New Games |
- Supremacy MMA is out today, gets a launch trailer
- Live show: Backlog returns to Albion for more Fable III
- New releases: Gears 3, Kirby, Persona 2, Rusty and more!
- 'Ashes of History' update coming to Rift next week
- Rotastic release trailer looks rad
- Podtoid 168: Hotel For Pigs (With Guest Tommy Wiseau!)
- Check out Namco Bandai's Japan office!
- Relaxation: Cheesy double chief burrito
- A glimpse of the Gears of War 3 Times Square launch
- Kongregate Arcade 2.0 is here and adds messaging
- Space Channel 5, Sega Bass Fishing set for early October
- Live show: Dungeon Defenders on Mash Tactics
- League of Legends: Dominion beta is happening
- Review: Burnout Crash!
- Ten Disney levels I'd love to see in Kingdom Hearts III
- Destructoid's Extra Life Marathon 2011!!
- World of Darkness details hint at CCP's direction
- Review: Radiant Silvergun (XBLA)
- Contest: Win the Steam 2D Indie Bundle!
| Supremacy MMA is out today, gets a launch trailer Posted: 21 Sep 2011 03:30 PM PDT
Good news everyone! Supremacy MMA, the new contender from 505 Games, has made its way to retail today. Bypassing the licensing and professionalism of UFC, Supremacy promises brutal, unsanctioned MMA action in a "fast arcade style." While UFC Undisputed and EA MMA opt for a slower, simulation style game, attempting to emulate the Pay-per-view experience, Supremacy is shooting for a more raw, carnal game which, let's be honest, beating the hell out of another guy should be far from sterile and structured. If you're a fan of competitive fighting this may be worth checking out. |
| Live show: Backlog returns to Albion for more Fable III Posted: 21 Sep 2011 03:00 PM PDT [Backlog is the ongoing quest to rid Conrad Zimmerman's collection of unfinished games. As voted on by the Destructoid community, Conrad plays each game from start to finish live on Destructoid's Twitch.tv channel every weeknight at 8pm Pacific] Thanks to all the lovely people who voted for the Mystery Game, we're playing Fable III on Backlog tonight. Last night's show saw very little actual gameplay occurring, as I pushed through basic tutorial missions and expository cut scenes. Maybe now we can be off on our adventures together. Come and join me as I return the age of Heroes to Albion. I'll be playing live and hanging out with the goons in our live chat over on Destructoid's Twitch.tv channel! |
| New releases: Gears 3, Kirby, Persona 2, Rusty and more! Posted: 21 Sep 2011 02:00 PM PDT
Gears of War 3. It's finally out for the Xbox 360 and marks the start of the avalanche of blockbuster titles that are about to clean out your bank accounts. So many good games! Other big titles this week include Kirby Mass Attack, Persona 2 on the PSP, the new Fallout: New Vegas DLC, Rusty Hearts on the PC and so much more. What's looking sw33t to all of you this week? X360: F1 2011, Resident Evil 4 HD, Supremacy MMA, Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road, Burnout Crash!, Gears of War 3, Rotastic PSP: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 2 - Innocent Sin 3DS: Frogger 3D |
| 'Ashes of History' update coming to Rift next week Posted: 21 Sep 2011 01:30 PM PDT Rift players are in for a treat, as next week will see the release of Rift 1.5 which comes with a lot of big features. Some of these additions are things you might expect from a paid expansion instead of a simple client update. Here's just some of what you can expect:
There's even more mentioned over on the official update site for you to check out. It looks like they're trying their hardest to keep high-level players entertained as long as possible, which I know is one of the hardest tasks for MMOs to accomplish. It just seems like too many MMOs are heavily lacking with end-game content these days. |
| Rotastic release trailer looks rad Posted: 21 Sep 2011 01:00 PM PDT
Sometimes less is more, as with Rotastic, the new game from indie developer Dancing Dots. The entire control scheme is one button. That's it; you use one button to grapple. In case you hadn't noticed from the launch trailer, there is more to this than just swinging from point to point. If you are interested in Rotastic, you can pick it up on Xbox Live Arcade for 800 MSP, anyone who wants it on the PC or PlayStation 3 will have to wait until next year. Because Microsoft. The simplicity of gameplay with the complexity of the levels found in Rotastic is something that makes me want to play it, and brings to mind games like N+, which are deceptively simple. A development team that can take a simple idea (swinging around with grapples) and evolve it into a game with almost 70 levels and multiple game types has potential. I hope to see more interesting games from Dancing Dots in the future. |
| Podtoid 168: Hotel For Pigs (With Guest Tommy Wiseau!) Posted: 21 Sep 2011 12:30 PM PDT On this fun-stuffed episode of Podtoid, we chat to none other than Tommy Wiseau, famous for creating The Room and The House That Drips Blood On Alex. He's got a new videogame-themed series coming up, The Tommy Wi-Show, and we ask him all about it while he tells us about the positive aspects of gaming and listens to a special movie pitch. Also on the show, we find out that Jonathan Holmes once looked after pigs in a hotel, we complain about Gears of War 3 and wonder what's up with the PlayStation Vita. Also, we read negative reviews that people have written and laugh, laugh, laugh. As ever, you can subscribe to us on iTunes and RSS, buy our Android App or download directly! (Oh, and check out Flixist's interview with Tommy, too) |
| Check out Namco Bandai's Japan office! Posted: 21 Sep 2011 12:15 PM PDT While Dale North slaved away, covering the pre-TGS Sony Press Conference, Hamza and I traveled to Shinagawa, Tokyo to check out some Namco Bandai games, last week. Since Hamza loves Gundam, I love the Tales series and everyone loves Pac-Man, we toured the epic M-shaped building (formerly the home of Panasonic) and took some photos. Check out the photo gallery for images of Namco's crazy cave/auditorium (the "Fun Theater), Tales concept art and the Gundam arcade pods employees hop-in during their lunch breaks. It's pretty much the type of crazy studio grounds you imagine in your head when you think of dream jobs. |
| Relaxation: Cheesy double chief burrito Posted: 21 Sep 2011 12:00 PM PDT [Last week's Bloggers Wanted topic asked you to tell me how you use video games to relax. Today, nekobun tells us how he relaxes by playing Halo while internet-drinking. (A process very similar to my own method of relaxation, except with TF2 and minus the Taco Bell.) If you want to participate in our Bloggers Wanted topic and see your own blog on the front page, take a look at our current prompt about TGS. -- JRo] Sometimes, the real world wears you down. Work, school, or whatever else day in and day out; your average Joes and Janes on the street being dicks for no reason, the state of affairs in general being pretty damn depressing... times like these call for a night out with your friends. A few drinks, getting a little rowdy, but all in good fun -- the perfect cure for most anything. Problems, however, tend to arise when your friends of a similar mindset live several states away, if not practically on the opposite side of the country. Solving this isn't so hard, however. If you can come to terms with the idea that it's not drinking alone if you're at least talking to people, and you remember to pick up some food as to avoid dying of alcohol poisoning and/or starvation, it's easy enough to meet someplace a little more virtual than the corner pub. For my friends and I, such meetups come in the form of Taco Bell & 40oz night on the planet Reach. We've had nights anywhere from six people to nearly a dozen, but it's a testament to how Halo, national fast food chains, and a little bit of alcohol can bring people together. We've all different backgrounds in our Halo experience; there's a married couple who tend to play co-op or multiplayer matches together, a couple of regulars I rarely see outside of these designated evenings, a Northeast Corridor ex-pat who'll jump into games with me on the reg so long as neither of us has work too early the next morning, and myself, who's obsessed with the lore and more into milking Score Attack these days for Commendation progress than actually playing with other people. None of that, nor our real-world differences matter when things come down to a sack full of tacos, some malt liquor, and killing space doods en masse. There's a formula that's developed, of sorts, in the few instances we've actually managed to organize Halo: TB40 sessions. The first few matches tend to be social, dicking-around affairs: usually Speed Halo. For those not up on their Halo, imagine a long, ramped tunnel, with one poor bastard standing in the middle of it, and teleporters down at the very bottom that transport anything that falls through them back to the top of the ramp. Everyone who isn't that poor bastard gets to climb into a Warthog of their choosing up at the very top, and begins plummeting down the ramp in an attempt to run over said bastard, who is, at the same time, trying to smash their vehicle with a large hammer and bring them over to the bastard side of things. Impacts with other vehicles, the walls, and off-timed hammer strikes tend to send the vehicles into insane loops and spins that never end thanks to the aforementioned teleporters. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. After the rapid spinning and chaos get to be too much, and most of the participants are through at least one 40oz, we roll on up into Big Team Battle. Woe betide anyone unfortunate enough to get swept up into our party if we're riding less than eight deep, because things tend to be moderately loud, occasionally vulgar, and regularly sprinkled with in-jokes no outsider could hope to fathom. That's not to say we scare or confuse a lot of people off; in fact, the opposite is more often how things play out. In the inaugural run alone, we came across a gentleman even more inebriated than the lot of us, who decided to stick around and be friendly for several games afterward, and a young man who insisted on warbling like a turkey pretty much constantly as we were playing. There's a great deal more acceptance of strange, new players when you've been sippy for a while, as well as a greatly lessened concern for any trash talk generated by potentially poor gameplay. Not that poor gameplay tends to be an issue, either; sure, we screw around on the whole a great deal more after a certain amount of alcohol is flowing through each of our veins, but great things happen regardless of sobriety level as well. An impromptu TB40 session was called for last night (which I missed the memo on, and had to settle for adobo-seasoned tilapia and mezcal as my picked poisons), and our last game saw two non-friends and the married couple dropping just as a capture the flag match began on Utopie (which, normally, is a map I despise), leaving us at four fairly buzzed men against a team of eight (later seven). Despite this, I basically ended up throwing all fear out the window, and snagged two of our eventual trio of flag captures (the second of which causing a ragequit by one of the opposing team's members), defeating their mere single cap and winning us the game. Who says alcohol impairs your reflexes? The guy driving the 'hog on both my pickups seemed juuuuust fine, thank you very much.* It's not classy, by any means, and there are probably better things we could be doing with our time, but honestly? When it's normal for most of us not to see one another for months at a stretch, lucky if we can get together in person once a year, it's great to have a way, once a month or so, to unwind with awesome, fun people and get a little stupid on the cheap. Taco Bell and 40oz nights help all of us cast aside both the wear and tear of everyday living, and of everyday Reach multiplayer; it's a jungle of racists, elitists, and homophobic tweens who should be in bed already out there, and it's nice to have a bit of liquid aid in not caring what they say or think about you. For anyone wondering, my weapons of choice are Olde English 800, with some orange juice added in once you drink down to the label, and a few Baja Chalupas, "beef." We tend to be pretty loose and non-judgmental, however; Mickey's is also popular, Steel Reserve has been noted as thematically appropriate, and food alternatives such as Qdoba and Chipotle are equally acceptable. So long as you don't pronounce it "chih-pole-tay," like some kind of uncultured savage. I mean, really. * - For crying out loud, don't drive drunk, ever, you'll kill someone. Which works if you're running around in brightly-colored MJOLNIR armor, I guess, but is not cool if you're behind the wheel of a real car. Always pound unwise quantities of malt liquor responsibly. |
| A glimpse of the Gears of War 3 Times Square launch Posted: 21 Sep 2011 11:45 AM PDT The premiere launch event for Gears of War 3 took place at the Best Buy Theater in Times Square on Monday night where hundreds of gamers gathered to ring in the release of Epic Games' latest installment in the chainsawing saga. Among the aspiring COG were Epic developers (including none other than Cliffy B), cosplayers, Big Sean, and a ton of drunks who didn't miss a beat at the open bar. After standing in line for nearly the entire day and watching the constant loop of TV Land's advertisement for Everybody Loves Raymond on one of the many billboards in New York City, roughly 300 people were given access to the insides of the Best Buy Theater. Once in, they were able to play Gears of War 3's Horde mode, watch rapper Big Sean perform, or drink by themselves at the aforementioned bar. Most people, however, took to the Gears of War 3 stations.
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| Kongregate Arcade 2.0 is here and adds messaging Posted: 21 Sep 2011 11:30 AM PDT Kongregate Arcade, the Android version of the Kongregate service which features close to 600 mobile games, has just received a rather large update in the form of Kongregate Arcade 2.0 which has added several new social-focused features. On top of the fact that players can now earn GameStop PowerUp Rewards points by scoring points on Kongregate Arcade (and the main site now as well), Arcade players now have access to the iconic Kongregate chat and messaging system, as well as the ability to invite friends to compete via the leaderboards and view them in real time. “We’re proud to be one of the highest rated gaming applications on the Android Market,” said Jim Greer, CEO of Kongregate. “The enhancements we’ve made to Kongregate Arcade 2.0 enable gamers to directly challenge their friends in hundreds of games, adding a new competition layer to an already addictive gaming experience. Kongregate Arcade 2.0 is out right now for you.
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| Space Channel 5, Sega Bass Fishing set for early October Posted: 21 Sep 2011 11:00 AM PDT Sega has the dates for two long-awaited digital re-releases, Space Channel 5: Part 2 and Sega Bass Fishing. For PlayStation Network, it's October 4th; the Xbox Live Arcade versions are coming a day later. Since these games are $9.99 (or 800 Microsoft Points) each, it's the better deal to go with the disc-based counterpart, though there's certainly an appeal to launching games without having to physically get up, sad as that may sound. (We've all been there.) It's been confirmed that PlayStation Move is supported by Sega Bass Fishing. While I have no intention of picking either of these up, I'm always glad to see Dreamcast titles resurface like this so they might be exposed to new audiences. Also, Space Michael. |
| Live show: Dungeon Defenders on Mash Tactics Posted: 21 Sep 2011 10:30 AM PDT [Not sure what Mash Tactics is? I've included a clip from the most recent episode to show you just a glimpse of what you've been missing, you daft fool! You can see all of Destructoid's previously-aired live shows in our archives.] Today, Mash Tactics is playing Dungeon Defenders, the upcoming tower defense RPG from Trendy Entertainment. Carnage and Pico will be joined in the studio by Philip Asher from Trendy to talk about Defenders and guide us through the gameplay. Here's your chance to get an early in-depth look at it! Mash Tactics airs Monday through Friday at 4pm Pacific. Watch Jon Carnage and Pico Mause let loose with off-the-wall humor and discuss the issues of the day in the live chat on Destructoid's Twitch.tv channel. Also, there are videogames being played. Join us for your chance to win prizes, talk to industry guests, and witness all of the glorious antics. |
| League of Legends: Dominion beta is happening Posted: 21 Sep 2011 10:15 AM PDT The League of Legends: Dominion limited beta has started as of this morning. If you missed it, fear not because more chances to play will opened in the next few days. Each will be during off-peak hours, with an announcement in the forums beforehand to let you know when you can try it out. Has anyone gotten a chance to try out Dominion yet? How is it compared to the other DotA-style play modes? I personally love the DotA maps and while I'm willing to try something different, I have my doubts that I will love this new map type more. League of Legends: Dominion enters limited beta, playable now [Joystiq] |
| Posted: 21 Sep 2011 10:00 AM PDT The Burnout franchise is best known for its insane speeds and awesome crashes, so when a downloadable title that would center on its Crash mode was announced a while back, it made enough people curious as to what it would be. When Burnout Crash! was unveiled to essentially be a top-down physics puzzle game with Kinect support, a lot of that initial interest deflated a bit, to say the least. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of ridiculousness, addictiveness, and sheer fun Criterion was able to fit into their new game. Burnout Crash! (Xbox Live Arcade [reviewed], PlayStation Network) To enjoy Burnout Crash!, it's best if you forget everything you know about the franchise except for Crashbreakers. It looks nothing like Burnout Paradise, plays nothing like any other game in the series, and besides a few familiar streets and the Crashbreaker name, it could've been titled anything and would've been the exact same game. Half of the effort here is accepting Burnout Crash! for the puzzle game it is, and thankfully, the other half involves just having fun. With your vehicle of choice, you start barreling down a path towards an intersection where cars periodically appear from all directions. The goal is simple: make all cars crash without letting any of them escape, and try to score as many points as possible by destroying everything you can in the most effective way. After hitting the first car in a level, you activate your continuously regenerating Crashbreaker to try and catch other cars in your explosion, or by exploding a wreck directly into them for a skillshot. Then you do the same thing on the opposite side of the road, hopefully resulting in a bunch of cars (and preferably, buses) piled up at intersections, which makes every approaching vehicle crash somewhere without requiring you to manually wreck them yourself. In the meantime, you can hunt for sports cars and gold cars for extra points, Crashbreak yourself into to buildings to destroy them whenever crashes elsewhere in the field help you fill up the Crashbreaker bar, or try to create a tangle of cars that you can later set on fire to make all wrecks explode in a sequential orgy of flames that would emasculate even the likes of Michael Bay. So far this could've described the Crash Mode from Burnout 3 for the most part, but Burnout Crash! adds some ridiculous stuff to revel in its arcade destination. Crash enough cars in the game's standard Road Trip mode, and different Features will take place. These include a sinkhole that eats traffic for points, a truck that will fire a "traffic-seeking missile" when exploded, an ice cream truck that freezes all traffic solid, a magnet modifier that attracts all traffic to your car so you can wreak havoc, and a thunderstorm that adds bonus lightning strikes to any car you explode. You'll go through a few of these predetermined events, some of which will yield negative effects like "Bad Cops" who will try to bust you, until you finally reach the Super Feature -- a level-ending disaster that will clear up anything you left standing, provided you didn't let too many cars escape. Such catastrophies include an asteroid strike, a tidal wave with a ship riding it that gets eaten by a shark with a propeller, and a plane crash. These Features and Super Features can be amazingly fun at first, although they do lose some of their novelty after you've seen them announced with a slightly annoying voice-over for the 50th time. Still, they add to all the craziness, and if you don't have a smile on your face during the first 15 minutes you're playing Burnout Crash!, either something is wrong with you or you are just terrible at physics puzzle games. Someone at Criterion or EA's marketing division must really love the '80s as well, because hits from that period pop up all over the game. Hit the gold car, and you'll hear Spandau Ballet's "Gold!," whereas the thunderstorm Feature makes your surround set blast "It's Raining Men" to all your friends, regardless of their sexual preference. It doesn't make that much sense in a game, but somehow it works. I'll say this, though, you'll probably enjoy it more if you are a child of the '80s or '90s. Play Burnout Crash! for a few hours, however, and you might feel some frustration nibbling away at the fun here and there. Part of this frustration comes from the game's primary mode: Road Trip. This is the regular crash mode with all the bells and whistles, but it's all too easy to lose by letting five cars slip through your exploding fingers of doom. If you carefully piled up a mess of wrecks at key intersections, they might explode after too much damage, thus clearing the path for future traffic to get away unscathed. This tends to come exactly at the moments when you are feeling safe, Crashbreaking your way through buildings and bonus vehicles hidden away in the level. Then again, this is something that, while frustrating, is a matter of skill, patience, and retries. Less skill-oriented is Rush Hour mode, where you have to pile up as many cars as possible to go boom in a massive explosion when a 90-second timer hits zero. In this mode, a pizza truck can be destroyed for a "Pizza of Fortune" -- a pizza wheel with positive and negative bonuses -- which can give you a coveted 3x multiplier to score ridiculously big, or something that will ruin your run if you're not careful. Because Burnout Crash! is a game all about scoring, the randomness of the Pizza of Fortune is a bit odd. To compete with your friends, you basically have to become good at a level and be lucky enough to get the right bonuses. The game's Pile Up mode feels a bit like a throwaway inclusion. While fun, this mode asks you to let no car escape lest an Inferno multiplier drop to zero and -- like the Rush Hour mode -- it wants you to work out your crashes for the end of the level, indicated by a number of total crashes. Hit this number, and you'll have a few seconds to set something on fire during an "Inferno" section. It doesn't matter what; just set something on fire, anything at all. In practice, you can end up with a nice pile of wrecks, have them explode by accident just before the Inferno section hits, and watch as your Crashbreaker bar regenerates just too slowly to hit anything before the time is up. While these frustrations exist, they are secondary to the fun you can have with Burnout Crash! if you are willing to overlook them. As the game comes with EA's Autolog for things like score comparisons and sending challenges to your friends, you're likely going to play the three modes across 18 levels over and over anyway. Replaying a few minutes here and there just because you were unlucky is not going to be a dealbreaker. It is, however, really odd that the game marks every in-game retry as an attempt. Score hunters will retry at the slightest mistake within the first 10 seconds, but the game makes you look as if you retried an entire crash mode dozens of times to get a paltry score. You can also easily lose track of where your car flew off to, especially after you unlock and use some of the lighter cars. Finally there's the Kinect functionality, which is only useful for the local multiplayer mode or to make a fool of yourself while your child looks at you and judges you. You don't need it, and you're not going to want to use it unless you desperately need something other than Dance Central to entertain those friends who question the soundness of your peripheral-purchasing behavior. (But it's not going to convince them.) If you can embrace Burnout Crash!'s design with open arms and wave the few annoyances away in the scope of a thousand retries, submit to the Autolog addiction with a bunch of friends, and devote yourself to hours upon hours of fighting for that high score, I can't recommend it enough. Still, Burnout Crash! can be entirely different things to different types of players. For those who are in it for the high scores and who have "Start, down, A, A" motions for restarting a race hardwired in their brain, it is pure arcade bliss. Those who prefer racing to physics-based puzzling with crashing cars might feel disappointed or let down by the Burnout name, but that's what demos are for. |
| Ten Disney levels I'd love to see in Kingdom Hearts III Posted: 21 Sep 2011 09:00 AM PDT Kingdom Hearts III is not officially a thing yet. According to series director Tetsuya Nomura it is coming someday ... but any word of its actual existence is shrouded in secrecy behind the mysterious Chocobo-guarded doors of Square Enix. And while a lot of people are starting to lose interest in the once fresh, once revolutionary series, I can’t help but be excited by how awesome a new, proper Kingdom Hearts sequel could potentially be. (Forget all those crazy, insanely-named spinoffs!) One of the best parts about the Kingdom Hearts series is discovering what Disney movies and characters will be featured as levels and companions in the games. As a massive Disney fan, there is nothing better than jumping from one surprising Disney level to the next with a familiar and beloved Disney character by your side. But I want more! So far the Kingdom Hearts series has included a fair number of awesome Disney levels, but so many amazing Disney properties still remain untouched. For a Disney super fan like me, the possibilities for Kingdom Hearts III are endless ... We all know that Dumbo has already been featured as a summon in Kingdom Hearts. But imagine how cool an entire level revolving around the almost-too-touching-for-words animated feature could be? The level: The circus. Featured characters: Dumbo. Mrs. Jumbo. Timothy Q. Mouse [summon!]. The Ringmaster [final boss!]. Admittedly, the sole reason I want to be able to play a Bambi level in Kingdom Hearts III is so I can stab the Hunter in the face with Sora’s Keyblade. Seriously. I hate that guy. The level: The forest. Featured characters: Bambi. Thumper. Flower [summon!]. The hunter [final boss!]. Okay, get ready for some serious Pixar love. The fact that not one Pixar movie has been featured in a Kingdom Hearts game is an absolute injustice. And, of all the Pixar masterpieces, The Incredibles might be the best one to get a Kingdom Hearts makeover. One of the most fun parts about the Kingdom Heart series is seeing the transformations of main characters Sora, Donald, and Goofy into themed versions of whatever world they are visiting (see: the animal forms in the Lion King level in Kingdom Hearts II). Seeing the three main characters in red Spandex suits sporting individual super powers would be worth the price of admission alone. The level: Syndrome’s island. Featured characters: Mr. Incredible. Elastigirl. Violet. Dash. Jack-Jack. Edna Mode. Frozone [summon!]. Syndrome [final boss!]. I know, I know, most people don’t like Cars very much. (For the record, I kind of love it.) But with what I just said above regarding character transformations, can you blame me for wanting to see Sora, Donald, and Goofy as car versions of themselves? I’m sorry, it would be beyond amazing. The level: The Radiator Springs Grand Prix Featured characters: Lightning McQueen. Doc Hudson. Sally. Luigi. Mack [summon!]. Chick Hicks and/or Francesco Bernoulli [final boss(es)!]. The most obvious of all the choices, Toy Story has to make an appearance in Kingdom Hearts III. It is arguably Disney/Pixar’s most recognizable movie and would make a perfect level in the game. It’s also freakin’ Toy Story!* The level: Andy’s playroom. Featured characters: Woody. Buzz Lightyear. Jessie. Bullseye [summon!]. Mr. Potato Head. Slinky Dog. Hamm. Rex. The toy aliens. Emperor Zurg [final boss!].
*The more I think about it, the more I realize that every Pixar movie would make a great Kingdom Hearts level. Monsters Inc.? Finding Nemo? WALL-E?! Instead of narrowing it down to a few, let’s just put all of them into Kingdom Hearts III. Thanks, Square Enix! I have no idea why there is so much Black Cauldron hate. Yeah, the movie is no Little Mermaid, but it is an engrossing, surprisingly dark adventure that I kind of loved when I was a kid. (BLU-RAY RELEASE, PLEASE!) There was also a classic adventure game based on the movie released in the late ‘80s that was also pretty great. And if the movie can make a great adventure game, a Kingdom Hearts appearance is obviously the next logical step! The level: The Horned King’s castle. Featured characters: Taran. Princess Eilonwy. Fflewddur Fflam. Gurgi [summon!]. Hen Wen. The Horned King [final boss!]. Yup, this would be a terrible level to feature in Kingdom Hearts III. But people make a big fuss about trying to create a game that makes people cry. Creating anything that is based on Fox and the Hound would make me cry. Heck, I once saw a Fox and the Hound lunchbox and even that made me cry. “Copper, you’re my very best friend!” BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! The level: The cottage. Featured characters: Tod. Copper. Big Mama [summon!]. Vixey. The bear [final boss!]. Another Disney movie that I think is completely underrated. Whether you like the movie or not, The Hunchback of Notre Dame would make a great Kingdom Hearts level. So great, it may actually be a reality! (There are rumors a Hunchback level will be featured in upcoming spinoff Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance.) The level: Notre Dame. Featured characters: Quasimodo. Esmeralda. Phoebus. Clopin. Victor, Hugo, and Laverne [summons!]. Frollo [final boss!]. EFF YEAH, MARY POPPINS! The level: The rooftops of London. Featured characters: Mary Poppins [summon!]. Bert. The Banks children. Admiral Boom. With other live-action movies already making it into the Kingdom Hearts games (Pirates of the Caribbean, Tron, etc.), I am genuinely shocked Who Framed Roger Rabbit? has yet to make the cut. Also, Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin at Disneyland is a ridiculous ride, and I want to see that kind of zany energy brought to Kingdom Hearts. The level: Hollywood/Toontown. Featured characters: Roger Rabbit. Jessica Rabbit. Eddie Valiant. Baby Herman. Benny the cab [summon!]. Judge Doom [final boss!].
----- What do you think? Do you agree that these would make great levels in Kingdom Hearts III? What Disney levels and characters would you love to see in the still-not-announced game? I am not a game designer by any means -- and some of these ideas may be terrible -- but as a Disney fan, I can’t help but be excited by the prospect of playing some of these Disney levels and meeting some of these Disney characters in Kingdom Hearts III. Come on, Square Enix. Can you please make this poor Disney fan’s dream come true? |
| Destructoid's Extra Life Marathon 2011!! Posted: 21 Sep 2011 08:45 AM PDT It's common knowledge that our world sort of sucks right now. With the world economy in trouble, the fact that my credit card debt is piling up, and the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3, it's hard to find things that are amazing. One thing I know for sure, though, is that charity ROCKS and that it's time once again for Dtoid to participate in the yearly Extra Life marathon! Destructoid's Extra Life Donation Page If you want to ask for donation money yourself or hold your own marathon, you can make your own account on the Extra Life website and join our team. This way, all of the money you raise will benefit your hospital of choice and count towards our collective goal! Stay tuned for more information about this amazing 24-hour event, and let's get the donations flowing FOR THE CHILDREN! |
| World of Darkness details hint at CCP's direction Posted: 21 Sep 2011 08:00 AM PDT Details about CCP's World of Darkness have come out of a panel at The Grand Masquerade. The MMO is still in pre-production, which would explain why news has been so silent. Community sites who were in attendance got the juicy info, though it's been warned that some of this stuff is subject to change.
While I don't see myself playing this, much like EVE Online, I'm sure World of Darkness will be a joy for outside observers. You've got to appreciate CCP's hardcore take on online gaming. New WoD MMO info from The Grand Masquerade [World of Darkness News] |
| Review: Radiant Silvergun (XBLA) Posted: 21 Sep 2011 07:00 AM PDT Some four years after Treasure's Masato Maegawa hinted at a re-release of one of the finest shoot-'em-ups ever to grace the world, Radiant Silvergun is finally available on Xbox Live Arcade for a fraction of what the Saturn game used to go for on eBay. Shmup enthusiasts will no doubt have blindly picked up this new version of the game the moment it came out, but not every classic from the '90s has made a successful revamp on current-day digital platforms. Thankfully, just like Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun on XBLA is everything that made it great, and more. Radiant Silvergun (Xbox Live Arcade) Radiant Silvergun distinguishes itself from the typical shmup primarily through its approach to weaponry. You have access to seven different weapons right off the bat, and the more you score with each weapon, the stronger it will slowly become as it levels up. This can be a bit overwhelming to those new to the game, but a couple of attempts and a dozen deaths later it becomes second nature. Weapons range from the typical frontal and backwards shots to sideways-shot bombs that explode when you release the button, to homing missiles, lasers, and plasma shots; there's a weapon for any situation and any type of player preferences, although you'll want to hone your skills with each weapon to utilize them where they are best used. Finally, you have the Radiant Sword. When held, this will project a sword from your ship that moves around as you move your ship around. The Radiant Sword eats up some of the bullets to clear a path through bullet hell and once it has had its fill, you can activate a Hyper Sword attack to do massive damage to a large area of the screen. By destroying three enemies in a row of the same color, you receive a chain combo bonus. If you are serious about reaching a score worth writing home about, this is where you'll have to keep practicing at over and over again. Each time you follow up one chain with another of the same color, your bonus will multiply, making it worth it to ignore that one ship here and there in favor of keeping your combo chain going. If you have an Achievement in Ikaruga, you can also unlock Ikaruga Mode which keeps chains going per three same-color kills instead of per color alone. As many enemies as there are to chain for those delicious combos and high scores, Radiant Silvergun has no shortage of bosses that it throws in your face left and right. You could just rid yourself of these bosses by simply destroying their key components, but destroying a boss piece by piece provides you with more points and an extra chance to level up your weapons. Compared to other shmups both old and new, Radiant Silvergun still holds up great. The level and enemy design combined with the deep weapon options at hand are a dream to play, the bosses are varied and challenging without being cheap and while it's hard to enough to even finish the game, factoring in the chain system makes the game even harder to complete with a decent score. The primary difference between the Arcade and Story modes on offer is the -- *gasp* -- story in Story mode, and the ability to save your weapon progress. Story mode offers some screaming Japanese characters in anime-style panels that now have localized subtitles, as much good as that will do you in understanding what is going on. More interesting is the ability to save your weapon leveling progress upon death and then starting from the beginning with your upgraded weapons intact. The Xbox Live Arcade version provides what you'd expect from a current-day port with some nice touches to boot. As the original Radiant Silvergun has a 4:3 aspect ratio, you are stuck with some leftover screenspace on a widescreen display. You can fill it with a number of background wallpapers and even change their brightness if you want, with optional button info for the various weapons displayed on the right-hand side by default. The amount of customization borders on the ridiculous. A myriad of display options can be configured and tinkered with as you please. The display size for the game proper can be changed, as well as the horizontal and vertical positioning, while the total screen size can be adjusted in all four directions to match your TV preferences. More importantly, the graphics have received a high resolution update that looks pretty good if you don't know, or don't remember, what Radiant Silvergun used to look like. Initially it doesn't quite impress visually by today's standards, especially the laughably blocky textures on the bosses. Switch the high-res graphics to the low-res original format during a busy fight in-game, however, and the resulting blocky sprites will make you appreciate the level of increased detail Treasure has put into this version. You can choose between the original low-resolution graphics, a smoothed-out version of the old graphics, the new high-res graphics, and finally the high-res graphics with fancy new effects. Even the translucency options can be toggled if you please. Besides the graphical update, online leaderboards and online multiplayer have been added to the game, which even gives you subtitles for the Story Mode's wacky dialogue. Not that it makes the story any more comprehensible; if you didn't know what was going on in 1998, reading the dialogue in English won't change that much. In a nutshell, though, everything you'd want from a XBLA version of Radiant Silvergun is here. Control-wise it will just depend on what you are stuck with. Using the Xbox 360 controller, all weapons are mapped to one button each by default. Again, this can be a bit overwhelming for novices but training and the ability to swap to the traditional three-button arcade layout, where different button combos fire different weapons, removes any obligatory annoyance you may have with this. Overall, the standard controller suffices for those without a fightstick or a fightpad with an actual d-pad that is worth a damn, but only barely; your ship is easy enough to control with the analog stick, albeit lacking in precision and definitely not the control method of choice for most. Using a standard Hori EX 2 fightstick, Radiant Silvergun works like a charm. For some reason, however, the game lets you press any button to map to any weapon you want, but flat out refuses to do so for the left and right triggers. You can still remap everything as you please by simply cycling through all the buttons per weapon, so it's not a huge issue even if it is an odd one. What's even better is that you can simply swap from a controller to a fightstick and vice versa by pressing Start on the respective controller at the title screen. The game will still want you to sign in again, but you don't have to go through that awful process of manually signing out on one controller just so you can sign in the same profile on another controller. I could really have used that feature during my Guitar Hero and Rock Band days. The Arcade and Story modes on offer give you the core shmup experience with plenty of options for each to fit any type of player. You can give yourself more continues and whatnot, but only the Score Attack modes where you have limited lives can be uploaded to the leaderboards. Between the core modes, the high-res graphical updates, and more options than you're likely to use, you can safely throw away that overpriced Saturn copy and stick with this latest iteration of the game. Make no mistake, though: you will die, you will die often, and you'll have to accept that you might be one of many who will most likely never finish it -- let alone in Score Attack mode. If that makes you think twice and if you bought Ikaruga only to play it a couple of times before giving up, Radiant Silvergun is not likely to be that one game that finally makes you complete a shmup. For the shmup enthusiast it's a different story. Radiant Silvergun doesn't just hold its own against the contemporary competition, but offers the classic game with different graphical skins and a host of options to reach a far wider audience than ever had the chance to experience its excellence before. |
| Contest: Win the Steam 2D Indie Bundle! Posted: 21 Sep 2011 07:00 AM PDT [Update: That's it, contest is over, and all codes are gone! Congratulations to those who nabbed one, and have fun!] The "Indie 2D Bundle" available on Steam right now is an insane deal. We're talking $9.99 for five solid 2D indie games: BIT.TRIP.RUNNER, NightSky, NyxQuest: Kindrid Spirits, Swords and Soldiers HD, and World of Goo. That's a $49.99 value, and you'd be insane not to buy it at $9.99. |
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