NIS America has some good news for fans of the Strategy RPG genre, Phantom Brave: The Hermuda Triangle will be coming to the PSP this upcoming March. You will be able to get it on UMD or the PSN in North America, or just the PSN if you are in Europe. Fans of the series may recall that Phantom brave was originally just a PS2 release, and then a Wii game. Well this one is even better.
The Hermuda triangle brings with it a handful of new changes such as new characters that are exclusive to the PSP version such as Hero Prinny and the Unlosing Ranger from past NIS games. There will also be new story chapters available that were added in the Wii version of the game. So if you happened to pass over the previous Wii adaptation, now is your chance to take a look at the new chapters.
Phantom Brave uses a turn based battle system unique to Strategy RPGs and also provides extreme character customization and unique battles. Marona who is the heroine of the game has the ability to summon ghosts and monsters to do battles for her. Though to do this she must “confine” the soul into something on the battlefield such as a rock or a tree to make them come to life. The tactical part of this is the fact that wherever she places the souls, they can become stronger. So although this may seem familiar to many fans of the genre it will be quite hard to pass up on the new changes all incorporated into the PSP.
Hothead Games, the people behind Death Spank and Penny Arcade Adventures, are working on a new title. However, they don’t have a name for the game yet. That is where you come in. You are creative, funny, charming and downright awesome, right? I knew it. Then get on over to the Hothead page and give your ideas to name their game. As mentioned above, you will get your name mentioned in the credits as a reward. The criteria for naming the game involves wizards, cards and the following screenshot. Ready, set, go get that reward!
Microsoft has kindly offered to help whittle away our cold and miserable cloudy winter by offering us a sweet promo. Buy 1600 MS points and get 400 MS points FREE!! Since most of us already spend that much anyway, this is like getting $5 for free. A list of eligible items is below. This deal runs from November 16-November 22, 2010 and you must register before you buy anything by downloading the Microsoft Game Studios Offer gamer picture. (To the uninitiated, 1600 points is $20.00 and 400 points is $5.00.)
Behemoth, the developer of XBLA hit Castle Crashers, has announced that Battleblock Theater, their newest game, will no longer be coming in 2010. The release date has shifted to a 2011 time frame. According to Behemoth, the game requires much more R & D than originally anticipated. But the good news is that the developer has succeeded in bringing Castle Crashers to PS3 in many parts of the world. It will launch in Japan on November 25, 2010 and after that, they have promised to bring you all the latest videos and screens for Battleblock. Can you content yourself with this video until then? Yea, me neither.
Well it is getting to be that time of year again. Many of the major games have already been released and the year 2011 is growing closer and closer. You know what that means. It is time for Spike TV to host the Video Game Awards of 2010. They have already released a list of all the nominees and categories that they were nominated for which you can check out below.
The most notable games are Mass Effect 2 with ten nominations, Red Dead Redemption with 9, and Halo Reach and Black Ops having seven each. It will be interesting to see if any game will sweep each category and end up coming up with the most awards of the show. Not quite sure if I agree with some of these nominations myself, nor how one can judge the most anticipated game of the upcoming year. But I digress; check out the list below.
Game of the Year
Call of Duty: Black Ops
God of War III
Halo: Reach
Mass Effect 2
Red Dead Redemption
Studio of the Year
BioWare
Blizzard Entertainment
Bungie Studios
Rockstar San Diego
Best Xbox 360 Game
Alan Wake
Fable III
Halo: Reach
Mass Effect 2
Best PS3 Game
God of War 3
Heavy Rain
Modnation Racers
Red Dead Redemption
Best Wii Game
Donkey Kong Country Returns
Kirby’s Epic Yarn
Metroid Other M
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Best PC Game
Fallout: New Vegas
Mass Effect 2
Sid Meier’s Civilization V
Starcraft II Wings of Liberty
Best Handheld Game
God of War: Ghost of Sparta
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Super Scribblenauts
Best Shooter
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
BioShock 2
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Halo: Reach
Best Action Adventure Game
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
God of War III
Red Dead Redemption
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Best RPG
Fable III
Fallout: New Vegas
Final Fantasy XIII
Mass Effect 2
Best Multi-player
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Halo: Reach
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
Best Individual Sports Game
EA Sports MMA
Shaun White Skateboarding
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11
UFC Undisputed 2010
Best Team Sports Game
FIFA Soccer 11
Madden NFL 11
NBA 2K11
MLB 10: The Show
Best Driving Game
Blur
Modnation Racers
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Split/Second
Best Music Game
Dance Central
DJ Hero 2
Def Jam Rapstar
Rock Band 3
Best Soundtrack
Def Jam Rapstar
DJ Hero 2
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
Rock Band 3
Best Song in a Game
“Basket Case”
“Black Rain”
“Far Away”
“GoldenEye”
“Won’t Back Down”
“Replay/Rude Boy Mashup”
Best Original Score
God of War III
Halo: Reach
Mass Effect 2
Red Dead Redemption
Best Graphics
God of War III
Heavy Rain
Kirby’s Epic Yarn
Red Dead Redemption
Best Adapted Video Game
Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Transformers: The War for Cybertron
Best Performance By A Human Male
Daniel Craig as James Bond (Blood Stone 007)
Gary Oldman as Sgt. Reznov (Call of Duty Black Ops)
John Cleese as Jasper (Fable III)
Martin Sheen as Illusive Man (Mass Effect 2)
Nathan Fillion as Sergeant Edward Buck (Halo Reach)
Neil Pattrick Harris as Peter Parker/Amazing Spider-Man (Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions)
Rob Wiethoff as John Marston (Red Dead Redemption)
Sam Worthington as Alex Mason (Call of Duty Black Ops)
Best Performance by a Human Female
Dame Judi Dench as M in Blood Stone 007
Danica Patrick as Danica Patrick in Blur
Emmanuelle Chriqui as The Numbers Lady in Call of Duty Back Ops
Felicia Day as Veronica in Fallout New Vegas
Jennifer Hale as Commander Sheppard in Mass Effect 2
Kristin Bell as Lucy Stillman in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
Tricia Helfer as Sarah Kerrican in Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
Yvonne Strahovski as Miranda Lawson in Mass Effect 2
Ah… GameStop, you’ve made some mistakes in the past revealing things before the publishers want you too and now you do it yet again. I say this because GameStop happened to place up a listing called the DreamCast Collection. This game was listed as being available for the PS3 and the Xbox 360 with a release date of February 15th 2011 and priced at $30. The part that easily places this within the mistake category is the fact that the listing was pulled within hours of it being discovered.
There was no actual information about the game’s contents but one can speculate that with the arrival of Crazy Taxi already on the PSN, an upcoming release on the XBLA, and the fact that it was originally for the Dreamcast (outside of the Arcade), leads us to believe that it will be part of said content. Also Sonic Adventure, another Dreamcast game, is already available on both consoles. Both cost $10 to purchase so that equals the two thirds of the price tag, but what about the last $10? Time will tell, and maybe we may even hear something from Sega in the near future now that this slip-up happened.
The listing would have been available here; but has been subsequently removed since discovery.
See those cute little guys? Aren’t they just begging to be electrocuted, cut into pieces, and otherwise destroyed with force powers? Well you will have your chance because The Force Unleashed 2 will be giving players the chance to destroy them very soon in DLC. LucasArts has announced to IGN that the DLC will take place on the Forest Moon of Endor, which is the home planet of the Ewoks and is in the movie Return of the Jedi.
Gio Corsi of LucasArts SIngapore explains that this DLC will be something similar to the Hoth Bonus Mission from the first Force Unleashed, called an infinite storyline. Infinite storyline means that battles that don’t fit into the actual Star Wars storyline happen, meaning that this isn’t canon. This storyline will place Starkiller with all of his powers and ready to tear into the little bear like Ewoks.
There has yet to be a release date announced for said DLC, nor a price listing of any sort so we do not know how much this DLC will cost. Most likely in the range of $10 to $15 as standard DLC goes from the first Force Unleashed.
Compared to the fact that Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood just came out yesterday this might seem like just a drop in a bucket in the AC universe, but Assassin’s Creed Ascendance is now available. Ubisoft has released the animated short film on the PSN, XBLM, and iTunes for $2 on each system. The storyline is said to bridge the gap between AC 2 and AC Brotherhood.
This means that if you are able to put down Brotherhood for a few minutes you can take a peak at more story as we see Ezio work towards taking Cesare Borgia out of power and preventing his evil rule. Bit of a nice tie-in to go with Brotherhood’s release but not entirely sure that it will be a major draw in sales.
You can download the XBLM version here, and the iTunes here. PSN must be downloaded via a PS3.
Imageepoch has just one question for you. Do you think that JRPGs are dead? Well their answer is an emphatic no. The developer of games such as Last Ranker and Arc Rise Fantasia has decided to make a stand for JRPGs and do what it can to bring them back to the limelight. Many people may believe now that JRPGs are stagnant or simply to similar to one another to make much of a splash anymore.
But that isn’t discouraging them as Imageepoch has decided that at a November 24th conference they will be showing off at least eight different gaming projects. They also entail that these games will be spanning from the PC, normal console games, smartphone games and even online games all set for a 2011 release.
There have been some rumors that one of the games they will be announcing will be an RPG centered around the Black Rock Shooter series, which I must say sounds excellent. Keep checking back with us on the 24th of November when we find out exactly what games they will be talking about, and if the rumors about Black Rock Shooter are true.
This past weekend was the Izumicon convention which is a yearly Anime convention. The convention itself lasts for three days but some mildly big news was announced by Sentai Filmworks during this convention time. They have announced that they now have the rights to the Clannad film that was produced in 2007. What this means is that they will soon be releasing a bilingual edition of the show next March.
Beyond the movie however, Sentai also announced that they will be bringing an English dub for the upcoming release of Clannad After Story. The After Story is a special route unlocked inside of the Clannad game once every story was completed and follows the aftermath of the main character’s confession. The bilingual release will be some time in April of 2011, with those who already own the subtitled copy able to trade their version in for the bilingual copy.
This is some decent news considering Clannad has been acclaimed as one of the best visual novels to ever come from Japan. There have been various Anime adaptions and movies produced as well, so it’s good to see some love for the series with it finally making its way to US shores.
