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Straw Poll Wednesday: Which Arcade Next Game Will Sell the Most Copies?
12 years ago

Straw Poll Wednesday: Which Arcade Next Game Will Sell the Most Copies?

 

[poll id=”3″]

Arcade Next is finally upon us with Trials Evolution launching earlier this morning. We are pretty excited about all four titles, but we’d love to hear …
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Awesomenauts blends chaos and strategy…and space frogs
12 years ago

Awesomenauts blends chaos and strategy…and space frogs

Awesomenauts‘ zany 1980s look is immediately appealing. Inspiration for the graphics was drawn from Galaxy Rangers and the Earthworm Jim and Bucky O’Hare franchises. The bright shades and disparate characters that clash in the outer-space battlefields send a message that the game is something fun and ridiculous. Aside from everything playing out on a 2D plane, though, nothing felt especially exciting when I first took the controller in my hands at PAX East. My options were pretty much limited to jumping or shooting in the early-going and death came swiftly. That all changed after building up some coin and getting the hang of what was going on. It was then that I began experiencing the joy and gratification the game’s silly character design and pretty colors had initially implied I would.

Playing as a cowboy character named Sheriff Lonestar I ran into the thick of things at the outset and began firing his laser blaster at the mindless drones marching ceaselessly towards my team’s first turret. Someone on the opposition was playing as the heavy robot class and he was relying on his thick armor and powerful weaponry to shred up poor little Lonestar. There are multiple levels to platform between in each map, but the side-scrolling nature of Awesomenauts still made it feel like there wasn’t much room for evasion. That coupled with the fact that there didn’t appear to be any way to recover from damage was making the situation look grim for our team of XBLA Fans writers.

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XBLAFancast Episode 57 – Eightieser
12 years ago

XBLAFancast Episode 57 – Eightieser

While we did record a regular show last week in addition to our three PAX specials, it got lost in the dark recesses of my hard drive never to be heard from again. So here we are back with a regular show, minus one Andrew Crews. Myself, Perry and Todd struggle on without him though and discuss some of the big releases from the past week. We hit on The Splatters and Skullgirls but the bulk of the game talk goes to Fez, don’t worry though there’s no spoilers!

Perry rushes through what little news there is before taking the opportunity to talk about some of his favourite XBLA games he saw at PAX.

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.

[podcast]https://xblafans.com/xblafancast/XBLAFancastEp57.mp3[/podcast]

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Trials Tuesday: Mindbender
12 years ago

Trials Tuesday: Mindbender

We’re making a quick exception for this week’s Trials Tuesday post by showing off a track made by Redlynx that will be included in Trials  Evolution when the game …
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Community Manager @twixprintmatic explains our contest process
12 years ago

Community Manager @twixprintmatic explains our contest process

Hi, my name is Andrew and I’m the Community Manager here at XBLA Fans. You might know me better as the guy running the twitter account that gives out codes for games every day. As you can imagine, I get asked a ton of questions about our contests. I strongly feels that openness leads to a better experience online and in life. So I figured I would explain my processes to you all a little in case you were curious about what I do and why I do it. So let’s talk a little bit about contests, shall we? Read More

PAX East: Getting ready for Minecraft
12 years ago

PAX East: Getting ready for Minecraft

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.

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What we are playing: April 15
12 years ago

What we are playing: April 15

What we are playing is a weekly column published on Sunday. Various members of the team let the world know which games have had them hooked over the past week …
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What we expect to see made in the Trials Evolution editor
12 years ago

What we expect to see made in the Trials Evolution editor

We love community content. Mods are what make good games great and great games love affairs. Mods can make a game last long after developers and publishers have lost interest in it. But mods are a bit of a taboo thing on consoles. How do you do it without sacrificing security of the system? It’s kept great expansions from console gamers, but RedLynx is one of the few that actually embraces mods with an in-game editor.

We’ve seen the amazing things that can be done in Trials HD, but Trials Evolution looks to throw away everything you know about ‘weak’ console mods. Its pro editor unlocks all of the power of the engine, and we’ve already seen RedLynx create a number of crazy scenarios — from Angry Birds to ‘Splosion Man. Here’s what we expect to see from the talent Trials community. We’re not saying these are guaranteed, just merely suggestions:

Trials 2 and Trials HD remakes – Obvious? Maybe, but we’re still throwing it out there.  Director of Marketing Jason Bates already stated that RedLynx fully expects remakes, and we’re hoping they’re right. And you know what? We’ll fill our hard drive with as many tracks and minigames as folks make.

Well, maybe not all the Extreme ones . . .

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XBLA’s Most Wanted: Star Wars Jedi Academy
12 years ago

XBLA’s Most Wanted: Star Wars Jedi Academy

In the late 90’s and early-mid 2000’s LucasArts was king. Games like Grim Fandango, Star Wars Battlefront, Star Wars Jedi Knight, Mercenaries and Secret Weapons over Normandy sucked gamers into their respective universes with their compelling stories and addictive gameplay. But while we love each of these games, one stands paramount above the rest: Star Wars: Jedi Academy.

The fourth game in the Dark Forces series, this title saw series protagonist Kyle Katarn take a back seat to Jedi Padawan Jaden Korr, a blank slate character. Players could customize Korr, changing clothes, lightsaber hilt and color, fighting style, force powers, even the species and gender. It was the first time in the history of Star Wars gaming that the playable character was whatever the player wanted them to be. The campaign allowed players to pick and choose missions as they saw fit, and the multiplayer had a number of strong game types and maps to choose from.

We miss it. We want it back.

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PAX East: Pulling the strings in Fable Heroes
12 years ago

PAX East: Pulling the strings in Fable Heroes

Fable has never been the most serious or mature of RPG franchises. Players were as likely to save the kingdom and behave regally as they were to let one rip. After gong hands-on with the 4-player hack ‘n slash Fable Heroes at PAX East, though, it’s clear that Lionhead Studios has moved the series into more family-friendly territory than it has in the past. Up to four players take control of cutesy characters that look like marionettes and slash and spell cast their way through swaths of hobbes and other native baddies of Albion. You move in a linear path and mow down the monsters that flood the screen en route to a boss fight — a giant beetle that shoots projectiles and slams into the ground in the case of the PAX demo that several of us from XBLA Fans played in Boston this past weekend.

Oversized gold coins drop when enemies are overcome, which creates a near-constant scramble to get your hands on more than the other members of your party. The coins are used to buy upgrades in the time between stages, and they can also be transferred into Fable: The Journey. In addition, any of the 12 puppets that gamers can take control of in Heroes will pop up in their inventories in the forthcoming Kinect game.

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