Neptune Interactive has announced a new strategy title called “The Castle Game” for Wii U and PlayStation 4.
Here’s a brief overview:
The Castle Game is a single player experience where the focus is on defensive gameplay. The player is able to build their own castle and defend against waves of enemies. Defensive structures like walls, towers, gatehouses with burning oil, and traps can be built. These structures can be manned by archers, knights, mercenaries, catapults, sorceresses, ballistae.
The Castle Game is inspired by the likes of Warcraft, Game of Thrones, and Lord of the Rings. “It’s not a typical tower defense,” Neptune says. “The maps will be designed to give a different experience. We’ll have control point capture, sandbox, and other types of maps.”
The Castle Game will be available in February 2015. It will be playable at PAX Prime 2015 this week.
Don’t expect Nintendo to ditch dedicated gaming devices anytime soon. Shigeru Miyamoto expressed the deep need for such hardware in an EDGE interview this month, telling the magazine, “A unique software experience can always be realized with unique hardware that has a unique interface.”
Below are Miyamoto’s comments in full:
“As I said before, there are always people who really want to get deeply into a game. We want to create, and they want to experience, something unprecedented all the time. For us to meet these goals, we need dedicated hardware that is designed to cater to the needs of these avid gamers. People might say that software is software. No. A unique software experience can always be realized with unique hardware that has a unique interface. That is why I believe Nintendo is, and will be, sticking to these dedicated gaming machines.”
This week’s Japanese eShop update is as follows:
3DS
Downloadable Titles
Aqua Moto Racing 3D – 400 yen
Dasshutsu Adventure Sh?en no Kuroi Kiri – 820 yen
Dokopon Choice Super Mario-kun Vol. 1 – 10-kan Pack – 4,400 yen
Dokopon Choice Blood Lad Vol. 1 – 5-kan + Omake Pack – 3,050 yen
Puchi Noberu Shukusai no Hachigatsu – 200 yen
Medalot (Medabot) 8 – Kabuto Version / Kuwagata Version (retail title) – 6,264 (from 8/28)
Boku wa Kok? Kansei-kan Airport Hero 3D Kank? Sky Story DEMO – FREE
Gaist Crusher God DEMO – FREE
Virtual Console
NA (since 5/7)
Wii U
Downloadable Titles
NA
Virtual Console
Gakk? Deatta Kowai Hanashi (Super Famicom) – 823 yen
Final Fight 2 (Super Famicom) – 823 yen
Akumaj? Dracula Circle of the Moon (Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, Game Boy Advance) – 702 yen
Kaiz? Ch?nin Shubibiman 2 – Aratanu Teki (Shockman, PC Engine) – 617 yen
Final Soldier (PC Engine) – 702 yen
This week’s Famitsu has another update on Final Fantasy Explorers. There’s one game element in particular worth bringing to your attention.
According to the magazine, Final Fantasy Explorers allows “legendary characters” (main characters from the series among others) to join the fight. This is possible with the transformation ability which allows players to change their form for a limited time.
Final Fantasy VII’s Cloud Strife is the first classic character reveal, and Famitsu shows a couple of screenshots. We should be hearing about more legendary characters in the coming weeks and months.
At one point, Nintendo “talked about the possibility” of featuring Mario as the main player character in Splatoon. That’s according to Shigeru Miyamoto, who revealed the information to EDGE this month.
Miyamoto told the magazine:
“There were heated debates over who the main player character should be. Whether it should be Mario, or a squid. When we talked about the possibility of it being Mario, of course we could think of the advantages: anybody would be willing to touch it as soon as we announced that we had the new Mario game. But at the same time, we had some worries. If it were Mario, we wouldn’t be able to create any new IP.”
Splatoon was first announced at this year’s E3. It’s a brand new third-person shooter of sorts from Nintendo and includes completely unique characters.
Eiji Aonuma, producer of Zelda Wii U, shared extensive comments to EDGE this month about the game’s open world without giving too much away.
EDGE started out by asking Aonuma about the challenges of adapting a linear design to a world that can be freely explored. He said in response:
In the original Legend of Zelda, there was no clear way to lead the main character to his goal. It was something that we entrusted to the players to find by themselves. As the game later expanded into a franchise, the structure of the game worlds became more and more complex – especially with the introduction of 3D – making it necessary for us to point the player in the right direction. Consequently, progression in the games became more linear.
To recreate a similar experience to the original, we have to give the game world a simple structure that players can understand intuitively. In doing so, it’s very important that we make every aspect of the world feel real and physically connected, so that it’s doesn’t look fake.
We can achieve this thanks to the hardware features of Wii U, but to truly get a deep understanding of the game world, we also need a real map that depicts the world as it is. The GamePad is very effective for displaying this, and thus also [for] providing players with a constant hint on where to head to. I think we can safely say that the innovations in this new game are only possible thanks to the Wii U hardware.
Since launch, Mario Kart 8 players could only increase their online VR points to 9,999. However, with today’s update, it looks like the limit has been lifted. The image above shows one player who has already reached the five-figure zone.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has issued a challenge to Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto. Guillemot is looking for Miyamoto to participate in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime was recently called out by Xbox boss Phil Spencer to take part in the same event. Reggie hasn’t posted his video yet, but we can apparently expect big things.
Lots of details about Fatal Frame: The Black Haired Shrine Maiden have emerged from this week’s issue of Famitsu. You can find all of today’s information rounded up below.
Yuuri Kozukata
– Goes to the mountain to search for the owner of the shop, Hisoka Kurosawa
– Voiced by Risa Tawata
Miu Hinasaki
– Girl searching for her missing mother
– Her mother vanished when she was a child
– She’s never known the love of parents and feels empty
– Heads to the mountain believing her mother is there
– Voiced by Maaya Uchida
Ren Hojo
– Failure of an author
– Has known Yuuri for ages
– Whimsical and is scolded by his assistant for it
– He hears of a custom involving burial photos, and goes to the mountain to research for his new book. Voiced by Tatsuhisa Suzuki
Hisoka Kurosawa
– Owner of the shop
– Uses kagemi skills to search for lost things
– Goes to the mountain to look for a missing girl and vanishes
– Voiced by Atsuko Tanaka
Rui Kagamiya
– Ren’s assistant
– She respects him, calling him sensei, and as well as helping him out she thinks of him as family
– Voiced by Maaya Sakamoto
Locations
– Explore 3 main locations at the start
– These include forest and buildings around the mountain
Mikomori Onsen
– An abandoned old, big house known as a famous ghost spot where lots of ghosts are
Kurosawa Antiques
– Also a cafe
– Yuuri lives and works here
– People come here to request lost things be found, or have their fortunes told by Hisoka
Shirazu no Mori
– A forest in the mountain
– Ever since it became famous as a suicide spot, there’s been a big fence around it, which people sneak in through
– There are also rumors of a murderer hiding inside
Gameplay
– Plays out a bit like mission mode
– Choose your mission and then you unlock new missions
– You can replay missions as much as you’d like
– Once you complete the chapter goals, you get the next chapter
– Your goal is to find people
– Each person has different reasons for going to the mountain and getting there, so you’ll have to gather as much info about them as you can
– You can use something that’s like a “scent” of a person from things like a hair, their documents etc.
– That aids your “kagemi”
– Then you use your clues to search for them
– If you chase the memories of them you’ll find them, so you have to follow their past footsteps
– When you find them and “bring them back” from their spiriting away, it’s mission complete, but you’ll have to watch out for the ghosts lurking
– You can also use your “ghost sight” to find hints from ghosts
– Looks kind of like hidden ghosts in other games
– Gameplay on the TV
– Map on the GamePad
– The touch system for picking up items is back
– Ghost hands are also back
