At first glance, Wargame: AirLand Battle might seem like a minor update to Wargame: European Escalation, the brilliantly Cold War RTS from the undersung RTS heroes at Eugen Systems who’ve been quietly innovating and polishing for over ten years (if you think they arrived on the scene with Ruse, you haven’t been paying attention). But this is no “just add airplanes” update. This is yet another instance of Eugen’s innovate-and-polish approach, this time applied to their own game. And AirLand Battle belongs on any list of the finest RTSs ever made for a few reasons, but mostly for one simple reason:
It does something that almost no other RTS can manage.
After the jump, the Cold War gets hotter Continue reading →
GungHo CEO Kazuki Morishita told reporters that he wants to surpass Nintendo’s sales before he retires. Bloomberg reports that the 39-year-old’s comments came as he was being interviewed in Tokyo after his company posted Q1 results.
GungHo’s revenue for Q1 came to approximately $307 million, one third of Nintendo’s numbers for the same period. While that may make it may seem like GungHo has a long way to go to reach Morishita’s goal, the company also reported growth of 900% while Nintendo only grew 1%.
“I want to make people think whatever GungHo does is fun,” like they do at Nintendo, Morishita said. “I respect Nintendo.”
GungHo’s success is largely built on the free-to-play mobile phone game Puzzle & Dragons which rakes in about $3.4 million a day. It’s not as popular in the West, but Puzzle & Dragons is the top-grossing app for smartphones in the world. It has remained in the top of the charts since its debut in February 2012.
GungHo plans to bring Puzzle & Dragons to the Nintendo 3DS later this year. Although the 3DS version will not have the lucrative in-app purchases, GungHo has stated that the game is “targeting children” to “increase lifetime customers” of their brand.
PopCap has announced that Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time will be launching on the iOS App Store on July 18th. The long-awaited sequel will be entirely free-to-play. PopCap says the “vast majority” of content will be available for no charge but players will be able to purchase upgrades and other in-game items.
Designed from the ground up as a live service, the ever-expanding universe of Plants vs. Zombies 2 continues the epic struggle of plants defending your brainz against zombies from your backyard through the vast reaches of time, both past and future. New worlds with new levels, plants, zombies and new ways to play will be released on an ongoing basis. Leveraging the touch interface of Apple’s popular mobile devices, Plants vs. Zombies 2 includes all-new touch-screen power-ups that enable players to “break the fourth wall” and interact with zombies directly, as well as via plant defenses.
The game is “exclusively” for iOS at launch according to PopCap. There is no word on whether or not there will be PC or Android versions of the game coming later.
This week Capcom releases Remember Me, a sci-fi adventure game in which the main character climbs around a lot (“Can we appeal to the Tomb Raider crowd?”), gets in fistfights (“Can we appeal to the Arkham City crowd?”), and manipulates memories (“Oh, right, we have to fit the central conceit into the game somehow…”). It begins with an interesting aesthetic, but once you escape from the laboratory and climb out of the sewers, you come to that moment when the music swells and a sweeping vista of the amazing sci-fi city stretches before you. My reaction to that moment in Remember Me was, “Really? That’s all you got?” Any further curiosity about the world or the gameplay pretty much dimmed once I got hung up on the first puzzle, which involves watching a doctor give medication to someone over and over again. Basically, these are puzzles about fast-forwarding and rewinding through cutscenes while you guess at whatever obscure solution the developers have in mind. If you really want to play an adventure game, I’m sure someone other than me could recommend a good one.
Also out this week is new DLC for Sins of a Solar Empire, a fantastic RTS that’s no less fantastic for its ongoing touch of feature bloat. Every time I play, there are about six or seven cool things that I know I’m probably not going to touch this time. Whether it’s mines, starbases, titans, some of the cruisers, superweapons, artifacts, inter-imperial pacts, refineries, or cultural boundaries, there are far too many nifty features for any single play sessions. Consider the trade port subgame. You might not even know it exists. But if you string together an unbroken line of trade ports, you get an income bonus. So you don’t just want that dwarf planet because your people need a place to live. You want it because it will extend your trade route by one system. Spacerailroad Tycoon in my RTS. The $5 Forbidden Worlds add-on will lets you further tweak planets, and it will add news planets, bonuses, and technologies.
A possible release this week is State of Decay. It’s in certification at Microsoft, and if all goes well, it will be included in Wednesday’s Xbox Live Arcade releases. Why should you care? Because of all the genres that need more games, single-player open-world zombie survival games need more games the most. Besides, I haven’t headshotted a zombie since dinking around with Resident Evil: Revelations a few weeks agao. I’m starting to go into withdrawal.
Finally, I wouldn’t normally care one whit about a free-to-play action RPG/MMO. But given that Marvel Ultimate Alliance is one of my perennial “you know, I should go back and play that yet again…” games, I’m actually looking forward to the free-to-play action RPG/MMO Marvel Heroes. The early launch this weekend has apparently been beset by problems — the PR rep sheepishly slinked away after last Thursday’s “hey, do you want early access to Marvel Heroes?” email — but whenever its issues get ironed out, I’m looking forward to getting my Jean Grey on. That right, Jean Grey. That’s how I roll.
Sony PlayStation UK and PlayJam will be sponsoring a videogame event called EToo which is meant to be an alternate to E3. The event will take place on the same weekend of E3 (June 10th – 13th) but in Soho’s Loading Bar.
David Wilson, Head of PR for PlayStation UK said, “PlayStation is pretty excited about EToo. As well as giving attendees the chance to witness our E3 conference live, there’ll be loads of time to get hands on with a range of awesome games from the blockbuster, The Last Of Us, to the small but beautifully formed Rain”
Over 30 developers will be at EToo showing off their games including indie developers New Star Games, Hello Games, Big Robot, and more. Capcom will be in attendance with playable demos of Lost Planet 3 and the HD version of Duck Tales.
Co-sponsor PlayJam will be showing off its Android console, the GameStick, which will launch in July.
Would you rather survive a crash landing on a hostile alien world or watch After Earth? Unfortunately, we weren’t given the option to decide one or the other. Then, if you’re not busy, would you maybe like to join us at the 38-minute mark for a 3×3 about dates in movies? We’ll pick you up at eight.
Next week: Upstream Color
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