The Disgaea series has always had a very unusual sense of humor. It appears that Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten will retain this humor thanks to the recent rating released by the ESRB. The ESRB has given the title a T rating for Animated Blood, Drug Reference, Fantasy Violence, Language, and Suggestive Themes.
The suggestive themes obviously come from the games dialogue, though whichever character had the guts to call one of the other characters flat chested better watch out for Etna if she is around. Check out the full ESRB description below.
This is a strategy role-playing game in which players control a group of characters on a quest to bring order to the Netherworld. From a 3/4–overhead perspective, players use swords, axes, and magic spells to engage monsters and human-like characters in turn-based combat (e.g., selecting attacks/weapons from a menu screen). Battles are accompanied by light effects, slashing sounds, and cries of pain; enemies disappear when defeated. One special attack depicts a bullet striking an enemy’s head, which is accompanied by slow-motion and X-ray effects. A few cutscenes depict brief stylized blood effects (e.g., an armored knight emitting blue droplets after getting impaled; the silhouette of blood splatter after a character is struck).
During the course of the game, some of the dialogue includes suggestive comments (e.g., “You’ve earned the right to be called a pervert, by sneaking around and peeping on us,” “I just love it when men do things that constitute sexual harassment,” and “You’re so flat, they use your chest to measure if a shelf is straight!”). The game also contains a brief drug reference (e.g., “If you inhale my dust, you’ll get really happy. It might even make you feel like you can fly . . . Just say no, kids! Bad! Bad drugs!”). The words “sh*t,” “a*s,” and “b*tch” can be heard in dialogue.
Today Ubisoft revealed that they have been working on an animated short film called Assassin’s Creed: Embers and they also released a bit of a trailer to let it know what it will be about. Ubisoft says that the film will “expand on the final chapter of the life of master assassin Ezio Auditore.”
You can catch the trailer below, though you will be able to get the film itself when the game releases on November 15th. The film will be bundled with either GameStop’s Assassin’s Creed Revelations Signature Edition or you can purchase it separately from the Xbox Live Marketplace or PlayStation Network, though no price was given at this time for how much it will be.
Eager to enter the town of Silent Hill again? Soon my friends, but for now you can content yourself with two screenshots that were released by Konami from Silent Hill 2. The screenshots can be seen both above and below and as you can see the HD graphics really have made a decent improvement to the overall appearance of the series, though it still is as dark as we remember.
Also released alongside these screenshots was a press release that said that the Silent Hill HD Collection will have a release window somewhere in September/October of this year. They also revealed that the developer for these ports is named Hi Jinx Studios. Those who are looking to pick up this collection should know it is currently a PS3 exclusive and that is only comes with the Silent Hill 2 and 3 games of the series.
Capcom revealed that when you power up Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, you may be getting a bit of a bonus surprise. That is of course if you have played Dead Rising 2 at all. Siliconera reports that apparently Dead Rising 2: Off the Record will search for a save data from the original DR2 and will give Frank West Chuck Greene’s jacket to wear.
Also revealed was that Gamestop pre-orders will be getting a special outfit known as the “Cosplay Warrior” outfit. The outfit is a cardboard helmet, monster face paint, cardboard armor, and cardboard boots. If the player equips a practice sword and shield they will have a special attack and they also will be able to gain 25% extra PP after each attack you do. Dead Rising 2: Off the Record will be released on October 11th in North America and will come at the discounted price of only $40.
Those hoping to shoot up their favorite shuffling zombies in HD will soon have their chance because Capcom revealed over the weekend that the high definition ports of two of the best Resident Evil titles are being released in September. Also revealed is that both versions of the game will be released to retail as well, though if they will be bundled together or separate has yet to be seen.
The two games will be released at separate times to the PlayStation Network and Xbox 360 Games on Demand service. Resident Evil 4 HD will be released on September 20th while Resident Evil: Code Veronica HD will be released a week later on September 27th. Both games will feature full Trophy and Achievement support which will make the trophy and achievement hunters like myself quite happy.
Business policies coming out of EA lately have been looking worse and worse for the consumer lately. First we have the Project Ten Dollar system that is starting to be used by other publishers and now we may soon have to pay even more to play games we have already paid $60 for. This news comes as EA Sports SVP Andrew Wilson held an interview with Eurogamer and there they discussed the potential for EA Sports to begin a monthly or yearly subscription. He addressed this question with the following response, which could strike fear into the folds of wallets everywhere:
“If we look at what consumers have pushed other industries for, if we look at what consumers forced the music industry to provide, if we look at what consumers have driven as a result of television and movie subscription, if you look at us -– there’s absolutely a time somewhere at some point in the future where the consumers say, ‘Hey, this is how we want to interact with you: we want to give you a monthly or annual subscription and we want access to everything you make.'”
Wilson went on to explain that they are trying to present EA Sports “as a service” which is something that honestly should be discouraged. I will leave it up to you to decide your own opinions about this news, though I must say that there most certainly is never a time for subscriptions. This isn’t World of Warcraft, its football…
Microsoft has released their Avatar based chat service for the Kinect Labs today in the form of Avatar Kinect. You can purchase the content entirely free from within the Kinect Labs program and it will be accessible to both Gold and Free Xbox Live members between July 25th and September 8th. After that time only Gold members will be able to use the Avatar Kinect service.
Thursday will be seeing two things out of Microsoft and Xbox. First the Xbox Facebook page will be holding a contest where they will choose the best stand up comedy act to win an Xbox 360 and Kinect bundle. They also announced that the Kinect Sparkler app for Kinect Fun Labs will be released Thursday and will cost 240 Microsoft Points. This app allows players to use their fingers to move sparklers around in their environment, though the unexpected price tag may turn off many users, considering everything else in the Kinect Fun Labs is free.
Namco Bandai made it official today that they will be releasing Tekken Hybrid for everyone waiting to purchase anything related to their favorite fighting series. Tekken Hybrid is set for a release sometime in November, though an exact date has yet to be set. Those who purchase Tekken Hybrid will be getting quite a lot for their money, because it will come with one game, one demo, and a CGI movie.
The game it will come with is named Tekken Tag Tournament HD which is a remastered version of the PS2 original with Trophy support, while Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue is something of a demo for the full game which will be released in 212. The reason I am calling it a demo is because it features only four playable characters out of the next game.
Finally the games will be coming with Tekken Blood Vengeace which is a fully 3D CGI movie where “Ling Xiaoyu and Alisa Bosconovitch uncover dark secrets that could destroy the Mishima family for ever.” You can catch a trailer below for the whole bundle. At the moment there is no price set for this bundle and it will be released exclusively for the PlayStation 3.
Hidden Mysteries: Salem Secrets Developer: GameMill Entertainment/Gunnar Games/Big Fish Games Publisher: Avanquest Software Genre: Point ‘n’ Click/Hidden Object Platform: Nintendo DS Released: Out Now
Another entry under the ‘Hidden Mysteries’ heading, Hidden Mysteries: Salem Secrets takes the hidden object/point ‘n’ click adventure back to the 1600’s, a time when the streets were ripe with superstition and infamously cruel witch trials were going on based on nothing but suspicions. It’s a completely standalone adventure; the Hidden Mysteries prefix hints at the nature of gameplay and the team behind it, but not having played others in the series doesn’t affect your understanding of the story at all.
The date is 1692 to be precise and you play Constable Hawthorne, an inspector sent by the Governor of Massachusetts after some reports of mysterious activity and four of the young female townsfolk going missing under strange circumstances and returning only to suffer from bizarre fits and tantrums. Rumours have been circulating that these girls were victims of the misdoings of a local practitioner of witchcraft, and you are tasked with finding the truth amid the hysteria of superstition in the sleepy town of Salem.
From the start, it is made clear you aren’t welcome. Constable Hawthorne arrives to empty streets, with only signs giving you notice of a recent funeral, declaring a quarantine zone and threatening any visitors attempting to trespass. It’s at least half an hour’s worth of play time before you even meet anybody, which even then is one of the afflicted you stumble across. Using the frequent hidden object scenes to gather useful objects as you explore Salem, you must cure all of the four girls along the way by finding a solution to their problems, then solve the mystery behind the events.
The story starts off very slowly, and while this generates a high level of curiosity inside the player, it isn’t fully capitalised on in that the story never does get going, meaning you were mistakenly interested for no real reason. It remains uninteresting throughout the four long-winded chapters until the very end when the mystery is concluded, featuring the twists and turns of any good tale of a mystery investigation.
The hidden object scenes themselves can sometimes be a little dark due to the setting of your adventure, making it hard to distinguish objects from their surroundings, but still, these screens remain one of the clearer examples of the genre. Given the level of clutter present on the screen at these times, the game does well to let you see fairly clearly by having a straight-forward, static 2D visual style instead of trying to animate any of the items.
However, at first there seems to be a variety of scenes to search, but as you progress, you realise you are revisiting the same locations. The developers haven’t even bothered to adjust the arrangements of the objects, with exactly the same layouts second and third time around, just with a rearranged list of objects to find. This links in with the problems of the map and the way you are constantly going back to the same places. Salem is large in scale in that there are loads of paths to take and places to explore – such a vast environment, however, is difficult to comb for evidence and with most of the buildings and physical representations of the lanes looking similar, it is disorientating, very easy to get lost and difficult to find the place where you’d like to be even if you know where you should be going.
As well as the hidden object levels, much like other games in the series you are presented with a more traditional style of puzzle that asks you to think about it and work it out, rather than randomly hoarding selections of objects just to find a single useful utensil or missing piece. In contrast to the regular hidden object puzzles, though, these are few and far between, cropping up only occasionally. There are 10 mini-game type puzzles in total, but taking into account that no explanation is provided each time, you may be forced to use the ‘skip’ function on some, subsequently making the limited number available even lower.
Hidden Mysteries: Salem Secrets holds similar production values to others in the series. Like the rest of its family, it possesses negligible sound: it’s just a dreary piece set on a loop. But, due to its safe attempt in the visuals department, it ensures levels and puzzles are easy to see, something which surprisingly isn’t the case for a lot of hidden object games. The nifty autosave system which records your progress after each in-game event removes the worry of tracking your data manually; the choice of four save slots even allows family members to start their own separate data files. It’s not the strongest instalment under the Hidden Mysteries branding, but it’s another point ‘n’ click adventure which leads stages onto one another logically, even though the story is a little weaker this time around.
GIVEAWAY:
To be in with a chance of winning a copy of the game, leave a comment below. One comment entry per person. Open to residents of Europe only – apologies to our readers from elsewhere around the world!
Bright colours, fast action and over-the-top in every-way, nothing better comes to mind on how to describe Baseball Stars 2. Having no MLB licensing your left with 12 teams with names like Aussie Thunder and Japan Samurai, which just suit the game’s style perfectly.
You start out selecting to either take on a friend head-to-head, or taking on the 15 game season. You pick your team and try to take them to the top. You have two difficulty levels to choose that change which 6 teams you can choose from. The only other thing affected by the difficulty is automatic fielding which makes the game easier.
Gameplay
Whether your batting or pitching, having control is what its about. This is done perfect, if only fielding was as easy. Batting is simple enough, with simply moving around the batters box with the D-pad. The simple choice of swing or bunt when you feel the pitch is perfect. If your going for a big hit you can get your powered-up bat for a bigger hit, giving a better chance towards getting a home run.
Pitching has more to it, be it throwing hard and fast over the plate or using a deceptive slider all controlled with the direction on the D-pad making for a simple yet still complex control. Pitchers get puffed out as time goes on making them slow down, when they start to slow down its always a good time to switch out for one of your three back-up pitchers. Having the chance to hit the batter with the ball is always fun against a friend as well.
Fielding isn’t that bad, its just that trying to see your fielders is the hard part as the screen never zooms out, leaving you with no idea of what position your fielders are in. Resulting in a strange mash of them just jittering around the field, trying to get one into view so they can get the ball.
Graphics & Sound
Colours that would make a pack of crayons feel ashamed of how dull they look, it catches your eye with a vivid tone and an art style to match, looking just how you would expect an arcade sport game, with big burly characters whose arms are bigger than their heads.
Every time something big happens like fielders doing a diving catch or making a slide towards home base, it gives a few seconds of a much closer up detailed picture of what’s going on these add a lot to the game. The greatest of them being when the batter gets beaned from the pitcher, he follows this up by running towards the mound giving you a close-up of the pitcher taking a right hook to the face.
Listening to the early voice work can be a little rough but it still adds to the game as the commentator speaks about the match, along with the random amount of times he will just yell the name of the game out which will surly make you smile. The music that repeats in the background over and over gets old fast due too its short loop but at least it never hits the point of getting stuck in your head.
Verdict
Arcade sports games always have great replay value. Even more if you have a second player around and this game is no exception. Its fast, over the top action and style gives a great twist on America’s favourite past time and laughs. With matches lasting around thirty minutes, you will definitely be coming back to this one a few times knowing just what to expect.
