Shadowrun Returns, born of a phenomenally successful Kickstarter campaign, was met with critical and fan praise ( My thoughts on Shadowrun Returns are here) . The follow up Shadowrun: Dragonfall – Director’s Cut, initially an expansion and then a standalone game, did everything better and addressed a few points made by fans of the original ( thoughts on Dragonfall are located here).
Now Harebrained Schemes the indie developer behind the oldschool Cyberpunk meets Fantasy RPG, lead by Jordan Weisman the creator of the pen and paper Shadowrun amongst other things, have announced the location for their new campaign – Hong Kong. This will be the third location explored in the world of 2054 following the intial setting of Seattle and Dragonfall’s Berlin setting. Harebrained Schemes are set to utilise Kickstarter again with a tentative launch date of January 2015.
(Note: This article refers mostly to the Final Fantasy series for examples but the vast majority of points are relevant for all titles early on in the JRPG genre.)
The Japanese RPGs of yesteryear and very much dead and buried. Turn-based battles are, for the most part, a thing of the past. Random battles are occasionally included, but the fluidity, or lack of, has been drastically altered. Look at Final Fantasy XV, for example. Whenever I show fellow writer and editor Mike Orvis some trailers for this upcoming wonder, he angrily/disappointedly shouts at the TV “This is Monster Hunter!”, followed by numerous groans. Is it the grandiose spectacle of ridiculously oversized beasts or the combat mechanics that, from a glance, make it look like a Hack’n’Slash title? The spectacle of Titan, still in reference to FFXV, is initially overwhelming, but if you tackle the thought of attacking the well-known Summon/GF/Eidolon with the mindset of, say, Shadow of the Colossus, then it becomes slightly more manageable.
“But Nick, that’s not a true JRPG!” I hear you cry. “I want my ATB back!” you scream, clutching on to your Cloud and Yuffie plushies, streams of tears rolling down your face, akin to those tears when that popular character got killed by another popular character in that popular Final Fantasy game. And that, you imaginary lot, is exactly what I’m talking about. The traditional JRPG of random, turn-based battles with little to no direction and a mesmerising midi soundtrack are a thing of the past. If, say, someone recreated the original Final Fantasy for today’s consoles, keeping all the fundamentals in place (battle style, story and direction) whilst upgrading the graphics, sound, etc, I think the vast majority of purchases would be due to nostalgia, not because it necessarily holds up well against today’s standard of games. In an industry where everything naturally evolves (mostly) for the better, why try and keep JRPG’s back where they first started?
Doesn’t quite have the same sense of scale…
I’m going to say something incredibly unpopular, and just bear with me on this, but I loved Final Fantasy XIII. It was the first Final Fantasy game for both the PS3 and Xbox 360, and therefore had a lot of hype and expectation around it. The critics liked it for the most part, but the FF die-hards… not so much. It was the most linear game to date, had a simplified battle system, and some of the cast got slightly annoying with their helium-pitched voices, particularly Hope and Vanille. But it tried something different. It gave up open-world exploration for a focused, concise story. Its battles, while being simpler than ever before at face value, opened up a deep and rewarding system that allowed players to tailor their party to how they wanted to play. It delivered an engaging tale that left me almost as happy as the ending scene of Final Fantasy IX did. Does that make it a good game? Not necessarily, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Is it what JRPG’s should be? Most definitely not. I missed the open-world aspect that I had become accustomed to and, while Final Fantasy XIII-2 tried to rectify this, they still have a way to go until they find a perfect balance.
“Aha!”, I faintly hear a few of you shout. “What about (Xbox360 JRPG) Lost Odyssey? That played like an RPG of old and was still amazing!” I whole-heartedly agree with you, invisible Internet commenters. This JRPG, handled by the famed creator of Final Fantasy himself, Hironobu Sakaguchi, was an incredible game, featuring all the tropes of the original offerings that bought the genre to main-stream popularity and I would adore it if more games came out like that. But I can tell you the reason that JRPG’s that show this kind of respect for their heritage are few and far between: Sales figures. Lost Odyssey, a sublime game, woos you with nostalgia, sells 880,000 units worldwide. Final Fantasy XIII on the other hand, has sold 6.9 million worldwide to date, excluding sales of the recently released PC ports. At the end of the day, as much as us gamers don’t want to see it on our end, the gaming industry is a business and therefore the bottom-line above everything.
Random battles, check. Style dripping out of every orifice, check.
More recent JRPG’s, such as The Last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles and the copious amounts of titles from the Tales series have shown that a balance can be struck between the old and the new. Between open-world exploration and still pushing you down a narrative quest line. Random battles with the freedom and epic scale of an action title. A vast amount of side-quests to prolong that inevitable end game grind. But, as should soon be obvious, the style of JRPG that kickstarted this beautiful genre into existence is no more. You’ll find hints and nods to it throughout your upcoming journeys and I hope you enjoy them, but it’s time to accept the fact that they aren’t coming back.
So there they are, dead on the ground, not gaining any experience from that epic boss-fight 5 minutes ago, and very much in need of a Phoenix Down. The rest of your party are uninterested, however, and continue their stride forward to shinier graphics, faster action, and downloadable content. The thought of everything that got you to this point gives you a warm fuzzy feeling deep in your potion-filled belly, but you shake those feelings aside and leap towards more impressive particle effects, a more streamlined experience and, hopefully, a bigger stash of gil over the horizon.
This, instead, is what you have to look forward to.
Whilst everyone is busy getting excited over their Playstations and Xboxes (or not as the case may be for some folk due to some hardcore hacking but that’s another story), some of us remember a little Italian plumber very fondly. Yes folks, Super Mario. What you may not realise is that he’s inspired a generation of musicians.
We’ve got this guy who decided to challenge himself and play along with Super Mario on his violin in real time…
Then these two who decided to give our favourite plumber the marimba treatment…
This guy prefers to beatbox his tribute…
So there you have it, Super Mario is a musical inspiration for the masses.
Ever since the Sony hack, one of the big newsworthy leaks was that Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal had sent an email to former executive vice president of production for Columbia Pictures Elizabeth Cantillon back in January; the email simply reads ‘Idris should be the next bond’, but it was enough to send the rumor mill spinning out of control.
One of the most controversial statements made about this was through Rush Limbaugh, who had this to say;
“James Bond is a total concept put together by Ian Fleming. He was white and Scottish. Period. That is who James Bond is, was. But now Sony is suggesting that the next James Bond should be Idris Elba, a black Britain, rather than a white from Scotland. But that’s not who James Bond is and I know it’s racist to probably point this out.”
What is interesting to me is that James Bond was originally English. In fact, it was only when actor Sean Connery took the super-spy to the big screen that Ian Fleming decided that despite what people originally thought, Bond would be Scottish. A change in the adaptation was welcomed. As such, the casting for Bond has never been strictly rigid – we’ve had a Scottish James Bond, a British James Bond, a Welsh James Bond, …hell, we’ve even had an Australian James Bond! Young or Old, Brown hair to Blonde, in the end it didn’t matter how Bond looked…only how he was presented to us.
Well, Idris responded in a tweet yesterday, pointing out that all Bonds before at least had one thing in common: they were all lookers.
Isn’t 007 supposed to handsome? Glad you think I’ve got a shot! Happy New year people. pic.twitter.com/3g9lAl2Uo3
Dystopian Wars was deservedly praised when it was first launched in 2010, given how the core rules encapsulated all theatres of engagement with the later supplements being entirely optional. Thus it was with some trepidation and suspicion that I approached the second edition of the game, as I recall all too clearly Games Workshop’s incessant (and unnecessary) revising of their Warhammer systems.
Since Dystopian Wars’ release, Spartan Games had identified the need to streamline their rules to make it a faster and more dynamic system. The first way they sought to achieve that was by eliminating the overwhelming number of “Model Assigned Rules” for the units.
In order to maintain game balance, some units will have changed more than others. Although the rules have been revised, all of the previously released miniatures remain valid (updated listings for each faction have been freely released).
An unfortunate side-effect of the rules being updated was that whilst the miniatures were (thankfully) still valid, their corresponding unit cards were not. These cards were fantastic for swift at-a-glance reminders of a unit’s capabilities and,whilst the new unit images are far clearer and allow greater ease of identification, we now have to resort to flicking through pages of the things trying to find the precise one we need.
While I am reliably informed that the game is indeed faster, my play sessions (which included numerous pauses for flicking through the rules) were not discernibly so. The first turn (including set-up) lasted three hours, whilst the second turn took just under one and a half hours. This perhaps might have been due to our inexperience with the new rules or the banter between players, but Dystopian Wars still remains a long game.
This is not to say that Dystopian Wars 2.0 is a bad game, but the second edition would have benefited from further streamlining. This is a war game that is only suitable when you have several hours available, and thus it is not as easy to find the time to play, compared with other games.
Nonetheless, the second edition of Dystopian Wars continues to be an excellent system for epic war games in a detailed steampunk setting.
The combination of air, ground and sea forces opens a diverse series of options for players, and the possibilities for playing unique scenarios, such as beach landings and ports using air and sea forces against embedded ground forces.
The presentation and formatting is – as always – excellent. The gorgeous (and unfortunately weighty) hard-bound book is clearly formatted and beautifully illustrated, with a handy index at the rear for quick rules finding.
In case you’ve been too busy buying and wrapping presents this December to keep up with the news, Sony has been recovering from ‘hacks’ into their email system, purportedly over the release of The Interview. The same ‘hackers’ – who likely had some help from inside of Sony to breach their amazing digital fortresses – promised a Christmas present for Sony.
Which seems to have taken the form of the a DDoS attack on PSN.
DownDetector.com, and multiple other analysts, have reported for most of Christmas Day that one of the largest DDoS attacks Sony has seen battered them over the Christmas period, one likely magnified by the number of new consoles which will have been trying to connect following Santa’s latest set of deliveries.
Multiple groups are attempting to claim responsibility for this hack, which could be as a result of people trolling Sony atop the promised attack, but all they’ve managed to do is annoy children and adult children who’ve tried to use their new consoles on Christmas.
With Sony apparently on the Naughty List this year, I imagine most of those will be on the same list next year.
Space Hulk: Ascension is not the first board game that has been adapted into a video game. Bloodbowl and Talisman have both been available for many years. However, both of these games have been faithful adaptations of the original board game, including the virtual moving of dice and – in the case of Talisman – virtual moving of miniatures. However, Space Hulk: Ascension has blended the rules of the original board game with the opportunities offered by digital format.
In many ways, the core concepts of Space Hulk remain unchanged. Each unit has a set number of action points (for movement, attacks, doors, etc), with the heavily armed and armoured Terminators having four, whilst vicious Genestealers have six. Similarly, movement is handled in much the same way with each forward movement or 90 degree turn, requiring an action point. The creators sought to faithfully replicate the laborious movement of the hulking Terminators, however this drawn-out process can thankfully be side-stepped by increasing the game-speed, so you do not find yourself twiddling your thumbs waiting for your terminators to finish moving.
The main difference between the two versions of Space Hulk is the combat mechanics. Unlike the board game, where combat – be it melee or shooting – was resolved using a series of six-sided dice (aka D6), the video game version uses percentage based attacks to determine the likelihood of success, much in the same way as X-Com does.
This new percentage based system makes sense, given the digital nature of video games, and whilst the simulated dice rolling found in Talisman and Blood Bowl replicate the tactile nature of board games, it feels like an unnecessarily antiquated technique that we could do without.
Another change to the combat mechanics are rules for ammunition (in the original it was assumed each weapon had infinite bullets) and for weapons overheating. The latter rule is an adaptation from the board game, which was normally occurred during Overwatch.
Despite this change of combat resolution, Space Hulk: Ascension nonetheless reflects the core fundamentals of the original; namely that Genestealers are lethal at close quarters and Terminators need to be able to effectively deploy their firepower in order to succeed.
Overwatch remains a similar constant, with the 2AP cost of overwatch allowing Terminators the opportunity to fire at moving targets during the Genestealers’ turn. Again, these combat opportunities are resolved through percentage based systems.
One of the new elements that fans of the original may lament is the inclusion of RPG mechanics. In the original game, each weapon came with its own points cost, the limit of which was based upon the difficulty of each mission. Terminators that have survived missions in the video game can use the experience points they have gained (through achieving objectives and killing genestealers) to acquire new abilities (increasing their number of action points, the percentage chance of success in combat, etc) and equipment (such as Lightning Claws or – my personal favourite – the cyclone missile launcher).
Most of the weapons and equipment remain the same, much of which admittedly comes from the later board game expansions Genestealer and Deathwing. Later missions also include the opportunities to deploy Terminator Librarians, the core rules of which remain the same as the original.
Whilst Space Hulk: Ascension remains faithful to the core mechanics of the original board game, the designers have nonetheless seized the opportunities available to them in a digital environment to enhance the gameplay.
Compiling footage from films, video games and TV shows, including footage from Arrow, Flash and the unaired Wonder Woman pilot, the talented Alex Luthor has created every comics fans dream – An epic Marvel vs. DC showdown trailer. It cleverly features many of their respective heroes and some villains and though we realistically will never ever see this happen in the cinematic universe, there is no harm in dreaming…
Marvel have revealed that Spider-Woman is getting a redesigned costume for the first time in 37 years. Seriously. 37 years. Spider-Woman has had the same costume since The Clash and Star Wars were brand new things. I mean, granted, she had that bizarre hair-covering variant last seen in the Bendis/Reed re-telling of her origin story, but the less said about that the better.
Your head looks like a suppository, Jess. Stop it.
So this Kris Anka redesign… I had a classic Spider-Woman cosplay planned and now I have to change it because DUDE this design is awesome. As I mentioned when I talked about the Batgirl redesign, there’s a wonderful trend for more practical costumes, which I love.
I like the shape of the jacket, and also the fact that there’s a jacket, so as a cosplay it’s going to be so warm and comfortable, and you could totally wear bits of it outside as day wear. As a disguise, however, it’s laughably impractical, as it depends on a pair of glasses- the lamest of all superhero disguises (sorry Superman!). Hopefully the glasses will have a function, like some sort of facial recognition/night vision/heat vision special modes; you know, something other than a button which covers slightly more of her forehead. The jacket zipping up to reveal the Spider-logo is a nice touch, but again, the disguise will be utterly foiled if her jacket flap swings shut, or someone approaches Jess from the side in civilian mode. But then, much like most of the Marvel universe, Jess’ identity has never really been that much of a secret. So it’s no big deal.
Except for this…
It’s a good plan, which has been praised for looking less ridiculous than Jess’ current wing-pits, without retconning her glide ability into straight-up flight. There’s just one problem: the activation. Jess pushes her upper arms into her back to attach the wings- not as unrealistic as it may seem, since I assume Jess is hyper-flexible and capable of doing that. From the back, as seen in Anka’s design and my recreation here, it’s all fine.
If a little unsettling…
From the front, however…
Care Bears aside, there is nothing right with this picture.
So the new Spider-Woman costume: it’s modern, it’s practical, and it looks awesome. But every time she activates her glide system, anyone in front of her will be under the impression that she’s trying to transform into an amorous raptor.
Were you planning to go see The Interview on Christmas? Not anymore.
Sony announced today that they are canceling the release of the controversial film in the US. The decision came after several major theater chains including Regal, Cinemark, Carmike and Cineplex reported they would be delaying or completely dropping the screening of the film.
This all comes in the aftermath of threats and a pretty impressive hacking job recently. (We do not condone cyber crime in any way) Sony said in a statement earlier, “Sony Pictures has been the victim of an unprecedented criminal assault against our employees, our customers, and our business.”
“Those who attacked us stole our intellectual property, emails, and sensitive and proprietary material, and sought to destroy our spirit and our morale- all apparently to thwart the release of a movie they did not like. We are deeply saddened at this brazen effort to suppress the distribution of a movie, and in the process do damage to our company, our employees, and the American public.”
The Interview, starring Seth Rogan and James Franco, portrays the assassination of the North Korean leader and has spurred several debates. A group calling themselves Guardians of Peace threatened action against theaters that showed the film. The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the threats but does not have any credible intel to indicate an active plot against a theater chain.
After canceling the release Sony said, “We stand by our filmmakers and their right to free expression and are extremely disappointed by this outcome.”
Hell, I’m very disappointed by this outcome.
So yes the release date has been canceled but the film itself is not. This is only a delay for now. Most of the theater chains are stating they will readdress the situation as it develops. We know Sony will still release the film in one form or another. With the recent loss of The Pirate Bay, I see a great opportunity for an online market. Just a thought.
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