It's becoming common knowledge that unless you're offering some sort of retailer "goody bag" along with a purchase of a game at launch, well then you don't have a cool game launch. The Simpsons Game offered a little Homer/Katamari ball; Burnout Paradise offered exclusive unlockable cars.
And now, the highly anticipated and tragically delayed Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMORPG is going ape-sh#$ with preorder mayhem. The official preorder page claims the following:
-Preorder the Collector's Edition ($78.99 on Amazon.com) and get early access to the open beta
-Also be a part of the "Live Game Head Start" thing, which will let you play the full game several days before the full launch.
-And, here's the real treat folks, receive all this magical in-game swag: Rittenbach's Portable Camp, Sentinel's Amber Band, Guardian's Iolite Band, and Champion's Sapphire Band. We have no real clue what all that does, but it sounds expensive. I wonder if on launch day kids wearing this stuff will get beat up; like the kid wearing Air Jordans on the first day of sixth grade.
In what seems like a match made in heaven, Square Enix has announced today the furry cooing Final Fantasy mascot, the Chocobo, will be coming exclusively to the Nintendo Wii on July 8 in the form of Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon.
In a land where the inhabitants have lost their memories, the game revolves around Chocobo and Sid, featuring turn-based RPG dungeon crawling, mini games, a Final Fantasy-esque job system, and enough sugary cutesy squawking to make even the staunchest Wii fanboy's teeth hurt.
What's unclear to me, is whether from the title we are to infer that the Chocobo's maintain and operate dungeons, or that they are imprisoned and are being contained inside of a dungeon. Thoughts?
In any case, we're glad to see a decent RPG make its way to the Wii. Maybe there will be a "blood code" in the final version? Probably not, just as long as we get some Chocobo's throwing down in some dungeons and tearing stuff up, a'-warking like mad, we're happy.
[via Nintendo Wii Fanboy]
If you're a Square Enix fan you should be drunk with joy. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII ships for the PSP tomorrow. Which means you'll be able to go and get it tomorrow. At the airport. Or the pier. Or maybe if you bribe a GameStop employee to go to the airport or the pier, otherwise it "ships" tomorrow, which means Wednesday in real life. When will the game industry stop with the "ship dates" and just tell when it's out? I've seen too many message board threads with braggarts in middle America claiming they have the game because of magical mistakes.
Also on the Square Enix plate today is a new "members only" website with some exclusive content. Members only means you can access the site after VII easy, long, arduous steps in order to look at everything. Check out the Q&A with Crisis Core developer Hajime Tabata. Also, create a Shinra employee I.D. Ok, there's not much up there currently, but the site just launched.
One thing, in the Q&A with Hajime Tabata, he speaks of why they chose to make Crisis Core a bit more difficult in the Western version, mentioning that "games released in Western markets are generally of higher difficulty than those released in Japan." I feel weird disagreeing with this man, but see Ikaruga for a small example of why I'd disagree. Maybe he meant differently. Anyway, joyous is the day when I own Crisis Core. Cheers to that! Already getting slathered with positive reviews and such.
St. Patricks day. Ah yes, the day that St. Patrick banished snakes from all the dungeons in Ireland, or something. Whatever the true meaning of St. Patrick's day is it can't be denied the day is synonymous with beer. For MMORPG'ers, this presents a problem. How does one pound Guiness while trying to organize raids, level up and type articulately? You've got to keep your priorities straight.
But never fear, Massively has a nice little collection of MMORPGs that are getting in the spirit of things with "beer quests" and what not. Now you can get soused in the virtual world while safely drinking grapefruit juice in the comfort of your dungeon.
The best of the lot is most definitely LoTRO's St. Patrick's day quest which awards one fresh Inn League Keg for completion. And when you finish the quest you'll wake up in a different part of Middle Earth! Fantastic.1503 A.D.
In what will be the sixth entry in Square Enix's let-us-torture-you-with-the-idea-of-remaking-FFVII project, aptly titled the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, the PSP exclusive RPG Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII will land in the U.S. on March 25th. The game is set seven years before the events of Final Fantasy VII (let us refresh you: Sephiroth tries to kill the planet by sucking all the planet's energy to himself, so Cloud kills him instead), and puts SOLDIER members Zack and Sephiroth on a mission together to resolve the disappearance of a fellow SOLDIER member in Wutai. Cloud, Tifa, Aeris, and yes, Sephiroth, are all back.
Visually the game should have you drooling RPG excitement, and it was reviewed favorably by Japan's faux-prestigious bastion of video game journalism Famitsu. But all of this doesn't make it any less torturous. It is, afterall, not really an actual remake of Final Fantasy VII. I'm not sure how much closer Square Enix could come to remaking FFVII without actually doing it. There have been two feature animated films and four games milking the series to death. Crisis Core even strongly resembles what you could picture a FFVII remake looking like.
Oh well, I'll buy it. I have to. We all have to. Stay tuned for updates on the game's launch later this month.
This is too cool to pass up. I even did a page on this at mahalo.com a while ago but didn't realize it was post-worthy.
Here's how you do it. Play as Snake on Shadow Moses Island against whoever. When the match starts push down on the D-pad (sickeningly fast) to trigger the codec conversations. I've heard "push down and punch, or punch and down" but no official say on it really. We seemed to get it when doing some sort of rapid seizure movement involving down and a button in some way. Nintendo what's up with that?
Anyway the codec conversations are great. It's funny to hear important military calls about people like Yoshi or Jigglypuff. Or Wario, here's a bit of his:
CAMPBELL: "Wario loves garlic. He eats whole cloves of it day and night, so try not to get caught in his mouth. Once that smell gets on you it'll stick to you for quick a while."
SNAKE: "That's a scary thought."
CAMPBELL: "He also attacks by farting. He can fart to fly around too."
SNAKE: "By farting?! Are you kidding me?!"
CAMPBELL: "Sadly, no. I am not kidding. If his belly starts to bulge, watch out."
And people accuse RPGs of being campy...
Anyway back to RPGs.
Well versed RPG enthusiast and Nintendo guru Lynxara of our sister site, omgNintendo, has taken the time to list out seven of the ill-conceived design trends commonly found in most American and Japanese RPGs. A great read for those of us who spend our days/nights/weekends eyebrow deep in the various fantasy worlds that companies like Square Enix and Atlus present before us each year.
Click here to check it out. Be sure to tell 'em Arturis sent you, and you'll get to read the article at half price! (Of course, 50% of Free is still Free)
Today in utter defiance of recent conservative criticism, Mass Effect released its first batch of racy DLC: an entire space-harem, in which you are awarded points for wildly bedding as many women as possible in every position. There's also rebellious rock and roll playing, and dancing.
Ok kidding, but that would have been awesome if BioWare did that.
The content pack is called "Bringing Down the Sky," and pits Commander Shephard-n'-crew against a gang of Batarian bad guys who've sent a space station hurling towards collision with the peaceful planet of Terra Nova. 400 MS points (and a save spot where you have access to the Normandy ship) gets you in.
There's 90 minutes of brand new gameplay and a new Achievement worth 50 gamer points. For anyone who owns Mass Effect this is a no brainer.
This reminds me of when Garth asks Wayne, "Did you ever find bugs bunny attractive when he put on a dress and acted like a girl bunny?" I don't know Garth, but I do find it attractive when girls dress up as Link. As least these two.
My main question for these girls, if they're out there, is why are so awesome? Hmm? What gives you the right to be funny, genius, cute and daring in one insane sweeping move? I'm flabbergasted by this. Next could you girls do Kratos from God of War? Give it a shot. I want to test your evil power. If you can do that you're unstoppable.
Now let me ruin every guy's life who's reading this. These are actually guys. You've been had. Kidding!
[via DS Fanboy]
In recent WTF news, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick spoke at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference and told analysts that their could be a Call of Duty MMO game in the future. This comes as a sorta surprise, but not a full surprise, since in late 2007 Activision (which publishes the COD series) merged with Vivendi (who owns Blizzard, who makes WoW). So naturally, the two companies should push their two biggest franchises together and give new meaning to the phrase "forcing a square peg into a circle," right?
No telling how far off something like this is, or if it will ever actually happen, but I think it's clear there's room in the MMO market for something other than magical wizards and goblins.
Conversely there's probably a bit of room in the war-themed game world for wizards, too. Not sure how that would pan out, but hey just throwing out ideas here. Or why don't they just get it all out and do like Marvel vs Capcom style and make a fighting game featuring all of the franchises. The hot dancing blond girl from Guitar Hero vs Orc Mage vs Tank in a multiplayer rhythm-based death match. No?
In any case, we'll keep an eye out for future developments on this front.
[via IGN]
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