Pac Man 256 unveiled

Pac Man 256 unveiled

BANDAI NAMCO ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCES PAC-MAN 256 FOR SMARTPHONES AND TABLETS!

Developed by Melbourne’s Hipster Whale, The Legendary PAC Is Back For His 35^th Anniversary!

SYDNEY, 25^TH May 2015 – BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment announced its latest project: PAC-MAN 256! Developed by Melbourne’s Hipster Whale (Crossy Road) and BANDAI NAMCO Studios Vancouver, this free-to-play game will be available for smartphones and tablets in 2015.

PAC-MAN 256 allows players to enjoy a brand new genre of PAC-MAN games; the iconic character created by NAMCO in 1980 will star in an endless maze chased by the infamous “256 Glitch”! Hipster Whale and BANDAI NAMCO Studios Vancouver have perfectly recaptured creator Iwatani Toru’s original PAC-MAN universe for a modern day mobile experience. Players can expect to encounter plenty of Pac-Dots, Power Pellets, and the notorious ghost ensemble: Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde. PAC-MAN 256 will also feature coins, power-ups and more to spice-up the thrilling pursuit.

“The gaming industry keeps on growing massively on a daily basis and we, at BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe, are proud to be pioneers of this with some of the biggest licenses out there! This year, we are celebrating PAC-MAN’s 35^th Anniversary and we couldn’t miss such an opportunity: we decided to create a brand new exciting game with Hipster Whale and BANDAI NAMCO Studios Vancouver. This results in a stirring game based on some elements that made history. Join us in celebrating PAC-MAN’s anniversary!” said Tatsuya Kubota, Head of Mobile & Web Gaming at BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe S.A.S.

“We are thrilled to be working with the creators of the huge hit Crossy Road in creating a new PAC-MAN game for his 35^th Anniversary. We’re already seeing incredibly strong, hooking gameplay in the early prototypes, and cannot wait to share this experience with everyone!” said Daisuke Hattori, Project Manager of PAC-MAN 256 at BANDAI NAMCO Studios Vancouver Inc.

Hipster Whale Director, Matthew Hall, who was just five years old when PAC-MAN™ was born, shared his enthusiasm about Hipster Whale collaborating with BANDAI NAMCO on PAC-MAN 256.  “Playing PAC-MAN in a seaside arcade in 1980 is one of my earliest memories. It is an incredible honor to be able to contribute to one of the most iconic video game franchises in history.  Our game, PAC-MAN 256, takes the infamous ‘glitch’ level of PAC-MAN and builds upon this to become a unique game that retains the retro spirit of the original.”

F1 2015 teaser is here

F1 2015 teaser is here

F1^TM 2015 TEASER TRAILER UNVEILED

PRE-ORDER ITEMS AND RELEASE DATE ALSO CONFIRMED

Codemasters® have released the first gameplay teaser for F1 2015, the official videogame of the 2015 FIA FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP™, which will now release on July 10^th 2015 and be distributed by BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment throughout Australia & New Zealand. This will mark the award-winning series’ debut on PlayStation® 4 computer entertainment system and Xbox One, the all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft. The game will also be available for Windows PC.

Codemasters has also announced that gamers who pre-order F1 2015 from select retailers across Australia & New Zealand will receive the exclusive pre-order items of a F1 2015 metal case and ‘Race Like A Champion’ guide book with hints and tips, while stocks last.

Operation Abyss - New release date

Operation Abyss - New release date

OPERATION ABYSS: NEW TOKYO LEGACY

COMING AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND ON JUNE 12!

NIS America is announcing that the dungeon crawler RPG, Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy, is arriving exclusively for PlayStation®Vita with a new release date June 12, 2015 for Australia and New Zealand. The title will be available as both a physical and digital release. Fight through the Abyss and battle against the Variants—but only if you dare!

About the game:

From the studio that made Demon Gaze comes Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy, a sci-fi dungeon crawler RPG set in a near future Tokyo. With the city under the constant threat of Variants—genetically engineered monsters—and the emergence of portals leading to a mysterious dimension called the Abyss, the government has established the Code Physics Agency to investigate these mysterious phenomena. The Xth Squad—a unique group of teens modified by the CPA’s Code technology—must evade traps, face down powerful monsters, and investigate the mystery behind the Abyss.

Lost Dimension coming

Lost Dimension coming

LOST DIMENSION COMING TO AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND IN AUGUST 2015

FOR PLAYSTATION®3 AND PLAYSTATION®VITA!

NIS America is very excited to announce that the turn-based tactical RPG, Lost Dimension will be arriving in Australia and New Zealand on 27 August 2015 for PlayStation®3 and PlayStation®Vita as both a physical and digital release!

About the game:

To subdue the threat The End poses to the entire planet, several countries create a special forces group called S.E.A.L.E.D., which is comprised of eleven psychics with superhuman abilities. Each soldier has their own talents and skillsets to use in combat, which can be expanded after gaining enough experience in the field. Bonds of friendship will form amongst the members of S.E.A.L.E.D., but be mindful of which allies to keep close, as The End mandates the player must begin eliminating teammates. Make sure to accuse the right teammate of being a traitor though – once the final battle with The End begins any remaining traitors will fight the main character alongside him.

Key Features:

A Cataclysmic Whodunnit! – Not only will players have to keep their eyes focused on strategically defeating the enemies laying in wait on the field of combat, but they need to carefully watch party members' tendencies in order to expose the traitor. At the end of every floor, players will be forced to vote and eliminate one of their trusted allies, and the consequences for choosing incorrectly could be dire...

Spoiler-Free Zone – In addition to a variety of game mechanics to help assess teammate loyalty, Lost Dimension's traitor system is randomly determined, assuring that no two players will be faced with the same playthrough. Sorry, kiddies, but it’s impossible to look up the answers this time around.

Psychic Warlords – Each character in the party is a master of a different sphere of powers. There's the girl who controls molecular behavior to burn or freeze anything/anyone in her path. There's the guy who can teleport all around (also with the bonus superpower of being satisfyingly cocky). And there's even someone with an identity crisis because all he knows how to do is steal everyone else's powers!

Keep Your Friends Close… – In between battles, players will have the option to chat with teammates and develop closer bonds with them. Juggling these friendships and keeping track of who participates in battle will be the key to sussing out the traitors and assuring that, by the time you reach The End, it won't be... the end... for you and your allies!  

Tomorrowland: Film Review

Tomorrowland: Film Review

Cast: George Clooney, Britt Robertson, Hugh Laurie
Director: Brad Bird

"Do I have to explain everything? Can't you just be amazed?"

In essence, these words spoken by George Clooney's grizzled and cantankerous Frank Walker sum up the enigma that is Tomorrowland, an engimatic mystery that promises so much and ultimately - and unfortunately -  disappoints.

The very loose story of Tomorrowland (and believe me, it's best going in unprepared as the appeal of the puzzle will be lost in endless inspection and scrutiny) centres around Britt Robertson's Casey. She's an eternal optimist, a dreamer determined to ensure the space gantry at Cape Canaveral won't be dismantled for fears of her father's unemployment. But when she's arrested and bailed for sabotage, she finds a Tomorrowland pin among her belongings. Touching the pin reveals a futuristic world to her - and she sets out to unravel the enigma of the pin, putting her on collision course with the mysterious Frank Walker.

Tomorrowland is an intriguing mix of a retro future, first pioneered by an altruistic Walt Disney who wanted the next day to be better than the last (and which ultimately led to the creation of the EPCOT centre)

And to be fair, in its visuals from Incredibles director Brad Bird, Tomorrowland certainly doesn't skimp on the spectacle, bathing the film in retro nods for the geek crowd and leaving you reminscing over 50s B movie matinees.

Every young dreamer will be taken in by the promise of Tomorrowland, a world where jetpacks are in daily use (this film launches as strong a case for George Clooney to be in a Rocketeer remake than any), monorails glide through the sky and, in one of the film's stand out FX pieces, people dive from one mid-air swimming pool to another with reckless abandon.

But ultimately, Tomorrowland is as much about smoke and mirrors as anything else.

Bird - along with co-writer Damon Lindelof  - have created a world of eternal optimism, so awash in the Disney corporate line that I'm surprised screenings don't come complete with free Koolaid to wash the "Anything is possible" lecture down. While portions of Tomorrowland extend the riddle of the central premise nicely, the ultimate reveal is a disappointment, swathed in preachy lectures of what we've done to the world, what we could do and really, what we should do in a brain-washing finale that's redolent of "I'd like to give the world a Coke"

Clooney has his moments, but his character's bitterness is never fully explained (one of the film's flaws is it doesn't exactly dump exposition on you, choosing to distract you every time a character demands to know what's going on during its 130 minute run time and leaving you clamouring for some coherent explanation of what's what); Laurie's pompous Wizard of Oz like man behind the curtain is about as unthreatening as anything Disney's ever proffered up - and it's really only Robertson's vulnerable and plucky turn as Casey which feels fleshed out, giving the film a heart and heroine which it sorely needs.

Tomorrowland is little more than the sum of its parts, a naively eternally optimistic ride that charts more lows than highs, despite the naturally dazzling visuals and cleverly comic action sequences that Bird craftily deploys.

It may end up appealing in parts to its younger audience more who have less cynicism than most, but on its occasional meandering and circuitous route to its ultimate destination, it could mean the journey isn't quite as fun and as thrilling as perhaps it could have been.

Rating:

Gemma Bovery: Film Review

Gemma Bovery: Film Review

Cast: Gemma Arterton, Fabrice Lucini, Jason Flemyng, Niels Schneider
Director: Anne Fontaine

Gemma Arterton once again becomes the cinematic muse to Posy Simmonds' writing in this latest, a big screen adaptation of Gemma Bovery, which ran weekly in The Guardian back in 1999.

Lucini plays Joubert, a Frenchman obsessed with literature - and specifically Madame Bovary - in Normandy. This baker finds his life turned around when Gemma Bovery and her husband Charles (Arterton and Flemyng respectively) move into their neighbouring house.

Struck by the literary parallels between Gemma and Madame Bovary, Joubert becomes unhealthily obsessed with Gemma, and finds his interest piqued even further when she begins to drift from her own husband and into the arms of a younger man (Schneider)...

Gemma Bovery is a breezy, light piece of French fare that's gorgeous to the eye, but light on the brain.

Simmonds' cartoon/ graphic novel was all about a woman bored with life within a rural idyll and Fontaine carries this off to maximum effect with the picturesque surroundings of Normandy, and an eye for what a perfect French life would be.

Initially, there's a humour present that rumbles along nicely - mainly thanks to Joubert's overt snobbery and literary diatribes (much to the horror of his family) - but it soon diverts into your usual story of unhappiness once the seams are picked away.

Tamara Drewe star Gemma Arterton is easy on the eye throughout, a fact Fontaine is clearly aware of, stopping just short of using soft focus each time she's on screen to convey Joubert's perception of her and the idolising he does. But she occasionally brings some of the depth needed to the character to make the actress seem less of a character from a cartoon.

Which is perhaps just as well as any supporting characters outside of Bovery and Joubert get little other than a once-over-lightly; Joubert's wife is nothing short of a harpy, his son a simpering idiot and Flemyng's Charles is nothing more than a presence rather than a partner.

As light and fluffy as a cloud in the skies above the south of France, Gemma Bovery is a forgettable flick once the lights have gone up kind of movie; it's visually appealing, but offers little to the grey matter when it's over.

Rating:

Noble: Film Review

Noble: Film Review

Cast: Deidre O'Kane, Sarah Greene, Nhu Quynh Nguyen
Director: Stephen Bradley

Sometimes inspirational stories and their subjects are failed by the leap to the big screen.

So it is with the well-intentioned but ultimately weakly executed Noble, a film that fails to inspire and live up to the legacy of Christina Noble, the Irish charity worker who underwent horrors in her formative years but began fighting the cause of the Vietnamese street children, leading to the creation of her children's charity foundation.

Moone Boy star (and also wife of director Bradley) Deidre O'Kane is the elder Noble who finds herself in Vietnam, after visions exhort her to do so. Exuding an irrepressible self-belief and confidence, Noble believes she can help the street children to better lives, despite the insistence of the authorities otherwise.

When Noble finds herself at a run-down orphanage after railing at God to lead her to her destiny, Noble discovers her work's cut out for her in among the sea of hands and wailing of unhappy children, wrecked by poverty and wracked by the after-effects of the likes of Agent Orange and abuse.

It's hard to describe the disappointment of Noble, a story that so fudges every major emotional beat and hides the true darkness of the abject horror that Christina went through. From her alcoholic father to her mis-treatment by nuns at the local orphanage, through to her gang-rape and consequent child being adopted out, Noble has a powerful story to espouse; a recognition of the strength of spirit in the face of such continued and sustained adversity.

But Bradley, who wrote and directed the piece, boils the whole thing down to its simplest moments, avoiding any of the true horrors from Christina Noble's book, Bridge Across My Sorrows, because it doesn't hold any truck with his attempts to please the crowd and manipulate them with piano-swelling music, aimed at telling you what to feel and when to feel it.

Some of the problem comes from drowning the film in too many flashbacks, from Christina as a young child in the grim settings of 1950s Dublin to the teen Christina dealing with disappointment and the evil that men do, without giving them space to breathe and us a chance to connect. The ebb and flow of the film doesn't help either with one-dimensional caricatures the only things to cross Christina's path.

Things get slightly better with O'Kane's venerable and charismatic turn as the compassionate Noble, giving the road to enlightenment and selflessness more a humane touch. But again, the latter stages of her journey only feel more grounded in her limited interactions with Downton Abbey's Mr Bates aka Brendan Coyle as a potential benefactor rather than the fight against immigration or the powers that be.

The fact Noble ends with Coldplay's In My Place ringing out as the camera pans back to reveal the creation of Christina's clinic and the signifying that her endless fighting and suffering has resulted in something speaks volumes to the biopic's blandness and muddled execution. It's a travesty to Noble's legacy and a shock to anyone who's expecting some kind of subtlety for this film - if you're expecting to be inspired, there are other films which would serve you better than this.

Rating: