Welcome back Valkyria fans – after taking on the challenge that was Hard Mode EX yesterday, today I sat down and played through Edy’s Mission, officially titled: Enter the Edy Detachment.

Edy’s Mission is a mix of storyline, a challenging mission, and multiple endings based on how well you did. If you pull off a lower rank, like I did the first time I finally beat it, Edy herself will – er, well, I’ll let you guys discover on your own. The storyline and the characters are what make Enter the Edy Detachment truly shine – so first up, a quick look at who you’ll have on your team.

The members of the Edy Detachment

Edy – She considers herself a rival to Rosie. Energetic and good hearted, she assumes the leadership role in this mission. Unfortunately, she tends to be rather panicky…

Homer – A blonde-haired boy that is kind of like Edy’s partner. Oh, right – and he’s a masochist. He loves getting into dangerous situations or having Edy hit him. Or kick him. Or slap him. You get the picture.

Jann – Honey, this guy is your only lancer in the mission. Don’t lose him: not only will you have no hope against the tanks, you’ll also lose one of the funniest characters in the game. If you’ve played the story, you may also know that he’s taken a fancy to another lancer we all know – Largo. Poor guy.

Marina – A cold blooded sniper that speaks simply and does her job with professional speed. She also adores cute, bubbly-eyed puppies. (No, really – you’ll see.) Keep her alive at all costs – you’ll be thankful for it near the end of the mission.

Susie – Also known as Ms. pacifist coward-that-hates-to-fight-but-for-some-unknown-to-God-reason-is-anyway. If I hadn’t needed every single unit available to defend, I probably would have ditched her at the beginning of the fight. She comes from a well-to-do family, but is by far one of the least dependable of your entire group.

Lynn – A Darcsen girl. The second of your shocktroopers (besides Edy), she believes in – and fights for – a dream that burns strongly in her heart. Ah, and one of the empire troops makes racial slurs towards her shortly after you begin the battle. Don’t feel bad gunning him down at point blank afterwards – he totally deserved it.

How the mission begins

Let me start off by saying that Edy’s mission is actually fairly challenging. You’re probably going to lose the first time you play it – and maybe the second or third time too. When you begin, you’ll start off with a tank to the north and a tank to the south – and shocktroopers, scouts, and snipers all around – and you’ll have to choose which direction to attack in first. North, South, or a mix of the two?

Tip: Try not to spread yourself too thin. Keep both flanks secure in the first few turns, but be wary of the tanks.

Next up you have to watch the map – every turn a long range mortar will strike down at the end of the Empire’s move, destroying any sandbag cover (and units) left within range. You can see the mortar range in the picture above.

It might look like a pretty simple map at first, but you’ll find yourself going around most – or all – of it by the time you’re done. You have to keep Edy alive, but you can still manage even if you lose a soldier or two – it just makes things much harder going forward.

If I go into much more details we’ll hit spoilers, but it’s well worth noting that there are four different endings to this DLC pack, based on how well you do. Pull off the highest ranking and you’re in for a treat: Edy style. I’ll let you guys discover what that is…

Tomorrow is the third and final DLC spotlight, and one of the largest batches of content of all three DLC packs. See the war through the eyes of the Empire, battle back Gallian troops at the war’s start, and control Selvaria Bles firsthand on the battlefield. (One of the coolest highlights of the pack.)

Valkyria DLC releases tomorrow – and with it, we’ll be posting a special look at “Behind Her Blue Flame“!

The Conduit Event
As noted across our blogs, yesterday we planned a Multiplayer event and show off The Conduit in full glory to the press and community. Arriving a little early, I watched Josh and Marty of our production team doing the last minute checks to get the game up and running. Hubs? Check. Network enabled Wii’s? Check. Connection? Check. All was working, but due to a batch of bad luck, the Nintendo testing servers were offline. Essentially, the Nintendo servers that allow for online play on testing kits simply wasn’t online, which meant no games could be played that evening. Ouch.

Everyone was extremely let down; we were really excited to show off the game to press. Even with the bad luck, everyone who attended was given some Single Player hands on time with the game, a chance to check out the first three levels of The Conduit, and a chance to grill Eric Nofsinger, David Pellas, and Matt Corso of High Voltage Software.

Eric Nofsinger, David Pellas, and Matt Corso of High Voltage Software.

Before everyone had a chance to play, Eric Nofsinger of High Voltage Software addressed the crowd talked briefly about the features for Multiplayer. The Conduit will feature 13 modes of play consisting as a mix of Team, Solo, and Objective based maps. Some modes are unique to the Conduit, such as ASE Football, which tasks players to control the All Seeing Eye while dodging attacks from foes.

The Conduit is to feature 12 total players with full Wii Speak support. Eric explained that through testing and development, 12 players was the best balance of graphics to gameplay resulting in a solid online experience for players. All maps and modes have been optimized and look to bring some intense firefights to players on June 23. Which you may have noticed, is really really soon.

Here are some shots from the event floor of everyone playing the game. More photos of the event are available across our flickr!

New Multiplayer Trailer
While we didn’t get a chance to show off multiplayer, we are happy to pass along a video featuring the online action to hold you back until our next mutliplayer event. Enjoy!

Driving beautiful cars in exotic locations — this is what it’s supposed to be all about, right? When I worked in Customer Service here at SEGA I heard more than a few woeful outcries when the network for OutRun 2: Coast to Coast was shut down, and for good reason — it was a uniquely fun racing game with a terrific mix of arcade-style racing and truly awesome cars and tracks. Well, good news: as of today OutRun OnLine Arcade is available for the XBox Live, and you can resume power drifting your way to glory at the top of the online leaderboards.

The first thing to note about this game: It looks really good. Especially in HD, although it looks great regardless. I think the screenshots look excellent, but they don’t quite do it justice — mainly because you don’t get the feel of the tremendous lighting and environment effects, as sky & light play across your rapidly accelerating supercar.

If you like exquisite Italian supercars, then you should be quite happy with the selection of Ferraris, all featured in previous OutRun games. I gravitated instantly towards the 360 Spider–the convertible version of the Modena, which has been one of my favorite supercars since it came out in 1999. There’s classic Ferraris (the previously featured Dino 246), muscly and popular Ferraris (the Testarossa) and racing-bred megacars (the F50), as well.

Fun factoid about the F50:  Ferrari manufactured only 349 of them, one fewer than they estimated they could sell–the idea being that Ferraris should be a very rare and special breed of car, and always in high demand.

The courses in the game are a ton of fun, and stages like “Lost City” where you come racing under a blanket of fog, or the city-at-night slickness of Casino City are especially well-rendered. I’ve never exactly been a dab hand at racing games, but I still enjoy them, particularly if the cars are good. The mechanics of OutRun are simple enough to learn, and fun–the pros, I am made to understand, master this game through judicious power-sliding around every turn, and constant slipstreaming. If by chance you own an actual $1,000,000 supercar, power sliding it at 180 MPH across the Golden Gate Bridge is moderately ill-advised–however, doing so here–not to mention catching the slipstream of your opponents and passing them–will in fact, just as in classic OutRun, earn you the undying love of your girlfriend:

The ‘hearts’ are actually part of the “Heart Attack Mode”, where you have to complete tasks for your ever-present ladyfriend in the front seat. There’s also the more traditional Time Attack mode, as well as a simple tour mode (which I quite enjoy) through a variety of stages.

I did make it into an online match as well, and it was nice to see a good crowd of players eager to take up this game again. Typically, I came in dead last, miles away from my competition. Okay–to be fair, I came in 4th out of 5–but the guy I passed, shortly before the race finished, was pulled over on the side of the road. Presumably he was sipping a latte with his girlfriend in the front seat and enjoying the vista–and hey, why not? Sure it’s an arcade title, but it’s still a gorgeous game that invites you to enjoy the scenery.

Lastly: another wallpaper available for the fans out there! While fans might argue that any Ferrari could be a “classic”, this one certainly qualifies–the monstrously powerful Ferrari F40. First manufactured in 1987, this was the last car Enzo Ferrari commissioned before his death, and for several years it held the official title of “World’s Fastest Production Car”.

Enjoy this wallpaper, and enjoy OutRun Online Arcade!

Our colleagues in Europe posted their photos earlier today, and here are the remaining 5 original, hand-drawn and signed, Let’s Tap art pieces from Yuji Naka. I don’t yet know how many of these we’ll have available to us for giveaways, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to hook a few of you up with these stunning drawings. We’re sure tempted to keep them all to ourselves, but we won’t.

In addition to the drawings, I got some Tap Runner figurines and some Japanese soundtracks! Like the drawings, I don’t know how many we’ll be able to give away, but they’re sure cool to look at in the meantime.

Stay tuned for future details. For now, I hope you enjoyed gawking at these great items!