Earthlock: Festival of Magic get funded

A a little Kickstarter title we've been following here, has reached it's funding goal and its first stretch goal and is quickly approaching it's second.



The title first popped up last Christmas last year as a Wii U exclusive but sadly didn't get funded but it came back at a far less cash busy time and added a host of other systems. With 13 hours to go the Norway based developers have reached their funding level and reached their first stretch goal of adding an post end game mega boss. their next stretch goal will add a full orchestrated sound track, Which would be nice.

The world of Umbra is "locked" and doesn't rotate. one side lives in darkness the other blinding light

The game itself is a non-linear JRPG with Harvest Moon style "ammo" harvesting. Here is the teams own feature list from their Kickstarter page

• Rich, non-linear story 
• Turn-based combat (No Active Time Battle) 
• Combat pairs (Allows more variations to your battle team) 
• Grow your own ammunition (Organic crafting) 
• Build and improve your home base 
• Environmental Puzzles 
• Gorgeous overworld with a retro feel 
• No random encounters (Monsters visible at all times) 
• Play as Male or Female protagonist (You can switch at any time)

Thanks to a misunderstanding in the office this is now a thing 

Abe's Take
Festival of Magic has been a game I have been eager to get hold of for some time. At first it was because the Wii U is in a dire need of RPGS but soon I found myself just wanting the game. in fact in fear of this promising title failing a second time, I helped fund this.

SURPRISE Nintendo Direct

Well that was sneaky. Nintendo ninja delivered a new Direct video today, Announcing Tomodachi Life will be heading to the west.



What is Tomodachi Life? well it's a little hard to explain it's a little like a mixture of Animal Crossing and the Sims with a massive heap of lunatic Anime Soap Opera weirdness. However that would do the game a disservice, watching the direct should help you understand the weirdness.

The game uses the same sort of vocaliod tech that power Hatsune Miku the Japanese virtual pop star, which allows the game "speak" text, in practice what this means is that things like your name and catch phrases will be included in the audio.

The game hits 6th of June in both eShop and Retail.

Abe's Take
I've know of the Tomodachi games but have nether really seen them. So it's never really been on my radar but after seeing the bizare antics I now NEED this game.

Nintendo Trademarks S.T.E.A.M.

Right i'm sure this might get confusing as people talk about this and people over hearing it will have all sorts of questions. 

Nintendo has filled for a new trademark in America. S.T.E.A.M. or Strike Team Eliminating the Alien Menace as it is also know as has no additional infomation or even a logo. Nintendo as previously trademarked Eternal Darkness and Zii but those was holding on to and protecting their IP's. This doesn't seem like that kind of trademarking, There isn't a S.T.E.A.M. game to our knowledge and is awfully precise of a title to be "just covering bases" so keep an eye out!

Abe's Take
well rumours have all ready begun to swirl. A new "mature" IP from Miyamoto? A third party Japanese Exclusive? the name dose scream wacky far more than gritty. I suspect this might be a free-to-play game for the 3DS or maybe Wii U

EA's New UFC Gets MMA's Father

Guest characters aren't all that rare these days, no year passes with out someone's face popping up somewhere unexpected (worst public toilet ever!) so you'll understand  why this guest is news worthy

Mr Lee REALLY 'likes' punching people

Yes Bruce Lee, father of Mixed Martial Arts will be playable in next UFC title. Whilst Mr Lee will available as a Pre-order bonus but unlike other pre-order DLC he isn't exclusive, he will be available to everyone who finishes the game.

Mr Lee's daughter and Chairperson of the Bruce Lee Foundation, Sharon Lee, said "“I am so excited about this opportunity to bring my father back to video games. I’m thrilled that fans can now interact with him in a new way. The EA Sports UFC development team has been incredible to work with, and they've done a great job capturing the look and feel of my father. I think people will love getting a chance to fulfill a fight fantasy by playing Bruce Lee in the new UFC game.”

Abe's Take
It's great to see the respect being shown to Bruce Lee who for all intense and purpose invented MMA and all that followed. Though i feel sorry for the guy who had to model his shorts...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

The Power Of Xbox One's Azure Cloud

During Its May reveal and its E3 show Microsfot talked a lot about the Power of the cloud and how it could improve games by off loading to the cloud. But a reversal in their online DRM meant that only online only games like Titanfall could really benefit from the  real time processing boost. 

But now we can see the power of the could... On a PC tech demo that show caused during Microsoft's BUILD conference last week.



The demo is running on the same specs on both machines, the power of the cloud is clearly... powerful, with the cloud version barely taking a hit to the frame rate whilst the other normal PC runs like my PC running Space Engineers (WOO! PC fail!). Time will tell how this will be used on the now offline One , perhaps the likes of Sunset overdrive and Fable: Legends will show off the Azure Cloud.

Abe's Take
After seeing this you can see why Microsoft was so insistent on having an "Always On" system and it's shame something as useful as this has to be relegated to "online only" games such as Titanfall and the upcoming Sunset Overdrive.

Family sharing, One time disc use, Cloud enhanced games and a less buggy OS at launch dose paint quite a different picture of the Xbox One

Monday News Lump 7/4

Monday's suck as usual and as usual a lot of news outlets horde their weekend news till Monday.

Microsoft looking into 360 emulation on Xbox One
This has been an hot topic since before the New Gen systems was even announced. Microsoft had looked into streaming 360 games much like the upcoming PlayStation Now service but ran in to trouble making it work in Europe or rural America (Sony has ran into the same issues but is carrying on with Now anyway).
Frank Savage, Partner Development Lead at Microsoft on the Xbox One's use of Windows was asked if there was any plans for 360 on One "There are, but we're not done thinking them through yet, unfortunately. It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the X86 stuff. So there's nothing to announce, but I would love to see it myself."

RUMOUR: Deus Ex Multiplayer
Edios Montreal is looking to hire a programmer with Multiplayer experience for a Deus Ex Universe project.
It's unknown if this is for a Multiplayer focused game or for a multiplayer mode for the next core Deus Ex title

DOOM beta for Next Gen only
Buying a copy of Wolfenstien: New Order will also net you Beta access to the next Doom title but only for the new systems an PC. Buying the 360 version will net you the Xbox One beta and same goes with PS3. I would take this as Doom being New Gen exclusive.

Evolve will be content rich
The house that Left 4 Dead built's next title will apparently dwarf L4D interns of content and playability. Multiple classes, multiple class variants, multiple planets, randomly selected wild life and multiple main monsters should produce a lot of replayabilty. Like L4D the environment and wild life combinations will be procedurally generated giving multiple play thoughts a different flavour.

Brutal Legend 2 may happen
But would require $30,000,000 to produce it, Though Tim Schafer says it's not likely to happen as he wants to work on new idea's first. Schafer also suggested the game would feature better RTS elements or scrap them entirely.

Minecraft Xbox info/One chatter
It seems the Xbox One version release date is "soon" and entirely up to the developers, this should hopeful reduce the need for a bug fixing patch. The 360 edition has reached 12 million sales and is approaching the PC sales. Those hoping for larger worlds to come to the 360 version will be upset as the developers have said larger worlds requires use of the 360's Hard drive and they can't guarantee players will have it.

Nintendo Owns Japan... In software
The numbers are in for the annual software sales and 9 titles are Nintendo with the 3DS doing the heavy lifting.

Pokemon X/Y (3DS): 4,328,008
Monster Hunter 4 (3DS): 3,429,862
Tomodachi Collection Shin Seikatsu (3DS): 1,635,099
Puzzle and Dragons (3DS): 1,358,548
Animal Crossing New Leaf (3DS): 774,152
Dragon Quest Monsters 2 (3DS): 710,303
Grand Theft Auto V (PS3): 699,182
Wii Party U (Wii U): 697,042
Yokai Watch (3DS): 652,803
New Super Mario Bros U (Wii U): 622,502

Also... DAMN look at MH4's sales 3,429,862 in Japan alone and i'm sure MH4G will probably match that so all the sales of MH4U (the western version) is just a bonus for Capcom

Nintendo Direct Tomorrow

It feels like forever since the last Nintendo Direct but that's probably down to there being only 2 so far this year. It's not a surprise that there is a new Direct so close to Mario Kart 8's launch but what is a surprise is that Tuesday's Direct is actually for Smash Bros 

Tuesday's Nintendo Direct will air at 11PM UK time again. Not so sure why they are running so late now, I suspect it's so it the three regions UK, US and JPN all get their directs all at once.
The Direct will focus on both 3DS/Wii U versions of Smash Bros. You can watch the live stream Here on Tuesday.

What should we expect in the Direct? no one knows right now but here some guess'.

• Release date: this seems likely but will probably something like November.
• Character Reveals: I'm expecting two to three reveals and maybe one surprise character
• Multi-player details: I suspect we'll learn about the game's online systems
• Cross functions: I suspect Nintendo will finally outline how the 2 versions will work together. We all ready know that their wont be a traditional cross play as each version has it's own level lists.
• less likely are; announcing the N64 and GC versions coming to eShop as neither system is ready yet though would be a good way of announcing them.

guess we'll see soon enough