Dragon Quest VIII is hitting the mobile market in Japan on December 12, coming to iPad, iPhone, and Android. It looks so weird in vertical format. Square seems to be on a quest to drag all of its existing games onto mobile phones.
Meanwhile, I patiently await news on a Final Fantasy XII HD for the PS4/Vita.
TURBOGUN has a "stealth-based precision platformer" up on Steam Greenlight called Master Spy that's looking for approval, but more importantly, there's a free in-browser demo ahead of a full release in 2014. You should try it out if words like "precision" don't sound overly frightening in the context of platform games centered around not being seen. Failure is practically inevitable here.
The game is broken down into individual rooms, most of which seem to be more about executing your plan of attack than actually solving the "puzzle" of how to traverse the environment safely and swiftly. Even with a cloaking suit, not getting caught is easier said than done.
Even though I tend to be fairly generous on Greenlight, I'm that much more likely to give a thumbs up when there's a playable build available and while Master Spy's trial isn't too extensive, it made enough of an impression on me to write this post. The GIFs helped too, if I'm being frank.
[Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]
Kadokawa Games (publisher of recent Grasshopper games Lollipop Chainsaw and Killer is Dead ) has a new strategy RPG from Patapon director Atsushi Ii coming to PS3, PS Vita, and PS4. Though no Western release has been announced, Natural Doctrine is hitting Japan February 22.
This is both the Japanese PS4 launch date and increasingly nearer as time does that thing where it moves at a constant rate, but feels like it's moving too quickly. "Can you believe it's already December?" the Facebook posts read.
Supplementing the trailer from a couple months ago, we finally have a flood of screenshots, which raises more questions than provides answers. We knew Natural Doctrine would eschew grids, but I expected a free-moving style similar to Valkyria Chronicles, rather than these portioned red and blue segments. I'm really curious how that's going to work. It looks different, for sure. Also a little bland and ugly, but hopefully playing on the Vita will eliminate some of that.
Also might start calling it Natty D.
The last time we checked in with a video for Super Mario 3D World , we showed you how to access the hidden fifth character. But after some extended play sessions of the game and my subsequent race to obtain a 100% completion rating, I uncovered a few more tips, and decided to share them with the rest of the world.
Whether you're on your first or your fourth playthrough of Super Mario 3D World, there's a lot of depth here. It goes without saying that there are spoilers for the last world and the identity of the secret character. Enjoy!
[Dtoid community blogger AboveUp gave just enough f*cks to write this blog... and that's about it. WARNING: There are a lot of naughty words in this post. You've been warned! --Mr Andy Dixon]
Videogame characters get tasked with the most impossible of missions all the time. Beating up entire cities, fighting swarms upon swarms of monsters, singlehandedly winning wars against the worst of odds. A normal person would crack under these circumstances. Videogame characters don't though. They don't even care. When sh*t hits the fan, they don't give a f*ck and just do what they have to do.
Whatever the f*ck that even means.
Clearly PS4 lust has been germinating in the country for some time, because Germans went crazy for the PS4 launch last week. It's like store owners were poking them with electric cattle prods outside the gates as if they were rodeo bulls. Germany people were trampled in the fray.
Of course, it might be germane to mention this still has little on Black Friday. Check out this depressing Black Friday Death/Injury Count.
The Xbox One led Black Friday sales at major retailers, including Walmart, Target, Best Buy, GameStop, and RadioShack, according to Info Scout. Xbox One accounted for 31% of console sales. Surprisingly, the 360 came in second, accounting for 30%, while the PS3 and PS4 each pulled 15%.
We don't talk about Wii U sales.
Of course, this is thought to stem from limited PS4 availability more than anything. As we know, Sony isn't hurting. In its UK release's first 48 hours alone, the PS4 outsold the Xbox One's total sales by 100,000 units.
It's also worth noting that among InfoScout's 102,000 Black Friday receipts, the data comes from the "slightly over 1,500" receipts that included console or game sales. It could be a nice representative sample size, but it's not hard numbers. Call of Duty: Ghosts led software sales, followed by the money printing Disney Infinity and Sjylanders: Swap Force.
I'm curious to see if the tepid response to Call of Duty: Ghosts might finally lead to a drop in series sales. There hasn't been an indication of that thus far, though. Perhaps those feeling burnt will be wary plunking down cash for the next outing?
[All week long we're going to be asking for your thoughts on certain topics related to the year in gaming. Here's the first!]
2013 was absolutely ripe with juicy new characters in the realm of gaming. Badass '80s action heroes, hilarious narrators, endearing psychopaths, robot dogs, annoyingly philosophical trans-dimensional twins, ass-kicking little girls, and a little dude with a lamp hanging from his nose barely scratch the surface as to the eclectic selection or protagonists and NPCs on display this year.
My personal favorite has to be Rex Colt from Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. His cheesy dialog and banter was straight out of the best (worst?) '80s action movies, and was a far cry (HAR HAR) from the usual FPS protagonist.
What about you? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments below! Or, if you find yourself getting long-winded, write a blog! (Be sure to share the link below.) We'll be pulling in quotes from the community for a special recap post later this week, so take some time to think about your responses.
Have fun!
These are the worst stories that pop up around launches of big ticket technologies. A San Francisco man arranged through the internet to sell his PlayStation 4. He was robbed and fatally shot Sunday afternoon in San Francisco's Bayview District, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
The victim was a man in his early 20's. He was shot multiple times and later died at San Francisco General Hospital.
According to KPIX-5's Brian Dinsmore, SFPD has announced a suspect is in custody.
San Francisco: Sale of Playstation 4 video game system turns deadly [San Jose Mercury News]
The person responsible for leaking those Grand Theft Auto V audio files that hint at upcoming DLC is back with an early video demonstration of GTA Online's content creator.
Like the aforementioned files, the creation system was also hiding in the game files. This isn't the newest version of the editor -- and it only supports the creation of races and deathmatches -- but it's interesting to see how this will seemingly work once it's ready for the general public.
Funmw2 has a few other videos, viewable below. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to use the creator myself before, and now I'm certain. I'll leave that to more talented (and committed) players.
Backwards compatibility may not matter very much to most consumers, but to people like me who have extensive libraries and only so much physical space in our media centers, support for older software is of great importance. With PlayStation 4, Sony will be using the cloud service Gaikai sometime in 2014 to provide backwards compatibility. According to Eurogamer, sources expect Sony to kick off the service in Q3 2014 in North America and 2015 in Europe.
"We're on track to have a commercial service up and running in the US first within 2014," SCEI president Andrew House told the outlet. "But what's important is to understand the full scope of what we're trying to achieve and why we felt the Gaikai acquisition was important. Our goal is to be able to have a new form of game distribution streamed from the server side, initially to PS4 consoles then gradually moving that out to Vita. But eventually, the endgame is to have this available on a multitude of network-connected devices, essentially delivering a console-quality gaming experience on devices which are not innately capable of doing that."
House wouldn't divulge anything specific about Gaikai's European launch, but noted "It's a brand new form of delivery. We need to prove out the technology, which we feel is good at its core, but we place -- as I think is quite right -- a real emphasis on delivering a quality experience for consumers. And that will be dependent to a degree on what the strength of broadband connection is going to be, and what our server deployment and infrastructure looks like. We're hard at work on all of those fronts, but I'm not at a point right now where I can be specific about when our European fans are going to be able to enjoy that."
PS4 looks set to break records at launch [Eurogamer]
