Video Games

Ezio Auditore’s Costume in Final Fantasy XIII-2?

 We’ve certainly seen some strange character crossovers before on certain Xbox 360 titles (the appearance of Yoda in the 360 version of Soul Calibur IV springs to mind).  However, Square Enix has issued a press release with an even stranger crossover: the costume of Ezio Auditore, as seen in the recently-released Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, will be available as an optional outfit for Noel Kreiss, one of the characters in the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII-2.  We don’t yet have any screenshots for how it might look, but there is a render of the costume available, which you can see below.
 
If there weren’t already enough hints that Final Fantasy XIII-2 might be returning to the over-the-top dress-sphere stylings of the last direct sequel in the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy X-2, this seems like fairly strong proof that the game will allow players to dress up the characters in a variety of different costumes.  Ordinarily, this would be fine, but the recent news of the involvement of Japanese pop singer Oshima Yuko (part of the pop group AKB48) in designing some costumes for the main character suggests that FFXIII-2 might be going down the J-pop route once again.  Time will tell.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review (PS3)

The Elder Scrolls series has a pedigree
of excellence.  So it came as no surprise to me when the hype for Skyrim
was otherworldly from the second the game was announced.  To say that
Bethesda had a lot of pressure to deliver the goods would be a
monumental understatement.  Industry pundits and fans were chomping at
the bit for Skyrim.  Our waiting and enthusiasm has not been in vain.

Apple Almost Allows iPad Game Subscriptions

Due to the relative ease of use and game development, the iPad App store has plenty of unique business models. There are cheaper apps that are created on lower budgets, free-to-play games driven by micro-transactions, products populated with advertisements, and more. Apple’s popular tablet was almost introduced to yet another business model, in the form of a multi-game subscription for Big Fish Games.

Battlefield 3: DLC Trailer

In case you’ve forgotten, as you’ve likely been lost in the realm of Skyrim, this game called Battlefield 3 came out.  Well the first DLC pack, Back to Karkand, is coming out and EA has been kind of enough to give us a little sneak peak with a brand new trailer.  The DLC pack features multiplayer maps from Battlefield 2 re-imagined using the new Frostbite 2 engine.  The new trailer shows off the Gulf of Oman map and showcases the return of some vehicles that may be familiar for veteran players, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and desert buggy.  There’s also a brand new vehicle in the video.  See if you can find it, it’s right around the 1:02 mark.

Details of Rainbow 6: Patriots Begin to Surface

It’s been a fair while since the last Rainbow Six game but fans of the venerable team based first person shooter series may be delighted to hear the first details about the next one, which will be called Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6: Patriots.

Skyrim Patch 1.2 Information

Skyrim performance patch v 1.2 details were released yesterday, and they include a number of fixes for both the most common and the rarest bugs in Bethesda’s 5^th installment of the Elder Scrolls series.

Among the big fixes are the texture loading issues for the Xbox 360 version of the game as well as the Playstation 3 bug that would cause the game to chug as the save file grew.  The Playstation 3 version of the patch is already available in Europe, with the Xbox 360 and PC versions expected to go live on November 30^th. 

Total War: Shogun 2 – Fall of The Samurai Announced

It’s been almost a year since the release of the last full game in the Total War series and The Creative Assembly have kept fans sated with numerous DLC packs that brought new content to the game, but now fans will have something bigger to look forward to in the form of the games first expansion pack “Fall of the Samurai“.

The expansion is currently set for a March 2012 release and is confirmed to be a standalone expansion, meaning it won’t require players to own a copy of Total War: Shogun 2 in order to play it. Fall of the Samurai is set to focus on the impact that the discovery and coveting of gunpowder-based military technology had on the world of Japanese feudal warfare. Fall of the Samurai is intended to expand and extend the game’s already lengthy campaign map, as well as add almost forty new units. There will be six new factions as well as an increased focus on naval combat. On top of all this, The Creative Assembly are promising an unspecified, but “huge” upgrade to the game’s multiplayer.