2K Games have released yet another trailer for the upcoming release title, NBA 2K12. The latest trailer, titled Momentus, takes a look at the gameplay animations.
The trailer features Eminem and Royce Da 59’s song Fast Lane, and showcases both legendary and current players in what 2K Games claims is their most “realistic simulation” to date. From the trailer, the animation definitely does appear to be very impressive, and players like Olajuwon and Pierce certainly do look and move like their real life counterparts.
NBA 2K12 is slated for release on the 4th of October, 2011, and will be available on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC, and PS2. Check out the trailer below, and have a look at related coverage on the title here.
Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter is the latest release into the Neverwinter universe from Atari and Liquid Entertainment. Having played the closed beta for a few days, I’ll attempt to give you a detailed rundown of how the game works so far, and throw in a bit of opinion on the way. Any questions or comments are more than welcome, and for more of an introduction to the game check out my earlier article which you can find here.
Build your Heroes
Heroes of Neverwinter lets you build a party of four to go questing with, and all of your allies are drawn from a level specific pool of other people’s characters. They only hang around for one mission though, and then it’s back off to the pub to pick up another team! Above level one your fellow adventurers will cost you to hire, either gold or some of the games buy-able currency – Astral Diamonds. Of course this means your own characters can be off adventuring without you, and upon logging into the game you might be lucky enough to receive some gold in payment for their services. There is also a gold bonus awarded for consecutive daily log ins and levels gained.
Character creation gives you the choice of a pre-made fighter, cleric, wizard or rogue, and also the option to build from scratch. Pick class and race (Dragonborn, Eladrin, Halfling, Human)set your stats and fiddle with some limited appearance options, pick a silly/serious name of your choice and you’re ready to go. Characters can also be customised with their own motto, and along with the often entertaining names on display these, if I’m honest, usually form the basis of my party selection. I haven’t managed to remember all of my favourites, but one recurring teammate was an Eladrin Wizard going by the enticing name of ‘Skulls Will Barf’ with a motto of “Exceptional Dennis”. I got an image of someone yelling that at top of the lungs volume whilst running into battle and stuck him in my squad immediately- stats be damned.
It’s almost another layer of strategy in itself, give your character a funny or topical name/motto, get picked more, get more gold. My ‘insert generic fantasy name here’ Rogue gets far fewer recruits than Targaryen the Dragonborn fighter for example (Game of Thrones reference to those not in the know). If you happen to be online when your character is recruited you can spectate on the other players adventure, throwing in a few powers along the way. Another nice touch with the customisation is the armour and weapons. These do change in appearance when you equip different items, which gives a good level of satisfaction from acquiring them and also a nice sense of character progression.
Let the Adventures Begin?
The city of Neverwinter is the game’s hub, providing a couple of merchants, a tavern for recruiting other party members, a house for your own character, a notice board and a Dungeon Workshop, which only becomes accessible after you reach level 10. At the time of writing I haven’t reached this milestone yet due to having a bit of trouble loading the game (browser swaps and cache clearing be damned, sometimes it just doesn’t load).
The notice board forms the adventure selection screen, and has a handy link back to the tavern in case you forget to pick up your allies before heading out to slay some nasties. There is a huge amount of content on offer here – with 50 unique adventures to play through over three difficulty levels. These are managed well with the easiest a newbie/casual friendly pick up and play option and Heroic being something that requires real strategy, a bulging inventory, and a little bit of luck.
The adventures themselves all come with a specific set of requirements and rewards, and from my experience thus far are forest or dungeon set. There is a good variety to the enemies and the plots of each episode are well written and add a much needed bit of depth, as well as some overarching story. It’s a nice hook to be able to follow a chain of quests to wipe out a cult, or a band of goblins, but I couldn’t help but want a bit more from the game that Facebook just can’t allow as a platform (a good sign in some respect).
The turn based combat is solid and enjoyable, with characters having their own set of at will, once per encounter, once per adventure, and free use moves. These are built up as you level, with each one gained offering a selection of new abilities.
The actual dice based mechanics are visible when you highlight the moves, and character stats are available too, so there is definitely room for in depth play here. Characters can flank (or be flanked) for combat advantage, and ranged attacks operate by line of sight so that every movement has its significance. I definitely found myself progressing as a player as I became familiar with the system.
Loot, gold, and other expensive things…
Loot is doled out via a ‘luck of the draw’ system, where you are presented with ten face down Dungeons & Dragons cards that net you varying prizes. Pick one to reveal your choice! You get to see what you have missed out on too – I seem to have a knack for picking the smallest pile of gold available. The other big source of goodies is also an incentive for consistent play. The Chest of Wonder (that definitely begsto be said in voice over man style!) is pretty much the sole reason for your house existing, and fills with a selection of treasure every 8 hours. The quality of the loot increases with each consecutive day that the chest is emptied. There is a limit of course – once you hit five back to back empties then the quality resets back to level one. The treasure system works here exactly as it does in adventures. Aside from the daily treasure, the chest also holds onto achievement rewards and any gifts you receive from friends.
Other than gold there are two commodities in game that warrant a mention, and not for positive reasons. Both can be won but only in very small amounts, and are part of the game’s only major problem. It is something of a platform related issue, but I feel that it needs to be brought up.
Play is limited by an energy gauge, which depletes as you take on adventures which each have a specified energy cost. Depending on the adventures you choose and the treasure you find you may be able to fit in one or four missions before you either have to pay to refill the meter (using Astral Diamonds or items payed for with Astral Diamonds) or do nothing for a period to let the meter refill. Now I don’t mind waiting, it’s a Facebook game, stuff like this is to be expected. It still breaks the immersion and defeats a lot of the point of an RPG (freedom to develop the character as you please – it’s very difficult to go off farming gold and getting the best items or example), but I enjoy the game enough to look past it.
It’s the Astral Diamonds system that gets me. Astral Diamonds are the in game currency, mainly acquired by purchasing through the Facebook credit system. $1 USD will buy you 5 Facebook credits, which in turn gives you 5 Astral Diamonds. Players can use them to hire allies, purchase items (some only available with real world cash) and refill the energy bar. A Potion of Life (revive a party member) is only available if you spend 15 Astral Diamonds on it, that’s $3! Fill the energy bar? $2. People with the cash to blow on this will be able to level up faster and get the best items for no effort. It’s unfair and it’s irritating. Charge a set amount to purchase the game then give everybody the same tools – advantage via real world wealth should never be part of a game.
A strange and fantastic place The difficulty I have in describing the presentation of this game is the platform. This is Facebook, designed for sharing photos and sending messages of basic text, not for games. Saying that, Heroes of Neverwinter looks good considering the limitations of the platform. The style fits well with the Dungeons & Dragons world and character sprites are detailed and individual. In windowed mode it all looks great, but I found that playing through the adventures themselves required using the fullscreen option, and this does stretch things to the point that all detail is lost. Of course which view you use will all be down to preference, my own reasons being that in windowed mode the rest of the Facebook page amounted to far too much clutter. The sound is, for the platform, good enough, although some of character sound effects are one note and irritating when repeated ad nauseam.
Everything is clearly laid out in menus and maps, and the game holds a surprising amount of stats and has full inventory, ability and character screens. All taken into account, Heroes of Neverwinter is a well presented game that will be both accessible to newcomers and enjoyable to veterans. The actual D&D mechanics are present in such a way that they can be ignored or enjoyed, so full marks to Atari for making the game appeal to a broad spectrum.
Closing Comments
For a Facebook game Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter is nigh on brilliant. But that’s the issue here, every comment I make I want to preface with “for a Facebook game”. It’s not the platform for this, and although it does allow for a social element to play, the game is limited by the platform far more than it is helped. I admire the way the game is in it’s current form and think that aside from the awful ‘pay for content’ aspect the developers couldn’t have done much better, but I would still prefer to see this buffed up and available for download on Steam, the PSN and XBLA.
Heroes of Neverwinter is currently still in closed beta, and is due to hit the open phase around September 14. Keep an eye on Capsule Computers for word of a concrete date, and as above, feel free to leave any comments below.
Here’s a treat for all of you Aussie Resistance fans. The guys at Insomniac Games have put together a video of a survivor of the Resistance in the outback city of Alice Springs. For those who don’t know where the Alice is, it is basically located in the middle of the country, north of Uluru or Ayers Rock. This is following the announcement of an Alice Springs multiplayer map, which you can read here.
The survivor is Rex Eastley and he recounts on his terrifying experience with the Chimera. He reveals that he lost his family early in the fight and had to go alone until finding a group of people in the mountains. After months without Chimera contact, they finally find the hideout. Rex, instead of defending the hideout, he runs, mortally terrified of the threat. Such an emotional account of survival, isn’t it.
You can check it out on our channel or below. Resistance 3 launches this Thursday. Be sure to check out our review as well as some gameplay footage sometime next week.
Spring is in the air. The sun is out, the birds are singing and a cool gentle breeze sweeps in through the window. Honestly, who wants to be inside on a day like this? Thanks to Gameloft you can play a huge range of portable games outside and appreciate the glorious weather. Gameloft have reduced the price of eight games, yes, eight games, to the price of 99c for both the iPhone and the iPad. The following games are available at a discounted price for a limited time so get in quickly.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard – iPhone | iPad
Shadow Guardian – iPhone | iPad
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within – iPhone | iPad
Zombie Infection – iPhone | iPad
James Cameron’s Avatar – iPhone | iPad
Rogue Planet – iPhone
Action Pack – iPhone
Sports Pack – iPhone
Announced over the weekend at Call of Duty XP in Los Angeles, Microsoft is to launch a brand new Limited Edition Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Xbox 360 Console. The limited edition Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 themed console will include two custom wireless controllers, a 320GB hard drive and a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 complete with exclusive avatar items.
The console will also feature special Call of Duty custom sounds when the console turns on and off and when the disk tray ejects. Along with this, Microsoft will also be launching two other limited edition accessories, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Wireless Headset with Bluetooth and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 themed Wireless Controller.
The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Limited Edition Xbox 360 Console is available for pre-order now and will launch on the same day as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 on November 8.
Back in April this year in Weekly Shonen Jump Magazine, the Gintama and SKET Dance manga both featured crossover chapters with one another. It has been announced today that in what is without a doubt a rare occurence indeed, Sunrise anime studios and Tatsunoko Productions will band together to bring the crossover to the respective anime series of both Gintama and SKET Dance.
The Gintama episode airing on September 26th will feature various SKET Dance characters and the SKET Dance episode airing on September 29th will in turn feature various characters from Gintama.
It is well known that Kenta Shirohara (creator of SKET Dance) worked previously as an assistant for Hideaki Sorachi (creator of Gintama) and are both quite good friends. So this crossover came as little surprise to fans of these series. Be sure to check out the crossover episodes when they air.
What do you think of this announcement? Let us know in the comments section below.
Assy McGee Season 1 + 2 Collection Tag Line: Crime doesn’t pay, but it sure does stink! Produced by: Madman Entertainment Run time: 220 minutes in 20 episodes Language: English Genre: Comedy, Crime Release Date: 20/07/2011 Available for purchase at Madman Online Store ($29.95)
Overview:
Adult Swim programmes are not usually known for subtlety, so it comes as no surprise that Assy McGee is about as unsubtle as these types of shows come. But does subtle always equate to comedy? No. But does it mean that not being subtle equates to comedy? No. A balance is necessary when it comes to comedy. Sometimes to obvious can be funny and likewise sometimes something that is subdued can be funny. Assy McGee goes for the obvious jokes and hits all the notes you’d expect it to hit. But does Assy stink or swim?
Story:
The plot of Assy McGee is simple, yet complicated, yet unimportant, all at once. All you need to understand is that there is an ass named Assy McGee, who is a detective at the police headquarters and hes a total ass. I mean he literally is an actual ass.
Each episode runs for roughly 10 minutes or so and follows Assy as he tries to solve a case, usually against his commanders orders. How does an ass solve crime you ask? Well he mostly just walks in a shoots everyone, then gets drunk and uhh… Yeah he kinda causes more trouble than he solves. He is definitely the worst officer of the police headquarters.
Other than that, each episode is littered with the expected ass humour. Assy often farts randomly, stinks and just does what an ass does in general. A lot of the humour is based around the fact that he is an ass. Oddly none of the characters ever acknowledge that he is physically an ass, opting to instead comment on his personality as being a total ass.
For an Adult Swim cartoon, which are known for being obvious and crude, Assy McGee is definitely memorable. Mostly due to it’s complete out of left field concept. Overall it is a quite humourous ride. But ultimately, I believe it may be a little too low-brow for a lot of people. Though, if crude humour is up your alley, Assy will certainly appeal to you.
Characters:
The cast of Assy McGee consist of the titular character who as I previously mentioned is an actual ass, that solves crime. Other than Assy, the rest of the cast aren’t particularly used for humour. They mostly play the straight man to Assy and provide something for his craziness to bounce off of.
Although well concieved Assy is at the end of the day, still a stereotypical asshole detective character, no matter how original his design may be. Like Assy the rest of the cast fill stereotypical roles – the sidekick, the angry police boss, unhinged priest, etc. Thankfully they are all interesting enough to base comedy upon and therefore work in their intended way.
Artwork: Assy McGee has a very unique art-style which oozes Noir and Grunge each and every frame. The series is dark, that is for sure. The fact that they opted for this art-style adds to the gritty and often disgusting crude-ness on display. It works extremely well and provides Assy with it’s artistic centre which may appeal to some and drive others away just upon inspection.
The fact that they opted for such a unique visual-style is a credit to the creators as it would’ve been just as easy to go for a straight for animation style, which would have no where near as much heart as Assy McGee ends up having.
It’s this visual flair that makes Assy stand out from the Adult Swim crowd which consists of a lot of basic styled American animation artwork. Assy McGee however contains a memorable and easily recognisable art-style that suitably looks as funny as the show is.
Audio:
The audio on display in Assy McGee is truly brilliant. Not only does it compliment the concept and characters well but it also is damn catchy. The theme song in particular will have you humming along after a few watches. The incidental music and score in general are also well concieved and make a perfect match to the show.
The voice work was all on par, however I found Assy’s voice to be a little difficult to adapt to at first. However after you watch a couple of episodes, his speech patterns become second nature and are easy to comprehend and accept. All in all it was a commendable job by the audio department.
Special Features:
Madman didn’t manage to pack a hell of a lot of special features in here, however with a nice slip-cover packaging as well as containing two entire seasons is something to be happy about to say the least. There is certainly enough on offer here to appease anyone.
Due to the episodes being so short there is much replay value in quick bursts, thus eliminating too much need for special features to get some extra life out of this collection. I believe what we got was good enough, though something a little extra wouldn’t have hurt.
Conclusion:
In closing, Assy McGee is indeed an original series. I know I certainly haven’t seen anything like it before. It knows how to bleed every possible laugh out of the viewer as it possibly can with this concept and does so resoundingly. There may be a little too much obvious jokes on display here but it doesn’t detract overall from the experience.
This series is for sure going to be very divisive. There will be those who hate it with a passion and those who love it. Whether you love it or hate it at the end of the day, Assy McGee is wildly original and doesn’t leave a single possible joke unmade by the time the final episodes credits roll. It’s predictable, but still unpredictable enough that it ultimately is a winning formula, but it is still short of an Adult Swim classic.
Battlefield 3 will be hitting shelves late October and in anticipation of it’s release EA have uploaded a trailer for the games Physical Warfare Pack. The trailer shows off the new deadly weapons which comprise the Physical Warfare Pack.
Included are the DAO-12 semi-automatic shotgun, Type 88 Light Machine Gun, flechette ammo for the DAO-12, and a flash suppressor for the SKS sniper rifle. All of which are effectively shown in the trailer.
If you are Battlefield veteran or new to the series, it’s hard to not be swept up by the fast paced, realistic warfare on display in Battlefield 3. I for one will be hitting the battlefield’s come release date. What about you? Let us know what you think of the trailer in the comments section below.
It’s been one hell of a past few months for Gundam fans. Ever since the reveal of Gundam AGE, the fandom has been privy to huge announcement after another huge announcement and you guessed it, here is another huge announcement. The cast for the upcoming Gundam AGE anime have been revealed.
Furitto Asuno played by Toshiyuki Toyonaga known for Ryuugamine in Durarara!!
Emily Amondo played by Aya Endo known for Cruz in Needless.
Dike Ganheiru played by Kouki Miyata known for Chojuro in Naruto Shippuden.
Guruudekku Einoa played by Hiroki Touchi known for Lasse Aeon in Gundam 00.
Wolf Eniakuru played by Daisuke Ono known for Sebastion in Black Butler.
Narration by Kazuhiko Inoue known for Kakashi in Naruto.
With such an amazing cast compiled for Gundam AGE, the series is shaping up to be potentially the best Gundam series yet. Only time will tell once October 9th rolls around. Leave a comment below letting us know what you think of this cast.
It’s been a huge past couple of months for the Hunter x Hunter series. Not only has the manga returned to it’s rightful place in Weekly Jump after hiatus (this time supposedly returning for good), but a new reboot anime series was announced with a premiere date of October 2nd, 2011 on NTV.
Today several new details have been revealed surrounding the upcoming adaptation of Yoshihiro Togashi’s epic manga. It has been confirmed that the series has so far been slated for 45+ episodes, however NTV says that is tentative. Which clearly means that the series will be long-running but it’s nearly impossible to place an exact episode count to the entire series run. So thus far 45 episodes is a given, which should bring the series to the end of the Heavens Arena arc.
Along-side that news, it has been confirmed that Toshio Furukawa, known for his roles as Piccolo on Dragonball Z and Portgas D. Ace on One Piece, will voice Hunter examiner Satotz (who guides the examinees in the Hunter Exam arc through the first phase). It seems the cast will be comprised of both veterans such as Furukawa and new talent such as Ban (who is voicing Gon Freeccs).
But wait that is not all, details of the structure of the adaptation have also been announced. In particular it has been revealed that Kite, the Hunter who inspires Gon to become a Hunter in chapter 1 of the Manga shall not appear until later on in the anime, in order to lessen the gap between his first appearance and reappearance during the Chimera Ants arc.
This wouldn’t be the first time a backstory character such as this has been revealed later on in an anime in comparison to the manga. Take One Piece for example, it took several episodes before the original chapter of the manga was adapted as an episode revealing Red-Haired Shanks as having inspired Luffy much like Gon is inspired by Kite.
Another change is that the level of gore seen in the manga will be lessened. Gore will still be present, but will be lightened, to accomodate to the child demographic of the air-time on sunday mornings. Also the character of Hisoka shall have his perverted side lessened, making his excitement more regarding the thrill of fighting then a sexual desire as is sometimes referenced in the manga.
Other than that, the series is set to follow the manga to a tee. For the first episode I personally predict that they will show Gon leaving Whale Island and meeting allies Kurapika and Leorio on the boat to the exam island. However that is still unknown as of this point.
What do you think of this news? Leave a comment below letting us know!
