Kotaku

The Next Onimusha Is... a Browser GameCapcom will bring a new Onimusha game to browsers this summer, it said Friday in a press release.


Onimusha Soul, to be released "for PCs and smartphones," will be out on June 28 in Japan. Here's how the developer describes it, as translated by Capcom's official website:


"Onimusha Soul" is a Sengoku simulation RPG based on the characters that appear in "Onimusha" series. Each player is a daimyo (feudal lord) of one of the warring states. Players use their powers to achieve the growth of their respective states and train military commanders as they fight with other players. "Onimusha Soul" also allows players to enjoy an original story.


The game is easy to play as it offers two unique advantages of browser games. There is no need to download or install the game data. In addition, the game features an unprecedented level of community and social elements. For example, players can be grouped separately based on Japan's 47 prefectures to enjoy a variety of cooperative game playing or fight players in other prefectures. Furthermore, the development engine uses "Unity 3D" to generate graphics that are far more attractive than the images of conventional browser games. Overall, "Onimusha Soul" was created to appeal to a broad spectrum of game players. Capcom plans to distribute this title for use on PCs and smartphones.


In other words, it's... nothing like Onimusha.


Capcom Announces Entry in the Growing Browser Game Market [Capcom]


Kotaku

It's hard to look cool when you're playing most music video games. You may think you look cool with your dinky plastic guitar or humorously scale-sized drum set, but in reality you look like… well, a person playing a plastic instrument.


At a recent Penny Arcade Expo, a group of contest finalists assembled on-stage to play through a Rock Band song in front of a huge, screaming audience. It was an enjoyable bit of theater, but if you've ever seen a picture of yourself playing Rock Band at a party (and I bet that you have), you know just how profoundly dorky it looks.


Even DJ Hero, with its real-ish-looking turntables and comparatively laid-back approach, never looked all that cool. That's set to change with Q-games' latest creation, Pixeljunk 4AM.


Pixeljunk 4AM is a different sort of music game. It's a DJ-ing game that uses the PlayStation Move, allowing players to control and cue loops, filters, and effects all by waving about the glowing PlayStation Move controller.


One of the neatest (and newest-feeling) features is the way 4AM incorporates social play. As you play, you'll broadcast your music out to the entire PlayStation Network, where anyone with a PlayStation 3 can tune in, even if they don't have the game. As Stephen Totilo already pointed out, it's a fun idea—you get motivated to do better because you've got an audience. I've no idea how it will actually work, or how many people will really watch the game, but at the very least it's a cool concept.


Finally, a Music Game That Lets You Look Cool While PlayingIt's also worth celebrating that this is a music game that you can look cool while playing. The game features the music of Japanese DJ Baiyon, who uses the game sometimes while performing at clubs. Baiyon DJ'd at a GDC party I attended, and the music was great. He didn't actually play 4AM at that party, but a second shindig in the Haight allegedly featured him using the game on-stage, waving about the Move controller in the dark.


I played Pixeljunk 4AM last week, and I really enjoyed the feel of the game. You can get a sense of how it works by watching the video above. It's easy to switch between the four possible instruments and "pull in" new layers by grabbing them at the edges of the screen and bringing them to the center of the screen.


Given how little you're actually seeing of what's going on (the game plays nothing but a visualizer to give you a sense of the music), it's cool how intuitive it all feels. And as nifty-looking as it all is in the game, it's equally cool-looking to watch someone play it. The Move's colorful ice-cream-cone head changes colors as you grab different instruments, a zooming blur of color that would look entirely at home looking out over a dancefloor at 4 in the morning.


Of course, it'll be possible for some people to look like goobers while playing this game. But it's nice to see a music game that allows players not only to make cool music, but to look pretty groovy while doing it.


Kotaku

Step Out in Style With Mario on Your Heels


Artist Jamie Ferraioli proves that stunning, feminine accessories are in no way at odds with nerd culture with her gorgeous, hand-painted shoes.


These heels and flats display meticulously detailed hand-painted art from Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda. My personal favorite part is the lava painted onto the platform sole of the black Mario heels.


Magicbeanbuyer's Shop [Etsy, via BuzzFeed]


Step Out in Style With Mario on Your Heels
Step Out in Style With Mario on Your Heels
Step Out in Style With Mario on Your Heels
Step Out in Style With Mario on Your Heels
Step Out in Style With Mario on Your Heels
Step Out in Style With Mario on Your Heels
Step Out in Style With Mario on Your Heels
Step Out in Style With Mario on Your Heels


Kotaku

You Won't Jump Over the Flagpole in These Awesome Mario Heels


Artist Jamie Ferraioli proves that stunning, feminine accessories are in no way at odds with nerd culture with her gorgeous, hand-painted shoes.


These heels and flats display meticulously detailed hand-painted art from Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda. My personal favorite part is the lava painted onto the platform sole of the black Mario heels.


Magicbeanbuyer's Shop [Etsy, via BuzzFeed]


You Won't Jump Over the Flagpole in These Awesome Mario Heels
You Won't Jump Over the Flagpole in These Awesome Mario Heels
You Won't Jump Over the Flagpole in These Awesome Mario Heels
You Won't Jump Over the Flagpole in These Awesome Mario Heels
You Won't Jump Over the Flagpole in These Awesome Mario Heels
You Won't Jump Over the Flagpole in These Awesome Mario Heels
You Won't Jump Over the Flagpole in These Awesome Mario Heels
You Won't Jump Over the Flagpole in These Awesome Mario Heels


Kotaku

A Song of Ice and Fire Has Become Game of Thrones, and Thank God For ThatSomewhere along the line, it happened. The name changed. George R.R. Martin's celebrated fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire more-or-less officially became known as Game of Thrones.


We can probably blame HBO; their hugely successful TV series Game of Thrones is what launched Martin's books into the public consciousness. Since the show's debut, A Song of Ice and Fire has been relegated to status as a footnote during a credits sequence, or a small note on the box.


Now we have board games, card games, video games of every stripe, and all manner of memes, merchandise and miscellany, all under the Game of Thrones banner. But how did this happen, and why?


The first book in A Song of Ice and Fire, titled A Game of Thrones, was published sixteen years ago. Since then, Martin has published four more books, and each entry has won him more fans. But everything changed with the arrival of the 2010 HBO series. That show, of course, was called Game of Thrones. It wasn't called A Song of Ice and Fire: Game of Thrones; it wasn't even called A Game of Thrones like the book. Just Game of Thrones.


A Song of Ice and Fire Has Become Game of Thrones, and Thank God For ThatSoon after that we got the announcement of several video games, the real-time strategy game Game of Thrones: Genesis and the upcoming Game of Thrones RPG based on the property. We've also got a Game of Thrones card game, as well as the hugely complex and diabolically fun Game of Thrones board game. That the board game in fact concerns characters introduced in the first three books doesn't matter; Game of Thrones is no longer a book; it's a brand.


Countless memes, blogs, licensed products, and fan-art collections go under the Game of Thrones title. Even the awesomely-titled Blog of Ice and Fire has added a sub-header including both titles.


I think that the new title is an improvement. For a while, I wasn't so sure; back when I was pondering what a great Game of Thrones game would look like, I even said that I thought that the game should be "properly" titled A Song of Ice and Fire. I've changed my mind. People have latched onto Game of Thrones because it really is a better name for the series. Here are some reasons why:


  • It's cooler-sounding. Nothing is as much of a turn-off as a wordy, overcooked fantasy name. A Song of Ice and Fire sounds like it could be any clichéd fantasy book; it conjures images of the sorts of tales that those who aren't already fans of high fantasy generally avoid. Game of Thrones is much easier to say. Removing the "A" was also a good call: the unnecessary article adds a surprisingly intense layer of self-serious dorkiness.
  • It's evocative. "Game of Thrones." What does that mean? It calls to mind all sorts of interesting imagery—throne-shaped chess pieces moving about a board, kings fighting for control of a kingdom. Which of course is entirely true to the story at the heart of these books, because…
  • It's accurate. Sure, it could be said that Martin's books are about ice and fire. They're about dragons and the snow, the ice-covered great wall and the sands of Dorne. But that's not what they're really about—they're really about a bunch of people conniving and manipulating one another in a bloodthirsty quest for power. While the first book may be called A Game of Thrones, the game itself plays out over all of the books, or at least, the first five. The overarching story is about a Game of Thrones.
  • It's part of one of the series' most famous quotes. "In the Game of Thrones, you win or you die." It's one of the most recognizable quotes from the whole series (perhaps behind "winter is coming"), and also the truest—that's what's really going on here. A fight to the death for power. Musical albums often have what I call the "Money Line," where the artist sings the hidden lyric that contains the name of the album. (e.g. "Under the Table and Dreaming" or "Chutes Too Narrow.") This quote is the equivalent of that—the line encapsulates the series and contains its title.

This isn't the first time this has happened with an overcooked fantasy title. People like to simplify things, and we've done it plenty of times in the past. Knights of the Old Republic became "KotOR," World of Warcraft became "WoW." As we watched the ongoing and just-resolved legal battle between Mojang and Zenimax over the term "Scrolls," who among us didn't say "Well, why do they even care? No one calls Elder Scrolls games The Elder Scrolls anyway."


A Song of Ice and Fire Has Become Game of Thrones, and Thank God For ThatIt's true: If I'm at a party and I start talking about the latest Elder Scrolls game, no one is going to have a clue what I'm talking about. But if start talking about Skyrim, even the haughtiest non-gamer will be on the same page. The same goes for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which has a title so terrible that no one has quite figured out what to do with it: Do we call it Amalur? Or Reckoning? Or do we simply not talk about it at all?


The lovely iPad game Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP was my favorite game of last year, but that doesn't mean I loved the title. It was purposefully ungainly, but it was a joke that lost its luster after the fifth or sixth time I had to type it. Fortunately, the guys who made it left that one word, the misspelled "Sworcery," able to stand in for the whole title.


Game of Thrones implies a much more interesting story than A Song of Ice and Fire.

It's never easy to name things. Everyone who's ever named a band or a website can tell you—you sit forever, poking holes in your ideas, trying to imagine how this name will work in the real world, how it will sound five years from now. One of the things that often comes up when naming something is how people will shorten it.


The question is: Will this new title always be appropriate to the series? Sure, Game of Thrones encapsulates the first five books better than A Song of Ice and Fire. But will that always be the case? Without spoiling too much, I could easily imagine that at some point, these stories stop concerning themselves with kingdoms and lineage and start concerning themselves with a broader, more traditionally epic battle for survival. Or not. No one but George R.R. Martin knows what will happen in the final two books. Or, as it has been fretted, maybe he doesn't even know.


I think Game of Thrones implies a much more interesting story than A Song of Ice and Fire. The first one sounds like an intense story of political intrigue, the second one sounds like tired high fantasy. Whether the adopted title will always be accurate is something we'll only know once the final two books, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring are published.


For now, the merchandising machine is fully underway, and it's too late to turn back. The TV show's possibly great, possibly disappointing second season will be out in a matter of weeks, and I'm sure that a plethora of Game of Thrones-branded toys, clothing, games, and other tie-ins will follow.


The title of a series' first entry has somehow usurped the title of the series itself. The age of A Song of Ice and Fire has ended. Now is the time of Game of Thrones.


Portal

Unauthorized Presales Land NECA's Awesome Portal Gun Replica on Indefinite HoldYou know that awesome Portal gun NECA was working on? The one everyone was excited about buying? As it turns out, folks were excited about selling it as well, and that excitement might have just gotten the amazing replica cancelled.


Kotaku reader Will passed along an email on Friday that he had received from online retailer Urban Collector regarding his preorder for the pretty portal-shooter. According to the message to the retailer from NECA, sellers jumping the gun on selling the gun have caused it to be delayed indefinitely.


We have received numerous reports of the Portal Device being presold, and in some cases, even wholesaled, even though allotments have not been announced or confirmed. Due to these circumstances, this item is delayed indefinitely.


The message further clarifies, "There is no release date and this item may never come to market ever."


Don't lose hope. This doesn't necessarily mean the Portal gun will never make an appearance; indeed it proves that demand is extremely high. I'm hoping it'll return again someday, with allotments strictly controlled and retail partners limited.


We've reached out to NECA for comment on the situation and will update the post should we receive further information.


For those curious, here is the NECA message in its entirety:


We have received numerous reports of the Portal Device being presold, and in some cases, even wholesaled, even though allotments have not been announced or confirmed. Due to these circumstances, this item is delayed indefinitely.


Please note that all orders for the Portal Device are being canceled and we are not taking orders at this time.


We will announce in the future when/if the item becomes available


Please consider your order canceled at this time if you have previously placed an order.


What does this mean? There is no release date and this item may never come to market ever. We have no further information than this.


If you wish to cancel, there is not preorder deposit penalty for cancelling, just reply to this email that you wish to cancel.


Thank you for your order and we will keep you informed of any new information on this replica as we receive it.


Update:According to NECA's Twitter, the doomy gloomy tone of the email may have been a bit much. The gun is still coming, the company just needs time to allot them fairly.


Kotaku

Where are the Black League of Legends Characters?In November 2011 League of Legends boasted more than 11 million active players all over the world. With almost 100 unique characters for players to choose from and bi-monthly additions to the roster, the studio behind LoL, Riot Games, has quite a diverse crew on its hands.


The game's roster isn't diverse enough according to an avid LoL forum poster named Eserine. He crusades regularly to draw attention to the need for, as he said in one of his posts, "more racial representation of Earth ethnicities within the game League of Legends."


I got in touch with Riot's senior concept artist Eduardo Gonzales on this issue who responded:


"As a senior concept artist at Riot (and Champion Lead), I've had a chance to help create many of our Champions. I've never really looked at it that way – while we have taken some specific inspiration (the city-states of Ionia and Demacia have particular mythological inspirations), League of Legends is a highly diverse fantasy world with a cast that includes robots, yetis, and a grouchy tree. It's not meant to look or feel like real life on Earth."


In an email correspondence with me Eserine responded to Gonzales, saying "How odd by mere coincidence French accents, scuba divers, motorcycle gang membership, broadswords, Christmas, Chinese New Year, and vampires named Vladimir all happen to carry over...but somehow not black or brown people!"


League of Legends borrows mythological characters from all over the world, from Medusa to Sun Wukong, and recreates them in-game. Riot also throws in heroic archetypes—like pirates and ninjas—as well as some completely original characters.


Out of the 93 characters to choose from (as of March 4th), I counted 39 human-looking characters (more if you have a looser definition of "human"). Out of those 39, I could only find two characters who didn't look Caucasian or East Asian, based upon their portraits.


As a daily LoL player myself, Eserine's point rang true. Being able to play as a squirrel person, robot, or bear certainly makes for good times but it seems odd that I can't play as a black human. Humans form a sizable chunk of the roster, yet most of the diversity is relegated to humanoid/monster characters. Even if LoL is not meant to be realistic, the fact of the matter is that humans do exist in the game. Why should those humans only look Caucasian or East-Asian?


Where are the Black League of Legends Characters?
Ryze's "skins" (League of Legends Wiki)

There is no "dedicated" black human League of Legends character. I say "dedicated" because each champion in the game has "skins", or alternate costumes, and while the character, Ryze, pictured here may be considered black in one of his skins—a skin that you can't buy anymore—he also happens to be purple and Caucasian. His default skin is the purple one.


Where are the Black League of Legends Characters?
Caitlyn's many "skins" (League of Legends Wiki)

This lack of a dedicated black character, in itself, is not the problem. The problem that Eserine points out in one of his many forum posts is that "those of darker ethnicity each have lighter skins available, but none of the Asian and Caucasian-based champions have darker skins." Look at Caitlyn (pictured here), who never changes the color of her skin, despite the number of character "skins" she has. This inconsistency across characters makes it difficult to argue that LoL seriously considers any of their characters black.


Given the size of the roster and frequency of the game's updates, it seems odd that Riot hasn't made a black champion along the way. This addition would help them appeal to a larger audience, settle a frequently-revisited topic in the community, and, really, there's just no reason not to do it. Plenty of African, Caribbean, etc. myths contain characters who would fit into LoL just fine; Anansi, a spider that also appears as a man, or Shango, a thunder god who plays the drums are prime examples. Certainly the latter sounds like he could be a mechanically interesting tank.


Riot is not alone in their unintentional oversight. Other MOBA games, including Heroes of Newerth and Defense of the Ancients, tend to fall into the same trap. Even beyond MOBAs, this is a reality of most fantasy games. Think of League of Legends as a case study in a larger discussion about ethnicity in video games.


(Top photo credit: 9warbane | Deviant Art)
Kotaku

Motion-capture technology's changed the way that today's movies, TV shows and video games look and move. Usually, sessions where special cameras and suits upload a person's movement to computers happens in sequestered studios, far from prying eyes. At GDC 2012, mo-cap happened right out in the open and it was a wonder to behold.


Acrobatics and weaksauce fight choreography make sense when it comes to courting game developers, but it's a bit of a weird coincidence that companies xSens and OptiTrack both used dance to draw passers-by. Nevertheless, we can only hope that the people imbuing the characters of tomorrow's video games are as dedicated as the performers you see here.


Kotaku

Maybe it's due to the slumping sales of Xbox Live Arcade games that game developers have been complaining about. Or maybe we can call it Gamerscore inflation. Or is Microsoft just being generous?


Whatever the case, XBLA games will be able to offer 400 Gamerscore points instead of 200, starting in April and will be required to do so by June. They'll now max out at 30 Achievements, according to Microsoft's Major Nelson.


Xbox LIVE Arcade Gamerscore Policy Change [Major Nelson blog]


Mass Effect (2007)

Why Mass Effect 3's Ending Doesn't Need Changing (SPOILERS)


If you died tomorrow, if some kind of disaster struck and removed you entirely from the world, would the choices you'd made with your life to date matter?


Would it matter what you had accomplished? Who you had loved? If you had saved another's life? Would your life's work have meaning? Would there not be at least a single day in the course of your years that managed to have repercussions beyond the limits of your own knowledge and time?


I know very, very few people who would say, "no, none of it matters." It's a nihilistic and bleak point of view to maintain, that the inevitability of the final conclusion — for indeed, we are all mortal — overrides the importance of what one does along the journey. To be human is inevitably to face death. The moments we live for, before the end comes, are what define us.


So, too, for the life and times of Commander Shepard.


When I played Mass Effect 3 through for review, I was short on time. I finished the whole thing in about 23.5 hours' worth of play, crammed into two weeknights and one very long Saturday. I completed the game successfully, in the sense that I ended the reaper threat, but it was more or less in the worst way possible. This Shepard (who was not my Shepard) and her allied forces were not truly ready, and I'd faced a long, agonizing series of lose/lose decisions along the way. One of Shepard's closest allies had committed suicide in despair, and many others had been lost on missions. Garrus and Liara, the Commander's right and left hands for so many years, her closest friends and most stalwart allies, died in London.


Rushed for time, exhausted, and deeply burdened by grief I was feeling for admittedly fictional characters, I simply made Shepard's final choice without much regard for which of the two available options I was picking. And so it came to pass that Shepard broke the cycle of chaos and order once and for all, but in so doing she didn't only sacrifice herself. She sacrificed pretty much everything, ultimately achieving destruction on a scale even the reapers couldn't achieve.


Shepard killed everyone. I killed everyone. After the credits rolled and the final scene faded, I sat up until well after two in the morning, unable to sleep, haunted by the outcome of a video game.


Why Mass Effect 3's Ending Doesn't Need Changing (SPOILERS)And there, on the sofa, in the darkest and most solitary hours of the night, I realized the truth: I need to be more selfish than that. I don't care if Shepard lives. I wish she could but I understand if she can't. But others need to. Some of them need to make it, need to carry the legacy of what they learned and what they did. Their worlds will never, ever be the same but they'll be there, to tell the stories and create homes. There is no "everybody lives" moment coming, no perfect moment to make everything work for everyone. But Shepard can save others, and to the best of my ability that is what I will have her do.


That's the Commander I need to play. And despite the finality and of Shepard's ultimate choice and the similarities of the conclusions, there still remain as many unique Commanders Shepard as there are players to control him or her.


The full story of Shepard, the whole Mass Effect trilogy, as it turns out, is neither a romance nor a tragedy. The closest analogue is an epic. Myths and legends handed down over centuries, told by parents to children, by prophets to followers, by bards and singers to halls full of eager ears. The story will always end the same way, will always have the same moral, the same sweeping vistas and battles, but the details — ah, the details. Don't those always change in the telling?


Shepard was a woman. A man. Dark-skinned. Pale as moonlight. In love with an asari, a turian, a fellow human. Kind and generous, ruthless and bold. She saved the council and pitied the geth. He destroyed the krogan and saved salarians. And no matter what, Shepard defeated Sovereign at the Citadel, escaped from the Collector base on the far side of the Omega-4 Relay, and came at long last to be standing with the Catalyst, there to decide the fates of all.


The self-sacrificing savior is the central figure of modern Western mythology, and has been for centuries. That's the core of Christianity, and it's a major factor in countless stories. Even at the subconscious level, the story of the redeemer who gives his life for the future of all has become a deep and immutable link in our collective narrative tradition. Shepard is practically the platonic incarnation of the messianic archetype, inevitably martyred for the saving of all.


And that it is where we find Shepard in the end: on the plane of mythology, removed from the plane of men. And that is also where many players feel they lose Mass Effect, because until the final moment, the plane of men has been the only ground the game knows. Shepard may have died (in the act of saving her crew) and been resurrected to walk the world again, but she has remained firmly, immutably human. The first two entries in the trilogy, as well as most of the third game, concerned themselves entirely with physical, tangible needs: disable a gun, set up a supply chain, shoot an enemy, save a colony. The reapers may be an existential threat on a terrifying scale, but they are visible, and can be touched and beaten.


Where the physical plane gets lost by dallying too close with the metaphysical one is in conversation with the Catalyst. Appearing to Commander Shepard in the form of the young boy who died in Vancouver at the start of the game, the Catalyst takes on the role of deus ex machina in an astonishingly literal way, standing forth as the guiding hand over all organic and machine life in the galaxy for millions of years. This is the deity of the Milky Way, whether it calls itself that or no, and its presence creates a major shift in the tone and the goals of the series something like 98% of the way through the third and final game.


Why Mass Effect 3's Ending Doesn't Need Changing (SPOILERS)Some players embrace that tonal shift. Others will forever reject it. I personally, as a player, love Mass Effect 3 in a way I have loved very few games before, but even a week after first watching Shepard meet the god of the Citadel, I am of two minds about its presence. I wish that we could have had more clarity leading up to this point, while also understanding that even for the biggest badass in the galaxy, some things simply are, and cannot be changed.


The reaper threat has always been so incredible, so massive, that even the biggest and most united armada the whole galaxy could muster seemed insufficient to beat it back. We know, now, why the reapers have been designed this way and why they scour the galaxy clean. But the answers to mysteries, alas, are often unsatisfying, particularly when they raise more questions than they answer. And in this case, the lingering questions are as philosophical as they are logistical.


Perhaps Mass Effect 3 really is a bleak endorsement of a joyless philosophy. In an argument between fate and free will, we are left with the reasonably free will of the player against the stark and unforgiving fate handed out by the game's designers. And yet, to argue that Shepard's choices cease to matter, to argue that the player's input ceases to matter, seems to miss the point not just of the game but of existence itself.


The player's control over Shepard's fate always was, in most ways, an illusion, across all three games. But what a strong and passionate illusion it was. At the end of all things, when Shepard's story culminates in one painful, limiting final choice, the player truly feels the limits of the walls that a game puts up. We cannot ask a "why" that isn't coded, and we cannot force a happy ending through sheer force of will.


Did Shepard love well? Did he do the best he could with the time that was given to him? Did she stand strong against unrelenting odds, and inspire faith and courage in others? Did the player laugh, gasp, and cry while guiding the Commander through his trials? If so, then Shepard's martyrdom and ascent from history into myth serves the purpose it was meant to do.


...