Vessel is already out on Steam, so we didn’t want to bore you with a giant preview. We did, however, stop by the booth at PAX East to chat with head John Krajewski, who confirmed that the physics-based puzzle platformer is still safely on its way to XBLA. As a quick recap for those of you who aren’t familiar with Vessel, you play the part of a genius scientist whose liquid-based automatons have gone a little mad, and it’s up to you to stop them. To help you on your way you’ll have to use the predictability of the automatons and a sweet liquid-sucking-and-blowing backpack to make your way through the world.
John didn’t need to say much, he mostly stepped back and let the demo speak for itself. One area Vessel shines in is the difficulty department. The puzzles increased in difficulty over the course of the demo, and while some of them took a while to figure out, it wasn’t in a frustrating way — in fact, it left us with a sense of accomplishment that some games struggle to achieve. Almost overshadowing the puzzles are the amazingly beautiful backgrounds and sounds. While much of the demo took place in steampunk-y factories, there are also outdoor areas that looked just as good. If that wasn’t enough, Strange Loop tagged Jon Hopkins – former producer and contributor to Imogen Heap, Coldplay, and Brian Eno – to create the incredible soundtrack.
Double Dragon means a lot of things to a lot of people. Developed originally for arcades in 1987, a single player version was released for the NES that became one of the defining brawlers of its time. The series eventually went on to span five numbered titles across a variety of platforms up through the Super Nintendo before disappearing into the annals of history – that is, until recently, when 2D powerhouse Wayforward Technologies (A Boy and His Blob Wii, BloodRayne: Betrayal) stepped up to man the helm for a shot back into the ’80s with the upcoming title Double Dragon Neon. We stopped by the Reverb booth at PAX to take a look at what’s on its way.
The first thing you’ll notice is the color. Wayforward didn’t choose the name Neon simply because it sounds cool, they decided to back it up by throwing a rainbow onto the screen and turning the metaphorical color amps to 11. As Assistant Production Manager Pete Rosky told us, it looks a bit garish, but that’s all part of the fun. The ’80s feel carries through to every design aspect of the game, from the ridiculous look of the characters and enemies to the incredible synth rock, which you can hear in the video below. Even the life meters have a bodaciously colorful style, complete with lightning bolts to measure your special power energy.
It’s almost a certainty that many of you have played Minecraft. However, somehow both myself and my intrepid colleague Nick Santangelo missed out on one of the most popular indie PC titles of the last few years, so we weren’t quite sure what to expect when we stepped up to the booth at PAX. Turns out, there’s a lot of mining, then a lot of crafting.
If you’ve played Minecraft before, go ahead and skip the next couple of paragraphs. For those of you unfamiliar with the game, I’ll give you a quick rundown of what you can expect in the first thirty minutes or so. You start out in the middle of a blocky, 3D world, with nothing but your own two hands to rely on. Right off the bat you have the ability to make a few things. After a bit of hacking away at the local foliage and, well, the ground, you’ll be able to build a workbench, which in turn unlocks other things to craft. Building those things unlocks more stuff, and so on.
It’s not all fun and games though, you’ll need to build shelter if you want to survive. At night, creatures attack, and you want to be safely in bed when that happens. Luckily there are plenty of options for the industrious (literal) homemaker, from windows and doors to torches for your walls.
For a long time, fans of XBLA knew little about Grounding Inc’s so-called Project Draco – it was being developed by the same guy who made the classic Panzer Dragoon games, it would be an on-rails shooter, and the Unreal Engine made it look unbelievably gorgeous – but that’s about it. Fast forward to about a month and a half ago, the title was officially announced to be Crimson Dragon and a little more information trickled out. It was still hard to get a grip on how exactly this title would turn out, so we took some time at PAX to stop by the booth and play through the demo so we could fill you in on why exactly Microsoft is so stoked about this game.
If you’ve played Child of Eden, you already have a basic idea of how the gameplay will work. Before we go any further though, I want to assure each and every one of you: this game plays a heck of a lot better than Child of Eden. Don’t get me wrong, I loved both Rez HD and its spiritual successor, but at the time it came out the Kinect controls just felt a little… off. Crimson Dragon takes all the best parts of the control scheme and pushes them to a whole ‘nother level – and it works beautifully.
Back in the days when men were men and XBLA was for arcade games, a beautiful little title called Geometry Wars 2 hit the marketplace. For many XBLA lovers it was the pinnacle of arcade-style gameplay, featuring six modes of score-attacking frenzy and leaderboards that to this day drive people back into the game’s depths to try and catch their friends. Unfortunately, as the production and development effort of XBLA titles increased, the platform has mostly moved on from games like Geometry Wars 2 – but there is hope. The launch of Kinect is bringing a whole new crowd of gamers into the fold, and developers are picking up the challenge in a big way, releasing amazing games like last year’s Fruit Ninja Kinect and (the reason we’re talking about this) the upcoming Wreckateer.
Wreckateer is a title that looks from a distance like it shouldn’t cause much of a stir. However, the second you see it in person you know it’s something special. The basic premise of the game is that you’re trying to destroy structures by launching things at them. Sound familiar? Even the folks at Iron Galaxy know that their game will draw comparisons to Angry Birds, but they’re fine with that. As they told us, Wreckateer is essentially a mash-up of the aforementioned pig crushing simulator, Boom Blox, and Burnout Crash, which to anyone keeping score means it is essentially a mash-up of some of the greatest quick-fix arcade games to come out in recent times.
There isn’t a lot to say about Arkedo Studio’s upcoming game Hell Yeah! that you can’t tell just by looking at the name of the game. The art style, the crazy minigames, the twisted humor; all of that feeds into what is going to be without a doubt the most insane game ever to hit XBLA. Of course, this wouldn’t be much of a preview without talking a little bit about what we learned from the demo at PAX, so let’s get on with it!
First things first – the full name of the game is Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, which pretty much sums up the plot. You play as Ash, the Prince of Hell, a dead rabbit who is caught by paparazzi doing some rather obscene things with a rubber ducky. Naturally, this causes the whole of the underworld to lose what little respect they had for you, so in order to gain it back you have to kill, well, everything. Sound awesome? We thought so.
Tipster @lifelower has once again pulled some great information by scouring the ratings boards. This time up we have a rating for a new iteration of the popular card battle game Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers, as well as a bit of confirmation from Stainless Games in the way of a jobs post looking for folks with knowledge of Magic: The Gathering. Although it bears the year 2013 in the title, if last year’s M:TG – DotP 2012 is any indication, we’ll be seeing the new game sometime around midsummer. With cars, sports games, and now Magic all pushing our definitions of when the new year begins forward, maybe we’ll skip over the predicted Mayan apocalypse and officially kick off 2013 sometime around September.
While Microsoft’s CES keynote focused mostly on sales numbers and non-Xbox news, we did get a couple gems out of it. One of the most interesting tidbits is the news that a whole slew of News Corp properties are coming to Xbox Live, including Fox News, Fox shows, IGN (well, more IGN), and The Wall Street Journal. Shows coming include Family Guy, Glee, House, New Girl, Bones, Fringe, and The Simpsons, among others. This is definitely a step in the right direction for giving Xbox dominance as the all-in-one media box in the living room, but we’ll have to see if Microsoft can keep making major deals like this one in order to win the battle once and for all.
Man, seems like a lot of games have been getting rated lately. Well, toss another one onto the pile. Grasshopper’s insane upcoming Kinect game Diabolical Pitch is well on its way along, at least according to this PEGI rating. Wondering about the use of the word insane in that last sentence? I’ll just leave this right here for you. Whatever way you slice it, there’s an interesting new Kinect game on the way, and by the sound of it, it’s coming sometime soon.
Big thanks to @lifelower for another great tip.
Yup, we’re as surprised as this guy. Robomodo’s upcoming Kinect title Bodoink was unable to reach the goal in their Kickstarter campaign. Never fear though, key Robomodo folks have assured people in a number of interviews that Bodoink will reach XBLA one way or the other, so keep your eyes out for an announcement sometime in the future. Besides, it’s not like they don’t have other things to get excited about – they’re also working on a little something called Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD. If you’d like to learn more about Bodoink, check out the preview and interview we did earlier this year. Hopefully we’ll see some more Kickstarters for XBLA games soon – it’s a great, innovative way to get involved in the gaming community and pick up some sweet swag along the way.
