Seriously, awesome guy you have on design, Capcom!

Look what Capcom left in my inbox today! Totally hype time! Consider it a Hyperfludd Media exclusive!

SAN FRANCISCO, CA— April 1, 2010 — Capcom® Entertainment, a leading worldwide developer and publisher of video games, today confirmed that Gotcha Force 2: Death Force Origins is in development for three different gaming plataforms: the Xbox 360 video game entertainment system from Microsoft®, PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and Nintendo Wii™.  Gotcha Force, the cult hit on the Nintendo Gamecube™ returns in one of the most requested sequels ever!

Gotcha Force 2: Death Force Origins takes place a few months after the original game ended. With the Death Force’s leader, Galactic Emperor defeated, Kou and the rest of his friends enjoyed peace with their Gotcha Borgs partners. However, this peace won’t last for long as a beaten up Gotcha Borg named J-Ace crash landed on Earth, with pleas for help back on Mega Borg. Mega Borg, as well as many other planets are under attack by a all new and powered up Death Force, run by the daughter of the Galatic Emperor! It’s up to Kou and G-Red to travel between planets and fight against the Death Force take over!

Read the rest of this entry →

(Edit – Winner has been picked! Please check the email you used to comment to see if you have won!)

Already at the middle of January, I hope time keep this speedy pace. I want this month to be done already, it’s always the most dull (for me anyway!) and nothing fantastic happens. But enough of that, let’s talk video games!

Darksiders (360/PS3) "Think God of War meets The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" - IGN.com

This month starts with heavy hitters (Bayonetta, Darksiders), a little DS rpg flavor in the middle (Sands of Destruction, Glory of Heracles), and ends with a Wii flavored bang (Tatsunoko VS Capcom, No More Heroes 2) as well as some potentially great downloads (Matt Hazard, VVVVVV).

VVVVVV (PC/Mac) "VVVVVV is a fantastic little indie game that's worth experiencing." - Kotaku.com

So what new games are you planning on picking up for the rest of this month? Share it with everyone else, and your comment may be randomly picked to receive a Star Trek Online PC Beta Code! (Include “STO” at the end of your comment to be eligible. This is only up to Sunday @ 11:59 pm, then I’ll just give it away on Twitter.) Only one winner will be selected. Please make sure your computer can run it so the code doesn’t go to waste!

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom (Wii) "TvC should prove to be a must-buy for fighting fans that own a Wii" - G4TV.com

As for me, I was planning to pick up Bayonetta on the PS3, but after seeing first hand the sloppy port job SEGA gave it, I decided to avoid it. (At least until it’s patched?) Darksiders will take it’s place, as it looks attractive and fun. Nothing this month for the DS, saving that for Edgeworth next month! Tatsunoko vs Capcom & No More Heroes 2 are definitely on my Day-1 list, been waiting for these games for what feels like forever!

I loved the demos for VVVVVV & Matt Hazard: Blood, Bath & Beyond, but they both suffer a small problem. Both titles are priced at $15, which feels like a tad too much. VVVVVV is a game everyone should try, it’s  simply fantastic. I would love it to be ported to DSiWare for 1000 Nintendo Points. You must simply try the demo. Matt Hazard continues his saga, parodying games and such, this time in a side scroller ala Metal Slug. Co-op is fun, but again feels $5 too much.

I’ll try to write whatever I can about these games as I get them, otherwise until next month!

My Sackboy: "Hero"

“A Holiday Mission 2! Santa VS Pirates!” was supposed to release, well during the holidays! Unfortunally, a surprise trip away home came up and I had to delay it’s release. I see this as a good thing, as now I have some time to polish up the stage.

I’m going to admit it right now, the title is a bit misleading. You won’t actually see Santa in combat with pirates. Instead, like last year’s stage, you will fight the pirates in his place! Oh that Santa, why didn’t he store his power in his socks or something!

You'll never see Santa frown!

The story starts out similar to the first “Holiday Mission!”, Santa lost his hat (which grants him most of his power) and he summons you with the little power he has left to aid him. Where did he drop the hat this time? Over the small town Port Alanta, the starting point for all pirates on LittleBigPlanet! All kinds of Pirates come and go here for various purposes like restocking or having a good time. Santa summons you just outside a small port close to the Islands (Yep, I like continuity in my stages!) and lucky for you, a friendly pirate named Pauro tells you about some red floating over to Port Alanta and offers you his paddle boats to make the long trip over there!

Once you make it to the port, you wander around town until a pirate steps out of the shadows, offering you the location of the hat if you just do one thing for him: get a golden coin out of the town’s linked wells. Sounds pretty easy right? As soon as you dive in, the well closes off and now you’re stuck underwater! So much for nice first time.

Is this some kind of advanced well filtering system!?

With the way out shut off, you dive down deep into the well, lucky enough to find a supply of air bubbles and a large puzzle regarding colored key pieces. Once you figure out the which key goes where, the coin will escape from it’s prison and you swim out of the second linked well with it. You meet the pirate from the shadows again, and he has Santa’s hat! As you move closer to grab the hat, it’s revealed that the pirate is actually the captain of the infamous Big Spider Crew! He informs you the coin is actually something powerful and proceeds to knock you out and take you to his small base outside of Port Alanta. Tossed into a guarded jail with no hope of escape, how the heck will you get out of this mess and save the holidays for LittleBigPlanet? You’ll have to play the stage to find out~! But here’s a little peek..

Can anyone say Jolly Torpedos?

You can expect the stage to hit LBP servers sometime this Thursday! And about a week after that I’ll write up a aftermath of the stage, filled with commentary and the such!

PS: To those who are waiting for more levels in my story driven series “LBP: Invasion” (not final title), I would suggest periodically checking out the blog this month

NOBY NOBY BOY

Playsation 3

Developer/Publisher:  Namco Bandai

ESRB Rating: E for Everyone

Price: $4.99 on the Playstation Store & Amazon.com

You play as BOY, a worm like creature who eats and stretches for GIRL, a larger female world creature who stretches around the galaxy. The more BOY stretches, the more GIRL can and wrap herself around other planets. This process in whole is a community metagame where every single BOY’s (Players) stretch count is added to GIRL. The more people play, the more planets GIRL can get to, and the more places GIRL can get to, the more weird levels BOY can play around in.

The controls are very easy, mainly using the dual analog sticks to control each end of BOY and the shoulder buttons to hop and eat almost anything in the crazy levels, which are filled with insane things. If you played any of the Katamari Damacy games, you might be used to this sort of thing! The game also includes an offline multiplayer mode where up to 4 BOYS can stretch around to their heart’s content on one screen. (Player 1 controls the incredible but hard to master camera.)

Overall, NOBY NOBY BOY is a very weird, but oddly charming game, and worth the 5 dollars just to experience the weirdness yourself. The game includes leaderboards as well as a screenshot taking tool and a direct Youtube upload feature where you can share your stretching techniques or something incredibly odd with others on Youtube easily.

+ Odd & charming
+ Awesome community features (Youtube & Leaderboard support, screenshot tool)
= Getting more levels to play around in is a community process, and may take a while
- The charm may not be for everyone.
- Camera may take some getting used to.

Loved the idea, hated the execution.

Warning: Possible spoilers, even though I probably won’t be talking about the story that much.

Right about a few days after Uncharted 2: Among Thieves released to the masses (FANTASTIC game by the way!), Sony & Naughty Dog in conjunction with Witchblade’s Marco Castiello dropped off a motion comic prequel to the first game in the Playstation Store called Uncharted: Eye of Indra. The comic was penciled in by Castiello while Sony added in the motion and the voice talent. (More of Nolan North is a good thing!) As I was drunk with Uncharted fandom, I rushed to the online store and downloaded the first issue.

The first issue of this mini-series is free and is in a video format, which I didn’t mind. Each issue was promised to be around five minutes long, which is decent considering every issue after this was priced at 99 cents each. While I was watching the free first issue, halfway into the comic it cutoff and presented an ad for Uncharted 2. This was a pretty odd ad to have here, since most people who would download this probably already got the highly anticipated game earlier in the week. It was pretty short, and it got back to the comic quickly. A few minutes later, another ad hits, this time for a Toyota Fourrunner featuring Drake running from some bad guys and the Toyota saving the day. Compared to the comic it was badly animated and feature no speaking roles whatsoever. The faces on the bad guys when Drake escaped were pretty hilarious, it looked like they were staring at him in horror.

HOLY CRAP, A TOYOTA!?

Aside from that probably unintentional hilarious moment, the ad was crap. But hey, the download was free so I assume this is what we would have to deal with. Heck, you could even watch it online, see those wonderful faces yourself.

Ending with a cliffhanger (All of them but the last one always freaking do, it’s good tactics.) one now has to wait for the next issues. Which took about pretty much a month to appear on the store. This is where my problems began. Downloading the the 99 cent issue, this time it didn’t come in a video format like the first one, and is now tied into the game menu. This might not be an issue to every, but I wanted to keep all of these in a single folder, which is now impossible to do so. I assume this was to keep it from being uploaded or something? Yeah good luck with that. After getting over it, I hopped right into the issue and was greeted with a wraparound, pressed X to continue and the comic started instantly boxed in a border with instructions below. Play/Stop, Return to Menu (Why?) and a full screen mode. Why would anyone keep the border around is beyond me, so I just pressed the full screen button and watched away.

A few minutes into the comic, just where it gets good (Eddy FREAKING Raja could make anything good if he wants) I’m greeted by…the same car ad that was in the first one. Seriously? Didn’t I pay for this? And they didn’t even bother to change it up, it’s the same exact ad. At least I got to see those guys who apparently never have seen a car before again. Ha.

Right after this I got a phone call and hit pause. Finished the call, grabbed the controller and hit play. It started playing from the start again. What the hell? I figured I must have hit stop or something so I tried to fast forward– oh wait, I CAN’T DO THAT. There is no option to seek through the comic. What kind of bullcrap is that? So not only do I have to go through the entire thing again with no control, I have to watch that goddamn ad. I guess that’s why it’s not in a video format, so you’re forced to watch this. Annoying.

After I returned to where I left off, it ended like 7 seconds after.  Gah, it’s shorter than the freebie? Issue’s 2 & 3 share this shortness and the same exact ads, while 4 actually has a different Toyota ad with Drake actually driving the thing, and people who know what cars are following him in another one. This is a fresh change of pace too late, seeing this is the final issue. There’s a little enjoyable twist in the ending (I believe we have found a possible Uncharted 3 villain/teammate/whatever), and right after that it ties itself into the first game. (Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune)

All in all, the mini-series itself was fantastic, getting a little backstory is always a great thing. However, while the idea itself was fantastic, the execution of the paid issues were sloppy and bad. I don’t know if you could call this a review, since I didn’t talk much about the story, but this is just me ranting. Yes, I’m ranting about a 3 dollar comic series. That’s what blogs are for right? If you’re crazy about Uncharted, these are nice gifts for yourself, even though you will probably see these on Youtube anyway.