Valkyria Chronicles 2: My Impressions and Views
Valkyria Chronicles 2's hero, Avan Hardins
It's been a pretty interesting last few days for Valkyria Chronicles fans. Not only has the sequel to the cult classic PS3 title, Valkyria Chronicles, finally hit North American shelves and the PlayStation Network, but there have been rumours of a Valkyria Chronicles 3 title. The rumours of Valkyria Chronicles 3 started last week when it was discovered that Sega had purchased the domain name valkyria3.jp. These rumours further gained substance when a teaser site was opened up at http://code1935.jp/ which currently features a single image with the silhouettes of character classes and tanks from the franchise and a date, September 16th, which just happens to be the first day of the Tokyo Game Show this year.
Ace Attorney: The iPhone Edition Review
The Ace Attorney series is back once again, except this time it's going to take a bite out of the big Apple.
Wait a second, hold it, what's this? An Ace Attorney game released on something other than Nintendo? Yup, the Ace Attorney series, with its cast of zany characters, loud outbursts of “Objection!”, finger wagging, and its outrageous flair for dramatic character reactions is hitting the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.
Ace Attorney: In need of a jolt of animation
Miles Edgeworth is not pleased to know he's not animated... yet
It has always struck me as a little odd that Capcom hasn't capitalized on the popularity of their Ace Attorney franchise as they should have. For a series that has sold just shy under 3 million copies across 5 games for the Nintendo DS (2.96 million) around the world it's really surprising that Capcom, known for having a plethora of Street Fighter animated works produced, hasn't gone down the obvious route and hired an animation studio, such as Studio 4°C which produced the Street Fighter IV: Ties that Bind short film, to animate an Ace Attorney series. There is easily enough material, from the 5 games, to create at least a 26 episode series and even more should they decide to create new cases and content, such as the stories covered in the official Ace Attorney comic, yet Capcom hasn't made the most of this opportunity.
Valkyria Chronicles 2: At last… or is it?
It seems like it has been forever since Sega announced that Valkyria Chronicles 2, the sequel to cult classic Valkyria Chronicles for the PlayStation 3 (PS3), would finally be coming to North American stores on the PlayStation Portable (PSP). It has only felt like forever since Sega has been pretty silent regarding the title, besides creating a website for the game and posted a release date of Summer 2010. However, recent posts on Joystiq and PlayStation Universe claim that Sega has made an official announcement of August 31st as the game's North American release date. This isn't all that unlikely considering that not only Sega has included a Valkyria Chronicles 2 section to their E3 Expo booth this year but the E3 Expo is still ongoing with today being the event's last day.
The Last Story: In the middle of development
If you have been following this blog over the past few months you will know that one of the upcoming Wii titles I am really looking forward to is Mistwalker's new RPG title, The Last Story. Over the course of the past few months we have heard details about the game such as the importance of sound, the presence of airships, different classes in society, and much more; yet we haven't heard of a concrete date rather than an ambiguous 2010 release of the game in Japan.
Yet another zany commercial from those silly guys at Kojima Productions
Over the years, as part of the promotional process for their Metal Gear Solid (MGS) franchise, Kojima Productions has released some really odd, zany commercials promoting their games. The first of their zany commercials was released to promote the PS2 and X-Box title, Metal Gear Solid 2, which, although short, featured a middle-aged business man, in a senior position within his company, hiding in his office building from his subordinates using some Solid Snake-inspired means of keeping your presence hidden which includes hiding inside a cardboard box (and walking across a hallway) and hiding in a cabinet. It was a humourous take on some of the popular features of the Metal Gear Solid series and would be the first of many.
Insomniac Games boldy goes multiplatform… for 1 new game…
It's a different time these days with gamers split between the PlayStation 3, X-Box 360 and Wii, it's a far cry from the previous generation in which the King of the Mountain was the PlayStation 2. With the amount of Wiis, PS3s and 360s out there it is no surprise that more and more third party developers have decided to go multi-platform to recuperate development costs and make a profit while also being able to get their games into as many homes as possible. What is a developer to do when there is a near 50-50 split of X-Box 360 owners as there are PlayStation 3 (PS3) owners (the Wii is another story entirely)? It would seem pretty silly for any third party developer to not make the most of this and double their audience and offer their games on both consoles.
The only disappointing thing about this trend, this generation, is that it seems the majority of video game developers that have gone multi-platform are ones who were previously closely tied to the PlayStation brand, i.e. Square Enix, rather than ones who have been tied to Microsoft and their X-Box brand. We can now add one more developer into the hat of previous PlayStation-centric developers who have gone the way of the multi-platform side, Insomniac Games!
Little Big Planet 2: Expectations
Little Big Planet is one of those rare video games that you come across these days that manages to be many things all at once and get it all right.
For a title that is marketed as a family-oriented platforming game, it is a little bit of a surprise that the game provides a gameplay experience that everyone enjoy. Yet the gameplay is only one part of the experience as Little Big Planet offers a little something that makes it really stand out amongst its peers: the ability to build your own levels and share it with other Little Big Planet players via the PlayStation Network (PSN).
Some might ask what's so special about giving gamers the ability to create at all on a system like the PlayStation 3 (PS3)?
Arc Fail Fantasia: How a poor localization might kill a game
When I last mentioned Arc Rise Fantasia here on Axis of Bozz it was in a somewhat festive mood. At the time not only had the game won an award from IGN at the 2009 E3 Expo as the Best Wii RPG, but the North American localization and publishing rights were transferred to Ignition Entertainment, the company responsible for the localization of Muramasa: The Demon Blade, from previous license holder Xseed Games. Although my interest in this series has waned over the course of the last several months, my initial interest was due to the presence composer Yasunori Matsuda and character designer Kenichi Yoshida amongst the game's staff, I was devasted when I first learned that the English audio for the game was fairly awful. After hearing the news I couldn’t help myself from asking, “If it’s true, how could things have gone so wrong?”
Ace Attorney: A Brief, Initial Review
It’s funny how even in this modern age of gaming, in which we have highly polished and detailed 3D graphics mimicking real life, that there are still several great games out there that are still using 2D graphics that not only can entrap a gamer into playing it over and over again but launch a successful franchise. There are some games, such as the Disgaea series, where the gamer replays the game due to the immense epilogue content in the form of dungeon crawling and extra bosses to battle or additional, multiple endings, and then there are story-driven games like the Ace Attorney franchise.
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