Month: August 2019

Cooking Mama: Cookstar is a new game in the cooking series that started on the Nintendo DS back in 2006. It will be the eleventh Cooking Mama game, and the announcement frames it as a reboot. The last game in the series was Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop for the 3DS.

Cooking Mama: Cookstar is due to arrive this fall on Nintendo Switch, and will be the first console game to integrate blockchain technology.

Although this was actually announced back in February, it went under the radar until now, when a listing on the Australian Classification website alerted folks to the game’s existence. The game, originally called Cooking Mama: Coming Home to Mama, seemingly went through a name change at some point.

“Each purchased copy of the game will have unique IDs which will be managed directly through the game’s internal wallet storage,” the announcement read. “Players will be able to focus on Cooking Mama’s user experience rather than cryptographic key management.”

This will be used to make every copy of the game “subtly different and personal to a user”, allowing the game to “change expression algorithms for characters, ingredients and cooking methods.”

Of course, since this press release came out in February, it’s possible that these plans have changed.

Beyond this, the real meat of the announcement – pardon the pun – is the addition of a new, optional vegetarian mode, which will allow players to ditch meat in favor of meatless recipes. This is the first game in the series to do so, and aims to make the game more palatable to potential vegetarian fans.

Players will be able to switch between and cook in both ‘traditional’ and ‘vegetarian’ modes. Cooking Mama: Cookstar will use a mix of motion gestures and traditional controls in its recipes.

Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince will release on October 8, and we’ve got a new trailer to go alongside the announcement. The game is coming to Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One and PC.

On the same day, Trine: Ultimate Collection will release, physically bundling all four games in the series. Trine 4 will retail for $29.99, while the Ultimate Collection will cost $49.99 on all systems.

The Ultimate Edition will include:

• Trine Series Original Soundtrack (download code)
• Trine 4 Digital Art Book (download code)
• Collector’s Reversible Cover Sheet
• Physical Trine 4 World Map

The physical edition of Trine 4 will also come with the world map.

The trailer above shows off the numerous additions made to the fourth game in the series, including new combat options, new skills to use, and the new four player mode. Previous Trine games cut you off at three players, and this is our first look at how this game will handle a fourth.

Trine 4 follows on from 2015’s divisive Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power, but is returning to the 2.5D gameplay style of the first two games in the series. Our impressions of the game so far have been positive.

Players will be able to get their hands on Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince in just under two months.

The XIII remake, originally announced for a 2019 release back in April, has been delayed into next year.

The cult classic shooter was originally released for the PS2, Xbox, GameCube and PC in 2003, and the remake is set to update the game for a modern audience. It’s now coming to Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One and PC in 2020.

François Coulon, Head of Production at publisher Microïds, announced in a press release that while they are “thrilled” with the work developer PlayMagic has put into the game, “additional development time is needed to reach the level of polish we’re aiming for.”

No specific time frame within 2020 has been set for the game’s release.

The original XIII was published by Ubisoft and developed by Ubisoft Paris and Southend Interactive. It cast players as Thirteen, an amnesiac enigma accused of assassinating the president, who must discover who is he is and untangle the wider conspiracy he’s caught up in. The concept art posted on the PlayStation Blog alongside the remake’s announcement suggests that the game will be receiving a dramatic visual overhaul. We’re yet to see any footage from the remake, so it’s unclear just how extensive a remake it will be.

While our original review of XIII (published all the way back in 2003) was less-than-glowing, arguing that “the total package isn’t one that will hold the interest of most first-person shooter players”, the game built up a fanbase after its release because of its ambitious narrative and stellar art design.

Decay of Logos, an ambitious RPG that reminds us of both Breath of the Wild and Princess Mononoke, is releasing towards the end of August.

The game is a story of revenge about a girl and her elk, who set out to find the truth and take down the culprits after the girl’s village is destroyed. Getting revenge will involve battling a lot of enemies, searching through numerous dungeons, and exploring a world influenced by high fantasy tales and European folklore.

The game has been in development since at least 2014, when game designer André Constantino built a prototype that would become fleshed out further when he joined with Amplify Creations in 2015. The creation process has been covered in an extensive DevLog on the game’s official site.

Decay of Logos is the first game from Amplify Creations, and because the company specialises in middleware, it was made mostly using in-house tech.

The developers don’t want the game, which will involve open-world exploration and combat that mixes swordplay with magic abilities (plus your elk, who can run in and headbutt enemies), to hold player’s hands too much, so expect to have to find your own way forward.

Decay of Logos will hit PS4 first on August 27, before coming to Switch on August 29. Xbox One and Steam players will have to wait until August 30. It’s being published by Rising Star Games.