VentureBeat » Fire Emblem: Awakening

Borderlands 2 Psycho Pack, Metro: Last Light both price slashed on release

Dealzon — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:45 +0000

This sponsored post is produced by Dealzon.

With the big release of Metro: Last Light earlier this week, it’s easy to forget Borderlands 2 got a new DLC this week: the Psycho Pack. It features a new playable character “Krieg, the Psycho” and a new “Psycho Bandit” class. This DLC is not in the Season Pass, so you’ll have to pick it up separately. Fortunately there’s a 30% off coupon that makes the DLC only $7.

Tuesday marked the big Metro: Last Light release. Despite THQ’s bankruptcy earlier this year, 4A Games and Deep Silver were able to release the highly anticipated title with only a two month delay from the original March 2013 release. TheSteam-activated version of Metro: Last Light can be bought for $40 after a 20% off coupon, making it the only known discount for the game thus far.

Today Amazon launched a “Digital Games Mayhem” sale. A total of 826 (!!) PC and Mac download games and DLC packs are up to 80% off their usual prices. Perhaps the best part about this sale is the plethora of PC download bundles available. For instance, the Deep Silver Power Pack Volume 2 includes Saints Row 3 The Full Package, Dead Island, Saints Row 2, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky for only $17.49; separately, these would cost $32 at best prices. Most recent releases are not to be found in the sale, but there’s an exception with the new Star Trek game for $24.99 (50% off).

Hot deals & recent releases

Last Tuesday’s release: Borderlands 2 Psycho Pack (PC DLC) — $7 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Elsewhere $10. Introduces the 6th playable character to Borderlands 2. The “Psycho Bandit” class is melee focused and can generate health when killing enemies.

Last Tuesday’s release: Metro: Last Light (PC Download) — $40 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Elsewhere $50. The latest Metro title survived the THQ bankruptcy with a respectable 82/100 Metascore.

Amazon “Digital Games Mayhem” Sale: PC and Mac downloads — up to 80% off at Amazon. A total of 826 PC/Mac download games and DLCs are on sale with big discounts. Highlights below:

Star Trek — $24.99 (normally $50)
XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Civilization IV: Complete Edition, Civilization V Gold Edition Bundle — $19.99 (normally $120)
Deep Silver Power Pack Volume 2 — $17.49 (normally $95)
Crusader Kings 2 — $9.99 (normally $40)
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition — $7.49 (normally $30)
The Cave — $4.99 (normally $15)
Magicka Collection — $4.99 (normally $20)
Bioshock Dual Pack — $4.99 (normally $40)

Preorder Deals

June 25: Project X Zone (Nintendo 3DS) — $33.99 at NewEgg after coupon. Elsewhere $40. This tactical role-playing title was released on October 11, 2012 in Japan and finally washes up on North American shores next month.

Aug. 18: Disney Infinity Starter Pack (Xbox 360, PS3) — $64.99 at NewEgg after coupon. List is $75. Similar to the Skylanders figurine video game genre. Includes figures of Sully, Mr Incredible, and Jack Sparrow.

Nov. 5: Call of Duty: Ghosts (Xbox 360, PS3) — $52.99 at NewEgg after coupon. List is $60. First discount spotted on the 2013 Call of Duty title. The official release date announcement came earlier this month, but to no surprise. Another classic CoD first-Tuesday-in-November release date.

PC download deals

BioShock Infinite (PC Download) — $34.99 at Groupon. Best price yet on quite possibly the best game of 2013. You’ll need to jump through one hoop to redeem the Steam key from the actual vendor.

Jagged Alliance Weekend Sale: Games and DLCs (PC Download) — 50% – 75% off at GamersGate. The tactical role-playing PC game has a solid discount this weekend. Grab the base game and all DLC/expansions in the Collector’s Bundle for $13.98 (normally $30).

Men of War Weekend Sale (PC Download) — 75% off at GamersGate. Each individual Men of War game, expansion, and DLC is 75% off, including the Collector’s Pack which includes everything for $17.50 (normally $70).

Yesterday’s release: Sanctum 2 (PC Download) — $11.25 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. List is $15. The game released yesterday, but the 25% off preorder coupon code still works. Think of the game as tower defense + first-person shooter.

360, PS3, and Nintendo 3DS

Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk (PS3) — $34.99 at Amazon. JRPG fans who haven’t already picked this up save $15 today. This makes the first significant discount we’ve seen since its stateside release two months ago.

Fire Emblem: Awakening (Nintendo 3DS) — $29.99 at Best Buy. In IGN’s words, “the best thing to hit the 3DS since Super Mario 3D Land.” Yippee! Next best is $35 at Amazon.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate (Nintendo 3DS) — $24.99 at Best Buy. With the exception of a 4.7/10 IGN review, this franchise reboot sequel is generally well-reviewed, if not remarkably so. Next best is $37 at JR.com.

Crysis 3 (Xbox 360, PS3) — $24.99 at Groupon. This makes the lowest price we’ve seen on the popular post-apocalyptic open-world shooter by $8. Next best is $39 at Amazon.

Hardware

Alienware X51 Gaming Desktop — $969 at Dell Home after coupon. Specs: Quad Core i7-3770, GeForce GTX 660, and Ubuntu Linux OS. List is $1,149.

PS3 Slim 320GB Console (Refurbished) — $199.99 at Groupon. New condition is $300 elsewhere. Just in case you don’t have a box and you’re itching to try some up the upcoming PS3 exclusives (Last of Us, etc.).

Turtle Beach Ear Force X31 Digital Wireless Gaming Headset (Refurbished) — $17.99 at Best Buy. Next best is $50 at Rakuten. New ones can go as much as $60+, and the newer model X32 goes for $87.

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Filed under: Games

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First XCOM and now Fire Emblem: Hard mode should not be luck mode

Community Writer — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 21:30:03 +0000

I consider myself a big fan of turn-based strategy games. I haven’t logged as many hundreds of hours (or even dozens of hours) in Civilization as some, and there are key franchises I haven’t even touched yet, but I loved the recent XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Fire Emblem: Awakening.

Until I beat them and tried the higher difficulty levels, that is.

I just started the Lunatic difficulty on Awakening a few hours ago, and I’m unhappy. I’m not even an hour in, and already the game seems next to impossible. I had the exact same problem with XCOM.

I’m certainly not whining about them being too hard. I loved the seventh Fire Emblem for Game Boy Advance on its maximum difficulty, and I played through a few select chapters at least two dozen times each just to get through without anyone dying. But with FE7, I had no need to rely on dumb luck just to beat the game on anything higher than the normal difficulty.

See, FE7 was perfect in its “Hector Hard” mode for a few reasons: The enemies were never more than a reasonable match for the player though they had advantages in number, placement, and a few particular items; these advantages could be combated purely by strategy. Even if things got out of hand, the random number generator (RNG) was only seeded once for each level, meaning that repeating the same actions between multiple attempts of a level would yield the same “random” numbers. This made it possible to continuously make progress at every attempt, however slight.

Fire Emblem: Awakening ditches this concept. (XCOM does as well, but since the reasons are similar, I’ll use only Awakening for convenience.)

The enemies are stronger than the player’s units from the very first chapter, with high stats and steel weapons pitted against your allies’ bronze. Even as new recruits join, it seems that a single enemy will run in to attack anyone with a guaranteed two-hit kill whereas an ally might get lucky with a three-hit kill. And there are almost twice as many enemy units as allied ones. This demands extensive use of the lone promoted character provided at the very beginning, which seems extremely uncharacteristic for the franchise.

If you haven’t played a Fire Emblem game before, most of them give the player one character who is overpowered initially but has mediocre growth stats and gains very little XP. Using this character heavily early on leads to a very underpowered team later in the game. This is less of a problem in Awakening because characters can be reclassed to non-promoted classes, but still … .

The RNG in Awakening fixes the “problem” that FE7 had, so on one attempt, I barely got hurt by the final enemy, and in the next attempt, I got destroyed by the first one. I ultimately can’t make any progress in the level despite how many times I try it. Eventually, I might get lucky on a couple dozen dice rolls and win.

A sniper, flanking with line of sight? Good positioning.
A sniper, flanking with line of sight, with a 44 percent hit chance? Not fair.

I’m not opposed to having extreme difficulty levels for those who want them. What I’m saying is that on Normal or Hard, Awakening is fairly tame and forgiving, but on Classic or Lunatic, it’s absolutely brutal. I’m left with no reasonable challenge, and I’m unhappy. Both of these games were phenomenal on the first playthrough, but the only reason I have to go back is to try to optimize my team at the same difficulty I just beat the game on. I was hoping for a bit more challenge, which would encourage my meticulous team-building, but if there isn’t one, I’m content to merely think about the games instead of replaying them.

Regardless, you should pick up and play both of these games if you haven’t already. Just don’t expect a fair fight if you’re looking for a challenge.

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat weekly roundup: Whales of social gaming, Starcraft II guide, Saints Row IV, and family Minecraft servers

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:14:08 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, EA admits it handled SimCity problems poorly and offers players a free game, Angry Birds gets its own arcade machine, and Mojang ventures into family-oriented Minecraft world rentals.

You’ll also find reviews for Lego City: Undercover, MLB 13: The Show, and SimCity as well as previews for Guacamelee and Payday 2.

News

Mobile News

Reviews

Previews

Interviews

Pieces of Flair

Filed under: Business, Games, Mobile, Social

3DS’s Fire Emblem: Awakening sells 180K in February — more than a third of that through eShop

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:26:03 +0000

Nintendo’s fantasy strategy role-playing game is bigger than ever.

The Japanese publisher released Fire Emblem: Awakening on Feb. 4, but it failed to crack The NPD Group’s top 10 best-selling games for February. Nintendo explains that that’s only because more than a third of the game’s sales were through the digital Nintendo 3DS eShop, which NPD doesn’t track.

Nintendo provided GamesBeat with the following statement:

Building off its 92 Metacritic score, Fire Emblem Awakening for Nintendo 3DS had the best first month sales in franchise history, selling more than 180,000 units — more than 117,000 at retail and more than 63,000 digital units. By comparison, the previous hand-held entrant in the franchise – Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon – has sold a little more than 250,000 units life to date in the U.S. Fire Emblem Awakening sold 70 percent of that figure in just 28 days

Clearly, Nintendo is proud of the title’s performance. The company rarely trots out specific numbers like this.

By all accounts (including my own many hours with the game), Fire Emblem deserves the financial success. It’s one of the best games on the 3D portable — with high-quality visuals, great writing, and amazing game design.

Filed under: Games

This week in the Nintendo Download: Castlevania, Runner 2, and Retro City Rampage

Sam Barsanti — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:11:38 +0000

Every few weeks, Nintendo digs out enough downloadable content from its virtual warehouse to put something new on all four of its online-enabled systems. Of course, that usually means something cool for the 3DS and Wii U and something weird/dumb/boring for the Wii and DSi, but not this week! Yes, for the first time (and let’s be honest, probably last time), one of the more high-profile releases is for WiiWare, but you can still find the usual cool stuff on the Wii U and 3DS and a game with a weird title on the DSi. So not everything is different.

First up is the Wii U, which gets full and demo versions of Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, the sequel to autoscrolling platformer Bit.Trip Runner. Like the rest of the Bit.Trip series from developer Gaijin Games, Runner 2 boasts a hip techno soundtrack timed with your actions that makes it feel more like a rhythm game than a straight platformer.

History has shown us that, prior to 2010′s Lords of Shadow at least, the 2D side-scrolling Castlevania games are usually the only ones worth paying attention to. Will Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate carry on that legacy? You can find out for yourself today in its new demo, or next Tuesday (March 5) when the full title is available on stores and on the eShop.

If whipping vampires to death isn’t your thing, you can get a pair of new eShop games: Coaster Creator 3D, which lets you design and enjoy your own thrill rides, and Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena, a mahjong game. Also, two-screen action title Fractured Soul is on sale for $7.99 (down from $11.99), and this week is your last chance to download the Champions of Yore 1 DLC for Fire Emblem: Awakening. So, get on that.

Thankfully, the much-hyped (by me) new Wii release is not a Virtual Console port of a game you forgot about 10 years ago, but it is a WiiWare port of a game you might have played a few months ago: Retro City Rampage. The faux 8-bit Grand Theft Auto-style shooter is essentially “References To Things You Like: The Game,” and the WiiWare version includes the new ROM City Rampage mode, which envisions how it would work if played on a Nintendo Entertainment System. For now, ROM City Rampage is exclusive to the Wii and PC versions, so you can hold that over anyone who bought it on Xbox 360, PS3, or Vita.

Finally, on the DSi, Easter Eggztravaganza takes hidden-object and spot-the-difference games to their logical conclusion with an actual Easter egg hunt. It’s not the same as the real thing, but at $4.99, it is certainly cheaper.

Filed under: Games

Required Listening: Fire Emblem, Crysis 3, and interview with Tomb Raider composer Jason Graves

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:00:04 +0000

Without music, many modern video games would not resonate with us on such an emotional level. It’s possible we would not feel a pang of dread as we rounded a blind corner in Dead Space 3, and we likely wouldn’t feel such urgency to hack our way through baddies in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The sometimes abrasive yet compelling quality to even dissonant tones can change how we perceive virtual worlds.

This month we take a look at Fire Emblem: Awakening, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Dead Space 3, and we discuss creating music out of non-musical items and the Tomb Raider soundtrack with composer Jason Graves.

Fire Emblem: Awakening
Composer: Yuka Tsujiyoko

Yuka Tsujiyoko’s music is the backbone of the Fire Emblem franchise. She’s the main composer for the series, which explains how organically music flows from one Fire Emblem to the next. Awakening’s score follows its predecessors with sometimes dreamy, often powerful orchestral melodies poised to elevate victorious highs and make us cry every time we lose a solider in battle.

Aliens: Colonial Marines
Composer: Kevin Riepl
Unlike the poorly received game housing it, Kevin Riepl’s score for Aliens: Colonial Marines is a true love letter to the film series. It plays with tonal similarities to both James Horner’s (Aliens) and Jerry Goldsmith’s (Alien) work on the film series while striking out on its own with gritty industrial sounds. You can feel the passion and dedication in every unsettling note and anvil strike Riepl uses. If you close your eyes and listen to the tracks linked to the picture above, you can imagine the much more frightening and generally more enjoyable game that Colonial Marines should have been.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Composer: Jamie Christopherson
In fine Platinum Games tradition, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’s soundtrack is very unconventional. When Platinum hired Jamie Christopherson to compose, they already had a pumping, heavy-metal sound in mind. The result is a very energetic album full of well-crafted guitar rifts and a successful hybridization of metal and electronic tones. It’s hard to imagine that Christopherson hadn’t written heavy metal on this scale before this project, but as he says in a supplemental interview to this article, it was all new to him.

Dead Space 3
Composer: Jason Graves, James Hannigan
Echoing, overwhelming percussion and spine-tingling dissonance is a hallmark of all three Dead Space scores, but Dead Space 3 combines those signature tones with more enjoyable orchestral movements. The result is a creepy soundtrack that is actually pleasant to listen to when removed from its game. The music is definitely much less claustrophobic, much like its inspiration.

Filed under: Games

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We need to stop misrepresenting minorities in video games

Community Writer — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:36:29 +0000

In October of last year, reader Edfire77 sent the above image to Kotaku. The photo shows Tommy Chong of comedy duo Cheech and Chong, and it was used to “celebrate” Hispanic culture. Not only was the choice to use a film about the misadventures of two stoners to observe Hispanic culture in poor taste, but the image did not even feature Cheech Marin, the only Hispanic member of the stoner duo (Tommy Chong is not Hispanic; he is of Chinese, Scottish-Irish, and French descent.)

The flub came and went without so much as an apology from Microsoft. Sure, chances are this was merely an oversight, but it was an insensitive move nonetheless. Hispanic gamers make up a large portion of Xbox owners. According to Microsoft, in an article posted on Viacom’s blog, Hispanic gamers contributed to 23 percent growth in sales while non-Hispanic gamers stood at 10 percent. The article also mentions that “Hispanics are 32 percent more likely to consider video games their main source of entertainment.” Considering these numbers, Microsoft should have been more careful about how it chose to portray this group. Rather than relegating Hispanic culture to a movie about potheads, the company could have used a positive film such as Stand and Deliver, the fantastic Pan’s Labyrinth, or the historically relevant Motorcycle Diaries.

Shifting paradigms in demographics plainly illustrate that Hispanics and other minorities are becoming a larger part of gaming culture. With such a significant number of minority gamers contributing to the growth of the market, one would think it would be a no-brainer to be sensitive to the nuances of these cultures. Unfortunately, as seen in the above image (and in many other instances I will discuss), this has not been the case.

Insensitivity towards minorities, as well as exaggerated and stereotypical depictions in video games, is nothing new. Anyone who has ever played Final Fantasy VII will remember the outspoken Barret Wallace. The only black character in Square’s epic role-playing game had the tongue of a sailor and spoke in an exaggerated Ebonics. No one else in the game was given this accent. Not the other denizens of the slums. Not Barret’s longtime friend Dyne. No one. Why would only one character speak in region-based slang? Because he’s black? It didn’t make sense to me in 1997, and doesn’t make sense now.

Localization standards have improved since then, and although Final Fantasy XIII’s black party member, Sazh Katzroy, has a few things in common Barrett (both single parents, both use guns, both begin as partner to an ex-soldier), he is not nearly the caricature Barret turned out to be. Whereas Barrett was loosely based on Mr. T, Sazh bears a closer resemblance to a different kind of television and movie stereotype: the funny black sidekick. Sazh’s “frocobo” didn’t help matters much either. Perhaps Square Enix should stop basing their black characters on problematic Hollywood tropes.

Another kind of stereotyping can be seen in fantasy titles where dark-skinned races are often depicted as being less intelligent, barbarous, prone to violence, and less civilized than their fair-skinned neighbors. The recently released Fire Emblem: Awakening’s Basilio and Flavia are two of the games few dark-skinned characters. They hail from the Kingdom of Regna Ferox, where brute strength is valued over all else. In one scene, Basilio tells another character to kiss his “big brown arse.” Another Japanese strategy RPG classic, Dragon Force (released on the Sega Saturn), featured a southern kingdom called the Bozack Nation, whose citizens were dark-skinned and beast-like and whose leader, Gongos, was considered less intelligent than the other rulers in the game.

Western RPGs haven’t fared much better in this regard. The Elder Scrolls series’ Redguard race, also dark of skin, has traditionally had lower intelligence stats and higher physical attributes than other races. This kind of depiction of dark-skinned races is not exclusive to games. The wildly popular Game of Thrones features the nomadic, barbaric Dothraki. Dark of hair, eyes, and skin, the Dothraki resemble Middle-Eastern peoples in both appearance and language. Compared to the “civilized” seven kingdoms of Westeros, the people across the Narrow Sea are seen as backward, exotic, brutish, and savage. Although these races are all fictional, their representation has a hint of real-world Orientalism that can inform notions about minorities and dark-skinned races and cultures.

The dearth of minorities as main characters is another issue worth noting. Many big-budget titles seem to feature a white male — an everyman — as their protagonist. While it may be argued that game developers who stick to this formulaic approach to character design are merely playing it safe and choosing not to use minority characters that may be construed as offensive or insensitive, it does not help the fact that the market is oversaturated with Nathan Drake lookalikes and sorely lacking in minorities as central figures.

But hope is not completely lost. Smaller developers such as Minority Media (which is comprised of a culturally diverse team and headed by lead designer Vander Caballero) may be the shot in the arm the medium needs. Minority’s first title, the PlayStation Network exclusive Papo & Yo, features Brazilian-inspired visuals and sounds as well as a dark-skinned young boy, Quico, as the protagonist.

Thatgamecompany’s highly praised Journey circumvented the problem of race altogether by making the main character completely nonspecific and ambiguous in not only race but gender and age as well. While these smaller, independent developers seem more inclined to deal with the problem of stereotyping in video games, Ubisoft — the creator of Assassin’s Creed — is also pushing for multicultural awareness in its titles. Its first PS Vita game, Assassin’s Creed: Liberation, featured a half-black female protagonist by the name of Aveline de Grandpré and proved it is not entirely impossible for developers to feature minorities in their titles without resorting to offensive cultural stereotypes.

Video games are becoming bigger than Hollywood. With yesterday’s announcement of the PlayStation 4 and the beginning of a new generation of games, developers — both independent and corporate — have a chance to start leaving behind the single-minded tropes and stereotypes that film and other mediums have held on to for so long. As creators and visionaries, they have an opportunity to challenge stereotypical notions, not reinforce them. With minorities becoming such a driving force behind the growth of video game culture, here’s hoping we begin to see more cultural diversity in in the medium.

Filed under: Games

Celebrate Valentine’s Day the gaming way

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 18:13:26 +0000

Valentine’s Day is never complete without a wealth of punny sayings. Unsurprisingly, the video game industry provides ample material for an endless fountain of clever and downright groan-worthy Valentine greetings you can share with the gamers in your life.

Here’s a look at cards we’ve received from various companies this year, some of which are a little unsettling. Nothing says love quite like throwing a brick at someone, right?

Sly Cooper’s Carmelita Fox’s Love Connection:

Be sure to check out GamesBeat writer Mike Minotti’s original gaming Valentines while you’re at it.

Filed under: Games

Here’s some 3DS DLC and eShop love from today’s Nintendo Direct

Jacob Lopez — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:47:29 +0000

Today’s Nintendo Direct, a live video stream that Nintendo broadcasts to make special announcements, brought in lots of 3DS eShop and downloadable-content news.

Bill Trinen of Nintendo of America’s Treehouse division, best known as the English voice of game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, talked Fire Emblem: Awakening DLC. Trinen said that the game’s first DLC map, “Champions of Yore,” is currently available as a free download. Come March 6, the price will go up to $2.50. On that day, “Champions Pack” — the first Fire Emblem map pack, which includes all three “Champions of Yore” maps — will go up from $4 to $6.

“New downloadable content will continue to become available for Fire Emblem: Awakening in the weeks and months ahead, including today,” said Trinen, who also announced two new maps: “Champions of Yore 3″ and “Golden Gaffe,” which both cost $2.50.

Nintendo product public relations man Kit Ellis had some eShop announcements. First, he detailed Pokémon developer Game Freak’s upcoming rhythm-based platformer, HarmoKnight.

HarmoKnight has the player running across a level set to music. You attack and jump while keeping time with the beat of the music. The game has more than 50 levels across eight worlds. Nintendo even showed off a Pokémon-themed level. HarmoKnight will be available March 28 on the eShop with a demo available for download on March 14.

Ellis announced Kersploosh!, also for the 3DS eShop. In this game, you control a stone that is dropped down a well. Players navigate the stone as they try to avoid obstacles strewn throughout the well to maintain speed. The idea is to reach the bottom and make a splash in as little time as possible. Kersploosh! arrives on the eShop on March 7.

Nintendo also announced Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move, which is “coming soon.” It’s a puzzler in which players guide mini Marios through a path to reach a goal. It also has unlockable minigames and a puzzle creator.

Dillon’s Rolling Western: The Last Ranger, a tower-defense game, arrives April 11. Players defend villages from approaching enemies by placing characters on the map to fight them off.

In Virtual Console news, Harvest Moon GBC and Legend of the River King, both originally for Game Boy Color, are coming to the Nintendo 3DS eShop. No release date was announced.

A demo for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate arrives Feb. 28.

Nintendo is definitely putting more effort into the downloadable side this generation.

You can check out the full Nintendo Direct video and a trailer roundup in case you weren’t up early enough to catch it live.

Click here for our full coverage of today’s Nintendo Direct.

Filed under: Games

This week in the Nintendo Download: Fire Emblem, Puddle, and The Cave

Sam Barsanti — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:59:25 +0000

Nintendo may not be planning on cutting the Wii U’s price anytime soon, but if it wants to get more crazy tablet controllers into people’s homes it’ll have to do it by continuing to support the system with extremely exciting eShop updates. Of course, the more exciting updates are almost always on the 3DS, but at least the Wii U is getting some new content this week.

The main addition to the Wii U’s eShop this week is liquid-based puzzle game Puddle (previously available on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Vita, and PC), which comes with some new enhancements specific to the console’s touchscreen capabilities. You can also get a demo version of Double Fine and Ron Gilbert’s newest adventure title, The Cave, the full version of which came out last week.

As stated above, the end of January (and beginning of February) are a bit more exciting on Nintendo’s latest handheld. Starting today, the 3DS eShop gets a port of Ikachan (a formerly PC-exclusive underwater action game from the creator of Cave Story), Ice Climbers (the NES classic that you only remember because its characters are in Smash Bros.), and two more full retail games: Witch’s Cat and Bloody Vampire, the latter of which is a platformer with role-playing game elements about someone who is half-human and half-vampire, so it’s basically Symphony of the Night. Basically.

“But enough talk. Have at you!”

Also, Sparkle Snapshots 3D gets a pair of DLC packs that might interest you more than you think, so don’t just ignore this paragraph because you’re “too cool” for Sparkle Snapshots 3D. Both sets, “Mario Core” and “Mario Kart 7,” allow you to pretty up your 3DS photos with Mario decorations, which is cool. So there.

The final 3DS update is surely the one that most people are excited about, even if they’ll have to wait a few extra days for it: Fire Emblem: Awakening, which GamesBeat’s own Mike Minotti referred to as “one of the best games Nintendo’s released for the 3DS yet” in his review. Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait until Monday before you can download it from the eShop.

On the DSi, the only new thing for its stalwarts to download this week is 99 Moves, a game in which you must escape areas using only, you guessed it, 99 moves. It boasts “incredible enemy patterns” on Nintendo’s official site, so that’s something.

Wrapping things up is the original Wii, which gets one measly Virtual Console title: Metal Slug 4.

Filed under: Games

Fire Emblem: Awakening starter guide: Tips, tricks, legendary weapons, marriage, and babies!

Sebastian Haley — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:26:44 +0000

Whether you’re new to the Fire Emblem series or just need a refresher (it’s been several years since the last game and nearly a decade since the last handheld iteration), GamesBeat’s spoiler-free starter guide should help you hit the ground running when Awakening releases for the Nintendo 3DS on February 4.

To die or not to die

Awakening’s Casual Mode enables new players (or possibly those who become a little too emotionally attached to their virtual soldiers) to forgo the franchise’s iconic permadeath and allow defeated characters to return after the battle in which they were injured.

For those seeking the authentic Fire Emblem experience, you can choose Classic Mode to ensure that any character who gets caught slippin’ is dead for good. Classic also prevents you from loading previous save games, so once you make a bad decision in-game, there’s no going back.

Note that Classic or Casual Mode are not difficulty settings, so you can still choose Normal, Hard, and eventually Lunatic regardless of the mode you select.

Avoid ‘trap’ characters

Every Fire Emblem game starts you off with some badass character that seems to swat away enemies like flies, and Awakening is no different. The problem is, those characters are usually advanced classes (as is the case with Frederick in Awakening), so while they may tank and attack like beasts, they’ll also eat up a ton of experience that could be going to your other, less-powerful characters.

If you let Frederick, for example, tear through the early missions, you’ll find that your party as a whole will be woefully overwhelmed by enemies later on. If you do bring Frederick, you may want to use him strictly as a meatshield. There will be instances where you can’t reach an enemy without being attacked first, often by multiple opponents, so you can send Frederick in first to take one for the team and probably thin the herd just with counterattacks alone.

Enemies will target the squishies first

So you’ve got a ton of characters near an enemy and figure there’s no way he’s going to go running into the middle of them just to bitch-slap your healer, right? Wrong. The A.I. is designed to take down whomever is easiest to kill, starting with your armorless healers. Keep them out of range at all times.

Skirmishes

Skirmishes are optional battles that appear on the world map. You’ll see an enemy just standing there, waiting for you to come over and slap it with your glove, or how ever people initiated conflicts in medieval times. Sometimes, though, you may encounter unique scenarios where two enemies will fight you at the same time. You’ll reap additional rewards (a random item and $3,000), but make sure you’re prepared.

If you enter a battle with a traveling merchant, he will appear as a nonplayable character. See that no harm comes to him, and he’ll gift you a random item (usually something good). Lastly, you can come across StreetPass or SpotPass characters engaged with the enemy. Those NPC characters will aid you in battle, but be aware that you won’t get any items they take.

Frequent fliers

Although they may start out weak, flying units can become your greatest asset. They’re able to travel further and over terrain types that other units cannot. Just be careful that you don’t let them go too far on their own (best to pair a couple of fliers together); otherwise, they may get stranded and ganged up on.

The only real weakness airborne units have is archer enemies, but since you can view the map before you choose your squad, you’ll know what you’re up against.

Support and pairing up

Unlike many other strategy-role-playing games, the direction in which you attack an enemy and your placement on the map have no effect on combat. So you can’t deal critical back attacks or have an archer deal bonus damage by taking the high ground. Instead, you’ll need to rely on the Support* and Pair Up systems.

One character will support another anytime the two units are positioned next to each other. This automatically provides a stat boost for the lead character in battle (the one attacking or being attacked). The higher the Support Rank between the two characters, the better the stat boost will be.

Support units can also execute a Dual Strike, attacking the enemy for additional damage, or a Support Block, where they dive in front of the enemy’s attack and nullify the damage. Again, the higher the Support Rank, the better the chance you’ll gain these benefits, so make sure your characters are all nice and friendly with each other.

Pairing up works a little differently in that two characters combine to act as one unit. The lead character will gain a bonus Pair Up boost based on the partner’s class (a magic class boosts your magic, for example), as well as still being able to activate Dual Strikes and Support Blocks. Keep in mind that the character who initiates Pair Up will actually become the support unit, but you may switch roles or separate at any time (as long as you still have a turn to take).

*Support Rank is gained by fighting next to each other or pairing up. It starts at a D Rank and can go all the way up to S Rank if the two characters are marriage compatible.

Marriage and children (really)

At a certain point in the game, male and female characters with an S Support Rank will marry each other. This includes Chrom, the main character, as well your own custom character, known as “My Unit.”

Once married, almost every female character has a corresponding child character that you can recruit toward the end of the game. Unfortunately, to further explain this system would spoil the story, but you can check out this incredibly robust FAQ if you’d like to know more.

Infinite Divine Weapons

Expect a downloadable-content episode titled “Infinite Divine Weapons” to be released eventually. This map has three treasure chests, each containing a random weapon, and can be replayed limitlessly. This is the most straightforward way to collect every Divine weapon in the game.

Lunatic-Plus

Veteran strategy-RPG players may find Awakening’s Normal difficulty to be a little too forgiving. The harder difficulties can provide a more appropriate challenge, and finishing the game on Lunatic (the highest difficulty setting) will unlock Lunatic+. The key difference here is that enemies may come equipped with insane skills unique to Lunatic-Plus. Good luck!

Additional tips: Kat Bailey, Serenesforest.com, GameFAQs

Check out GamesBeat’s Fire Emblem: Awakening review.

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Fire Emblem: Awakening is one of the deepest and best 3DS games (review)

Mike Minotti — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:00:10 +0000

Fire Emblem has never achieved the popularity of Nintendo’s biggest franchises. It doesn’t have the mainstream appeal of Mario, the merchandising potential of Pokémon, or the cutting-edge technology of Zelda. But Fire Emblem: Awakening, a turn-based strategy game coming out Monday for the Nintendo 3DS, easily matches the quality of those legendary series.

What makes Awakening so special, especially considering it’s the 11th game in the series (the sixth to come out in North America)? Sure, the gameplay will feel familiar to fans of the franchise, but this newest entry complements those great mechanics with impressive production values. Developer Intelligent Systems has refined and molded the core experience into an incredible portable game.

You play Awakening on a small screen, but the adventure you’ll experience is anything but tiny. This quest is an epic, complex test of your skills as a military commandeer.

What you’ll like

Hardcore strategy

Awakening is like a complicated game of chess (or, if you already find chess difficult, a really complicated game of checkers). You take turns against the computer positioning your army around a grid and attacking your opponent. A number of factors decide the outcome of each battle, including your unit’s level (which increases from experience earned while fighting), the weapons you wield, and your relationships with adjacent allies. (For tips, check out our Fire Emblem guide.)

Any one of these things can make the difference between life and death, which is a huge deal in Awakening. Death is permanent. Any character you lose in a battle is gone for good. Actually, you do have the option in the beginning of the game to have dead fighters respawn after a battle (a first for a U.S. entry in the series), but I recommend against it. Permanent death may seem like a rough penalty, but it forces you to act extra thoughtfully. Are you really willing to risk a character’s life against 50/50 odds of survival? The strategy aspect becomes a lot more … well, strategic. You can’t just throw units against a wall of enemies and hope for the best.

If you want to keep your crew alive, you have to act intelligently on and off the battlefield. You want to fight those optional skirmishes so you can earn some extra levels. You have to buy the best equipment and make sure your characters will have enough weapons to last a battle (most items only have a set number of uses, after which they break and disappear). You need to figure out how you want to upgrade your units, making sure you have a good mix of fighters, fliers, ranged attackers, healers, and more.

If it all sounds complicated, that’s because it is. It’s delightfully complex. If you love to pour over the details and plan for the bigger picture, then you’ll find Awakening incredibly rewarding.

Love can bloom on the battlefield

Characters gain bonuses to their stats by standing next to an ally, but those gains increase the more the two units like each other. Fighting alongside a friend can unlock conversations between the two outside of battles. After watching these often hilarious skits, their relationship will increase. A paired-up character also sometimes offers an additional attack. Again, the odds of this happening increases the further along their relationship is, so it’s smart to position friendly characters next to each other as often as possible.

Many characters can even marry each other. Spouses gain astronomical stat bonuses when fighting together, and marrying your fighters can lead to new side-missions that unlock powerful new recruits.

I actually spent days just playing matchmaker for my army and pairing off characters that I thought looked cute together in skirmishes just so that they would hook up. You can also pair units on the same square of the battle grid, which only lets one of them move and attack but makes it easier to increase their love for each other while saving some space on the field. This is also a great way to protect weaker units.

It was like playing a Japanese visual novel. Just, you know, with a lot more swords and fire spells. It also opens up a large variety of possible coupling, and each marriage comes with special dialogue. Who you hook up your main characters with can even have an impact on the game’s story, adding incentive to play the game more than once for completionists looking to see every possible conversation.

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This week in the Nintendo Download: Fire Emblem, Crash Mobs, and Kirby

Sam Barsanti — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 16:04:01 +0000

This is one of those weeks when Nintendo is going to have to sit down with all of its consoles and remind them that, despite all evidence to the contrary, it doesn’t have a “favorite.” Just because the Wii U and DSi aren’t getting any new content this week on their respective digital download services doesn’t mean they’re not special in their own way. It’s just that they’re not as special as the 3DS (or even the original Wii, to a lesser extent).

The headliner for this week’s 3DS-centric eShop update is the demo of Fire Emblem Awakening, the latest entry in Nintendo’s long-running turn-based strategy series. You can also get the full retail versions of kid-friendly minigame collection Finding Nemo: Escape to the Big Blue and Deer Drive Legends (which is unfortunately not an animal-driving sim but a hunting game).

Wrapping things up for the 3DS is a port of the Game Boy puzzler Kirby’s Star Stacker and Tokyo Crash Mobs, a game that proves that the DSi isn’t the only place to find totally weird things that are hard to explain. Basically, it’s a Zuma-style puzzle game where you throw people at other people in order to knock them out of line that uses a mix of live-action video and “wacky digital graphics” (according to the official site).

Finally, the original Wii finally gets an Amazon Instant Video app, so you can stream content from the online retail giant’s Netflix competitor. Hey, it’s something at least.

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Fire Emblem Awakening out on 3DS in North America in early February

Jeffrey Grubb — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:55:19 +0000

You may relax — gaming will continue throughout the cold winter months of 2013.

Nintendo is ensuring that we’ll have something to play when it releases Fire Emblem: Awakening for the 3DS in North America on Feb. 4.

During its online streaming broadcast, called Nintendo Direct, the publisher detailed more info about the Intelligent Systems fantasy game. It will continue the long legacy of the strategy role-playing franchise, which centers on military tactics, epic stories, and permanent death for characters.

Intelligent Systems debuted the Fire Emblem series in the early ’90s and produced many sequels. The studio’s other strategy game, Advance Wars, features similar gameplay but avoids most of Fire Emblem’s role-playing elements.

Many critics and gamers place both Advance Wars and Fire Emblem among the finest in the turn-based strategy genre.

Fire Emblem: Awakening will retail for $39.99.

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