Octodad: Dadliest Catch Wobbling Onto PS Vita Next Week
Developer Young Horses has announced that Octodad: Dadliest Catch will be coming to PlayStation Vita on May 26.
Octodad will be a cross-buy title, so if you already own the game on PS4, you will automatically gain access to it on Vita. However, it will not have cross-save support.
In addition, there is a new feature allowing local co-op play on one device, with one player on each side of the console.
You can read IGN's review of the PS4 version of Octodad: Dadliest Catch right here, where we said that "Young Horses has done an excellent job taking the diamond in the rough that was the original Octodad student project and turning it into a short but charmingly absurdist physics game. While it doesn’t quite take the extra step that would cement its place as a classic, lovers of physical comedy owe it to themselves to check Dadliest Catch out."
US Air Force Launching Mystery Space Mission Today
The US Air Force's space plane, X-37B, is going into orbit today for the fourth time.
It's launching aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, which will take off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The Air Force is still remaining quiet about the purpose of the X-37B, and while some speculate it might be some type of space weapon, officials have denied such reports, reaffirming that the launch is to test new space technologies. It's also worth noting that NASA has an experiment aboard the rocket.
Coincidentally, this is also the day that the solar powered spaceship LightSail will get a test flight.
Report: Apple Ditches Plans for Apple TV Sets
Apple’s long-awaited TV set won’t be happening any time soon, sources close to the project believe.
According to the Wall Street Journal, via CNet, Apple has quietly dropped plans to continue developing an ultra-high-definition television set, which was reported to include a camera for video calls and other “cutting-edge” features.
Those features, whatever they were, simply weren’t compelling enough to impress Apple executives, the Journal reports.
Recruit A Friend To Xbox, Get 12-Months of EA Access Free
Microsoft is offering you 12 months of free EA Access for referring a friend to buy an Xbox One console.
Select Xbox One owners have been allocated a voucher code via email. If a friend uses your code to purchase a Xbox One console, Forza Horizon 2, and a three-month subscription to Xbox Live via the Microsoft Store before June 21, they'll get the lot for £315 and you'll each get a free 12-month subscription to EA Access.
Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX Gets Delayed
Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX will launch on September 8 in North America, and September 11 in Europe.
The rhythm game which is exclusive to the Nintendo 3DS was originally supposed to launch this month.
In North America, a special physical launch edition will include the game, premium packaging, and a wallet chain designed after Hatsune Miku's belt.
Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX will be available in stores and digitally for $40. Check out some of the details we have on the game here on IGN.
Hellblade Gameplay Reveal Coming Next Month
Ninja Theory, the studio behind the PS3 exclusive Heavenly Sword and the somewhat polarizing Devil May Cry reboot, is teasing a June 10 gameplay reveal for its upcoming action game Hellblade.
News of the forthcoming debut was announced at the conclusion of the studio's latest entry in its developer diary series, which provides an in-depth look into the Ninja Theory's design process and the challenges it's faced along the way.
Hellblade was first announced last year at Gamescom as a PlayStation 4 title, but Ninja Theory has since confirmed a PC version will be coming as well.
There Was a Witcher Movie in 2001?
Sorry, Netflix. Before the games, but after the books written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher was adapted into a movie, and a TV series. Netflix is now developing the franchise into a new TV show starring Henry Cavill as monster-hunting hero Geralt.
The original film was known as Wiedźmin in Poland, which translates into The Witcher in English, although the film was renamed The Hexer internationally.
As the story goes, the film was released in 2001 and was panned by critics. The biggest problem being the movie wasn’t actually a movie, it was a 13 episode TV series that had been squished into a two-hour feature film, which in turn made it into a nonsensical mishmash.
Chinese Building Looks Exactly Like the USS Enterprise
The headquarters of NetDragon Websoft, a Chinese gaming and mobile Internet company, have been built to look exactly like the USS Enterprise from above.
NetDragon chairman Liu DeJian actually licensed the rights from CBS in order to construct the replica. The project cost $160 million, and took six years to build, finishing last year.
This YouTube video shows off the building in closer detail using drone footage.
China Hopes to be the First to Land on Dark Side of the Moon
China is planning to land its probe, the Chang'e-4, and its accompanying rover, on the far side of the moon for the first time in human history.
"Other countries have chosen to land on the near side of the moon." Wu Weiren said to China Central Television. "Our next move probably will see some spacecraft land on the far side of the moon."
An ideal landing spot would be the South Pole-Aitken basin, a massive impact crater which could offer more information about the moon's history.
The planned launch for the Chang'e-4 is 2020. The Chang'e-5 probe will launch in 2017, before the Chang'e-4, and will return from the moon from lunar samples. China is also planning a research mission to Mars in 2020.
Swords And Soldiers 2 Review
Military skirmishes are never two-dimensional affairs. There is always a lot of politics involved, of course, but on a more primal level, there are concerns like unit formation and attack direction to command your attention--elements that most real-time strategy games try to emulate in one way or another when they depict war. Swords & Soldiers II does away with most of that unit management, boiling the RTS formula down to some of its barest essentials and leaving you with a deceptively simple side-scrolling strategy game. Imagine Age of Empires, flatten it against a cave wall, cut the time of most matches down to 10 minutes or less, and sprinkle in an array of character names that double as puns.
Every battle in Swords & Soldiers II is a duel between two armies--one on the left side of the map and one on the right. Whenever you send out a combat unit from your base (whether it’s a slow but strong melee unit, an agile ranged unit, or something else entirely), that unit travels in a straight line toward the enemy's base until it encounters resistance. With rare exceptions, you have no real control over a unit's movement--most of the game’s controls center on buying soldiers, not commanding them. You can't tell a unit to stop, you can’t tell it to ignore an enemy, you can't command it to shift focus ... it simply moves toward its goal, destroying everything in its way or dying in the attempt.
As you play through the game's stages, you are steadily introduced to units and spells from each faction.
Since you can't manage exactly when and where your troops will go, resource management is key. Swords & Soldiers II keeps this simple: you purchase most units with gold, and on most maps, you collect it from a mine located right next to your home base--no exploring required. The mine's supply of funds is infinite, so as long as you don't allow your worker units to die, you can easily maintain a steady supply of income. The only other resource you have to keep an eye on is mana, which dictates when you can use the various spells at your disposal. Typically, mana trickles in slowly but steadily, though there are ways to earn mana more quickly if you're proactive about accumulating it. For example, blocks of gold or mana occasionally parachute down from the heavens, which you can send a worker out to collect.
Both gold and mana are important, but spells in particular often shift the tide of battle. They are your most direct way of influencing the action, like the hand of a god throwing down a bolt of lightning or cursing its enemies with fear. Unleashing the right spell at the right time can throw a major wrench into your opponent's plans. Say, for instance, that the other player has just sent a large group of fast-moving enemies your way. This could be devastating for your much smaller force if you simply allow the opposing units to duke it out head-to-head, but a properly placed blizzard spell can temporarily stop the entire cluster of enemies in its tracks, giving your own warriors time to whittle them down. Other times, success comes down to countering your opponent with a properly matched army. Is she sending flying units your way? Then don’t lean too heavily on your short-range berserkers.
All of this can be done with quick and easy touch controls on the Wii U GamePad, though this method means that you spend your entire time looking at the GamePad’s screen rather than the TV. If you’d rather, you can play with an analog stick and button control scheme that swaps a command bar at the top of the screen for radial menus assigned to the Wii U’s ZL and ZR buttons. You may lose a bit of speed when selecting units this way, but it’s a comfortable and easy-to-use setup.
You only have to worry about the opposing army coming at you from a single direction, but that doesn't mean that you never lose track of what's going on. Because a complex battle is being flattened to 2D, there is usually a lot happening on the screen, making it easy to be overwhelmed by the action. Thankfully, Swords & Soldiers II's vibrantly chunky, fantastical art makes most of the game's units visually distinctive from one another at a quick glance. (Granted, it helps that there aren't too many units in the first place. Each faction has less than a dozen, not including spells and towers.)
Swords & Soldiers II boils the RTS formula down to some of its barest essentials and leaves you with a deceptively simple side-scrolling strategy game.
If you played the first Swords & Soldiers, most of these details are familiar, though in this case, familiarity does not breed contempt. It's been several years since the beloved original game was released, and this sequel is much improved not just in visual terms (it's a much better-looking game than its predecessor), but also in regards to campaign structure.
The original game was separated into multiple short campaigns, each focused on one of the game's factions. Swords & Soldiers II instead has a single campaign that tells one large, unbroken story. As you play through the game's stages, you are steadily introduced to units and spells from each faction--such as the Vikings' snowstorm or the demons' skeleton-generating tower--allowing you to get a good grasp of all the game's strategic options without being overwhelmed right from the start. Intriguingly, those units are often mixed and matched throughout the campaign. A Persian Sand Witch can fight alongside a demonic Naga while being defended by a Viking guard tower, leading to greater variety in your potential strategies.
This ability to create your own custom faction carries forward into the game's skirmish mode. Perhaps you have played StarCraft and thought, "I really like playing as the Terrans, but it would be awesome if I had access to that one Protoss unit.” Swords & Soldiers II’s response to that question is to invite you to build a dream team. Unfortunately, you aren’t able to show off that team to too many people. While Swords & Soldiers II has a great local two-player mode in which one player uses the Wii U GamePad's screen and the other player uses the TV, there is no online multiplayer mode. You can play against AI opponents of varying difficulty, but the AI is no substitute for a devilish human opponent.
In fact, if you don't have people nearby to skirmish with, there's not a lot to keep you coming back to Swords & Soldiers II once you've finished the relatively brief (about four- or five-hour) campaign. There are bonus objectives and timed challenges to go for in each mission if you're a completist, but not much in the way of extra, replayable content. Yet Swords & Soldiers II is still impressive, bringing the depth of any properly balanced RTS to a two-dimensional plane. If you’ve got a few hours to kill, its campaign provides great strategic opportunities. And if you’ve got a friend nearby, you could be skirmishing for a long time to come.