RipTen Videogame Blog » Sean Mitchuson

Global Agenda Guns Down Pay Model, No More Subscription Fees

Sean Mitchuson — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 03:54:15 +0000

Global Agenda, one of the few MMOFPS games on the market, started out with a fairly good business model. They offered a free mode for people who just wanted some casual action and for those that wanted to be a bit more competitive a pay model with some extra content, but as of Friday things have changed.

Now if you purchase the game (which as of this post is on sale on Steam) you will get access to everything without ever having to pay a subscription fee. Any future content though will be added through expansion packs as opposed to free patch upgrades.

I’m not sure if the game isn’t doing well or is just trying to pull in a few more users. I played the free trial from Steam that allows you to level to 15, and play a bit of PvP and PvE, and thought the game was good but not worth the subscription. So perhaps the developers realized the same thing. I wonder if the customers that had been paying get anything nice for the money they spent?

The full press release can be found below.

Single-Game Purchase Grants Access To All Current Content And Features Within Award-winning Shooter MMO

ATLANTA – June 25, 2010 – Hi-Rez Studios announced today that Global Agenda is now 100% subscription free.

Purchasers of Global Agenda can enjoy the game’s full current content, including all current Player-vs-Player combat, Player-vs-Environment solo and co-op content, and Agency-vs- Agency seasons, without a monthly subscription payment now or in the future.

Future content updates will be delivered via optional paid expansions. The first major expansion, Sandstorm, will be included for free to the entire Global Agenda community.

To celebrate this change, the game is being offered for 33% off on Steam from now through July 5, as part of Steam’s Summer Sale. To purchase, visit the Global Agenda Steam Page.

“Hi-Rez Studios is committed to delivering the best value in PC gaming”, said Todd Harris, Global Agenda Executive Producer. “In addition to including all of the game’s initial launch content for free inside the single-purchase price, we are bundling nearly 6 months worth of post-release content and features and including that within the single-purchase game. One purchase of Global Agenda lets you experience all of this content forever with no subscription.”

Global Agenda allows players to create and customize multiple agent characters, complementing FPS skills with accessible RPG-style progression. Players can co-op with friends online, compete in fast-paced multiplayer matches, and conquer persistent territory with player-formed groups called agencies. The large summer expansion, titled Sandstorm, adds weapon variation and loot, new epic weapons across every class and a brand new Open Zone area complete with quests and new missions. The first phase of Sandstorm was released in early June 2010, with the remaining phase to be released later this summer.

Try For Free – Players can download Global Agenda and play until level 15 with no payment or credit card required.

Buy Once – A single purchase enables you to play forever. Progress thru 50 character levels, access hundreds of weapons, and experience all current content and gametypes on our worldwide, hosted servers with no subscription required.

Play What Suits You – Global Agenda offers a wide range of content including solo and co-op PvE, Mercenary PvP, Agency-vs-Agency, Arena PvP and more.

For more information, a FAQ has been prepared to answer the commonly asked questions regarding this change.

DJ Hero Rocawear Fragrance Promotion: Smell Good Spinning

Sean Mitchuson — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:45:41 +0000

One of the biggest names in Hip Hop music and clothing; Jay-Z, is offering up a “Rockawear Mix Pack” for a fragrant price.

Purchase any Rocawear fragrance at a Wal-Mart location then log into the Rocawear.DJHero.com site and enter your access code to get the exclusive pack that features mixes of Jay-z and Eminem.

Here are some tag lines I thought up that they may want to consider for this promotion:

- Turning the tables never smelt so good!

- Smell good while looking goofy!

- Your DJ skills may stink, but you’ll smell great!

- Jay-Z got 99 problems, but his stank ain’t one!

- H to the Izzo, stop smellin’ like King Hippo!

25 Man Patchwerk Soloed By Persistent Rogue

Sean Mitchuson — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:19:20 +0000

I play WoW pretty much daily, and when I signed on today my guild had a new message of the day up. A YouTube link. Usually these are rick rolls or things of that sort, but I decided to go ahead and check it out anyway. Apparently a rogue by the name of Jiderdonna had soloed Patchwerk from Naxx25.

Now for reference this is a 13 million hit point boss, and there are still groups that wipe on him (somewhere). Rogue’s aren’t known for their tanking ability so I had to figure out exactly how he did it. Luckily he explains everything in his video description.

The gist of the thing is he “exploits” or “creatively uses game mechanics” to make Patchwerk walk a lot thus slowing combat, and also he never seems to pop his enrage, which is on a timer. He accomplishes his task by using a critter he can place that lets him shadowstep up into the pipe that leads to another boss causing Patchwerk to walk all the way there. He can do this as much as he wants while healing up and waiting for his Evasion ability to cool down. When Evasion is up he slowly tears away at the 13 million hit points.

This is quite a feat for a World of Warcraft player, but there’s one problem, at least to me. He bugs the enrage timer which feels a little like cheating. Clearly he isn’t supposed to solo Patchwerk, and the engrage timer is supposed to be for that along with making the instance “difficult” for players.

Cheers to the player overall though since he actually spent five hours just to take down a boss and get some of that internet fame.

The YouTube video below is sped up so you can watch the entire fight from beginning to end in just under 10 minutes. Enjoy.

Ripten Review: Resonance of Fate

Sean Mitchuson — Mon, 17 May 2010 21:14:01 +0000

I decided I’d take up the task of playing and telling you fine folks about the game Resonance of Fate, released by Tri Ace and Sega. I haven’t played one of their games since Vagrant Story so I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d be in for. I knew it was a JRPG and that doesn’t usually bother me, but this game didn’t set well with me. Perhaps it was me, perhaps it was the game, but we never got that close intimacy I have with other games from this genre.

Firstly, the cinematics are beautiful. I loved the look of the game from the start. I also just recently purchased an HDTV which made everything look amazing. Without revealing much about the story, Japanese game developers seem to really be on a Christianity kick again as of late. This has happened before and it will happen again. I’m not sure what really fascinates them with this, perhaps since it is something different, either way we get a lot of imagery followed by violence.

There’s a second opening sequence which appears to have nothing to do with the first. We see a city and a girl that is jumping to her death only to be “rescued” by what I can only assume is another character. It’s also really pretty but it’s left open ended and we move on to our story.

I’m going to list game play as something separate from combat because I feel that it needs to be expressed. The game play to this game really rubbed me the wrong way. You start off outside your house (or whatever it is) and someone stops you. He tells you some stuff in passing and then you really can’t do anything but do what he said, but yet he explained it all to you as if you already knew what was going on, he just wanted to make sure you knew. You get missions from a guild from another wonderful NPC that likes to “remind” you of how things work like hexes, and missions, and where you should probably go for the first mission- even though you knew that already, right?

I’m really trying to not complain but I don’t enjoy having a game “force” me to do certain things from the start. I know you might be confused if they don’t, but usually developers find a way to do this without leading you around like a lost pup.

As you play you’ll get to a world map which you unlock by collecting hexes and placing them on the map. I thought this was a good idea but at the rate in which I got hexes it got annoying quick. I’m sure I was probably doing something wrong because I was already angry at having to listen to NPCs babysit me. Similarly the ‘gun crafting’ feature is an interesting idea but something I thought was a little silly. Maybe I’m just not getting the full grasp of how it’s done, but I’m not putting a lot of time into it.

Let’s move on to combat, the bread and butter of the game. You use firearms in this game as opposed to swords and shields which is a nice change. I was interested to see how they would create a new combat system because if you’re using a firearm you don’t want to stand still. This is solved with movement during battle- very cool! There is even movement and shooting together. My first problem, however, was jumping into the game without doing the tutorial. I highly recommend you don’t do this. If you want to have any idea of how to do things well in this game, go to the tutorial. Do them all, and pay attention to what it wants you to do. You’ll learn about hero attacks, changing ammo, triple attacks, and so on. All very helpful skills that will make the game go much faster. It’s just not a game to pick up and play, and requires a big investment of time and energy.

The story so far has been entertaining to say the least, but I like JRPGs so I’m probably a little biased here. I will be honest, I haven’t quite finished the game yet so don’t take my review as a full scope of the game, and I’m not going to comment on anything in the story in particular because I’m not one that likes to give out spoilers. If you want to know what happens, play the game or look it up. Having said all this, I did feel that the overbearing NPCs and slightly nonsensical story did detract from the experience.

Overall I thought the execution was done well and it is full of new ideas. That being said I can’t seem to stay focused on the game. This isn’t to say it’s a bad game or anything of the sort. It probably speaks more of my age and lack of time to sit down and stare at a screen for countless hours doing the same thing over and over. Don’t let this deter you from playing this game. I actually encourage you to play this game if you have thought about trying it out, especially if you are a fan of the excellent Vagrant Story. It is a very interesting change on the standard JRPG idea and it is one worth taking note of.

Ripten Review: Torchlight

Sean Mitchuson — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 02:20:56 +0000

Torchlight came out about a month or two ago and I just couldn’t see the point of spending 20 dollars to play a single player Diablo clone. Thanks to the holiday sale from Steam I was able to pick this up for a very meager price and give it my once over.

Torchlight is pretty cut and dry. You are the hired gun hero trying to help save the day! Monsters are attacking the wonderful city of unimportantville and you need to get out there, make a name for yourself and dispense with the carnage. Along with your good deed of saving the kind people comes gold, riches, and treasure beyond your wildest dreams.

You start your adventures at one of the three classes in game. Destroyer is your barbarian hulk smash type. Vanquisher is your agile marksman who would rather kill from afar then get too “in the thick of things”. Lastly, is alchemist which is your magic user. You’ll notice right off that all classes are basically made to pump out damage and there aren’t specific “team” roles in the game. It’s single player so who wants to go a whole game as a support class, alone. You can of course customize any of the classes through use of many different types of weapons, armor, skill points, and skills (even scroll skills).

The game is made by a lot of people that had a lot to do with Diablo so combat is pretty much that. You see the monster you click it until it dies. I enjoy the full 3d experience in this game compared to the older Diablo II which wouldn’t really do that at the time. It’s all you and your pet the whole game through.

The pet is a godsend. They sort of took queues from Dungeon Siege on this one. You get a pet that can carry stuff for you when your own inventory fills up. The best part is you can give them all the junk you just want gold for and send them to town, to get you some money and come back They also fight for you and you can give them certain items to buff their stat’s similar to a mercenary in Diablo II.

Story. So far I haven’t gotten too deep into the story, I’ve been enjoying just killing as much as possible as fast as possible. There is almost too much to do in this game when you break it down into all of it’s parts. It’s kept me entertained for many countless hours thus far and I expect it to continue to do so.

There are some new idea’s popping up in this game that I really like. One of which being the skill scrolls. You either find or buy scrolls with special skills on them that you can use on a cool down. For instance I have one you get from a mission that lets you summon uncontrollable zombies to attack your enemies. That’s a nice touch. I get to really break up the standard click and die and add in some different stuff whenever I’m feeling a bit froggy.

Modding is a big part of the player community now. There are mods for everything and people are cooking up more and more. I see idea’s for new player classes all the time, and yes, someone is supposed to be making a multiplayer mod but it’s all done by players so they sort of have a “use at your own risk” to them.

The company stated that the reason this game was released like it was, is to drum up support to see if an MMO is a good idea, and to build on the history and story of that MMO should the idea be green lighted. I can’t say for sure, but honestly I think it looks pretty good that this MMO will probably get made, but honestly I think computer gaming needs to lay off MMO’ing for a little while. There are too many out there because of the craze that World of Warcraft brought the world.

It’s a clone of a very popular game, sure, but it does it well. I love playing this every time I load it up. The art is beautiful, the music is very zone appropriate, and the classes are fun. That being said, if it just had multiplayer of some sort it would have been a 10 in my eyes.

New NES Game ‘Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril’ Brings The Latest In Mega Man & Metroid Retro Technology

Sean Mitchuson — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 02:09:42 +0000

I had an Atari when I was a kid, but I didn’t really become a gamer until I got an NES. I played a ton of games on there, and thanks to Virtual Console I can be easily reminded how hard some of those games were. Sivak Games is bringing back that feeling of anger and self hate with Battle Kid.

It’s basically Mega Man, with a spatter of Metroid looking monsters to me. I don’t have a demo of the game to give it a try but I’m told soon you can pick up your own cart at RetroZone. To be honest though, I am terrible at Mega Man, which mean’s I’m probably even worse at Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril. If you were the kid on your block that knew exactly where to jump and when, then you may want to pick this up. You’ll find the video below awakening memories of sore thumbs and light depression.

Source: GameSpy

China Central Television: Videogames Are Bad, MMMkay?

Sean Mitchuson — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 01:28:42 +0000

Full of violence, suggestive situations, language, and anything else bad you can think of video games have always been a target to blame when people do bad things. Recently China Central Television (CCTV), which is China’s state run news network, aired part two of a show called “Confessions of a Murderer — Focus on Pornography and Violence in Online Games (Part Two).

This isn’t the first time that China in all it’s wisdom has decided that online gaming is ruining all the people in the world, and they even cite examples of a man that clearly decided he should kill multiple people and himself, because he played violent video games. The man is serving a life sentence for killing the people all to get goods in a virtual game. The show claims that 80 percent of the criminals in a specific prison had all committed their crimes because of online gaming.

Other programs on CCTV have pointed the finger at other video games for causing such a degrade in society, such as an online dancing game “Audition” leading to a young girl having one night stands and abortions because of said interactions with people she met online.

The Chinese government has been locking down how much violence and pornography their citizen’s can get to. You may remember that World of Warcraft has had a rather difficult time keeping it’s servers active in the country due to issues with certain imagery in game.

The government of China wants to lower the amount of mindless gaming there is in the country. As a broad statement I can get behind that. I’d rather not have a bunch of games that are full of pointless objectives or have violence just to have violence. I don’t agree with the strong arming the government is using to accomplish this task. In my mind it is always up to the parents to pay attention and show interest in what their kids are doing, no matter where you live, what culture you have, or anything else. You brought that child into the world, raise them. Don’t let the television and the newest console do your job for you. That’s just my little rant on the issue.

Source: Computer World

Dead or Alive Comes to the PSP

Sean Mitchuson — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:01:25 +0000

The ladies of Dead or Alive are back with a brand new edition(sorry had to do it). They head to the beach one more time, only in a more portable sense on the PSP.

It doesn’t look as though they are changing the formula that has worked so well for two beach games on the xbox 360. There’s a camera mode to take photos of your favorite girl, and of course mini games a plenty. The three major spots are still there; the beach, the pool, and the casino. And the main attraction to the game is of course in tact; swimsuits.

There is no news on the Famitsu site that lists exactly how many suits there will be in this installment nor if this is really just a port of one of the two xbox games. For anyone that wants to keep up with the collection you might as well grab this. Sadly I can’t give a review of this game though the last time I tried to play one of the Xtreme Volleyball titles I never made it very far.

Game is apparently comes out in April of 2010, I honestly would be shocked if it didn’t come over here. I don’t know how well sales will go over though because I for one would be a little embarrassed to be sitting on a train while looking at a screen full of girls in bikini’s getting wet and making awkward noises. Though with games like Queen’s Blade on the PSP already this is really tame in comparison.

Source: Famitsu

Magna Carta II for 360: Great Graphics, Confusing Title

Sean Mitchuson — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:21:51 +0000

The Magna Carta is a pretty important historical document. It’s also a Japanese RPG. A sequel is being released for the Xbox 360 and still has me asking the question. What does this game have to do with the Magna Carta?

Magna Carta, from what I understand, is an RPG based in a fantasy world that has nothing to do with the real English Magna Carta of 1215. I have never played the game, but it has a rhythm based combat system, which will return in this sequel. The graphics for the new game will be updated from the original and from what screenshots over at Famitsu, it should at least be pretty to look at.

The basic rundown of the story is that society is slowly rebuilding itself to its former glory one-thousand years after a huge war. However, new wars are popping up after the assassination of a queen. The game also seems to feature a wolf man of sorts, and of course as is standard in Japanese RPGs, there’s lots of pretty girl characters who’s armor rating is inverse to the amount of armor they’re actually wearing.

Apparently the first game did really well in Korea, and they are probably trying to market to that demographic again. Magna Carta is scheduled to release around August 2009, so keep your eyes open in Korea…

Source: Famitsu

Final Fantasy VII available on Playstation Store

Sean Mitchuson — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:53:06 +0000

Famitsu reports that on April 10th (today) you can enjoy Final Fantasy VII on the PS3 for a small download fee.

It will run you about $15 US, but it is the Final Fantasy VII International edition and is downloadable through the PlayStation Store, which is pretty cool. So for those of you that haven’t played it yet, you might need to get a Playstation Network Japan account. At least you won’t need to change discs.

Source: Famitsu

Queen’s Blade PSP Brings Sexy Back to Fighting

Sean Mitchuson — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:16:14 +0000

To coincide with the newly released anime for Queen’s Blade, a slightly erotic fantasy manga, the company is releasing a fighter RPG game to give fans what they want – more service!

Coming out on April 3rd for the PSP, Queen’s Blade is a unit based game with a 2d side fighter to keep the action more interesting. There isn’t much info on the battle system other than what is listed simply as “damage.” As you fight you apparently have choice opportunities to destroy the “armor” of your opponent, but sometimes the “armor” is a maid outfit or some such.

If you do succeed in causing such damage to your enemy, you get a wonderful little fan service screen shot of the character you are fighting. The RPG element sees your units get stronger as they win matches and don’t get their clothes stripped off.

Famitsu doesn’t show us much, but I am somewhat familiar with this anime and I am willing to bet it gets a lot more risqué than the screenshots at the source.

Don’t expect this one to come state side, so if you’re interested I highly suggest you import it.

Source: Famitsu

More Pretty Screens From Final Fantasy XIII

Sean Mitchuson — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:15:06 +0000

I am a little late getting to this since I have turned off the Internet at my house, but looks like Square Enix has released some new (a month ago, but if you haven’t seen them yet…) shots to get you all excited or upset at the latest Final Fantasy installment.

No real information comes with the screenshots, just names of characters and that is about it. Hope you like looking at pictures, cause that is about all the info there is. That gun the girl is carrying is pretty cool looking though.

Check them out over at Famitsu.

PSP Review — Final Fantasy: Dissidia

Sean Mitchuson — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:15:02 +0000

I decided after getting my Japanese stimulus check that I should use it for something good, like video games. I chose to pick up another new PSP and the games Final Fantasy: Dissidia, and another secret game that I will review at another time. Dissidia turned out to be more than I thought it was, which was great. The game looks beautiful, plays pretty well, has a mediocre story, and lots of extras to keep the player interested.

The Basics

Dissidia lets you control one of ten characters from the first ten Final Fantasy games. Some are main characters and some are not. There are a couple secret characters as well but I won’t be dropping any hints and ruining it, so if you wanna know who they are, sorry! As you complete the game you can unlock the ability to play the bad guys that are also a big part of the game. All in all, though, there are 22 characters to choose from, so it’s a pretty decent selection.

The story is a pretty standard affair. Good, evil, crystals, and fighting. There really isn’t too much to say about it, it’s really just there to keep the game rolling instead of moving constantly from fight to fight for no reason.

The Fighting

The battle system in Dissidia is very action orientated. This is very different from the RPG games that the characters involved in the game are used to, but if you have played Kingdom Hearts or Crisis Core you will pick up on the combat really quick. Combat can become repetitive if you just feel like winning as opposed to trying different things with your character.

As you level up you unlock and master abilities. You can completely change the play style of each character from how they act when you start with them, but it takes so long to get into the interesting abilities, you have already programmed you’re muscle memory to a certain play style so it may make you feel weaker to change it up a lot.

Each character has two modes in battle. One is your regular look which you will see most often. As you beat on your opponent, though, they lose small crystal flashes or something which you collect to fill your EX gauge. When that gauge fills, you can go into “EX mode” which is a buffed version of your character with a different outfit (which is usually a lot flashier). Also, your special attacks get much more interesting in this mode.

Square really thought about its fans with the EX attack. Each character has their own cut scene-style special attack — you participate in this attack which reminds me of the limit break attacks. You either do a combination button press, or a button mash, etc. to try and get a perfect attack. Those of us that aren’t very good at these sorts of situations, have no fear — there is an ability the characters learn at later levels that does this automatically for you, but as another neat little thing thrown in by Square, until you master the ability, the character can screw up the limit break.

You also get the ability to equip armor and weapons on the characters along with rings that make the character stronger throughout the game. Something I didn’t like about this was nothing changes on the character when you equip new stuff. Something I really liked in FF7 and beyond was seeing a new weapon in the characters hands when I upgraded, not a big deal but it would have been nice to see.

The characters to me are very unbalanced. This is honestly not a con to me. It just means that I will have an unfair advantage against some characters and others will have an unfair advantage against me. This may ruin the multiplayer mode for a lot of people, but really that mode isn’t the point of the game or even really focused. It does make the story mode annoying sometimes when you get stuck on a character that you aren’t good against and they just mash you into the ground for hours at at time.

Some characters are able to easily tear through the game. Onion Knight, for instance, has moves that really don’t require you to get near the enemy if you don’t feel like it, thus winning every match for you easily. Characters like Squall and Cloud seem really weakened and are expected to get in rather close to fight their opponents. Their specials are nice, but working up the combo takes a lot of work. The characters can level up to 99 which I thought would take a very very long time. Luckily, as you level the stuff the character can do scales up so you are always gaining large amounts of experience for them. I took Warrior of Light from level 45 to 89 in about two hours on a lazy Saturday.

Graphics, Music, and Other

The graphics are superb in this game. Models look a little sharp and jagged but as this is a PSP game, this is to be expected. Otherwise the game has very well done cut-scenes and character design in general is rather pretty. The music is all songs taken from the games and some wonderful vocal tracks for important boss battles. Honestly, though, if I have to hear that choir sing about Sephiroth one more time I’ll probably smash the game.

The main point of the game, it seems, is to play until you unlock everything. One of the first things you do when you start the game is tell it what day you will play the most often and how often in general you will play. This will help you get through the game faster and help you unlock more items in the catalog.

The PP catalog is where you unlock all of the goodies that come with the game after you finish the story mode. You can unlock all the “evil” characters to play with them in quick battles, unlock items for the calendar, unlock icons to decorate your multiplayer card, etc. There is a ton of things to unlock, and of course after you unlock a bunch of different things, you unlock the ability to unlock more stuff, so you need to play the game more to pay for the rest of the stuff.

All in all this is a really good game. It is a bit repetitive, though. You fight the same battles over and over for ten stories with five chapters each. I think the average amount of fights per “chapter” is around five so that is 25 fights a story, at 10 basic stories that is 250 fights. Those ten stories, though, aren’t the end of the game, and you have a few more modes to go through to clear all the fights. To even begin to unlock everything, you better be ready to play well more than 1000 matches.

On the Ripten scale I give this an 8. It’s easy to pick up and play whenever, and you get a lot of fan appreciation. It can get boring, but it is just a fighting game, the only reason there is a story seems only to force you into taking a break every few minutes.

Phoenix Wright Special DSi To Be Released in May in Japan

Sean Mitchuson — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:05:40 +0000

The very popular lawyer series for Nintendo DS, Phoenix Wright, will release a special design DSi to go along with the new software.

Hitting the streets on May 28th for around 240 US dollars, you can get the white DSi with Taihokun logo. Nintendo and the companies releasing games with these special edition DSi’s really need to get on the ball and release these in places other than Japan.

Source: Famitsu

Monster Hunter Frontier: Another Year Without Release In The U.S.

Sean Mitchuson — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:57:47 +0000

Today marks the start of the annual quest in Monster Hunter Frontier, the MMORPG released by Capcom of the very popular action game. Japan eats up everything Monster Hunter, whereas the die hard fans in America and other parts of the world have to do without for some reason.

The quest which starts today and ends on March 4th is specific to one monster’s “breeding season” as they say and will probably lead to many new and old hunters coming in to cause this beast as much trouble as possible.

There are annual quests related to the monster for all Hunter Ranks, but those in the 100′s and up will probably get the most out of the whole thing. Readers in Japan: get your hunt on. You might even see me out there.

Source: Famitsu

Dragon Quest IX Has Wi-Fi Shopping

Sean Mitchuson — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:26:09 +0000

The newest bit of info to be listed over at Famitsu says that with the Wi-fi connection you can go shopping for items online. This is an interesting idea and allows for a lot of modification on the server side. The game may not be coming out for another five months almost but the info keeps on a flowin’.

Every piece of news that comes out for this game makes waiting for July that much harder. When the news came out that you could interact with other people over Wi-fi I was happy that they were using the abilities of the DS but upset that there really wasn’t a reason to do it other than to say hi to people on your DS, and show off what you have done.

Now that you can go shopping this adds another level to even connecting with people. The news states that you should probably access the online shop each day because items will be on rotations and new items will appear in the shop. You should also connect with friends and shop at their store because they might not have the same set of items that you do, causing massive amounts of people to be bouncing between all their friends stores.

If that isn’t enough to get you excited there are still two more little tidbits. The first being that there will more than likely be holiday related items in the stores to buy for your character. Christmas and probably New Year’s being the big ones at first. The second bit is that they are also adding downloadable quests like the Monster Hunter series has had for a while. This should really boost replayability of this title.

Source: Famitsu

Star Ocean 4 Makes Big Sales on 360

Sean Mitchuson — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:35:02 +0000

Star Ocean 4 released on the Xbox 360 in Japan has hit the list of one of the best selling games for the system in Japan. Sitting high with Blue Dragon and Tales of Vespia. It seems as though Japanese RPG’s are the way to 360 sales in Japan.

The Square Enix game went on sale on February 19th and has been selling nonstop ever since. The numbers listed so far put it at around 166,000 copies sold since that date. Blue Dragon selling 203,000 and Tales at around 170,000.

Those are some really decent sales numbers, and even though some skeptics say the 360 will never do well in Asia, it seems they really just need to make sure to release games that are popular for that area. Someone should tell Microsoft that not everyone likes Halo.

Source: Famitsu

Dragon Quest IX Lets You Connect to Gloat

Sean Mitchuson — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:38:34 +0000

Square Enix’s latest in the Dragon Quest series (coming to the DS on March 28th in Japan), is all the talk. Pre-orders are rampant at local 7-11′s and you see more and more people with slime toys every day. A new feature that is being added uses the Nintendo WiFi technology to let you discuss the game with other people and gloat through your DS.

The article over at Famitsu really doesn’t go too deep into the information, but basically you meet other players that are playing Dragon Quest at a certain Inn, kind of like you would bump into new and interesting people at a hostel while traveling around. These people have all setup a profile (hopefully) that shares a bit of info about themselves and maybe what they like about the game. You can also see all the neat things they have done in-game and compare your advancement.

There seems to be a small chat function and the ability to possibly add friends. So basically this is just like MySpace for your Dragon Quest character. I guess that’s pretty neat. Hopefully some more info about what else this game can do with Nintendo WiFi will surface, but maybe I am being optimistic.

Source: Famitsu

Slime Speaker for DS On Sale in March

Sean Mitchuson — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:15:34 +0000

Any Dragon Quest fan knows exactly what I am talking about when I say the word slime. The blob from the famous game series has been released as a plush toy many times over, now it’s getting a tech upgrade.
Famitsu reports that these new stereo speakers will go on sale on March 28th and retail for around 48 USD. The speaker is rather large and also includes a stand to hold your DS while you play. It seems a bit big though and might just get in the way more than anything.

I assume this is for the really die hard Dragon Quest fans, which I know plenty of. I’ll stick with headphones myself, but if you are so inclined to have a speaker that doubles as a stand for your DS, try and find yourself one of these.

Source: Famitsu

Dragon Quest XI Delayed People Not Shocked

Sean Mitchuson — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:22:15 +0000

I wrote up information on Dragon Quest XI just this morning, only to come home from work and find out it’s been delayed.

That March 28th release date has been moved back about four months to July 11th. I, along with most of the Square Enix fan base aren’t surprised. The company is usually known for missing their release dates or just in general taking much longer than most other companies to release their games.

Rumors on the reason for the delay abound on the net, ranging from flaws in the game to accounting issues. No matter what the reason, we still have to wait till July.

You have to admit though that after the title is released it’ll still look pretty. I still expect this to be another great game. I just don’t like waiting so long.
Source: Famitsu