Lots and lots of Launch Trailers, all over the place! Except this launch trailer is different. Why? Because it focuses on a cute little girl who simply wants to play with her swarmites. Check out the Launch trailer below and get all warm and fuzzy inside as you see more gameplay and go buy the Game for yourself.
…Or you might get a bit creeped out by the trailer, I guess it depends on your point of view.
If you are in the US you are already deep within Crysis 2 and we understand. We don’t expect to see you around the site for a while; however, our UK readers and Australian readers have to wait a few more days for the release of the game. If you did put down the controller for a few minutes and strolled over here to our site in between gaming multiplayer sessions; then feel free to leave a comment nicely telling our other readers just what they are missing.
Hopefully the extended Launch Trailer will keep everyone content in the meantime.
Crysis 2 Launched in the US today; March 22, 2011.
Australia gets the game tomorrow; March 23, 2011.
And Finally It will launch in Europe and New Zealand on March 25, 2011
It appears that due to the power consumption limitations that companies have been placed under in Japan, Nintendo has decided that they will be delaying the Pokémon Global Link service which would have originally went live on March 30th but now will be launched on an unknown date. Below you can read the official statement from the service’s website:
“The Pokémon Global Link was scheduled to launch on March 30, 2011. As a result of the earthquake in Japan and the need to conserve energy resources, the launch date has been temporarily delayed. When a new launch date is determined, it will be published here on the Pokémon Global Link. We apologize sincerely for any inconvenience caused by this delay.”
This service would have added plenty of new features to the Pokémon: Black and White games. This includes Random Matchup Challenge, global performance rankings, but more importantly it would have allowed access to the Dream World which allows players to gather berries, decorate a virtual home and capture Pokémon that otherwise would not be found in Black and White.
Panels, the new way to redesign a house with the least amount of effort. These panels will revolutionize home improvement and forever change the way you think about house design. Currently only being used in Aperture Labs for test rooms, Panels will be coming to the local market in the near future. Oh yeah, they also sell Crushers… but you don’t want to buy those.
Well, mostly released anyways. Batman: Arkham City’s official website has put up a smidgen of information regarding pre-order offers for anyone who wants to pick up the game in the United States. Of course they didn’t put any pictures alongside these announcements nor go into full detail about which one will contain at least.
But some news is better than no news and GameStop will be offering the Joker’s Carnival challenge map which sounds like the standard challenge maps that Arkham Asylum had, while Best Buy will have something they are calling the combo pack. Exactly what the combo pack will entail is still unknown. Though there isn’t anything stated underneath their logos, Walmart and Amazon are also shown on the pre-order page so expect more news in the future.
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together came out in February for the PSP and despite coming out in the shortest month of the year the title managed to become the best selling PSP game for the entire month, according to the NPD Group and Square Enix themselves. With Square Enix’s pedigree of releasing quality PSP titles this is no surprise, especially with Tactics Ogre’s reputation and following.
Unfortunately there are no official sales figures being released from Square Enix so we will have to take them at their word but it certainly is good news to hear that the PSP can still draw enough sales to encourage Square Enix to keep developing for the portable system. Considering they have The 3rd Birthday releasing next week and Dissidia duodecim 012 releasing today.
There are always people who stand outside of a store at midnight waiting for the launch of their favorite new game or for the release of the next console/handheld but I do not think I have ever seen a man decide to create a line himself, nearly a week before release. This man, who goes by the name Triforce, is already in line at the Manhattan Best Buy and actually has been there since last night. Apparently this is part of his tradition to be at every Nintendo console launch and did the same thing for when the Wii came out.
He goes on to say that he hopes that, considering he is the first person in line and that the Best Buy he is at will be home to the 3DS launch party that he will receive some sort of bonus gift or package, but that is yet to be seen. Obviously the man cannot sit out there for a week on his own and will have people sub into his chair while he goes home to take clean up and take care of natural business. Either way though, it may have just become spring here in the U.S. but it is still cold out.
Yoostar 2: In the Movies
Developer: Blitz Games
Publisher: Yoostar Entertainment Group/ Namco Bandai
Genre: Party/Simulation
Platform: Xbox 360 Kinect, PlayStation 3
Released: 11th March
For anyone who isn’t aware, Yoostar 2: In the Movies allows you to put yourself in iconic scenes from numerous films and also a number of television series, utilising Kinect to remove the previous star of the show, then inserting you in their place. In the run up to the release of Yoostar 2: In the Movies, I actually allowed myself to get a little bit excited. When the curtain was slowly lifted on a stunner set list which featured a good mix of contemporary hits and old classics, it seemed like you’d have been a fool not to. There’s 80 scenes in total, from popular films such as 300, The Hangover, Casablanca, The Godfather and I Am Legend just to name a handful, with the added feature of having dialogue-less backgrounds from a selection of other films, plus other made-up sets to act out your own masterpieces in. Perhaps I was misled by some of the video content before its release, maybe I was just naïve, but the seamless cut-out of the players outline was not that shown was not a reality in a typical playing space.
By “typical playing space”, I am going on the assumption that most people’s living rooms don’t come equipped with the “green screen” background needed for the crisp silhouettes advertised. The reality is a rather grainy cut-out of yourself which tends to chop off the top of your head as well as a very rough-edged outline of the rest of your body. However, like most of the drawbacks of Yoostar 2, it’s hard to pin this down as one of the game’s faults, but rather one of the limitations of Kinect. Such as the fact that Kinect can’t sense fingers. If acting in your scene you go to make a gesture using your fingers like a thumbs-up, you’ll be slightly perplexed to see that onscreen, your precious digit has disappeared.
In a bid to make Yoostar 2 more accessible, each scene is from the same sort of perspective. There isn’t any close up head-shots and there’s also a lack of action scenes. Instead, all scenes have you standing at a similar distance away from the camera. It would have been interesting to be able to capture each shot individually to create an authentic scene, but let’s not split hairs here, that’s not what Yoostar 2 sets out to do. You can’t deny that Yoostar 2 is accessible. In fact, it takes very little instruction to begin and just about anyone should be able to jump in and perform for the camera. Although action scenes like sword fights aren’t plausible, it’s a shame that there isn’t scenes with, at the very least, some aspect of movement. On the other hand, variation does come in the form of the different surroundings of each scene. The scenes from the inside of a car, in particular, yield some funniest results, although each of the alternate environments have their own comedic merits.
Some problems also arise regarding the resting height of the Kinect sensor as it seems to be prone to resting with the focus of the camera around chest-height, meaning occasionally you’ll have to re-adjust your positioning in order to get everything in the frame. Before each scene, you frame-up with onscreen outline to ensure you are standing in the right place. Again, maybe it’s the Kinect being unresponsive, but you’d think problems relating to the framing should be sorted out in this pre-acting screen with the Kinect auto-adjusting its angle.
However, not all of Yoostar 2’s shortcomings can be blamed on the hardware, because while it’s a great concept, in parts it is also a flawed one. After selecting the scene you want to perform, you are then given the option to do either a ‘scripted’ performance, which when selected provides you with onscreen visual cues of your lines, or the alternate ‘Ad-lib’ option, which gives you free reign to come up with your own lines and improvise, doing whatever you like in the scene without the game marking you down for misdirected speech/ not following the script. It is when doing a scripted performance on your own that some of the flaws in the concept become apparent. A major one is that the lines of onscreen text require you to look directly at the screen to read what you’re supposed to be saying, but doing so detracts from the actual scene because instead of looking at the character you’re supposed to be talking to, you are looking straight at the camera. If you try to go without reading the lines off the screen then there is little sound to go by either. The sound is dimmed down to avoid the Kinect microphone picking up on any noise coming from the television speakers, but as a result of this, if you don’t look at the screen you can often have little idea of how the scene is progressing and when speak. If you try to combat this by turning up your TV volume up so you can hear what’s going on, then it is more than likely there will be some sound interference with the recording, and when you play it back, the default actor will have an echo on his/her dialogue.
As such, Yoostar 2 is better played with a friend in the simultaneous two-player co-op mode, using creativity instead of the original script. This way the game is absolutely hilarious, especially with the option to replay clips to friends and family after you’ve saved them in the ‘My Films’ area of the game. Yoostar 2 also features some social networking options in the form of Yoostar Playground which allows you to link the game with Facebook and Twitter to share creations with friends, and moreover, has a rating system in place that grants you the ability to judge other people’s clips. As will always be the case with any compilation of films, there’s going to be something that people complain has been missed out. Thankfully, DLC support from the developers should be able to add more scenes to meet the demand of the fans (The Big Lebowski, please) assuming, that is, that it abides by the PEGI 12+ age rating (I guess that’s a no to The Big Lebowski then).
All in all, with a bunch of witty, inventive mates on hand and a little bit of imagination, Yoostar 2: In the Movies is an absolute riot and one of the most hilarious titles on Kinect. However, flaws exist with the concept which make acting alongside the original characters awkward, and some limitations of the Kinect sensor rear their ugly heads and have a negative impact on the gameplay at times – which is why the game is best played two-player, not necessarily following the script. The 80 scenes plus extra sets don’t go a long way, and soon enough you’ll have extracted all the movies you know or are interested in. This means that, despite the promise of DLC support which should inject a couple more hours to its lifespan, its hard to justify full-price for what will probably only end up as a few solid evening’s worth of entertainment.
Pros
Hilarious in the right hands
Stellar line-up of films at its disposal
Social network features
Cons
Concept is flawed in places
Kinect limitations
A selection of 80 scenes doesn’t go a long way (although DLC should go some way to solving this)
Sony Ericsson may have just been able to throw off the shroud of terrible advertisements for the Xperia Play because they have just released a slew of new advertisements that have actually put a face and a voice to the PlayStation Certified Xperia Play phone. No more simple thumbs or hands touching the device anymore.
Below you can find a number of different ads that feature Kristen Schaal who will describe some of the strongest features that you would want to buy the phone for, besides obvious reasons of course. These ads show off the phone’s abilities with YouTube, spreadsheets, apps, and of course being a portable gaming device that will be able to play PlayStation games. Catch all of the ads below.
Just a short while after the decision to postpone the launch of MotorStorm Apocalypse worldwide, Sony Europe has finally given the UK release date of the earthquake central racer as March 31st. As you can see by our review from Matthew Vella the game has been released in various areas around the world already. Though also as you can see in the review.
After the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan earlier this month the game had seen full release date delays worldwide and there currently has been no information given on the U.S. release date of April 12th being made official again or if the delay remains indefinite at this point. Nor has there been any information about the game being released in Japan, though it may be permanently delayed due to press reasons.
