Feature List Archive

5

Editorial: Are gamers shopaholics, too?

By
Steve Melton
– May 16, 2012Posted in: Feature List, Features

It frightens me to think how much money I’ve spent over the years on video games. True, I may not be walking down Rodeo Drive with 20 handbags full of dresses, jewelry and shoes, but I really wonder how many of us could give the traditional shopaholic a run for her money when it comes to the amount of money we’ve dropped on games, guides, consoles, and the like. Considering consoles range from the 2-500 USD when they’re released and games have always been in the 50-60 USD range. Game guides are roughly half that price, as are controllers. Other game peripherals can be as much as twice the cost of a game.

Yikes.

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0

XBLAFancast Episode 61 – Your junk’s gonna get fried

By
Ross Adams
– May 15, 2012Posted in: Feature List, Podcast

It has been a pretty big few weeks for XBLA, so fittingly it’s a pretty big episode. We start things off by of course talking about Minecraft, myself and Todd played a ton and we’re sort of beguiled by it.

Perry brings lots of news, so much that Todd has to jump in to tell us all about some big Awesomenauts leaks. We round things out with a big twitter topic and discussion of the Remember the days game.

Please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on iTunes. We appreciate it! Check us out on twitter (@XBLAFans) where you can win codes for games, give us feedback or just ask a question. We are also now on Stitcher, so you can stream the show on your smartphone, give it a go!

Big thanks to Chris Green for the awesome theme music, be sure to check out his site BlurredEdge and why not follow him on twitter too @BlurredEdge.

 

RSS | MP3 | iTunes

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0

Awesomenauts Fully Awesome Guide

By
Todd Schlickbernd
– May 15, 2012Posted in: Feature List, Guide hub, Guides

Making guides for competitive games is never easy, and never simple. As such, we’ve poured the knowledge acquired from 35 hours worth Awesomenauts, 100+ online games and the assurance of a 1500+ rating (the leaderboard position changes often, but it’s ~50). Hopefully that’s enough assurance for you that you’re in good hands. Thanks to many XBLA staffers and gamers alike who helped form this knowledge.

Since this guide is for a competitive multiplayer we must stress that things change over time and we cannot guarantee that the strategies employed at the time of writing this guide will stand the test of time as balance patches are released. However! We will update the guide in conjunction with DLC characters are notable patches which have overt effects on the function of different characters. For instance, of Yuri’s mines go from 30 base damage to 32, we’re not going to tell you that. However, if he can all of a sudden use his Time Warp without stopping, we will update that.

There is no map DLC planned for now, but there are at least two characters. They will make their way into this guide at the time of release along with all subsequent releases. For now, please enjoy what we have and do feel free to offer variants to character builds in the comments! While we feel we have chosen good builds and outlined some interesting variants where we found them, it takes a community to find some of the good stuff! So please, if you have questions or suggestions email them to us at guides@xblafans.com or tweet us @xblafans or our guide coordinator directly @emessai.

If you’re new to Awesomenauts, we highly recommend checking out the “How To” before the rest of the guide.\

We’ve added some videos with commentary from our Video Coordinator, Shawn Saris. If reading is too much work, his quick rundowns of the characters will give you a starting off point for understanding the various Awesomenauts. If you need more info after the video, read through the guide! That’s what it’s for.

How To Succeed in Awesomenauts including Tips and Tricks

Character Guides

Map Strategies

Thank you for Awesomenaut-ing.

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5

What we are playing: May 13

By
Mark Seymour
– May 13, 2012Posted in: Feature List, Features, What we are playing

What we are playing is a weekly column published on Sunday. Select members of the team talk about the games they’ve been playing over the past week and which they’re most looking forward to. 

Perry Jackson - Not too much XBLA but I did get to play Retro City Rampage at a Playstation event this week. It was on a Vita but it’ll be an engrossing, crazy experience on any platform.

Matt Liparota - A crazy week for me, what with an upcoming move and my girlfriend’s college graduation; in my spare time, though, I managed to dig a little more into Minecraft (Get it? Dig? Minecraft? Mine? Oh, nobody understands me). Looking forward to a bit of a lighter week coming up, hopefully with lots of gaming involved (Max Payne 3anyone?).

Nathan Bowring - Can’t talk, I’ve got a ton of obsidian to mine in Minecraft but I can’t find any diamonds!

James Heiger -  Its been a really slow week of gaming for me. I am still chipping away at Trials Evolution. I also fired up Pinball FX2 for a bit too.

Nick Santangelo - I played a little bit of Awesomenauts and a whole lot of Halo Reach. It’s nice that 343 is putting more appropriate credit rewards for completing challenges in and focusing the challenges more on matchmaking modes, which I Bungie probably should have done from the start. Still, the progress bar towards Legend moves absurdly slow, so I’ll probably still be ranked Hero when Halo 4 hits no matter how much I play the game between now and then. Anyhow, I also played someXenoblade Chronicles, but I’m making slow progress in it. The “good” news is that the retail release schedule for the next several months is a barren wasteland, so there won’t be much to distract me from it.

John Laster - Awesome. Awesome. Awesomenauts!

Ross Adams - It was a fairly regular week for games and then, Minecraft.

Ben Fisher - Still rolling along on Prototype 2.

Steve Melton - Picked up Forza Motorsport 4 for myself and Cars 2 (the video game) for my daughter and myself. Who knew that a movie-franchise game would be the perfect answer to an Xbox version of Mario Kart? Cars 2 is awesome.

Christine Mitchell - Well I wasn’t playing Fez that’s for sure, since my game save corrupted (sob!). Instead I settled for more Fable Heroes and a wee bit of Dance Central 2 while I wait for the patch.

Todd Schlickbernd -I’ve been all up in and around XBLA this past week. I’ve now got over 30 hours of Awesomenauts in and over 100 games, and proud of it. A few games a day has been tons of fun. I also played some Trials Evolution with friends over the past week and Castle Crashers as well. Lastly, I ended up playing waaay too much Minecraft. Never wanted it for PC, wasn’t going to pay for it on Xbox, then I got it for free; I’ve never had a game try so hard to get played.

Mark Seymour - Chowed down on my words and spent the last few days building sky-railways and portals into the bowels of hell in Minecraft. Also preparing myself for the almighty punch to the face that will herald Max Payne’s long-awaited return. It has been far, far too long.

No lack of choice on XBLA at the moment. What’s been tickling your fancy over the last seven days? 

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Weekly Roundup: May 13

By
Perry Jackson
– May 13, 2012Posted in: Feature List, Features, Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup compiles all the biggest news stories, reviews, and releases from the week into one handy post on the weekends.

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8

Friday Top Five: Top five XBLA end game songs

By
Andrew Crews
– May 11, 2012Posted in: Feature List, Features, Friday Top Five, Media, Videos

Last week we took a look at the top five XBLA in-game songs that help establish a mood while you venture through five various games. But for this week let’s take a look at the top five XBLA end game songs that make the payoff for making your way through a campaign that much more sweet. These are the songs that mark an epic ending to a great adventure. The kind of song so good, it’s almost worth paying through the game a second time just to hear it again. But luckily we have YouTube for those of us who want listen over and over again. And with that said, let’s take a look at our list:

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25

No splitscreen mining for SDTV owners

By
Steve Melton
– May 9, 2012Posted in: Feature List, News

Folks who can’t pony up the dough for an HDTV are up in arms over the lack of splitscreen  gameplay in Minecraft. It’s not broken or anything–at least that’s what they say. But SDTV players are entirely locked out of any splitscreen games, the option only available if your console is hooked up to some sort of HD output, Kotaku reports. It’s left some players on the Xbox.com forums completely clueless as to the problem, while others up in arms. It’s something that most reviews, including our own, didn’t catch–so yes, SDTV gamers are few and far between.

We’ve spoken our distaste about this recently, but this goes far beyond not being able to read text. This is locking players out of major features, players who spent money with no warning they’d be locked out. Players who are confused and mad. Take a look at just a few of the complaints below.

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0

XBLAFancast Episode 60 – The Misadventures of Scuba Steve

By
Ross Adams
– May 8, 2012Posted in: Feature List, Podcast

A return to the full regular roster leads to a slightly longer show than usual this week. Myself, Perry, Todd and Andrew get straight down to business with game talk, starting with Fable Heroes. We weren’t too keen on it ourselves but you can check out Christine’s review for a more in depth look at the game. After that is a lengthy discussion of Awesomenauts, in which Todd tells us all about MOBAs while Andrew and I lament our disconnection issues.

Perry of course brings all the big news stories from the past week, then Todd uses this weeks Todd Talk to ponder bots in multiplayer games and what their roles should be.

Andrew rounds things out with Crews’ Community Corner, this weeks remember the days game is Golf: Tee It Up!. Be sure to send your thoughts to us on twitter.

Please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on iTunes. We appreciate it! Check us out on twitter (@XBLAFans) where you can win codes for games, give us feedback or just ask a question. We are also now on Stitcher, so you can stream the show on your smartphone, give it a go!

Big thanks to Chris Green for the awesome theme music, be sure to check out his site BlurredEdge and why not follow him on twitter too @BlurredEdge.

 

RSS | MP3 | iTunes

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0

Trials Tuesday: Week of May 8

By
Steve Melton
– May 8, 2012Posted in: Feature List, Features, Trials Tuesday

Another week, another set of great tracks. This time around we’ve upped how many we’re showcasing. Too many great creations come out each week. To download these tracks by entering Track Central, selecting Get Tracks, then pressing X to search. Enter the gamertag below to find the track. Be aware that the search is case sensitive. A big thanks to the Trials Evolution community for the borrowed videos. Hit the jump to see this week’s picks.

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8

What we are playing: May 6

By
Mark Seymour
– May 6, 2012Posted in: Feature List, Features, What we are playing

What we are playing is a weekly column published on Sunday. Select members of the team talk about the games they’ve been playing over the past week and which they’re most looking forward to. 

James Heiger - I played through The Walking Dead Episode 1 in one sitting and loved every minute of it. Will probably play through it again before the next episode drops. I have continued to improve my times in Trials Evolution. Should be able to achieve all golds at least up to Hard. The Gigatrack could be a problem though.

Nick Santangelo - I sunk several hours into Awesomenauts this week. It’s a lot fun even though I’ve been losing most matches. I also started in on Xenoblade Chronicles, which brought the revelation that my Wii is dying — getting it started takes about 20 minutes of tinkering. I have no desire to buy a new one at this late hour, so hopefully it holds up a bit longer.

Nathan Bowring - I’ve been continuing my trek through Skyrim, besting my own times and finding squirrels in Trials Evolution, and began playing Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary for the first time. Also, was blown away by The Walking Dead.

Christine Mitchell - It was a busy week in the real world for me but managed to get some Fable Heroes in and some Left 4 Dead 2 in over the weekend.

Perry Jackson - The Perfect Strangers game, over and over and over. Also Awesomenauts.

John Laster - Done with school for the summer, which means I will finally have time to play games again. I started things off with a couple marathon sessions of Minecraft. I can’t wait for all of you to have it so that we can build things together. Also, Awesomenauts is amazing. You all should definitely check it out. I love the music. Fantastic!

Mark Seymour - I hooked the PS2 up for some honorary rounds of Flame Tag on Aztec after reading an insightful but utterly dismal account of Free Radical’s final days. They don’t make first person shooters like that anymore, regrettably.

Et vous? Has Arcade Next topped House Party thus far? Who’s going to be joining John in the fathomless mines this Wednesday? Did anybody buy Fable Heroes? Let us know.

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