With the service set to shut down later this year, your final chance to earn Club Nintendo coins is today.
As announced back in January, the Club Nintendo rewards program is being discontinued. Since January 20, all games and systems to come out have not included product registration cards. The next part of the shutdown begins tomorrow, April 1, when you'll no longer be able to earn coins for redeeming those registration cards, completing surveys, and so on.
If you haven't signed up for Club Nintendo previously but have been hoarding Club Nintendo registration codes, you can still sign up for a new account today and redeem them.
While today is the last day that coins can be earned, that doesn't mean you have to spend them immediately. Physical rewards could always go out of stock, but you have until June 30 to spend your coins on the available rewards. Any coins you don't use by then will be lost on July 1, and will not carry over to the new rewards program that Nintendo plans to launch.
The Major League Baseball season starts on Sunday and it is only fitting that the 10th iteration of MLB 15: The Show is set to release Tuesday, March 31st. With many different opinions and speculation around the start of the Major League Baseball season, it begs the question...Who is going to win the World Series in 2015?
Developed and published by Sony Entertainment, MLB 15: The Show is a deeply immersive and entertaining baseball experience with substantial year over year improvements to both their gameplay and graphics. We are set to give away 5 copies of the game on PS3, PS4 and PS Vita. Enter our giveaway for a chance to secure your copy today!
How do you enter to win? Simple. All you have to do is enter the required fields and if you win, you'll be contacted via email. Good Luck!
To date, we've seen little from the game, which was first announced in 2013, beyond the teaser trailer above from last year's E3.
If you're not going to be in attendance at the event, EA will releasing the trailer at some point during the show, though it's unclear if that will happen at the same time as when it's shown to attendees.
Those who are at Star Wars Celebration "will have a chance to see gameplay behind closed doors during the show at our official booth along with a few other activities starting that Friday," according to EA.
Ubisoft's 2.5D Assassin's Creed: Chronicles series will now span three different games each told in a different time period and setting, the publisher announced today. The first game--the only one announced prior to today--is Assassin's Creed Chronicles China. The next two are set in India and Russia.
Each game will follow a famous Assassin, and you can see a brief look at the story and gameplay in the trailer above.
In the China-set game, you play as Shao Jun, who first appeared in the Assassin's Creed Embers animated short. This title is set during the Ming dynasty at the start of its downfall.
The India- and Russia-set games, meanwhile, see players taking on the roles of Arbaaz Mir and Nikolaï Orelov from the Assassin's Creed graphic novels. The India-focused game takes place during the Sikh Empire as it prepares for battle, while the Russia game is set in the aftermath of the Red October revolution.
The three Assassin's Creed Chronicles games feature a unique setting, art style, story, and hero character, but all are tied together narratively, Ubisoft says.
Following Assassin's Creed Chronicles China will be the game set in India then the title in Russia. Release dates for those games have not been announced. In addition, Ubisoft did not announce any kind of special bundle that includes all three.
The Assassin's Creed Chronicles series is developed by Climax Studios (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories) with support from Ubisoft Montreal.
There is a sub-genre of platform games that I'm entirely unfamiliar with: Metroidvanias. Games like the eponymous Metroid and Castlevania, in which you backtrack through an interconnected world and find new items which allow for further exploration of the playable space. But it's not just these classics that are foreign to me. Recent games that play off the Metroidvania formula, like Ori and the Blind Forest, and Axiom Verge, are replete with homages and subtle nods to the classics which are entirely lost on me.
So, I decided to fix that by venturing back to the now-21-year-old game that is widely considered the pinnacle of Metroidvanias: Super Metroid. What follows are my four most significant, raw impressions of the game, coloured by the perspective of over two decades of experience with advancement in game design and accessibility.
The Wii U eShop version I played hard-codes German subtitles into the game, because it's the European version. Yay!
1. This Introduction Is All Over The Shop
The first thing I'm struck by is the amount of crawling-text exposition as the game begins. Super Metroid opens as Samus recounts her previous missions (of which there were two, unbeknownst to me--I had assumed Super Metroid was the second in the series). If I had played Metroid and its sequel on the NES, I'm sure it would be cool to see key moments from those games recreated in Super Metroid's graphics during Samus' flashbacks. Mostly, I just want the game to begin.
Once it does, the intensity ratchets up in a wholly unexpected way. No sooner am I experimenting with the finicky controls than a dragon-like creature which looks like the final boss appears, and a self-destruct timer starts. As I hot-foot it back the way I came, with the level collapsing around me, I'm wondering why something that feels like a grand finale is happening as soon as the game starts. Suddenly, the entire level begins to tilt to the right--something I'm surprised was even possible to render on the Super Nintendo. I hop in my ship, fly away from a massive explosion, land on planet Zebes (which I pronounce "zeebs" in my head) and wonder what just happened.
Lesson #1: Bomb everything.
2. This Game Is Excellent At Teaching Without Telling
Aside from the text popups that appear when finding a new item, Super Metroid is surprisingly adept at encouraging you to learn through experimentation and discovery. There is usually a place to use a new item as soon as you get it, immediately communicating its intended function. Coloured environmental cues serve their purpose without being distractingly obvious--I knew the green-tipped super missile would open green doors, for instance. Not knowing you can go behind some tiles until you see an enemy doing just that is genius.
Super Metroid is surprisingly adept at encouraging you to learn through experimentation and discovery.
It's not all easy learning, however. The walls that can be destroyed are frustratingly inconsistent in their design--especially since the environment palette changes so frequently. Not every type of damage will destroy every type of destructible object, which led me to waste much time and ammo shooting and bombing every suspicious piece of wall and floor. Some of the terrain even requires multiple actions to destroy, such as first revealing a tile with a bomb, and then destroying that tile with a super missile. Argh!
Diagonals! My worst enemy!
3. I Hate These Controls
I cannot stand Super Metroid's 8-way aiming system. In a world with twin-stick controls and 360 degrees of precision, having to line an enemy up in one of the ordinal directions is frustrating. This is compounded by the fact that pointing in one of those directions with the D-pad also causes you to move, while using the shoulder buttons to lock your aiming diagonally up or diagonally down becomes finicky when ten alien bats are swooping at you. I'm still struggling to get used to the air control and strange jump speed acceleration, and the fact that you can't aim directly down without jumping frustrated me even further. Plus, having to press the down key multiple times to enter the morph ball mode feels cumbersome, especially in a boss battle.
Speaking of boss battles, I had no idea I'd be experiencing something similar in multiple ways to Bloodborne. Not only are these bosses hard, but the rather limited save points meant I was traversing the same route to the boss room multiple times after multiple deaths. I became more efficient at getting through that path while losing as little health and using as few resources as possible, in exactly the same way I found myself doing in From Software's action role-playing game. And, just as Bloodborne intimidated me with towering enemies, so too did Super Metroid. There's one boss--a giant green lizard thing--who starts out occupying just one room. After his first phase, the walls crumble away and the arena becomes four times as large, and his full form bursts upward from the ground to leer over you. I was delightfully surprised that a game this old could still impress me with a sense of scale by playing upon my expectations like this.
I think this is a great boss fight, even though I died an embarrassing number of times.
4. There Are So Many Small, Thoughtful Details
I love the way Samus' arm cannon expands a couple of pixels when you prime a missile for launch. I love the little stone skulls embedded in the walls that turn their heads to follow you. I love that some enemies explode into little chunks which can still hurt me if they bounce in my direction. I love that reaching a dead end causes me to speculate about the kind of ability I'll find next which will let me push forward. I love that my ship is actually a save point, and that I need to make multiple trips back to it to resupply over the course of the game. I love that at one point, you cross through just a single screen that puts you in a glass tunnel underwater, before returning to some dark caverns. I love that different enemies require the use of different abilities, like those green mantis things that block your blaster shots and need to be taken out with morph bombs.
I love that reaching a dead end causes me to speculate about the kind of ability I'll find next which will let me push forward.
But then, there are some details which I found confusing. When I opened the map screen, I thought the "S" stood for "Samus" (it's actually "Save room") and the "M" stood for "Metroid" (it's actually "Map room"). Why are Space Pirates following the orders of a giant brain in a jar? Why do pink doors make me use five missiles to open them? Is the Y button ever used for anything at all?
Oh, and I still can't figure out why Samus' clothes fall off when she dies. But who am I to question the classics?
By Chris Pereira on Mar 31, 2015 09:25 pm Tower of Guns
Sony has announced the list of games that PlayStation Plus members will be getting for free in the month of April. This includes three games each for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 owners, and the standard two for Vita.
Unfortunately, because today's PlayStation Store update happens on the final day of March, we'll be waiting until next Tuesday, April 7, before they're made free. On the plus side, that gives you more time to make sure you downloaded March's games.
Below, you'll find the list of six free games for Plus members, including the excellent stealth-action game Dishonored and the over-the-top action of "oh my god there are like 800 bullets coming at me right now" FPS Tower of Guns.
The deals listed below are good now through April 6. Though some deals require an Xbox Live Gold subscription, a good portion of the games on sale this week do not. Prices for titles and add-ons marked with an asterisk do not require Xbox Live Gold.
What are you picking up this week? Let us know in the comments below!
Xbox One:
Battlefield 4 Air Vehicle Support Shotcut Kit* -- $5
Bloodborne is the latest game to be beaten with blazing speed.
Watch the video above, from YouTube user Oginam_tv, to see the challening role-playing game beaten in 40 minutes and 17 seconds, or 44 minutes exactly in real time.
Oginam makes use of a variety of Bloodborne exploits and glitches (including the item duplication cheat) to zip through massive game at that pace. Still, it's quite a feat to watch unfold.
"This was a pretty good run but I can certainly get faster," he says (via Eurogamer), claiming his time represents a new world record.
GameSpot reviewer Kevin VanOrd finished Bloodborne in about 60 hours, reaching level 90 and beating several--but not all--of the game's optional bosses.
The special preorder promotion for the PC version of Grand Theft Auto V that yields an extra $300,000 worth of in-game cash for GTA Online expires today, March 31. Now's your last chance to secure the extra cash to help you hit the ground running when GTA V arrives for PC in just a couple weeks on April 14.
The extra cash offer--good only for the digital version of the game--is available at a variety of retailers, including Steam, Amazon, GameStop, and Rockstar's own website. Though the extra $300,000 offer expires at midnight tonight, players can still receive $1.2 million worth of in-game cash ($700,000 for Story Mode and $500,000 for GTA Online) by preordering up until the game's release.
GTA V for PC will include online Heists right out of the gate. It will also feature a new editing tool called the Rockstar Editor. This will give players a "full suite" of tools that they can use to create and publishing clips to the Rockstar Social Club and YouTube.
GTA V was originally released in September 2013 for last-generation consoles. The game launched for current-generation machines in November 2014, selling 10 million units on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 as of December 31. In all, GTA V has shipped a massive 45 million copies worldwide.
The limited edition bundle ($450) comes with a copy of the game and steel-grey system featuring an Arkham Knight faceplate. The bundle also packs in a matching steel-grey DualShock 4.
In addition to this, Sony will offer another Arkham Knight PS4 bundle that comes with a regular black console (and matching DualShock 4 controller) and a copy of the game for $400.
Sony also announced Tuesday that Arkham Knight bonus content, such as additional missions and custom skins for Batman and the Batmobile, will be available first on PS4. This content will be available when the game launches in late June. It's unclear when it will be made available for Xbox One and PC.
Finally, Sony revealed that digital preorders for Arkham Knight are going live today on the PlayStation Store. The special edition Arkham Knight hardware bundles, meanwhile, are available to preorder here.
Marvel Entertainment and DeNA on Tuesday launched Marvel Mighty Heroes, a free-to-play mobile game for iOS and Android devices that was written by X-Men author Fred Van Lente. The game is described as a co-op brawler, and you can watch its launch trailer above.
In Marvel Mighty Heroes, gamers will choose from a deep roster of Marvel characters and build a "dream-team" of heroes and villains. Some of the available characters include Iron Man, Groot, Captain America, Star-Lord, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, and Spider-Man, as well as "dozens" of their allies and nemeses.
Each character has their own skillset and special abilities, as well as alternate costumes that yield new powers focused around speed, strength, and health. Marvel Mighty Heroes also supports multiplayer (up to four players) and features online leaderboards that will track how you stack up against friends and the world.
DeNA promises to support Marvel Mighty Heroes will a regular stream of add-on content in the form of new worlds and storylines, the likes of which represent narratives "never before explored in a Marvel game." To get things going, DeNA has rolled out a six-part weekly "Infinity" series where the Avengers and the Guardians of Galaxy are working together to fight Thanos the Mad Titan.
For a closer look at Marvel Mighty Heroes, check out the image gallery below. You can download the free game now by following these links: iTunes, Google Play.
DeNA also recently teamed up with Nintendo to bring that company's franchises to mobile for the first time.
This special pricing is good through April 7, after which point the game will cost $30. Avalanche has also released a CGI launch trailer for Primal, which you can watch above.
New for the full release of Primal is the Quetzalcoatlus flying dinosaur, as well as additional weapons and a dynamic weather system that covers the game's entire 9.3 square mile map.
Developer Expansive Worlds has also added eye-tracking to Primal by way of a partnership with Tobii Tech and SteelSeries. Similar to how it works with Assassin's Creed Rogue, Primal's eye-tracking allows players to orient the game camera based on where the they are actually looking.
Of course, players will need a SteelSeries Sentry ($200) with Tobii eye-tracking support to take advantage of the new feature.
The next Nintendo Direct broadcast has been announced, and it's happening soon.
Tomorrow, April 1, Nintendo will hold its next special broadcast, this one promising "updates" about upcoming Wii U and 3DS games. Nintendo is holding the presentation on April Fools' Day, but promises that, "this Nintendo Direct is no joke!"
In addition to the unspecified "updates" about Wii U and 3DS games, Nintendo will conclude the broadcast with a "short" presentation featuring one of the company's spring 2015 games. The company didn't say which game this will be.
The April 1 Nintendo Direct briefing will begin at 3 PM PDT / 6 PM EDT. GameSpot will bring you all the news from the event as it's announced.
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