Random Art: One More Before Turning The Page…

thumping 

Well, I was going to try and wrap things up for 2014 with a a few more posts, but it’s been a weird enough last month or three that I’m just about wiped out. Here’s something odd I whipped up last night or early this morning while up way too late thinking. Anyway, Happy New Year for those of you out there. If you’re out and about celebrating, get wherever you’re going and back home safe. If you’re like me and spending the evening home in front of the tube, yeah, stay safe as well. Don’t fall off the couch and crack your head on the carpet or whatever. Yeah, I lead the thrilling life, folks!

See you all in a day or two. I may post tomorrow, but that depends on me getting out for my resolution stroll in the cold air. I think two or three miles a day is a good start…

January’s PS Plus Lineup (Provided PSN Is Working!)


 

Poor Sony has been through the wringer this year. Between “hackers” hitting a few of the company’s entertainment divisions and among other things, knocking PSN offline for a bit over the last holiday weekend and a truly crazy class action lawsuit allowed to proceed, all of 2014’s successes seem so very far in the past. Nevertheless, PlayStation Plus subscribers will still be getting a bunch of free games as usual. January’s list of freebies is a nice one indeed, but at this point, it’s all up to whether or not PSN will be running properly so gamers can actually get all of that content. The privileges of membership, indeed…

Persona 5: Last Gasp on the PS3/First Breath on the PS4…

Persona 5 2015 bg 

Atlus’ long running Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series of games has always been a reliably sturdy franchise for fans, surviving a few major artistic and gameplay changes some dislike while providing deep and generally well written plots as well as some interesting characters. The company has been teasing Persona 5 for a little while now as the game is still in development in Japan, and as this latest teaser shows, some of the familiar elements are back. Expect high-school age kids finding out they’ve got hidden powers called Personas, Japan at the brink of some sort of apocalyptic destruction, and dozens of hours of gameplay not counting plenty of side-quests. Demon fusion, teen angst, maybe a bit of romance options and a number of returning good, evil and neutral NPC’s to chat with will no doubt also be par for the course.


 

This second teaser trailer reveals not much at all other than some of the new cast of characters and their names. Additionally, as this will be the first Persona game for next-gen (or current gen if you’ve already made the switch), it will be interesting to see the differences between the PS3 and PS4 versions of the game. I’d imagine the more powerful PS4 will run the game at a steady frame rate and probably feature ore detailed environments. But outside that fighting game, the series has never been about super flashy visuals or lightning paced action. We’ll keep an ear to ground for more on this one, but let’s just say a chunk of time is being carved out in order to dive deep into this one and play it at length.

Unmechanical Extended Edition: Get A (nother) Grip Games Goodie in 2015!

Unmechnaical EE banner 

Grip Games is at it again with a cool enhanced update to one of its popular titles. Unmechanical Extended Edition is coming in 2015 for PS3,PS4, Xbox One courtesy of Grip and developers Teotl Studios and Talawa Games. Given that the original game was a critical success on multiple mobile platforms and PC, a console version with a bit more content was pretty much a no-brainer. Exclusive to the console versions is a new chapter that allows playing of the puzzle/adventure/platormer hybrid as a new character. Grip has also announced the Vita version of the game has been canceled, at least for the time being. The press release notes this, however:

While it is possible that this version will eventually be released, it definitely won’t be simultaneously with other versions.

Ouch. If speculation must be made, I’d imagine that getting Unreal to play nice on the Vita is probably trickier than expected. That or there are other issues keeping this one from its Vita debut. In any event, if Grip and company manage to work things out and get the game up and running, an update will be posted as soon as any news arrives in the inbox here. In the meantime, here are five screens to check out.

Unmechanical_1 Unmechanical 3 Unmechanical_5 Unmechanical 6 Unmechanical 8

Right now, sometime in January 2015 looks like when we’ll see Unmechanical Extended Edition land safely on home consoles. Stay tuned for more on this one…