Stephen Farrelly, editor of AusGamers, has started a petition on change.org to influence Avalanche Studios – developers of the recently revealed Mad Max video game – to hire an Australian voice actor for the title role.

This all came about after attendees of its E3 2013 behind closed doors demo alerted everyone to the fact that the Aussie character spoke with a generic American accent, which was then confirmed by members of the development team. Their excuse was that “this is a different take on Mad Max”. Well now, fans around the world are furious that the uniquely iconic character has seemingly lost just that…his character, and his identity:

Mad Max is an Australian Cultural icon in a world saturated with American media and entertainment. It will NOT be Mad Max in anything other than name without that feature firmly in place. – James Ward, Adelaide

The post apocalyptic world is set Australia. It only stands to reason that it should be portrayed by an Australian. I very much doubt a “generic American” would be surviving out there in the Australian desert when the world has gone to hell. – Benjamin Last, Victoria

I am signing because Mad Max is an iconic Australian character, and to deprive the Australian people – and the worldwide gaming community – of one of their beloved character’s core attributes is an insult to the cultural legacy of Mad Max. As a proud Briton, I can only begin to imagine the level of anger and indignance I would feel if Avalanche had instead announced a James Bond game in which the titular character was portrayed as having a generic, gruff American accent. – Michael Mann, United Kingdom

Because the movie was set in Australia…the Australian Outback and cultural references are an intrinsic part of the movies, leaving it out would be like making James Bond an American. Don’t do it for the sake of all that is good in this world. – Jeff Robinson, Auckland, New Zeala

The above are all points made by signees of said petition. Farrelly himself was horrified, and stated that all Aussies in attendance at E3 were equally appalled. This is taken from his own petition statement;

Mad Max is an important part of Australian cinema and pop-culture history. However, the series is as equally important worldwide, and is arguably one of the most recognisable and referenced post-apocalyptic tales ever told. The titular hero, Max, was played by Mel Gibson whose Australian heritage came across as a gruff, stoic and hardened portrayal of a man who’d lost everything, but still had a sense of hope. Avalanche Studios has, however, chosen to have Max voiced by a “generic” American voice-actor so that Max can appeal to a “generic” crowd. This negates the hero’s place in popular-culture and is a bit of an affront to Australians who hold the character and movies so dear (and also to global purists). We’re not asking for Mel Gibson, but finding an Australian voice-actor who can channel the Max of the popular films would just be the right — and reverent — thing to do.

We at Capsule Computers feel the exact same way, and hope that you do too. Please, show your support and voice your disgust by signing the petition right here. Share it with your friends and we may be able to summon a collective voice loud enough to make a change.

This is art. Get it?

Published by Anuman Interactive under the Microids label, Dracula 4: The Shadow of the Dragon is now, as of June 19th, available on both PC and Mac. The game will focus on the final quest of Ellen Cross and, as the name suggests, that most famous of vampires: Dracula.

A few months after the shipwreck of a freighter that carries an important art collection meant for the Metropolitan Museum, one of the masterpieces is found in Hungary. Assigned by the museum to authenticate it, Ellen Cross, an art restorer, does not suspect that this mission is about to take her throughout Europe, on the steps of Valachi’s famous prince, Vlad Tepes.

The game will feature The Casual Mode, which includes a help system, as well as The Adventure Mode, relying more on challenges and featuring no indication on what to do next. The game centres around a 360 degree first person view, allowing players to move around 3D environments in search of clues. As objects are gathered, they may be combined to progress through the game, adding further difficulty to the puzzles.

An iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android version of the game are set to be released soon. Until then, check out the Developer Diaries below and get the inside scoop on the return of the Prince of Darkness.

Developer Diary: Scenario

Developer Diary: Gameplay

Developer Diary: Visuals and Music

As previously detailed when Update 8.5 was releasing, the free to play hit from Wargaming, World of Tanks, is starting to see the newest one, Update 8.6, come online around the world over the course of the next few days. The update adds some tweaks to the balance of the in-game economy, new SPGs (self-propelled guns) to bring that type to Tier X, a new premium tank the British A33 Excelsior, and a new battle arena the Korean-set “Sacred Valley”.

This new World of Tanks update has already been released for Europe on June 19th and next up to receive it will be the Southeast Asia on June 20th. Elsewhere in the world, those in the Americas will have to wait until June 25th to check out all the changes and new vehicles, while those in South Korea will have to wait the longest as it will not release until July 4th.

World of Tanks is a free to play MMO for the PC, which has also been announced as coming to the Xbox 360. Those wanting to check out World of Tanks can sign up at their website.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is a game that started its life as a First Person Shooter reboot of the X-COM franchise, which was to be set in the 1960s. Since then, the game, originally titled XCOM, was apparently cancelled and since then has now be recommissioned.

In this latest XCOM game, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, you’ll notice that the 1960s theme is still really prevalent, although it seems that only the setting has remained constant. Instead it now looks as though it has incorporated the gameplay similar to Third Person Shooters, like Mass Effect. This makes it different from the latest XCOM title, XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

XCOM is published by 2k Games.

Check out the embedded trailer below.

Transistor is the upcoming game from the creators of the hit isometric action RPG, Bastion, Supergiant Games. Transistor has been in development at Supergiant Games for roughly a year and a half, on the PS4, and required the studio to hire more talent to complete.

Transistor appears to be about a Pop Idol named Red who is being hunted by Assassins. The gameplay looks to retain the cartoon-like and isometric aesthetic of Bastion, whilst having a lovely art style and soundtrack that really pushes the games identity.

An interesting addition to the game is the ability to charge your sword, Transistor, and use it to stop time to plan your attacks against The Process, which seem to be enemies in this game.

See below for the embedded gameplay video.

Activision have just made a major announcement that they will be releasing the next lot of ‘epic’ downloadable content for the massively popular Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 game.

If you have Xbox Live on your Xbox 360 you will be able to get the latest downloadable content on July 2nd, ahead of the July 4th celebrations. The downloadable content is titled Vengeance and is the biggest and baddest pack for the awesome and epic Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

You can check out the new trailer for the Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Vengeance DLC below. It will cost 1200 points on Xbox 360 and will be released exclusively first on that console with other platforms to follow in the future. Stay tuned for more information on that.

Cubemen 2
Developer: 3 Sprockets
Publisher: 3 Sprockets
Platforms: iPhone, iPad (Reviewed On Both)
Release Date: Out Now
Price: $1.99 – Available Here

Overview

Cubemen 2 is the sequel to the well-received Cubemen for iOS, Android and Steam platforms. Cubemen 2 takes the tower defense/RTS gameplay of the original and expands on it with a few more units. As the old adage goes “if it aint broke, don’t fix it,” and that is certainly applicable to Cubemen 2. Nothing is really taken out from the original, just added on and improved. The audio and visual style retains its minimalist charm, but now there is an opportunity for players to add skins over their normally bland levels, and to even change the colours of their cube-men.

Gameplay

Cubemen 2 takes the same gameplay system of its predecessor and improves on it. You have to defend your tower from waves of oncoming enemies by placing your blocky-cube-men troops around the board and moving them tactically, or to use those same troops to capture more ground. You still have all the units that were present in the original game, but they are joined by a few new friends. There aren’t many of these new additions, but they really do shake up the game and add a lot of variety to the way you can tackle combat.

Outside of the campaign, Cubemen 2 comes pre-loaded with 20 maps for you to play on. While this doesn’t seem like a lot, within each of these maps you can change the way the game plays. One round can be a capture the flag, then after that you can play a straight up tower defense game, followed by a territory-capture based mode. In addition you can decide where the towers for each participant are, as well as the difficult and how many waves to challenge against. These options make sure that every round is unique and offers players a whole lot of bang for their buck.

Facing off the AI is all well and good, but where the game shines is its incredibly strong multiplayer component. Every game mode makes allowances for more than one player, and it all works quite seamlessly online or over a local area. A lot of mobile games can sometimes struggle with going online and retaining a connection, but I didn’t face these issues with Cubemen 2. The game played seamlessly and just worked.

For those who aren’t satisfied with the twenty pre-loaded maps, or who have a bit of a creative streak, Cubemen 2 has got you covered. The game comes with a complete level editor that allows you to create, play on, and share your own custom maps. As you can share maps out with the world, you can also download and play on other player’s maps. This gives Cubemen 2 a near-infinite amount of replayability, as long as people keep making maps, or you keep coming up with ideas of your own.

Unforuntately it is not all smiles and sunshine, as Cubemen 2 has a real problem, and it detracts hugely from the game. Cubemen 2 suffers from very poor controls. Playing on the iPad was difficult to say the least, needing to use tap, pinch, multitouch and swipe gestures to navigate around the game maps. These gestures and movements all seem like they should be intuitive and react with ease, but in practice this just isn’t the case.  Although the maps aren’t large, the constant need to change camera angles and even rotate the board different directions can be hell to work around. Also, sending your troops to the right square on the board can be a pain unless you are zoomed in close, in which case you will have to zoom back out as soon as you have.

Another problem that was frequently encountered was that the game didn’t seem very responsive to  gestures, sometimes a square was needed to be pressed three or four times before it would register what I was trying to do. These problems are bad enough on iPad, but when tackling the game on a much smaller device like an iPhone or iPod, they become a complete and utter NIGHTMARE.

Visuals & Audio

Like the original Cubemen, Cubemen 2 takes a very minimalist art style, with everything being solid colours by default. This minimalist style really separates Cubemen from the other tower defense games out there and makes it stand out as something unique and all to itself. It does away with the aestetic bells and whistles to deliver a true strategy gameplay experience. The audio follows this pattern, as there is only a little bit of music present (normally found in the menu screens), and simple “pew pew” style sound effects for the combat. Strangely enough, despite there being very little there in terms of art and sound, what is there works perfectly.

However if you aren’t into flat colours and basic shapes, Cubemen 2 offers a lot of texture packs to change the look of the terrain, and skin packs to change your cube-men.  the terrain textures are great and can really add some spice to the otherwise bland and boring battle grounds. The skin packs however, although varied (encompassing everything from zombies to terminators and all the way through to crash test dummies) don’t offer much more to look at when you are actually playing the game. The camera by default is panned too far back to really tell the difference between skins, and when you zoom in you lose sight of the game happening around you.

Overall

Cubemen 2 has a LOT of content. If you are into the tower defense or RTS genres and are looking for something you can pick up and play over and over again then this is definitely for you. With its in-depth gameplay and minimalist art style through to the custom level builder and plethora of visual skins and textures to customise the look of the game, there is a lot to love. However, the touch controls present on the iOS devices are a horrible experience that sadly does detract from all the good this game accomplishes.

Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.

Want more awesome mech action in MechWarrior Online? Well you are in luck as the Quickdraw Mech is now available in MechWarrior Online in three dangerous variations.

The Quickdraw Mechs are great for close-combat battles. The new mech has speeds of up to 85 kph with a mass of 60 tons, it can also jump around 150 meters all the while destroying the competition with quickdrawing ease.

You can check out a brand new trailer showcasing the Quickdraw Mechs below. So what are you waiting for? It is time to quickly draw out the enemy in MechWarrior Online and take them down with your awesome new Quickdraw Mech!

Capcom’s Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara is now available to download from the European and North American PSN, globally via Steam and on Xbox LIVE Arcade for Xbox 360. In addition, the game will be available soon for the Nintendo eShop on Wii U.

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara merges two arcade classics: Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom and its sequel Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara; both extensively updated with HD graphics and additional features that cater for an intense 2D side scrolling RPG, available online or locally for up to 4 players to battle against the iconic monsters of Dungeons & Dragons. 

Players can customise their gameplay experience with the all new House Rules feature and utilise the Challenge system to earn character level-ups and points to spend in the Vault after completing in-game goals. Furthermore, the Character Visualiser allows players create a more balanced multiplayer dungeon party through tracking which characters they and their friends use.

Check out the trailer below. Don’t miss out on this epic adventure and get your copy today for only $14.99 (1200 MS Points).

Coming out of E3 2013, KEMCO is proud to announce the release of their third legendary JRPG, Alphadia Genesis, to be released on iOS and Android in Japan this summer and internationally this winter.

Alphadia Genesis will make an impressive entrance, for the first time in 3D, taking advantage of smartphones high resolution touch screens and graphics to provide smooth and realistic battle scenes, a wide range of quests, beautiful-melancholy music and an expansive world to explore within the lands of the Lagoon, as seen within the screenshots provided in the gallery below.

Players can expect a deep and immersive storyline that follows the investigation of artificial clones, previously created for fighting during the Energi War and then programmed to live amongst humans, suddenly turning against their masters and threatening the peaceful existence of the human race.

Stay tuned with Capsule Computers for more updates on Alphadia Genesis and let us know your thoughts of the game in the comment section below the following gallery of screenshots.