Final Fantasy XIII battle screens revealed

Square Enix have now released screenshots and information on Final Fantasy XIIIs battle system.

According to Kotaku, players can control one character at a time, stacking RPG staple commands such as attack, fire, cure and the like. Combos can be executed by stacking up to 3 commands in a row. Each command has an associated "cost" using up points which decides how many times a command can be executed per round.

Similar to Final Fantasy XII, battles are in real-time differing from exploration gameplay only by the camera angle and commands available.

At this stage the game is due out later this year in Japan, and not until around April 2010 for the rest of the world.

Source: Kotaku

Are Aussie gamers getting screwed over?

This is something that has been annoying me lately, us Aussie gamers seem to get the short end of the stick at times, with delays on games, higher prices and sometimes games not even turning up.

A good current example of a game arriving late in Australia is Guitar Hero: Metallica (pictured).  The game comes out in the US today, almost a clear 2 months before we see the Australian release date on the 27th of May.  2 months..  what gives with that?  An even better example of course is the infamous Rock Band fiasco, with the game only coming out a whole year after virtually everyone overseas got their hands on it, which was only prompted by the release of World Tour.

Then of course when we can get the game, we also get slugged more for the privilege.  I noticed with the special on Far Cry 2 last week on Steam, the 50% off sale was pitched on several US based news sites as having the game for $US15..  whereas if you hit up the Steam store from Australia, yep, we got slugged an extra $US10 simply for purchasing the game from Australia, or you can say that in another way and say that we paid two-thirds more simply for buying it from Australia.  Its not as if they are even being charged import fees or any of that rubbish, as its electronically purchased and the sale takes place in the US for all intents and purposes.

So does anyone else feel that Aussie gamers really do get the short end of the stick at times?  Can you think of any other examples where we’ve gotten screwed over with games?

Rumours that Blizzard are working on another game

There are rumours doing the rounds that Blizzard are currently working on another as yet announced game title.  The rumour was sparked by a job advertisement to work on a "brand new title" at Blizzard.

The known titles that Blizzard are known to be working on currently are Starcraft II (pictured), Diablo III and an as yet unnamed MMO that the former project lead for World of Warcraft – Jeff ‘Tigole’ Kaplan – is now heading up.  So with this new rumoured title, that would give us 4 titles in total that Blizzard are working on, which may mean we’ll get to see another game franchise that Blizzard have been hinting at come out.

Blizzard’s main franchises are currently seeing Starcraft getting a sequel which should be out later this year, Diablo getting a third outing and the Warcraft universe receiving a new expansion for the World of Warcraft title late last year.  The only hints about the new title is that its currently being tested on the WoW engine, so you can read into that what you will.

Via:  Shacknews

Compilation of Final Fantasy VII not yet finished

Final Fantasy VII has certainly had a good run so far, with 2 movies and 4 games to date. An updated Blu-Ray release of "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children" is due out later this year with a Director’s Cut of the movie and extra features unique to the release.

Now Tetsuya Nomura has confirmed that Square Enix already have an idea about the next entry in the FF VII Compilation Series, saying in an interview "We do have an idea for the next Compilation, and for the time being, that’s all we can say. It won’t start up anytime soon."

Chances are they won’t start working on it until Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII are released, so fans of the series are in for a long wait.

Source: Kotaku

3FL news RSS feed, now with images!

This is something that the RSS users might find useful, we’ve now made some changes to the 3FL news RSS feed to enable images to be displayed.  In RSS readers and applications that allow images to be shown in RSS feeds you will now be able to see the images as attached to most of the articles that appear on the front page.

You can access the 3FL RSS feed either by clicking on the little RSS icon that will appear in the address bar in Firefox (and possibly other browsers), or you can use this URL here:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/3flGamingNetwork – which can also be found at the bottom of the front page.

Don’t know what RSS is all about?  Check out the Wikipedia page on the topic here.

Far Cry 2 – 50% off on Steam today only

If you were thinking of picking up Far Cry 2, but didn’t really want to shell out the $80-90 it normally is, this might be some good news for you.

For just today, Far Cry 2 is being offered with a 50% discount via Valve’s Steam platform, typically $US49.99, the game can now be had for $U24.99, which translates into about $36 in the Aussie dollar at the current exchange rate according to XE.  The offer is likely being done in US time, so you should hopefully have until tomorrow morning sometime to pick this one up, but I wouldn’t try your luck anyway if you are thinking about it.

You can check this one out in the Steam Store at the following location: http://store.steampowered.com/app/19900/

Left 4 Dead – 2.5 million copies sold at retail

Valve have revealed at GDC this week that everyone’s favourite zombie shooter Left 4 Dead has sold 2.5 million copies at retail.

This total includes both sales of the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game, but excludes copies of the game sold via Steam.  As a privately held company, Valve doesn’t reveal many details on the revenue and sales figures made via the Steam platform for their own titles, so this means that the overall sales numbers for the game would be much, much higher if the electronic sales made through Steam were included.

No doubt sales figures for Left 4 Dead will jump again next month, when the arrival of the previously announced free Survival pack due out next month for both PC and Xbox 360 will renew interest in the game once more.

Via:  Shacknews

Modern Warfare 2 – now dated, with less Call of Duty

Activision’s upcoming title Modern Warfare 2, aka Call of Duty 6, has been given an official release date with the Call of Duty moniker appearing to have rather interestingly absent from references to the game now.

Simply being called "Modern Warfare 2", the game now officially has a release date of November the 10th later this year.  The Call of Duty series started off as a World War II based game series, but deviated from this with the release of the 4th game in the series – Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which brought the series to current day weaponry.  Now it appears this modern tilt at the game looks to be going off in a separate direction, with the Call of Duty title noticeably absent from all of the official discussion and media doing the rounds now about the upcoming release.

The game should be coming out on the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, but other platforms such as the Wii could get a look-in as well, but there is nothing officially available about that as yet.  But for now we’ll just have to sit back and add MW2 to the list of games coming out in the mad month of November, it should be an interesting one to keep an eye on as further details are released.

*Update*:

You can now view the teaser trailer in our Downloads section by going here.

Via:  Gamasutra

Flash Game Friday: Electric box

Looking for something to do on an otherwise boring Friday whilst waiting for the weekend to finally arrive? Well maybe our section Flash Game Friday has something for you.

Like a very scaled down "The Incredible Machine", use these miscellaneous components to complete the circuit and turn on the device.  OK so it isn’t much on originality, but it is fun and a good way to wind down those last few hours until beer o’clock.

Play Electric Box

Multiple Final Fantasy announcements for the Wii

At GDC it was revealed that there are multiple Final Fantasy releases for the Wii due this year, both as WiiWare and as Virtual Console releases.

First up is "My Life as a Dark Lord", a sequel to the existing WiiWare "My Life as King". Given the mixed reception "My Life as King" received this could easily be a hit-or-miss release.

Second up is a port of the formerly Mobile Phone exclusive "Final Fantasy IV: The After Years".

Finally it was announced that the original NES and SNES Final Fantasy games will be getting released on the virtual console later this year.

As is often the case no time-frame has been given, but being a JRPG fan I am hoping the 2 WiiWare games will not be far off!

Source: Kotaku