We traverse back to Three Kingdoms-era China and find a few surprises in the latest of this long-running series.
You may think that after six Dynasty Warriors games, there’s little new to discover in this sprawling hack-and-slash series. Tecmo Koei is hoping to pleasantly surprise cynics with the newest addition–Dynasty Warriors 7–by adding in a considerable amount of new content, particularly in the form of a brand new faction that comes with its own set of new characters and battles.
Dynasty Warriors games have long focused on the three warring clans of Shu, Wu, and Wei, but Dynasty Warriors 7 will for the first time include the Jin clan. For those of you up-to-speed on the original historical Chinese novels the Dynasty Warriors game are based on–Romance of the Three Kingdoms–the Jin was (spoiler alert) actually the clan that ended up ruling China after this tumultuous period.
As such, Dynasty Warriors 7 will include new battles in which to fight in, as well as including several new Jin generals for players to take control of. With dozens of playable generals already available in Wu, Shu, and Wei, there won’t be any shortage of characters to take on the massive hordes of soldiers you’ll be up against in this game.
The story, too, is supposedly taking a more realistic turn. In previous games, any clan was able to “win” power over China, but history clearly shows that there was only one winner amidst many losers. Dynasty Warrior 7′s narrative will now more closely resemble those events.
Game play, too, has been enhanced, both in minor and major ways. The biggest addition is the ability to wield different weapons for each character, as opposed to having one weapon which you can find upgraded versions of as in previous Dynasty Warriors titles.
Autumn Games have announced they are working with game developer Reverge Labs to develop Skullgirls, a new fast-paced 2D fighting game that puts players in control of fierce female warriors in an extraordinary Dark Deco world. The team is led by renowned fighting game champion Mike “Mike Z” Zaimont and artist Alex Ahad, whose work has appeared in many publications, including Scott Pilgrim and Lava Punch.
Using advanced graphical technology never before achieved in a game of its type, Skullgirls is currently in development for a 2011 release on Xbox 360 and PS3.
We take a first look at Platinum Games’ chaotic multiplayer brawler.
As the Anarchy Reigns demonstration wraps up, producer Atsushi Inaba addresses the problem of assimilating what we’ve just seen: “There was so much going on and there’s no way we can explain every single thing that happened here.” He’s not wrong. Our first look at the game, variously described as an online action combat game and a third-person multiplayer brawler, was a violent whirlwind of leggy cyborgs, berserker mutants, tsunamis, black holes, and carpet bombing in the ruins of a postapocalyptic city.
And though we say “post”-apocalyptic, it’s not clear if the city was ruined before or while the game’s freak-show cast set about each other with chainsaw arms and spiked maces, dodging smartbombs and collapsing bridges and giant saw blades as they went. The presentation is light on the game’s fiction. What little is said about the game’s single-player story mode amounts to: “It has one.” The focus is unambiguously on online multiplayer action.
That online multiplayer action has groups of players clobbering each other across large stages while natural and unnatural disasters wreak havoc around them. It’s “basically a fighting game,” says Inaba-san, “but with not only a couple of characters fighting each other.” The roster of fighters revealed so far is a motley cyborg crew, each more or less human according to how much nanotech-enabled body modification they have undergone: cybernetic bovine Bull, ninja-like Zero, MadWorld’s Jack Cayman, and frosty femme Sasha, with two more MadWorld cameos (pimp caricature The Black Baron and Mathilda of the nipple spikes) unveiled for this demonstration.
Bryan Lee O’Malley said California studio approached him to make adventure game based on graphic novel series; author said franchise wasn’t suited for a game from the developer.
Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series was spun into a full-length feature film over the summer via the Michael Cera-led Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Further, a beat-’em-up game accompanied the film from Ubisoft in the form of the coolly received side scroller of the same name. Now, the author has revealed that Telltale Games also courted him for his series.
“Telltale wanted to do Scott Pilgrim, but I said no,” reads his tweet. “I couldn’t see it as an adventure game. All respect to them, though.”
Ubisoft’s Scott Pilgrim game follows the central plotline of the graphic novels, as the mediocre bass guitarist Scott Pilgrim tries to win his dream girl Ramona’s heart by fighting her seven ex-boyfriends. A ragtag coalition of her failed lovers–including a vegan rock star, identical twins, and an infamous skateboarder–are determined to prevent Scott from dating their old flame.
