Sengoku BASARA: The Last Party will be a sad
movie

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Because y'know, that's technically when the sengoku period ends. For all the liberties Capcom's Warriors-killer series has taken with Japanese history, its core storyline has stuck somewhat faithfully to What Actually Happened.

The Last Party, which is a theatrical anime movie due this year, is based on the plot of Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes, and details the conflict between Mitsunari Ishida and Ieyasu Tokugawa, which ends at the epic Battle of Sekigahara.

Since Sekigahara was pretty much where the sengoku period ended in real history, The Last Party an appropriate subtitle. If you haven't yet, watch the trailer for clips of Masamune Date speaking bad Engrish.

Seriously Capcom, consider doing like Dynasty Warriors and releasing a Japanese voice patch for the English voice Sengoku Basara. You rip off Tecmo Koei that much, may as well copy that decision, too.

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Shrine Maiden

Shrine Maiden Escape is another point and click room escape games by Kids Heart. In this game, you try to escape the house by finding items and solving puzzles. Good luck and have fun!Play This Game

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Rumor: Mayonaka TV might be a Persona 4 anime
adaptation

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If certain trailers and teaser sites are to be believed, there may be something related to Persona 4 in the works, and we may know more in less than two days.

A mysterious live-action trailer circulating through the web shows a bunch of people talking about the rumored "Mayonaka TV". Persona 4 fans may know that "Mayonaka TV" is the Japanese name for the "Midnight Channel", the key story element in Persona 4.

The trailer ends with a web address leading to mayonaka-tv.jp, a teaser site with a shade under two days left on a countdown clock. Incidentally, the clock runs out on April 11th 2011 (Japan time), which is the same day that Persona 4 "begins".

Whether or not this is an anime project specifically is unstated, but other images discovered suggest the existence of a "Persona 4 Animation" project bankrolled by Aniplex, Sony's big anime/music distribution house. Intrepid fans note that decompiling files on the teaser site lead to files entitled "anime" and a (currently) blank site at P4A.jp . What could that "A" mean?

Having a Persona project go all "transmedia" isn't a new phenomenon. Both P3 and P4 gained manga adaptations, and an original anime series with links to Persona 3, Persona: Trinity Soul was aired some years ago (and recently licensed by NIS America).

So...are you excited? Unhappy that this isn't a Persona 5 announcement, or are you still waiting for the inevitable announcement of a Persona 4 PSP port? C'mon, all the other games got one, after all.

[Via Jin115 and Japanator user Jon B]

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SSX dev diary provides a glimpse of pre-alpha
footage

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This developer diary is a great supplement to the recent slew of details on SSX to come out of creative director Todd Batty and Game Informer. As outlined in the text -- and again here, in video form -- the initial teaser trailer for the game isn't as indicative as some would have you believe.

There's a lot of reiteration in what's talked about, but it is quite nice to have that visual aid to fall back on. It's been so very long since I've seen virtual snowboarders get such mad air and not die upon landing. Plus, Uber tricks are briefly mentioned/teased. Ubers!

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Stardock CEO elaborates on the Impulse/GameStop
deal

Earlier this week, one indie studio had to make a snap decision (based on a lot of factors) and decided to stop selling its game on Impulse, Stardock's digital distribution service, after GameStop officially takes over.

When the Impulse/GameStop deal was initially announced, many people wondered why Stardock sold Impulse to the retail behemoth. Were they running out of money? Did Elemental: War of Magic nearly bankrupt Stardock? And if Impulse really was profitable, as Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell recently told Joystiq, then why did they sell it? Or why did they sell it to GameStop of all things?

Wardell was happy enough to answer these questions for us and to clarify what the sale of Impulse will mean for the service's management, for developers, and for consumers.

For starters, Stardock will be actively involved with the transition of Impulse to GameStop and run much of it from a day to day basis, with the whole Impulse team transferring to GameStop in its entirety. Wardell himself, a key driving force behind the service, will stay involved with Impulse for the next year to advise and consult on the platform's future. So worries about the lack of his leadership being a detrimental factor in the digital distribution service's future would appear to be mostly unfounded. For the time being, at least.

When asked about how he thinks Impulse will affect PC sales in the future -- and indie game exposure in particular -- after GameStop takes over, Wardell was keen to point out the shelf-space issue that brick and mortar retailers traditionally have. Having worked in a retail bookstore as a youngster, and later at Software Etc. and Babbage's (which later merged into GameStop), he experienced first-hand how only the highest selling products get shelf-space in these mall stores.

Wardell elaborated that "there's never really been a time, even going back to the CompUSA days, where indies were getting their titles in a store. That time never happened. It's not like I went in there and I was getting Space Empires III at Best Buy, even though it's one of the best games ever."

But the emergence of digital distribution is where indies have gotten their chance to shine. One could argue that looking back on the past five years or so, the acceptance of digital distribution by consumers has gone hand in hand with the rise in indie games development. Of course, the emergence of easy and cheap (or free) tools has had a hand in that as well. But without a way to sell your game without being drowned out, those tools by themselves aren't all that useful for keeping you off a ramen-only diet.

Naturally, Wardell was happy to explain that Stardock's Impulse infrastructure makes it really easy for developers to release multiple titles per day. The tech behind Impulse, in particular Impulse Reactor (basically a Steamworks platform variant) and its GOO DRM solution (which combines an executable with Impulse Reactor into a single encrypted file) are meant to facilitate indie game publishing rather than obstruct it.

"When we say that Impulse is very technologically advanced, this is one of the areas I'm talking about. [...] I think most developers and publishers -- especially smaller ones -- who've had to update their game can attest that getting something updated on Impulse is very quick versus other platforms. And that's because our system has been designed over the years and years, when we were doing just our own stuff with Object Desktop where we might do multiple updates per day, to make it very inexpensive and easy to update things.

"And that's really important to indies, because if you're making a small game and you want to get it up, let's face it, all these digital distributors are businesses, they're in it to generate profit. So by having a system where it's very inexpensive to release updates and get new titles up is one of the reasons why I have no fear of indies going by the wayside with Impulse."

Of course while Impulse itself might be a fine digital distribution service for developers, the concern of indies in particular, and the vocal online community in general, is not with the service itself, but with GameStop. Wardell doesn't blame users for being anxious about the impending takeover:

"[With] Any sort of change you don't know what's going to happen. I worry about stuff all the time [and] I spent a lot of time when I was younger worrying about OS/2 vs. Windows so I can relate. I guess the best thing I can say is just wait and see. Give them a chance to prove themselves, or to fail to prove themselves.

"But either way, no matter how you slice it, having more than one option for PC gamers is just so critical. It doesn't require any leap of faith to look at the pricing of PC games and compare it to console games over the past 10 years. And there's a reason why PC games have come down in price and the reason is competition. There's so much there to keep prices from going out of control. And that's why you want to have as many places as you can to buy these things and as many developers as possible to get their stuff out there."

Since I'm a cheap Dutch bastard I pointed out to Brad Wardell that some games, like Crysis 2, were recently launched as $60 PC games, the same price of the console versions. Being the eternal debater he is, Wardell countered this by reminding me that PC games were even more expensive in the past.

"I remember paying $59,95 for some of the later Ultima games, and add in inflation and you get about a $90 game by today's standards. [...] I believe that if you have enough consumers out there making decisions, that they'll vote with their buying dollars and that's what is making the prices go down. It's not because of any benevolence by any company, it's because the consumers are making conscious choices.

"That's one of the reasons I'm happy to see Android games and iPhone games, because the more channels that we game developers have to get our stuff out there, and the more places that gamers have to be able to buy our stuff, the better off we both are to keep anyone from becoming too entrenched."

But how does Impulse factor into that, and how will it factor into increased opportunities for consumers? In other words, will the GameStop takeover of Impulse turn it into a stronger competitor to Steam? Wardell thinks it does stand a good chance, and that while Stardock has been working on a lot of technology like Impulse Reactor over the years, the company just doesn't have the resources to continue down that road by itself.

"I mean let's face it, you're running major publisher XYZ and in front of you, you have three platforms. You have Steamworks, Games for Windows Live, and you have Impulse Reactor. One's made by Microsoft, one's made by Valve, and one's made by... what are they, Stardock? Starrocks or something? Which are you going to pick?

"The technology isn't what determines the winner. Building the best mousetrap on its own isn't enough. You have to [be] on the cloud and [have] the sales force and the support infrastructure to really go out and make it successful. And that's something that GameStop really takes to the table on that."

The new Impulse might be more competitive through the support GameStop can provide, which is what is required to drive it forward in the future. But it also raises the question of whether that future will have fewer, more dominant digital distribution channels for developers and consumers, which would actually lead to less competition. Being able to support a digital distribution platform is what appears to be most important in securing its future, as Wardell explains when I asked him where he sees the current five largest digital distribution services in two years time.

"Oh I think they'll all still be there. One of the things is that [concerning digital distribution services] I think there could even be more than that. I think it could even be more fractured, if anything. So it'll be interesting to see how that goes, because it's so lucrative. I can't speak for GamersGate or Direct2Drive, but I imagine that all of them are running very high margins. Because running a digital distribution service is a lot like a casino, except that you don't have to hand out free margaritas.

"I mean, you're dealing with virtual goods. There's no shipping, there's no manufacturing involved, there's no sales people, it's all handled by machines. And the cost [...] is really on the back end of having account managers and having developers to keep extending the platform.

"But if you'd ask me where I see things going in 5 years, the next big battle is going to be the Platform War. And that is, on the one side you have essentially the web stores, which I don't know what's going to happen to them. I don't think they're going to go away, because the margins are so high.

"But if you're just a web store, that's going to put you at a disadvantage to someone who has a platform like a Steamworks or an Impulse Reactor or Games for Windows Live. Because when you have those things, then there's a mechanism for developers to integrate features into their games that can build communities and that sort of thing. Whereas if you're just a web store you're gonna ultimately have to bundle a third-party platform [...] onto your store."

The concept of an impending Platform War is interesting enough and given the current integration of services into digital platforms, like we see on things like Steam, Xbox Live or even Facebook, it doesn't seem all that far-fetched. Which is probably one of the reasons GameStop is jumping on Facebook as well.

But that's the future, and this is the present. Or this is. Or this is. What's more important right now is how the sale of Impulse to GameStop will affect Stardock as a company, and how GameStop is approaching the platform's future.

"We're a relatively small company. And I really like digital distribution, but that's not what I want to wake up to in the morning and do as my job all day. I like making tech, and I mean if you look at Stardock's homepage, people are always shocked at how many products we have. We're around 50 people and we have dozens of products. It was never my intent for one particular product or service to dominate the company.

"And in the past year, our company's had more and more resources put into Impulse because, frankly, it was generating so much money that it was really hard not to put in that kind of focus. But that meant our Object Desktop programs (the kind of software that gets packed-in with HP and Dell pre-built computers - Ed.) were not getting any attention they would get, our gaming products were starting to not get the attention they should get, and there's been some effect on that that's been reported in the past year on our other non Impulse-related endeavors.

"And you know, I like making tech. Stardock is a technology company, and we have a lot of really cool things that are in the pipeline that we want to be able to focus on. And in order for Impulse to remain competitive, for 2011, 2012, Impulse is in good shape. But to take it to the next step, you really need to have account managers, sales people, lots of sales staff, account engineers, and on and on and on. Those are things that we were just not prepared to do.

"But on the other hand, GameStop already has these kinds of people. And they've assembled an amazing team of people from our industry. A lot of people don't realize this, but besides the fact that the Impulse team is going over as an intact team, GameStop has assembled some amazing people with it, I mean they have Steve Nix from id over there, he's my successor!

"I'd like to think that people would feel that it's in pretty good hands. Just because a company is a public company doesn't mean, I mean, one should always remain skeptical but at the same time there's a line between being skeptical and cynical."

And does that mean that now that Stardock has sold Impulse, it can focus on more fun things like developing games? Wardell says:

"Yeah exactly! I've been having a lot of fun doing heap fragmentation coding! Here's something people talked about, [and] I wouldn't be surprised if you'll feel similar to how I do, people always say that money isn't the only goal in life. But it's amazing how skeptical they are when they see someone actually choose. I mean obviously we were well compensated too, but my goal in life is to do cool interesting things. I'm not looking to run a multi-billion dollar company. So if I can go and spend time doing cool stuff, that's what makes me happy and that's what makes our team happy."

So, Stardock has sold the profitable Impulse digital distribution service -- for quite a large amount of cash one would imagine -- to a company that was better suited and more willing to grow it and remain competitive, with all the sales and support infrastructure that requires, in order to focus on the core products like it did before Impulse started to eat into their time.

Rather than choosing to try and become another Valve, Stardock chose to sell Impulse and focus on what they used to work on instead. Which probably also means that something like a future 'third episode' of a game franchise shouldn't take a huge amount of time to release. Hell, it it means I'm getting Galactic Civilizations III faster, I'm all for it.

Brad Wardell also had some interesting things to say about Stardock's future in gaming in particular, and his vision on the future of gaming technology, but you'll have to check back tomorrow for that.

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Mysterious Countdown Hints at New Persona
Announcement

If this mysterious teaser trailer is any indication, we could be learning about a followup to Atlus' phenomenal Persona 4 as early as this Monday.

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Unsung Heroes: Cass from New Vegas

_{[Community member Stevil tells us why Cass from Fallout: New Vegas is so important to the overall game experience. Want your own work on the front page? Write something awesome in the community blogs. --Kauza]}

If Red Dead Redemption is a love letter to Unforgiven and The Proposition, then Fallout: New Vegas must be an ode to 50’s epics like The Searchers, by way of barmy cult classics Battle Beyond The Stars and Ice Pirates. 

Fallout is fantastical with its post-apocalyptic setting, to say the least. Radioactive reptiles, malfunctioning robots,The Road Warrior gangs and the restarting of modern day politics in a medieval world make it more ‘Weird’ than ‘Wild’ out West. Yet, if you replaced the science-fiction with the aesthetics of the late 1800’s, New Vegas is not that far removed from any Western regularly screened on daytime television. 

To make such a concept work, you need believable characters to sell the core principles. New Vegas does so admirably with Rose of Sharon Cassidy and Raul Tejada. Both characters are more concerned with old world values than overgrown killer ants; Raul is particularly haunted by his gunslinger past, while Cass struggles to keep her family business afloat. 

So, it’s unsurprising that Cass is probably the first potential companion you meet, dressed like a cowgirl, shotgun holstered on her back and drowning her sorrows in a trading outpost’s watering hole. 

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While Raul is entertaining enough, a legend now reduced to being your Tonto, the fascination with Cass revolves around her ambiguous femininity. 

Videogames tend to have women in two camps – the damsel in distress or the battle hardened vixen. These are archetypes created through the medium’s objectives. The more masculine the male protagonist becomes, the more women have to match the levels of testosterone. Very few female companions break the mould with the more interesting undertone archetypes, like Ashley Williams (Mass Effect) or Chie Satonaka (Persona 4). 

With Cass, her masculinity has increased not because of the player/protagonist bond, but because of the Mojave Wasteland. In this regard, there’s a similarity to RDR’s Bonnie MacFarlane. Both women are surrounded by male figureheads, and to survive the land, they’ve had to toughen up. Where Bonnie succeeds because of her world-weary father however, Cass is the modern day Calamity Jane, due to her taking on her missing patriarch’s role. 

Simply put, Cass is a functioning alcoholic. 



Addiction is still somewhat a taboo in videogames. Rarely is there any weighty discussion for it, and when it’s done, as with Alan Wake’s substance abuse, it’s through hidden meaning or interpretive dialogue. 

Here, you have a companion who follows you everywhere and mentions needing a drink on a regular basis. Yet, in a narrative where you’re obligated to be as amoral as The Man with No Name, it’s near impossible to be judgemental about her predicament. 

It’s never entirely clear how she’s become this way, other than the references to the pressures of family business, but it’s clear enough that Cass is full of short-term goals. Her quest for revenge mirrors your own chase after the man who left you for dead, one that can’t end well for her personally, despite a potential peaceful resolution. 

Eventually, Cass decides to tag along and helps to regain control over Hoover Dam, thus shaping the future of New Vegas. Considering that this story, for everyone’s New Vegas journey is different, featured a bearded (though, smartly dressed with a penchant for hats), amoral Courier – named Steve - who played every faction like chumps in The Long Game, aided by a flying radio and cowgirl with a drinking problem, you’d be right in thinking these protagonists hardly sound like the catalysts for independence. 



Ultimately, Cass’ various endings are just as short-term as her ideals. We only learn of the Dam, with her as witness to New Vegas’ future or the fact she sleeps with a soldier out of her re-affirmation of life’s little moments. Nothing is resolved beyond Cass' initial reasons for joining, much like The Courier's tale of revenge turning into something greater and uncertain. 

Though, truly, that’s not the point of her character. 

For Cass and the player, her constant mumbles and grumbles make the nomadic journey all the more bearable, revealing bittersweet things about her and the world around them. 

There’s a melancholy and lament that betrays her uncaring, barfly observations. Primm might be a “shithole” to her, but it’s more about the decay of something beautiful rather than the town itself. 



It’s hard to fathom why a companion such as Veronica Santaneglo is more popular than Cass; usually championed by writers who should know better. Maybe it’s because Veronica is that popular gaming archetype – technologically savvy, dry but pretty and vulnerable too - much like Mass Effect’s Liara. There’s nothing wrong with that, but other than her being a maverick in a strict ‘family’ that’s easier to love than Cass, there’s not much one hasn’t been seen before. 

Maybe it doesn’t help that voice actress Felicia Day sounds like she’s turned up several years too late for that Buffy the Vampire Slayer audition. 

New Vegas ended up as one my favourite titles of all time. It was a long journey through the wasteland, hedging my bets under the neon lights, changing lives for personal gain and bucking the odds with the big iron on my hip. Though, none of it would have been half as fun without a certain woman, who owned a powerful, yet dilapidated, shotgun which summed her up more than these words ever could.

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Shiver: Vanishing Hitchhiker Collector's Edition

Shiver: Vanishing Hitchhiker Collector's Edition is another awesome Collector's Edition point and click adventure type downloadable hidden object games from Download Games 24. After leaving something in your car, a hitchhiker vanishes! Track her down and return her things in Shiver: Vanishing Hitchhiker! Explore a spooky landscape as you figure out where the mysterious woman has gone in this

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Choose Your Game

Choose Your Game is not really a game, more some kind of parody on a game, but still fun to play with. "Tired of fantasy? Then turn the space setting ON! You don't like adventures? Then let's play a shooter! Answer the questions and define this game and play it as YOU like. Everything in Choose Your Game is based on the choice of the player. Enjoy this parody of modern games cliches and destroy

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Weekend Destructainment: Mad Dance Max Revolution

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You've seen Tool Assisted Speedruns before, but how about a TAS of Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, 3 and Lost Levels all at the same time. THE SAME TIME!

Next up on the Destructainment of Weekends is the voice of Halo. Then it's DanceDance Ultimate. Next up is a funny prank on a news anchor involving the iPad. Then it's a rad Left 4 Dead fan movie. Followed by Robotnik having some vehicle troubles. Next is a video made with the Kinect. Then it's the Brothers Mario 2 trailer. The Destructainment ends with 3D in real life.

The voice of Halo.


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DanceDance Ultimate.

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News anchor falls for a funny April Fools joke via the iPad and iPhone.


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Rad Left 4 Dead fan movie.


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Robotnik's vehicle breaks down.


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This was made with the Kinect. Yup.


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The Brothers Mario 2.


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Making life more 3D thanks to the 3DS. Thanks, Randall!


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