Tokyo Game Show kicked off yesterday and of course there were tons of trailers for different PlayStation Vita games but none of those games had a more stylized look than Gravity Daze. As you can see in the trailer released today, Gravity Daze is an extremely unique looking title that is being created by Siren’s Keeichiro Sotoyama.
Also released was a video of Siren creator Keiichiro Sotoyama doing a small playthrough of the game and showing off a number of the titles features. Plus it is subtitled in English so we’ll actually know what is going on! This game was first shown off back when the PlayStation Vita was revealed and was actually the title I was most interested in during the announcement. Let’s hope that this game makes it overseas to the West as its unique look is certainly a welcome sight.
What a great day. Tokyo Game Show 2011 is now under way. Day one is out of the way, I got to say that this year TGS does look a little empty compared to last year in terms booths. Anyway, check out Day 1 Pics from the show. Focus today went to all the booths and of course the amazing booth babes that always seem to impress each and every year.
Let us know what booth you liked the most and also who the best dressed booth babe is at the show. (I say the Alien Ware Babes are probably one of the best we’ve had in a while)
Anyway enjoy the pics. (remember there is mulitple pics per page)
Jewel Link Chronicles: Legend of Athena
Developer: Cerasus Media
Publisher: Avanquest Software
Platform: Nintendo DS
Genre: Puzzle
Released: Out Now
The match-3 genre experienced a real surge a few years back when ‘Bejeweled’ hit the scene in which you had to slide adjacent gems to form lines of three or more. The genre has since had countless imitations of this, as well as plenty of other games giving their own take on the match-3 area of the puzzle genre, but don’t be fooled by the name Jewel Link Chronicles: Legend of Athena which, admittedly, sounds like it’s another by-the-books copy of Bejeweled. Although it’s similar in that it’s still match-3 meaning it will always bear huge likenesses, it actually has enough differences to set it aside from others of its kind. Plus, you don’t move jewels anyway. You move fish, olives and grapes.
The reason Jewel Link Chronicles: Legend of Athena is different is that it features a curious combination of genres; it gives an incentive to your symbol-matching in the form of a RTS-like (real-time strategy) civilisation builder. As you slide the tiles together to destroy sets of three or more through the 100 levels, you earn various points which can then be used against new buildings and features for you settlement. These earnings correspond to the symbols in-game as well; matching a group of olives, fish and the like will give you bonus points of ‘nourishment’ to spend; sets of coins or rings will earn you a cash bonus, adding to your stocks of ‘gold’; or lining up groups of timber and other resources will add to your value for ‘construction materials’.
Once you’ve accumulated enough points in the necessary areas and meet the build criteria, you can add these new features to your settlement and watch it grow. That is, provided you have completed the level to unlock the next patch of land for building, because a set number of levels unlocks the next building allotment. There’s no doubt that this civilisation builder extension gives more depth to the game and livens it up beyond just a trawl through a set of 100 puzzles, but it is very limited. For the DS it’s more than sufficient, but that’s just to say that it is primitively basic, with specific developments assigned to each plot of land – you simply have to earn enough of each resource to construct each of them individually.
You will see your settlement through 5 dynasties, and you will see the changes depending on the era your ancient Greek civilisation is currently in. It’s well presented for the DS in this sense, as your city has a charm and character as you watch in grow and facilitate your people (which you never get to see) with new instalments to improve their quality of life, from fields for farming, to town halls and markets. There are minor tagged on extras with respect to the building aspect of the game, such as in one instance where you have to slide panels to piece together the blueprints of a building project, although, fortunately, you are given the option of skipping them with no consequences, which most will feel compelled to do given they seem to have been added a side-idea/afterthought.
However, even with all this talk of the building options, the main part of the game is the match-3 puzzles. A variety is achieved in what would have otherwise been a mundane task by the use of different objectives and different shaped grids. Objectives range from destroying a certain number of combos, eliminating panels of a certain colour, unlocking chained up pieces, and guiding a ball to the bottom of the grid by clearing a path for it. The grids, on the other hand, are always different shapes and sizes. As you progress through the game, the levels become progressively harder with grids which isolate certain pieces and give you less space, making it more difficult to execute lines of three or more.
A time limit ensures you never get too comfortable, but isn’t overly constricting as more time is added for each combo. Finishing combo after combo can also amount to in-game power-ups to help you clear the grid quicker, such as blasts which destroy everything in the vicinity. Other grids have abilities taking up squares which help clear the grid when they are activated when involved at the start or the end of a nearby combo. On top of the main story, there’s ‘Relax mode’ which is just a quickplay mode, allowing you to go back and re-do any puzzles you’ve already completed, and subsequently unlocked, in the main mode.
Overall, Jewel Link Chronicles: Legend of Athena offers an interesting combination through its use of a ancient Greek city builder teamed with match-3 puzzler, but for some reason it works and makes the puzzling sections more satisfying as there’s a rewarded after accumulating a set number of points. The graphics allow your settlement to take shape nicely, and gameplay is a decent enough example of match-3. With a reduced price point as well, the 100 puzzles and additional 15 bonus levels are worth a go if you enjoy simple puzzlers.
It is always a good thing when a game does well. No matter how some people may bash a game, when a game sells well good things happen for not only the fans but also the developers of that game. With its very hyped marketing campaign, we have been interested to see exactly how well Dead Island has done as far as sales go, and it seems that things have been going quite well.
Dead Island publisher Deep Silver has just released a few numbers for the game, including one that says that the game has shipped out one million copies to the United States alone and they are expecting to have sold two million copies by the end of the second week on shelves.
Geoff Mulligan, Chief Operating Officer at Deep Silver, stated in a press release that “the critical ‘first week’ of game sales has been an enormous sales success for Deep Silver. We’re working quickly with our distribution partner in North America, Square Enix, to restock shelves as quickly as we can.” When your game is literally flying off of shelves and has to restocked quickly, its a good sign.
Since the Playstation Vita’s announcement and pricing plans were revealed, it seemed as though this system would have no equal, and that it would roll over its competitor and might even take a nice stab at mobile gaming. However, at TGS 2011, two announcements were made that made this system much less desirable. First off, it was revealed that although “some software titles are capable of saving [saved data] on to the PS Vita card itself,” other “PS Vita software titles may require the use of separately sold memory card.” These seperately sold cards will NOT be universal though, unlike what the PSP used. Yes, no SD or Memory stick cards will fit in the PS Vita. To save games, buy PSN content or full games from the Playstation Store, you will need a special memory card, costing anywhere from $29 to $124 for a 4, 8, 16, or 32 GB card.
Secondly, the battery life on the system is expected to last for about 3-5 hours in game mode, with slighly longer times if video and other features are used, and if only default settings are used. Default means that Bluetooth is turned off, headphones are used instead of speakers, the “default setting” is used for screen brightness, and there is no “network” use in games. Making matters worse, Sony will charge $36 dollars for a docking station, unlike Nintendo who started packing a docking station into new 3DS packages to combat the short battery life of its system. You’ll have to use the packed in cable for your Vita’s charging needs, unless you shell out even more dough.
What do you think? Will the system be a boom or a bust based on these revelations?
While I may have loved Dead Island for what it was, an open world zombie survival game that is extremely enjoyable, it also had a number of bugs. These bugs were meant to be addressed in a day one patch by Techland, however that patch still hasn’t been available over a week after release.
Well if you own the Xbox 360 version of the game, you can download the patch right now which will include “improvements to matchmaking, AI, quest and escort fixes, visual glitch fixes and a ton more.” This announcement came via Dead Island’s twitter, where they also said that Dead Island fans on the PlayStation 3 and PC are going to have to wait just a little bit longer, but the patch for their versions of the game is on the way.
The development team behind the BlazBlue fighting game series, Arc System Works, have been rumored to be creating a Persona based fighting game. The gaming magazine Famitsu also confirmed that this would be happening. However, at TGS 2011, 10 minutes of video was recorded of the game, and it IS actually as insanely bizarre as you would have thought.
If you want to take a look at the video, you’ll have to go the Japanese video sharing site Niconico. Keep in mind that this video is rather mature and therefore NSFW. The link to the video is here.
Capcom is in a frenzy at this years Tokyo Game Show. In addition to releasing a hilarious Street Fighter X Tekken trailer set in a bar (which you can see and read about if you click here) they released 3 other videos detailing other characters and the story that is present in the game. A box named Pandora has fallen from the sky, enabling new game features in addition to providing a story to the game.
Farting bears, fighting men, girls, and more are also included in the game. Which matchup are you most excited to try out?
The absolute highlight of my day at Tokyo Game Show 2011 was spending the time with the coolest dudes on the planet Brent Poynton (right) and Travis Ryan (left) from RARE.
Travis and Brent were kind enough to run us through the latest two modes revealed in Kinect Sports 2: Skiing and Baseball. Skiing has you taking on the mountain and manouvering your way between the flags so that you don’t receive time penalties, along the way down you can launch yourself off little jump ramps and while doing that you can perform special posses that give you star points that count towards your final score. I must admit on my attempt going down the mountain against another journalist, I failed misserably and got beat pretty bad, but my pose jumps were cooler. The trick to it is keep down as low as possible to gain the speed you need race through the circut, but making sure you skii between the flags.
At the end of each event you also get to see how much calories you’ve burnt wile playing also a cool little feature that if memory serves me correctly works with the style points and score you earn in the game, building a group of fans that love your every move making you that superstar you’ve always wanted to be.
Moving on to baseball Travis and Brent went through a few features in the game. The person batting can perform a number of differnt batting styles, like big swing hits for home runs, small taps that will drop the ball right at their feet making the run to first base that little bit easier. Running to the bases is performed by the player batting, you also have the option to slide into the base which can be done quite easily with the Kinect.
Pitching has you selecting either a left or right hand. Then you can throw a variety of differnt styles of pitches, from curve balls, speed balls, under-arm pitches that can be used to trick the batter and making them swing and miss. There is also one extra option in the game that allows you call upon your superstar pitcher or batter, that person will carry a or throw a “Golden Ball” or use a  “Golden Bat” that will give that player an advantage in that play.
Finally Travis and Bren briefly ran us through another mode called challenge mode, where you can take on a friend in your friends list to a mini style game, such as downhill dodge, eagle falls, pop darts to name a few. The challenge is quite simple the person who wishes to challenge the other player goes first and attempts to go for the highest score possible in that chosen challenge. Once they are done, the score is sent over to the other person and then once they log back into the game they will see a message saying that they’ve been challenged and then if they want attempt to beat  their score. Doing so will earn you braging rights and a big head and will probably make your friend over live a little mad but hey… they started it, so they can get over it 😉
Keep an eye out for Kinect Sports 2, its set for release end of September. MasterAbbott gives it a two thumbs up !!
Although Microsoft and the Xbox 360 have faced a rough market in Japan, they are still trying to capture the hearts of consumers there.
According to Major Nelson, “TGS is also about marking the Xbox commitment to Japan, which is home to some of the most legendary games creators in our industry. One of the most important aspects of the Xbox business in Japan is the relationship with our third party development houses…”
At TGS 2011, Microsoft announced quite a few newsworthy items that dealt with the Japanese market:
-A new title from Toylogic, a Japanese developer, is coming to the XBLA. It is entitled ‘Happy Wars.’ At TGS 2010, there were 5 other games from Japanese creators revealed.
-Microsoft will have a “demo of Project Draco from Grounding” that will be shown to the media.
-“Diabolical Pitch (announced at TGS 2010 as codename D) from Grasshopper Manufacture, and Haunt from NanaOn-Sha” will both be playable during the show at the Xbox booth, with Diabolical Pitch set to release in 2012 on the XBLA.
