Image

About Nick Santangelo

Nick has been a gamer since the 8-bit days and has been reporting on the games industry since 2011. Don't interrupt him while he's questing through an RPG or watching the Eagles, Phillies, 76ers or Flyers. Follow Nick Santangelo on Twitter.
Latest Posts | By Nick Santangelo
Microsoft has boosted Xbox Live security
12 years ago

Microsoft has boosted Xbox Live security

By  •  News

Microsoft’s Xbox Live security team has spent the last several months introducing new safeguards to the service in response to a bevy of user feedback, Xbox Live General Manager Alex Garden said in a blog post today. Garden released a statement about buffing up account security earlier in the year and reported that the Xbox community responded by sending him “hundreds of emails and the responses ranged from frustration to support, as well as suggestions for making Xbox Live the best service it can be.”

The team in charge of protecting users is said to now be better positioned to do so thanks to increased notifications being sent to accounts with suspect activity. Holders of such accounts are encouraged to take self-protecting measures such as changing passwords, tapping Microsoft’s customer support and proving that they are indeed the owner of the account in question.

Read More

Dungeon Fighter Live: Fall of Hendon Myre review (XBLA)
12 years ago

Dungeon Fighter Live: Fall of Hendon Myre review (XBLA)

Dungeon Fighter Live: Fall of Hendon Myre was co-developed by Nexon Korea Corporation, Neople Inc. and Softmax Co., Ltd. and published by Microsoft. It was released on July 13, 2012 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

One year and change ago Nexon’s free-to-play dungeon crawler, Dungeon Fighter Online (DFO), surpassed 300 million registered users, redefining the phrase “massively multiplayer.” Last week the franchise made the leap to console in the form of Dungeon Fighter Live: Fall of Hendon Myre. Hendon Myre is a pseudo-sequel that takes place in a slice of the original’s map; features the same fighting game-inspired combat that has hooked so many PC gamers; and three of the original’s nine base classes. Yes, only one-third of the original character classes have made the transition to console (gunner, fighter, slayer).

It’s not all addition by subtraction, though; the visuals have gotten a slight bump from those featured in the now eight-years-old DFO, and split-screen drop-in/drop-out co-op has been tossed in to go along with online play. That’s important, too, because the game is infinitely more enjoyable with a group of four than it is when flying solo. Dungeon Fighter Live has tried and true mechanics at its core: raid a dungeon(s), return to town, buy/sell/craft goods, rinse and repeat. Designed to be replayed many times over on different difficulties and in search of new quest items, Nexon’s action-RPG is great button-mashing popcorn entertainment with your chums — not so much by your lonesome. One can only plow through so many waves of identical gray goblins in grassy fields before the very notion of starting the cycle anew induces sighs of tediousness. But by introducing a trio of friends to the equation, the game remarkably becomes enjoyable once more.

Read More

Minecraft skins to get Summer of Arcade tan
12 years ago

Minecraft skins to get Summer of Arcade tan

By  •  News

The Minecraft skin parade — no, not that kind of skin parade, get your mind out of the gutter! — continued today with Major Nelson announcing that the …
Read More

Phil Spencer on Xbox Live, SmartGlass, cloud
12 years ago

Phil Spencer on Xbox Live, SmartGlass, cloud

By  •  News

After launching on the original Xbox back in 2004, Xbox Live Arcade matured when it made the leap to the 360 and became home to an impressive stable of downloadable titles from small and independent developers. More recently, however, scores of indies have retreated from XBLA in favor of platforms such as Steam, iOS and Android. Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Studios Phil Spencer, speaking with Games Industry International, addressed the current role indie developers play in the Xbox Live Arcade landscape.

“The term indie does not necessarily mean ‘small.’ Some of the most independent studios I’ve ever met are some of the largest studios I’ve ever met,” said Spencer. “I think if what we’re saying is if there is content available for Xbox at multiple price points, both from what it costs to build the content and buy the content, or does everything have to compete at $60 and beyond? I’m really happy with the different price points that we see on Xbox; we just put out Minecraft last month and sold 2 million units. Trials came out and did incredibly well. Further down on price point, I’m playing The Walking Dead, which is an episodic game for $5 or so [Editor’s Note: The two episodes currently sell for 400 Microsoft Points each], forgot the exact price. We have price points for content across the 360.

“The nice thing is we have successes at these different prices; there are real businesses that can be made at the different levels that are available. That’s a strength of the Live marketplace.”

Read More

Zuma taking revenge on XBLA next week
12 years ago

Zuma taking revenge on XBLA next week

By  •  News

Zuma’s Revenge will launch on Xbox Live Arcade next week, PopCap revealed over Twitter yesterday evening. Responding to a question about whether or not more Bejeweled releases could …
Read More

Trampled under foot: Ascend: New Gods preview
12 years ago

Trampled under foot: Ascend: New Gods preview

Ascend: New Gods is an action game. The fact that players take control of gigantic warriors known as Caos that mow through hordes of beasts with magic and melee weapons while trampling the tiny, feeble humans under their feet as a man might a rodent, informs those who pick up the controller of as much. The fact that these towering, stout champions appear before the seemingly indomitable Titans of the game as not but rodents themselves, betrays that there may just be something more to Signal Studios’ game than the repeated mashing of a face button that could effectively get one through the title’s E3 demo.

Although Signal promises that more challenging enemies will turn up later in the game, the demo, while enjoyable, left one wanting to see what other tricks the studio has up its sleeve. Most of the encounters could be won by relying on basic attacks, the repeated swinging of a sword or war hammer until the foe(s) before the Caos were felled. Getting beyond the basic “press X to kill stuff” approach to battles is something that all developers of action games must work to overcome if they are to differentiate their work from that of the competition.

Signal has plans for that. A unique form of multiplayer (more on that shortly) and a slew of challenging beasts that may require a bit more cunning to overcome. “We have tons of different monsters in the game,” Signal Studios Lead Game Designer Ian Scott explained to XBLA Fans at E3. “As you saw, the humans are really small in our game; they’re kind of like rats. You can pick them up and eat them for health, but there’s obviously things that are a lot bigger than you and more badass. Well, I don’t know about necessarily more badass than you.” Scott isn’t sure whether or not the team wants individual non-Titan enemies to be tougher than a Caos, but he asserted that there are definitely enemies that can dole out a walloping.

Read More

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD DLC will include ‘revert’
12 years ago

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD DLC will include ‘revert’

By  •  News

When Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD gets its first piece of downloadable content about around a month after the game’s July 18 release, it will include the revert …
Read More

Microsoft’s Minecraft deal was made just before its announcement
12 years ago

Microsoft’s Minecraft deal was made just before its announcement

By  •  News

Microsoft and 4J Studios bringing Mojang’s world-building simulator, Minecraft, over to Xbox Live Arcade was a big deal when it was announced and was promoted as such by grabbing some of the spotlight during Microsoft’s pre-E3 2011 media briefing. As such, it stands to reason that the console holder and the Swedish studio behind the original version of the game hammered out a deal months ahead of time before carefully fine-tuning the specifics of its E3 announcement. Sure, that’s reasonable all right, but that’s not the way it happened, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Studios Phil Spencer recently informed Destructoid.

“So I have a funny ‘behind the curtains’ story on Minecraft,” Spencer explained. “It was about a week before E3 last year when we made that deal as a first party. I believed in the project and we knew the studio. The graphic behind me last year on stage — if you were like, ‘What is that?’ it’s because it was created in one night. Even the people inside Microsoft, as they were looking at it, were thinking, ‘What is that Minecraft thing and why are we putting it on stage?'”

Read More

From paper to pinball: Creating The Avengers Chronicles tables
12 years ago

From paper to pinball: Creating The Avengers Chronicles tables

By  •  News

Released on XBLA last week, Zen Studios’ Marvel Pinball: The Avengers Chronicles DLC for Pinball FX2 offers up a quartet of new Marvel-themed tables for gamers to flip silver balls around for 800 MSP. According to the Penny Arcade Report, the foursome are the result of two years of collaborative work between Marvel and Zen. Each of the tables was in development for around eight months, with 75 percent of that time being spent on testing.

“The table I’ve been championing literally since we started this whole thing is The Infinity Gauntlet,” Chris Baker, the interactive manager at Marvel Entertainment, told the Penny Arcade Report. “I think it might actually be what prompted the idea for event-based tables in the first place, just because the idea of Infinity Gems becoming their own balls is so conducive to great video pinball missions. I think more than any table Zen has made so far, this is definitely a videogame and definitely not something you could see actualized in a traditional pinball form. One look at the Reality Gem in action, where the table warps your reality by literally flipping it upside down, and I think you’ll know what I mean.”

After going hands-on with the table at E3 and with the review copy, XBLA Fans has seen firsthand the genius of its intricate design. Zen’s blending of visually impressive comic book elements with satisfying silver ball play is the result of seasoned table designers, but the team behind Infinity Gauntlet wasn’t always capable of such innovative works, admitted Zen Creative Director Neils Sorens. “We started out as game developers who happened to be pinball fans,” he said. “Our lack of pinball design experience showed in our early work, which was derivative and doesn’t stand up well to what we’re putting out these days.”

Read More

E3 jetpacks-on preview: Hybrid
12 years ago

E3 jetpacks-on preview: Hybrid

It’s natural to have questions when playing a game for the first time. Questions like, “So this is Gears of War with jetpacks, right?” for instance. Or perhaps, “Is that guy shooting at me from the ceiling?” Maybe even, “What’s that sou — oh god, is that a cybernetic assassin?!” Gamers who partook in the beta for 5th Cell’s Hybrid already know the answers to those questions. For the uninitiated: no, yes, a cybernetic assassin and see: previous answer.

When a studio that is known and loved for creating a specific type of game — those in the Drawn to Life and Scribblenauts vein, in this case — announces it’s taking that brave leap of faith from the comforts of its nest to attempt a flight towards previously uncharted territory, there can be some trepidation among gamers, perhaps some skepticism, even. Take just one look at 5th Cell’s Summer of Arcade third-person shooter and it’s plain that it is one such departure. Five matches in a noisy convention hall (seriously, Activision, did Black Ops II have to be that loud?) is a sample size too small to categorically abandon all concerns over whether or not the studio has the chops to pull this thing off. However, it is large enough to glean that Hybrid has all the makings of the next XBLA shooter that will keep gamers up until the wee hours of the morning on many occasions. Now might be a good time to start banking up that sick leave at work.

Read More