pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/xbox360/" rel="tag"Microsoft Xbox 360/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/rpgs/" rel="tag"RPGs/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://www.videogamer.com/news/07-10-2008-9569.html"img vspace="4" hspace="0" border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/fable2dlc.jpg" //abr //div OK, so notorious over-promiser Peter Molyneux did stop short of guaranteeing that the soon-to-be-released ema href="http://www.joystiq.com/tag/Fable2/"Fable 2/a/em would actually receive downloadable content. But he did a href="http://www.videogamer.com/news/07-10-2008-9569.html"tell VideoGamer.com/a that Lionhead would be "pretty dumb" if it wasn't planning it. In case you don't speak Molyneuxese, that means he wanted to wanted to tell them all about it, but his PR handler had his hands around his own throat, making the international sign for "I'll choke you to death."br /br /So, what can you expect from the ephemeral content? Molyneux explained he wouldn't "want it to be just a whole load of new weapons and armour," and that it would be nice if fans "didn't have to wait months and months for it as well." Here's hoping the PR guy leaves the room for a smoke soon so we can find out what Pete is planning.p style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href=http://www.videogamer.com/news/07-10-2008-9569.htmlRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/07/molyneux-all-but-confirms-fable-2-dlc/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1335205/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=amp;fc=1amp;url=http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/07/molyneux-all-but-confirms-fable-2-dlc/" title="Linking Blogs"Linkingnbsp;Blogs/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/07/molyneux-all-but-confirms-fable-2-dlc/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=Z7Wlm"img src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=Z7Wlm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=GocGm"img src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=GocGm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/413952812" height="1" width="1"/

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time is one of many Nintendo DS RPGs with Nintendo Wi-Fi support. Sega has Phantasy Star Zero and Namco Bandai has Destiny Links. Details are still scarce, but one of the key features is up to four players can link up for online play via Nintendo Wi-Fi. Destiny Links doesn’t have any flashy graphics to show off, it’s sprite based, and appears to have a customizable attack system similar to Soma Bringer.

Unfortunately for Namco Bandai Destiny Links is in direct competition with Phantasy Star Zero and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. All three online DS RPGs are scheduled to come out this winter in Japan and Destiny Links is the clear underdog since it is not an established franchise.

Images courtesy of Namco Bandai and Famitsu.
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I briefly checked out Knights in the Nightmare, Sting’s deviant DS game. Like the trailers suggest Knights in the Nightmare is an effective blend of bullet dodging and grid based tactical combat. But, you don’t move troops on an isometric board or anything like that. You control a wisp, a glowing spec, by dragging it with the touch screen.

The wisp can breathe life into otherwise soulless soldiers by touching them. A blue light emits from an awakened soldier showing you the attack direction. Let go of the stylus and the warrior unleashes an attack. Menus on the side allow you to equip your lifeless troops with weapons by drag and drop deliveries.

While the tactical combat is going on glowing orbs scatter in the background. If you touch one the time meter depletes and the wisp loses rounds to finish the battle. Sting doesn’t skimp on the time sucking orbs. In the demo the screen was full of them and it was like navigating through an asteroid field. Unlike other strategy RPGs you can’t have a snack while selecting commands, Knights in the Nightmare is fast and furious.

There are some very cool concepts introduced in Knights in the Nightmare, but the Nintendo Channel demo barely scratches the surface of the system. Sting’s game is intriguing and I think we should start bothering Atlus to pick this up. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if Atlus is already working something with Sting out since lately Atlus is publishing nearly everything Sting makes.

Images courtesy of Sting.
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pimg src="http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/news2001/20551/carbine.jpg" align="left" hspace="5"/Developer Carbine Studios, an NCSoft North America division, promoted former Fallout series producer and designer Tim Cain to the position of design director for an unannounced MMO. Cain has worked with Carbine since its inception in 2005, serving as programming director. He is best known for his work as producer and designer on Interplay's PC RPGs Fallout and Fallout 2. He parted ways with Interplay in 1998 and co-founded now-defunct Troika Games, where he helped .../pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?a=3L3rM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?i=3L3rM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?a=705SM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?i=705SM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?a=CMikM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?i=CMikM" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GamasutraNews/~4/413931811" height="1" width="1"/

Filed under: Nintendo DS, Action, Adventure, RPGs

Another of the games shown in video-only form at Nintendo's recent North American media summit, Mario and Luigi 3 (or Mario and Luigi RPG 3, depending on who you ask) is the latest chapter in Intelligent Systems' superb action-RPG series, and the second on DS.

This outing adds Bowser as a playable character, and, from what we saw (and you can see in the above video), Mario's long-time nemesis brings some nasty power-moves to the party. It also looks like players will control him solo, rather than throwing him into a three-character combat system. That's okay with us; as long as IS keeps coming up with cool gameplay mechanics using both Mario bros. and crafting a zany story to compliment them, we're there.

Gallery: Mario and Luigi 3

 

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