Saint Seiya Brave Soldiers will cover the Sanctuary, Poseidon and Hades arcs of the Saint Seiya manga, and this morning, Namco Bandai shared a new trailer for the anime fighter that covers the Hades arc of the story. Watch it below:
Saint Seiya Brave Soldiers will be available in the west this November. In case you missed it, you can watch a trailer for the Poseidon arc here.
NIS America released a new video of Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness that introduces the main characters. You probably recognize Laharl, Etna, and Flonne from other Disgaea titles. Disgaea D2 is a direct sequel to the first game and Laharl has stepped up to the Overlord throne.
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Sicily is a new character who claims to be Laharl's sister and also wants to be the Overlord. Another faction doesn't believe Laharl is up to the task of filling in for King Krichevskoy and wants Barbara to be the Overlord. Meanwhile, there is a war between demons and angels. It seems like Xenolith knows something about that.
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Disgaea D2 comes out on October 8 in North America and September 27 in Europe.
Insomniac Games revealed Sunset Overdrive during Microsoft's press conference at E3.
The game is a colorful and stylistic open-world shooter. From what we can gather from the reveal trailer, Sunset Overdrive allows freedom of movement, including wallrunning and parkour style climbing.
The trailer shows a battle between humans and orange mutants, and features both traditional and unusual weaponry, such as a gun that shoots vinyl records (Revolution X, anyone?).
This morning, The Wonderful 101 director Hideki Kamiya hosted a Nintendo Direct presentation, explaining the upcoming Wii U exclusive in great detail for those that essentially have no idea what it’s about. You can watch the presentation in its entirety below. It touches upon the game’s combat, characters and more:
The Wonderful 101 will be available on August 23rd in Europe and September 15th in North America. A demo for the game is available on the Wii U eShop in Europe now. North America will be getting the demo in the near future as well.
Ace Combat Infinity, Namco Bandai’s free-to-play Ace Combat game, is headed to North America and Europe, the publisher announced this morning. The game will include a new story campaign as well as team co-op multiplayer.
“The Ace Combat franchise has set the gold standard in both graphics and dog-fighting dynamics for flight combat video games throughout its long running history,” said Chris Gilbert, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Namco Bandai Games America.
“The Project Aces team has crafted a Free-to-Play experience within Ace Combat Infinity that will allow gamers to enjoy high flying aerial warfare like never before.”
Ace Combat Infinity is slated for release on PlayStation 3 as a free download in the “latter half of 2013” in North America. Europe will get the game in 2013 as well.
In 2012, Disney release a side-scrolling Wreck-It Ralph platformer as an extension of their animated movie. The game took place after the events of the movie, allowing you to play as Ralph or Felix, and one of the concept artists who worked on the game has shared some of the work he did for it.
The concept art shows off stage design notes, detailing both art and game mechanics in some of the pieces, as well as designs for enemies and a mini-boss, and you can take a look at some of it below. The rest of the design concepts can be found at the link above.
The theme of the latest installment of the popular rhythm game series Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F 2nd is going to be “The Diva until now, The Diva From now on,” as Sega’s way of expressing the evolution of the series. As part of the evolution, they’ll also be remaking past songs for the upcoming game. These will be chosen from a list of popular songs voted on by fans.
The poll took place between December 24th, 2012 and January 15th, 2013. Fans were asked to participate in a poll regarding their favorite Project Diva songs. Here’s a look at the top 39 songs that fans picked:
1. Romeo and Cinderella
2. Rain of Cherry Blossoms ' Standard edit
3. Two-Faced Lovers
4. A Pair of Wintry Winds
5. Melt
6. Cantarella
7. Rolling Girl
8. A Thousand Year Solo (DIVA edit)
9. World is Mine
10. SPiCa – 39’s Giving Day Edition -
11. Paradichlorobenzene
12. Love Words
13. Cumulonimbus Cloud Graffiti
14. Luka Luka★Night Fever
15. Disappearance of Hatsune Miku
16. Clover♣Club
17. Hold, Release; Rakshasa and Carcasses
18. Meltdown (Nuclear Fusion)
19. Although Songs Have No Form
20. magnet
21. Just Be Friends
22. Colorful×Melody
23. Look This Way Baby
24. Marginal
25. I'll Make you Miku Miku'ed
26. When the First Love Ends
27. Yellow
28. Electric Angel
29. Love is War
30. Stardust Utopia
31. In the End of Solitude
32. The Intense Singing of Hatsune Miku
33. Miracle Paint
34. After Rain Sweet*Drops
35. Vocaloid In Love
36. Far Away
37. Change Me
38. Heart
39. Packaged
According to the official Project Diva blog’s post, it has not been confirmed as to how many of the above 39 songs will actually be remade for Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F 2nd, but the development team will be making an announcement in the near future.
In addition, Sega would also like to remind fans that this list wasn’t a vote for the most popular songs, but rather taht the original poll asked fans which song they’d like to see remade the most.
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F 2nd is slated for release in Spring of 2014 for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita.
In the 1950s, the prospering Japanese film industry reinvented the “monster movie.”
The giant monsters of the era were “kaiju” that often symbolized the effects of pollution, such as radiation and hydrogen bomb experiments.
In the 1960s and ‘70s, the “hero show” was born. Brave heroes challenged the kaiju on prime time television, and the entire nation tuned in.
The heroes were just as big as the monstrous kaiju, but they were more like friends to the children of Japan, or even a father that would protect them, no matter the sacrifices he had to make.
It’s not every day that you come across a title like Attack of the Friday Monsters: A Tokyo Tale, a strange nostalgic trip to the Japanese ‘70s, with lots of love for tokusatsu (special effects) films of that era. Being one of latest in the line of Guild games from Level-5, Friday Monsters is the product of Kaz Ayabe, the creator of the Summer Holidays 20th Century (Boku no Natsuyasumi) series, which bears many similarities to this game actually.
The West having never gotten to experience any of his prior work, may not be all too familiar with Ayabe, but he has had success over in his home country, and is known for his child-like wonder, and atmospheric games.
It being the first Ayabe game to finally come out in the West, I was very excited to try Attack of the Friday Monsters; I always wished to play the Summer Holidays games but never could because of the language barrier. So, how exactly does this game hold up? Well to put it in the simplest of terms, the game accomplishes what it sets out to do.
Friday Monsters from the outset begins with this cute, almost anime-like opening song singing about what it means to be a kid. When the song ends, the player is thrown into the shoes of Sohta, a young 10-year-old boy who just moved into Fuji no Hana with his parents, the Dry Cleaners at the end of the Summer 1971. Sohta is soon busy running errands for his parents and ends up meeting with the neighborhood kids, the local bullies, the employees of the local TV station, and the plain whacky inhabitants of his new home.
The game’s characters have a lot of whimsy and charm; the localization really hones in on this, and delivers some cute puns and generally funny jokes. It’s a strong effort on Level-5’s part and makes the game a blast to read, which is good, because you’ll be doing a lot of reading. The translation choices keep most of the Japanese terminology intact, including honorific suffixes. Most of the terminology like ‘kaiju’ is explained in the dialogue, so as to not leave those less familiar with Japanese out of the loop, but the honorifics are never really explained.
There is an amount of spoken dialogue in the game, mostly through the voice of a narrator who narrates the action going on the screen, and occasionally says out loud what Sohta is thinking. All the acting is left in its original Japanese with the speech bubbles being in English. When there are no speech bubbles, the game uses English subtitles.
Attack of the Friday Monsters is pretty straightforward, with you navigating Sohta around town using the 3DS Circle Pad. Talking to the residents of the town can unlock new ‘episodes’. The game consist of 26 episodes, of course, just like a lot of anime. These episodes are relayed out of order, and some can be short, even completed by accident in less then a minute, such as finding a hidden pathway to open a gate that was locked. Others can stretch on and are on the longer side.
Through the 26 episodes, Sohta and his friends will see miraculous and scary “monsters” scare off bullies. They’ll make new friends, experience first love, and just plain be kids. Friday Monsters can maybe be best classified as an interactive narrative experience. The game is light on play mechanics, with a card game included to mix things up a little.
Oftentimes, Sohta will have to run an errand in order to get a resident who is blocking his path out of his way. But another way to progress is through the game’s monster card game. While exploring the town you will find ‘glims’. You can’t really miss them since they’re big glowing orbs on the ground. Walking over them causes you to collect them, and eventually when you get enough, they give you a card.
When you beat others in the card game, and when you finish an episode you are often awarded even more glims. Another added bonus of wining card games is that it turns the loser into your servant. The game lets you chant your own custom made spell (picked by a set of pre-made voiced options). Once you say your spell, the loser falls over and then must listen to you. The loser may even give you helpful hints. The card game itself is simple enough and mostly plays like a randomize match of rock-paper- scissors, but it helps to give you more to do in the game, and by fusing cards together it does allow for a little more depth in the card game aspect.
Though it is limited in content that the player can “do,” there actually is a lot to see and experience in Attack of the Friday Monsters. Additionally, a nice soundtrack, and very pretty visuals help make playing the game a joyful experience. Some of the pre-rendered backgrounds really are gorgeous to behold, and show off what the 3DS can do nicely.
If you allow Attack of the Friday Monsters to sweep you up in its pace, the game becomes something really special. This is one of those games that isn’t played, it’s experienced. That’s how Ayabe accomplished his goal; the game truly makes you feel like a kid again. The appeal of the game at first may seem limited with its obvious Japanese setting, and sentimentalities, as well as a cultural barrier in place, but through playing the game, these all melt right away. At its core, Attack of the Friday Monsters isn’t really about monsters. It’s not even about 1970’s Japan or card games either—it’s about being a kid, and everybody can relate to that.
Food for Thought:
1. The subtitles are in white, I would have preferred them to be a brighter color like yellow so they don’t bleed into the background; white on white is a nightmare.
2. Speaking of subtitles, the actress for the narrator also happens to be the actress for Sohta’s love interest. (wink, wink)
3. The game isn’t very long; you can beat it in about 3 or so hours, it should take around 5 or 6 hours to 100% clear everything post-game.
4. The story of Cleaner Man is one of the most adorable tokusatsu hero stories ever.
Nicalis, the company that picked up Cave Story and developing The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, is bringing Yatagarasu to PlayStation Vita. Yatagarasu will be renamed Legend of Raven, but it's the same core game from a team that made King of Fighters titles. Kotani Tomoyuki hand animated the eight fighters in the game.
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Legend of Raven has been enhanced for Vita with a new soundtrack, parallaxing backgrounds, and ad-hoc play. Players will be able to battle each other through an ad-hoc versus mode.
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Legend of Raven is slated for release later this year via PlayStation Network.
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The Pokémon Company have released official images of their upcoming limited edition Eevee Nintendo 3DS XL system. As reported last night, this system is only available by entering a lottery at Pokémon Centers in Japan and getting lucky. It costs 18,900 yen.
Il ritorno di un mito per molti, la speranza di un’inedita e ricca esperienza per tutti: Thief è ufficiale.Un grande titolo next-gen verrà rivelato nel prossimo numero di Game Informer di aprile, la cui cover anticipa il contenuto della prossima uscita.
“L’eroe seriale Garrett ritorna alla Gotica, metropoli industriale conosciuta semplicemente come la City per rubare tutto e qualsiasi cosa lo possa rendere più ricco.
Sfortunatamente la città arrostisce in tensioni sociali e viene devastata dalla peste e dominata da una politico tiranno conosciuto come Baron. Al fine di sopravvivere alle sue avventure, Garrett dovrà porre attenzione al territorio e fare uso di tutti i possibili sentieri attraverso ciascun livello del gioco.“
Di cosa si parla a questo punto è semplice: Thief. Il tanto vociferato seguito, pensato inizialmente come “Thief 4″, è ora ufficiale ed è atteso su PC, PlayStation 4 e un più generico next-generation consoles (probabilmente nuova Xbox). Stephane D’Astous di Eidos Montreal annuncia la natura di reboot della serie e afferma:
“I fan ricordano i giochi originali con molto affetto e noi vogliamo preservare quell’essenza mentre introdurremo il titolo a una nuova audience di prossima generazione”.
Lo scopo degli sviluppatori è quello di consegnare ai giocatori la fantasia di immedesimarsi in Garrett il maestro dei ladri e sarà su questo che si incentrerà l’esperienza di gioco. Thief è atteso per il prossimo 2014 ed è in preparazione presso i prestigiosi studi di Eidos Montreal ormai da alcuni anni.
Un breve video di discussione sul futuro Thief e un leaked di un breve trailer di 30 secondi sono al momento l’unico spunto visivo disponibile sul gioco insieme ad alcune immagini prelevate direttamente dal sito vk.com.
Appuntamento ad aprile con Game Informer per l’attesa rivelazione di questo interessante reboot intitolato, semplicemente, Thief.
Leaked trailerVideo introduzione di Game InformerThief su PS4, console next-gen e PC: primi trailer e immagini, 5.0 out of 5 based on 4 ratings
