The big rumor is that this teaser, Code1935.jp (discovered by the good folks at Andriasang), could be a new sequel. The “top secret” site is adorned by the silhouette of a tank and isn’t to be “opened” until September 16th. Hey, isn’t that the first date of Tokyo Game Show? Indeed it is.

All the imagery definitely points to more Valkyria Chronicles. If 1935 bears any meaning, it could be that the new game takes place during the same time as the original game. The big question is, will this be another PSP adventure or will the franchise make the switch back to PS3?

So many questions.

Black Panther: New Yakuza Chapter is a spin-off to Yakuza’s main story, and will allow those interested in beating people up as stylish, Japanese teenagers to do just that. Just go over to 4Gamer and do a bit of clicking to get the demo downloaded direct to your PC or Mac.

Andriasang are also reporting that, come the end of the demo, players are given a password. This password will supposedly unlock content in the main game, although said content is unspecified. The game’s got a lot of customisable features, so it wouldn’t be surprising if this code was for some exclusive clothing.

Source: 4Gamer

Vanquish is the next creation from, Bayonetta mastermind, Shinji Mikami and is a world away from what we usually see from him – with the exception of it’s fast-paced nature, of course. Set in a near-future New York City, you play Sam Gideon. Gideon is a DARPA agent tasked with infiltrating the occupying forces and restoring some kind of order to the city. He’s also the co-creator of some pretty nifty tech and it’s this that’ll help you complete your mission.

It’s definitely an impressive looking game and Mikami’s track record is almost second to none, but does it have what it takes to be up there with the best? Come next week, you’ll be able to find out for yourself.

The image (above), from Famitsu, shows Tokyo decimated: windows broken, rubble everywhere, cars smashed. It’s pretty bad. “The End” also seems like a bad sign too, especially as there’s no question mark to make us feel better. Could this be the final tale in the Yakuza story? Maybe.

This could signal a change in environment for Yakuza players. The bright lights of Tokyo, switched up for a more sombre, desolate look. The criminal underworld might thrive here, but all that other, cool, Yakuza-type stuff might as well be thrown out of one of the many broken windows.

I’ll admit, although I was interested in the game, the idea that Yakuza was a mix of Grand Theft Auto and a JRPG was a little off putting. I didn’t really think a mix like that could work all that well. How surprised was I to find that, in fact, it did. After a bit of a slow start and having to adjust to the reading of subtitles I was on my way. I got completely engaged in the story: I found the characters interesting, Kazuma’s motivations refreshing and the location fantastic. It was great to be wandering the bright streets of Japan instead of the drab, New York City-influenced, locales seen in games like Grand Theft Auto 4.

At first glance, Yakuza 3 definitely feels like a GTA clone. However, after spending just a few minutes with it you come to realise that there’s a lot more to it and that, actually, the GTA-loving crowd might not like it that much. Yakuza 3 is like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, JRPG in the guise of a Western open world title. The gameplay is a mix of open world exploring and random arena battles. Combat is pretty simple, but satisfying. Bashing a goon’s head against a wall and then clobbering him with a mountain bike never got old. As well as the random battles on the street, as you progress, you’re funneled towards larger boss battles. Here, I thought the difficulty curve spiked a little too much. I’d gotten too used to the simple street punks and, for a while, the bosses were troubling me. However, I learnt to adapt. The bosses definitely pose a challenge, so don’t expect to dispatch them as easily as regular goons. Alongside the exploring and combat elements, Yakuza 3 also has a bunch of minigames. Now whilst these are pointless, a lot of these games do earn you collectibles. Those of you with OCD certainly won’t appreciate these. Especially the bloody crane machine!

Please bear in mind, this game is actually a year old. I wouldn’t have guessed it though. Yakuza 3 looks awesome. The environments are vibrant and the faux-Japanese streets are filled with pedestrians. This made random encounters even more random, because I couldn’t even see who was waiting to jump me. The only problem I had was, although the environments look pretty big, a lot of areas are cordoned off via things in the environment and even invisible walls. Seriously, in 2010 do we still need invisible walls? Come on SEGA.`

This being my first foray into the world of the JRPG, I enjoyed Yakuza 3. How it stacks up to the bigger name games in the genre, I have no idea. However, it’s an experience that many will enjoy, but one I fear few will experience. The story is great, it looks beautiful and it could certainly be a dark horse contender for TPSN’s game of the year. Yes, really. I think the big thing that will put people off is the lack of an English voice track. However, I grew to enjoy the Japanese voice acting and thought it definitely added to my experience. It certainly won’t be to everyone’s tastes though.

Avoid this one at your peril.

8.7/10

If you asked me to describe this game in one word (which would certainly make the review process easier. Seriously, pitch that to Anthony!) I’d say AVP is “boring”. It’s something I found a chore to play from start to finish. Don’t get me wrong, it’s mechanically sound but it’s missing that ‘X-Factor’ that makes you want to keep playing.

Of course, the game does have it’s qualities. You do get to play through three campaigns as the different factions and have somewhat different experiences, the problem is that both the Aliens and Predators have fairly steep learning curves if you want to play effectively. Not only did this make me want to play the game less, but it also left me with no choice but to start as the, super stereotypical, space marines first. Oh joy!

The marine campaign is pretty much a ‘paint by numbers’, straight forward campaign that you could take out of any first person shooter. The problem is, there’s too many great FPS’ out there and playing through this whilst pining for MAG certainly didn’t help motivation-wise. Like I said, the marine campaign does give a good introduction to a lot of the mechanics you’ll use throughout your time with the game, so it’s certainly a good place to start.

I know what you’re expecting (believe me, I was too), I’m going to tell you how cool the other two campaigns are in comparison. I wish I could. Both the Alien and Predator campaigns suffer for one reason: both factions are melee-based. Sure, Predators do have some ranged attacks but, more often than not, you’ll be wanting to stab things with those Wolverine-esque blades attached to your hands. First person melee isn’t easy to pull off, this makes the game a lot less fun than it should. A game that lacks fun is one I don’t want to play, thank you very much.

AVP is a game that could’ve been great. A game that, like Arkham Asylum before it, tore up the rulebook on what a licensed game could be. It really doesn’t deliver. I was left feeling underwhelmed by the whole experience. I’ll admit, at times, I felt immersed in the world and loved the idea of playing these big screen icons. By the time the credits rolled I couldn’t wait to play something else. Fans of the franchise will probably enjoy this a lot more than I did. By the end I felt underwhelmed and completely underpowered, whatever faction I was playing. Surely that’s not how it’s supposed to be?

6/10

Yakuza 3 only hit Western shores last week and the 4th game comes out in Japan on Thursday so SEGA have been a little quick off the mark with this one.

At the briefing, which had been held for the launch of Yakuza 4, SEGA showed off a trailer for the series’ next iteration. Toshihiro Nagoshi announced the game as “Project K”, but once the trailer played and that familiar neon sign for the Kamurocho district came into view it became obvious that this was the next Yakuza game.

Who knows if we’ll ever see the game on UK shores? Yakuza 3 debuted at #24 on in the UK charts, so it certainly looks possible.

Dubbed “the first modern espionage RPG”, Alpha Protocol will release in Europe on May 28th and, a few days later, on June 1st in North America. The game has been a long time coming. The question is, will it stack up to the juggernaut that is Mass Effect 2? At this point, we don’t know.

The game has been delayed too many times to count (well, not really), so hopefully SEGA will be able to stick to this release date.

The game is a direct sequel of Sonic 3 and, after all these years, we’ll finally get to play as Sonic in 2D again. The new game will be released this year on PSN, XBLA and WiiWare and is a much welcomed change in direction. Seriously, who thought a Were-hog would be a good idea?

However, this take on Sonic isn’t as simple as it could’ve been. The game will be released episodically. This seems like a strange idea, but I’m willing to give SEGA the benefit of the doubt if they pull off a good Sonic game after all these years.

Hit the jump for the official teaser trailer.

Having seen what Kamiya had worked on prior to this game, I came in ready to hate it. I hated pretty much everything about Devil May Cry. Viewtiful Joe, I just didn’t get. However his last game was Okami, so I was willing to give Bayonetta a shot and I’m happy I did. Unlike DMC, the combat is extremely fast paced and fluid. I never felt like I was doing something wrong. Constantly chaining attacks and pulling off killer finishing moves with ease is what makes the combat in Bayonetta so good. I’ve not had this much fun wailing on enemies for quite a long time. I actually found Bayonetta a refreshing experience. Especially after all the – admittedly fantastic – story driven games and first person shooters Call Of Duty, I played towards the end of 2009.

Not only was Bayonetta a palette cleanser (of sorts), it was good to see an original protagonist in a game like this. The exceedingly emo-tastic nature of Devil May Cry’s Dante was one of my major sticking points about that whole series. I thought the guy was a giant douche and he just put me off. Bayonetta was a different character and although she isn’t deep, this helps considering the genre. You don’t really need a super deep character, all you need to know is that she can kick ass. It’s also nice to see a strong female in a game like this, even if she is incredibly over sexualised.

This sexualisation also plays into the gameplay, all of Bayonetta’s attacks seem to accentuate her ‘features’. The fact that her clothes can all but disappear during certain combos certainly plays to this. Aside from this accentuation, the gameplay is fun and combos are fairly easy to pull off. I’d go as far to say that Bayonetta is the latest in a string of games designed to make you feel like a bad-ass. You’ve also got the ‘win button’ mode. Playing the game on the easy or very easy difficulty level basically allows you to hit whatever button you want and beat on every enemy in sight. Having played the game like this for a little while, I can see the appeal. I actually found it fun just mashing buttons and pulling insane stuff off (as if I wasn’t doing that anyway). This is obviously aimed for the more casual player but, I have to say, I quite enjoyed it.

The game is fairly aesthetically pleasing, but as it’s a game about witches the art style does have a very dark, gothic theme that reduces the colour palette to black and various tones of grey and brown. This is only broken up with the odd flash of colour here and there, I wasn’t expecting rainbows of colour but it would’ve been nice if the game didn’t look as drab. The environments look nice and the character models animate fairly well. Bayonetta is really the only character you’ll be focused on though, so any slight AI based graphic issues don’t really play much of a part.

In stark contrast to the drab environments, Bayonetta is a sonic achievement. The J-Pop (that’s Japanese pop music for the uninformed) soundtrack is fantastic, but it’s not something you would generally associate with a game like this. Somehow, it works and I actually really enjoyed the music. This is one of the things that marks it as distinctly Japanese, but it wouldn’t surprise me if someone decided to play something a little less light hearted whilst slaying angels.

Despite my obvious liking of Bayonetta, it does have it’s hang ups. Despite it being a pretty graphically impresive game, once the combat gets hectic it can be hard to know where you are and what you’re meant to be attacking. That said, it’s no surprise that any game in this genre has a bad camera. The other main problem comes when the game is loading. I had a long time to think about this as it often took quite a while for me to actually be able to play the game. Load times of this length really are unacceptable in a big budget game nowadays. However, what’s more unacceptable is the fact that it takes upwards of 5 seconds to load the pause menu. When the pause menu has a load time, that’s when you know a game has problems. Complication is also a word that comes to mind playing this game. A lot of what I was doing in terms of upgrading wasn’t really explained and when I found out how to do something it tended to be quite over complicated.

Bayonetta is a good game, but it isn’t really too different from any hack and slash game I’ve played before. If you enjoyed games like Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden then you’ll probably appreciate Bayonetta a lot more than I did. I’m fully willing to admit that this isn’t my favourite of genres, but I’ll also admit that this is a good game. Just don’t go in expecting it to change your mind about the genre.

7.8/10