Well, Sony revealed that the PlayStation 4 is actually called the PlayStation 4 and that it will be released during “Holiday 2013.” Price-point and other facts to be determined at a later date (you can find some deeper details on the press event here). The secondary chip to handle uploads and downloads is one of the best ideas yet because it will hopefully make those frequent updates to the system and games go more quickly.
While I mostly like some of the ideas that Sony was pushing for – like a system that is more instantaneous in its operations than the PS3 currently is, on-the-fly downloads, various social features, and the ability to play games while you are downloading them – there was one fact that bothered me a lot. The PS4 is not backwards compatible with any previous PlayStation Games because it does not use the Cell processor. This means that you will not be able to play those PS3, PS2, and PS One games on your spiffy new console.
Anodyne is Link’s nightmare realized; born in a borrowed bed, crying out its first time into a world that is eerily familiar and yet drastically off kilter. Anodyne feels like a rag doll effigy of our old pal Link, a doppelganger left in a crib where a real child once laid its beautiful innocent little head. Link’s not here of course, but the spirit of your poor relationship with your mother and your poor social skills are rattling their ghost bones around some dark corner of this world.
This 8-bit homage to Hyrule’s little hero is really about you, the player. But though Anodyne is strangely dark, it is also genuinely charming, and its humor smooths out the sharp edges of its bizarre storytelling and psycho-analysis.
While everyone is putting together their end of the year awards, I hope that you’ll consider the games I am about to mention for inclusion in your lists. They certainly have been a delight to play, but I won’t give you any more of a pitch than a simple mention here.
I could blather on about how X-Com blends what made the original series so great with some new play mechanics and some tactically minded gameplay that it deserves an award, or I could yammer on about how Faster Than Light captures what it might be like to be the Captain of a ship filled with RED SHIRTS, or how Mugen Souls playfully dances on the edge of sexism without actually being sexist, or how Torchlight II adds to the gameplay of the Xbox Live Arcade and PC hits by adding multiplayer and over land maps, or how Dishonored channels the spirit of game mechanics from the like Deus Ex and Thief successfully, or how Hotline Miami makes murder a guilty pleasure…. but I won’t.
So while you handing out all those awards to the usual suspects ( the Call of Duty’s, Battlefield 3′s, Madden’s and Borderlands’ of the world) please consider some kind of award for all these games. Thank you.
Note:Before you start reading my Final Verdict on Mugen Souls, be sure to check out my earlier in-depth take on the game’s various systems ( Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV). All briefed? Good, now onto my final thoughts on the game.
Mugen Souls is little too misogynistic for my taste, but I get that most of the slightly sexual jibs, jabs, and jokes are meant to be harmless fun aimed at teenage boys. Still I really don’t want to think about girls that are possibly under the age of 18 taking baths together or playing with each other’s breasts. That aside, the story isn’t really all that appealing until you get into the last chapters of the game where you finally feel that familiar sense of romance you might have experienced the first time you played an earlier NISA game like Disgaea or Soul Nomad. When the game does finally take itself seriously, players understand why this whole adventure happened and what motivates the protagonist and other characters encountered throughout the story to do the things they do.
If you haven’t downloaded FTL: Faster Than Light yet you probably should do so for a number of reasons. First and foremost it’s a fun little game, and secondly because it’s $9 on Steam right now. The game lets you take control of your own little space ship and sends you on random adventures with a small crew. It’s lightly rogue-like in that you are trying to explore as much as you can before death breaches your airlocks or turns you into a pile of ashes.
I have only played it for a few hours and I have to say that skipping the tutorial is probably the worst thing you can do. There are all these little things that you need to learn about your ship and how the game functions. For example if you don’t bother with the tutorial, you probably won’t know how to install a new weapon, how to open airlocks, how you can use your crew to put our fires and make repairs during battles, or the fact that shooting lasers (pew pew) doesn’t do squat against the systems inside the enemy crafts you’ll be fighting because it can’t breach the hull.
But even the tutorial is not going to prepare you for the randomness that is going to throw something at you that you ultimately can’t handle. Don’t get too attached to that ship or your crew because chances are they will all be dead in a handful of hyper jumps.
Anyway if you haven’t taken a run at the game yet I encourage you to check it out. I’ll be writing about the game here and there as I attempt to figure out how to survive in the deeper pockets of these randomly generated universes…
A new Cube World video shows off some new features that have been added to this in-development game that is best described as Zelda meets Minecraft. New features include gliders, sprinting, some new attacks that can stun enemies, new monsters and items, a glimpse at what dungeons will look like, and rare zones.
Enjoy the video and check out Wollay’s Blog to see more of the game. I can’t wait for this to be released!
In the first three parts of our Mugen Souls preview we talked about all the various elements of the game except combat. We saved this part of the gameplay for last because it is probably the most important part and in reality 90 percent of the gameplay will be spent fighting either in the main storyline worlds or in the Mugen Field.
Combat is pretty straightforward: you use your basic attacks, skills, magic, and special attacks to take down enemies and win the round. Battles are played out in turns, and a character’s level of speediness determines the order of things. Basic attacks are straightforward enough and come in short, medium and long range (guns, spears, swords, etc.) depending on what weapon you use.
Now that we are almost done with dissecting (almost, but not quite) Mugen Souls, I’m going to start playing Legasista hard-core over the next week to push a review out. If I haven’t mentioned Legasista before, it’s an action RPG that gets its inspiration from Roguelikes, though it dispense with the whole “perma-death” part of the popular sub-genre. If you don’t know what a Rouguelike is you can learn more about that here.
What the game does have in common with Roguelikes is the use of randomization for things like weapons, monsters and dungeon layouts, and the ability to keep the stats and the skills you gain when you die.
In Part II of our ongoing preview of Mugen Souls, we talked about money and other forms of currencies used to get ahead in the game. In our latest intstallment we discuss the mysteries of the Mugen Field and why it is pretty important that players make an effort to slog through it to get the most out of the game…
At a certain point in the game the Mugen Field opens up, giving you another avenue to grind up those levels and build the perfect Undisputed God of the Universe. You can use the characters provided by the game in the main storyline, or create your own peons, but whatever you do, the Mugen Field is the best place to gain experience and the only place to get large amounts of G Up points, so it’s pretty important to use it as much as you can.
NIS America has pushed the release date for Mugen Souls to October 16. They cite “schedule adjustments” as the reason for the extra month. We’re not really sure what that means, but the end result is that you’ll have to wait an extra month to play it.
On the plus side, we’ll continue to talk about the game here in this space and better prepare you for the game’s launch. For now, you can check out the new Battle trailer below:
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