Today, leaked via Nintendo Power, we have confirmation that Mega Man 10, the sequel that started the comeback of the classic series, Mega Man 9, is soon to be on the WiiWare network. With the same homage to the horrible six hour artwork of the 80′s, Mega Man and a Protoman that looks like he fought Lord Zedd and copied his powers grace the cover.

Double Dragon has nothing on these two.

Apparently, Swine Flu Robotenza is spreading and it’s up to Rock(Mega Man) and Blues(Proto Man) to find the vaccine. Cue the 8 Robot Masters, and 8 stages of pain. Proto is playable from the get-go and comes with everything he had in 9, including a shield and sliding ability. Known bosses at the moment include Sheep Man. Seriously. Among the secrets the game has in store, a thrid playable character, but my guess is it’s going to be a character that plays just to your forte.

Expect more as details come out, and a full review once the game comes out.

So good luck to you all in getting what you wish!

Firstly, the game is bursting at the seams with sex appeal. The demo is even titled Bayonetta: First Climax. Made by the creator of the Devil May Cry series, it plays just like it in terms of controls. Bayonetta herself moves quite gracefully, although very sultry at the same time.

She has a bunch of moves available to her in normal combos that separate her from her spiritual predecessors Dante and Nero. First off, her combos can end in summoning hair monsters to finish the combo. If you’re performing a kick combo, you can expect a giant heel of hair slamming down into your opponent. She also has another move triggered by moving the left stick in a circle and then tapping punch or kick, followed by mashing punch or kick that sends the slick witch into a dynamic shooting frenzy. The camera focuses on Bayonetta, allowing you to shoot around you in a circle. Finally, her best move is Witch Time. Whereas DMC’s Devil Trigger powered up Dante and Nero to demonic levels, Witch Time slows down everything, allowing you to pick off enemies as you please.

The game is beautiful, and the demo featured a lot of grandiose battles, even starting out in a dream where you are falling down on a broken clock tower. The enemies in the game show up in a very “Whose That Pokémon?” style, where the enemy’s name shows up as they first appear. During battle, Bayonetta can use moves called Torture Attacks, where she can shove enemies into iron maidens she summons onto the arena. Against the boss of the demo, you can finish him off with an over-the-top summon; a dragon made up of Bayonetta’s hair. After crushing the boss, the dragon returns to her naked body, which shows itself to be her clothing as well. That’s right, her hair is her clothing. Her magic is just that powerful.

Fans of the Devil May Cry series, rejoice. It’s back, and it’s wearing .45 caliber stilettos.

It starts out with Kratos looking dead at you, and goes straight into him taking on a few soldiers that are attacking civilians. With the Blades of Chaos at your command, you get to lay into all of them with beautiful brutality. The controls are easily mapped, with the right stick controlling your dodging and the left your movement. The D-Pad handles you’re weapon selection, with the Blades of Chaos mapped to Down, and Cestus to Right.

Next up, you move through a door into a cave with a harpy. Time to do some harpy jumping, after which jumping off, Kratos kills said Harpy. It then proceeds deeper to show you how to chain Harpy jumps. This…is difficult at first, but second nature after getting used to it. It becomes a vital skill later on, so it’s important to master it as soon as possible.

Arriving outside to greet you is Helios, and a Titan. This section also teaches you how to glide using the Icarus Wing power, with a trial by fire. If you fail to use the power properly, you die and start right before the jump.  As you challenge the soldiers, Helios will rain down solar flares to keep you on your toes. Defeating them earns you… a fight with a Centaur and more soldiers. Using wide area attacks, the Centaur falls down to the button-sequence state, which you begin to slice it apart right down the middle.

After dealing with the threat of the Centaur, you move upwards towards a Bautista. Engaging it pans the camera back and triggers a battle with a Manticore. This multi-stage battle shows off the real power of the Cestus gauntlets, being able to make short work of the beast with its power-foucsed attacks, once taking off the tail, second the lion-head, and finally the ramming beast.

With the Manticore felled, you approach the Bautista, shooting down Helios, and allowing the Titan to send him FLYING… the other way. Once that’s done, you proceed back down to do a Harpy Ride all the way to the other side of the chasm. This is where the Harpy Ride skill becomes vital.

Another corridor filled with soldiers offers the chance to show off the battering ram technique. Very useful, moreso fun. Bones go flying every which way, and it’s just gorgeous with the textures. Climbing a cliff, Kratos finds Helios on his death-charriot. Walking towards him, some aid comes in the form of a cyclops and some soldiers. Bringing the cyclops down to the button-entry sequence allows you to control the beast a la Titan in Arkham Asylum. With them turned into ashes and having their eyes pulled out, you proceed to break Helios’ head off and turn it into a portable lantern. Using it allows you to reveal secrets and blind baddies.

Revealing a door, you get to test out such a feature. At the end of this cave is an ‘Icarus Vent’. Jumping into it begins a flying mini-game. Kratos spreads his Icarus Wings, and begins to fly upward, dodging debris and burning boulders. As you near the end of the flight, you meet the Titan again, who knocks you loose a bit, but not enough to stop Kratos from prepping the Blades to go face-first into the Titan.

As a first taste of God of War III, my appetite has been whetted. Come March 2010, I’ll open Pandora’s Box, but for now, I’ll play catch up with the God of War Collection on PS3. This is going to be a good game, living up to its pedigree. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get (too) overhyped.

Anyway, here’s the unboxing video: (click article to view all the videos)

I show off all the characters on the select screen here, with a little bit of King randomness via random select of course.

Here I show off a couple of the new characters, Alisa and Lars:

I really haven’t even played the game much yet to get a serious review or anything, but seriously, it’s exactly the same gameplay of every Tekken game from the very beginning. The progress is undoubtedly the outstanding look of the characters and interactive stages they battle in. 60FPS gameplay is absolutely gorgeous, to go along with the motion blur effect. It’s a little gimmicky I suppose, but it definitely works here and adds to the whole HD feel to the game. It’s extremely easy to pick up the basics; even my 12 year old broski was whipping my behind with his button mashing. Easy concept on how to win, it just takes a lot of memorizing, being able to execute and knowing when and what to do. Pretty much the same as any fighting game in that case. This game is made to play against others, so I really hope the online isn’t as bad and laggy as Street Fighter IV.

So let’s say if this game were supposed to be released the same day as SSF4, and upcoming Blazblue game and that I could only choose 2 of the 3 titles, sorry Tekken, You’d have to wait until next time. No hard feelings though, you’re still the best pure 3D side stepping fighting game(yes, easily over Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur and Virtua Fighter’s recent games), that’s for sure.

I’ve barely scratched the surface with this game and the plenty of modes and button mashing fun it has to offer, but if I was forced to give my “impression rating” so far with the game, I’d give it a solid 8.5 out of 10.

I have a couple more videos of Tekken 6 on my Youtube channel, as well as many more to come! So be sure to stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!

Peace

Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion just came out TODAY. As the latest incarnation in the Tekken series, it, as the tagline claims, has exploded into a full blown out war, Kazama vs Mishima, in a Devil vs Devil bloodbath to the death. Seeing as how I don’t have the game just yet, I’ll leave all honors of a proper review to John. I will go on to detail what’s coming up.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift has a new video out showcasing the Arcade version’s intro.

More fighters, more rivalries, more Medabots? More power? All jokes aside, everything has been touched up, from the character artwork, to the movesets. As info comes in, I’ll try and post on it.

Moving on to a smaller field of gameplay, the PSP is bringing in to powerhouse anime franchises to the field. First up is Naruto Shippuden: Narutimate Accel 3. Continuing from Naruto Shippuden: Narutimate Accel 2 (Ultimate Ninja 5: Naruto Shippuden once it hits the US), the game features more characters, going all the way up to the formation of Sasuke’s sqaud, Snake. So far, confirmed things include the Rasenshuriken as a Naruto special technique, and the ‘Yellow Flash’ as a playable character.

http://www.cyberconnect2.jp/narutoA3/index.html

Seeing as Japan hasn’t put out a new Naruto PSP game since the first game (Naruto: Narutimate Portable - Mugenjo no Maki/Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Heroes - The Phantom Fortress). The other two games, Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Heroes, and Naruto Shippuden: Akatsuki Rising, were made by Bandai-Namco, which explains how they pale in comparison to their original counterparts.

Finally, something for Gundam fans. Previously released on the PSP and in arcades as Gundam vs Gundam, this rerelease – Gundam vs. Gundam NEXT Plus – now has Gundams that fully represent every Gundam series, adding in the overlooked movies from the previous iteration. What that means is you can now have your “Who is the ultimate ZERO Gundam? Wing Gundam Zero Custom or 00 -Raiser?” Original Gundam vs Seed? Wing vs 00? Whatever you like, as a Gundam fan, this game looks like it’s going to be great.

http://www.gundam-vs.jp/nextplus/

For one, the system does feel a LOT lighter versus the PSP 1000 – 3000 models. Almost cheap, but just a grade above that. The screen takes what worked for the 3000 and makes it work better, even though the screen is a bit smaller (3.8″ by the way). The L and R triggers are a bit longer and feel similar to the DualShock 3 in how it hangs out.

More importantly lets get down the more important controls: The D-pad and the buttons. I had my PSP-2000 God of War PSP to compare with, and just by touching the Go’s D-pad, it feels very shallow. It’s similar to the US PSP-1000 Piano Black’s in how shallow it is. It is almost a turn-off, but I expect that a PSPgo 2k series is already in the works with a raised D-pad. I can understand the d-pad not being raised because of the sliding function, but I wouldn’t mind having it “pop” somehow out when the top screen slides out.

The other thing control wise is the analog stick. It has a smaller contact area, which makes little sense seeing as it has enough room in its recessed area to fit the PSP 1000-3000′s stick, it would just need the shaft to be closer to the system. The volume controls are a bit awkward to reach at first, but it becomes second nature in a few minutes. The wi-fi button is moved back to the left a la PSP-1000, while the Memory Stick M2 port is where the MS Pro Duo stick port is on the PSP 2k/3k.

Now that control positives and negatives are out of the way, let’s move on to the system’s software. It was very quick loading games, and the built-in memory is a boon. 16 GBs is nice. Its greatest strength is its greatest weakness. With all the games being downloaded to the internal memory, it becomes eaiser to take everything with you. Rock Band? Got it. Pat-a-pat-a-Patapon? Done. But now here’s where it gets ugly. Because it has no UMD drive, or UMD transfer program due to legal issues, that nice stack of UMD games you have been building up since 2005 is now null and void. Hopefully, SCEA will take a nod from their UK brethern and throw PSP gamers a trio of free games to download to the system.

Overall, it’s a good step in the right direction. Once it gets some steam behind it(read: once Sony stops being anal about the prices), and maybe in the next iteration. PSP-N2000 with a touch screen and raised buttons, with 128KB of RAM , at $200? I wish. But it would finally be worth the price.

Well I figured that now that they’ve said that Super Street Fighter IV is going to be a standalone update, the newest update to BlazBlue will be as well.

Titled “BlazBlue: Continnum Shift”, it’s an upgraded version of “BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger”. Besides an over haul on the hud, the game also includes three new characters from the games story mode as playable characters: Noel Vermillion’s best friend, Tsubaki Yayoi,  Hazama, and Λ-11.

Before I go any further, SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILER ALERT!! WARNING!!

Now that that’s taken care of, players of BB:CT’s story mode remeber Hazama as the super-evil badnik that’s been manipulating the events of the story, from Jin cutting off Ragna’s right arm, to the whole time loop. He poses as Hazama, a captain of the NOL, but in actuality, he’s Terumi, the main villian of the game. What kind of powers he will posses in-game will be interesting to see..

Then there is Tsubaki. A top-class member of the NOL, she is Noel’s best friend and one of Jin’s childhood friends. She takes her orders seriously, and at the moment, those orders, from “Hazama”, are to terminate both Jin and Noel.

Finally, there is Λ-11, a new character that takes the place of V-13 in BB:CS. She is a predessor of both 12 (Noel) and 13(Nu). Because of this, she is less spammable.

Besides the new characters, the older characters ([White Requiem]‘s Rachel Alucard and Ragna the Bloodedge) gain new drive moves, while other character’s (Arakune, Carl Clover) get new attacks.

All in all, this looks like it will be quite a nice update to an already impressive game. It should be out sometime next year, hopefully in another collector’s edition like Calamity Trigger.