Home alone on a Friday evening? You could do a lot worse than enlist with the XBLAFans team tonight (8-11 PM ET, 5-8 PM PT, 1-4 AM GMT) as they engage in some friendly warfare in hit-Arcade title Iron Brigade. You’ll need Iron Brigade and an Xbox Live Gold account to join in the ruckus, of course. More details, including who you’ll need to contact to snag a spot in tonight’s playdate, here.
Playing through Halo Anniversary this weekend with my brother-in-law I had a very eye opening experience. After all of the PR fluff and critic reviews based more on nostalgia I found myself more critical of the quality of the updates to the original Halo: CE. I wondered why I was knocking all of these little issues I found when I was having a blast playing through a game that can still suck me in. Then it hit me: Bungie didn’t work on Anniversary, and that’s who I was comparing 343′s work against. Sure, Saber Interactive provided the new HD graphics layer and Certain Affinity developed all of the multiplayer maps, but as the primary developer 343 had the end say as to whether something qualified as Halo-worthy or not.
We’ve known that the narrator for XBLA his Bastion is amazing, but his most recent work takes the (wedding) cake. Fan Jay Greschner contacted developer Supergiant Games, wanting to get narrator Logan Cunningham to do some lines for his wedding. They were happy to oblige, and after a few e-mails he was sent four custom narrations for his wedding. These clips were played at the appropriate times during the wedding, which “completely floored” his new wife. To read Jay’s story and hear the wedding’s narration, check out Ars Technica. Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Greschner, the luckiest Bastion fans in the world in more ways than one.
Update: While the NewEgg deal says expired, it is still valid. Also, Amazon is offering a similar deal $40 for Halo Anniversary with $10 Amazon gift card.
It’s not exactly XBLA news, but Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary will be out November 15. If you’re willing to wait a few days for shipping NewEgg.com has a preorder for USD $30 (normally $40). When you consider that the multiplayer map pack alone will likely be 1200 MSP when it gets released to everyone it’s a great value. We also checked with GameStop. They’ll be taking in trades on Anniversary for USD $18 initially, meaning that if you just wanted the map pack you’ll have picked it up for roughly 960 MSP. It’s quite the deal, and unlike so many console bundles, this deal isn’t a wallet breaker. We highly suggest picking it up, especially if you’ve never played through the original Halo.
It’s no secret that Plants vs. Zombies is a wildly popular game with its own special sense of humor. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the new music video, sung by world-renowned hip-hop artist Cray-Z. We’re not exactly sure what caused PopCap to make this, or what the song even means, but we do know how much joy we got out of watching this.
We loved Crimson Alliance in our review, and evidently the folks over at Penny Arcade are playing it too. In Wednesday’s strip Tycho and Gabe poked some fun at the in-game purchasing system, which lets you buy in-game currency in exchange for real-life money. Crimson Alliance is the first game to adopt this kind of free-to-play system. It also lets you play early stages of the game for free and purchase characters individually if you want to proceed. Frankly, we think Gabe looks pretty pimpin’, and we don’t care what it cost.
In case you missed it, we put together an epic Crimson Alliance guide. If you’re having trouble with the game or need some help getting the last couple achievements, check it out here.
Source: Penny Arcade
Super Meat Boy is nearly one year old and Team Meat are planning on celebrating for the whole month of November. Super Meat Boy was first released on XBLA October 20 2010 so why not celebrate with them by having a drink out of a Super Meat Boy Mug. The mug features all the characters in the Xbox and PC versions of the game and a limited number of them are signed and numbered though there are plenty unsigned available too.
Bottoms up!
We know some of you are having issues with the site, specifically with older posts. Basically when you click Older Posts you get taken back to July 14 of this year, the day we switched to a new server.
We know it’s annoying, and we don’t want to lose you as a reader. In fact, we want your help to get some data on the issue as we’re having a tough time nailing down what is wrong. What we need is a post in the comments below (see the end of this post for what we need). In exchange we’ll give away one XBLIG code for every 10 unique posts (read: not spam). Be sure to log in to the comment system via Twitter so we have a way to contact you directly. (You also need to be following us on Twitter so we can DM you the code)
Here’s what we need:
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Once you have that post up, try the flushing the DNS cache by doing the following:
Next clear your browser’s cache. See instructions for your browser here. Once you’ve completed both steps reply to your own post and tell us if you are still having the issue. Please note that the more replies we have for those who tried this solution the easier it is to diagnose so these replies count towards your chance to earn an XBLIG game.
We truly appreciate you as our readers, and we mean that. We often talk about the community. Please help us fix this annoying issue for everyone!
Move over Wills and Kate, XBLA royality James Silva and Michelle Juett of Ska Studios just got engaged. Yesterday at PAX, during a special showing of their 2012 XBLA release, Charlie Murder, James’s onscreen character got down on one knee and popped the question. Michelle tweeted earlier today:
@jamezila proposed to me in a graveyard in Charlie Murder. D’awwww. He knows me.
Our friends over at Play XBLA saw the whole thing and kindly sent us this picture.
The happy couple will presumably be getting started on their plans for the big day but as James tweeted, first things first:
Neither of us can figure out how to change our Facebook statuses on the mobile site though! XD
We at XBLAFans wish them all the best and can’t help but wonder if they just unlocked a new Achievement?
Three years ago today The Behemoth gave us Castle Crashers, a game that truly brought the brawler back to the limelight. It’s hard to believe that the four colored knights have been hacking away at enemies for that long. Congrats, The Behemoth, on all your success (over two million served!) and we wish you the best in the future!
*Update*
Thanks to The Behemoth for posting a pic of the card we dropped off. Only one of us made it to PAX, but rest assured it’s from all of us! Big thanks to our Consulting Editor Kaitlyn Chantry for presenting the card and cheesecake. Ain’t she a gem?
