PlayStation Vita owners are going to put away the books and pull out their favorite weaponry when they return for summer classes with the release of Megatagmension Blanc + Neptune Vs Zombies on May 10th!
Megatagmension Blanc + Neptune Vs Zombies is yet another spin-off game for IFI’s most popular franchise – this time seeing our two heroines take on hordes of the undead while attending the alternate universe school of Gamicademi. Unlike other games in the franchise, which have taken either a Strategy RPG or psuedo turn based RPG approach, Vs Zombies is a purely action title where players are able to rack up high combos using a mixture of character swaps and support characters. New characters like my personal favorite Uzume from Megadimension Neptunia will join Blanc + Neptune in this latest adventure.
We’ll have more as the start of class approaches – so print off your schedules and catch up on your combat basics because Megatagmension Black + Neptune Vs Zombies is available to pre-order at GAME, Amazon, EB Games and other retailers!
Australia’s ratings board is pretty well known for spoiling major game reveals. So when PCgamer reports that they have broken the seals on a new Dead Island game, I am inclined to believe them. The classification site recently listed a new game called Dead Island Retro Revenge, which it slapped with an “M” rating for bloody violence and online interactivity. So Dead Island was pretty violent and bloody so no surprise there, and online suggests it will hopefully be in the same vein as the Dead Island games before with co-operative open world zombie killing action.
unfortunately Australia’s game rating site doesn’t give up the same kind of deep informative details as the US counterpart the ESRB, what we do know is that it will be published by Koch Media, the parent company of Deep Silver, and that it’s being developed by Empty Clip Studios.None of that really means anything to us, beyond the fact that Empty Clip is the developer that owns the Rapid Fire Engine which has been used in a few games, perhaps most notably Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine.
Fans of Dead Island will remember that this last year has not been a particularly good one for the franchise, as Dead Island 2 ended up in development hell, after it was first delayed, then eventually lost its developer. Landing it in the territory of the never was, that magic developer hell where we know it exists, but have no idea how done it is, or if it will ever be ready for consumers. Dead Island: Epidemic MOBA was also shut down in October before it even had a chance to get out of Early Access. Hopefully this new filing means that the franchise will
Paladins Champion of the Realm, the newest game from Hi-Rez studios (creators of SMITE, and publisher of Tribes). The game features (so far) a cast of 9 characters who fight over a single point to capture. After capturing the point players must then escort a cannon to three “doors” which the cannon destroys advancing the game. Most games last about 10 minutes and feature fast paced action that’s pretty close to nonstop. The game currently features 9 Champions each of whom have 3 special abilities that are activated by a key press. In this way its very MOBA like, but the similarities end there. Instead of towers, or turrets, the game has you capturing a point, for tickets. The more players on the point the more tickets you get. After 100 tickets, a “siege engine” spawns and you escort the engine to the enemies gate, where it fires at the gate and does damage. This all sounds pretty confusing but the game is honestly quite simple. Most of the game your directed directly to the objective that currently was needing to be achieved.
Paladins UI is very minimalist
The games major difference from other MOBAs comes in its card system. As you level up you are allowed to select a series of 5 cards which have unique effects on your three abilites. One might boost damage, one might boost duration, anotehr might cause a debuff on the enemy. This is how the game handles “builds” the cards are drawn at random from your stack as you level up, and you can earn more cards each time you level up, or you can purchase more cards for in game currency or buy cards. Yes the game has microtransactions, its not yet clear how all of them will work, but it does seem clear that at least you can earn everythign thats currently in game just by playing. You would have to play a lot, but you could earn it all.
this screen is what you get when you level up
I found the game to be a lot of fun, I streamed it for two hours, you can watch the VOD here on my twitch channel, but watching 20 minutes of it should give you enough of an idea of what the game is about to decide if you like it or not. Most matches last less than 10 minutes. Personally I love the games look, really reminded me of Wild Star. Its very cartoony and bring, something that I honestly love. The style is often made fun of for being too childish, but for me dark games are just too much, I really prefer the pretty colors and particle effects. The Beta is very much a Beta, with new content being added very quickly. It also has its fare share of bugs, but there is a full forum for reporting bugs and I have no doubt that Hi Rez will work diligently to iron out the bugs, while adding as much content as they can.
Currently in semi-open beta you can sign up on the site or purchase access (buy in for 20$ here) on the Hi-Rez site. The game is I think its worth the the small buy in to get on the ground floor. The game is (At least according to wikipedia) planned for multi console release, so getting in early on PC should give players an edge. Judge for yourself by checking out the youtube and twitter content that Hi-Rez is putting out.
As if we didn’t get enough of the Final Fantasy XIII goodness, we get another call to action from Square Enix. Tonight, Square Enix formally announces LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII. This will be the final game in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy.
If you head over to visit Square Enix’s site, you will find a video of Yoshinori Kitase explaining about a crystal and more about the game itself. Kitase tells us, instead of doing a trailer for the game, there will be “multiple presentations” that will be shown throughout the site, beginning September 4th.Read More
