Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds hands-on

Last year, most of the oldschool hardcore fighting games made their revival with titles like Tekken 6, King of Fighters 12 and Street Fighter 9. This year, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Super Street Fighter 9 and Blazblue were added to that list.

By now, it’s has been almost 10 years since we have seen an iteration of the critically acclaimed Marvel vs Capcom series, so it surprised none when the sequel, Marvel Vs Capcom 3 was announced for release next year.
This past GamesCom, we had the opportunity to try out the next step in the Marvel Vs Capcom legacy with our own hands.

For those who don’t know Marvel vs Capcom, it is a sidescroller Fighting game with characters from both Marvel and Capcom that fight against each other. The previous game (Marvel Vs. Capcom 2) is still very popular and was played by millions. Because the previous game was so incredibly well received, making a sequel that is even better is no easy task, but it seems like the developers are on the right track.

In Marvel vs. Capcom 2 you had 56 playable characters to choose from. However, there were some complaints that some characters felt unbalanced. Some even seemed useless, and overall very un-balanced. Some characters had suspiciously similar play-styles to others. This time around, Capcom announced that they didn’t want to include 56 characters, but instead go for a total of around 20 to 30. This to ensure each character’s uniqueness, striving for a balanced lineup overall.

A lot of new characters will be introduced In Marvel vs Capcom 3, and so far, 16 characters have been announced. The Capcom characters include: Danta, Felicia, Ryu, Morrigan, Chris redfield, Trish, Chun-Li and Amaterasu. It seems that Capcom has taken characters from all of their franchises, instead of just looking at Street Fighter. This is a very nice move of CapComs’ and brings some well-deserved variety. On the opposing side, we have Marvel with the more standard lineup, including Captain America, Iron man, Deadpool, Hulk, Wolverine, Thor, Doctor Doom and Super-Skrull.

The game looks pretty cool and as we’re used to from Marvel vs Capcom games, all the attacks and combo’s are rendered in all their colorful special-effect glory. From our preview, we’d say that the developers tried to combine all of the good points from both Super Street Fighter IV, and Tastuko vs Capcom, kept it close to the roots of Marvel vs Capcom, and succeeded. If you’re a fan of fighting games then will definetely be on your must-buy list when released somewhere next year for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

Okamiden hands-on

At Gamescom we got our hands on the new Okami title for the DS, Okamiden. The game is in 3D, and showed some decent graphics with a thick black cell shading outline on everything to mimic Japanese ink illustrations, just like those in the original Okami game.

The overall gameplay and direction feels a lot like the original Okami for the Wii.

The game story takes place some time after the first Okami which featured the sun goddess Amaterasu. This time you go through the adventures of Chibiterasu. He is a young sungod that needs to save and restore the world. You posses a magic celestial brush that can restore ingame objects. The first obstacle was a broken bridge that had to be fixed, which was done by selecting the magic brush and drawing the outline of the missing part on the DS touch screen. There is a limited amount of ink so you need to be careful not to use too much. After the correct brushstrokes have been made, the bridge is constructed and Chibiterasu is able to pass. Another feature was the ability to split Chibiterasu from Shiranui to make the overall weight lighter so they can cross certain fragile parts of the world and collect keys or activate platforms to open new areas.

If you liked the Wii game, you’ll most likely enjoy this game, so be sure to keep an eye on this title which will be released in the first half of 2011.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective hands-on

In the Capcom press room at Gamescom we got to try out Ghost Trick Phantom Detective. The basic premise of the game is that you start out with a dead character that lost all his memories and your goal is to regain all of your memories and really find out who you are. The game had some very nice stylized pixel art, awesome animations, good use of color and great sounds. The trial introduced us to the concept of controlling your soul. The game has 2 modes: the real world and the ghost world. In the real world you are dead from the start of the game, but when you switch to the ghost world you will see a blue glowing ball that represents your soul. Your soul still has the thoughts and ideas of the character and there is a lot of conversation going on during the demo.

When you are in the ghost world you can see your own soul of course, but it also shows the places where your soul can go. To travel from place to place you have to drag your soul to the other container with the DS touchscreen. When your soul is an object and you switch back to the real world, an interact button pops up, when you press, the object will start moving. Let’s take the bike for example; in the demo, the bike had 2 containers you could move to, one on the handlebars and one on the pedals. The handlebars were intersecting with junk so the bike was hanging in mid air. First you had to move your soul to the handlebars, when you went back to the real world and interacted with the object the handlebars was detached from the junk and the bike fell down, then you go back to the ghost world and move the soul to the pedals, then go back again and when you use the pedals the bike will start to move.

The concept of you controlling your soul and not actually a character felt really nice. It’s like you’re viewing the story that’s going on from a second dimension because the characters that play in the game don’t know of your presence, or at least some don’t because in the demo you were also able to enter other people’s body/souls and you could talk through their thoughts.
The demo was very short but it showed some nice potential for puzzles. It’s definitely a title to look forward to if you own a DS and the quality showed in the demo was amazing.
Here is the trailer they showed at E3 to give you a better impression:

Street Fighter X Tekken Trailer

Press release:

Utilizing the same technology that powered Street Fighter™ IV & Super Street Fighter™ IV, Tekken™ characters such as Kazuya Mishima and Nina Williams will make the transition into the Street Fighter™ universe having been re-imagined using the much-loved art style of these seminal titles; while retaining their unique characteristics and signature moves as they go head-to-head with classic brawlers from the Street Fighter franchise in what promises to be the ultimate match up. Read more

Rise Up: DarkVoid Review

The game takes place before World War 2 and you play as a character called William Augustus Grey. He is teleported to a different world while flying over the Bermuda Triangle. This place is known as the Void. While in the Void you will encounter an alien and a human race. You will later on join the human race who a fighting a war against the aliens. The aliens are fighting to try and get back to Earth. The Void is the middle between the aliens world and Earth. Read more

Resident Evil 5 Producer Jun Takeuchi Will Not Produce a 6th Installment.

After a year of Resident Evil 5, everyone has been waiting for the announcement of the next installment in the series, Resident Evil 6.

Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi has said that Resident Evil 6 would be a, “total reboot” to the series.

Unfortunately, producer Jun Takeuchi said that he will not be involved in 6.

“I’m not involved in Resident Evil 6. There’s actually a number of things I want to do.”

“If I say it like that, it might be taken as ‘next game,’ but before reaching the step of making a game, we — Japanese developers — have a lot of things that we must do. To begin, I have a number of things I’d like to do related to Capcom as a whole.”

Looks like we have to see who will fill his spot for the next installment.

Nintendo’s 3DS and Third Party Lineup (Incl Remakes)

• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D ™
• Animal Crossing™
• Kid Icarus™: Uprising
• Mario Kart™
• nintendogs™ + cats
• Paper Mario™
• PilotWings Resort™
• Star Fox 64™ 3D
• Steel Diver™
• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn™ Read more

Lost Planet 2 Review: Will we be leaving on a jet plane?

Lost Planet, Capcom’s little surprise game from 5 years ago, finally has a follow up title. This episode takes place on END3 (a planet) 10 years after the previous game; a lot has happened between number one and two, however. The planet has undergone some big climate changes, and that means big disasters.  Now, we’re not talking earthquakes and tornadoes; we’re talking Akrids: an alien race; the original inhabitants of EDN3.

So what’s it all about?

Lost Planet’s main story is all about the player cooperating with three fellow human warriors, sent out into the unknown to complete your mission. But you wont play only one person; every episode of the game introduces you to a new clan, from the military Nevec to the desert pirates and many more. The game has 6 episodes: every episode is made out of chapters, and sometimes, there are even sub-chapters. This makes the game quite expansive, and it takes an experienced Lost Planet player an estimated 8 hours to finish it in a perfect run. The co-op experience is meant to be played online, but you can play offline with a friend in split-screen as well. As you play through the game you will discover several things crucial to your survival in the game.

1. T-Energy. This is fuel for your life support system, Vital Suits that you enter and also fuels some weapons in the game.
2. Weapons. These are not always made for killing the bad guys that you encounter; they can also be used for supporting your team members in various ways.
3. Vital Suits Or in other words: VS’s. These are one of the things that makes Lost Planet so special. While some are small and slow while carrying a big gun, others are larger and can ever transform. Anything from subs to planes to transportation units and much more (some even say you can fuse them into one big VS).
4. Boxes. Loads of boxes. in the beginning you might just want to walk by them or grab them not knowing what they are or what they do, but in the end you will be hunting for these, because boxes contain valuable items, and sometimes more than that!

So those are some of the things that you will need, together with your trusty anchor hook (grapling hook) that you will need to get to some higher places very quickly. The weapons that you find or own can be upgraded; this is something you will have to do in a separate menu, meaning you have to go back out of the game and enter customization mode. This will make you able to use the “slot machine”: From the boxes that you have found and have converted into money, you gan give the slot machine a spin for 2000 credits per go (a box can hold an estimated 50 to 250 credits). You can get everything from war titles, emotions, and weapon upgrades to new abilities; some extremely useful for one player, some useful for others.

The War Titles are a bit useless but you will get them a lot. This is often a bit frustrating, especially when you see your hard earned money disappearing in to a War Title. A bit less frustrating is when you earn the emotion. It is still quite useless, but atleast it’s something you can use to interact with other people. More important is the ability upgrade that will fill up your ability slots. You have 2 ability slots so you can take 2 separate abilities or get one big one that fills up both slots. These abilities make you stronger in a specific area, anything from VS master to gun master and much more. For instance, VS master makes you ride in a VS with way less T-Energy requirement, and when your VS gets broken you can now fix it faster (yes you can fix the VS’s now) than a normal player. The most important aspect of the machine slot, however, is the weapon upgrade! You can get all kinds of new weaponry to fill your weapon of choice list, from powerful to more accurate to support and even new grenades.

The main storyline is satisfying enough to keep most people interested (but lets face it, we never really cared about it that much now did we? We just want to save the world, find out the princess is in an other castle, etc.) In short, without spoiling to much, Nevec is again throwing the planet you live on out of balance.  The Akrid’s become larger thanks to this unbalance, and you have to stop it. As I said before, you’re not just one hero, you are several heroes, and you will play them one by one. Each epesode has 4 heroes, 1 controlled by yourself and 3 controlled by friends, other payers or CPU players (computer controlled players).

The Impressions of the game:

Visuals: Lost Planet is a beautiful game and has you running through all kinds of environments: snow, jungles, mountains, deserts, oceans and more. The weather effects in the game are really nice, but sometimes it makes us feel that they were brought in to cover some textures up. The game is fast paced and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Explosions are extremely well done. The animations of the humans, akrid and VS’s look and feel really good, so in terms of visuals the game doesn’t fall short.

Playability: There are several control schemes you can choose from; you can control the sensitivity of the controller and you can shut the auto aim off if you are getting good enough in the game. Some things can be a bit frustrating though. Not everyone gets the hang of switching from the grenades to the T-Energy support gun (pressing 2 buttons at the same time), for example. You can run now, but it will limit your vision and controllability. The anchor hook (grappling hook) is less accurate now, and sometimes even kills you instead of saving you, so dont be surprised when you’re in battle and you want to get from one end to another by grappling and there’s a 10 centimeter high ledge that you will get stuck behind; the grabbling hook will de-attach halfway through the jump. The VS’s also take a bit of getting used to since the controls have been changed from the old version. Why? We really don’t know. But, globally, the game is fun, easy, and exciting to play without too many control or playability frustrations.

Replayability: The game offers not only the co-op mode, but it also offers a multiplayer mode that has types such as elimination, team elimination, post grabbing, counter post (king of the hill), team egg battle (capture the flag), and more. So if the co-op isn’t enough to keep you busy together with your friends, then that will. Although our team has varying opinions about the multiplayer ranging from “it’s great to play” to “it’s unbalanced”. We all think that the multiplayer games could and should have been done better. 10 maps to pick from isn’t much, and the high amount of menus together with the impression that the game is unbalanced gives us the feeling Capcom changed the winning team of the old Lost Planet a bit too much. They even removed the highly popular game of akrid hunter! But, this all might sound really bad, but rest assured the co-op really makes up for it all.

All in all: Lost Planet 2 is a great game with a great cooperative mode that will keep you coming back for more along with all your friends. The game could have been better in more ways than one, but I suppose that leaves the door open for Lost Planet 2 Colonies?

To buy or not to buy: The game is really worth playing, especially if you have a preference for cooperative play. You might, however, get a bit disappointed by the multi player. The game is well made and fun to play, but truth be told, you do have to have a little preference for this genre to begin with.

What’s the score?

NiSuTe’s Value System: 9/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Quality: 8/10
Replay: 7/10

Overall score: 8.2

Triumvir x Capcom Street Fighter II: World Warrior Collection

In continued efforts together with Capcom, Triumvir released its second Street Fighter® t-shirt collection entitled, World Warrior Collection. The World Warrior Collection broadens the concept scope and draws inspiration from a multitude of Street Fighter II® characters.

Here are some more images:

Super Street Fighter 4, worth it’s weight in gold?

I’m writing this article with the idea that you own SF4 and cannot decide if SSF4 is for you, but before getting down to business I’ll introduce myself.
The name is Johnny and I have been playing SF since SF2:world warrior. I love the thrill of battle and meeting my match ^_^ Played Turbo, Alpha 3 and SF3:3rd Strike and once SF4 was announced I couldn’t wait to insert it into my PS3. It was a major improvement over 3rd strike and even though I missed the hand drawn charm I got over it very quickly.

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