KILLER IS DEAD Import Walkthroughs: Game Empire HD Does It Again…

Posted on July 31, 2013 by geelw

I hadn’t realized that this had shipped out in Japan (well, it’s officially out tomorrow there… wait, it’s tomorrow there already, right? Oh, my head hurts…) until I poked around in my inbox and spotted these Game Empire HD play through videos. There are four so far, but I’ll only run two here so as to not ruin too much of the fun. I absolutely LOVE that the menus are in English, which means I can import this and play it (but I’ll hold out for the US version just to support Xseed Games here) and it certainly looks as if Suda 51 and grasshopper manufacture had a blast making this one, so strap yourself in and enjoy the ride. Er, this isn’t for the kiddies, kids – so break out the blindfolds or go put them in the broom closet with a flashlight, a box of Popsicles and a funny hat or two.

New Elysium Trailer: The Grass Is Greener If You’re Not Living On The Planet…

Posted on July 31, 2013 by geelw

While Elysium looks to be pretty grim in spots, as with Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, there’s probably going to be some humor found in the strangest places. D9 had plenty of irony going for it in a few areas and I think it would be pretty amusing to see references to that film here (as if, yes, it’s the same Earth those aliens visited getting an even more depressing future this time out). We’ll see, of course – but I hope this does well out of the game and better than the other future flicks that have crashed and burned at the box office. If anything, I’ll bet the Blu-Ray/DVD set will do pretty well, as it looks like one of those flicks that’s worth multiple views just to see the many layers of depth in the CG effects work (which is some of the best I’ve seen in a film like this).

Games of Summer: Dragon’s Crown

Posted on July 30, 2013 by geelw

Atlus may be struggling with its recent financial woes in Japan, but the company is still swinging for the fences hard and knocking it out of the park with some great titles on assorted platforms. Case in point, Dragon’s Crown, already a hit in Japan and headed to the PS3 and Vita in North America on August 6. George Kamitani and his team at Vanillaware have created an absolutely, outrageously gorgeous game that’s a throwback to classic side-scrolling arcade hits as well as a mighty challenging solo and online play experience. I know a few folks with the import and yes indeed, they’re very pleased with the game (and the AMAZING deluxe art book that came with it). Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on both versions, as I hear they’re different in a few key ways. Of course, I still want a proper Princess Crown remake or sequel one of these days, but at this point, Kamitani and company can make paper bag puppets and I’ll throw money their way…

Elysium Clips: Blomkamp’s Blockbuster, Bit By Bit…

Posted on July 26, 2013 by geelw

I’m not the biggest fan of these clip job teases, but they sure didn’t spoil District 9 for me by the time I got around to seeing it. Neill Blomkamp and his effects team certainly have a way with mixing CG and practical effects that doesn’t look fake or too overblown at all and yeah, Matt Damon as a cobbled together cyborg is making for a pretty interesting character.

As long as the ending feels right (and doesn’t necessarily set up a sequel), I think this might do well and yes, we may see someone at Microsoft kicking themselves in the ass for not letting Mr. B. do that Halo movie. Of course, those folks are still in desperation mode, so I can see them throwing money his way to get on board that Xbox One’s content machine for a super exclusive.

As usual (repeat after me, class)… We shall see.

Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut Steam Bound!

Posted on July 25, 2013 by geelw

While a small but vocal bunch of PlayStation 3 owners have been ranting away for Rising Star Games to contract Access Games to stop working on their upcoming Xbox One exclusive D4 to do some fixes for Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut, that’s not going to happen any time soon. On the other, stranger hand… the game was recently surprised-dropped onto Steam Greenlight for a potential PC release with even MORE content and wonder of wonders… it was approved in what seems to be record time. Wow. Now, I’ll be the first to say I’m shocked and thrilled at this news, but I’m not expecting the PC version to be “perfect” by any stretch of the imagination. Even higher resolutions and tweaked controls aside, the game will still look intentionally cheesy and probably have the same driving setup for the cars as the PS3 version did (which is much better than the original Xbox 360 game from a few years back). Anyway, this is indeed great news and soon, you horror game fans looking for something TRULY weird and memorable will all get a little FK in your own coffee when DP:TDC is finally let loose for PC. Once I get an actual release date, I’ll let you know…

Things to Do When the Real World Stinks (One)…

Posted on July 24, 2013 by geelw

(thanks, Game Empire HD!)

OK, I actually didn’t do anything TOO productive today other than blow through 34 missions in Earth Defense Force 4 and take a bunch of notes for my review. Ive got a long way to go, as the game has got 94 missions total (eek), four character classes and five difficulty levels. I most likely won’t solo the entire game through ALL the difficulty levels before starting my review, as EDF games are made for seriously long play time. I’m probably going to complete Easy and Normal, but I’ve already played some missions on Hard and Hardest just to see how tough they are (they’re tough, but beatable), but haven’t gone near any Inferno maps yet because I need my sanity for the rest of the week. Which so far consists of a meeting to see a new game tomorrow, a screening I may or may not attend (it’s a bit last minute) and a bunch of stuff I need to write up from this week and last.

Er, that’s about it… I guess. Oh, right – I’ll add a few Random Film reviews in a bit. I haven’t watched anything in a few days, so I’m thinking I need a decent old comedy or really bad “B” movie to get back on track. My brain is still packed with mud a little from reality and I made the silly mistake of watching the news this evening (blech… too much crap going on in that real world and too many crazies at the wheel all driving off different cliffs). I’d go bake a pie or something, but I haven’t done that in oh, maybe a dozen years or so, I have no ingredients and I’d probably end up eating the whole thing once it cooled. Who doesn’t like pie?

Morose Monday Made Markedly More Meaningful…

Posted on July 22, 2013 by geelw

Well, let’s see now: coming home from a funeral: gloomy! Coming home TO a nice surprise in the mail (thank you, Play-Asia!) and a double surprise (I’d forgotten to cancel a big Namco Bandai press event for tomorrow morning, which is actually a great thing as it gets me out of the house and not sitting around moping) plus tax (another event on Wednesday and I think one more this week) mean life goes onwards, bumps in the road aside. OK, off to squash some bugs – I may post one more thing before midnight if I haven’t collapsed from being a wee bit too tired. It’s been a really long day…

DuckTales Remastered: Himalayas, Here We Come (Woo-Ooo!)…

Posted on July 20, 2013 by geelw

Capcom shows off their upcoming revisit to the retro days reboot with this nice long look at the redesigned Himalayas stage. By the way, no stupidly cute cartoon bunnies were hurt in this video, the already angry goats got what they deserved and that big and annoying Yeti boss? Well, he was trying to make duck cutlets out of Uncle Scrooge, so he had to go down hard. MORAL: Don’t mess with a rich canard and his fancy cane bouncing skills, folks. All that swimming around in that huge money pool bank vault of his has given him some MEGA strength in that feathered old body. Tough bird, indeed…

EDF 2025 Recruitment Video #2: Not to “Bug” You Again, But You’re Wanted…

Posted on July 19, 2013 by geelw

Only in Japan do you get these goofball game videos that manage to be informative and amusing (well, if you understand the language, that is). I’m still waiting for my copy of the game to arrive, but others who ordered their copies at the same time I did seem to be finally getting them this week. No worries of course – it just means I’ll have a LOT of catching up to.

Meanwhile, the fine folks over at Game Empire HD are STILL uploading some great gameplay videos and as you can see above and below, things get quite chaotic in these later missions. Well, I did say that I needed some distractions this summer, so this will indeed count as one of them.

OK, I’m shutting up now. It’s too hot (again, as in 103 or so with the heat index) and I need to go do stuff that requires less effort. Sleep? Not yet… but maybe I’ll do something really nuts like cook something in the oven just to generate sweat and make me drink more water then fall into the shower for the third time today. We shall see…

Strider Gets An Extra Life Courtesy of Capcom & Double Helix…

Posted on July 19, 2013 by geelw

Well, this was an interesting surprise to see popping up in the inbox yesterday: An all-new Strider game on the way from busy developer Double Helix headed to PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC. Of course (throwing my two cents down here)… it would be better to get this out on the Wii U and Vita as well, but we seem to be in the age of publishers only wanting to get games out on platforms where there’s guaranteed interest and bigger initial full-price sales from a larger dedicated install base rather than trying a title out on a platform that may only rack up less than stellar sales figures or just have users saying they’ll wait for a price drop. Which, by the way is dumb on a game that’s no doubt going to be budget-priced. Hopefully.

Of course, for someone like me who’d rather have MORE choice than less and can clearly see this doing decently enough on some systems it’s not (currently) coming to, the news is great but a tad annoying. Sure, development costs no doubt factor into the decision to not bring this to the Wii U or Vita, but I say Capcom should do some sort of outreach into both of those communities and see if there’s interest in buying this one on either platform (I think there is) and perhaps getting those versions out at some point. With a classic like this making a comeback (that actually looks quite good and seems to be quite challenging based on that video above) as a digital-only release, it’s not as if there will be a ton of unsold retail boxes clogging up an inventory somewhere, right?

Oh… and if this doesn’t toss in the original arcade game as an extra, that would be really silly. Make it happen, Capcom.