What with Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter’s arcade release imminent, on June 21st in fact, a new promo has been released to help get the word out that this game is positively bonkers (yes that’s a transformed Prius above firing electricity, obviously). The driving setup looks pretty cool though, something we weren’t expecting at all. The mecha combat does still appear to be turnbased though. In any case, the full promo is shown below.

A new live stream for Armored Core V has been announced. Entitled Revision its main focus is to cover feedback from the Japanese community on the game, especially in regards to the online implementation and how matchmaking has been dealt with. This will also be an interactive event as well, as it seems viewers will be able to ask questions to the panel. Personally, we applaud From Software’s support of the Japanese community. If only Bandai Namco would learn from their example when it came to the Western release of the game, something they are still wholly responsible for. The new live stream will happen on 11th June at 9pm (Japanese time).

Separately, we will be posting a new post-mortem opinion piece on the game as we’ve been playing the Western version since March. Whilst the review we did still holds true, it was very much based on the Japanese releases. The Western version has had some pretty interesting issues by comparison. So keep an eye out for that over the next week or so.

Finally, we now know that the release date for the new freemium based Gundam Battle Operation will be June 28th. The core game will naturally be free to download but internal content will be monetised. In addition, players will be able to pre-register on PSN pretty soon. Once we’ve put some time into this, be sure that a review will be forthcoming.

As this year’s bizarre clusterfuck that is E3, there’s now finally some (supposedly) in-game footage of Lost Planet 3 in a pretty slick trailer (plus some nice screenshots). Despite the somewhat desperate attempts to emulate a Hollywood film, the whole setup does show the fact we have another middle of the road Unreal powered game on our hands. This is not to say that Unreal is a bad toolset, far from it, but that publishers tend to force developers to play safe and opt for functionally very standardised design. Though in this instance it feels more like Spark are leading Capcom down the garden path due to their lack of inspiration. Considering this developer’s pretty crappy portfolio up to this point and the fact we’re getting a Red Faction: Armageddon vibe from this, we’re expecting something functionally very safe but also deeply lacklustre. Thank fuckity there’s E.X. Troopers on the way. The full trailer is available for your viewing pleasure below.

At a recent event in a Akiba Sofmap, the upcoming Steel Battalion Heavy Armor was available to play by members of the general (Japanese) public. Bearing in mind that a demo is also available online, it’s now fair to say that our initial concerns about the game have in fact developed into fully fledged and pretty justified facepalms. The video below does help to illustrate some of the problems the game has but when you actually pilot one of these bastards yourself you realise that it genuinely has “issues”. From Software, as far as we’re concerned, have just been helpless pawns in all this. We can also only begin to feel the pain the likes of Hifumi Kouno and the rest of the original development team on the first Xbox game must be feeling right about now. In any case, we’ll be definitely reviewing this puppy come its imminent release in the next few weeks.

What with this year’s E3 almost upon us and that means trailers. Hawken is no exception, as it’s clear their new marketing budget has been blown on a swanky live action trailer (shown below). PR crap aside, the last gameplay trailer (circa this year’s PAX) is looking pretty good. Though there’s still a crazy amount of v-sync issues going on, what the deuce is up with that? Functionally we’re still on the fence with Hawken though, whilst it does look pretty none of the gameplay we’ve seen or heard about has us really excited yet. Only time will tell and we’ll all know if the game is any good come the end of the year.

The rather fascinating arcade game Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter has finally had it’s 3DS tie-in revealed at a recent event. Going down a more RPG route, it narratively shares the same setup as the anime, manga and arcade game but will have its own story nonetheless. It will also have a wireless combat option too. The game will be released next Spring.

Our good friends at HobbyLink Japan (those nice people that send us toys and kits to review) are now in the process of celebrating their 15th Anniversary. The happy chap in the photo is Scott T. Hards, the guy that runs HLJ. He’s also a fan of Heavy Metal L-Gaim, so he has taste too. In addition HLJ was setup the same year the original Armored Core was released, so it definitely seems that 1997 was very much a “good year”. Keep your eyes peeled though, as they’ll be a panoply of sales occurring over the course of June.

What seems to be the entire newly animated opening movie for the Zone of the Enders HD Collection is now available online for everyone to see. Animated by Sunrise, it was specially commissioned for the new HD collection. There’s also a brief interview with Kojima online too, though this more importantly shows the new HD gameplay in action. Both videos are linked below.

Famitsu has a nice new update showing in-game screenshots for the upcoming Zone of the Enders HD Collection. The most impressive of these, we think at least, are for the original game. In many ways playing that will be more interesting than Anubis (which already had many silent revisions and a special editions). Fingers cross crossed that they’ve helped to excise the suck out of the first game.