Author Archive for Chad Awkerman

Kirby’s Epic Yarn Trailer – The Cuteness is Overwhelming!

Here’s the Japanese trailer for the upcoming Kirby game, Kirby’s Epic Yarn. The game is as much charming as it is eye-catching and just overflowing with cuteness. If you’ve been waiting for another Kirby game, like I have, you’ll definitely want to check this trailer out. Yet another reason it’s good to own a Wii this fall, even if it might not get used as much as other consoles. Kirby’s Epic Yarn comes out in North America on October 19, 2010. Hit the jump for the video and let us know what you think!

New Release Rundown ~ Week of 8/29/2010

This week’s release lineup is pretty solid, considering some big titles we’ve been waiting on for a while are finally hitting, such as Valkyria Chronicles II and Metroid: Other M. We also have Behemoth’s awesome co-op game Castle Crashers, which has been out on XBLA for well over a year, finally making its way to the PSN. That is most definitely one to pick up if you haven’t played it yet! There’s also some other gems appearing in the wild, such as the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Ultimate Edition and the expansion to Dead Rising 2, Case Zero. Hit the jump for a full list of what to look out for this week. What are you guys playing?

A Proposition for Sony: Worldwide PlayStation Store

One of the most appreciated aspects of Sony’s consoles this generation – and this applies to both the PS3 and the PSP – is that, when it comes to games, they are “region free”. What does this mean? For those of you who don’t know, various forms of media are typically locked into one region, and can only be played on devices that originate in that region. If you look on the front and/or back of any DVD or BluRay you purchase in North America, you’ll typically see a “Region 1” somewhere on it. This means that it can only be played in DVD or BluRay players native to “Region 1”, which is basically all of North America.

Lair of the Shadow Broker Trailer Looks Hot

In what is looking to be the best bit of Mass Effect 2 DLC to date, “Lair of the Shadow Broker” becomes available for download next week, on September 7, 2010. This DLC focuses heavily on Liara T’Soni, Shepherd’s old friend, and the lengths she’s gone through to help Shepherd throughout the years of their friendship. Watching the video, I was reminded how the story of ME2 barely touched on Liara’s involvement in Shepherd’s resurgence (sorry, didn’t want to spoil anything for the PS3 guys who haven’t played this yet, so had to come up with an idiotically vague word). I guess that is what they’re looking to cover in this lore-rich story.

Anyway, Bioware released the trailer for this bit of DLC today, which you’ll find after the break. It will retail for 800 Microsoft/Bioware points (or $10). It will also come on the Mass Effect 2 PS3 game disc come January.

Cladun: This is an RPG Pushed Back Two Weeks

Cladun, the retro-style, dungeon-crawling RPG in your pocket from NIS America, has been hit with a two week delay. The cause for this delay? Two letters. Two itty-bitty letters. During the character creation screen, you are unable to use the “Y” and “h” characters to name your little guy (or gal?). To allow the final version of the game to go up on the PSN for public consumption without those errors, a new build of the game is being produced and submitted to Sony for approval. This process apparently takes exactly two weeks.

We’ll have a review coming for you for this title before the release date, so stay tuned. Just for the record, ours is the buggy copy, but I’m sure this won’t affect our review at all. Well, unless Jon is extremely partial to “Y” and “h”. If that’s the case, heaven help us all.

Could Sega Be Revealing Valkyria Chronicles 3 at TGS?

Sega recently registered a domain name that strongly hinted that there was a Valkyria Chronicles 3 coming down the pipeline. That was last week, several days before the second incarnation was even released in North America. Today we find a site that Sega has put up that pushes that assumption even closer to confirmation – http://code1935.jp/.

On that site, you’ll see the above image, with the words “Top Secret” plastered up top, and a reveal date of 9.16.2010, which is the first day of the Tokyo Game Show. You can easily recognize the tank in the image above, but if you look closer, you’ll see heavy weapons like those used by Lancers in the Valkyria Chronicles games. Also visible are some other weaponry that seem oddly familiar to fans of that franchise. What do you think? Will we see a Valkyria Chronicles 3 announcement from Sega at the Tokyo Game Show? Here’s hoping!

Why a Simple Story is Better

If you’ve been hanging out around here for a while, you’ll probably recall that the single biggest part of any game for me is the story and characters. This isn’t to say I don’t play games without a great narrative and some solid characterization, but when I really dig my feet in and get down and dirty with a game, I like seeing some substance to it, instead of superficial multiplayer or a half-assed single-player campaign. At the same time, though, I do think a game’s writers can get too carried away making a complex story that is possibly hard for the player to follow. When they link the characterization to that story, it sometimes turns into a clusterfrak of confusing banter about things the player can’t care about even if they tried, because the narrative is so convoluted they can’t understand it. So, there is something to be said about simple, even cliché, stories.

Portable White Knight Chronicles Officially Announced

In this week’s Famitsu, something that Sony has been hinting around finally was announced – White Knight Chronicles: Episode.Portable – Dogma Wars. This is a version of the title for the PlayStation Portable that is aiming for a release in Japan sometime in 2011. I’m tired of making jokes about how long the first White Knight Chronicles took to localize, so I’ll just tell everyone to not hold your breath for this to come stateside.

This new portable iteration features the White Knight once again, except this time around it’s the enemy. So, something must have taken place in the 10,000 years since Leonard’s adventures in the first two PS3 outings. Not a whole lot is known about this title yet, but it seems to continue the tradition of RPGs that start on a console making their way to a handheld platform, much like Valkyria Chronicles and Kingdom Hearts. I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on this one.

New Aion Expansion Fly-Through – Gelkmaros

Last week we brought you the fly-through trailer for a zone on the Elyos side of things, from the upcoming Aion expansion, Assault on Balaurea. This week NCSoft is back with another trailer along those same lines. This time, however, it is showing off a predominently Asmodian zone, Gelkmaros. So, for those of you who like the arguably darker and lesser-played side of things, you might want to hit the jump to check out this week’s fly-through video.

Aion: Assault on Balaurea releases in just one week, on September 7, 2010. It’s a pretty sweet MMO, from my time with it, at least. In a way I want to go back, but I don’t have the heart to give up WoW….

Square-Enix Shows Off Kingdom Hearts: Re:Coded Screens

Square-Enix, by way of Famitsu, showed off quite a big helping of screens from their upcoming DS Kingdom Hearts venture – Kingdom Hearts: Re:Coded. While some things may look familiar, some may throw franchise fans for a loop – especially the sight of what appears to be a turn-based battle of some sort. Is this just one part of the game or is this how part or all of the main battle system will play out? At this point, it’s anyone’s guess, but if you need something Kingdom Hearts related to tide you over until next week’s release of Birth By Sleep, hit the break and check out the screens!

Ys Seven Review

I went into Ys Seven with few expectations, and even less knowledge of the entire franchise than I wanted. Needless to say, it was an RPG and I’m all for trying new RPGs. This one was no different. The Ys franchise has been around for a long time and, unlike other RPG franchises, this one sticks mostly with the same characters, just different stories in each title. Here we have the series’ main character, Adol, and his friend Dogi (is that pronounced like “doggie”?) arriving on a new land via boat. What is your goal? To search for treasures, of course.

Not being a series regular, so to speak, I didn’t quite know what was going on, as the dialog didn’t seem too cognizant that some players may not have played previous games. While the story is unique to this title, I just didn’t “get” all the character interactions between Adol and Dogi because I hadn’t played previous titles in the series. But, all that really isn’t needed to enjoy this game.

DualCast Level 7 – Art Style, Atlus and Save Points!

Hey everyone! We’re back this week with a new episode of the DualCast, after missing a week due to scheduling conflicts and Jon running over a spiky-haired kid with a big sword. He’s deeply regretful, so settle down fanboys. This week we have a great DualCast for you, with some more recent news items involving Atlus, their recent merger announcement and their upcoming title, Catherine. We also discuss how important art style is in various RPG genres, and end the podcast with a discussion about save points and their usefulness. There’s also stuff thrown in about hentai games, an anime Call of Duty, “Adult Only” titles and just about everything in between. Hit it up below and let us know what you think!