Bandai Namco has announced at Anime Expo 2017 that The Seven Deadly Sins: Knights of Britannia will be coming to North America in early 2018. The game serves as the first console game for the popular manga and anime series, which shares the same name. Unlike the recently confirmed Little Witch Academia game however, it will be exclusive to the PlayStation 4.
As part of the whirlwind of announcements at Anime Expo 2017, Bandai Namco has announced that Gundam Versus will launch in North America on September 29. No date has been given for a European release, however the game is still expected to release in the Fall for that region.
Hot off the heels of Little Witch Academia's domestic Netflix debut, Bandai Namco has announced the game adaptation, now titled Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time, will release in North America in early 2018. The game will be coming to the PlayStation 4, as previously announced for its Japanese release, but also to PC via Steam.
Bandai Namco has provided a brief overview of the setting for the anime, as well as the the game's original plot:
ARMS' new DLC character will be joining the fray this month and to get us all hyped, Nintendo of Japan has uploaded a new sizzle reel for the godly final boss. I'm still not quite sure how he is balanced, because he definitely looks overpowered. He'll certainly be an opponent you'll come to fear.
The Evolution Championship Series is sort of like fighting game Christmas. Skilled players from around the world gather to virtually punch each other in the face, and it's the hypest thing of the year. Making it even more enticing for those attending will be Arika's newest fighting game project, featuring Street Fighter EX characters Garuda, Kairi, and Hokuto in the initial footage, will have a location playtest during the tournament and Arika will be looking for player feedback.
This project first debuted on April Fool's and confused everyone, but I'm glad it's making some sort of headway. The initial footage looked amazing, but there's no guarantee it'll look the same when it's officially announced as Arika is just teasing an exhibition for a general "project." Regardless, this'll be a great reveal to be sure given how awesome the EX series was.
Last week PC gamers got the Steam Summer Sale, and this week the console brethren join in the discount magic with the Xbox Live Ultimate Game sale and the PlayStation Mid-Year Sale. If that erupting volcano header image doesn't get you excited, we're sure it's intriguing to Tom Cruise.
The Xbox sale seems to be highlighting recent releases and includes new lows on Battlefield 1 and Mass Effect Andromeda while the PlayStation sale has pretty good deals on titles like Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY and Ratchet and Clank. Like past year sales, both offer extra discounts on all games to paid members of either Xbox Live Gold or PlayStation Plus.
Unlike years past, we found a way to save an extra 10% in the PlayStation Mid-Year sale in the US. GMG, for the first time, is selling digital delivery PlayStation Store credits with a 10% off coupon. Buying those and using on the PS Mid-Year Sale will essentially save you an additional 10% off anything you buy.
Being the 4th of July weekend, big PC manufacturers like Lenovo are holding their usual 4th of July sales in the US. Probably due to high GPU demand for cryptocurrency mining, this year is a little disappointing in terms of gaming PCs compared to others, but we did find a few gems like the $899 Lenovo Y710 Cube PC or an HP Omen Desktop with a GTX 1060 for under $900.
In terms of PC summer sale, some cheaper-than-Steam titles are also lurking about, with Metal Gear Solid V: The Definitive Editiononly $14 (vs. $20 at Steam), or Dark Souls III Digital Deluxefor $35 (compare to $42 at Steam).
This week's release of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy has long time PlayStation fans feeling pretty nostalgic. As a show of celebration for the remasters of Sony's classic mascot platformer series, PlayStation employees in the United States were given a free copy of the N. Sane Trilogy in an old school Jewel case.
It looks like Naughty Dog employees got in on this little gift as well. Naughty Dog's own Neil Druckman took to Twitter to show off his copy.
I used to hang out on Yahoo! Chat, the social media hub for anime geeks in the late nineties. It was the coolest thing this side of a Geocities Sailor Moon fan page, (going to take second to remind everyone about how awesome NeoCities is for anyone feeling nostalgic about the internet) and I used to talk endlessly with internet friends about Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball AF was a fake rumoured continuation of the series. It was dumb and looked a little like this.
Australian hoarder extraordinaire Joel Hopkins currently holds the Guinness World Record for the largest game collection, totaling 17,446 games as of last year. Yesterday, Joel (under his online persona of 'Last Gamer') uploaded an 80-minute video tour of his game room, which is the stuff of a madman's dream. A really, really wealthy madman's dream.
Among complete collections of games for various consoles and home computers, Joel also has a plethora of awesome merchandise and memorabilia. This includes the Ghouls n' Ghosts board game you never knew you wanted, complete print runs of '90s magazines such as Amiga Format, and laserdisc guides to Space Harrier and Street Fighter II.
It's a real sight to behold and the perfect video for a lazy weekend, so feast your eyes and fantasize!
The Order: 1886 studio Ready at Dawn recently came out with a multiplayer-only blob action game with a cute aesthetic, a nice 'n' chunky game feel, and a melodic soundtrack from Austin Wintory.
Those were the positives. Unfortunately, they were vastly outweighed -- at least in my experience -- by insurmountable negatives. I had a lot of trouble just getting into a working match at launch.
Since I last checked in with the game, things are much better. Not ideal, but better.
Actual tutorials. They're short and segmented but sufficient, covering the basic elements like movement, shooting and charging, power-ups, and classes. It was jarring having to learn how to play in live matches (or by watching YouTube videos beforehand), so this is a crucial addition.
Cross-network play. PS4 and PC, and Xbox One and PC players can matchmake with one another. Naturally, PS4 and Xbox One aren't playing nice but we know how that goes.
Offline play. You can do local split-screen co-op with up to four players and the secondary accounts don't need to have PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold memberships. Thank goodness.
Performance and network improvements. I'm still getting some lag, but it's not as bad as it was around launch.
The studio is on the right track. I don't know if it's too little too late, though. The $30 price tag is simply too high for the depth and scope of Deformers, and its ghost town of an online population don't inspire confidence. If they can get AI bots fully implemented, that'd be a huge step forward.
As is, I can't help but wish this style of game was attached to a cool little platforming action-adventure experience rather than deathmatches and a soccer variant. I just like how it feels to move -- it's inherently fun, which is no easy task to pull off. And with Sega not concentrating on Super Monkey Ball these days, it's been a while since I've had a good game about rolling around. There's an opportunity.
Like all NetherRealm fighters, last month's Injustice 2 release did gangbusters numbers, even if its impact on the community was slightly smothered by the launch of Tekken 7 mere weeks later. Regardless, the rubbery-limbed fighter has amassed a very strong following, thanks to its all-star cast of DC reprobates and its frantic fight action, which combines merciless zoning with the NRS staple of extended combo sequences.
NetherRealm has just released the first major update for the title. This patch aims to fix visual bugs and stage interaction problems. At a glance, it is very much a glitch fixer, rather than a full-on balance patch, with only Red Hood seeing notable tweaks. Good thing too, as major roster changes this early into a fighter's life is a terrible idea.
The Nintendo Switch is a neat little console -- but its debut was almost overshadowed by its flagship launch game: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The game was lauded as a long overdue evolution on the Zelda formula, and it deserved the praise, too -- it's an objectively excellent adventure game that brings the classic Nintendo franchise into the modern era.
Still, fans were worried Nintendo would stumble when it came to the game's DLC packs. Rest easy, Hylian hero, Breath of the Wild's first DLC drop is light, but actually pretty good. Mostly because it focuses on what made the game great in the first place: survival, exploration and problem solving.
You've probably never played a game like Fight Knight before. It's a first-person dungeon crawler, and while that isn't anything special in and of itself, the way that it abandons spells and battle axes in favor of fisticuffs sets the game apart from anything in recent memory.
If you've just woken up from a coma, you may not have heard that the SNES Classic is coming this September. It's loaded with 21 classic Super Nintendo titles, from A Link to the Past to Yoshi's Island. One game on that list is the biggest and most surprising news though: After over 20 years, the unreleased SNES title Star Fox 2 will finally make its debut on the SNES Classic.
Whatever happened to that game though? Star Fox 2 was finished after all, so why didn't it ever see a retail release? It's a question on a lot of people's minds with the announcement of its official release. Star Fox 2 was an ambitious project, but it would be thrown out, and we wouldn't see Fox, Slippy, or Falco again until Star Fox 64– a favorite of the era for a lot of gamers.
Despite recent news of Netflix cancelling a few of its high-profile originals, the streaming service hasn't missed a beat. One of its most recent, GLOW, debuted last week and critics seem to agree that it's worth your time. Heck, we even recommended it in our monthly roundup. The Ringer offers a look at the series and the actual women's wresting promotion from which the show gets its name.
"Zelda DLC." That phrase still doesn't entirely compute. It feels like yesterday that Nintendo started dropping their initial batch of New Super Mario Bros. 2 add-ons as their first foray into the modernity of monetization.
Yet here we are with Zelda: Breath of the Wild's first premium pack, The Master Trials, as we move into a brave new era of paid Nintendo online play. It's a strange world.
Welcome to the weekend. The feds have made an arrest following the Fyre Festival debacle, and no, it's not Ja Rule or any Instagram influencer. We'll also dig into this week's retro gaming news with a look at StarCraft Remastered and the SNES Classic Edition.