Nintendo shared some information on their social media channels this evening, sharing some information about amiibo compatibility with upcoming Metroid Prime: Federation Force.
While tackling missions in Metroid Prime: Federation Force, tapping one of the two Samus amiibo (Samus or Zero Suit Samus) provides upgrades like additional missiles and ammo for the Slow Beam. Additionally you can add some bling to your Blast Ball matches in Metroid Prime: Federation Force by scanning amiibo. Doing so allows you to add a custom paint job to your Mech.
No word on just what amiibo will be compatable, with only Mario and Bowser confirmed. Neither Metroid.com nor amiibo.com have any updated information regarding which amiibo will work with Metroid Prime: Federation Force.
Nintendo has unveiled the latest Splatoon Splatfest.
The choices for the latest Splatfest are “early bird” or “night own.” Which one will you choose? The early bird may get the worm, but the night owl gets like four more hours of sleep and who the heck wants a worm anyways?
You can vote right now in the Splatoon plaza for the next Splatfest: Early Birds vs. Night Owls. The showdown will start on June 24th at 9:00PM PT.
Nintendo announced three additions to the Wii U Virtual Console lineup on Thursday.
This Thursday, three Pokémon Mystery Dungeon titles come to the Wii U Virtual Console. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team from the Game Boy Advance, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team, and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky both originally Nintendo DS titles.
More Pokémon Virtual Console titles are planned for later this summer.
Publisher Sekai Project has released a new trailer for their upcoming visual novel Highway Blossoms to celebrate the game’s release this past Friday. Set in an old gold rush valley town located in the US, Highway Blossoms tells the story of the budding romance between Amber and the lost hitchhiker Marina.
In terms of features, Highway Blossoms features around six hours of gameplay, handpainted backgrounds rendered in 1080p, accessibility options and the ability to skip forward if you’ve already played the game. Sekai Project also promises additional “silly content” for players who chose to experience the story more than once.
Highway Blossoms can be purchased on Steam for $9.99 CDN.
Koihime Enbu is one of those games that surprised me, I was offered the chance to review it by the publisher Degica and honestly was planning on taking a pass until I saw some of the still images that went with its PR packet. I am a huge sucker for cute girls, and this game is full of them. So I booted it up. I was expecting sort of Tekken vibe, and was rewarded with a satisfying and easy to get in to fighter that does lack some depth but is still fun. There is a lot here to explore and with so many really great characters to play, each of which has a unique visual vibe. 13 Unique fighters make the game feel fresh and diverse.
Full disclaimer I am not an expert at fighting games, I lose to all of my friends regularly in Street fighter, Mortal Combat, and Soul Caliber, so I am literally the worst when it comes to skill at fighting games. This became important when I learned that this basically a non-technical fighting game. While you can do air combos, blocks, recoveries, and even reversals, this isn’t Street Fighter 5. Air combos are really important at higher levels but you can play with out using them and still do all right.
The basics are pretty standard fighter, the characters are all girls, who come from a VN with the same name in 2007. The art style is absolutely beautiful, the colors are bright the models are alive. the stages are diverse. I can easily recommend this game just from its amazing art style. Each girl has a unique weapon and they span from generic swords to a set of heart shaped hoops. There is a lot of diversity both in character models and environments. Each of the character models is technically 3d so you get some nice side effects as your characters move around and fight, but since they exist in 2D space these are more like hints of depth than any actual depth.
The game offers Story mode, arcade mode, vs, training, and online mode. I dove pretty heavily in to the Story mode, which is fully and beautifully voiced in Japanese with English subtitles. There is a story but like most fighting games, the story is mostly about something you no doubt will not care about at all. Primarily it serves as a beautiful rest and transition period between the fights. I cant say i was at all invested in the story, or that I even played the VN this game hearkens back to (I don’t even remember 2007). The story is mostly fluffy and I am reasonably sure that I absorbed none of it at all, but it was very well voiced and each in between segment took several minutes to watch.
Enbu is a 4-button fighting game with 3 core attack buttons (low, medium and high), and another button being used exclusively for throws. The throw button can only be used after you hit a stun, The games simple buttons are nice for people like me who are not really very good at fighters with complex control schemes. This control scheme mapped well to the Xbox controller I was using. Each of the three main buttons went to X, A and Y, and grab went to B. The layout felt pretty good, as my fingers spent most of the time pressing the two buttons on the left and bottom of the controller, and much less time on the right side, which for someone with small hands is harder to reach. The triggers are also used providing an easy press for multiple buttons. I thought it fit pretty well to use the Xbox controller even with its notoriously horrible design when it comes to fighting games. All of the buttons are mapable but I am not the type of person to spend any time remapping the buttons for comfort.
I spent the vast majority of my time in game watching the games amazing character models move and attack and just exist in the games bright vibrant world. I was sorely missing the standard fighting game tutorial, but honestly this game does all right with just button mashing and skin of the teeth reactions. I will never call myself a great player of fighting games, and anime fighting games tend to be even more specific in their needed buttons, thankfully this game does not have that problem. Combos and special moves are the same set of buttons for every character. While this made me quite happy, I think many harder core fighter fans will find this lack of diversity boring. I like it because you can move across all of the characters with very few problems. Super and special moves are all executed via a simple combo of buttons and assist calls are done with just a single button combo (half a circle and the throw button).
The game does lack the depth that you will get if your chosen fighter is say Street Fighter. But, for someone like me this is the perfect game to just jump in to and have fun with for a few hours. The game includes the necessary social and multiplayer modes. I dipped my foot in to them, got smacked in the face a bunch and decided it was not for me at all. However, if you like competitive online multiplayer, it does exist here. The one drawback of this being such a niche fighter is that since its launch the online community has taken quite a dip, and other outlets have reported that it can take over 10 minutes to find an online match.
If you see this game below its current price of $39.99 I would say pick it up. at 40USD I can’t recommend it unless you are a big fan of either anime fighters, or cute girls beating each other up, but if it was more like 30USD it would be an instant buy for me. Make your own decision on this one based off of how much you really like anime fighting games.
There wereabsolutely dozens upon dozens of booths with hundreds of interactive experiences for attendees to try. Fionna and I tried to see as many booths as we could and play as many games as humanly possible with only six hours of floor time per day. Here is a visual rundown of some of the 3rd party booths – so not Microsoft, Sony or other major console manufacturers – from both the North and South Hall.
Just outside of the South Hall cafeteria was a small multi-part booth for the recently released 10 Cloverfield Lane. If you read my review of the film when it hit theatres last Spring you’ll know that I absolutely love the franchise. The booth in South Hall was complete with a functional jukebox and board games that attendees could play. A little odd for a movie to have a booth at E3 but hey it works.
Near the back of the IndieCade booth in Sout Hall was a small game called _Transfer being demonstrated off of the main programmer’s laptop. This game has a sci-fi / cyberpunk feel and from the 10 minute demo that I played gave me the same kind of feelings that Analogue: A Hate Story gave him – memories and identity are at the core of this unique experience.
The folks from Kona were at E3 also at the IndieCade booth, unfortunately all I saw was their laptop with a wallpaper. No developers were on hand for my time at the Indiecade booth 🙁
A number of unique experiences were on offer at the IndieCade booth include a real life adventure game set in an 8 year old’s bedroom, indie titles like Inversus and it was one of the only spaces where people could sit together on an actual play together.
Natsume had a medium sized booth complete with an inflatable tree, Harvest Moon demo-stations and the chance for fans to get some awesome swag provided that they play all four titles available at the booth.
Rebellion showcased Sniper Elite 4 in a pretty sweet lounge.
Some general shots of both Halls, the crowd outside on Day 2 and other general areas of the convention.
Capcom went all out for their E3 experience: A dilapidated demo theatre for the stealth announcement of Resident Evil 7, A replica of the actual courtroom from the Ace Attorney franchise complete with fans shouting “OBJECTION!” and a playable demo of Dead Rising 4 being played alongside members of the Capcom Vancouver development team. Of course some of our collegues have found that playing Resident Evil 7 in VR can be a bit of a nightmare!
Square Enix brought a lot of stuff to E3 -their booth had several stations for Final Fantasy XV, Star Ocean V, Kingdom Hearts 2.8, Final Fantasy XII HDand more. It would have been easy to lose an entire day of E3 to the offerings at Square Enix’s booth alone. Don’t forget that Kingdom Hearts 2.8 includes new content not found in other games – if you missed the E3 trailer from a few days ago check it out here.
That’s it! The conclusion of our 2016 3rd party booth tour in pictures. Do you think that a number of the games announced at E3 will be successful? Let us know which booth from E3 was your favorite in the comments below.
Just to recap some of the biggest games we’ve seen so far at E3 2016: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Lawbreakers, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Resident Evil 7, Death Striding and Gravity Rush 2. AAA publishers like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo alongside smaller indie develoeprs brought their best games to this year’s E3 Expo!
