With a feudal Japan setting, Shiren the Wanderer is a welcome addition to the Nintendo Wii family.

Check inside for screens and more information about the game.

Shiren the Wanderer is releasing in February 2010. Unfortunately, the Rescue, Versus, and Item Transfer online features will not be included in the North American release. Though the Japanese downloadable content will be included.

From the Press Release:

Epic adventure in feudal Japan — As the wandering samurai Shiren, you will explore a vision of historic Japan that is beautiful and vibrant. An epic story that begins 1000 years prior takes you through villages and dungeons and places you alongside figures straight out of Japanese mythology.

Variable challenge — A brand new easy mode lets even newcomers to the genre find a foothold while experienced players will find a more rigorous challenge in Normal mode. Post-game activities will test the most advanced gamer with additional quests, super dungeons, a tournament, and the “ultimate challenge”-the Millennium Dungeon, a pain-staking 1,000 floor dungeon crawl.

Challenging depth and strategy — Control your time in the dungeons down to the details. Choose direct control over your party members or take advantage of the excellent AI that lets you specify attitude and tendency. Power up equipment through the new Dragon Orb system, and imbue them with special abilities via more than 100 Seals. New Spells allow targeted casting of effects on enemies.

A new update for Maple Story releasing in December introducing a new class of players.

The DLC is scheduled to be released in the Spring of 2010 for $49.99.

Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition will be the box copy of the game which will release after the DLC. PlayStation 3 users will get the game and added content on one Blu-ray disc and Xbox 360 users will receive a DVD with a token for the DLC.

Bioware is known for excellent RPG games, and they haven’t disappointed with Dragon Age: Origins. The huge amount of side quests extend the life of the game and learning about the world itself is a lot of reading, but those who want to know everything about the world will be able to.

The game begins by creating and customizing the character that will be used for the entirety of the journey through Dragon Age: Origins. The three possible races are Human, Elf, and Dwarf. A nice side note is that the Elf race are considered second class citizens rather than the elegant and awe inspiring race of other fantasy stories.

The beginning of the game is determined by the race chosen as each race has their own introduction stories. My choice was human as it would be the most standard for my first run through the game. Customization can take a long time depending on how specific the appearance of the character. After completing the customization, a character class is chosen which will determine how the combat and exploring will function. Choosing the Rogue was my first choice for the stealth abilities along with lock picking, a skill I have always found useful.

When the game presents the main story quests after the introductory quest, Dragon Age: Origins becomes a fragmented journey that slowly pieces itself together through the completing of the main quests. Each hour spent in the game presents history of the world through codexs (found throughout the world) and conversations with NPC characters and party members. The codex contains a lot of information about the world of Dragon Age: Origins and many an hour can be spent learning about the years that lead to the present day of the game.

Quest completion varies, mainly on how familiar one is with the area that you are in and the amount of tasks that need to be completed. While the main quests are straightforward and involve an amount of dungeon crawling, the title does open with the multitude of side quests. Obviously these side quests are not mandatory to complete Dragon Age: Origins, but they do help level characters and some choice equipment can be attained. These side quests are also a nice diversion from the main story.

During quests, it helps to talk to party members and learn more about the quest currently in task and get a different perspective on it. Party members relationships to the main character are variable through the different decisions that are made. Those decisions come into play as the title progresses as well.

The world is fully realized as every NPC can be talked to and lots of information can be heard, persuaded from, or simply using intimidation could get the results that I wanted. Preparation for lots of listening and reading is necessary, but encounters are interesting through the personalities of every character in the game.

The combat of the game is interesting because it is a hack and slash with a good amount of tactical planning. The main character is controlled by you, utilizing a quick move menu, but also a pop-in options menu that contains all the talents, skills, and potions that are available. Positioning is also important because it can result in higher attack points. The other characters are blessed with a Tactics Set, where pre-determined situations will be answered with pre-determined moves.

In the Tactics Set, the amount of specification for situations is staggering because your party, enemies, classes, and even certain situations can be assigned. The secondary party member’s tactics set do need to be customized as the default actions work for most situations, but there were occasions when other members blindly ran off and died.

Depending on the character class, weapons and equipment will effect the abilities of the characters, but the dual wielding ability for warriors and rogues was a nice addition. Through experience leveling, new abilities and skills for all classes are learned which open up the combat to be more in your favor. And the Tactics Set also expands allowing for a large amount of actions.

The PlayStation 3 version did have some glitches in the game, nothing truly deal breaking; but when they occurred, it changed the experience of the title. An example of a large glitch was during a cutscene that replayed itself and had all the characters involved replaced with placeholder characters who also lacked any animation. The sound also cut out during some conversations which threw me off.

Visually, the title looks nice. The majority of characters all have distinct appearances and no one looks like a copy/paste. The animations of characters is also good, though movement does looks like characters are sliding over the surface rather than touching it. Combat animations are particularly enjoyable, especially when finishers are learned and beheading is possible.

As for the sound, Dragon Age: Origins is full of it. Not even considering the voice acting, the worlds in general all have a huge amount of ambient noise. Also environmental effects are in place, like inside the Dwarf hall, echoes during combat could be heard.

The DualShock 3 is very easy to use with the game as the hot buttons are assigned on the shoulders and most of the game is through the analog sticks and X. There are no complaints on the mapping of the controls.

Gameplay varies from swift combat situations to wandering underground, but unless completely lost; there is never a boring moment in Dragon Age: Origins. There is plenty to do like customizing character equipment and weapon sets, concocting potions and poisons, making traps, and trying make out with Morrigan. Bioware really gave a full package with Dragon Age: Origins, and with three races to choose from, there is a lot of replayability.

Some concessions should be made for Dragon Age: Origins since the amount of pure game is enormous. Bioware did well in fleshing out the story of the game. The problems were small, gameplay did take a little time to understand, and the dungeon crawling did get a little repetitive, but Dragon Age: Origins is a game that RPG aficionados shouldn’t miss, especially with the caliber of games that Bioware produces. It’s a good holiday title for those who have time off, but prepare for a long haul.

Well, it’s that time of year again. The time when all of those big-shot game developers KNOW that you are sitting on your fat butts looking for something fun to do, so of course all of the best games are released! Well we all know that Valve has an impressive track record with The Orange Box and the previous Left 4 Dead, so we should certainly expect nothing less than gold from their new zombie slasher-thrasher, but should you spend your hard earned money on this, or one of the many other new releases? Well I’d like to thank Valve for sending me an early copy of the game to review for all of you, so here are my thoughts on Left 4 Dead 2.

ZeitgeistGameReview.com

Back again for some Robot Punch!, where we exercise the motto: Don’t hate the media; become the media!

The video above is one of the latest bout of yellow journalism to be projected into the living rooms of ignorant America. Fox News chose our representative well: Some blogger guy with poor conversational articulation. It’s like pitting some trailer park hick with a hook hand in a knife fight against a US Marine. Poor Cletus never stood a chance, but at the end of the day, everyone gets to cheer, “Semper Fi!”

Don’t be so fast to judge Mr. Christensen… He was a victim of his own naiveté. Fox News did originally attempt more credible pundits, like Jason Andersen of the ECA. Unfortunately, Anderson was disqualified from the offer to be the voice video game industry expertise. This is probably because patsies don’t ask questions. Had Jon Christensen been more insistent about proper preparation for the interview (and less distracted by the opportunity to promote his blog) he might have saved himself some embarrassment.

The best I can offer for this situation is how I might have responded, had I been in that seat. The last words spoken by the host to influence Christensen’s response was in regard to Modern Warfare 2’s realism. To which, I would respond:

“I don’t know… Is it realistic? I mean, I’ve never seen actual combat. The video game looks convincing, but if you stuck a rifle in my hands and dropped me into a Middle Eastern sandbox, I doubt both scenarios would parallel.”

I would express the same points held by Christensen on the reservations toward playing as a terrorist, though perhaps more eloquently…

“You don’t actually play as a terrorist; that’s a deceptive statement. You play as a CIA agent who goes undercover to bring down the terrorist organization from within. You’re a double-agent spy working for the Red, White, and Blue. Jack Bauer does the same thing and advocates baby torture, yet he’s considered an American hero.

“As for helping the terrorists in violent acts, well, that’s just part of going undercover. Again, in every All-American action movie where the hero has to pose as a criminal to join a gang, they make him go through some initiation to prove how bad he is. If he’s forced to do horrible things to keep his cover from being blown, it just adds to his animus for bringing the bad guys down.”

And my final word:

“Parents have the responsibility to be aware of what games their children are playing. Regardless of whether the game falls into a child’s hands or not, what’s important is how the child is raised to interpret that interactive fantasy. Above all, it’s up to the parents to instill proper values in their kids so that they understand that actual violence is not a game and to respect real world warfare.”

And for this reason, Fox News will probably never call me for an interview.

Sean Ryan writes the Robot Punch! column, here on GotGame.com. He’s also the founder and head writer for TheGreyGhost.net, where he also co-hosts the Method to Madness podcast.

Man, I never thought today would finally get here. Well, it’s here, the most anticipated game of 2009, Infinity Wards Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released at midnight last night, and believe me, I was one of the several hundred people standing in line freezing outside of Gamestop to pick this bad boy up. Well, with all of the anticipation and build up of the game over the last several months, you’d better damn well hope that this game is going to blow your mind. Well, let’s just take a look.

ZeitgeistGameReview.com