the choreography is recognisable from its appearances in music videos, as it’s all moves from one of The Black Eyed Peas’ choreographers. However, although ultimately it doesn’t have a major bearing on the gameplay, there are only four stages meaning repetition becomes apparent even very early on. You can edit your character’s appearance to mix things up, but this is rather pointless as you spend most of your time looking at The Black Eyed Peas dancing as you follow their motions, and their outfits only change between each of the four levels but otherwise remain the same.
Overall:
The Black Eyed Peas Experience left me with a sweaty back and a new-found love for The Black Eyed Peas. The structure in place ensures you learn the moves, ultimately allowing you to have more fun as you will be doing them correctly. Occasionally you can feel it’s a bit lax with the movement tracking, although it’s never anything serious. Repetition threatens to affect the ‘Experience’ you’ll have with The Black Eyed Peas, and the selection of 28 songs can be stretched a little thin after a while, but if you consider every last one of the tracks comes from the same group then the variety they’ve managed to achieve is something quite special. It lets you fully appreciate the groups versatility and prompts the conclusion that they do deserve their own game. Even if they aren’t as legendary as the King of Pop. It may not be the complete package, but I Gotta Feeling that for neutrals and for those who love The Black Eyed Peas, it’s a top-notch dancing game.
