This Week in Famitsu

Weekly Famitsu #1187

Cover Story

This week the newly released Tales of Xillia, for the PS3, graces the cover of Famitsu. Tales of Xillia is the thirteenth, and first next-gen, entry into the extremely popular Tales series. Xillia takes place in the world of Liese Maxia, where humans and demons live with another in relative peace. However, a third group of spirit beings, whose powers provide the world its energy, inhabits the world as well. Tales of Xillia follows the adventures of Jude Mathis and Milla Maxwell, a girl who claims to be one of those spirits. At the beginning of the game, a devastating accident occurs involving the use of those spirit powers at a military base, and from there our heroes embark on their quest to uncover the cause of the accident and unravel the mysteries of the world, meeting new characters along the way.

Tales of Xillia features a new combat system called Double Raid Linear Motion Battle (DR-LMB) in which two characters coordinate their attacks against enemies. Also new to the Tales series is the Assault Counter system, where heroes link their attacks together, resulting in devastatingly powerful attacks.

Namco-Bandai, the long-time developers of the Tales series, is going all out with their DLC content for their first next-gen offering, including a wide range of in-game outfits to deck-out your entire roster of characters with. Some of the outfits are pretty out there, and include ones from the popular Idolmaster games, Maid/Butler themed outfits, classic Tales characters outfits, and even the same clothes that pop-singer Ayumi Hamasaki wears in the music video of the game's theme song. Unfortunately for Tales fans elsewhere in the world, Namco-Bandai currently has no official plans to localize the game for a release outside of Japan. However, there have been hints of them wanting to, such as showing trailers for the game at trade shows outside of Japan, so perhaps if there's enough demand fans will see their dreams come to fruition. After all, no one wants another Last Story, an awesome RPG that only Japanese fans are lucky enough to play.....

Upcoming PS Vita Games

Continuing our cover story from last week, Famitsu enters week two of their hands-on previews of upcoming PS Vita games, the first of which is going to be a MUST HAVE title for the PS Vita, Uncharted: Golden Abyss. This newest entry into the Uncharted series actually takes place before the original Uncharted for PS3, and follows our rugged hero Nathan Drake as he attempts to uncover the secrets of an ancient Spanish cult. Golden Abyss will take full advantage of all of the Vita's new features, including touch-screen controls for platforming, combat, weapon selection, and puzzle solving. It looks like even though it takes full advantage of the system's touch-screen interface, it still manages to maintain the feel of an Uncharted game.

Next up we have Dynasty Warriors NEXT, which will be using the Vita's touch capabilities in hopes of spicing up a fairly formulaic but incredibly popular series. By tapping on the back touch panel of the Vita, players will be able to activate their Musou powers, causing eruptions from the ground in the same place you touched on the back panel. Additionally, NEXT will have a new Ambush System, in which the player will be ambushed by enemy soldiers in a first person perspective and must use the touch-screen to slash at the enemies before they are able to attack you. Finally, during a boss encounter, you will have to use a touch-screen based QTE system in order to effectively defeat the bosses.

Finally we have the game for the Vita that we are most excited for, and that is Gravity Daze. Gravity Daze (which apparently is going to be released in the States under the shorter title of Gravity) is an action platforming game made by Team Siren, which are better known for their horror games. Still, from what we've seen of this game so far, we are willing to overlook their inexperience with the genre. The game revolves around a young heroine named Kat, who like all of the best main characters is currently suffering from amnesia. Not only does she currently have little to no idea who she is, she mysteriously has the power to control gravity. Kat can walk on any surface she sees, simply by shifting the gravity of an area to a new direction, done by utilizing the Vita's gyroscopic controls. Beyond this fascinating gameplay mechanic, the atmosphere of the post-apocalyptic looking world, perfectly visualized by a cel-shaded graphical style, really has our interest up. Needless to say, we'll be waiting in line to pick up this game on its first day of release.

Featured Games

Persona 4 The Golden (PS Vita): Game developer and publisher Atlus is perhaps best known for the Persona series, a spin-off of their main Shin Megami Tensei RPGs. Persona 1 and 2 were on the PSOne, and have recently been re-released on the PSP for new fans to enjoy them. Persona 3 and 4 were on the PS2, and while Persona 3 was released recently on the PSP for fans to enjoy on the go, Persona 4 was remarkably absent from the handheld scene. Until now, that is, as Persona 4 is finally being released in portable form on the upcoming PS Vita. The more advanced processing and graphical capabilities of the Vita allow for not just a port of Persona 4, like it might have been on the older PSP, but an upgrade. Boasting a new character (named Marie), new dialogue, new and expanded animation sequences, new persona demons, and new outfits, Persona 4 The Golden has everything the original Persona 4 had and more. A set-in-stone release date has yet to be announced, but hopefully it will be close to the launch date of the all-new PSP Vita, which is rumored to be coming out this November in Japan.

Persona 4 The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena (Arcade, PS3/360): As if making Persona 4 portable weren't enough, Atlus has more plans in store for the Persona RPG series faithful: a beautiful all-new fighting game, featuring everyone's favorite characters from Persona 4. Made by the team behind the fighting game classics Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, this game not only looks gorgeous, but it should have an actual honest-to-goodness fighting game system and play mechanic to back it up. The Famitsu article only showed Yu (the main character), Chie, and Yosuke so far from Persona 4, but it also revealed that Aegis from Persona 3 will be a playable character as well. Other characters from Persona 3 are also rumored to be in the roster, although no confirmation of that has been made at this point. Regardless of who is in it, however, there's no denying that this will appeal to not only Persona fans, but hardcore fighting game fans as well. The game will first be released as an arcade cabinet here in Japan, with home console versions rolling out sometime at a later date. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long to hook our arcade sticks up to this beautiful game.

Hardware Sales: Week of 8/15-8/21

• Nintendo 3DS – 107,462 units
• PSP – 40,595 units
• PlayStation 3 – 30,342 units
• Wii – 17,399 units
• Nintendo DS – 5,015 units
• PlayStation 2 – 1,192 units
• Xbox 360 – 1,103 units

Top 5 Selling Games: Week of 8/15-8/21

• Everyone's Rhythm Heaven (Wii) – 50,877 units
• Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka Airu Village G (PSP) – 37,988 units
• Super Pokemon Scramble (3DS) – 35,102 units
• Kirby Mass Attack (DS) – 34,145 units
• Extra Dimensional Gamma Neptune mk2 (PS3) – 33,763 units

It's definitely a sad week for Microsoft Japan; the PlayStation 2 (a ten year old console by the way) outsold the 360 this past week. Ouch, that's gotta hurt! We hope you enjoyed this week's look inside Famitsu, as always. See you next week!

Submitted by: Aaron McKeever and Sherrie Blackwell