In anticipation to the next game in the Dungeon Siege series Dungeon Siege III, Square Enix and Obsidian Entertainment have released two new trailers for the game which is set to be released tomorrow, June 16th in Australia and New Zealand and in North American on June 21st. The first is a launch trailer, showcasing the four playable characters that players will be able to choose from. And the second is a tongue-in-cheek live action trailer. In Dungeon Siege III, players will be able to play local two player co-op or online with up to three friends from start to finish of the story campaign.
Dungeon Siege III will be available for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC
Game – No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise
Console(s) – Playstation 3 (Reviewed), Xbox 360
Publisher/Developer – Konami/ Feelplus & AQ Interactive
Genre – Action Adventure/Hack ‘n’ Slash
Release date – August 16, 2011 (USA), April 15, 2011 (Japan), May 20, 2011 (EU)
Buy/Preorder here – Amazon (USA) or Play – Asia (Australia)
After the critically acclaimed but poor selling No More Heroes released for the Nintendo Wii a couple of years ago, Konami is at it again with a sequel in the form of No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise. Can this game fix the faults of its counterpart and rise to the occasion?
Story
Travis Touchdown (I swear that last name is real) is a typical dude. He likes video games, motorcycles and alcohol. He also spends way too much time chatting up the ladies. Oh, and he has a beam katana, which is a super powered stick of glowing death that can be swung about to cause massive damage. Not only that, but he is also a well known assassin. There are only a few problems with his life.
Problem 1 is that he is ranked as number 11 on the list of assassins by the people who rank such things (seriously, who has the time, interest and investment to give assassins a numbered score?)
To solve his first problem, Travis agrees to a tournament of sorts: Find and kill numbers 1-10 and be ranked NUMBER 1. Of course, after signing his tournament contract papers, Travis finds out he must pay a steep entry fee to get a chance at his prey. Which brings us to:
Problem #2- Travis Touchdown got no money.
To make up for this, Travis needs a job, but we’ll get into that later.
All in all, the story is so shallow and bizarre that it is a wonder that even the writers of the script were able to keep up with it. Every character and interaction just adds more weirdness. Other than your demented tourney organizer (who is, by the way, uber hot and may want to have sex) there is no real reason pay attention to the story. If your into really insane stories, then you’ll love this game. More serious minded people will be turned off, but at least the game does bring some new ideas to the storytelling arena.
Gameplay
Most of your time will be spent hacking, dashing, smacking and slicing the poorly programmed AI into bits. Standing perfectly still most of the time and only occasionally attacking, these enemies seem to want a quick death at the hands of your Japanese lightsaber. Unfortunately, battling these tepid protectors can be tedious, while at the same time a fun, affair. Playing with the Playstation Move controls, you’ll just need to press a button to wear down an enemies’ health. Once it gets down far enough, swipe your motion controller in a direction indicated on the screen, which will result in dismembered bad guy. If you swing the wrong way, then you will have to waggle the wand to defeat your enemy.
This is actually very fun for the first few hours, especially once you start pulling off super violent combos (which merely require one button press). It does eventually get a little tiresome, but it is much more interactive than a standard controller. Sadly, boss fights are torrid events that boil down to tapping the button as fast as possible while dodging occasionally. At least the character models for the bosses are very original and interesting.
While combat is a hit or miss affair (I’d say 60/40) the side missions are where the game shines. Most are wildy different events that will bring giggles and fun gameplay moments to your living room. These side missions are where you’ll earn your money to enter the tournaments and while some feature dull combat, most are funny and redeem the rest of the game. For example, in one of the side missions, you will need to attack coconut trees.
Graphics and Audio
One of the more unique and exciting parts of the game is the graphical style. Although styled with a more western edge, there are definitely huge Japanese influences as well. The best part about the graphics is that all the power-ups and collectibles in the game world are modeled after 8 bit games, thus mixing the bloody nature of the game with the charming sights of a bygone era.
Speaking of blood, you’ll be seeing plenty of it as this game features some of the most horrifying executions imaginable. On the bad side, most of the buildings and the rest of the world are very bland and look like a last generation game.
The soundtrack to the game is also pretty good. It too features 8 bit sounds, and it is one of the more redeeming features present in No More Heroes. Even the voice acting in the cutscenes is fairly tolerable and verges on being quality work. Enemy voice overs are another matter though. Poor quality at best, hearing a dying man say, “My SPLEEN!” is only humorous a few times and after the 10000th time, it just started to piss me off.
Conclusion
Somehow despite all its faults, No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise remains worthy of a recommendation to play it. The sheer personality and presentation factors make the game original and a delight to slog through. Even if the gameplay wears thin after a few hours, the rest of the game offers enough to keep anyone entertained. After all, when is the next time you’ll be able to wield a freakin’ beam katana in battle against a nefarious dude who has a curved sword the size of a whale, whilst collecting 8 bit power ups along the way, then drive a gigantic motorcycle across town to gather coconuts?! Your right. It just doesn’t happen. Its a shame that this game has so many special pieces to it, and yet, none of them can quite fit together. Nevertheless, what the game DOES fit together is enough to garner this game the score you see below.
Pros:
Bloody, violent combos
8 bit graphic cameos
Awesome boss character models
Side missions
Wow, when Neatherrelm Studios said they were going to heavily support DLC for Mortal Kombat, they wern’t joking! Today a new bio video for Skarlet has been released which you can see below courtesy of IGN, now that’s pretty cool right? Well on top of that we have a release date: June 21st! You want more? Well how about FREE alternate MK3 inspired skins for Cyrax and Sektor available for DLC on the same day? Check the renders below! Whats that you want more? Ok, how about this. Watch Skarlet’s bio video. Sure it says we’ve got Kenshi coming soon, which we already know, but also after much begging from the fans, Rain has been announced for DLC and he’s coming soon! Now that’s a rainy forecast you can be excited for! The silhouette of the fourth fighter is also shown, but not revealed. Personally, I think it’s Reiko or Fujin from MK4, but hey your guess is as good as mine!
At E3 MK creator Ed Boon said during a live stream interview, he described Skarlet’s character as “Easily the most gruesome character we’ve had”. He also begun to describe her fatality beginning with “It’s pretty disturbing…Im not sure if I can describe it on Tv.” But after some reassuring he stated that “…she stabs somebody in the side of their ear basically, and cuts their throat and does a pez dispenser thing and kinda bathes in their blood.” The stream also included some gruesome exclusive footage, so go check it out here! If the Skarlet bio and the Ed Boon interview isn’t enough for you Mortal Kombat freaks, check out some of the cyborg costumes leaked footage here. They look perfect, just like from the original MK3!
Bleach the Movie 2: The Diamond Dust Rebellion Tag Line: Execute Toshiro Histugaya! Produced by: Viz Media Run time: 90 minutes, Feature length film Language: English, Japanese Genre: Action, Shounen, Supernatural Available for purchase at Madman Online Store ($29.95)
Overview:
I went into Bleach the Movie 2, with higher expectations than I did going into the first Bleach movie. Perhaps that could attribute as to why Bleach the Movie 2: The Diamond Dust Rebellion felt as though it was lacking something. But for the sake of an honest review I will assess the movie as an individual.
Standing alone, the movie works well enough as an adaptation of a popular Shonen series, you have all the boxes ticked. But the thing that both let’s the movie down and where it succeeds as a movie is the fact that it feels so unashamedly thrown together and rushed. This both works and doesn’t simultaneously, creating one completely frenetic movie with an unclear direction that will despite it’s problems manage to captivate you by it’s mystery and break-neck speed plotting.
This particular brand of haphazard pacing and story line will be no stranger to fans of the series and undoubtedly warrant a watch from them. Is this a movie for everyone? Not in the slightest, but it is entertaining.
Toshiro’s Ice Ice Baby…
Story:
The plot for the movie is the cinematic equivalent of a roller-coaster. One moment it’s up and within a flash it’s down. It’s all rather slapped together and will either really please fans or outright annoy them.
The movie sets out to create a back story for Toshiro Hitsugaya, one of the captains of the 13 Court Guard Squads. In doing so, it plays with Bleach’s expansive mythology in ways that fans will either love or hate. We get a new character introduced as a man from Histugaya’s past whom steals an ancient Soul Society artifact that is really poorly guarded considering how supposedly important the artifact is. This is all merely to create a villain for the movie and to give fan-favourite, Hitsugaya, the lime-light.
How they go about telling this story is put simply, wrong. What could have been a good way to provide some history to a fan-favourite instead becomes a melodramatic scattered red-herring flashback inducing mess. It’s all so utterly chaotic that aside from the action and fights, the story line is barely legible. Little is explained and more and more questions are raised and it ends with practically no answers besides “its over, just don’t think about it please!”
But for Bleach, all this chaos is cohesive and despite the unanswered questions, the experience is satisfying enough to be watchable, if not for anything besides the fights.
Big sword vs. Small sword! Does size matter?
Characters:
As always with Bleach the sheer ammount of characters in this series is it’s undoing. There is well over 150 characters in this series and the creators like in Bleach Movie 1, feel compelled to cram in as many of them as possible.
Some characters have good moments, however fleeting, such as Chad’s one scene wonder. But overall a lot of them served no purpose to the plot besides wasting time showing off each characters special moves. Time that should have been spent developing the plot.
In general the character development was poor, the only character truly having any development being Hitsugaya. Which is to be expected since this movie was really just a glorified back story for him.
The obligatory cram every single character into one shot-shot.
Artwork:
Here is where movie succeeds. We have great flowing animation and Bleach’s artwork has never looked better. I don’t have any gripes with the artwork besides the fact that Kusaka’s final transformation looked cliche’d. But that isn’t enough to derail one of the shining spots of the movie.
The designs of the new characters were well-done (asides from aforementioned’s final transformation). I particularly found the 2 Arrancar girl’s designs quite charming with their blades concealing behind their heads. Unfortunately their personalities weren’t as good.
The battle scene’s were simply poetry in motion and the bankai special effects were all great. Overall a great job from the art and animation department for this movie.
The face of evil… Obviously.
Audio:
The stand-out tracks of the anime series all appear here as well as some new made for movie tracks. I particularly enjoyed the theme song of the movie, “Hikaru no Rokku” by Sambomaster. It is a great track and fits the movie’s frenetic pacing perfectly.
The voice work was all on par, however Steve Staley (Hitsugaya) was a little stiff with some lines but I a sure that is more to blame on some clunky dialogue and not his acting. The MVP performance was as usual Johnny Yong Bosch as Ichigo Kurosaki. If there is any voice actor in this movie who challenges the original japanese voice actor, it is without a doubt Bosch.
Special Features:
Like the previous movie, Madman has packaged it with a nifty information booklet with details on the characters, important terms and mythology of Bleach and general synopsis of the story.
We are also treated to Viz Media’s usual DVD features such as production art, interviews and promo trailers of the movie. We also have Madman’s usual trailers for their releases.
Don’t cry Toshiro, you won’t even remember this by next anime episode.
Conclusion:
Bleach the Movie 2: The Diamond Dust Rebellion is a perfect example of where plotting goes wrong, but it still provides enough of an entertaining experience to warrant a viewing. The fight scenes are above par for Bleach and the regular characters hit all of their usual notes perfectly. If you can handle some dodgy pacing and a bit of confusion, or are just a fan of Bleach, give this movie a go. It is still a good watch, despite it’s downfalls and succeeds in being an entertaining 90 minutes of anime.
I give Bleach the Movie 2: The Diamond Dust Rebellion:
There were a few years when E3 tried to be a bit more business oriented and actually restricted the use of booth babes to help attract crowds. Thankfully for our inaugural visit to E3, this rule has been forgotten and there were plenty of different babes there to attract the crowds. Now below you can catch pictures of all the different booth babes that we saw at E3 this year, as well as a few people who came to cosplay for the event.
Now as long as you can keep your mind focused for a little bit, why don’t you let us know which one of these babes, or groups of babes in some cases, you think is the best. I’d have to say that I prefer the above booth babes the best from small company NIVAL but that’s just my opinion. Let us know your vote below and we’ll crown our Best Babe of E3!
Remember there are 3 full pages of booth babes to check out. Let us know who you think should be crowned E3 BOOTH BABES for 2011 for a chance to pick up a XBLA game.
The internet (including our site) has been abuzz with panic about the cryptic double meaning in the South Park mid-season finale.
Amongst all the hearsay and rumours, I couldn’t find anything official about whether or not creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker had signed a new deal with Comedy Central to extend the show past 2011, and so I contacted Comedy Central PR to get the final word.
The official news is that the show will continue until 2013, in the same format of two runs of seven episodes a year.
Settled.
The episode that freaked fans out had Stan’s parents break up and move out of South Park, while Stan’s friends shun him for being such a pessimist. But it was the ominous argument between Randy and Sharon that sparked many a worried forum thread.
“How long can we keep doing this?” Sharon cries, and approaches the camera as she complains about how “every week it’s kinda the same story in a different way, but it just keeps getting more and more ridiculous.” Fans have come to expect a comment from South Park about some kind of issue, and this one seemed particularly personal; the creators are bored.
This season’s apparent decline in quality was also considered a sign of fatigue. However, the boys came fresh from launching their Broadway show The Book of Mormon, and apparently skipped the usual pre-season two-week preparation time, including a writer’s retreat, where ideas for the season’s stories are thrown around. This is likely the cause of a below-average run, but if The Book of Mormon‘s success is anything to go by – the show picked up nine Tony Awards this week, including Best Musical – the guys are not finished yet.
So if they are continuing, what did the episode mean? The show is known for changing things up occasionally. After five years of killing Kenny in every episode, the joke got old and he died permanently, before returning without explanation and only dying when it served the story. Teacher Mr. Garrison was a closet homosexual, then became openly gay, then got a sex change, became a lesbian for a while and finally had another operation to become a man again. The boys moved up to the fourth grade, and Butters became a central character.
This could just be another transitional time in the show’s history. Stan’s parents have broken up, Stan apparently doesn’t live in South Park any more, and it was even indicated that Kyle and Cartman may be getting closer. Whatever happens in the rest of the season, beginning October, it will definitely be interesting to see where they take it.
Phew. I’m resting easy now, knowing I have at least two more years of goin’ down to South Park.
Hunted: The Demon’s Forge Developer: inXile Publisher: Bethesda Released: May 31, 2011 Platforms: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PlayStation 3, PC Price: $59.99 US, £49.99 UK, $119.99 AUS
Overview:
Your standard dungeon crawling experience usually involves at least one character that will make their way through a number of dungeons either in the search of some powerful artifact, or an expensive trinket or even to defeat a creature that can destroy a world.
Now dungeon crawling games have been on the lull lately, and after years of other titles being released, Hunted: The Demon’s Forge has been released by inXile Entertainment and Bethesda. This dungeon crawling experience places the player in a world where dungeon crawling has been mixed with cover based shooting. Now these two things usually never mix, so does this mixture create a new and unique experience or something that should have been better left separated?
Story:
Players will be taking control of either one of two heroes, Caddoc and E’lara. The two are a group of mercenaries that will sell their swords to whoever can pay them the most money. Caddoc has long been having visions of a mysterious white skinned woman and suddenly, the two stumble upon her. Seraphine is her name and she has a quest for these two heroes, but this quest is just the start of things to come as a dark cloud of evil begins to show itself the further these two unlikely heroes journey on their quest.
Unfortunately the storyline for Hunted: The Demon’s forge is rather forgettable at times and you will usually find it difficult to justify the way that you are constantly being led from place to place without much of an actual explanation other than that there is money at the end of the tunnel. The storytelling is rather underwhelming and for a dungeon crawling title, a story is usually the backbone.
Your actual enjoyment of the storyline will most likely come from the interaction between Caddoc and E’lara themselves. Caddoc, despite being a large muscular man is the more levelheaded and calm member of the team while the elven E’lara is hasty, prone to destroy things and plays a great comedic role most of the time. The relationship the two have with one another is the best thing about the story in Hunted as they often mess around with one another in enjoyable and sometimes comedic ways that will leave you wanting to keep playing simply to see what they will be saying next time.
Graphics:
Hunted: The Demon’s Forge unfortunately does not impress visually. There are a few pieces of the game where you will be truly surprised by the environment that you are playing in, but for the most part all of the levels are designed around a color palette so dark that you will find most of your time struggling to see the area around you. While this does provide the dark visual aesthetic that I believe that the game is going for, it also is inhibiting to the players so that they cannot actually enjoy the world around them, instead venturing through rather samey looking areas multiple times in the same chapter.
The characters and enemies themselves are rather impressive looking at first. E’lara and Caddoc can be covered in blood from fighting close range and even dirt and grime from venturing through a dark dungeon for an extended period of time. Unfortunately these effects usually always appear the same way which means if you have seen it once, you’ve seen it all.
Another complaint is the fact that the character animations are very painful to watch at times. During cutscenes the different characters usually look well enough, however during actual gameplay you can notice that the animations drop significantly. This is especially noticeable during the Executions that the game offers. If you are playing as E’lara then you will often get the chance to perform an execution on an enemy, but you will be lucky if one out of a hundred will even land properly. Instead of dying in a hail of arrows, your enemy will simply twitch around and fall over, with slow motion arrows still flying through the air after you are moving forward. Also… E’lara is certainly going to be a bit of a fan favorite thanks to her rather revealing outfit; though it can be forgiven thanks to her agile character base that she needs free movement.
Audio:
The atmosphere for the title is well set by the simple dungeon like sounds you will hear inside of any given area, or the whispers of a human survivor going insane off in the distance. Unfortunately besides setting a little bit of atmosphere, the soundtrack is forgettable and players will be wondering if there even was music after they have finished an area.
The character’s voice actors do a good job representing each character. Seraphine is voiced by veteran voice actor Lucy Lawless so there is a little bit of star power. E’lara’s voice actress is rather impressive as well as the lucid tones of her voice help set off the environment quite nicely. This is another example of the biggest highlight of the game, Caddoc and E’lara’s interaction with one another. Their banter is well voiced and you can easily derive each character’s personality simply from the way that they talk.
Gameplay:
Hunted: The Demon’s Forge’s gameplay centers around either melee combat or long range combat and each of the two main characters are capable of performing both. However each character also has something they are good at. It comes as no surprise that Caddoc is a powerful warrior that can perform at his best at close range with hand to hand weapons while E’lara uses her bow to pick off enemies at a distance and provide support to Caddoc.
Of the two characters E’lara seems to be the better fighter, simply because she can deal damage very rapidly and also because the melee combat in Hunted is a bit under refined, with most close up battles resulting in a pile of enemies crowding around you. Also it helps because if an enemy is equipping a shield, E’lara can easily deal damage to the enemies head, legs or back by flanking around the enemy. This works best especially with two players as the second player can draw the enemies attention as Caddoc while E’lara whittles away at them from behind.
E’lara’s bow and arrow is also quite strong thanks to the fact that arrows are extremely plentiful in the game, with most enemies dropping arrows often and arrows usually laying around in heavy fight areas, you will usually never run out of arrows to fire at enemies.
Earlier I mentioned that the game is a mixture of action adventure and today’s standard shooter. This is because the game features a cover mechanic that allows the player to take cover behind low walls or corners and then pop out to shoot arrows at enemies on the other side. The mechanic works well enough, but this works well only with the slower long bows that E’lara can use, rather than the more enjoyable fast paced bows that can pick apart enemies at close range as long as you take advantage of E’lara’s agile form and dodge out of the way of their attacks.
Besides the standard attacks of each character, the player can also collect crystals from containers in the environment as well as downed enemies. These crystals can then be given to Seraphien through portals scattered around the level and used to learn magic powers and attacks. E’lara can learn special arrow type attacks such as explosive fire arrows and freezing arrows while Caddoc can use whirlwinds to lift enemies off their feet, go into a rage and also charge through enemies. Besides these abilities unique to each character, there are also three battle spells that both characters can use. These spells are a sigil, a lightning spell and a fireball. These skills can also be used to battle charge your partner and give them an extra damaging boost.
Outside of leveling up their powers with crystals, players can also fulfill in-game objectives to improve their abilities. This includes performing lots of kills with either a bow or sword and doing extra damage thereafter, or reviving your partner allowing you to carry more revive potions. A number of these upgrades are useful and easy to come by but don’t really flesh out any legitimate character customization.
Besides combat you will also occasionally stumble upon a puzzle that can be completed or left behind if you so choose it. Some of these puzzles may sound deep at first but usually just involve following an optional path for a while and then looking around you for a quick and easy solution, usually shown by pressing B in the right area. The rewards for this are either Gold to unlock things in Crucible mode or a powerful weapon that is enchanted to do extra damage. Problem with these weapons are that they do significantly less damage when their charges run out and until you get further in the game you will be stuck carrying only that weapon without being able to switch it aside for later.
Outside of the campaign mode there is the Crucible mode which allows players to make their own dungeon and share it with the world. It also allows the player to create their own experience and venture through it with friends or on their own if they feel like it. Unfortunately the ability to actually make your own individual experience each time runs out quickly and you are unable to keep your main characters from the campaign which is only a minor let down compared to the extreme let down from individuality.
Now Hunted: The Demon’s Forge is primarily meant to be played as two player co-op either locally or online. Local co-op divides the screen horizontally and unfortunately makes the screens rather small to see what is happening. In a game such as this, vertical split-screen may have been the best choice. If you happen to be playing with the AI partner however, you will find yourself frustrated more often than not.
Your AI partner will often run to the nearest weapon rack and smash it before you get a chance to do so, stealing the weapon inside while also standing in the way of your ranged attacks which makes them nothing more than a glorified pin cushion. I also experienced a situation where my character had been downed and my AI partner needed to revive me. I could clearly see two revive phials on his belt but he simply stood there and let me die, reverting me to the last check point for no reason.
Online co-operative mode works rather well but it does not have a number of features which could have made it a much more enjoyable experience. First and foremost there is no drop in or drop out option. This means you will often be finding yourself making sure you have a trustworthy partner and unfortunately your friends can’t jump in mid-dungeon which is a curious game mechanic to have to say the least.
Overall:
Now Hunted: The Demon’s Forge has plenty of opportunities where it could have been a great game and a new evolution of the action adventure genre. Unfortunately due to a number of half polished and questionable design choices the game does not deliver with what it could have been. Demon’s Forge is still an enjoyable experience for the most part and can deliver a decently long gaming experience but falls short in a number of areas that could have made it a great game, instead of a decent one.
In case you were wondering why the Metal Gear Solid HD collection was announced to only contain Metal Gear Solid 2 and three and not the first game of the title then a recent interview with Yoshikazu Matsuhana from Kojipro may tell you why. Eurogamer was able to question Yoshikazu about Metal Gear and he said that the game is simply to old and the polygon count is too low that even an HD reissue won’t do much at all.
He said that “Metal Gear Solid 1 was for the PSone. It has a very, very low polygon count. While at the time the game was something new and refreshing, just bringing it as is into HD probably wouldn’t have that much meaning to us. We’re doing two and three with a certain work flow where the goal is to take that game, preserve it and introduce it to a new generation. We can’t really take that approach with Metal Gear Solid 1 because it’s very dated at this point.”
Instead of simply making an HD redo of the title, apparently if the team would ever remake Metal Gear Solid it would not be an HD reskinning but an entire re-imagining of the title with a new updated storyline and better gameplay than what we saw so many years ago.
You may have read on our site yesterday that a number of Battlefield 3 fans have started a boycott because they were furious that anyone who pre-ordered the game would receive extra multiplayer content that normal players wouldn’t be able to obtain anywhere down the line if they didn’t pre-order it. This lead to over 3,000 people joining the cause so far and the list growing every day.
DICE, developer of Battlefield 3, has stepped up to the issue and is defending the pre-order content while also saying that it will not cause any imbalance in the gameplay due to the exclusive items. The company stated that they “believe in rewarding our core fanbase with special offers — such as giving them the Back to Karkand expansion pack at no extra charge”…”The three exclusive items in the Physical Warfare Pack were specifically chosen not to be overpowered or imbalance or break the game in any way.” Hopefully this statement will help calm the people who have grown angry over the DLC but only time will tell.
If you are a fan of any of the above websites or online games then you may be experiencing problems accessing your content today, and the reason for that is because the hacker group known as LulzSec has stated that they have dropped these various services through distributed denail of services (DDOS) attacks.
The groups being attacked at the moment, and being brought down are EVE Online’s Tranquility server, Minecraft’s multiplayer services, the Escapist Magazine’s website as well as League of Legends’ servers as well. EVE Online has confirmed the existence of the attack, Escapist is down completely and Minecraft’s creator Notch also said that things are down at the moment. LulzsSec themselves have given no reason for the hacks to have occurred, but have done so in the past simply because it was “for the lulz” as their motto seems to be.
