Three new games will join the Wii U Virtual Console tomorrow when Nintendo’s North American download hits.
The first title is Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones from the NES. Join the Lee brothers as they head on a worldwide search for their friend Marion and the powerful Sacred Stones. Defeat your enemies using a collection of martial-art moves, including those of enemies that join your quest. Play solo or together with another player as you finally reach the evil mastermind behind Marion’s kidnapping.
Sometimes a first person shooter is perfect for a lazy afternoon. You can sort of just turn off your brain and worry about not being shot in the back of the head. EA / Respawn’s Titanfall might not get a lot of play two years after its release but it is still a lot of fun.
This past afternoon I bolted myself into my mech and enjoyed a few rounds of Titanfall on Twitch.TV. Here’s a video recap of a couple matches – make note that I tend to die a lot.
Bandai Namco will be adding an optional season pass to Dark Souls III upon release the publisher announced. Details on exactly what this pass will entitle players to is currently unknown as Bandai Namco’s press release did not contain any details other than the pass will continue in the tradition of Dark Souls’ Artorias of the Abyss and Dark Souls II’s The Lost Crown add-ons. This season pass can be purchased either individual from the game or as part of a Digital Deluxe edition on all platforms.
The season pass on its own is priced at $27.99 CDN while the digital deluxe edition is priced at $94.48. Both prices are from the Canadian Steam storefront and pertain to the Windows PC version of Dark Souls III.
In addition to the announcement of future DLC, Bandai Namco will also be giving a free copy of the original Dark Souls to anyone who pre-orders the game on Xbox One. Currently, the original version of Dark Souls is only playable on Xbox 360 but will be added to Xbox One through backwards compatibility in the future.
Here is Namco Bandai’s full press release:
Today BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe announced their exclusive digital pre-order programme with Xbox for DARK SOULS III. For a limited time, gamers who digitally pre-order DARK SOULS III on the Xbox One Store will receive the original DARK SOULS; playable now on Xbox 360, or on Xbox One later via Backward Compatibility. The code for DARK SOULS will be delivered to their Xbox message center in 7-10 days.
Additionally, BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe also announced a Season Pass programme for DARK SOULS III. “Artorias of the Abyss” (DARK SOULS) and the “The Lost Crowns” (DARK SOULS II) were known for expanding the experience of DARK SOULS in a meaningful way and the season pass for DARK SOULS III will carry on this tradition by supporting the game with exciting new content after launch. The season pass will be available on all platforms along with a digital Deluxe Edition: which includes the main game, season pass, dynamic theme and official soundtrack. Further details will be revealed over the next few months.
Capcom’s Street Fighter V has been available on Windows PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 for little over 24 hours and players have already found a way to “restore” animation changes to fighter R. Mika’s introduction.
For the unaware, as I was until I came across the modification on twitter this morning, in pre-release versions of SFVR.Mika would slap her own ass during her V-Trigger super move activation animation. Months later in December 2015 fans noticed that these few frames of animation had been removed from recent trailers prompting the following statement from the game’s developers:
“Those changes came up internally. We decided to remove that because we want the biggest possible number of people to play, and we don’t want to have something in the game that might make someone uncomfortable.”
The above quote is from none other than long-time Street Fighter producer, Yoshinori Ono. The development team felt that the sexualized butt slap animations could be offensive to members of their fanbase and ultimately removed it before releasing the game. In my opinion Ono-San and his team made the right call in removing this animation.
So here we are now 24 hours post release and fans have moded in the pre-release version of Mika’s animations. Fans adding moded content that goes outside of the original scope of a developer’s vision are nothing new – there are whole new lands for Skyrim and even a nude mod. But despite some rather lengthy outcries on Twitter this does not amount to videogame censorship. Yoshinori’s decision to remove an ass slap from a fighting game in no way represents the suppression of any kind of dissenting opinion or information. The Street Fighter V team removed a sexualizing and degrading animation that focused on a woman’s body and now portions of the gamer demographics are up in arms. It’s almost like this has nothing to do with this particular game at all, considering the removal of R. Mika’s animations don’t affect gameplay at all, and have everything to do with objectifying bodies.
To those who still think that Capcom has censored your brand new fighting game, chill out for a second, because there is a lot of great content to be found in Capcom’s latest fighter. Clearly the developers intentions were to remove the animation as this change was made during the game’s development as it did not fit with their vision for the title. Claiming otherwise is not only going contradictory to Yoshinori’s statement but also makes it apparent that perhaps this whole thing isn’t about Street Fighter V but how we view female bodies in videogames?
In the end, this modification adds nothing to the game.
If you’ve been avidly awaiting an invite to the closed Overwatch beta on PC and are based in Asia then prepare to spam your F5 keys rapidly. Blizzard took to twitter yesterday to let potential players know that they have flagged accounts for the first beta wave since Overwatch’s December hiatus for accounts based in the Asia region.
Some players have asked if Australia was considered part of the Asia region. According to the official @PlayOverwatch twitter account our Aussie friends are actually considered part of the Americas region.
You can check your beta status by logging into the battle.net account management page. If you see something like the below image then you’re in!
Also here is the original tweet from Blizzard:
[BETA] A wave of accounts from our opt-in pool have been flagged for Closed Beta. This wave targeted players from our Asia gameplay region.
Fortified is a new third person shooter tower defense hybrid from developer Clapfoot. It’s a tale as old as sci-fi – Martians are invading! They want something from us, and only a small group of American 1950s stereotypes can help save us! The US government has recruited a rocket scientist, a secret agent, a space-man, and a captain to fight against hordes of aliens in an attempt to defend the Earth! Or at least, the rocket ship that will save the earth. This will be a familiar formula to anyone who has played Orcs Must Die: you start on a level with limited paths for creeps (or in this case, aliens) to traverse, you place turrets and obstacles to prevent them from getting there, and supplement those turrets with your shooter skills. At no point does this game do anything that we haven’t seen before in tower defense shooters. You get money for killing enemies with lets you build more defenses, which gets you more money, which after several waves of enemies leads to the end of the level. After each level, you are rewarded with upgrade points, which you can spend on better turrets, guns, and NPCs. One unique modifier that I have not seen before in tower defense is that as you increase the difficulty, the number of defenses you can use is lowered as well the time you have to place them.
The game features a wonderful 1950s take on technology – think Tommy guns and Tesla coils. I love the way it works in ’50s Americana with classic tower defense. Placing Tesla coils or star branded machine guns feels awesome. Fortified has also added another layer of depth from other tower defense with NPC characters you can place and command. There are several types of these characters, ranging from basic grunts to snipers, each of which has their own advantages and disadvantages. You can also command these troops to do simple tasks like rush to your rocket to defend it, and return to their positions.
