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September is about to break your wallet After months of anticipation,The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IIfinally has a release date for North America. Publisher XSEED Games confirmed today the PlayStation 3 and Vita game will hit store shelves on September 6. Holy crap that’s soon. Developed by Nihon Falcom,Trails of Cold Steel IIis the follow-up to one of thebest JRPGsfrom last year. Owners of the original who still have their save data will find bonus stats and extra items when they start up the new game....

Echo boom shakalaka There has been a massiveNBA Jam-sized hole in my heart for quite a long time now. EA Sports managed to achieve perfection withNBA Jam: On Fire Editionback in 2011, and whenever EA does a good thing, it’s usually a mistake, and they quickly bury it under the crawlspace with all the other talented developers. So, until the police manage to get a warrant and dig up all those bodies, I’ve been on the lookout for a game that captures the same razzle-dazzle....

After finishingMetal Gear Solid 2for the umpteenth time, I had a sudden realization — as much as I loved Hideo Kojima, I had never completed a single game he’d worked on that did not have the words “gear,” “solid,” or “metal” in the title. It was, I thought, high time to remedy that. I’d been aware ofSnatcherfor some time, but not owning a Sega CD nor being of an inclination to NOT emulate it, my knowledge of this cyberpunk detective story did not extend beyond “Blade Runnerby way of Kojima....

Releasing this September for PC and PS4 A series of live-action videos and analternate-reality gamehave led to this: 12 minutes of uncut footage from Frictional’s next first-person horror title,SOMA. It’s coming to PC and PS4 at long last on June 16, 2025. Bad things are brewing on the underwater research facility PATHOS-2. One minute in, I am horrified. Those robots with human personalities who don’t realize they’ve become machines are deeply unsettling....

Grass, Fire, or Water? It’s great to be back in the wild and messy world ofSplatoon— and the residents of Inkopolis are especially excited this weekend, with the coming ofa very special splatfestthat sees the colorful shooter series crossover with the iconic Pokemon franchise, ahead of the launch ofPokemon Scarlet & Violet. Kicking off later today, the newest battle royale will charge players with selecting their favorite stater Pokemon — choosing from the holy trinity of Grass, Fire, and Water....

Late January Just recently theKingdom Hearts IIIteam confirmed thatdue to the possibility of leaks, they would be withholding certain spoiler-heavy content from the game, to be added in at a later date. For those of you who don’t play the series, this is generally found in the form of extra/post-game videos that relay the fate of the cast or deal with an epilogue of sorts for the tale. While we got a vague “after launch” heads-up with that same message, now we know when it’s happening for sure....

Ken is back in the red While beauty is, obviously, in the eye of the beholder, I am a huge fan of the character designs forStreet Fighter 6— The underground flavor appeals to me, bringing dazzling life and personality to our posse of World Warriors. Still, like many fans, I was hoping to see further evidence of some classic (or “nostalgia”) skins, allowing our heroes and villains to rock their more iconic wardrobes....

You’ll also be able to find Skeleton Island on PC Techland’s first-person skeleton-smasherHellraidhas returnedafter a delaywith news that it will now release for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 instead of last-generation consoles. It’s being moved toDying Light‘s Chrome Engine 6 and isn’t coming until 2015, so the move makes sense. One aspect of the re-reveal I’m less into is that Techland plans to putHellraidon Steam Early Access this autumn before the full PC release happens next year....

Telltale casts a pretty wide net Telltale games can be found on toasters and refrigerators these days, so to hear that they’re expandingBatmanout into the Nintendo Switch isn’t surprising at all. It’s not a sure thing, but Russian retailerGame Buyand European retailerOzgameshophave provided listings for the game, noting a June 30 release date. It’s either a placeholder or a possible “post-E3 excitement it’s coming soon” type of thing. Whatisa sure thing is that you can always bet onBatman, and that the Switch is very hot right now, and could always use more games to fill its library....

I have always maintained that one of the most detrimental factors for modern wargame design has been the comparatively cheap rent for houses with large sitting rooms in Nottingham, England, during the late 1980s and early 1990s.With all that space available to Games Workshops’ designers, it made sense to think big. This thinking would then infest the rest of the industry, and the idea that wargaming had to be done on at least a six-foot by four-foot table became way too common....

I’m not surprised that The Game Awards has put games likeDave the DiverandDredgeon theirlist of nominationsfor the “Best Independent Game” award, but I am very, very disappointed. That’s not to say thatDave the Diveris a bad game undeserving of an award. It’s just not indie. Its developer and publisher, Mintrocket, is a direct subsidiary of Nexon. The South Korean game publisher has an annual revenue in thebillions of dollars. That’s not indie....

GDC was a little too hectic on me but never fear, I still managed to see all of the Community blogs that went up over the past two weeks. No game room this week as I wanted to focus onSilverhertz’s Lagantoid wallpaperthat he made for theDestructoid Children’s alaphabet book. There are a few different sizes of the image over on Silverhertz’s C Blog. Lots of people drew things, Welkstar’s RetroforceGO! arcade cabinet is almost finished, nintendoll loves you, the next BaltimoreDC NARP is going down next month, Technophile talks about the Forums, DtoidNewYork is getting together on May 22 and much more happened over the last two weeks in the Community....

One awesome new Mii costume! The final Nintendo Direct forSuper Smash Bros. for 3DS/Wii Uhappens today at 5pm ET. But, an update released last night for both titles has been data-mined revealing some new information, while keeping most surprises under wraps for Nintendo to reveal. The biggest piece of leaked information is easily that fan favorite Geno from the SNES classicSuper Mario RPGis getting his very own Mii costume! Pretty exciting for most fans, but personally I’m all about that Mallow life, as he is the best character from any RPG ever objectively, obviously....