Weekend Headlines March 10-12th Part 1: Crash Bandicoot, Final Fantasy and More

By Rebecca Smith,

Following on from the many announcements from last weekend, we end the roundup with all of the trailers, screenshots, release dates, updates and other details to be found. Like the announcements, this section has also had to be split into two.

Aragami

The game was updated to version 01.07. While this patch fixed some of the game's crashes, it also added PS4 Pro support. This means "at least" a 25% improvement in the number of frames per second.

Baboon!

Developer Relevo released a launch trailer for their upcoming Playstation 4 port of their puzzle title. We still don't have a release date for this, but the game must be arriving in Europe soon.

Battalion 1944

Square Enix Collective has recently announced a spate of titles that they will be publishing; the latest of these is Battalion 1944. Developer Bulkhead Interactive had previously teamed up with SEC on The Turing Test, so it was an easy decision for the developer to rekindle the partnership. To explain why SEC is the ideal publisher and reveal some new screenshots for the game, the team released a vlog:

Battle Chasers: Nightwar

Developer Airship Syndicate shared a work-in-progress preview of one of the game's motion comic cutscenes, with audio provided by PowerUp Audio.

Battlezone

This title received an update that brought along a lot of new features. First there were new difficulties: Beginner for those who are finding the game difficult and Extreme level for those that need a challenge. The latter difficulty brought along a new trophy and three new tank loadouts, but if you want to earn all of the loadouts then you'll need to beat Extreme difficulty three times.

For those that like their cosmetic add-ons, there's a new Rogue Trooper bobblehead to place on your dashboard. There are also new lava-based levels, as well as the new King of the Hill and Conquest missions. Finally, there's the new enemy: the Jet. To help you to beat the Jet, Rebellion has added the new Railgun weapon.

The Jet

Buck

A new trailer was released to celebrate the fact that Buck will be entering Early Access on Steam tomorrow, March 17th. A release date for the console version has not yet been announced.

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!

In addition to the game's classic Management mode, one of the new features that will be introduced in CSD2 is a campaign: Chef for Hire. In Teragon Supertower will be nearly 30 restaurants spread across 10 food courts and over 400 levels to conquer. All of the restaurants need chefs for a variety of shifts, with decent wages and rewards on offer, but each has its own menu to which you need to adapt. Each level also has a task that must be completed if you want to earn bonuses, such as “don’t serve more than 10 average orders”.

As you progress, the tasks become harder. More foods are added to the menu and the existing foods are upgraded to become more complicated. More service stations open up and more customers arrive. Once players have completed half of a food court's levels, a new food court opens up meaning that there is some flexibility in the order that players tackle the levels. "Nearly the entirety of the game" can be played in this mode.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

People who attended PAX East were treated to a hands-on preview of the remastered Crash Bandicoot trilogy. One of the levels that could be sampled in this demo was the Hang Eight water level from Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. For those that couldn't be there, publisher Activision treated us to a developer playthrough of the level instead.

Dungeon Defenders II

DD2 was upgraded to version 19.4. There were a number of changes and these can be found in the spoiler below:

*** Spoiler - click to reveal ***

Farpoint

Impulse Gear's first-person VR shooter will be released on May 16th in North America and May 17th in PAL regions. The game can be played using a Dualshock 4 controller or by using the custom-made PS VR aim controller. Those who will be plucking for the first option can expect to pay €59.99/£49.99 at launch for the standard version of the title. Those of you who wish to play with the aim controller will instead be looking at €89.99/£74.99 for the bundle that includes the peripheral.

Those who pre-order either version of the game will be rewarded with the Red Planet Wanderer Spacesuit. This is an exclusive skin that the player can use in-game. You might not think there's much use if other people can't see it, but Impulse thought of that. The game will now feature two-player online co-op at launch. Players can team up to replay previously-completed levels, only this time they will be facing hoards of enemies and will be accumulating points for kills and accuracy.

FINAL FANTASY XII THE ZODIAC AGE

When FFXII is released on July 11th, players will be able to treat themselves to four different editions of the game. The first is the standard retail edition. The first print run will come with a limited reversible coversheet featuring artwork by Akihiko Yoshida (FINAL FANTASY TACTICS, FINAL FANTASY XIV, NieR: Automata).

The second is the standard digital edition. Those who pre-order this version from the Playstation Store will receive a PS4 static theme and four music tracks by Hitoshi Sakimoto. The theme will be unlocked as soon as players complete their pre-order, but the tracks won't be available until the game's release.

The third version is the Limited Edition that will be available at select retailers. This will include the game, an exclusive steelbook featuring artwork by Akihiko Yoshida, and a code to unlock the in-game Original Soundtrack Background Music option.

Finally, the fourth version is the Collector's Edition that is available exclusively at the Square Enix online store for US$199.99. As well as the game, players will get the following content:

Exclusive “Judge Magisters” Mini Bust Set featuring busts of Judges Bergan, Drace, Gabranth, Ghis, and Zargabaath
Selection of soundtrack music from famed composer Hitoshi Sakimoto
Steelbook featuring exclusive art to the Collector’s Edition
Set of Six Art Cards featuring Vaan, Ashe, Basch, Fran & Balthier, Penelo and World of Ivalice
Digital code to unlock the FINAL FANTASY XII official soundtrack background music option in-game.

FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn

On June 20th, "Stormblood" will be released for FFXIV. Unfortunately, this marks the end of support for the Playstation 3 version of the title. Those who wish to upgrade to the Playstation 4 version of the game will be able to do so free of charge through the upgrade program. You can get more details on the program here. The upgrade program will end on December 31st, 2017. From now on, PS3 players are no longer able to automatically renew their 90 day subscription to the game, although shorter subscription periods are currently available.

For now, patch 3.55b was released that brought along a host of changes in the Battle System and Items, as well as some bug fixes. The list of patch notes is extensive and you can take a look at the list here for more details. For now, take a look

GOD WARS Future Past

Both the Playstation 4 and Vita version of God Wars: Future Past have been delayed into June. The game will now be released on June 16th in Europe, June 20th in North America and June 22nd in Japan. This is to allow the developer time for additional development and in-game balancing based on feedback from the game's “The Beginning” demo that was released in February.

LittleBigPlanet 3

LBP3 has been updated to version 1.25. Full patch notes are in the spoiler below:

*** Spoiler - click to reveal ***

Paragon

A year ago, Paragon was released into Early Access. To celebrate that fact, Epic has upgraded the game to V.38.3. You can read the patch notes in this blog post, but if you prefer a more visual representation, you can watch the trailer instead.

Bokuhime Project CARS 2

Two more cars were revealed for the upcoming racing game. The first was the Mercedes-AMG GT R. The second was the ACURA NSX. For more details on the specs of each car and the history of their development, you can check out the Project CARS blog post. If you just want to admire some screenshots, you can do that below.

Mercedes-AMG GT R

ACURA NSX

Written by Rebecca Smith

Rebecca is the Newshound Manager at TrueGaming Network. She has been contributing articles since 2010, especially those that involve intimidatingly long lists. When not writing news, she works in an independent game shop so that she can spend all day talking about games too. She'll occasionally go outside.