Monolith Soft Wii U Trailer January 23, 2013

Here’s something that is sure to interest our site contributor Twitch.  Monolith Soft is the company which developed Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii.  According to Twitch’s research, Nintendo owns a stake in Monolith Soft, which is why their games have appeared as Wii exclusives in the past.

With the Wii being phased out, it looks like Monolith Soft’s next major game is going to be headed exclusively to the Wii U, and it looks just amazing.  The following premiered today during the Nintendo Direct feed.

X is coming exclusive to the Wii U.

Nintendo Miiverse Smartphone App Announced January 23, 2013

Nintendo announced during today’s Nintendo Direct that a smartphone app that would allow Wii U owners mobile access to the Nintendo Miiverse was going to be coming.  With it, you’ll be able to read Miiverse posts, view drawings, posted screenshots, and manage your communities without having to be home and logged in at your Wii U.

The app will be coming in two phases starting this spring.  The first phase will be a browser-based experience which will allow limited interactivity and allow users to keep up to date with Miiverse posts on their smartphone screen.  A full featured Miiverse app will then be released afterwards.

Nintendo announced that you would be able to access Miiverse through your Nintendo Network account, which users traditionally set up the first time they start the Wii U.  While any internet connected smartphone will be able to browse the Miiverse with their smartphone’s internet browser, no specifics were provided about which smartphone platforms they would release the full featured app on.

Bayonetta 2 Behind the Scenes Teaser January 23, 2013

Fresh off the Nintendo Direct this week, here’s the trailer for Bayonetta 2.  Instead of showing what they had before, Nintendo and Platinum Games decided to show a little bit of behind the scenes behind the making of the game.

Although only a brief look into the game’s development, I like where this is going.  I hope that Nintendo and Platinum Games decide to release a longer behind the scenes featurette for Bayonetta 2 some time down the road.

Bayonetta 2 is coming exclusive to the Wii U.

Wii U Direct – 1/25/2013 January 23, 2013

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of Nintendo, Mr. Iwata.

There was a lot going on here in this video.  We heard some new E3 game teasers, game announcements, and upcoming Wii U features.  On top of that, Mr. Iwata also made a few announcements that I had requested in a previous article on the site.  Because of all the information relayed in this single video, I feel that it would be too complex to include all my analysis about it just here in this article.

Stay tuned to the site today for further analysis of Nintendo’s plans for the Wii U this year!

Gears of War: Judgement – The Guts of Gears Trailer January 22, 2013

Up until this point we’ve only seen the briefest glimpses of what will be the storyline for Gears of War: Judgement.  Well, that is about to change.  Set before the events of the first game, Gears of War: Judgement follows series characters Baird and Cole as they face trial along with the rest of their squad after the events of Emergence Day.

Take a look at yourselves as Baird himself explains what is coming with this new game.  There will be entirely new strategies, new features, and an entirely new single-player game mode.

Gears of War: Judgement is coming March 19th, 2013 exclusive to the Xbox 360.  An exclusive original Hammerburst and young Marcus Fenix skin will be available to those who preorder the game.

The Phantom Pain Alternative Trailer January 22, 2013

Moby Dick Studio has released this updated version of the trailer they released at the VGAs.  This alternate trailer doesn’t change much with the trailer itself but it does bring in an entirely new music soundtrack.  The footage is still being rendered entirely on a high-end PC, but the studio promises that the game will release to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

The more times I see this trailer the more I believe the online community in their belief that this trailer is a hoax for the next Metal Gear Solid game.  The game’s protagonist, although his face is partially bandaged, looks very similar to Naked Snake’s face from the Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes trailer.  One of his eyes is clearly bandaged, showing that the character could have lost it.  Naked Snake is already missing an eye.

The character’s movement when shambling around with difficulty reminded me of a very similar moment in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, where Solid Snake had to walk through a corridor bathed in intense microwaves.  As time progressed it became harder and harder to move through the area, and Snake became weaker and slumped closer to the ground, bringing his movement to a slow crawl.

The new music track included in this alternate trailer at the two-minute mark also sounds very similar to a track from the Metal Gear Solid games.  The new music has a very similar guitar rhythm to ones that would play during a boss fight or action sequence.

But I believe the two strongest pieces of evidence that the trailer is a hoax comes from two very important moments towards the end of the trailer.  At 2:36 in the trailer, a giant flaming whale comes out of the sky.  Could this be where the studio, if it is a fake, got its fake name from?  It is highly unusual that a brand new game developer would name themselves directly after an event or character of their flagship game, particularly one that would be so plainly seen in their first game trailer.  Usually game studios are named after unrelated things or were references to popular projects the studio heads had done in the past.

The other, and the one that brings it to the closest connection with Metal Gear Solid is the appearance at 2:57 of what looks to be a doll of The Sorrow floating above someone in pain.  The Sorrow was a boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.  He was a member of The Boss’s Cobra Unit, and while he was already dead before the game began, he somehow had the power to act as a ghost and impact the real world.  Though he was defeated in MGS3, a doll of him was used by another boss in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.  It was wielded by Mantis, one of the final members of the Beauty and the Beast Corps that Snake battled in the game.  The Sorrow’s doll could even be collected and used by Snake as a special item.  While the B&B Corps would not be around during the events of Ground Zeros, The Sorrow would still be dead.  Could this explain the origin of Mantis’s doll?

The Phantom Pain is coming to Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Halo 4 Spartan Ops Episode 6 Released January 21, 2013

The long wait following the release of Spartan Ops Episode 5 has officially finished.  Spartan Ops Episode 6 has been released for free to all Halo 4 owners with Xbox Live Gold Subscriptions, and Halo Waypoint promises that with the release of Episode 6, the series will return to weekly releases leading up to Episode 10.  Want to know what’s going on this week?  Take a look at this.

Spartan Ops is an episodic cooperative campaign following the events of Halo 4’s single-player story.  A new episode is released each week for free and is composed of one computer generated video that sets the stage for the episode’s story, and several missions that can be tackled alone or cooperatively with friends online.  All of these episodes will lead up to the release of Halo 5.

For those of you who haven’t played the previous episodes in a while, here’s a quick recap on what has currently happened in the Spartan Ops story.

Halo 4 is out now exclusive to the Xbox 360.

Mass Effect 3 N7 Armor Unlockable in Dead Space 3 January 21, 2013

Fans of Mass Effect and Dead Space are going to be pretty happy about this announcement.  It looks like Issac Clarke is about to become a Spectre.  The iconic N7 armor worn by Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series will be a special unlockable armor you can wear in Dead Space 3.

Anyone with a save file for Mass Effect 3 will be able to obtain the N7 Armor from the in-game store when they play Dead Space 3.

If you want to see for yourselves what the N7 Armor is going to look like in Dead Space 3, take a look at this.

Dead Space 3 is coming February 5th, 2013 to the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.  The game’s demo will be released for download tomorrow to all PS3 and Xbox 360 owners.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance – Jack the Ripper Trailer January 20, 2013

It is an understatement to call what I’m about to show you guys a trailer. It is a tradition for Konami to premiere a new Metal Gear Solid game with a trailer unlike anything we had seen before. In 2000, the first trailer for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was released and clocked in at just under ten minutes. It featured a mixture of in-game cinematics and gameplay. In comparison, other companies would show no more than 90 seconds and show gameplay clips cut to rock music.

Well, we’re in the last few weeks leading up to the release of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, a spin-off game from the Metal Gear Solid series featuring RAIDEN, the hero of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and now is the perfect time for Konami to break out a seven minute trailer showing what this game has in store for players.

The following trailer is referred to as the Jack the Ripper trailer. For those of you familiar with the story of MGS2, Jack the Ripper was the nickname that Raiden earned as a child soldier when he served under Solidus. As an adult, his childhood was extremely traumatic to him and it was only by repressing those memories was he able to cope. After the events of MGS2, he could no longer ignore his childhood memories, and this trailer shows that something has happened to him during the course of this new game that could cause him to become even more dangerous than he was before. For those of you who need a reminder how dangerous he was, in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, he took out several walking tanks using only a sword.

Take a look and see for yourselves what he’s in for next.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is coming February 19th, 2013 to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Super Power Beat Down Video Game Battle Royale January 20, 2013

Our friends over at Bat in the Sun, the creators of the series Super Power Beat Down and several amazing Batman fanfilms, were asked by Machinima.com to produce a video which took some of the most popular characters from recent video games and battle each other to determine just who was the best.

This is one heck of a fight featuring five very popular powerful characters from across gaming.  Cortana from Halo, Connor from Assassin’s Creed 3, Vaas from Far Cry 3, Max Payne from Max Payne and Lee from The Walking Dead.

A teaser was released in anticipation for the Inside Gaming Awards Show, but until this point the public has not seen who was the victor.  Well the votes have been tallied online, and now we can see who won.

Don’t forget, you can still cast your votes for Episode 7 here!