FFXIII-2, Now with Squall and Wakka!
Suddenly, Release Dates!
This week brings us English-speaking rubes great news in the form of several localization release dates! First, Cooper’s much anticipated Pokémon game, Pokémon Rumble Blast (formerly known at Super Pokémon Rumble), will be releasing in the United States on the 24th of October. In the 3DS title, players take control of Pokémon in the form of wind-up toys, searching the world for Drops of Light which enable the Pokémon to fight. The game has different single-player battle modes in addition to co-op and versus modes to be played with over six-hundred kinds of Pokémon. Another series Lusipurr.com cannot live without, Final Fantasy, has also set a release date on the follow-up to 2010′s tunnel RPG. Final Fantasy XIII-2 will be released in Japan this coming December, with the English release launching a month later. Finally, the curious El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron has been pushed back due to “unforeseen logistical issues,” which everyone in the industry is taking to mean ‘we know Atlus’ Catherine will outsell us and do not want to be buried by the competition.’ The Ignition title will instead release on the 26th of August, the developer quoting on their Twitter, “don’t worry, everything is fine.”
Playing video games with girls.
Misogyny Versus Misogyny
We have all heard the jokes before; there are no women on the internet, get back in the kitchen, where is my sandwich, how are you play video games with a dick in your mouth, such and so forth. You, a male, and your similar penis-wielding friends want to have a LAN party, but you are not the type to laugh and jeer at female gamers and do not want to invite any types that are so callous. What is the best way to do this? Why not exclude women from your event altogether? That’s exactly what a group of gamers in Texas have planned for their upcoming Battlefield 3 release party. The group initially changed the paragraph detailing their ‘no girls allowed’ rule, then removed it entirely after many people brought up a good point: is it you do not want them to be insulted, or you do not want to waste the breath to insult them to get them to leave? All this could have been simply a ‘guy’s night out’ that became horribly misconstrued, but regardless, they are not doing any favors for the shining stereotype of the male Texan (sorry, Lane).
Its all their fault!
March of the Morons
It was only a matter of time before some loon decided that the bombing in Oslo, Norway just had to be blamed on video games. As if it were any surprise, the target of their ire is Modern Warfare 2 after one obscure line in the attacker’s 1,500 page manifesto: “I see [Modern Warfare 2] more as part of my training-simulation than anything else.” Because more than the rest of the 1,500 pages of anti-Muslim propaganda, one video game is what corrupted him. Thirty-two year old Anders Behring Breivik is in police custody after he detonated a bomb that killed seven then opened fire, killing eighty-five more. World of Warcraft is also being implicated, though not as directly, saying the hours upon hours he spent online actually accounts for most of his time spent calculating these attacks. Breivik was motivated by the influx of Muslims immigrating to his country, feeling they and their multicultural aspirations were a threat to European culture. His choice of venue was no random decision; the youth camp was known to serve the children of high-ranking Norwegian officials. Activision could not be reached for comment on this specifically, but in an unrelated interview, Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling discussed the similarities between the Modern Warfare series and acts of terrorism occurring outside of the game. “I’m not too worried about it because the conflict that’s raging in Modern Warfare 3 is very different from any real life scenario,” he says, almost certainly recalling the controversy brought on by the “No Russian” mission in the first game. It will be curious to see how both the loons and the industry will respond to this tragic turn of events.
Lollipop Chainsaw
Bloody Candy
Do you like Killer 7? What about No More Heroes? If director Goichi ‘Suda 51′ Suda has yet to win your heart with either title, perhaps their new IP will win you over. Lollipop Chainsaw follows the life of Juliet Sterling, a pretty blonde cheerleader at San Romero High School with a love of all things pink. She comes from a long line of zombie hunters and, when zombies invade her high school on her eighteenth birthday, she is forced to pickup her trusty chainsaw and hack through droves of undead. Perhaps an homage to the disgust of just about everyone towards the Twilight series, these undead shower Juliet in sparkly pink and gold blood as they are being hacked through. Grasshopper Manufacture has said they the game is about seventy percent complete and that they already have plans for it to be released in English, but no release date is yet announced. No further details exist at this time, only plenty of screenshots best described as pink as hell.
