Over at 4Gamer there’s an interesting update for Armored Core Verdict Day. On the one hand it shows the new and nicely shiny boxart but also covers the game’s singleplayer component. Specifically, we have a fleshed out Story Mode that has you play single player narrative focused missions. The purpose is to clear all 60 missions and reach the plot’s conclusion. This is slightly different from the handful of story missions in the previous game followed by the the Order filler missions. This seems to be far more substantial in terms of content. Two player coop play is also possible for all missions and a UNAC or a mercenary can be selected as a partner. Once the story is cleared another mode, Hardcore Mode, will appear. This mode changes a number of things, such as clearing the story with higher difficulty conditions, from limitations on your AC to increased damage taken. There are a total of 10 different modes with a variety of conditions in Hardcore Mode. Beating Hardcore Mode will also result in your details being listed on online rankings. In addition, you can create a single player team and battle with UNAC (AI) AC as the team members. Not to mention that it is also possible to send only the UNAC units and participate in the battle as an operator. The mercenary setup is also very much still present and whilst you’ll lack voice communication you can still participate in the story mode missions just fine. Finally it seems the western release of the game will also get the same collector’s edition, which is pretty cool.

Sentinel have finally revealed their upcoming Riobot Jehuty figure in all its glory. It’s considerably larger and more detailed than the previous Revoltechs, so this obviously comes with a larger price tag (of 13,500 yen) and will be released in September of this year. That said, this figure will come with a good amount of diecast too apparently so that’s good to know at least. You can pre-order yours here.

The third livestream for Armored Core Verdict Day will be happening on the 21st June (you’ll be able to watch it here). The previous livestream is also online here if you want to watch it. From what we’ve been seeing it seems that the game is going to be very good indeed. In addition, there are lots of rumours flying on Japanese boards about merged servers. If true that would make a huge and very positive difference to the game’s online community and potential longterm success.

As we mentioned previously, Hasegawa are releasing a kit of Myzr Eta from Virtual On Force in June. This is one of the many Myzr variants from the game and already accompanies another kit, that of the Delta released back in January of 2011. Like the previous kit, the Eta can also transform. This new kit will cost 6,090 yen and is at 1/100 scale. You can pre-order it here.

As part of the current Deal of the Week, the fantastic Bangai-O HD is now half price (at 400 MSP). We have an enduring love for Treasure’s shooter, as archived here in our feature on the series. So if you haven’t bought the latest game already, then there’s no excuse now. Unlike the other Treasure releases on XBLA, this isn’t a remake of a previous game but an all new one. The reviews, especially in the West, were sadly rather lawltastic as it seemed to be somewhat of a shock to the system for many of them (as it’s obviously very skill based). So ignore them entirely and just buy it now. It’s bloody awesome!

Over at Hideo Kojima’s Twitter feed, he recently posted some photos of Yoji Shinkawa posing with a large prototype of ThreeA’s new Metal Gear RAY toy. This is a follow up to the equally large Metal Gear REX released by ThreeA last year. Whilst we love Shinkawa’s designs, we were pretty disappointed with ThreeA’s REX toy. It lacked any real diecast and subsequently felt very cheap. In addition, the colour scheme was also completely wrong and all the lightning felt out of place too. No word on price or release date for this new RAY toy though but it will probably be similarly priced to the previous REX toy.

This year’s Shizuoka Hobby Show is under way and as always it has a huge amount of new model kits on display. With Hasegawa’s new Myzr Eta kit (shown above) from Virtual On Force being notable. Bar that, there’s obviously a large amount of new Gundam related kits on the way and it seems the HGUC range seems to be getting a lot of interesting new entries. If you’re curious about the show then both CyberGundam (here, here and here) and AmiAmi (here, here and here) have lots of photos. HLJ also has a nice breakdown too.

The second livestream for Armored Core Verdict Day will be happening on the 17th May (you’ll be able to watch it here). The main point of discussion will be about the new UNAC system, which is the new AI setup that harks back to earlier Armored Core games and allows AI wing-mates to help you out on missions (in the absence of human players).

Someone nice has uploaded beta test footage from Armored Core Verdict Day (shown below) and it looks pretty great. The new scan initiation looks cool and the whole game runs smoother too. We’re not sure on the size of the maps but the one in the video looks pretty expansive and varied. Obviously, the music isn’t from the game (in case you were wondering). In addition, Famitsu also has some scant details on “UNAC”; a new AI customisation setup for NPCs on the field. This harks back to the likes of Ranker Mk in Master of Arena and the AI setup in Silent Line. It seems Verdict Day is shaping up quite nicely and we’re really looking forward to its September release.

Not for the first time, but the recently announced Zone of the Enders sequel has been put on hold. The difference here is that this game was publicly announced compared to the previous attempts at a sequel. What’s also interesting about this announcement is that the HD version (which we reviewed) was also brought up. With Hideo Kojima himself apologising pretty profusely to (Japanese) fans at the sub-standard quality of the port. As such it’s been indicated that Konami themselves have taken matters into their own hands and an internally produced patch for the PS3 version, though no news on anything for the 360 release sadly (though this is likely due to the fact that the PS3 version was the best selling one in Japan, so it takes priority). In some sense it seems that the poor sales performance of the HD release is likely one of the causes of the sequel being put on hold.