Did you play the Dissidia games for the PSP? I see a handful of Final Fantasy fans raising their hands enthusiastically. But only a handful. Even the die-hardest Final Fantasy fan isn’t necessarily inclined to bang his head against a drawn-out leveling grind, creeping up in power one notch at a time, accumulating one tiny crafting ingredient on the way to a ring that boosts a stat a single point. It’s a series of slight imperceptible tweaks to the next fast-paced unbounded flash of anime combat on the way to not much at all beyond more unbounded anime flashes. Dissidia was like staring into a strobe light, and even for some of us who wouldn’t know Lightning from Cloud Strife, just as mesmerizing.
The PSP, and now the Vita, was uniquely suited to Dissidia’s short arena battles. Small system, cramped controls, graphics mini-powerhouse, eminently portable. Three minutes of gameplay at a time, with breaks between to admire your stats, assign points, pick the next mission, whatever. That’s also how Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker got its hooks into someone — me — who couldn’t care less about a Snake or a Pistol Ocelot or a Big Momma. Snippets of gameplay connected by walls of stats? Sign me up. Oddly enough, it’s not that far a jump from Paradox’s strategy games or the numbers-based power leveling in an MMO.
After the jump, dark souls, nier misses, and bearing arms Continue reading →
Gearbox has confirmed to IGN that the fourth campaign DLC for Borderlands 2 will be released on June 25th. Tina Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep will be the final DLC included in the Season Pass.
The DLC was teased at the PAX East Gearbox presentation with a video of Tiny Tina and other Borderlands characters playing Bunkers & Badasses which seems to be a fictional version of Dungeons & Dragons complete with a 20-sided die.
You’ll experience their game as part of Borderlands 2 with Tina serving as dungeon master, narrating the action as it happens and even changing boss attributes, location details, character names and much more on the fly.
More Tiny Tina is always welcome. If you don’t have the Season Pass, the DLC will cost $9.99 on PS3 and PC or 800 Microsoft Points on the 360.
TimeGate Studios, developer of the Section 8 games, and most recently (and infamously) contributed unspecified work on Aliens: Colonial Marines, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Texas. Polygon reports that the court documents reveal that money owed to creditors and total liablility ranges from $10 million to $50 million.
TimeGate’s top creditors include companies like Unreal Engine developer Epic Games, online game service Agora Games and transmedia developer DJ2 Entertainment. Creditors listed in court documents also include a local pizzeria, to whom TimeGate owes $34.80, and video game agency Birthplace Management Group, which is owed $20,539.20.
TimeGate recently lost an appeal against Southpeak Interactive for ownership of the Section 8 property and $7.35 million in damages as part of a fraud countersuit.
The status of their currently in development game, Minimum, is unknown.
The Kickstarter for Camelot Unchained, by Mark Jacobs and City State Entertainment, has been successfully funded with $2.23 million in the final tally. The Kickstarter asked for $2 million, so the extra amount pledged was enough to unlock archers, one new race per realm, and heraldry. The MMORPG will include realm versus realm battles with up to 500 players and player-built forts and castles.
The game will feature RvR-based leveling tracks for all classes. No PROGRESSION VIA PvE (player vs. environment), loot drops or other such systems are currently planned. All leveling will come from engaging in the game’s RvR-based systems, whether by fighting other players, capturing objectives, and/or crafting objects to help in RvR. There will be NPCs but you cannot use them to level your character.
The last 48 hours of the Kickstarter was hampered by overzealous fans that spammed news sites with entreaties to publish stories about the game. Mark Jacobs asked fans to tone down their efforts and let journalists do their jobs.
The official Camelot Unchained site lists the Foundational Principles of the project.
Mojang announced that Minecraft: Pocket Edition has sold 10 million copies. That’s a lot of wood chopping and coal mining! The post also included some details on future updates.
So… I know what you are thinking. “Yeah, 10m is cool but where is the next update?” We have been working hard on restructuring the backend of a lot of things for Minecraft – Pocket Edition to make future updates smoother. For instance, you can now change options without jumping back to the main menu. What you can also notice is that we have in one of our menues (more to come in the future) an experimental title where we will put in features that will work for more high end devices. The reason to put in in experimental is because we first want to test out features before making them default on.
Mojang is also working on Minecraft Realms, a paid subcription service that will allow players to use official servers and maintain persistent worlds.
