Young Justice Legacy Hands-On Update: Still Kicking (and Punching) For A November Launch

YJL Logo (Custom)First, the “bad” news (which isn’t bad at all when you read the good news): Young Justice Legacy is coming out in November for multiple platforms, not September as noted a few updates back. The “good” news (which is actually great news): the delay (which is thanks to the started later Nintendo versions) will give developer Freedom Force more time to polish this already fun action “RPG-light”. The gameplay is heavy on the easy to tap out combo attacks and special moves, while the character customization should appeal to gamers who like to beef of their heroes to be better, faster and stronger versions of their already powerful selves.

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Some additional hands-on time this week when Little Orbit dropped into NYC revealed that the game is really shaping up to be a solid and pretty decent game experience that’s not going to reinvent any wheels, but should please fans of the canceled show in terms of where the story fits into the canon and the dozen playable characters from the show. You’re getting an action-heavy pick up and play game along the lines of Justice League Heroes or Marvel Ultimate Alliance with more stylized visuals, a nice set of locales from and inspired by the show, a voice cast full of folks from the show and some classic DC villains to go up against solo or with up to two other friends offline or online.

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Dark Souls II “Forging A Hero” Teaser: Keep That Anvil As A Backup Weapon, I Say…

March 2014 may seem like a long time to wait for Dark Souls II, to pop up at your favorite physical or digital game emporium but it’s actually going to be here faster than you think and you absolutely don’t want to be rusty when you take your first steps into the new dungeons. Meaner, faster, stronger creatures of many varieties await and they’re not planning to let you simply waltz around as if you’re in a petting zoo. If you have a copy of the first game lying around, you may just want to set aside time to replay it just so your fingers and brain are on their toes. Or you can go in to DSII cold and come out a total wreck before you’ve made it through the first map. Your choice, but I say practice makes perfect. Or less prone to death…

Hands-On With Pac-Man Championship DX: Dot’s Entertainment (And How!)

Pac_Man_Championship_DXAs an old fogey, I can’t recall a year not going by since 1980 without playing a Pac-Man game. Granted, I’m sure a lot of other people can say that, but it’s pretty incredible that the dot-munching, ghost avoiding/chasing character has held up for over 30 years. Of course, next to the arcade classic, the best ways to play a good game of Pac-Man these days is by hopping online and getting in some quality time with the excellently addictive Pac-Man Championship Edition on the Xbox 360, which is finally getting a content upgrade soon in the form of Pac-Man Championship Edition DX. The original game was an Xbox 360 exclusive, while DX made its Windows 8 debut earlier this year. Pac-fans old and new will LOVE this one for its spin on the classic game, the funky HD neon visuals and the lighting fast pace of the game that’s bound to keep you playing ’til the wee hours…

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BandFuse: Rock Legends Reboots the Music Game Genre Big Time

bandfuse artCalling Realta Entertainment’s upcoming PS3 and Xbox 360 title BandFuse: Rock Legends a mere video game is actually doing it a huge injustice. When you discover just how in depth this game is going to be, even the most jaded fan of the former kings of plastic and actual guitar games should be bowing down and paying their respects to what’s going to be an incredibly comprehensive class in guitar and bass for all skill levels. There’s a vocal element as well for you singers, however drummers don’t get some here at all. Still, you skin thumpers out there will want this one for the sheer amount of stuff you can learn and try out if you’ve got a guitar tucked away in your closet somewhere.

MH_BFMeeting up with Reverb’s Doug Perry and Realta’s super enthusiastic Marcus Henderson (the game’s designer) for a demonstration of the game made for an hour so packed with information that it seemed as if we were discussing three or four entirely different games and a couple of expansion packs.

BandFuse packs in actual guitar use (yours or one you can buy in an excellently priced bundle kit), no-fail gameplay, a ton of lessons from some guitar greats, a built in studio full of all sorts of goodies and more to the point where I was left shaking my head in awe and respect whenever Henderson pointed out a new feature. There’s a serious amount of content here, ALL of it high quality, unlocked from the start and any of it ready to be studied in depth and practiced at one’s leisure making this an essential tool for budding to expert players.

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Dark Souls II Hands On: Home Again For the Hardcore…

As I noted earlier, if there was any doubt that From Software was making Dark Souls II “easier”, all one had to do was play the demo build that’s making the rounds (it was a huge hit at this year’s E3 as well as the more recent San Diego Comic-Con) to be shown the error of misreading that quote from one of the game’s directors a few months back. The game isn’t “easy” at all, but more accessible in terms of getting you into the action quicker, getting rid of backtracking yet upping the scale of the maps to an impressive degree. As to the demo, it’s brutal but beatable and although I didn’t make it to the gigantic knight boss, I did stick around for a bit to watch a few fellow editor types step up to the plate, swing and miss wildly, their chosen characters dying in a few not so pretty ways…

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

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…

DuckTales Remastered Duckumentary: WayForward Gets Me Looking Backward…

OK, now I need to unearth my NES and that copy of DuckTales I have buried in a bin somewhere so I can do some comparing. I’d been meaning to do so for a while, but I keep putting it off for assorted reasons. This “duckumentary” did help me decide to finally get off my butt and sit back on my butt once I find everything, so that’s a good thing, right? Alright, I’m not THAT lazy, people! I walked over a mile today already!

Rollers of the Realm Pre-Beta Hands-On: Pinball Wizards Whip Up an Instant Classic

RotR_picI can probably tell you the long and boring story of my first pinball machine memories (1972,Gottlieb’s Batter Up, first version, but I also vaguely recall playing Central Park a few years earlier at Coney Island while standing on a rickety wooden crate), but then you’d be fast asleep and drooling in front of your computer instead of up-voting Phantom Compass’ (and friends!) innovative Rollers of the Realm on Steam Greenlight.

The team is working on what’s turning out to be a superb genre-blending mix of old and new ideas that features some excellent pinball action, decent writing and so far, what’s looking to be the makings of an instant hit that absolutely deserves to be on as many platforms as possible. I signed up to get access to a playable version as soon as I heard this was in development, that pre-beta access popped up in my inbox on Friday and after playing the first chapter a few times, I’m definitely recommending anyone even remotely interested in pinball, RPGs and puzzle games to take a nice long look at this one…

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Muramasa Rebirth: The Vita’s Big, Fat Bundle of Joy This Week…

Hey, it’s out already? Crap. I had NO idea! Oh well. Not like Aksys’ PR ever sends me any review codes anyway (*whine*). Actually, I don’t even mind supporting them and Vanillaware, as this game on the Wii was really fun and the Vita version has some cool exclusive features. OK, another one for the “to do” list. Gah, I really, REALLY need a time machine. Or a game-playing monkey with a much thicker wallet who can also build shelving in its spare time. Hey, I have to put all those games somewhere, right?

Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara

DnD_CoM_Key_Art (Custom) Platform: PC (also on PSN/XBLA/Nintendo eShop)

Developer: Iron Galaxy Studios/Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

# of Players: 1 – 4

ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

Get it HERE!

Score: A- (90%)

It’s really too bad developer Iron Galaxy didn’t make its version of Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara compatible with Windows XP simply because I’d bet a dollar that people still using that older OS would get a hell of a lot more of a kick from this pair of classic Capcom arcade hit than a chunk of more current OS users filling up the Steam forums with all sorts of complaints about everything from the visuals not being worthy of the system requirements to the game not working properly on certain systems or supporting any other peripheral except an official Xbox 360 controller. Us non-picky oldsters who prefer XP because 90+ percent of the games we run ARE old news to you big-riggers out there (long live gog.com!) would be all over this game like white on rice (or brown on rice is you’re into that variety) and even though we only make up less than 8% of Steam users (according to Steam), that’s almost a potential 8% more people buying and possibly NOT bitching about the graphics and having to use one controller type that works perfectly as soon as it’s plugged in. But I digress…

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