With the release of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood less than a week away Ubisoft is already ready to get us excited about their next project in the world of Assassin’s Creed. A small trailer was released today for a game called Assassin’s Creed: Ascendance on UbiWorkshop’s website.
Ubiworkshop is in charge of everything that doesn’t count as a videogame, instead focusing on comic books and short films. What this means is that while the teaser could have simply been an animated cutscene for the sake of having one, actually could turn out to be part of the film. You heard me right, film. This is just idle speculation so far due to the fact that little else is known about Ascendance, but it appears that it will be an animated short film that will fill out parts of the story that have been left open between Assassin’s Creed 1 and 2. What do you think?
Keep your eyes peeled for this game over the next 6 months, with the latest video showcasing the history of everyones favorite Sub Zero. Find out how this un-dead ninja assassin became the cold blooded killer and why Scorpion and Reptile, better watch out!
Mortal Kombat (2011) sports the tag line “Brutal things come to those who wait” but if you can’t go here to see Scorpions back story and other great information. The game is being developed by Warner Brothers Interactive and is due early 2011.
Arcania: Gothic 4 Platforms: Xbox 360 (Reviewed), PC, Playstation 3 (Future release) Publishers: Dreamcatcher Interactive, JoWood Entertainment Developer: Spellbound Entertainment Genre: Fantasy RPG Release Date: October 19th, 2010
Overview:
Over the past decade Gothic has always had a distinct crowd of PC gamers that were die-hard fans. Piranha Bytes had been keeping together these RPGs that, while not always very popular, always had plenty of fans. Now however the fourth game is in the hands of Spellbound and JoWood and does it keep together the hardcore experience fans always loved when it arrives on the Xbox 360?
Story:
Gothic 4 places the player ten years after the events of Gothic3 in the land of Myrtana. King Rhobar III who used to rule the kingdom fairly has become ill with a type of madness that transforms him from a standard ruler into a bloodthirsty tyrant. This all begins before the player even has a chance to step into their role as a peasant sheep herder.
The player takes on this role as a simple man who occasionally dreams of adventure but is all set to settle down and have a wife and child. Everything is peaceful in the isle of Feshyr, the player goes through the standard tasks done by a working village man, lasting just long enough to make players wonder when the action will begin. That is until Rhobar’s troops show up and spoil everything by burning down the village and killing his fiancée. Thus begins the tale of revenge for your village and loves ones, and maybe on the way free the kingdom from Rhobar’s rule.
While it won’t win any awards for story, Gothic 4 sets itself up beautifully for what players have come to expect from the series. A bleak beginning with nothing to turn back to, only the grim future that awaits the main character. This would have at least been a bit more striking if the player could name their character in any way, or customize them but I digress. The story is exactly what RPG fans are looking for in their fantasy RPGs, especially when it comes to the Gothic series.
Graphics:
Vast open world seeming RPGs require a great looking world to explore otherwise it defeats the purpose of giving players the drive to venture around. Thankfully Gothic 4 delivers in this category. The areas that the player explores are very large and intricate. With large castles in scenic settings, to forests that just scream danger Gothic 4 at least knows how to set the feeling at a distance and at times is quite breathtaking; bordering on realistic.
This changes however after the player begins to actually explore said forest. This is because the frame rate constantly flakes off during combat or even more complicated looking areas. When seen close up the character models only end up looking strange and unbelievable and in some cases can confuse the player with what the gender is of the NPC that they are actually talking to. Plus remember that forest I mentioned before? Well as you get closer to that forest you will notice the more intricate details disappearing for better performance. Meaning instead of objects popping in, or texture draw; we have objects completely popping out and vanishing.
Sound:
The soundtrack is limited at best and the majority of what you will be hearing as far as background music goes is when you enter into the menu screens. These orchestral tracks are enjoyable for those who like that type of music (such as myself), but otherwise don’t step too far outside the box when it comes to normal music during combat and simple exploration. Even with music abruptly halting for no reason at times.
To its defense though, Gothic 4 has quite a large array of voice over work that would end up being played over the background music. This voiceover work though is inconsistent at best. There are times that you will go from one extreme to another. A very serious scene, wherein the entirety of the plot is branched from contains dialogue that is very cliché at best, but performed well enough to not seem as bad. Then a few minutes later with another character, the voice work becomes over-the-top and completely unbelievable. It also doesn’t help when the subtitled text reads completely different than what is being said aloud.
Beyond the voice work however the game sounds just fine, bow shots twang like the best of them, swords clash and pierce flesh and magic soars through the air. All in all as long as you stay away from the characters it sounds well enough, but alas much of the game requires involvement with different NPCs whose voice work shifts from believable to questionable between a few phrases.
Gameplay:
Gothic 4 is a third person hack and slash RPG. Combat is controlled via the face buttons on the controller in real time. The D-pad contains four different items, weapons, and spells that you can hotkey for quick use if you decide that you will need them for your fight. There is also your standard lock on LT and spell casting and selection on the RB button.
Everything is handled in real time except for when the player enters the menu screen. This menu screen pauses all action on the field and allows the player to use any healing items or buffing items that they choose to use, which sometimes makes fights one sided with the numerous amount of consumable items within the game itself.
There is little to no customization within the game outside of the level up system. Players will be able to customize their hero with skill points received from level ups, which can be attributed to things such as increasing your combo ability, your magic, ranged ability, and a handful of other statistics that are quite strange to see and will be confusing to even the most battle tested RPG fans. The actual skill points themselves are broken down into skill trees but are thankfully non-restrictive. Meaning you can choose to specialize your character to become any variation you want, or a combination of the two.
Outside of killing everything that happens to be breathing and in your path there is also the ability to craft items and perform alchemy. These are great ways to kill time within the game and create some powerful items with combinations of what you can accumulate from dead enemies and the world itself. These skill trees, while not combat oriented, are great to explore and sometimes practically unavoidable due to simply wanting to explore the amount of options that they provide.
This only becomes more apparent when you realize that the world is full of different ingredients and materials that can be alchemized and crafted to make your character stronger, or give yourself an edge. This is doubly true as far as enemy loot is concerned. Enemies will drop plenty of items that seem to level as you do. You won’t be finding too many items that are out of your reach from the enemies that you kill; instead you may be eagerly waiting to see what type of bonuses you will get out of your next confrontation.
And what a confrontation it can be. There are times in Gothic 4 where the player is accosted by countless enemies to beat back and destroy. These enemies don’t believe in Gentlemen’s Rules either, they are more than happy to rush in all at once to bring you down. This can lead to being mobbed by enemies quite often, but only gives the player a chance to test out their new weapons and spells on.
Players are also given two choices to venture around the world of Myrtana; by either walking around or teleporting using the point teleportation system. While teleportation is the fastest and most efficient way to travel, it does not help as far as quests are usually concerned. This is because quests are not marked always where they should be, or none at all, meaning that players must venture across the landscape simply to finish the quest. Though this is a benefit most of the time due to the fact that teleporting around can cause the player to miss items that they otherwise would have passed over blindly.
The game itself performs quite well, but the story progression and quests is where players will become extremely frustrated. That is because there is a more than usual amount of quests that are simply fetch quests or delivery quests. These are so numerous it will feel that the player is more of a mailman than a hero bent on revenge. When quests do venture outside of the delivery aspect there isn’t much variety there either, with most objectives being solved with a sharp blade and a powerful spell.
One aspect of these more story driven quests however, is that there are certain choices to be made as you venture along. Should you support one side or the other and how will it affect your quest in the long run turn out to be quite popular. These quests can vary from being extremely convincing by giving the player a decent amount of backstory and information about what they should do, or can squander into deliver this letter to the other side of town.
It is quite sad that there isn’t more quest variety as Gothic 4 is quite long. There is plenty to do in the world of Gothic 4, but unfortunately a lot of it revolves around said fetch quests and it quickly becomes tiresome. Though on the bright side the main storyline itself reaches upwards of 15+ hours on its own, and if you have the patience to handle the side quests then it can almost double your play value.
Overall:
Arcania: Gothic 4 does plenty of things well, but unfortunately sticks true to its standard looting and quest grinding methods which have become tedious over the years. While it is a more than suitable Medieval Fantasy RPG with lots of gameplay to offer, Arcania: Gothic 4 does little to step outside of the box and expand upon the standard formula.
Fresh and hot off the press, there is a new trailer for Rockstar’s latest upcoming game. It gives a spring 2011 date so it is expected sometime next year. Not too far away. All the footage in the video is pulled straight from gameplay. Enjoy.
Developed by Team Bondi in conjunction with Rockstar Games, L.A. Noire is a dark and violent detective thriller set against the backdrop of Los Angeles in the post-war years of the late 1940s, the most corrupt and violent period in the city’s history.
Based on groundbreaking performance capture technology that goes beyond traditional methods to render every subtlety and nuance of an actor’s facial expressions and emotions,L.A. Noire is the first game to truly explore what it means to be a detective, offering players the opportunity to solve crimes through a blend of classic action, clue-finding and interrogation, allowing players to analyze every subtle nuance of an actor’s performance in order to get to the truth.
Pan Vision, a leading independent Nordic publisher and distributor has worked together with Tactile Entertainment to bring you their latest game, Pirates vs Ninjas vs Zombies vs Pandas! (I’m having lots of crazy images floating in my brain as I type its name…) ANYWAY! It’s a game, and it has its story, the story of how it all begans…
Rampaging through a deep bamboo forest in their endless hunt for buried treasure, Captain Ashbeard’s rum-soaked pirate crew hacked unwittingly through the den of the pandas, until they disturbed the “Fat Panda” leader from his tree high in the sky. With one swipe of the Pirate’s blade the Fat Panda fell and tumbled like an out of control juggernaut towards the sacred land of the Ninja Masters and their ancient lotus grove. Furious and silently outraged the Ninjas watched as the Fat Panda barreled through their spiritual garden destroying all in his path. Eventually, the Fat Panda came to rest crashing into the cursed graveyard, the domain of the Zombie King and his army of the undead. Disturbed from a 1000 year slumber the zombie army rose to face those who would dare awake them from their deathly rest. It was at this tense moment that the Pirates, Ninjas, Zombies and Pandas faced off against one another. The Pirates vs Ninjas vs Zombies vs Pandas war had begun!
Apparently, this game-with-extremely-long-name is a physics-based demolition puzzler made for the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Looking at the bizarre name, I have zero idea how the developers manage to put pirates, ninjas, zombies and pandas in one single game. I mean, they are all common, but having them all together in one app, it’s crazy. I’m not even sure why the adorable Pandas are involved. Who will win the war? We shall wait and see when this comes out in December… Before that, let’s enjoy some screenshots!
Some gameplay footage of the demo build of beat ’em up Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has made an appearance on the web. While it is still early days where the games development is concerned, you can see that it is shaping up quite nicely, and although it’s only a basic framework of the game, it’s good to see some characters have already been fully rendered in game form, confirming their inclusion in the title.
As it isn’t due for release until late next year, Harada wanted to stress that this is all test footage and it is still early in the game’s life, and is therefore subject to change. As you will find out if you watch the video, some features such as breakable floors have yet to be integrated in this test version, and this sneak peak is by no means a full representation of the final product.
Still, it’s great to see such a robust prototype of the game already. It’s a pleasant surprise that at this early stage in the game’s development, the combo moves using the game’s tag elements are looking as fluid as they are.
Lately, masses of freemium games came to the App Store. Ngmoco, the leading publisher in the freemium scene is no longer the exclusive one as several other reputable publishers have jumped into the bandwagon! These include Amplified Games, Capcom, Chillingo, Glu, IUGO and SGN. Basically, freemium titles are free-to-download games with in app purchases of virtual currencies or premium items, made popular on the iOS devices by games like We Rule, Farmville, etc. These titles are extremely popular on Facebook too! It’s free to try, so why not?
Here’s a small run down of some notable freemium titles which are released in the past few days. (Click on the game titles will bring you directly to the Apple App Store)
Based on the original cartoon and comic art, players begin the game with only a single mushroom house and lone plowed plot of land. It’s basically Farmville with a twist! Enjoy the colourful crops and pretty scenery in the Smurfs’ Village.
Capcom finally brings their classic arcade titles to the Apple portable devices. You are given 3 free tokens each day to play Street Fighter II, 1942, Ghouls’ n Ghosts, or Commando in their entirety. Don’t forget to read our review of the game HERE!
Capcom has work together with IUGO to bring you their latest social game, Lil’ Pirates. As the name suggests, you play as a pirate (One Piece-style or Johnny Depp-style, your choice). You will have your own pirate ship, manage your own crew and go on missions!
It’s a virtual cat game! You can now have your very own cat (or cats) from five popular breeds, namely the Tabby, Persian, Russian Blue, Siamese and Black Shorthair. You will get to design a house for your beloved pet, and play with it as you unlock new decorations, toys and clothes for your pet. If you like, you can also visit your friends’ houses or arrange dates with their cats.
This is a location-based MMORPG as you explore the virtual world with your iPhone. Build and claim settlements, trade goods in the market, and uncover treasures in hope to expand your empire.
A 3D action shooter with waves of T.O.O.L enemies that keep on coming. Form your own brotherhood with your Game Center friends. They will help protect you and destroy the T.O.O.L enemies. Earn experiences when your “brother” is used even when you’re not in game. The game comes with a recent update that gives you Retina Display support, Game Center Leaderboard, new planet, new enemies and several bug fixes.
From a small town casino, you work your way up to build your own empire in MiniTycoon Casino. Design your casino with your favorite slot machines and poker tables while you hire your friends as dealers.
You begin with a small village and you are tasked to expand it into a sprawling city in the world of Trade Nations. Basically what you do is to harvest raw resources, refine them and create goods to earn a fortune. You can also trade goods with your friends and assign up to 14 different jobs to your villagers to improve your village’s productiveness. What set this apart from other similar games is its fantasy-style buildings and environment.
Only in Japan, would they call their next generation mobile gaming platform “Pop Tower TM“. So named, because of the partnership between PopCap Games and TAITO Corporation (TATIO(R)) of Square Enix Holding Co subsidiary. PopCap are world leaders in social and networking games; with smash hits such as Bejewled, Zuma and Chuzzle. The dedicated service will go live, in Japan, early next year.
Specifically Pop Tower will aim to showcase modified or otherwise ‘custom social adaptions’ of the above games and other from PopCaps’ back catalog. As can be expected, premium offers are available as will be the option for more network play with friends, as well as the obvious additional content ‘exclusive’ to Pop Tower. This is breaking ground for the Tokyo office of PopCap games who just this year also agreed to bring their first multiplayer game service: PopCap World, to Korea. PopCap continues to dominate the market in both Japan, China and Korea.
Other good news is that while TAITO are used to casual and arcade games from way back in the beginning of arcade machine development, they have held up well in a market now dominated with online, social and networking games.
James Gwertzman, PopCap’s Vice President for Asia/Pacific, said:
Social games on mobile devices looks set to dominate gaming worldwide and Japan is already ahead of the curve. PopCap is about identifying the curve and getting ahead of it. It’s not about being “trendy” or “first”; it’s about being the best; taking the talent and time to create something genuinely innovative. The Japanese game market is the second largest in the world, but historically, few Western companies have succeeded here.
PopCap believes the way to succeed globally is to think and act locally. We’ve set up a local team in Japan, and are very excited to collaborate with TAITO, one of the most dynamic Japanese companies in the social mobile space today. Our ambition for Pop Tower is to bring the best of PopCap – core game franchises like Bejeweled and Zuma – to Japanese customers; and hopefully make some discoveries about the mobile social space that we can then share with gamers internationally.
Their first iPhone app: Bejeweled 2 has built on the success that the Bejeweled franchise in general is heralded as kick starting the social gaming trend. The number of subsequent adaptations are enormous. We can only assume that PopCap have named their platform ‘Tower’ because of the model for menu access and file storage and networking (imagine one person at the top with an exponential number of contacts and data spreading out underneath in a ‘tree’ )
Mr Akihito Shoji, TAITO’s Senior Vice President of Content, said:
With Bejeweled and a host of other successful properties, PopCap Games is a casual gaming giant. The social game market is undergoing remarkable growth, and we have high hopes for this partnership. Mobile social game are a critical part of our overall strategy, with much of our resources devoted to the design and management of games that are not only fun pastimes, but also foster interaction and communication between players. We’re confident that our mobile social market experience and PopCap’s strong casual properties is a winning combination, and one that will deliver a whole new experience to the game users.
Developed by TAITO under the supervision of PopCap’s Tokyo office, Pop Toweris due to launch in early 2011 on GREE, a leading Japanese social network.
It has been a year since Cosmonaut Games released 5 Spots Party and to celebrate, the developer is giving away two copies of their first WiiWare title each day for the whole month of November.
This contest is exclusive to the European Region. To enter it is rather simple as well.
STEP 1: To be a @CosmonautGames follower in Twitter
STEP 2: Write this twitter message: “@CosmonautGames I want my free copy of #5SpotsParty”
Optional Step: Let us know you tweeted the message! Every winner who comes from this site will be awarded 100 extra cube points to their Capsule Computers account which can be used for more chances to win prizes and games with the Cube Point system. Just link to your tweet in the comments below for that extra entry. Don’t forget to be following @capsulecomputer for this bonus portion as well.
The winners will of course just need a European Nintendo Wii system to claim their prize.
Cosmonaut will draw two names each day, and since the contest is going on now, I strongly recommend any of our European readers to get in on the action and enter to win 5 Spots Party for the WiiWare.
La Laa La Laa La Laa !! The Smurfs ARE BACK !! Sing a HAPPY Song !!
Capcom has just released Smurfs Village for the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad available for FREE from the App store. For all you Smurf fans out there you’ll be glad to know that Capcom have made sure the game is based on the original cartoon and comic art.
The Story goes likes this : Gargamel found the Smurfs’ village and scattered the Smurfs far and wide. With Papa Smurf’s guidance, it’s up to you to build a new village for the Smurfs to call home.
Players begin the game with only a single mushroom house and a lone plowed plot of land. From there, things quickly progress, allowing players to build specialized houses, elaborate gardens with colorful crops, bridges to span running rivers, trodden paths, and more.
Features:
– Creativity is your only limit, build a complete Smurfs’ village from scratch
– Play with your favorite Smurfs including Papa Smurf, Smurfette, and Jokey Smurf
– Play mini games like Greedy Smurf’s Baking Game, Papa Smurf’s Potion Mixing Game, and Painter Smurf’s Painting Game and unlock additional bonuses
– Connect with friends through Facebook and send gifts to your friends’ villages
– Play offline… manage your village anytime without having to connect to the internet.
– Retina display graphics
I can’t wait to kick Brainy Smurf out into the forrest as he’ll probably annoy the crap out of me as he did in the original caroons !! 🙂
