Divekick is a very strong technique, familiar from many fighting games. A character jumps in the air and dives down quickly feet first. Sometimes it dominates the whole game. Sometimes it is the whole game!
Started as an indie game parody of fighting games, Divekick‘s early versions gathered a very positive reaction after being showcased at competitive events. The game is played with only two buttons, one for jumping and one for divekicking. One hit is enough to empty the opponents whole life bar.
In spite of the simplicity and humor, there is legitimate competitive depth to Divekick. It could be considered to be a fighting game at its purest; it is very simple to get into, but you will need strategy, good reactions and a lot of patience to triumph.
Iron Galaxy, a developer best known for remastering several of Capcom’s classic fighting games, has now joined in to the development of the game to bring the full version to PSN. No release date has been announced as of now.
Final Fantasy X and its direct sequel, Final Fantasy X-2 will be released on the PS3 as Final Fantasy X | X-2 HD Remaster bundle, sometime later this year. Square Enix has also announced that the Playstation Vita versions of the HD remasters will be sold separately.
Both remasters are based on the “International Versions” of the original games, which means they will include features, such as new superboss enemies and equipment, previously unavailable in some regions.
Check out the screenshot gallery after the jump to see the new touched up character models and textures!
The highly acclaimed indie adventure game, Machinarium, is about to be released on Playstation Vita as soon as 26th of this month. This new version will not only include all the improvements introduced in the PS3 version, such as zooming and magnetic hotspots, but also adds better zooming and control, using Vita’s touch capabilities. Another new feature is the leaderboard that records the time spend on your adventure and stacks it up against all the other players.
If you still haven’t gotten your hands on Machinarium, this seems like as good a chance as any. Better, in fact, since Vita’s touch controls will definitely complement a point ‘n’ click adventure game perfectly.
Source: Playstation.Blog
Sony’s Playstation 4 press conference has now come and gone and it sure was an interesting ride. What did we learn from it, then? Here’s PSN Fans’ quick brief on the new miracle machine!
Hardware
While the actual, physical PS4 wasn’t shown at all, the preliminary specs were announced and are as follows:
| Main Processor | Single-chip custom processor CPU : x86-64 AMD “Jaguar”, 8 cores GPU : 1.84 TFLOPS, AMD next-generation Radeon™ based graphics engine |
| Memory | GDDR5 8GB |
| Hard Disk Drive | Built-in |
| Optical Drive (read only) |
BD 6xCAV DVD 8xCAV |
| I/O | Super-Speed USB (USB 3.0) 、AUX |
| Communication | Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Bluetooth® 2.1(EDR) |
| AV output | HDMI Analog-AV out Digital Output (optical) |
It seems that Sony has taken some valuable lessons from their experiences with the PS3, a console notoriously difficult to develop games for. PS4 is touted as being much more developer friendly, and the much higher amount of memory (compared to PS3′s 256MB for system memory and 256MB for video memory) and a much more common CPU type especially support this angle.
According to a PS Blog comment by Konami’s Social Media Manager, Dalton Link, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker may be playable on PlayStation Vita in the near future:
You may see MSF infiltrate the Vita in the near future. Stay tuned!
This comment was an answer to a fan’s question, asking whether there’s a chance for the Metal Gear Solid PSP games, Portable Ops and Peace Walker to be playable on Vita. MSF (Militaires Sans Frontières), was a private military company, only featured in the latter game, so there’s no reason to expect a version of Portable Ops any time soon. Or at all, since Peace Walker seems to have effectively taken its place in canon by actually being directed by the series creator, Hideo Kojima and debatably being the better game in many aspects.
Source: PS Blog US (via PlayStationLifeStyle.net)
As a part of their 30th anniversary celebration, Capcom is working on releasing a platform for downloading and playing their old, primarily 80s, arcade games.
Capcom Arcade Cabinet: Retro Game Collection will be released for PSN and XBLA at an unspecified point in the future. The platform will be available as a free starter pack, including one free game to play through. Rest of the game lineup will have to be purchased separately.
According to Capcom, the games will be arcade perfect versions, but they will also include additional features, mostly helping players with the often sadistic difficulty levels of the originals. The games were, after all, made to suck up coins as efficiently as possible. The players will be able to modify these versions in many small ways, such as making the player character’s attacks stronger or subtly changing the collision detection.
Only game announced so far is the 1987 fantasy side-scroller Black Tiger. The official announcement regarding the games will be made February 7th. In the meantime, you can try to make your guesses based on the teaser images (one posted right above) released by Capcom.
Source: Famitsu (via Polygon), Capcom Unity
Sony probably won’t be winning any new supporters with its newest patent, possibly making the concept of selling used games obsolete.
This new technology allows a console to tag a game and check, whether it’s being used on other consoles or on other people’s accounts. If it is, the playback may be disallowed.
Time will tell if this is actually going to be one of the new features of PS4, or if Sony will bend against the outcry of consumers. Disallowing used games would be a big blow, affecting everyone from users to retailers to game tournament organizers.
Sony’s rationalization has to do with redistributing the sales proceeds more towards developers, but one has to wonder if used games are actually as big of a problem as they say.
You can check out the full patent application here.
Source: ZoKnowsGaming.com, FPO
The beautiful, unique and wacky 2D fighting game Skullgirls has been updated to a “slightly different edition”. For a free patch, it sure does include an amazing amount of fixes and adjustments. Nearly every feature has been improved in some way: added features, balance changes, general gameplay changes, Online Mode improvements, newly added move lists (finally!)… everything you could ask for!
The detailed changes are too numerous to list here, so pay a visit to the official site for the lowdown.
Good news for all you lonely rolling stars out there! The very original Katamari Damacy is due to be released as a PS2 Classic in Japan. The game will be out November 21st for ¥1,200 ($15). No news yet whether or not it will be released in other regions, but keep your fingers crossed. This would be an especially nice treat for all the European fans, since Katamari Damacy completely passed them over the first time it was released.
As you may know, Katamari Damacy is that quirky, Japanese puzzle game where your goal is to roll a sticky katamari-ball around and try to make it bigger by touching any objects smaller than your katamari. It’s an amazing feeling when you start from the size of a small coffee cup and end up rolling up the townspeople or the town, or even more! The bigger you make your katamari before the time runs out, the better star or planet you can make out of it. Why do you need to roll stuff up to make celestial bodies? Because the King of All Cosmos accidentally destroyed all of them during a drunken rampage, of course! Yeah, it’s an awesome game.
Some would say you haven’t felt true happiness unless you’ve tried rolling a katamari.
Source: Siliconera
Jordan Mechner‘s legendary Karateka had its remake released on XBLA this week. The PSN release has been announced, but the date for that is not yet known.
Karateka is an HD Remake of a similarly titled, critically lauded 1984 game. As described by Mechner, it’s a story based game, with fighting as the main gameplay mechanic. The new version intends to stay true to the feel of the original, telling the story of the main character saving Princess Mariko from the clutches of evil Akuma, without any dialogue.
The basic idea remains as simple as ever: the player proceeds from one enemy to the next in a linear path with no deviations. The gameplay has been modernized, making the fighting more rhythm based. Old fashioned, frustrating mechanics (like one-shot deaths, forcing the player to start over) have been reimagined. If the player should fail, they get to try again with a different character. The game can be finished with any of the three characters, but the ultimate goal is to reunite the first, “true love” with Princess Mariko, adding to the replay value.
To whet your appetite, check out the newly released screenshots below, and see how the new style compares to the classic game.
