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Atlus has announced a new distribution deal with Kalypso Media USA making Atlus, the Japan-based publisher best known for its RPGs such as the long-running Shin Megami Tensei series, the sole North American distributor of a number of upcoming Kalypso Media games on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. Kalypso is a German games publisher best known for strategy games such as the city-building Tropico series and interstellar warfare strategy game Sins of a Solar Empire, though they’ve delved into other genres with games such as the RPG Disciples 3 and expanded version of first-person shooter Hard Reset, Hard Reset: Extended Edition.

The games included in the deal are:

Port Royale 3- Historical strategy/simulation/trading game where you play as the captain of a ship in the 17th-century Caribbean. You can set out to make your fortune through peaceful commerce, setting up trade routes, using your wealth to develop colonial industries, or through more bellicose means like privateering, piracy, and raiding. Releases on October 9 for the Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3.

Tropico 4: Gold Edition- Latest game in the popular Tropico series of games, which are a combination of political strategy and city-building construction and management simulation. It’s kind of like SimCity, except that you’re a corrupt Latin American dictator and if you do badly enough the citizens will forgo the formality of voting you out in favor if just assembling into a howling mob and stormed the presidential palace instead. Planned for release on the Xbox 360 and PC on November 13.

I’m rather surprised to see a game like this getting a console release, since this sort of strategy/sim game has been all but absent from American consoles for a few console generations now. There was a smattering of them when I was younger- I spent a huge amount of time playing the Super Nintendo version of SimCity when I was a kid, for instance- but they’ve been almost exclusively the province of PCs for at least a decade now. I’d certainly be happy to see more games like this appearing on consoles again, though, so I’d be happy to see the Xbox 360 version of this game do well.

Omerta- City of Gangsters- Strategy game about building a criminal empire during the Prohibition era, planned for release on Xbox 360 and PC sometime early next year.

DARK- Stealth action game were you play as a vampire. Which, thinking about it a moment, is such an obvious combination of genre and subject matter that I’m surprised we don’t see it more often. Scheduled for March of 2013.

I find the new relationship between Kalypso and Atlus somewhat surprising, since Kalypso is primarily a PC publisher and Atlus publishes almost entirely on consoles. (Or it’s North American publishing/localization arm Atlus USA does, at any rate.) One of the positive trends in gaming over the past few years has been the weakening of boundaries between PC and console gaming, with North American and European developers having far more of a presence on consoles than in the past and PC versions of Japanese games like Street Fighter X Tekken and Dark Souls appearing more frequently in America. It’s nice to see a continuation of that trend.

Resident Evil 6 (Xbox 360, PlayStation) the newest entry in the long-running survival horror/action series. Like its two predecessors, it continues the trend in the series of emphasizing the action and shooting elements rather than the slower, more deliberately paced survival horror game play of the early series. Whether that’s good, bad, or indifferent is a matter of opinion, of course.

Resident Evil 6 is a bit broader in scope than previous Resident Evil games, bringing together protagonists from several prior games in the series with new characters in three different plot threads spanning outbreaks of the undead in the United States of America, China, and Eastern Europe. The zombies and other inhuman monstrosities of the previous games are joined by a new group of undead adversaries called the J’avo, who are more intelligent than their traditional cousins and can coordinate their efforts and use weapons.

(I played the PlayStation 3 demo of the game without knowing this, which made for a brief but very confusing moment when I suddenly started losing health when they were seemingly no enemies close enough to threaten me, and just stood dumbfounded in the middle of the street while my brain processed “Wait, they’re using guns now?” )

The game has revamped its controls to something better suited to its action-focused gameplay, since one of the common complaints about Resident Evil 5 was that it still used a control scheme that had been created for style of the original Resident Evil games- slow, deliberate pace, slow-moving enemies that usually only appeared a few at a had time, tightly limited ammo supplies that deemphasized gunplay and combat in general- in a context where that no longer made sense. It also adds a co-op mode, playable locally or online, in which a second player can drop into the action playing as your otherwise AI-controlled partner on the fly.

Critical response to the game has been strikingly polarized, with very positive reviews from some some outlets and vehement criticism from others. There’s a downloadable demo available, which you should definitely look into if you’re interested in this game to see if it’s to your taste or not.

Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Collection (PC) Massive compilation of the venerable real-time strategy series. Command and Conquer has been largely overshadowed in the real-time strategy genre that it did so much to popularize and define by later series like Starcraft, but they’re fun games and an important part of gaming history that’s worth looking into if you like the genre. The Ultimate Collection contains nine full games and 8 expansions spanning 17 years, including the main series, spinoff series Command and Conquer: Red Alert and Command and Conquer: Generals, and the franchise’s foray outside of strategy games and into the first-person shooter genre with Command and Conquer: Renegade, which is quite a bargain for the price of one game.

Microsoft has put out some new materials for upcoming shooter Halo 4, including screenshots of both single player and multiplayer modes and a new trailer called “Weapons of the Covenant.”

The “Weapons of the Covenant” trailer is just what it says on the tin, depicting some of the alien weapons available in the game. These include the standard energy-blasting rifles and pistols, the needle gun, the explosive concussion rifle, a nasty explosive/anti-vehicle weapon called the fuel rod cannon, the venerable Covenant sword, and a new melee weapon called the gravity hammer.

The single player screenshots depict the first level of the single player campaign, which is set after the conclusion of the war between the human race and its alien adversaries, the Covenant, and will apparently focus on the legacy and return of the Prometheans, warrior caste of caste of the Forerunners, the ancient aliens who built the game’s eponymous ring-shaped megastructure. Which, lest we forget. were built to contain the threat of the ravenous parasites known as the Flood by destroying all intelligent life in the galaxy if they ever got loose, so you can imagine why some of them coming back might not be a good thing. (I imagine the average Forerunner homeowner’s response to discovering a termite infestation in his basement would’ve been to higher a pest-control contractor to drop an atomic bomb on his house, or something.) Entitled “Dawn,” it is set on the wreck of the human ship where recurring series protagonist Master Chief was last seen going into suspended animation at the end of Halo 3 and has now been awakened.

The multiplayer screenshots show the first 2 stages in the game’s “Spartan Ops” mode, “Land Grab” and “Sniper Alley,” depicting a firefight in a dry, dusty canyon. Spartan Ops is a cooperative multiplayer mode for up to four players in which players play through a series of missions where up to four simultaneous players play out the exploits of a a team of elite SPARTAN-IV troops called Majestic Squad in battles against the returned Prometheans and renegade hold-out soldiers of the alien Covenant who refuse to accept peace with humans. The levels will be released episodically as free DLC and tell an ongoing story that will intertwine with the main story of Halo 4′s single-player campaign. It’s a really neat idea and the kind of thing that’s a lot more likely to get my interest then the typical multiplayer modes of first-person shooters, so looking forward to seeing more of this.

Halo 4 is scheduled for release on Xbox 360 on November 6^th.

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria (PC, Macintosh)- The latest installment for the multi-gazillion selling massively multiplayer online RPG. Mists of Pandaria introduces a new playable race called the pandaren and a new character class, the Monk. (Martial artist-type characters, of course, since the videogame industry’s conception of what a “monk” apparently comes entirely from old episodes of Kung Fu.) It opens up a new continent with a number of new areas for players to explore, new quests, new dungeons, and so forth. The expansion also raises the level cap from 85 to 90, reworks the talent system, and introduces a new form of gameplay called “Challenge Mode” in which your party tries to clear a dungeon of enemies as quickly as possible and receives awards based on how the game ranks your performance.

Hearts of Iron III: Their Finest Hour (PC)- Expansion for Paradox Interactive’s World War II grand strategy game. Their Finest Hour includes additions such as expanded systems and options for Naval invasions and espionage, new large-scale strategic options, new tactics, and a custom game mode where you can adjust things like the military sizes, technology levels, and political alignments of different nations at the start of the game. Hearts of Iron is the one Paradox Interactive grand strategy series I haven’t played, so I can’t directly comment on its quality, but based on its reputation and Paradox’s track record with series like Europa Universalis and Victoria it should be well-worth looking into if you’re interested in a complex, large-scale military strategy game in the World War II era.

Tokyo Jungle (PlayStation 3) Downloadable PlayStation Network action game with an intriguing premise: You’re an animal struggling to survive in an abandoned post-apocalyptic Tokyo, completely empty of all human inhabitants. There are scores of different animals that can become playable, from chimpanzees to lions to crocodiles to the mighty Pomeranian. There’s a story mode, where you play as a variety of different animals in the course of the story and find out that what happened to humanity, and a Survival mode where you build up a pack of animals and just fight to stay alive as long as you can.

I have no idea if it’s a good game or not, but it’s neat to see a game with the sort of bizarre premise usually found in obscure indie PC games on the PlayStation 3. And which theoretically allows you to bring down a hippopotamus with a bloodthirsty horde of feral Pomeranians.

Whether you are a fan of online gaming, or perhaps you just prefer to download games, tablets are starting to play an increasingly important role. The initial reason for this is size, they are portable enough to take with you on journeys, college or work, whilst at the same time being big enough to provide the user with a better gaming experience than a cell phone.
Add to this the fact that tablets are coming with increasingly powerfully processors, higher resolution screens and a far bigger selection of games than you could ever get from any of the major games consoles, and you are left with a package that can attract real gamers.

Whilst there is no need for Sony or Microsoft to panic just yet, we are reaching a point where people are considering purchasing a tablet for the purpose of gaming, so if the time has come to renew your iPad 2 contract and you are planning on using your tablet for gaming, then here are three of the best tablets on the market today.

• Nexus 7: Thanks to its quad-core Tegra 3 processor and 7 inch screen, the new tablet from Google is ideal for gaming. It’s just the right size to hold in your hand comfortably whilst still being large enough to fully appreciate the gaming experience. Not only will this little baby handle the best of games available with very little compromise, the size ensures you can hold it, or even lie down with it in the air, for prolonged periods without losing the feeling in your arms. It’s also great value for money; however, if you are considering getting the Nexus, it’s worth spending the extra few $ for the 16GB as with the 8GB you could find yourself running out of space quickly.

• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7: The high contrast AMOLED screen on the Samsung is something to behold. The picture quality is more vivid than that of the Nexus and with the extra .7” the screen just about wins out. You can also upgrade the storage space, which is handy. However, it’s a lot more costly than the Nexus and for me it’s not superior enough to warrant the extra outlay.

• iPad: The latest version from Apple comes with an A5X dual-core processor with quad core graphics and as such is a serious competitor for games consoles. Power hungry games such as Infinity Blade II pose no problems for the iPad Retina. On top of this you have picture quality that is unrivalled anywhere in the tablet market, nothing else even comes close. For me, the only two down sides are size and cost, it doesn’t feel quite as comfortable as its 7” competitors when playing over prolonged periods and the 64GB version still costs a whopping $700. However, if money isn’t an issue then this is still the tablet to beat.

When comparing these tablets the iPad wins out on practically everything except price and size and perhaps this is something Apple has taken into account with the design of the hotly anticipated iPad mini. If the new mini addition to the iPad tablet world doesn’t sacrifice picture quality or power (and I suspect it won’t), then this will be the granddaddy of gaming tablets for 2012.

Guest Author: Kerry Butters contributes this article on behalf of Broadband Genie, the consumer advice site for finding an iPad 2 contract.

Eurogamer Network, which oversees the yearly Eurogamer Expo gaming festival, has announced that a number of discussion sessions with developers held at this year’s Expo will be available for viewing online through live video streams at Eurogamer. The sessions will feature various figures from the gaming industry discussing games in development or more general gaming-related subjects.

Speakers who will be featured live online will include legendary developer Peter Molyneux, Halo Franchise Development Director Frank O’Connor from 343 Industries, Community and Communications Manager Meagan Marie and Tomb Raider Senior Art Developer from Crystal Dynamics, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Game Design Director David Vonderhaar from Treyarch. You can check out a full listing and schedule for the live events at the live stream’s page on Eurogamer’s site.

The Eurogamer Expo is an annual event held in the United Kingdom for both the gaming press and general public organized by Eurogamer Network Limited, best known as the publisher of the popular Eurogamer website. (A site that will be forever dear to me for its role in exposing the vile calumnies directed at my beloved Vanquish.) It runs this year from this Thursday, September 27^th until September 30^th. In addition to developer sessions, the Expo features a showcase for indie games, social events for attendees, and the chance to try playable versions of games before their release. There’s also an associated event called the GamesIndustry fair for people interested in a career in the games industry. You can find more information about all of the events at the Eurogamer Expo at the official website.

Upcoming games that will be playable on the show floor this year include Halo 4, God of War: Ascension, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Gears of War: Judgment, Assassin’s Creed III, Crysis 3, Resident Evil 6 , Dead or Alive 5, Company of Heroes 2, Castlevania, Mirror of Fate, Farcry 3, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Tomb Raider, and many others.

Note that all live streaming times listed are are British Summer Time, so so be sure to adjust for your time zone if needed; if you live in the continental United States, you’ll need to subtract 5 to 8 hours from the listed times. And possibly stockpile some caffeine, if you really want to see Peter Molyneux or Frank O’Connor and aren’t usually up and about at 4 AM.

Konami has announced that they will be releasing a compilation of the Zone of the Enders series, entitled Zone of the Enders HD Collection, this October. As a bonus, the Collection will also include a playable demo of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. (Via Games Press.)

Zone of the Enders HD Collection will include the two primary games in the series, Zone of the Enders and Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner, originally released on PlayStation 2. (Though not the Game Boy Advance spinoff, Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars.) Both games have been remastered for high-definition resolution, and the version of Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner included is the European special edition of the game, not previously released in the United States.

Zone of the Enders is one of the lesser-known franchises produced by Hideo Kojima, best known for being the creator of Metal Gear. It’s a mecha-focused action series set in the 22^nd century where the player pilots a futuristic bipedal war machine called an “Orbital Frame.” The games spawned an animated spinoff series in Japan and a third installment in the series is planned for current-gen systems, though they’ve never achieved the massive popularity or iconic status of some of Kojima’s other work.

The inclusion of a demo for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is an interesting bit of repeating history, since the original Zone of the Enders drew attention in large part because it included a playable demo of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Indeed, due to the franchise’s cult status, the original Zone of the Enders is arguably better-known in the United States today as the vessel for the Metal Gear Solid II demo than as an actual game.

It wasn’t the first game that happened to, nor the one to suffer it most severely- if there’s anyone who remembers Tobal No. 1 as anything other than the game you rented because it had a Final Fantasy VII demo, I’ve certainly never met him- but it’s still a cruel fate for a game to live in the shadow of it’s own pack-in bonus. The Zone of the Enders series picked up some steam with the sequel, but it’s still relatively obscure, so we may see something similar here. It makes sense if Konami is making the third game in the Zone of the Enders series, since the demo of such a hotly anticipated game will presumably draw in some people previously unfamiliar with Zone of the Enders who will become interested in a sequel.

Of course, the demo for Metal Gear Solid 2 that came with the first Zone of the Enders was cunningly limited to the prologue of the game, where you play as returning protagonist Solid Snake, thereby setting up fans for the cruel sucker punch of getting the full game and discovering that the prologue is the only time in the game where you play as Solid Snake, so there’s an ominous precedent for this sort of thing. I’m half-expecting to discover, upon the release of the full Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, that it starts off with a few minutes playing as superhuman cyborg ninja Raiden like in the demo, then has some sort of weird plot twist and reveals that you’ll actually be playing as the reanimated corpse of Otacon’s little sister who died in Sons of Liberty, or something. Though I suppose that’s acceptable if she is now also a superhumanly agile cyborg with a monomolecular-edged sword that can effortlessly cut men in two.

Zone of the Enders HD Collection will come out for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 30.

Torchlight II (PC) Sequel to Torchlight, the dungeon crawler action RPG released by Runic Games in 2009. The basic formula for Torchlight II is the same as the original: explore and fight through dungeons, leveling up and customizing your character, finding weapons and armor and treasure, and so forth. Like the original, Torchlight II is designed to be extremely mod-friendly, allowing players to tweak things character and monster stats, edit quests, and make other changes to alter the experience of the game or create new adventures.

The sequel will have a number of additions and improvements over the original. There are now four playable classes instead of three, and there is considerably more customization for characters allowing you to choose your sex and appearance. Torchlight II also adds cooperative online multiplayer to the mix, along with a longer campaign and a more expansive world.

The first Torchlight was enormously fun and highly recommended if you like that sort of thing, so I have high hopes for Torchlight II.

Borderlands 2 (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) another sequel to a game from 2009, the science fiction first-person shooter Borderlands. Like the original, it combines shooter gameplay with quests and character development mechanics more characteristic of RPGs. Like the original, this game will also have online co-op play for up to four players. The original received enthusiastic response from both reviewers and the gaming public, and critical reception to Borderlands 2 thus far has been even more positive, so if you like the original this should be worth your while.

Alea Jacta Est: Roman Civil Wars (PC) Turn-based military strategy game set in classical Rome that lets players play out scenarios from- spoiler alert- the Roman civil wars, featuring five campaigns with starting dates spanning the era from 87 BC to 200 AD. These feature events such as the civil wars between Sulla and Marius in the waning days of the Roman Republic, the struggle between Julius Caesar and Pompey that brought the end of the Republic and the rise of imperial rule, and the chaotic period of 68-69 AD that saw four different emperors on the throne in the space of a year. (There’s a joke I could make about modern Italian politics here, but I’ll restrain myself.)

Each scenario as a number of different playable factions, with their own leaders, each with their own distinct traits and skills, and victory conditions. In addition to single-player, the game can support up to eight simultaneous players in online mode, with every side’s orders executing simultaneously each turn so that you’re not sitting around doing nothing every turn while you wait for the other players to go one at a time. There’s also a play by e-mail option.

Like a lot of historical strategy, this is probably the kind of thing that splits most people between those who find it absolutely fascinating and those who find the appeal incomprehensible. I’m definitely in the former group, so I’m interested in seeing how this turns out.

BioWare has announced the next game in their popular fantasy RPG series, Dragon Age, entitled Dragon Age 3: Inquisition. The existence of a third Dragon Age game in development has been an open secret for months, but this marks the first official announcement. If you’re interested, you can check out  see the official press release at publisher Electronic Arts’ website, as well as a letter from executive producer Mark Darrah about the game.

Dragon Age 3: Inquisition will be based on a variant of the Frostbite 2 engine, originally created by Electronic Arts Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment (better known as DICE by people who don’t like having to keep saying a 19-syllable name over and over) for the popular first-person shooter Battlefield 3. Dragon Age 3′s predecessors Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II, both used engines-the Eclipse engine and a variant called Lycium respectively- developed in-house by BioWare- and past RPGs from BioWare have historically also used engines developed in-house, so this is something of a departure.

(Using the engine of a first-person modern-day military shooter as the basis for a quasi-turn-based fantasy RPG isn’t as odd as it may sound; games as diverse as the Gears of War series. the turn-based JRPG Lost Odyssey, the 2011 reboot of fighting game franchise Mortal Kombat, and Batman: Arkham City are all based on the Unreal 3 engine, for instance.)

Mark Darrah has promised that the new engine will bring “more expansive world, better visuals, more reactivity to player choices, and more customization,” though details are scant thus far. Players will be able to import saved game files from the first two Dragon Age games, with the effects of some of the player’s decisions carrying over into the setting of the new game. The setting of the game is promised to encompass a much wider area than the previous two, and to draw increased influence from open world RPGs such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Little has been revealed about the story of Dragon Age 3: Inquisition. The Inquisition in the Dragon Age universe was an ancient order of people dedicated to defending the world from demons, malevolent gods, dangerous mages, and supernatural corruption. They eventually gave way to successor groups dedicated to the same task, such as the Templar Order that deals with similar threats in the time when the game takes place, but there have been previous hints that the Inquisition may somehow return. Presumably the game will focus on them in some way.

Dragon Age 2 was something of a departure from its predecessor, with a more action-oriented combat system and a more linear, focused story. It received a mixed reaction from fans and reviewers compared to the much more uniformly positive response to its predecessor, with many strong opinions both positive and negative, so it should be interesting to see where the new game goes.

Dragon Age 3: Inquisition will be released sometime in 2013.