June has come, and that means the release of Dungeons and Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara is imminent. The upgraded classic that many of us have been oogling over since word of it's release will finally see the light of day this month in exactly a week. It will be released for all current platforms, including PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3. A Wii U version is planned for sometime in the unknown future.
It's that time again - summer. A time to stay out late, go to the beach or the pool, and generally enjoy the summer weather. It is also approaching time for the XBLA Summer of Arcade to hit the digital shelves. Found on the blog of Major Nelson, this year's Summer of Arcade looks to be another great one, with some cooperative titles thrown in the mix.
Day 2 of E3 2013 is well underway and the news about new games, or new details about previously announced games, just keeps coming. Amidst all this, we're going to take a quick break to look back at some of the big press conferences that kicked everything off. Locke, Mike, and Nick offer up their impressions and takes on everything in stunning Ultravision video format! Ok, it's just some regular videos uploaded to YouTube. Enjoy!
The Stronghold series has been around now on PCs for over 15 years, with the RTS garnering millions of sales over its lifetime. Honestly, it's surprising there aren't more games out there that are similar. While the series started out set in medieval England, the Crusader branch took things to the deserts of the Middle East. Now that series is getting a new game on a brand new 3D engine and being self published by Firefly Studios. In an AirStream trailer across from the LA convention center we went eyes on with the new game. Stronghold Crusader 2 is still early in development but it's already shaping up to have many of the core gameplay elements that made the original so popular. While the game will have a campaign, which will serve as both a tutorial and a series of challenges, the meat and potatoes of Stronghold is the game's skirmish mode. It's here that Firefly has put a lot of attention and added the ability to co-op with a friend.
Dragon's Crown stands out in a crowd. The bodacious character design is kind of hard to miss on the E3 showroom floor. As I circled Atlus's booth, avoiding the nice young women who were thrusting foam crowns upon the unworthy masses, I figured what the hell, let's stomp some goblins and look good doing it.
The last bit of news we heard about Crimson Dragon, the game being hailed as the spiritual successor to the widely popular Panzer Dragoon series, was that the PAX East 2012 demo had found its way onto the Japanese XBLA marketplace. This was, perhaps, a bit of fortuitous happenstance for the much delayed title as the project's director, Yukio Futatsugi, received a good deal of feedback about the game being Kinect only. It seems that folks weren't content using only some gestures and their voice to control their dragons, and preferred the tried-and-true method of using those twin analog sticks and face buttons. So, Crimson Dragon will no longer be Kinect only. However, that's not the only bit of news coming out of E3 about this co-op title.
Yesterday, Nintendo announced at their E3 presentation that Bayonetta 2, the sequel to hit action game by Platinum Games, would feature a 2-player mode. While some sources claim that "co-op" was announced, other sources state that simply "two-player mode" was mentioned. So while it's looking promising for co-op, let's hope we don't find ourselves in the "co-op" versus "multiplayer" semantic confusion that a lot of other people throw around (but not us, never us!).
Nick and I snaked our way through Sony's overcrowded booth. Well, it really wasn't a booth - it was more like an impressive display of dominance. It was bigger than Microsoft's show floor, and it seemed to have many more games on display than Nintendo. Sony's E3 offerings were laid before us. The only thing separating our eager hands from our sweet, sweet next-gen experience was a thousand other event goers with the same hopes, dreams, and inflated expectations.
Some of you may be aware that a film called R.I.P.D. is out in cinemas this summer, whilst others may be aware of movie tie in games. Slam these two concepts together and what do you get? The 2 player online co-op R.I.P.D. The Game coming to XBLA, PSN and PC on July 16th.
E3 2013 officially kicked off today which means the show floor was open for all to see. The West Hall was jam packed with the "Big 3" taking up the majority of the space there. Sony's booth was an absolute monster. The South Hall was also crowded, anchored by EA and Activision, and then a lot of the smaller pubs filling in the gaps.
IndieCade had a pretty large establishment at this year's E3 2013 with one of the bigger booths in the South Hall. The event is actually held in Culver City later this year, but the folks from IndieCade wanted to showcase some of the more popular and polished submissions to E3 attendees. While digging through the troves of indie games we found a little couch co-op gem called Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime.
Well, this just happened. While checking out the IndieCade showcase at E3, we got to have a little hands-on time with WiiU indie title Spin The Bottle. Unlike the game I remember from my childhood, this one barely involves being rejected by girls who really don't want to kiss you, although I nearly made out with the lovely gentleman pictured above. *sigh* Someday.
