Square-Enix have finally unleashed the latest edition of the Final Fantasy franchise in Japan. This is the first game of the main series that has been released for the PS3.
Final Fantasy XIII hit the shelves today in Japan where hundreds of people queued up in order to buy the game. Sony hopes that the game will boost sales of the PS3 console for Christmas.
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Square-Enix hopes to sell at least 2 million copies of FF XIII locally. The game will be launched in the North American and European markets on March 9th, 2010. It will also be available on Xbox 360, but not on Wii.
The Final Fantasy franchise has sold more than 92 million games worldwide since its launch in 1987.
The initial impressions posted on Kotaku say that the cut-scenes are well-directed, but I’d expect nothing less from Final Fantasy. The music is layered and complex. The game starts with resistance operatives fighting against a city of machines. Sounds pretty cool! I’m looking forward to playing this when it arrives in English.
[via Kotaku, images via Square-Enix]
Written by range on December 17th, 2009 with no comments.
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Next month’s Mass Effect 2 is going to be huge. Not that the first game was any slouch in the size department, with its dozens of (lookalike) planets to explore and the kind of choice-filled plot BioWare is famous for. But it looks like the second offering is going to leave the first in its space dust.
Not only is the sequel spread out across two discs, but the follow-up will also feature a sprawling voice cast packed with even bigger names than the first game, which sported work from the likes of Marina Sirtis and Lance Henriksen. Actors Seth Green and Keith David will be returning for the second game, and a bevy of new actors have been added to the voice cast, from Carrie-Anne Moss and Tricia Helfer to the underrated and fabulous Oscar nominee (and Emmy winner) Shohreh Aghdashloo and Martin Sheen. In case that’s not enough, fan favorites Adam Baldwin and Michael Dorn round out the cast. I sure hope January and February are low points in the movie release schedule next year, because Hollywood is gonna be hard-pressed to pull me away from this one.
At this point, I’m not sure what’s left for the planned third game. Nathan Fillion? That’d be worth waiting for.
[via Gay Gamer]
Written by alisha k. on December 11th, 2009 with no comments.
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Now that Gyromancer has continued what Puzzle Quest started, Infinite Interactive is set to steal back their throne with a sequel to the cult-favorite RPG/puzzle hybrid. Life just got a little sweeter… at least, for me.
GamePro has the details on the forthcoming sequel, but they’re not ready to give ‘em up just yet. From the image, it looks like the interface is going to be a little more straightforward and the graphics a little more slick… but really, all that matters is that you can match gems and kill dudes without getting all complicated as with their last game, Galactrix. The sci-fi setting was cool and all, but the beauty of Puzzle Quest was that you just matched gems and threw some spells around. It’s a most satisfying way of killing ghosts and goblins.
No more information as yet, but I’ll tell you one thing: if you own some sort of electronic device, you’ll probably be able to play this game. I’m surprised they didn’t release a Game Boy version last time.
[via Joystiq]
Written by alisha k. on November 27th, 2009 with no comments.
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Move over, Puzzle Quest. You had a good run with the whole jewel-matching RPG hybrid, but the big boys have come to steal your throne… and rock our faces off. Gyromancer may be a little late (the Puzzle Quest folks already moved on to sci-fi), but it really doesn’t matter when this boat arrives. We already know it’s gonna be the best boat ever.
Gyromancer is the brainchild of Square Enix and PopCap, the makers of Bejeweled, the game that kick-started our universal matching addiction. The two companies have combined to produce a beautiful puzzle-RPG that will very likely give me the arthritis in my Xbox hand(s). The best part? I’ll be suffering for a mere 1200 Microsoft points ($15 for you PC people).
Here’s a video, but be warned: if you watch this, all those holiday plans may just poof right into thin air as you find yourself racing to get your hands on this bad boy. Sometimes, downloadable games can just be a little too convenient.
Click to View Embedded Video Clip
Written by alisha k. on November 17th, 2009 with no comments.
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The folks at Gamersyde were handed some footage of the opening minutes of the PS3 game 3D Dot Game Heroes, From Software’s upcoming homage to classic RPG/Adventure games. The graphics are really neat – it’s like everything is made of cardboard LEGO dot things.
If you’ve seen the trailers before then you’re probably familiar with the graphics, but I believe this is our first glimpse at the HUD and controls of the game. Also, BIG-ASS SWORD!
I don’t know why this dude and his MegaBastard Sword only appears at the very beginning of the game – although it seemed like whoever was playing could control Sir Huge Sword here, note that the HUD is absent – but according to 1UP’s Kevin Gifford, players will be able to customize and swing huge swords. But of course, even heroes have to start somewhere – here’s the puny little fight stick the king gives the hero as he starts on his quest:
According to the same 1UP article that I linked to above, players will be able to choose from three archetypes – the Hero, the Prince, and the Adventurer. If you like none of those three, you can make your own hero, dot by dot, and even customize its animation. Going back to the footage, here’s the world map, which is very reminiscent of Link’s Map in the first Zelda, except that this one is pseudo-3D:
All in all, the game does have a very old school feel, but the cute graphics will probably lure in kids as well. Gamersyde is have bandwidth problems so they’ve disabled embedding for now, meaning I can’t post the video here, but all you have to do is go here to watch the high quality version, and here for the low quality one. You can also download the video if you want. The Japanese version of 3D Dot Game Heroes just dropped this week; a North American release is coming, but we don’t know when exactly.
Written by lambert v. on November 5th, 2009 with no comments.
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RPGs are traditionally long and epic in scale for lots of good reasons, but a lot of RPGs have elements that add unnecessary length to the gameplay, like unskippable walls of text, unnecessarily slow-ass modes of transport and/or huge maps, quests with insane requirements, and of course the grinding. Oh the grinding. Marvelous Entertainment and XSEED games make fun of a lot of the genre’s conventions in their upcoming game Half-Minute Hero, so named because the quests in the game have a default time limit of 30 seconds. Yep, 30 seconds per quest. Destructoid ’s Ben PerLee wrote a detailed preview of the game, and it seems to be a must-buy for jaded gamers.
The game uses our expectations and past experience with RPGs and throws all of that – the 8-bit graphics, character portraits in dialogues, conventional plots, grinding, item buying, dialogue etc – in fast forward, which makes sense because if you’re not going to see anything new anyway, might as well zip through to the end right? And PerLee mentions repeatedly in his preview that the game is consistently funny and self-aware, and that’s a huge plus for me. Here’s a video of the gameplay from the Japanese release of the game. The video has spoilers (especially if you can read Japanese) towards the end but it also shows the 30 second system at work pretty well so… watch at least the first 3 minutes, then stop if you want.
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As you saw in the video the 30-second time limit can be extended in exchange for money, but the whole thing was still freakin frantic. Half-Minute Hero isn’t just an RPG; The RPG part is just one of the 4 gameplay modes in the game. There’s also a shmup, a survival/king of the hill mode and even an RTS (!) mode, with each mode assigned to a stereotypical character. The hero gets the RPG mode, a princess is in the shoot ‘em up, a knight defends a mage in the king of the hill mode, and an evil boss is the character in the RTS mode. Here’s a shaky and quite awkward interview by Unit of True Game Headz with Jimmy Soga of XSEED.
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This and Persona may just be the ones that will make me use my PSP again. Hopefully the humor is really present throughout the game. You can pre-order Half-Minute Hero at Amazon
for $28 (USD). Check out Destructoid for the full article for more info.
Written by lambert v. on September 25th, 2009 with no comments.
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If you missed Fable II or perhaps unloaded the game and wish you hadn’t, you’ll have a new and different shot at the game, in the form of downloadable episodes. Best part? The first one is free. It’s like a demo, but extended, made better, and served with ice cream. Except without actual ice cream, of course (though I’d re-buy Fable if it came with ice cream, I have to say).
While I’m torn on the overall idea of breaking retail games up into episodic download packs – just feels like the top of a possibly slippery slope to me — the idea of an entire portion of the game, without restrictions on saves and such, is very appealing.
No pricing available yet, other than the fact this is fully downloadable content and will not require the disc. The episodes will even work with previously available DLC packs… and the whole package debuts next month.
Also announced, to no one’s surprise, was Fable III, scheduled for release next year. Preliminary image looks nice!
[via Joystiq]
Written by alisha k. on August 21st, 2009 with no comments.
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If you were paying attention during E3, you probably noticed a prominent new face in the trailer for Mass Effect 2. Newly released screenshots offer a longer, lingering look at Thane, an assassin who’ll be a part of the squad in the upcoming sequel.
I don’t know much about this guy, other than the fact that he is ninja-silent and thoroughly bad. I do, however, know that this game cannot possibly come out soon enough. Mass Effect was an incredible experience and from everything released on this one, so far? It looks like it might really be better.
And you’d better be, too. Word is that decisions in this one might be deadly, and I’m not saying for your squadmates. I’m saying for you. Or your version of Shepard, anyway.
If you missed Thane’s debut in the trailer, you can check it out here.
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[via Joystiq]
Written by alisha k. on August 14th, 2009 with no comments.
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