There was a touch of nervousness with the announcement that the game would support in-game purchases to upgrade and equip your avatar, and it looks like this has been scaled back to some degree: ngmofo Chris notes that upgrades earned as you rise in the ranks will primarily be cosmetic ones (shifts in your armor’s color), but that the in-game commerce could give entirely new thematic armor changes, which are coming, says Chris, from some of the original Halo artists.
But, he continues, they’re sticking their first tenuous dips toes into the water to see how they might balance the game by giving each armor set (heavy armor, amphibious suit, stealth) unique properties:
We’re also in the process of experimenting with gameplay-affecting attributes for purchasable armors. This feature is in the early stages of testing for balance and is something we may or may not ship with, but the design idea is to differentiate the armors sets by speed, protection, physics and other properties that align with the concept of a given armor. So a heavily armored combat suit would take more damage than base armor, but would also come with slower movement.
The intent is to give each a bonus and a trade-off, rather than a complete upgrade, to keep things in balance with the base armor set. Another idea we’re discussing is giving each armor different modifiers to power-ups (either instead of or in addition to base stat modification), so a heavy battle suit might enjoy longer bonus from damage power-ups and shorter bonus from a jet-pack powerup.
Read the full run-down for more on their design, with additional entries on the weapons and actual name of the game promised soon.
Cosplay takes a lot of flack in the West, but sometimes, just sometimes, something comes along that forces you to re-evaluate: case in point, Judy Stephens’ Silent Hill set, photographed at the recent AnimeCentral 2009. [via GSW]
As we’d hoped for since early April, Nintendo has added the Nintendo 64’s time-looping Ocarina sequel The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask to the Wii’s stateside Virtual Console this week, giving everyone inspired by Margaret Robertson’s recent ode to the Zelda game too few have played the chance to give it their own One More Go.
Also of note this week and well worth picking up, the DSiWare release of Art Style: PiCTOBiTS, the stateside release of the Quarth-like picture puzzle/action game we’ve covered a number of times during its Japanese debut as PicoPict, with classic NES remixes by chipper chiptune band YMCK.
As promised, the clouds have continued to gather on the website for Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima’s next game, currently codenamed “Next”, with a hint of thunder and lightning (雷電 [Raiden]), a flashing and fading ‘5’, and a countdown timer with 3.5 days remaining on the clock.
Spotted by the TIGSource crowd earlier in the weekend and quickly ordered before its minuscule run of 350 copies ran dry is Okatu Play, the latest issue of a chapbook style magazine put out, as it happens, by the same Romanian organization that put together the Otaku festival Mike noted a week or two back.
The table of contents is a laundry list of unfamiliar or only hazily recognized names, but it’s the included DVD that is more overtly the draw: in addition to a lineup of 2007 BlipFest videos (all taken, it would seem, from the earlier mentioned Vimeo uploads that included 6955 and Virt), the disc also features music by Nullsleep, Kaseo and she, trailers and info on a number of Offworld-regular indie games, and, to top it off, comes with a foldout poster by iso-pixel artists eBoy.
The magazine ran me just over $20, and still looks to be available as of now: see also some previews of their earlier issues via issuu.
There’s only one available to buy over at Etsy, but have no fear; Asia’s also selling the pattern for the lovable 4ft-long scamp – so if you fancy a BOY of your own, there’s never been a better time to take up crochet. Or, alternatively, make friends with someone who can already crochet.
Leaked this weekend: the brilliant culmination to a series of Team Fortress 2 character updates that saw the focus on the Sniper abruptly backstabbed and turned to a focus on the Spy.
Knowing of YMO’s mid-70s electronic and computer game influences and their subsequent influences on videogame music composers like Hitoshi Sakimoto, there’s something genuinely fitting about seeing their classic tunes played on a Nintendo DS.
