If you were starting to wonder when the successor to the Akiba's Trip games was going to release in west, the answer is finally here: May 16 in America and May 19 in Europe, 2017. The ESRB has rated it T for teen while it is PEGI 12 in Europe.
Akiba's Beat does not appear to be as well received as Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed, but what I've played of it seems decent enough for a budget title. Anime is anime is anime, but the warm color palette resonates with me as well.
Let's take a brief trip down memory lane for Pokemon Sun and Moon's Global Missions. In summation, they're little meta-missions that involve some sort of online collective goal, which reward players with in-game currency. The first, which merely involved catching Pokemon, failed spectacularly. The second, which tasked players with scanning for creatures, also failed.
But since then we as a community have been faring much better, amidst easier goals from Nintendo. The third trading, fourth battle tree, and even the fifth egg hatching Global Missions have been a success. Yep, it was just confirmed that the goal for the most recent mission, which ends on April 10, has been met.
As I've always posited, since these missions are hidden behind a gate in some extra menu option, a lot of the casual community probably weren't even aware that they existed. Plus, a lot of casual users kind of just coast through the story and may not even care about anything after that. By lowering the goals you can basically have competitive players carry the load for you, and everyone wins.
Electronic Arts has made it very clear to investors that Star Wars Battlefront is a big part of its plans for the near future. Of course it is. The recent annualization of Star Wars movies means it's currently one of the most lucrative entertainment properties in existence. Everyone will strike while the iron's hot.
The first time out, Star Wars Battlefront was a tremendous success to the tune of 14 million shipped copies. That's even more than EA thought it'd do. The follow-up is set for later this year and it's sure to have similarly lofty expectations.
While Star Wars Battlefront II is certainly launching during the holiday season, EA is hitting the marketing campaign in the coming weeks. A "save the date" post on the Battlefront site pegs the first trailer for April 15 at 11:30am Pacific. That's smack dab in the middle of Star Wars Celebration in Orlando during a dedicated Battlefront II panel.
The road to Battlefront II surely winds through Star Wars Day, E3, gamescom, etc. -- all the big video game conventions plus a series-specific day. We'll see a lot more Battlefront in the coming months. But, it all begins three weekends from now. It's a new hope for anyone who found the first game lacking; for EA, a second opportunity for galactic profits is more the empire striking back.
Outside of the secret "all applications"menu that popped up after 10 games have been loaded onto the Switch, folks haven't discovered any extra bells and whistles yet. No special eShop music, no Easter eggs -- just the basic OS with basic features.
That isn't changing as of last night either with the Switch's 2.1.0 update, which enhances "general system stability improvements to enhance the user's experience." I have a number of wishlist type things for the Switch, most notably the Virtual Console and the addition of a friend code workaround -- and it looks like I'll have to wait a bit longer for them.
Strictly in terms of the OS though, I'm pretty happy. It's responsive, fast, and sleek.
Tribeca was the first film festival to embrace video games as a storytelling medium, showcasing the world premiere of detective game L.A. Noire nearly six years ago. Now, the organization is teaming up with publication Kill Screen to launch the inaugural Tribeca Games Festival. Running April 28-29 during the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, it will feature some prominent members of the gaming industry, including legendary Metal Gear developer Hideo Kojima.
Fire Emblem Heroes is getting into the spring spirit with a limited-time event full of delightfully silly outfits. Xander wields an overgrown carrot for reasons I don't ever need explained, and even if you're expecting to come up short with your hero pulls, there's a new "Paralogue Story" to play through.
It's entirely to be expected for this type of game, but, brace for impact: "These Special Heroes may or may not appear again in a summoning event held in the future."
The Spring Festival runs from March 30 at 12:00am Pacific until April 13 at 11:59pm Pacific.
Anyone who played OG Destiny knows the pain of the "Dinklebot."
On paper it was a great idea -- famous actor Peter Dinklage would accompany the player throughout the adventure, hot off of his turn on Game of Thrones. But the writing and the performance came up short, as folks didn't really take to it outside of some (unintentionally) hammy lines. He was subsequently replaced by Nolan North, who has since recorded dialogue for new content. Since Destiny is an online-only game Dinklage was effectively patched out entirely, and for all intents and purposes, doesn't exist anymore.
But with the Age of Triumph update, Bungie saw fit to give him one last sendoff. While completing the infamous "that wizard came from the moon mission," Dinklebot delivers that same line before coughing and trailing off back into Nolan North. It's a little thing that only a collective of the Destiny playerbase will care about it, but it's funny all the same to see Bungie poking fun at itself.
Blizzard is working hard to overhaul its free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) Heroes of the Storm. The studio has announced some big changes are coming in the game's 2.0 update, including a new reward system similar to Blizzard's hugely popular online shooter, Overwatch.
Throughout all of 2014, the Xbox One received monthly updates to gradually repair the bungled state the console originally shipped in. Slowly but surely, it got there. The system-level navigation woes eventually subsided. It's a much more usable machine today.
Nowadays, Xbox isn't as frequent with the updates. Instead, they're reserved for more meaningful implementations rather than just small fixes. One of these released today, and it puts an emphasis on often-used features and interactive streaming.
The home screen is where the majority of users will notice the most changes. The title that's currently being played as a significantly smaller icon, and this frees up more room for game hubs, clubs and groups, and social sharing.
However, it's off to the side where the biggest alterations are. Xbox has done away with the notion of double tapping the home button (an action with far from a 100 percent success rate). Now, a single press of home brings up the guide which defaults to showing recently played games and apps. From there, the mainstays -- friends, achievements, parties, settings, etc. -- are all found by navigating up and down the side bar.
Xbox says that one of the focuses of this update was to optimize for speed (which was the excuse given for doing away with the Snap feature). It's completely anecdotal but in my five minutes spend with the new dashboard, it seems like Xbox accomplished that. Everything's responsive so far, and anyone who has spent a good amount of time on an Xbox One knows that isn't always the case. Also, the guide is inching ever-closer to making the home screen a moot point; you can get almost anywhere from the side menu.
The thing that's probably of most interest to Xbox isn't a nominal improvement to the dashboard. It's the implementation of Beam, a streaming platform that's owned by Microsoft. Beam allows an audience to participate in streams by joining games that streamers are playing. It's said to have around a 200 millisecond latency, meaning that the interactions are in near-real time. Beam was just added to Xbox One today in preparation for the April 11 Creators Update on Windows 10.
There are a few more minor additions like co-pilot mode across two controllers (I think this is legitimately neat), screen time limits, and bitstream passthrough for the Blu-ray player. Those, along with everything else, are described in detail over on Xbox Wire. Or, just watch the video that's embedded above to get a better sense of all the new stuff your Xbox will be able to do starting today.
While Fallout Shelter is a good free-to-play game, it didn't hold my interest as long as other similar projects did. You can take the plunge and see for yourself on Steam today if you want, if you didn't already play it on iOS, Android, or Xbox One.
Pretty much every aspect is the same, including the microtransactions. But this time you have fancy Steam achievements to work toward, and all of the updates to date since it was released originally in 2015. It's a little late, but it's a welcome addition nonetheless!
It also made a ton of cash for Bethesda, and as the first project of this caliber that was made in-house it's an interesting development for the studio. Whereas other publishers contract out mobile games (including Nintendo), this much first-party success could lead to a lot more mobile to PC stuff in the future.
DICE is looking to lessen the "friction" between Battlefield 1 players who do and don't own the game's $50 Premium Pass. As is, these groups are split off when it comes to DLC, but with the studio's new "Premium Friends" system, they'll all be able to play together on every map (with caveats, of course).
In short, if someone in your party owns the Premium Pass, your group will become "Premium Enabled," granting access to all maps even if you don't own them. That's a decent step up. However!
"While all players will be able to play on maps accessible through Battlefield 1 Premium Pass through Premium Friends, some experiences are exclusive to Battlefield 1 Premium Pass owners.
In a 'Premium Enabled' party, only owners of a Battlefield 1 Premium Pass or the specific expansion pack will earn XP from the maps exclusive to that expansion. We will save the XP for everyone else and grant them retroactively if they decide to get the Battlefield 1 Premium Pass for themselves.
Only owners of a Battlefield 1 Premium Pass or the specific expansion pack will be able to spawn in with weapons and vehicles unique for the expansion.
Only owners of a Battlefield 1 Premium Pass or the specific expansion pack will track progress towards the unique medals and codexes for the expansion."
Clearly, this approach doesn't stack up to just giving out maps for free. It's progress, though.
The feature is rolling out with a "test run" on March 30, right in time for Battlefest. According to producer Andreas Skoglund, feedback will be noted. "It's our goal to work towards molding this feature into something that embodies our commitment to you, our amazing community."
While horror MMO The Secret World never quite became the next World of Warcraft, its unique supernatural vibe made it a cult hit among MMO fans. The game's publisher, Funcom, plans to relaunch the game as a free-to-play "shared-world action RPG," no doubt hoping to cash in on the original title's recognition while updating the title for a modern audience.
Good news, Destructoid community: it's WrestleMania week! For the uninitiated, WrestleMania is basically the season finale of wrestling. It's the biggest WWE show of the year, where the company (ostensibly) brings long-gestating storylines to a close in as spectacular a fashion as possible. Sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn't.
In honor of the Show of Shows' thirty-third anniversary, myself and Destructoid vape criminal Myles Cox will be taping installments of the first annual Destructoid Wrestling Tournament very soon. It's an eight-man tournament, where virtual representations of video game personalities like Destructoid's Zack Furniss will duke it out in a virtual ring. The prize? The Destructoid Championship (pictured above), which is more than just a create-a-championship I made in WWE 2K17. If the winner has a reasonably available shipping address, I will paint a WWE toy belt green and sent it to them. I'm not joking -- bragging rights and a $20 toy that I will deface are on the line here.
Although we'll be focusing on Destructoid-centric personalities, of course we'd like to hear from the community as well! If there's somebody from Destructoid alumni or the games industry you desperately want to see in this tournament, post their names in the comments below! We'll use an undetermined scientific method to nail down the roster, which is currently very much in flux. Hell, if somebody in the Dtoid community has a killer create-a-wrestler they'd like to see featured, that would be even better!
No new major releases? No problem. The Nintendo Switch soared by nearly 30,000 sales from last week-a 57% increase. Japanese gamers appear content with its current library, as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and 1-2-Switch remain near the top trailing only Monster Hunter XX.
This is only speculation, but considering students just graduated and are currently on spring vacation, perhaps many of them used graduation money on a shiny new console. Good a time as any to sink into Breath of the Wild, as I finally have. To say it will consume time is an understatement.
After no small amount of hype, the Xbox One's big spring software refresh is finally rolling out to everyone. The March update centers around a redesigned interface that's designed for speed above all else. It's quicker to perform more than a few tasks, such as finding a group to join. The revamped Guide should be much quicker, too -- it promises faster access to recent apps, background music controls and game recording. A few tweaks are designed with multitasking in mind, such as a brand new achievement tracker and a Cortana rework that puts the voice assistant into an overlay that won't disrupt what you're doing.
I'm kind of at a loss for next month's PS Plus selection. I do appreciate that Sony still bothers with the idea of free games, but just one look at the selection would make anybody sad. Credit where its due, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime looks awesome (and was also recently offered on Live Gold), but I can't say I care even the slightest bit about the rest of this line-up.
For PS4 users, you'll be getting a pretty big month with four games available. Vita was basically an afterthought and the PS3's choices might as well not exist. I'm more surprised with how Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom is the fourth game in the series than with how Sony thinks anyone cares about it being free.
After quite a bit of work, modder Zynk Oxhyde has finished his Roll sprite hack for all five Game Boy Mega Man games. The hacks use custom sprite work in addition to the original source material, and Rush has been replaced by Tango the cat, who to date has only appeared in several other games -- including Mega Man V. There's also a new character (Quart, an evil Roll that's a play on Quint, the evil future version of Mega Man) and some minor gameplay improvements.
Roll is a frequent star of fan hacks, and even got a few official playable renditions. She was a holdover in the mobile version of Mega Man 1, she was playable in the first Marvel vs. Capcom 1 and 2 (albeit as a joke type character) as well as Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, and in Mega Man Powered Up.
I'm not really sure how, but SNK has really impressed with each of their DLC character announcements. While some folks (like myself) might have wanted BaenessaVanessa, Whip, and Yamazaki in the base roster, it's been so good to see them confirmed now especially with these great intro trailers. Though I'm sure no one expected an outsider would join the fray.
Rock Howard, Geese Howard's biological son and Terry Bogard's adopted son from Garou: Mark of the Wolves (of the Fatal Fury series), makes his first appearance in the King of Fighters series proper. Just watching this trailer makes it seem like he's been a part of the series all along. I can't wait to counter everything.
There's also a promise from the development team that Rock won't be as "low-tier" as he was in Garou. Also great news? All four of the announced DLC characters will be available April 5th. The new stages and background music will also be available for free to everyone too.
Now I just want a full SNK fighter in this engine.
When I was a kid, the Persona series was on the fringe of a niche. I had to be introduced to it on the original PlayStation by way of my cousin, who subsequently went on to show me Wild Arms and a few other classics. But after the resounding success of Persona 3, Atlus almost scrambled to meet demand with re-releases and alternate takes, culminating in an all-time high with Persona 4 Golden, one of the several "must haves" on the Vita.
At least, Golden was the pinnacle of the series at the time, because Atlus has shown us they have more than enough gas in the tank to keep this train going with Persona 5.
While the VR war between the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive is getting most of the hype, the competition in mobile VR is a far bigger deal for most consumers. After all, you only need a phone and a cheap headset for mobile VR, not a powerful gaming rig and lots of spending money. Samsung's Gear VR cemented itself as a pioneer in the market over the past few years, but Google's Daydream View headset came out swinging last year with the inclusion of a small motion sensing remote.
This week Blizzard unveiled its new Heroes of the Storm 2.0 update, which is arriving in beta form later today. In short, it heralds a completely revamped progression system, loot chests, a new currency (gems are replacing cash), a collection interface, and cosmetics like sprays, banners, voice lines/taunts, announcer packs, and perhaps its biggest surprise, adorable emojis.
It's probably the biggest shakeup since the game's launch, and most of it is good news -- even if I am a bit weary of injecting even more free-to-play elements in.
For months, Heroes of the Storm players have been clamoring for more Diablo love. After a brief event in 2015, we've only gotten a few representatives from the Diablo universe, and most of the existing cast is from the third iteration.
Well, later today you'll be able to give Cassia (the new Amazon) a test drive, in addition to the new "2.0" beta that completely overhauls the game's progression system.
I don't know a whole lot about The Secret World, but I do know that it launched with the requisite subscription model that almost every MMO starts with. When sales were lower than expected, developer Funcom decided to go with a buy-to-play model that saw a one time purchase similar to Guild Wars. It looks like the time for that final transition into free-to-play territory is upon us.
Funcom has announced that The Secret World will be relaunched this Spring as Secret World Legends with a completely free business model. I'm surprised Funcom was able to last five years in a post-World of Warcraft world without going F2P as basically every other MMO can barely last a full year.
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is almost ready to drop in Japan (on April 20, before its worldwide May 19 date), so Nintendo saw fit to provide a seven minute trailer to go over all of its new features, and some old ones. Of note is a small amiibo section at the end that showcases the special solo dungeons for the two new figures (based on the title characters) as well as the existing Fire Emblem character content.
It's all in Japanese but it's pretty easy to get the gist of, even if it's your first ever strategy game. Basically you're fighting people on a grid, collecting new party members, and possibly losing them if you turn on permadeath.
Welcome to mid-week. We've got sub-$1,000 4K TVs in decent sizes, the US government voted on whether ISPs can sell your browser history, and IKEA is getting into the smart lighting game. You might have heard -- the device has been leaked enough -- that Samsung's Galaxy S8 will get its official unveiling later today. We'll be live from the event, which kicks off at 11AM ET in New York.
