Free-to-Play Soulcalibur Lost Swords Confirmed For Europe, Single-Player Only

Following its reveal in Japan’s Famitsu magazine earlier today, Soulcalibur Lost Swords is confirmed for release in Europe—and it will be a 'single-player experience' according to Namco Bandai.

Namco Bandai will release the free-to-play fighting game in Europe via the PlayStation Network. As previously reported, Siegfried and Mitsurugi will be among the game’s playable characters.

More news on Soulcalibur Lost Swords is expected at this year's Toyko Game Show.

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PS Vita TV Will Reach Asia In January 2014 (2)

Sony confirmed they will bring PlayStation Vita TV to other Asian regions in January 2014. This device plugs into a TV and plays PsOne Classics, PSP games, and selected Vita titles like God Eater 2 and Soul Sacrifice Delta.

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PS Vita TV supports ad-hoc play with other Vita handhelds and two DualShock 3 controllers for PsOne games.

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Watch Adam West Batman Get His Hands Dirty In Batman Arkham Origins

As previously reported, Batman: Arkham Origins will get two exclusive costumes at launch on PlayStation 3—the Adam West Batman outfit from the 1960s TV show and the costume featured in the Knightfall saga in the comics from the ‘90s. A new trailer shows both costumes in action, and you can watch it below:

Just when these costumes will be made available for other platforms hasn’t been announced yet. Batman: Arkham Origins will be released for PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii U on October 25th.

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Arc System Works' Supernatural RPG Has An Unconventional Battle System

In our previous post, we talked about the adventure half of upcoming horror dungeon crawler Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters. After conversations are done, it’s time for action. Battles have to be planned carefully in advance in Tokyo Twilight as the ghosts are quite smartly invisible to the naked eye.

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Pre-battle, players can lay out traps and sensors on a map that will help them both figure out enemy movement and deal some damage should the foes stumble into their traps. These cost money though, and the predictions of where the ghosts will be exactly may be wrong. In a twist, the game swaps between players planning their move for the turn on a battle map and a “camera feed” from each character’s head as they move around.

Tokyo Twilight has some snazzy effects to make the transition from map to in-game battle movement, and ghosts only show up if you land a successful hit on them. There also appears to be a turn limit(!) before the ghosts escape, perhaps.

While the video shows only two characters moving and fighting in the map, the right hand side of the display also shows three more characters – a possibility that reinforcements could be summoned if things go hairy perhaps?

Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters is slated for a 2014 release on Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Vita.

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Bakumatsu Rock Is The Wildest Music Game You'll Hear About This Year

Feudal Japan is a hot setting and video game companies have different takes on it from the romance series Hakuoki to Sega's more RPG-like Yakuza Restoration. Senran Kagura maker Marvelous AQL has a wild spin on ther era called Bakumatsu Rock.

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Set in the final days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the Shogunate is using the Heaven's Song to brainwash people and rule the country. Freedom fighters are "rockers" led by Sakamoto Ryoma. Famitsu says Bakumatsu Rock is a rhythm game and it's coming to PSP on February 27.

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Here are some of the characters and voice actors confirmed for the game:

Sakamoto Ryoma (Kisho Taniyama)

Takasugi Shinsaku (Tatsuhisa Suzuki)

Kido Takayoshi (Showtaro Morikubo)

Okita Soji (Kensho Ono)

Hijikata Toshizo (Toshiyuki Morikawa)

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Lightning Returns Final Fantasy XIII Brings Back Vanille

Square Enix and Sony Computer Entertainment Japan’s Play Community held a special Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII event, where various key members of the staff got together to talk about the latest features including equipment customization options.

While shops will be selling your everyday swords, shields, and gear; they’ll also sell various ‘decoration’ parts, such as glasses, piercings, pendants and more. These will serve cosmetic purposes, and won’t affect your stats. According to Square Enix, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is a world-driven game, so they wanted to make shopping a little more fun by having various shops around the world that sell regional specialties.

Performance customization will be a huge part in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, too, however. Square Enix felt that RPGs have always followed a pattern of going to town to buy new equipment, beat the next boss, repeat; so, they’ve decided to add a little twist by allowing players to freely customize their own style according to preference.

The three main styles are: Balanced, Magic, and Physical-type. For example, players who aren’t that great at action will be able to customize Lightning’s performance to focus more on defense and HP, so they can take more hits, or go with an approach featuring no defense and very high damage output.

The above video is a look at the new color customization option. The “Custom Color Drive” allows you to change the colors of your equipment by choosing from of a palette of preset colors, or you can customize your own colors and set them yourself. Your equipment will be divided into three main sections, allowing you to color it according to your preference.

This feature also works for collaboration items and other special equipment, so you can dress Lightning in an all-pink SOLDIER outfit, if that’s what you’d prefer.

Additionally, Dengeki’s coverage of the event has confirmed that Vanille will also be reappearing in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. Director Motomu Toriyama revealed, “This time, Vanille is being sheltered by a religious organization, known as the “The Order,” who control the city of Luxerion.”

Square Enix will be revealing more regarding Vanille in the next update.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is slated for release in February 2014 in the U.S. and Europe for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

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Sengoku Basara 4 And Its Wacky Enemy Formations Are Set For January 2014

Sengoku Basara 4, Capcom's samurai themed hack and slash game, is coming back to consoles on January 23 when its released for PS3. Just like other games in the series, one button is for basic attacks which you can change with long button presses and adding a direction input. Each character has different special skills (mapped to triangle & R1 with different directional input) they can learn when they level up, and secret techniques tied to R2.

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L1 is your defense button. Pressing this makes your character guard, but you can also do a knockback move if you press L1 right before an enemy strikes or an evasive maneuver by pressing L1 and the analog stick. When your Basara gauge is full you can unleash a Basara attack. New for Sengoku Basara 4 is the Giga Basara technique (giga being the kanji "caricature") which you can trigger if you and a partner character use a Basara attack at the same time. This changes the game with a Sumi-e art look for the duration of the attack.

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Here's a look at the different characters in Sengoku Basara 4.

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Enemies learned a few tricks between Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes and Sengoku Basara 4 too. They can organize into different formations when a tactician on the battlefield orders common soldiers to change their strategy. Soldiers with guns can make a human pyramid that fires bullets in sync. Foot soldiers with spears and shields can create a gigantic moving wall. The Great Wheel formation creates a deadly spinning human wheel and another formation has spear soldiers spinning so fast they create a tornado.

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