Month: September 2018

Square Enix has announced it is remastering Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, and it will launch in 2019. A short trailer for the game made its debut at the PlayStation Lineup Tour, a pre-Tokyo Game Show event, and teases the return of the multiplayer RPG.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was originally release for Nintendo GameCube in 2004. The game tasks players with battling enemies and solving puzzles so that they can safely gather Myrrh, an energy source that sustains the crystals needed to protect the world from Miasma. In the original release, multiplayer was enabled by connecting Game Boy Advances using a link cable, however, the remaster will have internet connectivity.

In GameSpot’s Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles review, Brad Shoemaker awarded it an 8/10, saying that it is “a fun action RPG with its own style and a fair amount of replay value.”

He continued: “It doesn’t exactly fit into the Final Fantasy series proper, aside from the involvement of crystals and a few familiar monsters and magic spells, but it’s good enough to stand on its own without any famous franchise names attached to it. Crystal Chronicles plays specifically to those who will appreciate it, and it serves as a fitting return for Square to the Nintendo partnership that first brought the company to fame so long ago.”

The PlayStation Lineup Tour has delivered a few other surprises too, including a new Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer that shows the Big Hero 6 world and characters. In it, Sora, Donald, and Goofy meet with Baymax and Hiro to defend San Fransokyo from the Heartless.

In addition to that, a new trailer for From Software’s Sekiro: Shadow’s Die Twice was also released. It shows off some of the things that differentiate it from the studio’s other big games, Dark Souls and Bloodborne–most notably the traversal. Watch the new Sekiro TGS 2018 trailer here.

From Software has released a new trailer for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice ahead of the start of Tokyo Game Show, which begins on September 20. The trailer is, as is typical for From Software titles such as Dark Souls and Bloodborne, moody and ominous. It shows a shinobi seeming lying dead on the floor, but quickly cuts to gameplay, with the lead characters acrobatically launching himself around the environment.

This kind of movement is the big distinction between Sekiro and the Dark Souls series. The main character has a grappling hook, and can quickly climb up walls, hide in the rafters, and generally engage in sneaky ninja behaviour to take out his enemy. Despite this, the combat still looks and feels very familiar to previous From Software games, though perhaps with the intensity turned up. In the trailer the main character is shown taking on towering, gruesome beasts in brutal combat. Kitao has also posted some pretty sweet artwork for the game on Twitter, which you can see below.

From Software previously discussed the interesting development history Sekiro has had, confirming that it originally began life as a new instalment in the classic Tenchu series. “When we originally set out to create something different from Dark Souls and our previous titles, we thought it would be interesting to make a Japanese themed game,” explained community manager Yasuhiro Kitao. “So from that we started going in the direction of the shinobi and ninja, and of course Tenchu was an IP with that history; that was the original impetus for this project.”

Activision immediately came on board, but over time the project changed into something else, which is why Sekiro is now launching as a new IP. “[A]s we developed and as we partnered with Activision, and started building it together, it started becoming its own thing. The game we wanted to make was no longer just Tenchu, so it really evolved into its own thing,” Kitao said.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice introduces a resurrection mechanic, which is also a key difference from the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne. When you die in battle, you’re able to use a limited number of life tokens to instantly revive, which creates interesting strategic considerations. Your protagonist also has a prosthetic arm that can be outfitted with a shuriken, axe, and other kinds of weapons akin to the Trick Weapons from Bloodborne.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice launches for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on March 22, 2019.

Square Enix has released a new trailer for Kingdom Hearts 3, showing off plenty of footage from the Big Hero 6 world and characters that will be featured in it. The trailer was shown at the PlayStation Lineup Tour, a pre-Tokyo Game Show event. The Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer is in Japanese but you can use YouTube’s closed captions feature for English subtitles.

It opens with Sora, Donald, and Goofy in San Fransokyo battling Heartless on the Golden Gate Bridge. Baymax arrives and introduces himself, alongside Hiro, and the gang all team up to fight their enemies. There’s also short segments from the Monsters Inc. and Tangled worlds, as well as some story teases, with Xehanort appearing briefly too. Check out the trailer above to see all this, plus some pretty cool combat and Gummi Ship sequences.

Kingdom Hearts 3 is set to be the closing chapter in the saga, which has been told primarily through the numbered, core entry in the series. As with previous entries, players will be taken on a ride through some of the most beloved Disney worlds, including Toy Story, and Hercules, in addition to those mentioned above. Kingdom Hearts 3 is set to release on January 29, 2019 on Xbox One and PS4.

At E3, GameSpot talked to one of the key creative forces behind the Kingdom Hearts series, Tetsuya Nomura. The interview covered a variety of topics, including how it felt to finally have a release date for the game, which has been 13 years in the making, the pressure of fan expectations, and working on Kingdom Hearts 3 at the same time as remaking Final Fantasy 7, among others. You can read the full Kingdom Hearts 3 interview with Tetsuya Nomura here.

Brand new gameplay from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is revealed in this trailer from Tokyo Game Show 2018. Shadows: Die Twice is released on PS4, Xbox One and Steam 22nd March 2019.

A new Japanese-language trailer for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has been released ahead of Tokyo Game Show next week.

You can watch the new trailer (with English subtitles) up above right now, which contains lots of new footage including a glimpse at new mechanics, bosses, and environments than we’ve seen previously.

I’ve gathered some of the main highlights in the gallery below and added my own observations as well as a moderate dose of speculation based on playing the game, recent interviews, and speaking to the developers at Gamescom.

Daniel is IGN’s UK Managing Editor. You can be part of the world’s most embarrassing cult by following him on IGN and Twitter.

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Walmart’s had a bunch of gaming PCs on sale for a while now, and over the course of the weekend, it dropped the prices on a whole bunch even more than they already were. Don’t wait for the new RTX 2080 benchmarks if you’re thinking of jumping, head-first, into the world of PC gaming. With these sale prices, you can get a perfectly competent gaming PC right now, one that runs basically every modern game, for around the same price as a new 20-series card alone.

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