What's that, Lassie? Tokyo is slowly slipping into the pits of hell as demons wage war on humankind and life as we know it is over? "Arf!" and there are Aliens invading Earth as well? Why, you must be playing the new enhanced port of Devil Survivor 2 that just came out on the 3DS in Japan recently! "Arf!." Good dog.

That's right, Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker has launched, and while we haven't exactly gotten a release date for when it is going to arrive on Western shores, I thought a little preview of some of the new features couldn't hurt, as I am completely positive this game will be released in both North America and Europe with absolutely no ridiculous 2-year time gap in between. No siree.

For the unaware, Devil Survivor 2 was released on the Nintendo DS back in 2011 and is getting a sparkly new port to the 3DS system with extra content, including fully voiced cutscenes. This is a similar treatment its predecessor, Devil Survivor, received when Atlus released Devil Survivor: Overclocked.

So, what new things can we look forward to? Well, apart from the new fully-voiced cutscenes, an entirely new scenario is included that occurs after the events of the original Devil Survivor 2 and is said to be equal in length to an RPG title on its own! The new scenario features an invasion by three additional extraterrestrial lifeforms known as the Triangulum after the disappearance of JP's leader Yamato Hotsuin. It will feature at least one new character: a girl with a strikingly similar appearance to Yamato.

The game will also introduce an easy difficulty ("Gospel" mode) for those who just want to enjoy the story. The standard difficulty that was present in the original game will now be called the "Apocalypse" mode, which is ten times more awesome than being called "Normal" mode. It's unclear if there will be any other gameplay enhancements, but I think it's pretty safe to say that based on Devil Survivor: Overclocked, we will at the very least have some new demons to fuse, and hopefully there will be some new skills to learn, too!

As is expected of most games these days, Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker will have new characters available as downloadable content. What's interesting about this case is that the characters aren't actually anything to do with Shin Megami Tensei. In fact, they are characters from the light novel series Durarara!!. Presumably, this is because the character designer from the Devil Survivor series, Suzuhito Yasuda, is also the illustrator of the Durarara!! novels.

Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker is due to be released sometime this year in North America. No word has been given if the game will be published in Europe, so we Europeans had better start praying now.