This may have already been posted on the Shattered Lens, and I apologize if that’s the case (did a search, didn’t see anything on it).
Eidos and Rocksteady are almost ready to bring us the next chapter in their hit Batman: Arkham Asylum with Arkham City, due out this October. With a wider playing around and a bigger story, it’s expected to be a hit. This preview showcases Catwoman as a playable character, along with some of the updates in the gameplay overall. It’s looking very good.
Today marks the end of E3 for 2011 and I have chosen one of the best intro music for any game ever created. The previous two songs chosen were from Bethesda role-playing games and while I stick to the same game genre I’ve moved onto who I consider the best RPG developers currently working today. The latest “Song of the Day” is by music composer Jack Wall and is the “Main Theme” to that oft-overlooked, but a classic rpg nonetheless, Jade Empire.
The “Jade Empire Main Theme” just hints at the epic that would become the Jade Empire story. Jack Wall does a great job of not just sticking to the usual classical European orchestral sound. He brings in traditional Asian musical instruments from throughout Chinese history. He even brings in some Japanese taiko drums to give this theme just a touch of that martial sound. This main theme really highlights the Asian themes and influences BioWare used to create the fictional realm that Jade Empire takes place. The way the music plays out it wouldn’t be too farfetched to hear it scoring an Ang Lee or Zhang Yimou wuxia epic.
Jade Empire is one of those games, despite having not as big a following as some of the bigger and more popular rpg franchises, whose fans are very vocal about their love not just for the game but for the soundtrack which I consider one of the best soundtracks ever composer for a video game.
Asura’s Wrath is a title by Capcom and developer CyberConnect2 and first made it’s appearance at E3 2010. It’s actually a title that has flown way below my radar when it comes to interesting games coming up in the forseeable future. It’s a good thing that Capcom brought it to this year’s E3 once more and showed more details about what the g ame is really about and some of it’s core gameplay.
Let’s just say that from the trailer this game looks to be one over-the-top of an action game that reminds me of the SEGA/Platinum Games title Bayonetta. More people seem to compare this game both aesthetically and spiritually to the Sony God of War franchise and they wouldn’t be wrong. Asura’s Wrath really ends up being a mash-up of both those series with a sci-fi helping from Too Human.
The art design for the game looks beautiful. Looks like developer CyberConnect2 decided to go for the 3D cel-shading that looks quite similar to Capcom’s own look for the recent Street Fighter IV. The game is not flat and actually has depth to all the scenes, but the flat-look of the cel-shading really gives this game a unique look that’s quite uncommon in gaming of this latest generation.
Asura’s Wrath doesn’t have a set release date, but all points to sometime around 2012 (hopefully)
Namco Bandai is less than 6 months away from releasing the next entry in their long-running and critically-acclaimed arcade combat flight simulator series Ace Combat. This upcoming entry will simple be called Ace Combat: Assault Horizon.
They’ve released a story trailer just in time for this year’s E3 and anyone who has been a fan of the franchise should be very excited about this upcoming game. It looks like new types of gameplay has been added to the tried-and-true fixed-wing aerial combat. Players can now get behind the controls of attack helicopters and even AC-130 gunships. The in-game graphics (used in the trailer itself) looks to have made some major improvements from the last title in the series. If I’m looking at the trailer correctly it looks like pretty much everything a player sees on the screen is destructible whether it’s an enemy vehicle or just a decorative fountain in some African warlord’s palace.
This series has always been good at delivering an extensive and exhaustive single-player campaign. Multiplayer has always been hit-or-miss. The last game in the series made some serious in-roads into multiplayer. Now that this next title will be released not just for the Xbox 360 and it’s Xbox LIVE on-line component, but for the PS3 and it’s counterpart in the PSN, there should be some expectations of a hefty on-line multiplayer component.
Ace Combat: Assault Horizon will have a release date of October 11, 2011 for North America and October 14, 2011 for Europe.
The next E3 2011 Edition of the “Song of the Day” is the intro and main theme to the follow-up game to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. This song is called “Reign of the Septims” and it sets the epicness of what was, and is, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
“Reign of the Septims” actually sounds similar in certain areas to the Morrowind intro of “Nerevar Rising”. Where this intro differs is how it’s less about hope (a term and emotion that Lisa Marie mentioned she felt listening to the previous song) but about rising up to take one’s destiny and become the leader the game’s storyline requires of the player. There’s a certain martial aspect to the song which could be heard in the brass section and strings working in concert right in the beginning and throughout most of the song until they begin to fade to give “Reign of the Septims” a simpler and more mellow ending.
I really can’t imagine any future games in this series having its soundtrack being composed by anyone other than Jeremy Soule. It’s a good thing that he will be on hand for the next game, Skyrim, and from what I’ve heard of the initial theme to that game it’s a nice progression from the intro for both Morrowind and Oblivion.
Just a little under four months ago the announcement trailer for the Techland and Deep Silver zombie survival horror title, Dead Island, premiered to much acclaim. The trailer was like a short film and really tugged at the emotions of those who saw it for the first time. The trailer itself didn’t show what the game was all about other than a paradise resort becoming the setting for a zombie survival horror game with open-world gameplay.
A couple more trailers using gameplay scenes came out since then, but it’s now E3 and gamers want more info on just how the game plays. Techland and Deep Silver didn’t disappoint. In addition to a new trailer made exclusively for this year’s E3, the game also was available in demo form for attendees to check out and play. The two-part video below is one such example of someone playing the demo.
From what I could tell from the gameplay demo this game seems to be a much more serious version of the campy and over-the-top Capcom zombie horror title Dead Rising. Weapons seem to be mostly melee types like machete, knives, steel bars and such with the random rifles and pistols to be found during the game. Dead Island looks great from what I could see from the demo. Hopefully, more details about the gameplay and the co-op multiplayer will be released between E3 and the game’s release.
Dead Island is set for a September 6, 2011 for the U.S. and September 9, 2011 for the rest of the world.
This year’s E3 wouldn’t be the same if the folks from Team Ninja (though one that’s somewhat not as awesome with it’s rockstar leader Itagaki Tomonobu having left the studio) didn’t release more cool stuff about the latest and third entry in their Ninja Gaiden action-adventure franchise.
Ninja Gaiden 3 returns with it’s iconic ninja-hero, Ryu Hayabusa, and more blood and severed limbs that a gamer can shake a Wiimote at. The series has always been about extreme violence and always been known to cater to the hardcore of the hardcore gamers out there. The Ninja Gaiden series never catered to the newbie gamer. They even had a hilarious way to help out gamers who could never master the game by creating an “easy” difficulty level simply called “Ninja Dog”. Team Ninja’s newest lead designer, Yosuke Hayashi, mentioned that this latest game will not have it’s difficulty level toned down for the casual gamers out there who will have some major difficulties getting past the game.
That’s the good news in addition to how the game just looks gorgeous (like all past games in the series), but one thing shown at this week’s E3 really dampened my excitement for this third entry: inclusion of QTE (Quick Time Events) where a player presses a series of buttons to accomplish an event. QTE’s I consider as part of the “pussification of hardcore action games” and games like those in the God of War series (which I love but could’ve loved even more if they got rid of the QTEs) rely heavily on such gameplay mechanics.
Ninja Gaiden 3 should be about testing a gamer’s skill and not how fast they can press a combo of buttons shown on the screen to finish an event. Other than that disappointing news most of the announcements by Team Ninja about this title still will have me dropping some cash to buy and play it. Here’s to hoping that Team Ninja doesn’t drop a ton of QTEs in this game. No amount of severed limbs and bodies or lakes of hot, steaming blood would be enough to balance out a ton of QTE’s in a game that never needed them.
This was one title that caught me by surprise this week as this year’s E3 continues to roll on through. The Brothers in Arms WWII tactical-action series was never one which I really got into, but when I did play them they were enjoyable enough that I wasn’t disappointed. I think part of it comes from the fact I’m not very good in tactical shooters where I have to give orders to team members.
This latest offering in the series by Gearbox Software and Ubisoft looks to keep the series in its ubiquitous World War 2 setting. The major change seems to be in the tone of the game. Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 — from the look of the debut trailer — looks to lighten up the story and I got a major Inglourious Basterds-vibe from that trailer. This may not sit well with the hardcore fans of the series, but with so many action shooters already in the market both Ubisoft and Gearbox Software needed to change things up in a radical way and this “grindhouse” tone may just be what the franchise needed. I will admit that the trailer gave the title a much fun and over-the-top feel and that’s always a good thing.
Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 still hasn’t been given a release date.
Even though Monday had several E3 Press Conferences by the industry giants like Microsoft, Sony, EA and Activision, in reality E3 didn’t really begin until today. So, starting today I’ll post one song a day of some of my favorite intro music from some of my favorite video games through the years. The first song will close off today’s E3 coverage and comes from the game which got me hooked on The Elder Scrolls rpg franchise.
The latest “Song of the Day” is from the third game in the TES series called Morrowind. The song is the main theme for the song and it’s title is “Nerevar Rising”. This track, like all of the music in the Morrowind soundtrack, was composed and arranged by Jeremy Soule who has become one of the top composers of music for the video game industry. I just love how this song begins with the deep drum beats which then fades into the background as woodwinds and strings come in gently. By the one-third mark of the song even more strings arrive in the form of violins. It’s when the song hits the halfway mark when percussion comes back to the forefront to join woodwinds and strings to combine and create an epic sound worthy of a fantasy epic adventure about to begin.
I still listen to this intro whenever the urge hits me and it still raises the hairs on my arms and shivers up my spine at just how epic it sounds. As an added bonus the song makes a reappearance in the end of the game once the player has achieved his goal and finished the game. It’s pretty much the same music but with some added sections.
One of the titles which I look forward to losing several hundreds of hours playing is the fifth entry in Bethesda Game Studios The Elder Scrolls role-playing game franchise: Skyrim.
I’m proud to say that the previous game in the series I had spent nearly a total of 1500+ hours playing using several created characters over a span of 6 years. I would say that 3/5 of that total time was played within 6 months of buying Oblivion. The developers of Skyrim are promising fans of the series no less than 300+ hours of gameplay (though they didn’t specify if that means just the main storyline or also includes side quests and such) so that’s a comfort to hear.
This role-playing game series has always been known for it’s very expansive and complex world which allows it’s player to roam it’s confines however they want. It’s this open-world gameplay dynamic which makes this game and the series, in general, such a favorite with gamers worldwide.
Lead designer for Bethesda, Todd Howard, gave G4TV an in-depth look at Skyrim. The videos you’re about to watch has Howard showing the extreme and beautiful detail rendered by the game’s new graphics engine in the Creation Engine. He also shows just how some of the changes in combat, skill leveling and the type of creatures the player will end up fighting makes this latest entry in The Elder Scrolls series the best to date.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has a set release date of November 11, 2011.
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