The cast of Soulcalibur V has seen quite a lot of chance in the 17 year time-skip since we’ve seen them in Soulcalibur IV, but they are going to see quite a lot more change with their alternate costumes. As you can see in the screenshots below a number of characters secondary outfits have been revealed today by Namco Bandai.
But more importantly they also released a fancy cinematic trailer which can be seen below. This trailer provides a small summary of the game’s storyline involving Patroklos, the son of Sophitia Alexandra. Soulcalibur V is set to be released on January 31st in North America and February 3rd in Europe.
The latest video for Square Enix’s sequel to FFXIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2, has been given a new trailer and this time around viewers are able to learn about the new gameplay aspects that the time traveling mechanic has created.
As players venture around the world they will discover mysterious gates placed in towns and the wilderness. Players can activate these portals by finding hidden Artefacts with Mog’s assistance. These gates will allow the player to then travel through time to distant locations and even the same location at different time periods. This allows the player to see just how the environment of any given area has changed in the many years that have passed, or even how it looked in the past.
Check out the video below for yourself and be ready to spend a lot of time in the world of FFXIII-2 quite shortly as the title is set to be released at the end of this month for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Atlus has spent the last few weeks teasing another game that they would be bringing over to North America from Japan, and this time around the title was a game from the much wanted Growlanser series. To be more specific the game is Growlanser: Wayfarer of Time and it is set to be released for the PSP this summer.
The official Japanese name for the game was Growlanser IV: Over Reloaded and it is a tactical RPG that was remade on the PSP last year. Unfortunately for fans of the JRPG genre, the title will only be given voices through the anime cutscenes, because Atlus apparently has had issues with the licensing restrictions of the Japanese voice track. Though why they aren’t putting the effort in to provide their own English voice track is a question that has so far gone unanswered.
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.
