A bunch of places have covered the material released at this year’s GamesCom for Armored Core V. With 4Gamer being one of the better ones. Showing off three areas; a buried city (above), a mountain base and an abandoned city. The big thing that seems to be hammered on about is all about the base defenses. Some places have rather snarkily interpreted this setup as being akin to glorified tower defense, which is entirely accurate if the tower defense genre has been broadened to include online combat with massively customisable mecha. Well done there, no really. That asinine nonsense aside, the update also talks about the involvement of two voice actors. Namely Chiaki Takahashi and Keiji Fujiwara, of which the latter was recently Ali Al-Saachez in Gundam 00 (though we’ll always remember him as Holland from Eureka Seven). What’s really clear about all this is how important the operator will be, as the status of your territory will be very much reliant on the team’s “eye in the sky”. Getting a good tactician on your team will clearly be as crucial as skilled gaming ninjas for the mecha piloting aspect, something that’s pleasantly reminiscent of Chrome Hounds.

What with Gamescom under way, Armored Core V has received a new trailer to show off its online setup. Whilst the voice over is a bit stiff, it conveys the premise of the game well. As always, it’s looking very nice indeed. In addition to the video, a selection of new screenshots are also up on the official Facebook page. Here are some additional videos from inside the Gamescom booth.

The latest live stream for Armored Core V, shown yesterday and embedded below, is quite an eventful one. It shows all manner of gameplay elements in far greater detail than we’d seen previously. Whilst the Overweapons are noticeably absent, the rest of the live stream is suitably illuminating. In many ways the delayed released is clearly a shrewd and sensible move, this is clearly a complex game with some very advanced multiplayer elements at work. Taking the time to get it right is something we wholeheartedly endorse.

The upcoming Macross Frontier Sayonara no Tsubasa hybrid Blu-Ray pack has finally received its first promo. This also shows some actual game footage, which interestingly features several ground based missions (as per the PSP games). Entitled Macross Last Frontier, this looks more developed than the previous Trial Frontier but will still be a bit on the short side. We’re still sure a full fledged PS3 Macross game will be developed off the back of these, as it would be dumb to throw away all this development. Anyway, the game footage kicks in around the 2:30 mark and the disc will be out on October 20th.

As a result of the ongoing beta testing From Software have announced that, in order to polish the game further, they are delaying Armored Core V’s Japanese release until January 2012. In some ways, this is not overly surprising but it is encouraging. The whole point of the beta testing was to uncover and resolve potential problems before release. So it’s good to know that From Software are doing just that. There will also be another live stream for the game on August 5th.

The latest live stream for Armored Core V’s team based setup happened yesterday and is now archived accordingly. The full video is shown below and as always it’s fascinating to watch. What’s very much apparent is how much like Chrome Hounds the operator setup in Armored Core V really is. The tactical overview you get on the level that’s being generated by real players in the thick of combat is still uniquely wonderful. We really can’t wait to play this come October.

Following on from the first Macross Frontier’s movie Blu-Ray film/game hybrid pack (which we reviewed), the second film will also receive the same treatment. Whether this will be a more substantial effort remains to be seen, but the Blu-Rawy will be released October 20th for 7,140 yen. In addition, a deluxe pack will also be released for 10,500 yen featuring a poster, movie pamphlet, art book, film script and custom themes.

Update: 4Gamer has an update, with screenshots of the game, for the new hybrid pack.

At the recent Tamashii Festival a few curious shots of Armored Core V figures have surfaced. These are specifically Super Robot Chogokin figures, which is a tad incongruous as AC’s are very much at the real robot end of the spectrum. Either way, the fact that Bandai Namco are handling the international publishing means we’ll finally get some decent Armored Core toys. For those that may remember, Kaiyodo did a line of toys back in the day for AC2 and AC2AA (of which most of them were utterly woeful). Now that Bandai have stepped in we are genuinely expecting something pretty damn special. No word on pricing or whether the toys will be customisable but the Super Robot Chogokin toys are pretty affordable. We’re assuming the toys will be released alongside the game in Japan this October.

After the rumours we reported a while back, it turns out the Voltron (aka Go Lion) game will be hitting XBLA and PSN this October. There’s even an announcement trailer (shown below). Apparently, it will be an action adventure game of sorts but the trailer does show some genre deviation from that. Unfortunately this is being handled by the same team that did Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime, so don’t get your hopes up.

A live concert will be gracing PlayStation Home next week with both Sheryl Nome and Ranka Lee from Macross Frontier. Entitled Super Live, it’s a follow on from the previous concert earlier this year. This new Super Live effort will also come with a variety of virtual outfits and paraphernalia, so they’re not missing a trick with this one. Whether this is part of the build up for a home release of the second film is not yet known, though all we care about is that Artdink get to release the full fat Macross PS3 game they’ve very obviously been working on.