If you will be attending PAX Prime this year then you should probably swing by Square Enix’s booth, which is number 3646. They will be showing off a number of their upcoming titles and have them playable for those in attendance. Such titles include Dead Island which will be released in a couple of weeks, Deus Ex: Human Revolution which will be released tomorrow, Wakfu, Heroes of Ruin and Final Fantasy XIII-2.
But beyond the games that will be playable at their booth, Square Enix is going to be holding a special panel on August 27th at 7PM. At this panel Square Enix and Airtight Games will be revealing a brand new project that has not been spoken of outside of the companies. The title was described by Square Enix as “incredibly fascinating and quirky.” Curiouser and curiouser.
Going to PAX Prime this weekend? Then you should definitely swing by the Bethesda Softworks booth, booth #1314. Why? Because then you may be able to get past the lines of people who will be standing there to get their hands on one of the few first times that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be playable to the public.
Of course there is more there than that. You can also attend a special presentation of Prey 2 which will happen every hour on the hour, as well as get some time to play RAGE which releases in just over a month. Of course if you want to attend a special presentation of Skyrim instead of simply playing it yourself, you can go to the Unicorn Theater on Saturday August 27th at 3:30PM.
There you will be able to watch Todd Howard, game director of Skyrim perform a special presentation of the game. Seating is limited and those who attend will get a special ticket where they will be able to redeem at the Betheseda booth which will net them a cool Skyrim plush helmet that you can see below.
In yet another reveal from the Official Xbox Magazine today, it seems that Peter Molyneux and the folks at Lionhead have been working on another title pertaining to the Fable franchise besides their “not on rails” rail shooter Fable: The Journey. CVG reports that the magazine says “Look for the Fable cycle to continue with a proper, controller-based Fable IV in 2013.”
With two years still in development, and not even an official announcement yet this can still best be seen as speculation, but honestly it is the best move that Lionhead can take considering the disappointment many are already feeling with Fable: The Journey. Or what about Milo?
The Official Xbox Magazine’s next issue has an interview with Gearbox Software, and in it the company just happened to mention that they are going to be aiming for a Duke Nukem reboot soon. However before they worry about that, they want to make sure that they can create as good of a game as possible with the Aliens: Colonial Marines title.
The first title will be called Duke Begins reports CVG, which was the game that Gearbox was initially working on before they were given the pinnacle of delayed games, Duke Nukem Forever, to work with. No other details were given at this time but it confirms one thing, Duke Nukem is far from being dead my friends.
Despite The Third Birthday and Parasite Eve I being released much earlier this year, things have been quiet regarding the second game of the franchise. Sure it was announced that there would be a release of Parasite Eve II on the PSN sometime in the future, but there never was a date given nor a reason why it was taking an excess amount of time.
Well, there still is no reason, but those who have been waiting for the game to grace the PlayStation Network with its presence should be happy to know that Parasite Eve II will be released this week on the PSN for $5.99. Parasite Eve II takes place three years after the first game and contains a number of gameplay changes from the original title, though fans of the first game would be doing themselves a disservice to miss out on this one.
Though E3 can sometimes be called one of the biggest gaming events in the West, it certainly can’t be called the most attended event anymore. Hell, with this new record even the Tokyo Game Show hosts may have to push a little harder to reach new attendance highs. This news comes out of Gamescom themselves as they broke a record of 275,000 attending the event in Cologne, Germany this past week.
The event had a total of 557 exhibitors from 39 different countries, with many of them showing off multiple titles which brought the total number of games shown to over 300. Besides the 275,000 in attendance, 5,000 of them were members of the press and Gamescom 2012 has been given a start date of August 15th to the 19th.
You can check out all of our Gamescom 2011 coverage over the weekend here.
I don’t know about you guys, but ever since E3 I’ve been really looking forward to finally getting my hands on Ronimo Games’ Awesomenauts! Coming to Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network later this year, Awesomenauts is an awesome-looking 2D sidescrolling MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game that appears to play like Metal Slug with Tower & Defence elements, with a very 80s Saturday morning cartoon style to it. As of today, Ronimo Games have released the trailer they debuted at Gamescom via their Youtube channel for the world to see, which you can below! Further more a walkthrough of the game in action can be seen here, thanks to game2gether. The game is really shaping up to be a really exciting title by the looks of things! In fact, I suppose you could even go as far to say that Awesomenauts is looking well, awesome!
The Asskickers
Platform: PC (reviewed), Mac Publisher: AGO Games Developer: AGO Games Release Date: 30 June 2011 Price: $4.99
Overview:
The Asskickers is the first title to come from indie developer AGO games, and is meant to ape the styles of classic beat ‘em ups like Streets of Rage and Double Dragon. There are three modes on offer; a six levelled story, survival and time attack. Both the story and survival modes can also be played via local co-op.
‘The Asskickers’ is a brave name for a first release, and had me expecting a lot of tongue in cheek attitude and fun beat ’em up action. What I actually got began as follows:
Create a profile didn’t allow text entry or to exit the menu. Restart game. Select a profile works but I cannot progress past character selection. Restart game. Create a profile – it works! But the game crashes after character selection. Restart game. It does it again.
At this point I am more than ready to beat something up. Perhaps this is the idea. Satisfied that the bugginess is just an elaborate trick to increase my enjoyment of the game, I promise to forgive the Asskickers this opening salvo if the gameplay holds up.
Story:
The Asskickers does go in for a bit of anti establishment attitude, with an introduction describing a corporation ruled mega state where the police are privately owned and the politicians corrupt. The action kicks off with a confrontation between your character and a pink-shirted idiot who turns out to be the son of the current world leader. The police pay no attention to your regular Joe, immediately smacking you on the head and throwing you in jail. The goal is escape, and kick ass. Simple.
It’s a nice idea to try and tack a bit of social commentary onto a beat ‘em up, but sadly it’s just not pulled off. The writing is dull, unfunny and skippable, and the opening text even has a few basic errors (thespacebarwasobviouslybroken).
Admittedly plot and setting aren’t what beat ‘em ups are all about, so the poor writing can be forgiven – as long as the gameplay holds up!
Gameplay:
The gameplay, it turns out, does not hold up.
The three characters on offer are pretty standard fare. There’s the tough girl who’s quick but weak, the balanced good looking guy, and the bulky tight t-shirt wearing muscle heap (a ringer for Stephen Lang’s bad guy in Avatar). They have a few funny lines between them, but don’t really register as individual characters.
There is no character progression and without much personality on offer your choice is really down to your play style – or it should be. I usually go for quick characters but the difficulty is so badly designed it’s almost impossible to get anywhere past level two unless you pick the bruiser, and this is on easy.
The enemies are equally lacking in any charm, with riot police, frat boys and incredibly annoying drop kicking women forming up the bulk of the onslaught. They have a habit of walking off screen where you can’t hit them but they can hit you, and occasionally get stuck there so that you can’t progress any further.
Bosses are bosses because they have big health bars, but do provide a bit of a WTF diversion from the rest of the game when at the end of the fight you bend them over and spank them (!). It’s a tiny shred of personality, but it’s stuck in a big heap of frustration and boredom.
Enemies can only be hit when you are perfectly lined up with them, and when you are, you can’t block their attacks. The lack of blocking reduces the gameplay to lining up and button mashing, which would be all well and good if the game actually detected half of your key presses.
And it’s the detection that is the biggest nail in the coffin. I can live with having to be precise, and can almost deal with the lack of blocking, but when the game ignores half of your input and the majority of the rest misses anyway, it’s really difficult to want to keep going.
Another part of the game that deserves some special attention are the pick ups, somewhat ironically named given that half the time you can’t actually pick them up. See that health restoring burger? The one that’ll stop you from having to replay the entire level right from the beginning? You can’t have it. You can dance around it spamming the use button all you like, but that little burger is actually super glued to the ground in an elaborate ploy to raise your aggression levels, thus making you more likely to keep beating stuff up (that’s what I told myself at least).
Combine all of the above with the way you get busted back to the very beginning of the level despite having passed a load screen and/or reached the boss fight , and that ‘No’ button on the continue screen just screams to be hit.
Co-op lessens the frustration a little, and so do the time attack and survival modes, but really, the gameplay is just not fun anywhere, anyhow.
Audio & Visual:
The visuals are one of the games only redeeming features, and do pretty well to ape the retro beat ‘em up style without being completely copy cat.
The audio is a bit of an afterthought, the background music especially. An awesome soundtrack can really lift this kind of game, but sadly in the Asskickers this is completely lacking. What starts out promisingly enough in the menu screens completely evaporates in game – a couple of dull background tracks and sometimes no music at all.
As for the sound effects the punches and kicks do have a nice retro smack to them, but enemy characters only have one attack sound and when you have a handful of them on screen all doing it at the same time, it becomes annoying incredibly quickly.
Overall:
The Asskickers has a lot wrong with it (including some snippets I didn’t mention, would you believe), but what it all boils down to is this – it’s not fun to play: it’s a chore. Avoid it.
Itching to play PES 2012 but don’t want to wait until the October release date? Konami have you covered. It was recently announced that Konami would be releasing two demos for the next entry in the famed soccer franchise, giving players a early taste of what to expect. The first demo is set to launch as soon as August 24th, and will be a “preview build of the game.
In this free downloadable demo, players will be able to try out the “Teammate Control” elements of the game and experience the realism that the new Active AI brings to the sport. This preview build is also not slacking on teams, featuring the likes of Manchester United, AC Milan, FC Porto, S.S.C Napoli, Santos FC, and C.A. Panaro all ready to compete in 10 minute matches. The new control scheme for PES 2012 will also be in full display with the Challenge Training elements, letting players get a feel for how things work months ahead of time.
A more final build of the game will then be released via a second demo in mid-September, but with a different team roster of Tottenham Hotspur, FC Bayern Munich, FC Internazionale Milano, Rangers FC, Club America and Sport Club Internacional.
“We have spoken a lot about the new additions to PES 2012, and now we want users to see it for themselves,” explained Jon Murphy, European PES Team Leader. “By releasing a demo for preview purposes, we want people to get in early to try out the Teammate Control elements and to see for themselves how the Active AI works. This will then be followed by a second demo that offers different teams, and a closer approximation of what the final game will play like. We truly value the support and input of our user base – and these demos are so they can see how their help has aided the most ambitious PES to date.”
I would say Konami seem to be very excited about PES 2012 seeing how confident they are in letting players experience the game months early, and if you are a Xbox Live, PSN, or Windows PC user (link to demo for this format can be found here), now is your chance to take to the field and give this one a full run-through.
PES 2012 is set to officially release for the Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows PC on October 24th, followed by a PS2 and PSP release October 28th, and finally the Wii version on November 4th. The dates are still pending for the 3DS and iOS versions of the game, but once we receive a date, we will sure to bring you the news here so stay tuned.
The Playstation Vita isn’t the only handheld Sony will be releasing in the next 12 months. At Gamescom, Sony revealed the 5th iteration of its first handheld, the Playstation Portable (read here for the announcement). Not much was known except for the price, which comes at 99 euros. Some more specifications have been revealed, however, via the UK Playstation site.
The notable differences from the PSP-3000 (and earlier models) would be the lack of wifi, however, the PSPE-1000 is also considerably heavier than the 3000, thus a little bulkier. The PSP-3000 weighs in 189 grams. The PSPE-1000 weighs in The PSPE-1000 will also sport a monaural speaker. Earlier models supported stereo speakers.
The model has only been announced for the European and PAL markets, which means Australia and New Zealand will also be receiving it. It will see a release in the autumn/spring of 2011.
