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Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 19, 2013 in Videogames 
Took them long enough! Square Enix has finally announced a Western release date for their HD remastering of Final Fantasy X & X-2 that has taken entirely too long to produce. At least their work looks great, with reorchestrated music and redone models in certain places, besides the game being presented in widescreen and HD. You can check out the improvements yourself on March 18, or March 21 in Europe. As a reminder, this collection includes most full-featured versions of the games: Final Fantasy X International, Final Fantasy X-2 International + Last Mission, and a 14-minute video bridging the two games called Final Fantasy X Eternal Calm. If you preorder the game, you’ll get it in nice limited edition packaging that holds the game in a book of concept art and commentary, similar to Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX. I’ve had mine preordered for what feels like forever, but watch this new trailer if you’re not yet convinced. Read more…
Tags: Final Fantasy, PS3, square enix
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 5, 2013 in Videogames 
At this point, it’s hard to tell whether Konami has been poorly communicating information about Metal Gear Solid V on purpose (a la Metal Gear Solid 2) or if it’s just due to their usual bad management. We had heard that there would be two parts to the upcoming sequel: Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, a prologue (similar to MGS2‘s Tanker scenario), and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the main, longer game (similar to MGS2‘s Big Shell scenario). After the rather inelegant reveal that The Phantom Pain, a game advertised as an independent game made by a fake studio, was unsurprisingly MGSV, conflicting information suggested that both parts of the game would be sold together. Konami has just announced that this isn’t true: Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes will be released by itself in Spring 2014. Read more…
Tags: Metal Gear Solid, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Posted by Bob Muir on Oct 30, 2013 in Videogames 
Have you heard of this “walking dead” thing? If you’ve been living under a rock, The Walking Dead is a critically acclaimed comic series by Robert Kirkman that has been adapted into a very successful TV series on AMC. Last year, Telltale Games released a episodic adventure game called The Walking Dead: Season 1 that went on to win untold Game of the Year awards based on its strong design, writing, storytelling, and characters, despite competing with games with far bigger budgets. If you haven’t played it yet (or its short expansion 400 Days), go do that now before even thinking about watching what many fans have been waiting for: the reveal trailer for Season 2. Read more…
Tags: iOS, PS3, Telltale Games, The Walking Dead, Xbox 360, zombies
Posted by Bob Muir on Oct 29, 2013 in Videogames 
Here’s a weird game that you probably won’t get to play. Akiba’s Trip 2 is set in Akihabara, one of the geekiest places in Tokyo. However, demons have invaded, so what do you do? That’s right, you punch and kick the clothes off of demons to expose them to sunlight. And if some of those demons are girls/are possessing girls (it’s hard to tell) and you see them in their underwear, so much the better, it seems. You can also visit over 130 real shops from the area. Akiba’s Trip 2 will be released in Japan on November 7, with no plans for an international release, which should come as no shock to anyone. Of course, it could still come to America, as stranger things have been released. Just don’t get your hopes up! Read more…
Tags: Playstation Vita, PS3
Posted by Bob Muir on Oct 22, 2013 in Videogames 
Were you aware that the first PlayStation console launched in the West in 1995? Yep, besides the December 1994 Japanese release date, it’s been 18 years since Sony fully entered the console market after Nintendo’s tragic betrayal. Sony Europe made this great video that shows several people growing up with PlayStation products throughout the years. While it’s a little unusual that this guy has lived in the same room for 18 years, I guess it’s still plausible now that the economy has forced recent graduates to delay moving out of their parents’ home. Read more…
Tags: Playstation Vita, PS2, PS3, PS4, PSP, Sony
Posted by Bob Muir on Oct 15, 2013 in Comic Books, Videogames 
Despite being a prequel and switching developers away from Rocksteady, Batman: Arkham Origins is actually shaping up to be an awesome entry in the Arkham series of videogames. One major cause for concern was Mark Hamill retiring from the role of the Joker, but Troy Baker sounded pretty good in recent trailers. If you want to completely erase your concerns, watch this clip from New York Comic-Con of Baker reading aloud a monologue from Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, one of the best Joker-focused comics. Baker sounds right on the money, sounding natural and evoking Hamill’s performance. I’d say we have a worthy successor of voice actors here. Read more…
Tags: Batman, Batman: Arkham Origins, DC Comics, PS3, Warner Brothers, Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Oct 15, 2013 in Videogames 
After Square Enix announced and released Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX (which includes the first game KH: Final Mix, its interquel KH: Re:Chain of Memories, and HD cutscenes of the second interquel KH: 358/2 Days), fans asked one major question: why wasn’t the sequel KHII included? While fans are split on whether they prefer the first or second games, they’re the only two numbered entries, with KHIII still on the horizon for PS4 and Xbox One. Now that the first HD collection is out globally, Square Enix has announced the sequel they hinted at in that collection’s credits: Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX! Read more…
Tags: Disney, Kingdom Hearts, PS3, square enix
Posted by Bob Muir on Sep 25, 2013 in Comic Books, Videogames 
Okay, the costume you see above isn’t literally Adam West. The Batman in Batman: Arkham Origins is still being voiced by Roger Craig Smith, and the costume won’t change that. But it’s definitely Adam West’s Batman outfit from the ’60s live-action TV show. And though this Batman is bigger and more ripped than Adam West was, I think it’s cool how the outfit makes him look slightly pudgy and soft, just like the TV series. But if this alternate costume doesn’t tickle your fancy, how about Azrael’s Batman outfit from the Knightfall storyline? It looks positively demonic, and perhaps almost too badass for my first playthrough of a game that’s supposed to be about Batman’s early days. If you’re liking these outfits, you may want to consider buying Batman: Arkham Origins on PS3, as they’ll be exclusive to that console. You also get five challenge maps, but aside from people with an unhealthy obsession for this game’s combat like me, the main thing I’d be worried about missing out on is these awesome costumes. Read more…
Tags: Batman, Batman: Arkham Origins, PS3, Warner Brothers, Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Sep 18, 2013 in Videogames 
Shinji Mikami is well known for directing Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4, classics of survival horror (or I guess just horror for that second one). He and his studio Tango Gameworks have teamed up with Bethesda to make The Evil Within, a new horror game for most major platforms. It does look pretty spooky, with the enemies looking like a mixture of science gone wrong and forbidden occult magic. The Evil Within is coming out sometime in 2014, but hopefully it will be playable at this year’s Tokyo Game Show and we can get more enticing details. Read more…
Tags: Horror, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Posted by Bob Muir on Aug 27, 2013 in Videogames 
When you think of HD game remasters, you generally focus on the visuals. Besides being rerendered in a higher resolution, HD versions sometimes have higher-res textures, framerate fixes, or small bonus touches. You don’t generally consider the audio, which is often the same music the game had before. But since Square Enix is making many more improvements for Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD (like creating new models), they’ve also redone more than 60 tracks from Final Fantasy X‘s 91-track soundtrack. That’s pretty cool! Read more…
Tags: Final Fantasy, PS3, square enix
Posted by Bob Muir on Aug 15, 2013 in Comic Books, Videogames 
Telltale Games knocked it out of the park with The Walking Dead: Season One. It garnered tons of “Game of the Year” awards, which is incredible for a modestly-budgeted game with no bleeding-edge graphics from a smaller developer. Season Two is coming in Q4 2013, but before those episodes start releasing, Telltale has another comic book collaboration to start: The Wolf Among Us, a prequel to Bill Willingham’s Fables series. The episodic game will release its first episode in Q3 2013, with the overall series centering on Bigby Wolf, the reformed Big Bad Wolf who can take human form. Bigby works to keep other fairy tale creatures in line in a part of NYC known as Fabletown. Read more…
Tags: DC Comics, Fables, PS3, The Wolf Among Us, Vertigo, Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Jul 31, 2013 in Videogames 
After much waiting, Irrational Games has finally revealed its DLC plans for game-of-the-year contender BioShock Infinite. Burial at Sea will be a two-chapter DLC that tells the story of an alternate reality Booker and Elizabeth who live not in Columbia, the city in the sky, but in Rapture, from the original BioShock, on the eve of is downfall. Unlike the first BioShock, which is set after the underwater city has torn itself apart, this story is at least partially set when the city is still functioning properly. It looks like a film noir story. But most enticingly is the fact that you will play the second chapter, set during the downfall, as Elizabeth, who will play much differently than Booker.
Burial at Sea hasn’t been dated yet, but I’d expect the first chapter to arrive later this year, with the second chapter stated to arrive by March 2014. Each chapter will cost $15, but those who paid $20 for the Season Pass DLC obviously get it for free.
In the meantime, there’s a new piece of DLC you can download right now: Clash in the Clouds. For $5 (or free if you have the Season Pass), you’ll get four arena maps with 60 challenges. It’s standard “horde” mode stuff where you fight waves and waves of enemies. Along the way, you can unlock new concept art, voxophones, kinetoscopes, and other materials in The Columbian Archeological Society. I’m not that astounded by this offering, but if you really enjoyed the main story’s combat, this will be another big dose of fighting.
Source: YouTube
Tags: BioShock, BioShock: Infinite, PS3, Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Jul 18, 2013 in Animation, Videogames 
The first footage of Cartoon Network’s next Adventure Time and Regular Show games is out! Both Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I DON’T KNOW and Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby in 8-Bit Land are being made by WayForward, the 2D masters who also made the previous Adventure Time game Hey Ice King! Why’d You Steal Our Garbage?! However, the new AT game isn’t a 2D sidescroller with an overworld (a la Zelda II) like the previous one was. The new game is a multiplayer dungeon crawler, where you can play as Finn, Jake, Marceline, and Cinnamon Bun — yes, Cinnamon Bun! But of course, it’s got that Adventure Time charm, so I’d expect it to me more than just another Gauntlet game. Read more…
Tags: 3DS, Adventure Time, Cartoon Network, PS3, Regular Show, Wii U, Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Jul 10, 2013 in Videogames 
If you haven’t heard, Grand Theft Auto V is going to have three main characters, all playable as you rampage around an HD version of GTA: San Andreas‘s Los Santos (a.k.a. Los Angeles). That’s pretty cool! What’s cooler is how you can play as them. In this new trailer, you’ll see how you can pick one character to play as, then switch over to another character who is living their life independent of your actions. You might even catch them in the middle of some trouble! Or, start a mission with one character, pop out to give support as another character, then pop back in to your first character. Even cooler! Read more…
Tags: Grand Theft Auto, PS3, Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Jul 10, 2013 in Videogames 
There’s a lot of ways to do an HD rerelease of a classic videogame. Do you go through and make sure everything looks and runs great, then make even further improvements like Bluepoint did for Sony’s Shadow of the Colossus? Or do you basically just tell the game to rerender at a higher resolution and call it a day like Capcom’s Devil May Cry? Square Enix thankfully put more effort into their upcoming rerelease of Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. (Admittedly, they had lost a bunch of source files and had to redo a bunch anyway, but whatever.) Check out this comparison video between the original SD version and the new HD remaster, making sure to bump the video quality up to 720p or 1080p. Read more…
Tags: Final Fantasy, PS3, square enix
Posted by Bob Muir on Jul 9, 2013 in Videogames 
Bit.Trip Presents: Runner2 Future Legend of Rhythm Alien (or just Runner2) will get seven new “well-loved” characters, according to Gaijin Games. The characters will be coming as DLC to the Steam version this Thursday, while console versions will get the characters at an unspecified later date. Five of the characters remain a mystery, but two have been revealed: Razputin (“Raz”) from Psychonauts and Quote from Cave Story! Read more…
Tags: PS3, Wii U, Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Jul 3, 2013 in Videogames 
When the first trailers for Final Fantasy XIII came out, showing main character Lightning riding on a train, everyone immediately drew comparisons to the opening of Final Fantasy VII, with Cloud riding on a train. Connections were also made between the weather-based names and their demeanor. So how fitting is it that preordering Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, the third and final game of the FFXIII trilogy, will grant players Cloud’s outfit and massive Buster Sword? Read more…
Tags: Final Fantasy, PS3, square enix, Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Jun 18, 2013 in Videogames 
HD remasters of Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2 are due out on the PS3 and PS Vita this fall. In typical fashion, Square Enix is taking forever to finish them — an HD remaster of two Kingdom Hearts games was announced and will release before these two — but the results look promising. Since they look so good, what are the chances of the PS2’s other single-player FF game, Final Fantasy XII, getting an HD remaster? Actually, it could happen. Read more…
Tags: Final Fantasy, PS3
Posted by Bob Muir on Jun 13, 2013 in Videogames 
While WayForward is busy remaking the NES’s DuckTales with Capcom, Sega is also reviving a classic Disney game: Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse. E3 brings us the first footage of the remake, and it’s looking sharp. There may be a few more fans of Magical Quest on SNES, but this HD remake seems like a fun romp through a dark children’s fantasy world. My only question is whether or not the original game will be included as well; I always think that’s a nice touch. Read more…
Tags: Disney, Mickey Mouse, PS3, Sega, Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Jun 13, 2013 in Videogames 
Since Team Ninja’s Tomonobu Itagaki left Tecmo Koei, his baby Ninja Gaiden has been going through a rough patch. Ninja Gaiden 3 was critically panned, and while a Wii U version fixed some things, it still didn’t match up to the first game in the revived series that had justified two updated versions since its original Xbox release. Enter Keiji Inafune, creator of Mega Man, who has left Capcom and is now working on new projects, including Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. Read more…
Tags: Koei Tecmo, Ninja, Ninja Gaiden, PS3, Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Jun 11, 2013 in Videogames 
Microsoft came out strong today, showcasing 13 console exclusives and even showing off multiplatform games playable on Xbox One. Sony, however, has an advantage in that it doesn’t have a horrible used game/online DRM policy, as far as we know so far. With that said, let’s get into what they announced during tonight’s last conference. Read more…
Tags: Playstation Vita, PS3, PS4, Sony
Posted by Bob Muir on Jun 10, 2013 in Videogames 
Just like last year, Ubisoft got Aisha Tyler to host their E3 press conference. Wearing a shirt with the hashtag #girlwood on it, Ubisoft didn’t have much to show, but there were a few major new reveals. Click through to see what was said about hot games like Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Rayman Legends, and Watch Dogs, as well as all the new games. Read more…
Tags: PS3, PS4, Ubisoft, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Posted by Bob Muir on Jun 6, 2013 in Videogames 
Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us comes out on PS3 on June 14, so the marketing is ramping up to make sure everyone knows about the latest game from the makers of Uncharted. This live-action trailer depicts a player becoming Joel, being completely immersed in the game. From what we’ve seen of the game, The Last of Us is a tense survival game with some horror elements. Joel must protect the young Ellie, and because Naughty Dog intends for their relationship to be a major aspect of the game, becoming immersed would be vital for making that emotional connection work. Early reviews have nothing but glowing praise for the game, so hopefully this will be a strong near-swan song to help close the current generation of gaming consoles before the PS4 and Xbox One come out this fall. Read more…
Tags: PS3, the last of us
Posted by Bob Muir on May 14, 2013 in Videogames 
Tales of Symphonia, originally released on the GameCube (and later the PS2 in Japan), was one of the high points in Namco Bandai’s long-running Tales JRPG series. It now seems that it may be getting an HD rerelease on PS3, according to series producer Hideo Baba. He teased the rerelease, calling it “a representation of the dreams and hopes of the fans, who have long been wanting it.” Namco Bandai has yet to officially confirm anything, but it also seems that the Wii-exclusive sequel, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, will also be included. Considering how that title shares many assets with the first game, I wouldn’t be surprised, since it would cut down on work. It will be interesting to see how the updated games look once there’s a formal announcement! Read more…
Tags: Namco Bandai, PS3, RPG, Tales
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