Once again Nintendo surprise everyone by announcing today another Nintendo Direct, which went live at 4pm UK Time. Over the next 30 minutes, plenty of info was revealed about upcoming Wii U and 3DS titles both known and unknown; but the bulk of the time (the initial eight minutes, longer than any other game discussion) went to The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Releasing in Europe in just nine days time (November 22), Nintendo chose today to launch a brand new trailer demonstrating the game. Following this, Nintendo took time to discuss many facets about the game…

New Characters

…Starting with some of the new characters you’ll meet. One important new character is a witch called Irene. Though she’s seen flying overhead at the start of the game, soon enough she introduces herself to you with a story about how, despite being a witch, she has a lot of bad luck herself and was informed that if she aided someone green, she could change her fortune. As a result – and somewhat begrudgingly – Irene offers her services to you.

What services? Well, how about quick transport? Homaging old ideas such as the Recorder whistle that allowed Link to move to another area quickly from the original Zelda titles, Irene offers Link rides on her magic broom to different areas of the game. You first have to unlock a location for the broom to reach by finding and interacting with Weather Vanes located in appropriate areas; but once this is done, at most points in the game you can touch a bell icon on the 3DS touch screen and select a Vane to be taken to. Irene will then arrive – often complaining – and fly you to your chosen destination. Interestingly, the Broom can even travel to the “Dark World” version of Hyrule (what, so “A Link Between Worlds” didn’t tell you there would be a dark world?) and even pick him up and take him to locations between both worlds – although it appears Irene does not ride the broom while in the Dark World – so it seems her broom really IS magic!

Also making an early appearance is a character called Seres, who is introduced as the daughter of Hyrule Sanctuary’s Priest. A gentle soul with a pretty appearance, don’t expect to spend time with her for long – meeting Yuga, your nemesis, at the start of the game, she is magically turned into a portrait on the wall and trapped there, creating the game’s plot.

New Items and Abilities

Of course, she’s not alone – Yuga also sends YOU into a portrait on the wall as well, before leaving to the dark world via a rift accessedvia the castle’s wall. But the Triforce piece within link lets him free himself from the portrait and back into his physical, 3-dimensional form – and this unlocks the “flatten yourself against the wall and scale it” feature that we’ve seen already and forms a key part of much of the game’s puzzles and dungeons.

Another new feature revealed today might be familiar to long-term Zelda fans. At some point in the game you will pick up an item called Zora’s flippers – yup, you know where this is going don’t you? – and gain the ability to swim and dive in water. No news yet as to the purpose of this feature (although all of us at Sanitarium Towers expect to see it featuring in at least a few puzzles or dungeons – just no Water Temple please!); but Shibata DID give us a hint as to a side quest involving the water. During your swim around Hyrule you may find a cryptic message in a bottle, referencing a man who loves the taste of premium milk. As it turns out, Hyrule now has its own Milk bar, like those seen in more recent Zelda titles. Ask the owner about premium milk and he’ll wonder how you found out about it; then tell you about a man who always used to order it every day before taking trips up the mountains, but who recently disappeared.

Streetpass Gameplay

Of course, it wouldn’t be a 3DS game without taking advantage of 3DS features – and one interesting new Gameplay feature being introduced in A Link Between Worlds involves special battles using StreetPass. Introduced to you by a kind, elderly fellow affectionately called “Gramps“, you will be able to create your own shadowy version of Link to share. Your Shadow Link will have the number of hearts and the basic equipment of your real Link character at the time of creation, plus you can specify another item of equipment for it to use (interestingly, there appear to be TWO equipment slots, but only one is used in the Trailer) – the equipment and the number of hearts your Shadow Link has determines a bounty that will be placed on its head.

After saving your Shadow Link, the next time you tag someone on StreetPass who also has the game, your Shadow Link will be sent to their game; and you’ll receive theirs. Gramps will be able to tell you if a new one has arrived in your game; soon after, their Shadow Link will appear in specific places in your Game World – and you can talk to them and choose to fight them in a special one-on-one battle! Defeating the Shadow Link sent to your game will earn you the bounty attached to them, which will be an amount of Rupees from 30 to – well, who knows? What’s more, there’s no penalty to losing – so StreetPass often and keep getting new challenges to fight and more bounties to gain!

One more thing…

During the Trailer, Link is seen acquiring a Bow from Ravio’s store – the place where all essential equipment can be rented and eventually bought for use in future dungeons. However, Ravio doesn’t charge for the rental. Instead he’s seen to say, “Normally I’d charge a rental fee, but I’ll lend it to you for free. This time, anyway.” Could this mean you don’t necessarily have to pay to acquire all the equipment in the game?

As mentioned earlier, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds will launch in Europe on November 22nd – but if you’re a true Zelda fan and have the Rupees cash to burn, you won’t want JUST the game, will you? Also launching that day is the limited edition Link Between Worlds Nintendo 3DS XL Bundle, which alongside a digital copy of the game will also include the Golden, black-backed, special design Zelda 3DS XL. Shiny!

Finally, if you can’t wait nine days to find out more about Link Between Worlds, head to Nintendo’s Instagram page – http://instagram.com/nintendo – where today and regularly until the game’s launch, Nintendo will be releasing a total of four quick 15-second trailers offering more teasers in the run up to the game’s official launch. Oh Nintendo, you do spoil your fans…

Want to know the install sizes for some Xbox One launch titles? Well you’re in luck because the U.S citizen that got his console early from U.S Retailer Target has posted them up.

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag – 20GB
Battlefield 4 – 33GB
Call of Duty: Ghosts – 39GB
Dead Rising 3 – 19GB
FIFA 14 – 8GB
Fighter Within – 9.2GB
Forza Motorsport 5 – 31GB
Just Dance 2014 – 22GB
Killer Instinct – 3.4GB
Lococyle – 13GB
Madden NFL 25 – 12GB
NBA 2K14 – 43GB
NBA Live 14 – 9GB
Powerstar Golf – 3.9GB
Ryse: Son of Rome – 34GB
Skylanders: Swap Force – 15GB
Xbox Fitness – 246MB
Zoo Tycoon – 2.6GB
Zumba World Party – 24GB

Sounds like someone is going to need a bigger hard drive, although it’ll need to be external as you cannot upgrade the Xbox One internal hard drive at this time.

Thanks to shopto.net for the original story

Blizzard have announced that their Warcraft-themed virtual trading card game,  Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft – currently in a closed, invite-only beta – will soon be available to all; as the game enters an open beta some time next month.

Battle.net players interesting in trying out the game before its official launch will be able to login, download and experience the game in its current early form starting December 2013.

Blizzard also today announced that the game is also planned to have iPhone and Android versions, allowing a similar game experience in smartphone or tablet form. A release is due in early 2014.

We’ve known that Blizzard has been working on its own MOBA for a while, though the name has changed several times between each discussion. Originally announced as Blizzard DOTA – causing much of a stir with players of the Warcraft 3 mod of the same name – it was later given the code-name “Blizzard All-Stars“. Now it’s officially known as Heroes Of The Storm.

Now, before we go on, let me take some time to criticise Blizzard’s naming policy. It’s quite obvious to me people will start abbreviating the new name for Blizzard’s new MOBA; however, HOTS is already used to refer to another Blizzard game, the Starcraft II expansion fully titled “StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm” – and sometimes, by extension, StarCraft II itself. So should we call the new game “Heroes” for short? But then, what about Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft? It starts to feel like Blizzard don’t want people to call their games anything OTHER than their full, long titles…

Anyway, Heroes Of The Storm will feature characters from all three of Blizzard’s main franchises – characters so far revealed have been Starcraft‘s Kerrigan and Jim Ranyor; Illidan and The Lich King from the Warcraft series; and the titular Diablo of the games of the same name – in team-on-team battles to destroy an opposing base while protecting your own. But if that sounds too much like your standard MOBA game (if actually there IS such a thing as a “standard” MOBA since the term has been applied to a number of completely different games), it’s Blizzard’s attempts to switch up the genre that make this one stand out.

For a start, unlike most similar games, you will not be buying items and accruing currency to get more over the course of the game. Instead, gold chests will periodically spawn on the map to collect or steal (depending on which side of the map you’re on), which can then be used to purchase powerful map-specific upgrades. Items themselves have been replaced by unlockable character-specific skill choices, allowing you to customise the skills offered by your characters beyond the typical four initial choices and keeping you always in the thick of the action. As for those map-specific upgrades, one map sees a character able to transform into a powerful dragon; while another sees a ghostly pirate fire cannons at your enemy’s base to deal huge damage.

Blizzard’s main goal with Heroes Of The Storm is seemingly to speed up the time taken to play full MOBA matches, but still keep all the action. The previously mentioned maps shown off so far are small in comparison to genre tradition; and with mounts available to increase the speed at which players can move, crossing the map is likely to be a very quick process even in the most demanding battles. Slowing players down however are the use of gates, which must be destroyed before certain parts of a map can be accessed; bringing a new level of crowd control beyond towers and lanes. Forts will be nearby, too, to enable health and mana regeneration.

Heroes Of The Storm will be free-to-play with microtransactions, but it’s not clear if that means purchasing heroes to play as or just skins and mounts.

You can sign up to the Heroes Of The Storm beta now, or do so through your Battle.net account page.

Blizzard developers suggest that the original Warcraft games are coming to modern operating systems.

During the World of Warcraft Ask Anything panel, a question was asked about the original Warcraft games (meaning Warcraft I, Warcraft II, and the expansions). The BlizzCon goer asked if, because of the setting and theme of Warlords of Draenor, would we be seeing a port of the original Warcraft games to modern machines (I presume she meant modern operating systems). The devs gave an intriguing response by saying that they have a group at Blizzard working on something that may be able to do “something like that.”

Now, this is interesting and unexpected. Most players of World of Warcraft probably haven’t even played Warcraft III, much less Warcraft I and II. By releasing the games on modern operating systems, that would definitely introduce an expansive audience to the Warcraft universe’s roots. This is especially poignant when considering that it was just announced that the Warcraft movie would focus on Lothar and Durotan. Not only would they be bringing their newer players into the loop, but they would be introducing general movie goers to the back story, as well.

But, what did the developers mean by saying “something like that?” That seems to suggest that the games might be coming to us in a nontraditional way. What first comes to my mind is a system similar to the Starcraft II arcade. That would be pretty interesting and a cool addition to World of Warcraft. I would definitely play it even if it was within WoW.

So, what do you think? Do you think they’ll port the games to modern operating systems or not? What form do you think they could be distributed? What do you think the developers meant with their answer? Have you played the original Warcraft games? Would you play them again? Let us know in the comments section below!