True Story: Despite living in New Jersey for my entire life, the first anime convention I ever attended was actually Anime Boston, and since attending in 2005 or so, I have never been back to the large con. This year, however, is different.

I'm heading up from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with the school's Science-Fiction Association, which is organizing a trip to the con. While up in Boston, I will be blogging about the convention's myriad panels and events and maybe grabbing an interview or two with the guests. Plus, I will co-presenting with Daryl Surat of Anime World Order on his "Remembering Satoshi Kon" panel. (I ran a similar one at Genericon, and I hope to bring my own insights to what is already looking to be a great panel about the late director's life and work.)

As usual, I've included my tentative schedule — complete with overlaps that I will reconcile on the fly at the con — after the break. Note the number of Charles Dunbar panels; after Ink's great write-up and my own repeated failure to attend his panels, I'm going to make a real effort to see them this time.

Are you going to the con? What events are you looking forward to?

Western fantasy role-playing games have moved in different directions over the years. You have the European type of games like Two Worlds II, the Gothic series, and the original The Witcher. Games that tend to expect a lot of patience from the player while giving you a huge amount of things to do in an open, yet usually (or initially) buggy world.

Then you have games like Dragon Age II that streamline the more hardcore elements to provide a more polished experience, but at the same time restrict your freedom in terms of customizability and things like crafting.

Now it looks like we finally have a game that tries to do it all, and in doing so might blow anything away that we've grown to kind of accept in recent years. If you were one of those people that complained about Game X and said "I'll wait for Witcher 2 instead," then congratulations: you were right.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (PC)
Developer: CD Projekt RED
Publisher: CD Projekt (Europe), Atari (North America)
Release Date: May 17th, 2011

Geralt of Rivia is back, and he is as bad-ass as he ever was. Following some events during a siege on a castle, Geralt finds himself a prisoner in a dungeon of the very kingdom he once protected. The witcher is being accused of a crime and acts like it's either one he didn't commit, or acts as if he knows more about it than he's willing to tell just anyone. A crime that appears to be a grave one, given the torture marks on Geralt's back and the guards' pleasure in beating him to a pulp.

After the White Wolf is being brought to an interrogation chamber, a seemingly familiar face greets him and asks him just what the hell happened in the events that led to his capture. Thus, Geralt is given the option to start at the beginning and tell his tale in chronological order, or to simply go to key events; events you'll play through yourself.

Choosing to recount his tale from the beginning, you play through Geralt's recollection of a massive assault on a certain castle. After waking up next to the lovely Triss Merigold -- who happens to sport the best areola and shaven vulva textures of any game to date -- the battle-scarred witcher is summoned before the king. As you exit the little tent you woke up in, you are greeted by a massive valley the likes of which you haven't seen before.

Army tents litter the field encampment and the distant scenery as trebuchets lay waste to a castle's defenses in the distance, launching their ammo in 5.1 surround sound. Soldiers idle, train, and talk about rape and glory, and you're instantly transported to a fully realized and living world that stands on the brink of a major assault.

You are free to walk around and talk to soldiers, who sometimes have a few lines to say but always seem engaged in something even if they're just standing around, and a few "friends" from Geralt's past. There is one problem though: Geralt can't remember his past up to a certain event that made him lose a significant part of his memory.

These former acquaintances are happy enough to fill you in on some of your previous dealings with them, including tales of even more rape and murder. If you are sick of JRPGs or anime tropes that deal with sexual innuendo involving 12 year old girls, and prefer a brutal and adult medieval fantasy world, this is the game for you.

Following some dialogue, the unapologetic soldier bandits present you with a choice. They have stolen a magical trinket from some defenseless priestesses and would like to know if it would protect an inexperienced member of their merry band in the battle ahead.

Geralt's witcher medallion reacts to the trinket's magic, but there is no way of telling what the magic item actually does. You are given the choice to tell them that it will protect the new guy or that you just don't know what it will do -- the latter resulting in the guy being donned in armor and sent to battle without magical protection.



After a brief detour, to experience the dialogue system and the way in which The Witcher 2 deals with choice, you make your way to King Foltest who briefs you -- and some of his slippery political advisors -- on the battle ahead. Though the new graphics engine looks fantastic, the camerawork and the production values of the in-engine cutscenes might be even more impressive. Even minor characters show personality before they speak a word -- their posture, brief hesitations, and clothing often communicating more than mere words could ever do.

Instead of having a tiresome chain of events explained to you, the game expects you to figure out what exactly is going on by just dealing with present events and by paying attention to key characters that shed light on the situation at hand. It's a refreshing take on the old narrative structure we've grown accustomed to in RPGs, for sure.

What matters for Geralt there and then is the battle at hand, not why the battle is fought in the first place, and that's what the game focuses on. You make your way to the castle's walls, riding along in a tower with the King's elite, while Geralt notes how the real men fight in the piss- and shit-filled streets below as the aristocracy literally towers above them. Finally, it's time for action.

Combat is now a far easier affair than in the last game. Geralt automatically attacks the nearest enemy when you click to attack, so you can just mash the mouse buttons (for quick and heavy attacks) to hack and slash your way through combat if you please. You'll see Geralt making acrobatic leaps and rolls to cross the distance before he slashes down his foe. That is, until you encounter shielded and heavier enemies who will destroy you if you don't block incoming blows, or dodge out of the way to attack them from behind.

Alternatively, you can use various types of magic to set your enemies on fire, lay traps for them, blow them out of the way or buff your defense. Holding down the control key slows the game down and lets you select magic or weapons with a cursor. Or you can just use the keys centered around the WASD control scheme to do all of that. It works well and it's pretty easy to get the hang of.

As you fight your way through the castle's defenses, you'll mix up regular fighting with supporting the army's advance. Launching a ballista here and opening a gate there, the gameplay varies from scene to scene. The scale and ferocity of the siege is pretty impressive in its depiction, as axe men are ordered to chop down a wooden door instead of having it just magically open as a game's trigger is set off. Cutscenes seamlessly break up the gameplay to depict medieval "special forces" tactics and assaults that propel the main attack ever onwards.

It's what you'd expect from a medieval assault, until a "monster" enters the fray changes the mathematics of warfare. One scene sees you frantically fighting your way to survival alongside a group of soldiers and key characters, while "thing" wreaks havoc on the battleground. Some other scenes are even more dramatic, and breathe fantasy back into what could've otherwise been a plain old medieval world at war.

Eventually the battle reaches a couple of climaxes. In some of them you can choose how to deal with the situation at hand, which affects some events afterward, eventually leading up to Geralt's present predicament back in the dungeon you started in. Throughout the entire siege recollection you go back and forth between the events you just played through and the "present time" interrogation, to discuss what happened before choosing what event to play through next.

Eventually Geralt of course escapes the dungeon somehow, finding some allies (or are they foes?) along the way. If you happened to tell one of the soldier bandits -- who you met at the beginning -- that their magical artifact probably wouldn't protect their new guy in battle, you can find him along the way and he'll recount how your choice saved his life. In return, he'll help you distract some guards. If he used the artifact instead, who knows what would have happened?

Later on in the game you arrive in a forest infested with bizarre creatures and Elves to continue on your quest. And like everything else in the Witcher universe, even the Elves are badass. None of those Lord of the Rings or World of Warcraft graceful kinds of Elves, or even Dragon Age's "Elves as social commentary" stuff. Elves are a race like any other; one that has suffered through many wars and has its own internal political divisions. More than that, they just don't screw around if you get on their bad side. Some, however, are friendly and peaceful enough.

You quickly find yourself in a miniature world of humans, non-humans, and all kinds of social and political themes reflecting both interracial relations and internal divisions within a race. A public hanging, for instance, can be resolved by pointing out that one man is being hanged for debauchery, to which a previously cheering townsman reacts: "Debauchery is one of my favorite pastimes, and I wouldn't want a noose around my neck for it!"

It's great stuff, and if you're a fan of potty-mouthed NPCs who scream random obscenities at you, or at seemingly no-one in particular, you can eat your heart out. Peeking inside a prison cell rewards you with someone shouting a continuous stream of obscenities for almost a minute on end. Elsewhere you can find an NPC named Fliparse. And later on, some shady sidequest NPCs may offer you to participate in an experiment that could perhaps make you stronger. But to finish that quest, you'll have to meet them again in some town two years from now. Two years!

That's the kind of scope you're going to have to expect from this game with regard to choice and consequence. Some consequences may be easy to anticipate when you are given a choice. Other choices may affects things you weren't even aware of. It appears that The Witcher 2 attempts to weave a magical tapestry of non-linear interactive storytelling throughout the entire game. And from the looks of it, it does so without making it as obvious as in other games.

The forest environment also provides a taste of the more open-world affair that the game offers, because the mostly linear castle siege and the escape from imprisonment -- which takes around 3+ hours in itself -- merely forms the Prologue of the game. You'll spend that amount of time only to be greeted by "Chapter 1" being casually thrown in your face as you enter the forest in question -- something that bodes well for the full game's length.

Backtracking seems to be less of an issue compared to the first game -- which for full disclosure I sadly didn't play all that much -- although even 15% of the forest map already yields you a fair number of sidequests that gradually let you explore the area.

You can fight monsters, resolve disputes, help out townsfolk with random things, or even perform tavern fist-fights through QTEs. I was afraid that the QTEs would get tiresome, until I saw Geralt kick a guy in the nuts. It was almost as if you could hear the design team talking to you through the game, holding a meeting where they once went: "How awesome would it be if we'd insert an animation where he kicks a guy in the balls?"

Typical other Witcher elements make a return as well, like crafting, potion making, and an extensive skill tree. The moment you first lay your eyes on the inventory system is when you start to understand just how deep the game will go. It's a hardcore, but still pretty accessible game that attempts to offers both a polished and extremely immersive world while seemingly not restricting you in your freedom.

What I played was a still unfinished preview build, so some bugs are to be expected. And while there were a few instances of getting Geralt stuck, it felt like even those would be minor annoyances if you just quick-save a lot. PC gaming excuses aside, the loading times were reasonable and the game looked and ran playable enough on a two year old PC (E8400 3.0GHz, 4GB RAM, HD4830 512MB) at 1680x1050 and "medium" detail. If you are looking at upgrades and have a good dual core CPU already, then a current-day midrange graphics card will probably let you run the game on pretty good graphics settings without too much trouble.



Overall, my 7 hours or so with The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings left me very impressed. Again, I didn't play The Witcher as much as I would've liked, but the difference between the two games feels like the difference between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. Everything from the gameplay to the consistently high quality of cutscenes and the voice acting just feels like a labor of love by CD Projekt RED.

I looked back on my experience with Dragon Age II afterwards, and BioWare's fantasy RPG now feels like it's in almost every way a mere toddler in the shadow of The Witcher 2. That's not to say DA II sucked, but a single village in The Witcher 2 already has more personality than all of Kirkwall. Moreover, the politics now run deep without treating you like a child for once. Characters feel human and treat you like an adult, the player is expected to deal with temporal jumps in narrative to keep up with the story, choices actually carry weight, and oh my god the breast textures!

Not that it's a male-oriented or misogynist game in any way, just because it deals with adult content matter. There's plenty of manflesh and pretty boys to admire as well, and the female characters are strong, confident, and don't take any shit or act like girly caricatures. Triss Merigold in particular already feels like she's going to be a fan favorite of gamers regardless of their gender; which is how it should be.

I knew I should keep my eye on The Witcher 2 even before I first saw it in action last year, but now that I've finally played it I feel confident enough to say that as a PC owner you're not likely to find anything like it all year. Sorry Hawke, but your cardboard persona is about to be witched in half. And Shepard? I still love you and I know you star in a different kind of RPG. But I'm really, really glad that your third space adventure is scheduled six months away from what will inevitably be Geralt's assassination of our social lives.

Few gamers expected Ar Tonelico III to arrive on North American PlayStation 3s after it was released early last year. The first game's quirky, thoroughly Japanese atmosphere earned it a cult following, but an embarrassingly bad localization of Ar Tonelico II put not only a stain on NIS America's reputation, but also a damper on fans' hopes that the trilogy's last entry would cross the pond.

Those fears proved unfounded, though, and now the game is here, renamed to Ar Tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel. Which now leaves one question to be answered: Is the game any good? Does this swan song make for a fitting finale, or has the Ar Tonelico saga lost the melody forever?

Ar Tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel (PlayStation 3)
Developer: Gust
Publisher: NIS America
Released: March 15, 2011
MSRP: $59.99

Upon cursory examination, most observers would conclude that Ar Tonelico Qoga is "just another JRPG", one that displays the traits that have earned a reputation for stagnation and unoriginality. They'd be half-right, for while the game has adhered to many of the core conventions that have come to define its subgenre, the twists it does bring are substantial and make up for those tropes' perceived flaws.

Aoto is a lackadaisical carpenter concerned with little beyond catching a nap and avoiding work, until a woman wearing armor appears outside his door, fighting off a group of soldiers. A quick rescue later, the woman - a girl, really - transforms into a different girl, magically sheds her clothes (more on that later), and proceeds to turn her pursuers into giant slices of cake, complete with icing and strawberries on top.

Yep, Ar Tonelico Qoga is that kind of game. Its plot is largely lighthearted, its characters' surface personalities (more on that later, too) range from "pleasantly cheerful" to "overbearingly cute", and its visuals back all that up to an almost creepy degree (still more on that later).

The game's mythos is rich and doesn't expressly require knowledge of the elder games to understand, though franchise veterans will find plenty to lap up and digest. Digging deeper into the greater lore of the setting, one built up over the course of three games and stored conveniently in an in-game glossary/encyclopedia, reveals a surprisingly grim backstory, enough that the moments when Qoga chooses to take itself seriously can jar and disturb those expecting nothing more than a fun, fluffy romp.

Ar Ciel (the name for Ar Tonelico's world), in sharp contrast to its bright color palette, is a post-apocalyptic one, having both its sky and surface rendered uninhabitable by a past, difficult-to-pronounce catastrophe, leaving human civilization clinging to the remains of three Babel-esque power generators.

So far, so familiar. That's where Ar Tonelico's conceptual twist comes in. Ar Ciel is a world literally powered by music and song. Specifically, "Song Magic", generated by the towers and channeled only by Reyvateils, an artificial race of cute singing girls. Again, yep, Ar Tonelico Qoga is that kind of game.

In contrast to previous games, however, Ar Tonelico Qoga's setting puts Reyvateils in a different position. Instead of being rare in one game and dying out in another, Qoga's Reyvateils rule the roost, running the oppressive Clustanian empire out of the upper levels of the tower, exterminating entire communities at the slightest hint of defiance.

And it's not hard to tell why Reyvateils wouldn't be in some powerful post, for they form the absolute core of Qoga's combat system. Just as Ar Ciel's civilization is controlled by Song Magic, so is its battle.

Qoga's encounters involve a single Reyvateil and a party of up to three Vanguards. The Vanguards attack with physical attacks and special moves, while the Reyvateil charges up a Song Magic spell. Foes will attempt to break through the Vanguards' defense and attack the fragile Reyvateil, and the Vanguards must defend her until she can unleash the spell and vaporize the enemies. Timing attacks to the peaks of an oscillating "Harmograph" speeds up the charging process and enables the Reyvateil to perform a "Purge" (more on that later).

Unlike its predecessors', Qoga's new "R.A.H. System" operates in real-time, with the player controlling one Vanguard at a time (switching freely between them). Many smaller enemies can be dispatched purely through Vanguard attacks, but most bosses and tougher enemies require the kind of firepower only the Reyvateil can call down. That firepower takes many forms, such as an explosive blast from a sunglasses-wearing suicide bomb, or a wide beam cast by a winged fairy with a bag over her head (she insists that it's "edgy") wielding a rabbit-headed baton. And again, yep, Ar Tonelico Qoga is that kind of game.

Flashiness aside, the combat is less elegant than in previous outings. Although the game rewards you for finishing fights with Reyvateil magic, most smaller encounters can be ended more efficiently by the Vanguards alone, and many bosses have such a high HP count that players will find their parties simply hacking away at the enemy and chugging health potions while the Reyvateil charges her song.

Then again, there's an excellent feeling of power that comes with charging a spell to a whopping 150,000% (yes, that's one-hundred-fifty thousand percent) and killing the final boss in one shot.

That's not all there is to the game, though, which is where we come to the stuff I delayed talking about. The sexual innuendo stuff. That sort of stuff.

Like its forebears, Qoga is loaded to the brim with double entendres, thinly-disguised innuendo, lecherous misunderstandings, and the sort of content that might make one embarrassed to play the game in public, or in English, where someone might understand the dialog (a Japanese voice-over option is available).

It's especially prominent considering that Aoto's most, er, in-depth interactions with his lady Reyvateil friends takes place in the form of "Diving", a process by which Aoto, er, enters the girls' subconscious worlds, or "Cosmospheres". During a Dive, Aoto navigates the girls' mindscapes, talking to them (a lot), and helping sort out their myriad personal issues in a manner not unlike that of a visual novel (think Sakura Wars, Persona 4, or 999). This has the side effect of powering up their Song Magic spells, as well as unlocking further levels of Purging or new "Personae."

To Purging, then. It's a combat action that, once readied, can be triggered by holding down a shoulder button and shaking the controller. What happens, then, is magic. Specifically, the magical dissolution of a layer of the Reyvateil's clothing. Not only does a Purge accelerate the Song Magic charge, but it adds elemental or status effects to spells and Vanguard strikes. More Purges dissolve more clothing, add more power, and enable fancier attacks. At the highest Purge levels players may find their Vanguards defending a nurse or nun whose modesty is shielded only by the holographic equivalent of a bath towel.

The excuse for this is that Reyvateils can absorb more Song Magic from their surroundings as they expose more skin, but really now. Before crying "sexist" though, know that even male Vanguards must strip to use their best attacks. And they don't get the benefit of Purging layer-by-layer. It's all-to-practically-nothing for them.

Despite this apparent descent into raunchiness, it's been a long while since the Ar Tonelico series first shamed its players, and games in general have grown far more daring in their portrayal of sex and sexual content. Folks seeking titillation would do well to look elsewhere, as Qoga stays strictly in PG-13 territory. The most one would get out of it would be blushing anime girls in their skivvies, or joking shyly about their "first time."

Thankfully, the cast make themselves more than just a pretty design to dress down. In a smart design decision, Qoga's linear story contains few distractions, with side activities carefully constructed to reinforce character development and provide a semblance of customization that alleviates the "JRPG" feeling of narrative restriction.

There are no meaningless fetch quests in Qoga, and the game is fairly generous with cash, experience, crafting resources and Dive Points (needed for Diving and Item Synthesis). And while the game uses a random encounter system, all dungeons contain an "encounter gauge" that depletes as battles are triggered. Once emptied, players are free to explore without interruption until they transition to a new area. Difficulty settings can be adjusted on the fly, though occasional spikes in enemy durability may necessitate a small amount of grinding.

Aoto can converse with the Reyvateils at any save point to deepen his bond with the girls, subsequently enabling him to Dive deeper into their Cosmospheres, exploring their motivations, attitudes, emotions and traumas. Diving also unlocks "Personae", additional personalities so strong that they can manifest physically, changing the girls' appearance, combat attributes, background music...and "vital statistics". The childishly naive Saki might be replaced by the stoic Sakiya Lumei, or the spunky Finnel may give way to the calculatingly efficient Yurisica. By the end of the game players will find themselves attached to the cast, viewing them as more than their initial archetypes.

Even the protagonist (Aoto) gains extra dimensions beyond the typical, "too-nice-for-his-own-good" stereotype, thanks to the mini-cutscenes that come with the crafting of new items or equipment. Those crafting scenes carry some of the funniest material in NIS America's above-average localization, as well as providing the opportunity to help name the results. The ability to decide whether a healing item should be called "Spunky V" or "Chintzy Powerfill", or craft a suit of armor called "The Lethal Frills" is something no one can forget.

Strengths in characterization and world-building aside, Qoga's other production values leave something to be desired. The game's visuals clearly reveal that Gust was working on a budget. While colorful and generally smooth-looking, character models and environs are uniformly low-polygon. This is somewhat offset by the fact that most dialog takes place through static 2D-cutouts and town navigation is handled in the classic style of 3D models on 2D maps, but dungeons suffer from bland textures and less-than-useful camera angles.

Where Gust did not skimp, however, is in the music department, which is only appropriate for a game with so much emphasis on the power of song. Each Reyvateil and her various Personae have their own standard combat theme, which is altered when the player triggers a Purge, depending on their equipped "Hyumas" (read: unlockable magic upgrades).

But where soundtrack stands out the most in the game's various "Hymns", songs that play during key scenes and boss battles. Each Hymn is a complex composition, with styles ranging from large-scale orchestral arrangements to single-instrument vocals to discordant techno-rock, to a pop melody so saccharine that the cast themselves are disgusted by its sugar-sweetness.

The Hymns often weave together multiple choral tracks with lyrics in both Japanese and "Hymmnos", a constructed, Ar Tonelico-exclusive language with its own grammar, writing system and vocabulary. Hymmnos supposedly represents the programming code used by Reyvateils to interface with the towers, reinforcing the game's distinct techno-fantasy setting.

The song lyrics themselves don't convey much more than the usual sentimentality common in JRPGs and anime, but the fact that Gust went as far as to construct a whole language to do so indicates genuine inspiration. In fact, dedicated fans have made a hobby out of translating Hymns for all to appreciate.

Sadly, little of this is present in the material available to the end user. The soundtrack included with the game contains mostly background music, and the Hymns themselves only play during their designated scenes/battles. Some players may find themselves trying to prolong some battles to hear a particular Hymn in full.

Speaking of prolonging certain battles, Qoga (a Hymmnos word for "End") has multiple endings. Unfortunately, the only truly satisfying one is the "True" ending, whose conditions are almost totally unmentioned. One of said conditions is finish a certain late-game battle within a fairly short, invisible time limit. It's highly recommended that players seek out that True ending the first time out, using a walkthrough if need be, and going for the other endings the second time around. An option to skip already-viewed cutscenes makes replaying the game much easier for completionists.

Ar Tonelico Qoga serves as an impressive curtain call for the series, making up for its less-impressive combat and visuals with a cast appealing, well-developed characters, a colorful and well-realized setting, and a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack. Its somewhat leering sensibilities and strongly "anime" aesthetic may not win over some players, and it won't revolutionize the genre in the eyes of its critics.

That said, anyone who claims to be tired of overly self-serious JRPGs that concentrate on graphics above all else has no reason not to at least give the game a look.

Score: 8 -- Great (8s are impressive efforts with a few noticeable problems holding them back. Won't astound everyone, but is worth your time and cash.)

If certain trailers and teaser sites are to be believed, there may be something related to Persona 4 in the works, and we may know more in less than two days.

A mysterious live-action trailer circulating through the web shows a bunch of people talking about the rumored "Mayonaka TV". Persona 4 fans may know that "Mayonaka TV" is the Japanese name for the "Midnight Channel", the key story element in Persona 4.

The trailer ends with a web address leading to mayonaka-tv.jp, a teaser site with a shade under two days left on a countdown clock. Incidentally, the clock runs out on April 11th 2011 (Japan time), which is the same day that Persona 4 "begins".

Whether or not this is an anime project specifically is unstated, but other images discovered suggest the existence of a "Persona 4 Animation" project bankrolled by Aniplex, Sony's big anime/music distribution house. Intrepid fans note that decompiling files on the teaser site lead to files entitled "anime" and a (currently) blank site at P4A.jp . What could that "A" mean?

Having a Persona project go all "transmedia" isn't a new phenomenon. Both P3 and P4 gained manga adaptations, and an original anime series with links to Persona 3, Persona: Trinity Soul was aired some years ago (and recently licensed by NIS America).

So...are you excited? Unhappy that this isn't a Persona 5 announcement, or are you still waiting for the inevitable announcement of a Persona 4 PSP port? C'mon, all the other games got one, after all.

[Via Jin115 and Japanator user Jon B]

Section: Gaming News, Handhelds, PSP & PSPgo, Game-Companies, Developers, Publishers, Genres, 3D, Action

In a move that should surprise no one, Namco Bandai has announced that it is planning on bringing Naruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive, the latest PSP Naruto game, to North America. Unfortunately, you’ll have to be patient and wait until Spring 2011 to play this action-adventure game. But it should be worth waiting for, since it’s not a fighting game, like most would expect. It’s an action game with a focus on cooperation between players and NPC characters.

Naruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive is set shortly after the events of the Rescue Gaara Arc of the manga and anime, but has an original storyline. Someone is going after the ninja from Konohagakure and abducting them. This same person, or persons, is also targeting Naruto. So, in the story mode, players will work with NPC ninjas to go through missions, solve the mystery and save the day.

The Free Mission Mode is what will probably draw most people to Naruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive though. In it, up to four players can work on missions together over ad hoc wireless. Each player can use any character from the roster that he or she would like, which means Konoha ninjas and members of Hebi can be tapped to create a four character squad.

But you’re probably wondering, why the Kizuna Drive subtitle is that. That refers to the multiplayer attack system that comes into play in Naruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive. A Kizuna Drive happens when multiple characters start assaulting an opposing character, with each blow doing more and more damage if you time things right.

Naruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive looks like an interesting change of pace. It’s just a shame that it only supports ad-hoc multiplayer. It’s be a lot more promising if it supported infrastructure mode for online play, like Phantasy Star Portable 2.

Read [GDN] Site [Naruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive]

Full Story » | Written by Jenni Lada for Gamertell. | Comment on this Article »

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Cosplay is a form of expression in which participants use costumes and accessories to represent their favorite manga, anime or video game characters. Its followers in Latin America are a passionate community that promotes Cosplay through personal blogs, Flickr and other social media outlets.

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The list of Heisman Trophy finalists has finally been released and, just as expected, it is going to blow your minds with the most controversial picks in the history of college football!!! Just kidding, it’s the same guys that we’ve expected for most of the season. Along with frontrunners Cam Newton of Auburn and LaMichael James of Oregon are Stanford’s Andrew Luck and Boise State’s Kellen Moore. Surprisingly, I don’t see Jacory Harris mentioned anywhere in this list, even though my Miami friends swore it was all him this season. Very odd.

Newton and James will meet up for the Heisman ceremony this Saturday, about one month before they meet for the National Championship game in Tempe, Arizona. Meanwhile, Luck’s Stanford team will take on Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl and Moore’s Broncos will play Utah in the MAACO Bowl in Las Vegas. And everyone will live happily ever after, because there has been absolutely no controversy over this Heisman race, has there Huffington Post?

Newton overcame a pay-to-play scandal with a superb season on the field, piling up nearly 4,000 combined yards and 49 touchdowns in leading the top-ranked Tigers into the Jan. 10 national championship game.

James and the Ducks will be there waiting for them in the desert after he piled up more yards and touchdowns than anyone else in FBS, helping the second-ranked Ducks into their first national title game.

That’s right, I get my sports news from the HuffPo. I also get my fashion tips from Drudge Report and my political opinions from anime fan forums. I’m the most informed blogger in America.

So this Heisman decision would seem to be pretty clear cut in Newton’s favor, no? Not according to my good friend and Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi, who left Newton off of his Heisman ballot and is now causing quite the media stir…

Mien shaman Kouei Lin Saechao drafts a "spiritual passport" to help settle past grudges and ensure that the victims' spirits go to heaven.

As most Sacramentans celebrated a joyous Thanksgiving week with family and friends, Ou Tan Saechao has attended three funerals.

Today, Saechao and his family are burying his aunt, Chio Chong Saechao, 46. Monday and Wednesday, they buried Saechao's sons, college students Vern Cheo Saetern, 19, and Jerry Wang Saetern, 22.

Police allege that Saechao's husband, Kouei Wang Saetern, 47, shot her and their two sons to death the night of Nov. 8 after the couple had quarreled over his drug addiction. He faces three charges of murder.

The couple's 7- and 12-year-old daughters, who escaped the deadly violence, now are living with their oldest sister.

On Friday, the victims' south Sacramento home was filled with relatives who had come from as far away as Washington for the ceremony. The family began the traditional three-day Mien funeral led by three shamans.

The shamans and their assistants pounded a drum, shook bells and chanted to Mien ancestor spirits. One shaman drafted a "spiritual passport," designed to settle past grudges and ensure that the victims' spirits go to heaven.

Chio Chong Saechao's brother, Laung Saechao, recalled her as "a good-hearted person, very patient (who) helped everybody in the community who asked her."

"This is how I'm spending my Thanksgiving," Ou Tan Saechao said at his cousin's funeral Wednesday.

Cosumnes River College honor student Jerry Wang Saetern was remembered for his dream of opening an auto repair business, for reading manga, watching Japanese anime, riding a motorcycle with his hair blowing in the wind, and whipping competitors on XBox Live.

"Even if he had nothing to give you besides a smart remark, he said it with love, knowing you wouldn't take it wrong. Then he would help you with your problems," said his friend Jason Saechao.

"Jerry always put everybody before himself because he was happy with what he had," said his friend Long Banh. "That night we wanted to go out to dinner with him, but he just wanted to go home and said we'd kick it tomorrow and pick out our classes for next semester. Three hours later, I got the call."

Laung Saechao said Kouei Wang Saetern's problems became severe two years ago. Superior Court records show that Saetern had been sent to counseling in a 2007 misdemeanor drug possession case.

The family believes that Saetern, who was unemployed, asked his wife for drug money, but "she didn't want to give him any," Saechao said. "She tried to save as much money as possible for her kids' college educations so they could have a better life than she did."

Saechao said the family wanted Saetern to go into drug rehabilitation, "but he wouldn't, and the law states we can't force him.

"I don't want this to happen to other families," he said. "If they think there's a drug problem, it always turns out bad."

Many southeast Asian families don't seek the help they need "because there's a culture of saving face, and you don't want people to know your problems," said Chiem-Seng Yaangh, president of United Iu-Mien Community Inc., "and regardless of how bad the person is, you want to stay with them to save face. But at a certain point, saving face can be very dangerous."

Yaangh said families who have gotten restraining orders "have been fine with the drug user not coming after them. In the United States, our new society, we've got to depend on the American legal system sometimes when drug abuse becomes dangerous."

If other Mien families need help, "We will be the bridge for them to community resources," Yaangh said.

A college fund has been set up for the two youngest daughters at Bank of America, Account #09055-26858, routing #121000358, or checks can be sent to Vanessa May Saetern Family Account, United Iu-Mien Community Inc., 600 Lemon Hill Ave., Sacramento CA 95824.

Remake of 16-bit strategy role-playing game topples God Eater: Burst from top spot on Japanese sales chart; Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 debuts in second place.

Square Enix is hoping its PSP remake Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together is a hit when it launches in North America on February 15, but the game is already a blockbuster in Japan. The strategy role-playing game topped the Media Create Japanese sales charts for the week of November 8-14 by a wide margin, easily tripling the total of the next-best-seller.

Raging Blast 2's sales for the week were well over 9,000.

In its first week on sale, Tactics Ogre notched 176,153 copies sold. A remake of the original Super Famicom and PlayStation Tactics Ogre games, Let Us Cling Together features extra subplots, new and redesigned characters, and added gameplay mechanics that allow players to turn back time, either to change the story's direction by revisiting key plot points or to replay critical points of individual battles for a better outcome.

Namco Bandai's Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 for the PlayStation 3 finished the week in second place, selling 176,153 copies. The game actually launched in Japan a week later than in North America, where its arrival was met with an unimpressed critical response. The 3D fighting game based on the anime and manga series builds on last year's original Raging Blast with 20 extra characters (for a total of 90 fighters) and a new "raging soul" system that allows players to forsake the ability to use their super attacks in exchange for amped-up melee damage.

Namco Bandai's God Eater: Burst relinquished its hold on the top spot after two straight weeks, falling to sixth place with 31,372 units sold. Nintendo had a strong week with Super Mario All-Stars, Pokemon Black and White, Wii Party, and Kirby's Epic Yarn all ranking in the top 10, and a new bundle of Wii Sports Resort with a Wii Remote Plus debuting in ninth place with 14,438 copies sold. Rounding out the new releases was Konami's fifth-place DS virtual life game Tongari Boushi to Mahou no Omise.

Sony's PSP retained its top spot on the hardware charts, but not by much. The portable sold 40,328 systems for the week, edging out Nintendo's resurgent Wii, which tallied 39,308 sales. The Wii total was boosted by the launch of the red Super Mario 25th Anniversary hardware package, as well as white and black Wii bundles with the Wii Remote Plus packed in. The PS3 came in third with 21,114 units sold, followed by the one-two portable punch of the DSi LL and DSi, with 18,711 and 13,994 units sold, respectively.

JAPAN GAME SALES WEEK OF NOVEMBER 8-14, 2010
Software:
Rank / Title / Publisher / Platform / Unit sales
1. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together / Square Enix / PSP / 176,153
2. Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 / Namco Bandai / PS3 / 47,610
3. Super Mario All-Stars / Nintendo / Wii / 43,621
4. Pokemon Black and White / The Pokemon Company / DS / 42,279
5. Tongari Boushi to Mahou no Omise / Konami / DS / 40,208
6. God Eater Burst / Namco Bandai / PSP / 31,372
7. World Soccer Winning Eleven 2011 / Konami / PS3 / 30,353
8. Wii Party / Nintendo / Wii / 17,471
9. Wii Sports Resort / Nintendo / Wii / 14,438
10. Kirby's Epic Yarn / Nintendo / Wii / 13,896

Hardware:
PSP - 40,328
Wii - 39,308
PS3 - 21,114
DSi LL - 18,711
DSi - 13,994
PSP Go - 2,727
Xbox 360 - 2,149
DS Lite - 1,752
PS2 - 1,233

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net.

Public media is facing the same pressures as commercial media when it comes to digital: How can they transition to a new age of social media, collaboration and audience interaction? From today until Thanksgiving, MediaShift will have a special in-depth report on Public Media 2.0, with analysis, case studies, a 5Across video roundtable and coverage of this weekend's national PubCamp in Washington, DC.

Public broadcasters have been facing intense heat this fall, from dodging flak after the Juan Williams firing to rebutting calls to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to defending the diversity of their news programming. But the negative coverage often misses a deeper story -- of the transition of this sector to a more innovative and varied set of Public Media 2.0 organizations that are finding fresh ways to network with users, partners and one another.

Over the past year here in the Public MediaShift section, Center for Social Media researchers and practitioners from the field have been covering varied public media experiments -- including youth media, government transparency tools, community-level collaboration and a converged national newsroom. These explorations reveal five emerging trends that are helping to reshape and broaden the public media sector so that it can better inform and engage users.

1) Learning to COPE

Adopting a COPE strategy -- "create once, publish everywhere" -- is making public media more modular and flexible.

"I don't know about you," CPB's vice president of digital strategy Rob Bole told the audience at a FedTalks event in mid-October, "but my life is split between my home, the train, work, meetings, going back on the train, playing with my kids, paying bills, and actually trying to spend some time and converse with my wife. So, I need a public media that is built for me -- that continues to be essential, to help me navigate through troubled times, to be interesting and surprising, but built for my somewhat crazy life."

Here's a video of Bole's talk:

Bole went on to explain how public broadcasting organizations are repurposing content for distribution across multiple mobile and digital platforms to reach people where they are.

Breaking content into portable digital pieces is in turn powering other capabilities. For example, the newly redesigned PBS site offers greater visibility for local content by providing a shared platform for video exchange between stations and national producers.

In the long run, aggregating locally produced content online will increase users' access to a rich supply of diverse stories and perspectives, along with cultural and historical gems that rarely appear on commercial broadcast outlets. "There's something there for everyone," Bole said.

Similarly, public access TV centers are developing the Community Media Distribution Network, which allows for content sharing and archiving of citizen and independent productions -- an often-overlooked source of grassroots public media. If all goes as planned, both independent media and public broadcasting from previous decades will also be made available to both users and outlets through the American Archive project -- a sort of COPE-retrieval mission.

This is a complex and daunting multi-year undertaking that will involve hundreds of stations and digitization of materials across both analog and digital platforms. An analysis of the scope for the project, released in June, laid out the steps and related challenges.

2) Sharing Knowledge with Peers

Registration now is maxed out for this weekend's second annual Public Media Camp, which the Center for Social Media is organizing with NPR, PBS and iStrategy Labs. Organized by their attendees, PubCamps are designed to help public broadcasters, tech developers and public media users share best practices and work together on community engagement projects.

Several local PubCamps have taken place at stations around the country since last October. The gatherings are proving to be valuable opportunities for trend-spotting within the field, and venues for introducing stations to national platforms, tools, and funding sources. Proposed sessions so far address tips for sustainable collaboration, previews of coming apps, such as the one from PBS' "Antiques Road Show," and suggestions for what public media makers can learn from anime fandom.

NPR senior strategist Andy Carvin, who has been central to organizing the events, said more than 300 people have registered for this weekend, representing 40 different public media organizations.

"Public media has a long tradition of public support, especially in terms of people making donations to their local station," Carvin told me. "With PubCamp, we're working with stations to develop new ways for them to engage people who want to become even more involved, donating their expertise to help strengthen the station's role in the community. I'm most excited about the fact that the majority of attendees won't be staff -- they'll be people around the country who simply care a lot about public media, and are willing to donate their time to help us in one way or another."

The PubCamps reflect a broader surge in journalism-related unconferences, such as the Media Consortium's Independent Media Mobile Hackathon, or the numerous participatory meetings hosted by Journalism That Matters. These events incubate new projects by connecting attendees first face-to-face and then through an array of social networking tools. The flow of participants across the various gatherings and platforms is bringing fresh approaches and constructive critique to a previously cloistered sector.

3) Boosting Community Engagement

Peer learning has proven to be particularly popular in the area of engagement -- a fast-growing but controversial priority for public media makers still adjusting to expectations for greater participation and interaction set by social media. Public engagement has been built into the DNA of community access centers for decades, through production training and ascertainment processes designed to figure out communities' information needs. But public broadcasting stations often feel trapped in a double bind: They are simultaneously expected to provide "balanced" news and analysis, and to actively involve users in civic issues.

To the rescue comes the CPB-funded National Center for Media Engagement (NCME), which has been hosting a series of webinars that bring producers, station staff and online innovators together to discuss engagement experiments and opportunities. Accompanied by lively sidebar chats among attendees, the webinars offer real-time snapshots of effective projects in process.

For example, one featured the Wisconsin Public Television's Vietnam veterans "welcome home" event, a multi-platform model for engaging tens of thousands of local veterans who felt alienated by their stateside reception. The project grew from veterans' strong responses to a documentary, War Stories, and now several other stations have hosted or plan to host related events. Portraits and oral histories from the veterans are available here along with transcripts, related maps, educational resources, the full documentary, excerpts from the companion book, and a digital honor roll of Wisconsin vets who died in Vietnam.

By capturing and analyzing the stories of such successful engagement projects, the NCME hopes to provide both inspiration and concrete prototypes. They offer a related guide, along with training and fundraising resources, to support public media outlets in such efforts. Staffers are actively reaching out to producers from other sectors for lessons and models; they recently announced that they'd partner with the Integrated Media Association, which is hosting a track at the next South by Southwest Interactive Festival for public media makers.

4) Building Strategic Partnerships

"Collaboration" is a rising buzzword in public media circles, but finding successful ways to match projects, capacity and strategies is not always easy. In a December MediaShift piece, Amanda Hirsch laid out some of the complexities, including getting buy-in from top managers at each partner organization, assigning staff to the collaboration project itself, and establishing formal communication channels.

"Don't assume that working together means saving time -- that's not the value proposition of collaboration," she wrote. "The value proposition is about quality."

For these reasons, it's often easier to start with time-limited collaborations with clearly defined outcomes. In Philadelphia, such an approach will be tested via the Philadelphia Enterprise Reporting Awards. Announced in late October, the awards are supported by the William Penn Foundation and administered by J-Lab. Fourteen projects received grants of $5,000 each, designed to both support in-depth reporting projects and to explore whether it's possible to connect the "silos of journalism throughout the city." The idea is to provide more entry points to expose news consumers to public affairs content and "create a 'knowledge network' among the region's news initiatives, so they can add to, amplify, link to or broadcast news that is being created but that their niche audiences might not otherwise come across," according to the Awards site.

Public broadcasting station WHYY is involved in three of these projects -- Anatomy of a School Turnaround, in conjunction with the Philadelphia Public School Notebook; the Power Map of Philadelphia, in conjunction with the Philadelphia Daily News, Philly.com and an institute at the University of Pennsylvania; and ArtBlog Radio, in conjunction with theartblog.org. Two of the collaborations intersect with WHYY's newly launched NewsWorks project (more on that in tomorrow's piece on public broadcasting news experiments). Community media producers, including cable access station PhillyCam and media training center Scribe Video are also grantees, as well as digital citizen news projects such as Phawker.com and Metropolis.

Besides being interesting in their own right, this array of projects highlights the strengths and goals of various nodes in Philadelphia's news ecosystem, suggesting how non-commercial public media might help to fill key gaps.

5) Paying Attention to Policy

Historically, public broadcasters have lacked the resources, expertise or coordination to regularly track and intervene in the policy-making that supports them.

Public broadcasting ignores most media policy research, whether it originates in academia, think tanks or federal agencies, and it often seems out of touch with major national policy deliberations until too late. That disengagement is highly dangerous because it allows others to set the national legal and regulatory agenda for communications without assuring adequate policy attention to public-service, non-commercial and educational goals. Such policy initiatives also can negatively affect the funding and operating conditions of every public licensee.

However, two countervailing trends are now capturing the attention of both public broadcasters and the broader public media sector. On the one hand, a series of high-profile reports and agency hearings have proposed reforming public media and expanding funding as a corrective to the loss of reporting capacity across the country.

On the other hand, calls to cut or abolish public broadcasting are on the rise, both from members of the soon-to-be-Republican House and from President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (the commission on reducing the deficit).

Productive reform will be complex and contentious, but not impossible. As Steve Coll, the president of the New America Foundation, observed in the cover story of the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review:

The problem is that the media policies that govern us in 2010 -- a patchwork stitched from the ideas of Calvin Coolidge's Republican Party, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, and Ronald Reagan's deregulatory wave -- have been overtaken by technological change.

From the country's founding, American media and journalism have been continually remade by technological innovation. Political pamphlets made room for industrially printed newspapers, which made room for the telegraph, which made room for radio, which made room for broadcast television, which made room for cable and satellite services, which made room for the World Wide Web, which is making room even as we read this for the Kindle, iPad, and mobile phone applications.

When such technological, industrial, and economic changes dislodge the assumptions underlying public policy, the smart response is to update and adjust policy in order to protect the public interest. And politically plausible reforms that would clearly serve the public are within reach. It is time to reboot the system.

These myriad political pressures are driving public media to a tipping point, in which the case for a new social contract with the public will either be made or will fail to convince. While the non-commercial and digital public media sector is larger than the public broadcasters, the broadcasters are the most well-funded and visible players. As Rowland suggests, it is time for them to step up, demonstrate vision, and tell their own story of the shift to Public Media 2.0.

Jessica Clark directs the Future of Public Media Project at American University's Center for Social Media, and is a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation.

The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net.

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