Following the release of the shmup Aero Fighters, several members of developer Video Systems left and formed a new company: Psikyo. Aero Fighters 2 still turned out rather well without them, but Psikyo would release some high-quality titles itself. Zerodiv has already brought some of those to Switch, but now it’s bringing Psikyo’s first game to the eShop: Samurai Aces (aka Sengoku Ace).
Like many of the games Psikyo produced, Samurai Aces is a shmup where you pick one craft from a selection of choices and then go through several levels shooting down anything in sight. It was also designed with a vertically orientated monitor in mind and should you be playing undocked this experience can be recreated by playing in TATE mode; optional scanlines can also be added to the image. Play on the big screen and the default display makes more sense than flipping your TV on its side, but naturally this restricts the action to the middle third of the screen.
There’s a similar art style to Psikyo’s later released (but already on Switch) Gunbird and Strikers 1945 games, with the same powerup and bomb icons and similar bullets, explosions and colour choices. The locations are different however, with a variety of rocks, greenery, water and villages flown over. There’s a wide range of enemies encountered with different aircraft types, insect-like attackers, tanks and turrets. In other instances statues rise from the water to attack and large armoured warriors appear on screen to unleash bullets or shuriken in your direction. Similar to the Strikers titles these enemies are more technologically advanced than the setting would normally allow, but aesthetically fit right in.
There’s also variety in the six aircraft availabl, with regular designs included alongside bird-like craft and a wooden X-Wing. Each has different attacks that become more apparent when you collect weapon upgrades as well as having different bomb and charged attacks. As is common with Psikyo shmups there are two buttons for shooting your primary weapon, where one is held down for the charged attack and the other is held for rapid fire.
Set across seven levels, gameplay is enjoyable as you move about the screen dealing with the various enemy attacks and movements. You need to keep alert as buildings can slide aside to reveal more dangers and other enemies can emerge from clouds. Bullets come from multiple directions and can crisscross to make safe passage tricky. The pace of the game alters too, sometimes enabling you to make slight adjustments to gently slide out of the way of a stream of bullets, where as other times enemies streak towards you requiring quick reflexes to if not shoot them down, then to at least get out of the way.
Boss battles put you up against large mechanical creatures or constructions and require you to blast pieces off before their ultimate destruction. They can be tense affairs when low on lives and/or bomb attacks, with the screen getting dense with bullets as you try desperately to navigate a safe pathway whilst also trying to get in attacks of your own.
If struggling with the game, there are seven difficulty settings available (default: five) and your three lives and two continues can be increased to nine and unlimited respectively. Whilst this can certainly aid in clearing the game it doesn’t completely remove the challenge as after the first few levels, failure sends you back to the beginning of the stage. After clearing the game (apart from on the easier difficulties) a much tougher second loop begins, although (unlike some Psikyo games) you can still use continues.
The game is fun to replay, with each craft having a different pilot that results in different between-stage dialogue and endings. Two-player mode is also available if you’d like to have a friend join you to help vanquish the enemy forces, whilst also adding an element of competition as you look to see who has the highest score at the end of it. Hi score chasing can add a lot of replayability to a shmup in single player mode, but here the scoring is flawed due to there being no score reset upon continue. Struggle on a stage and replay again and again and you will score higher than a player who has breezed straight through.
Conclusion
Psikyo’s Samurai Aces plays a lot like its Gunbird and Strikers titles. As they were both great shmups, however, seven more levels in that style is no bad thing. Dealing with attacks and utilising your own offensive options leads to varied and enjoyable gameplay and the changing pace of combat keep you on your toes as you anticipate the next attack. With no credit/life limited mode included, the hi score leaderboard is flawed unless you and those using your Switch agree on what settings to use. It is a well put together shmup however, so whether playing alone or with a friend Samurai Aces is fun to replay whenever you choice to boot it up.
A Vulkan-compatible driver for macOS and iOS, MoltenVK, is now available free of charge and open-source. Having invested into its development for more than a year, we have sponsored The Brenwill Workshop to donate MoltenVK for inclusion in the Vulkan graphics ecosystem. We’ve also continued our efforts with LunarG who is today releasing a corresponding update to deliver macOS support to the Vulkan SDK. Also as a result of that work, Dota 2 will be updated in the comings months to target Vulkan on macOS.
It’s been almost four years since we started contributing to Vulkan’s goal of becoming a cross platform solution. With support for Windows, Linux, and Android crossed off the list, this latest set of updates checks off one of the largest remaining targets, giving developers an easy yet robust way to also target their Vulkan-based engines and titles to run on macOS and iOS. By making the code to MoltenVK freely available and open-source, the goal is to enable developers to bring their games to macOS and iOS with minimal evelopment cost.
The LunarG Vulkan SDK is a key component for developers targeting Vulkan by providing tools such as validation layers, shader compilers, and a loader. Now available from LunarG, an updated Vulkan SDK now offers those same tools to developers targeting macOS, enabling them to efficiently develop Vulkan code on the platform.
Additionally, we exercised MoltenVK with real world workloads including Dota 2 and we’re seeing significant performance improvements over running on OpenGL.
We encourage developers to test their engines and titles with MoltenVK and the LunarG SDK and provide feedback. We are committed to making Vulkan a viable option for developers targeting all platforms.
Cold ruins can be found in cold, frozen, ocean biomes – regardless of depth
Warm ruins can be found in warm, lukewarm, and deep lukewarm biomes
Can generate alone or in a big ruined village
You can also sometimes find them slightly underground or slightly above sealevel
They can contain mysterious treasures! So mysterious that we haven’t even added the real treasure yet.
A few more things to come in a future snapshot…
CORAL
Pretty blocks! Or should they be mobs? I’m not entirely sure.
Comes in 5 colors: blue, pink, purple, red, yellow
Requires water to stay alive
If it dies, it dies. Sorry.
Currently only obtainable in the creative inventory
World generation to come in a future snapshot…
FIXED BUGS IN 18W09A
MC-118324 – One of magenta dye recipes is unlocked via getting Ink Sac
MC-118416 – Recipe for bowl not unlocked until bowl or mushrooms are obtained
MC-126111 – Furnaces don’t award recipes or experience when output is taken after a reload
MC-126150 – Furnaces don’t account for multiple recipes with the same output when giving experience and smelting recipes
To get snapshots, open your launcher and go to the “launch options” tab. Check the box saying “Enable snapshots” and save. To switch between the snapshot and normal version, you can find a new dropdown menu next to the “Play” button. Back up your world first or run the game on in a different folder (In the “launch options” page).
Please report any and all bugs you find in Minecraft to bugs.mojang.com.
Snapshots can corrupt your world, please backup and/or run them in a different folder from your main worlds. 1.13 will have a lot of experimental snapshots that may break everything and smell funny. This may be one of those snapshots. This is what happens when Mojang are changing all the things!
Share your thoughts on how 1.13 is shaping up in the comments below!
This week at Bungie, the factions are rallying again. Future War Cult is aiming for its first win in the Faction Rallies event, but it won’t be taken easily. New Monarchy is eyeballing its third victory (in a row, mind you), with legions of dedicated players hitting the grind on public events, Crucible, and Lost Sectors. With a few new rewards to entice a change in pledges of loyalty, it’s up in the air as to who will claim victory. We’ll find out next week, once Faction Rallies comes to a conclusion and the Tower is decorated with the banners of the victor.
Course Correction
The most important element of making a plan is being open to the fact that it will change. We’ve updated the Destiny 2 Development Roadmap with some new information. Exotic repetition reduction and Nightfall Strike unique rewards have each been moved out to Destiny Update 1.1.4. Additionally, Exotic weapon and armor sandbox changes have been delayed to Destiny update 1.2.0, to grant proper time to test and implement these changes.
Teams are hard at work ensuring these upcoming features not only meet a proper quality bar, but also don’t endanger other aspects of the game with potential bugs or issues. We’ll keep you updated every step of the way to make sure you know when to expect items to be released.
Say My Name
Next week, Destiny update 1.1.3 will introduce Nightfall Strike Scoring, the first version of the Prestige Nightfall Challenge Card, and emblem variants. Two weeks ago, we went through how Nightfall Emblems are changing. Joining us again to go a bit deeper, here’s Senior Design Lead Tyson Green to talk about the upcoming emblem and aura changes:
Tyson: Emblems in Destiny have been positioned as a vanity collectible, with a few exceptional (and popular) emblems that reflect noteworthy achievements. In D2, we started to pivot emblems more towards the latter example by adding stat displays to some of them. Now, we want to go further in the direction of emblems as a means of exposing achievement.
First, we’re exposing more stats on emblems and making those emblems more available to players who want to display those stats. For example, the Crucible emblems that advertise wins or KDA can now be obtained directly from Shaxx after 10 Crucible rep packages (if you don’t get one earlier). We’re also deploying a new emblem that advertises your Crucible kills, which are broken down by class so you can see who find themselves in your crosshairs most often.
Second, we’re collapsing auras into emblems and removing them as standalone items. This means that existing Raid, Trials, and new Nightfall Emblems will provide the existing aura effects to players, and future emblems can also roll out new effects. These auras are conditional—for example, you still have to go Flawless or do a Prestige Clear to activate them. Some of these auras will also come with fireteam bonuses, so when they see that aura over you, they know who is giving them that benefit.
Lastly, we’re introducing variants to some emblems. If an Emblem indicates high achievement and lots of players use it, we didn’t want that to mean that everyone looks the same. But we still want achievement emblems to be recognizable as such. Variants are being introduced to allow visible achievement without losing the recognizable identity of the emblem. Some variants are unlocked via conditions—the new Crucible Kills Emblem unlocks some fun “class foe” variations after you down a thousand Guardians of that class. Others are drops from sources like destination chests or Nightfalls, and some of these might be quite rare.
An example that ties this all together are the new Nightfall Emblems. Obtained by completing specific Nightfall Strikes, these emblems display your highest personal score in that Nightfall. In the future, we hope to display your clan’s highest score too. These emblems have several variants each, which drop from that specific Nightfall, but in some cases only above certain score thresholds (and we expect some to be quite rare.) And finally, these emblems enable the purple Nightfall Aura as well as a fireteam bonus to Vanguard Token drops, but only if your personal high score is above a par-score. That will start off at a value selected from internal playtests but we plan to adjust it based on your (the community’s) posted scores each time a Nightfall comes around.
This is the first round of this new direction; we hope to do more, and to learn from your response to it. Future releases may revisit or add new emblems for underserved achievements, or more variants for popular emblems.
Bug Stompers
Whether it’s at deployment prep time or immediately after an update has shipped, Destiny Player Support is always on the watch for reports of rising issues. You can find them in the #Help forum, distributing helpful articles or collecting information to escalate to internal teams for investigation.
This is their report.
Destiny Update 1.1.3 Maintenance and Downtime
Next week, Destiny 2 services will undergo maintenance in preparation for Destiny Update 1.1.3. Please see below for the timeline of maintenance windows.
Monday, February 26, 2018
Destiny services will undergo backend maintenance. No downtime is expected. Maintenance will begin at 10 AM PST (1800 UTC) and is expected to conclude at 12 PM PST (2000 UTC).
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Destiny services will be brought offline for maintenance. Destiny Update 1.1.3 will also become available upon maintenance completion. Please see below for the timeline of the maintenance window.
8 AM PST – (1600 UTC)
Destiny server maintenance is schedules to begin
Players may no longer sign in to Destiny services
9 AM PST – (1700 UTC)
Players still in Destiny 2 activities will be returned to the title screen
Destiny 2 Update 1.1.3 will be available to download and install
10 AM PST – (1800 UTC)
Destiny server maintenance is scheduled to conclude
If you have any issues when downloading or installing Destiny Update 1.1.3, please post a report to the #Help forum detailing your experience.
Patch Notes Preview
The following are general patch notes from Destiny Update 1.1.3.
Fixing an issue where the Phoenix Dive ability can be used to get out of the intended playspace
Fixing an issue where players could receive a loss in Trials of the Nine if opponents leave multiple matches in a row
The Crucible Helmet Ornament will now gain unlock progress from Trials of the Nine wins in addition to competitive match wins
Projectiles from the Colony Exotic properly track enemies on PC when frame rate is set higher than 30 FPS
Stay tuned for a full list of patch notes, which we expect to make available alongside Destiny Update 1.1.3.
Interlinked
Last week, I was out with the flu. It’s absolutely horrendous this year, and I highly recommend getting a flu shot at your earliest convenience. It did give me some time to sit back and watch a plethora of community created content on the Creations page, though. These movies have taken the top spot for Destiny related entertainment this week, and their creators will be granted an awesome emblem in-game for their troubles.
Movie of the Week: First we dance, then we fight
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Honorable Mention: Crimson Days – Grenades and Fists Only
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Honorable Mention: Run from Acrius
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It’s always a pleasure to write the TWaB, and with this week’s announcement about my new gig, you’ll see me around these parts more often. We’re eager to hear your feedback on Nightfall Strike Scoring, and we will be watching for new threads in the #Feedback forum once the feature goes live. Thanks to all who stop by and share their thoughts, as player feedback is integral to the growth of Destiny 2. As we continue on the path of the roadmap, we’ll continue to keep you up to date on any forecast changes as they occur.
In this frantic 2D couch combat game, you have one bullet to fire at your opponents. After firing your gun, you must ?rebound? your bullet before firing again.
How would you react if a sentient alien civilization was discovered that challenged everything you knew about biology, chemistry, physics, and religion?
The Station is a first-person sci-fi mystery set on a space station sent to study a sentient alien civilization. Assuming the role of a recon specialist, players must unravel a mystery which will decide the fate of two civilizations.
In the wake of the Noble Faction's occupation of Heimdallr, civil war has broken out across Erebonia. The provincial armies, loyal to the aristocracy and the Four Great Houses, have claimed many of the nation's great cities in the name of the Noble Alliance. The Imperial Army, called back from the four corners of the Empire, has only just begun sweeping its counterattack.
After Rean managed to escape Trista with Celine and Valimar, he awakens in the mountains near his hometown uncertain what fate befell his friends, who bravely threw themselves in harm's way to buy him time to flee.
Though the road will not be an easy one, Rean decides to take up his sword again, journeying across Erebonia with his Divine Knight, Valimar, in search of his friends from Class VII and a way to end the conflict before its price becomes far too dear
Originally released in 1993, "Secret of Mana" is by far the most popular title in the Mana series. Now it's finally getting a long-awaited, full 3D remake!
The game faithfully retells the beloved story while adopting modern 3D graphics and controls. It will feature a newly arranged musical score, voiced characters and new content.
The adventure of Randi, Primm, and Popoi is reborn in the new "Secret of Mana"!
KEY FEATURES:
* Moogle Suit DLC - Equippable armor that can be used in game. This special piece of equipment also changes the appearance of the characters.
* Tiger Two Piece DLC -Equippable armor that can be used in game. This special piece of equipment also changes the appearance of Primm.
* Tiger Suit DLC - Equippable armor that can be used in game. This special piece of equipment also changes the appearance of Randi and Popoi.
* Custom downloadable wallpaper (sizes: 1024 x 768, 1280 x 1024, 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1600)
* 3D Graphics - Revamped visuals for the entire game; a vivid, Mana-filled world rebuilt in 3D!
* Upgraded Gameplay - The original system has been reworked in an effort to realize a modern action RPG with improved gameplay.
