I would normally create some Fire related joke at this point, but my lawyer says that it would create a bad public image if I did; so i will just get straight to this week’s Windows Phone 7 release.
Burn It All! ($2.99/£2.49)
Team up with your cousins in a fiery adventure to get your grandpa Volcano the fresh air he needs to stay blazing. One flame at a time, torch your way through Earth to the surface. All sorts of odd stuff has been scattered along your way to feed your natural urge to BURN IT AAAAAAALLLL!!! The cousins are three small rocks who convey fire. You play one of them at a time:
1- Fill up with flames at the source, 2- drag your finger to your designated target, 3- set fire to it. 4- Repeat until satisfied! 5- Each screen is a floor – reach the top to succeed.
Seems simple? It is… but I haven’t told you about each cousin’s abilities, the materials and parasites, the water and gas, the Badabombs, the Key-zards, the “Single Player Cooperation”, the time loops… (Oops, I’ve said too much already… seriously, let’s not spoil it… yeah, sorry…) Get those worries off your chest with this cool and refreshing game. If you’re in the topscore business, take on the world through each of the… how many already?… many, many floors separating you from fresh air. Come heat up your fingers and Burn It All!
Another cool video by the same creator that brought us the “Law Abiding Engineer” video. This time it is Team Fortress 2 characters entering the Dark Knight Trailer.
Check it out below and be sure to give the creator his props. The audio is a bit low, but get a headset plugged in and it becomes manageable.
Rockstar Games has today released a brand new in-depth gameplay video “Investigation and Interrogation” which highlights your two crucial detective skills, investigating and interrogating. The video is comprised entirely out of in-game footage and shows how players will search crime scenes, search for possible clues, question witnesses and suspects in order to solve a case, as well as the consequences of failing to do so. This is all part of Rockstar Games unique approach to L.A Noire storytelling and gameplay which aims to create an immersive world for players to truly feel like a detective in Los Angeles in the 1940s.
L.A. Noire is set to be released on May 20 in Australia for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3
Sony has announced that PlayStation Plus members will have the ability to use an online storage system to store their PS3 game save files in. This means that you will be able to play your save games from anywhere with an internet connection and your own PlayStation Account logged in to a friend’s PS3. As part of the $50 a year membership you will be able to store 150 MB or 1,000 save files whichever one is reached first.
In the future games will have the option to save directly into the PSN “cloud” instead of asking to save to your HDD which sounds like a new feature in theory but if the loss of internet occurs for whatever reason then you are sitting there with no access to your saved file. Players can use the feature to also back up their saves in an effort to make sure that nothing is lost if the worst should happen to their PS3. There has currently been no word of this feature becoming available for normal users and it most likely will not which gives PlayStation Plus a new feature to tempt PS3 owners into spending their money.
Atlus’ Catherine was met with much chagrin when players found the game too difficult to make it past the first few stages but with the patch released now it adds a brand new difficulty to the list, super easy mode. The patch is currently only available on the PS3 with a 360 patch coming in the future due to issues with Microsoft. There have been a few changes made to the game besides the addition of super easy mode according to Andriasang.
When the player picks up a pillow in the dream world it would normally provide Vincent one extra retry on easy mode. With this latest update any pillow that the player picks up will instead give three retries on easy, two retries on normal and only one retry on hard. There is also an exploit that has already been found which allows players to grab a pillow near a checkpoint, die, and restart from that checkpoint to grab another pillow and stock up on lives.
The super easy difficulty gives players something called the “drink assist” mode where players can hold the select/back button down and cause a certain drink to appear in front of them. This will cause Vincent to be able to jump three blocks at once instead of the normal one which means that Vincent will be able to move up the tower ridiculously easy with the use of this drink.
If you wouldn’t like to have the patch’s effects take place in your game then you can press both the joysticks down at the same time and it will disable the patch and provide the same difficult game that some fans may enjoy. There has been no word from Atlus’ USA branch as to whether or not this difficulty patch will be pre-applied to U.S. versions of the game or if it too will be a feature added after release.
Gabrielle’s Ghostly Groove was once a rhythm/action title that was scheduled to hit the Nintendo DS this year, but now Natsume have announced Gabrielle would be moving with her ghostly cast of characters to the Nintendo 3DS. Scheduled now for a summer release, this title will put players into the world of Gabrielle, who just sneezed her soul out of her body (I would say that is quite an original start), and now must travel to Monster Town to get assistance in her odd dilemma. Gabrielle must now dance and spook her way back into her body once and for all in this rhythm adventure.
Natsume have released this statement about the console shift for Gabrielle’s Ghostly Groove:
“As soon as we saw what the 3DS could do, we knew it was the best platform for this game,” said Hiro Maekawa, President and CEO of Natsume. “The way the dancers and effects pop right off the screen is simply amazing. You have to see it to believe it!”
Maekawa seems to be excited about this one, and being a rhythm/action fan, I am certainly interested in this quirky title myself as it is certainly different from what we have been seeing as far as 3DS announcements go. I guess until this summer though, gamers will just have to wait and see how exactly this title plays out on the 3DS, “amazing” effects and all.
Disney Interactive Studios have put out another trailer for their LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean game which will cover all four of the movies – the three already released ones and the new On Stranger Tides coming to cinemas in May, the same time as the game’s release.
This particular trailer focuses on The Curse of the Black Pearl and the corresponding section in LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean. It features a voice-over guy narrating over the video footage which should help to further explain what to expect when it releases. The video also shows off some brand new areas of the game, and gives a glimpse at some of the scenes from the film which have been immortalised in LEGO.
For those of you who have not had the chance to try out the 3DS as of yet, Nintendo have full plans to bring the unit in tow with them during PAX East, which runs from March 11-13 in Boston. There will be a full library of fans for gamers to try out early this year it seems, with the Mii Maker & AR Games included. Titles that will be demoing at the event include:
Steel Diver
Kid Icarus: Uprising
Pilotwings Resort
nintendogs + cats
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars
DEAD OR ALIVE Dimensions
Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition
Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D
Pokémon Black & White will also be at the event, letting players try out the new features for both titles which launched March 6th in the states. If you are planning to go to PAX or just live near Boston, this is a great opportunity to try out some new titles as well as the system itself for some awesome bragging rights or simply to make up your mind if the 3DS is the handheld for you.
Beyond Good & Evil HD
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft
Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: XBLA
Released: 2nd March
Price: 800 MSP BUY NOW
When it was first released, Beyond Good & Evil was hailed as what some called the “adult Legend of Zelda”. This was at the time of The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker and its new cel-shaded graphical style which was met by a lot of opposition who were claiming it looked far too childish. Although The Legend of Zelda is as suitable for adults as it is children (probably even more so due to some of its dark undertones and spooky enemies), you can certainly see where they were coming from. But, being compared to such a legendary series is not only an honour, but gives you, the consumer, an idea of the depth that’s on offer in Beyond Good & Evil.
Set in 2435 on a distant planet, the story follows Jade, an investigative reporter trained in martial arts, as she slowly gets more and more involved with a resistance movement before eventually uncovering dark secrets and a planet-wide alien conspiracy. It’s played out through third-person action-adventuring, with a blend of combat, puzzling and stealth missions, so it’s no wonder comparisons have been drawn between this and The Legend of Zelda. The systems in place are actually fairly similar such as the way health is broken down into sections which deplete in parts as you take damage, but you can also earn hearts, thus increasing your overall life gauge. Combat is done using a combat stick but computer-controlled allies can lend a hand when you press a certain button to trigger their ‘super attack’, which usually help by making the enemy off-balance and more vulnerable to your own attacks.
As Jade is an investigative journalist, the game also makes use of a camera, the control scheme of which is nicely mapped onto the shoulder buttons, meaning it’s out of the way for when you don’t need it, but easily accessible for when you do. While the camera features as part of the main plot path, it is also where Beyond Good & Evil does its very own take on collectibles. Along the way you are tasked with taking pictures of each and every species of animal on the planet. Doing so earns you special space pearls, one of the in-game currencies that is used for buying ship parts and conducting upgrades and repairs. These space pearls can be acquired elsewhere throughout the story too.
The story is truly one of Beyond Good & Evil HD’s greatest assets: the stunning cinematic cut scenes are incomparable to other downloadable Xbox Live Arcade releases. It may be old now, but Beyond Good & Evil is a retail game at heart and its retail production values remain intact and as such, far superior to those normally witnessed on the download service. With excellent voice acting and a compelling plot it surpasses most other XBLA games simply because most of them will have had a remarkably smaller budget than Beyond Good & Evil did when it was produced for Xbox, PS2 and Gamecube. The storyline may not live up to the hefty task set by such a powerful title, but it’s more than adequate, if a little short-lived.
Technically, the HD tagline is a bit cheeky because, aside from controls to suit the Xbox 360 pad, Beyond Good & Evil is almost a straight port of the PC remake of the game. Yes, the graphics are great and the diverse in-game universe is genuinely impressive, but calling it HD is a bit of a stretch. That said, the visuals have definitely had a much needed polish from the last-gen original’s: textures have been smoothed, character models have been improved, and the sound quality of the soundtrack has been cleaned up. On the subject of the soundtrack, this is also brilliant and the emotive musical score contributes positively to the overall mood of the story, making it an even more engrossing experience.
It may be wrong seeing as it isn’t a completely new game, only a polished port of an old one, but Beyond Good & Evil HD is a definite contender for being one of this year’s top XBLA games. As it was originally a full retail release of the highest calibre (which due to poor marketing flunked), it still holds those high production values which are unrivalled on the Xbox Live Arcade. This means diverse 3-D environments, a top-rate story with charming, amusing characters, and a decent story with professional voice-acting and cut scenes to boot. It still possesses some remnants of its past in the over-excitable camera and the occasional gameplay glitch, but for 800 Microsoft Points, you can’t really go wrong. If you’ve played the original then it doesn’t have much to offer other than a new coat of paint and added sheen, but for those who didn’t play it first time round, this fantastic adventure well worth having.
Pros
Great story and lovable characters
Stunning cut scenes
Brilliant soundtrack and voice-acting
All for the modest price of 800 Microsoft Points
Cons
Camera issues and odd glitches remain
Not so appealing for those who have already played through one of the other versions
While the SMT fans still have to wait until summer to get their hands on Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overlocked, Atlus have now released a trailer which should hold fans over for a while as it introduces the vast amount of voicework that went into the game. I will admit, I wasn’t blown away by the voice acting, but seeing this hefty amount used on a portable title certainly is impressive though.
Aside from the enhanced audio, it also appears that this remake will be getting a fresh coat of paint on the already loved artwork from the original. Fans will also now be able access a newly added eighth chapter to the game which will be sure to be the “it” factor for Overclocked, as it is being deemed as a “rousing epilogue” for SMT fans everywhere. I personally missed out on the first title when it came around, so I am pretty pumped to check out this new version myself. For now though, you can check out the new trailer below and let us know what you thought of the enhanced features in the comments below.
