About Brandin Tyrrel

If you haven’t heard by now, Fez II was officially put to pasture. The news came via Fez‘s polarizing creator Phil Fish, who took to Twitter over the weekend, …
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Travel to exotic places, meet strange and interesting creatures, and punch them in the face. That’s Zeno Clash 2 in a nutshell, picking up right where the original left off. The first-person brawler is unique, to say the least, and available today for 1200 MSP in an effort to start your weekend off with some bare-knuckle fisticuffs.

Though Zeno Clash 2 continues onward from the first game in the series, it boasts a few improvements. There’s the fleshed out combat system, more environmental variety and some spruced up visuals, pumping additional power into the surreal aesthetic. If you never got around to playing Zeno Clash, piecing together the series’ bizarre universe will be no easy task. However, developer ACE Team has taken the necessary steps to allow new players a chance to catch up on the unique story.

To see how the game handles, the foot fist way, check out the gameplay trailer after the jump. If you’re still on the fence, rest assured we’ll have our official review up as soon as it’s ready.

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By now you know the drill. Another bundle with a short expiration date serves up three Xbox Live Arcade games for one low price. This time, it’s the Be A Hero …
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Meet Haris Orkin, writer and voice director behind the critically acclaimed Call of Juarez: Gunslinger. He assisted Techland on the first Juarez game back in ’05, when he suggested the polish developer hire an American writer to get the dialogue right. He’s been working with them ever since.

In a ‘making of’ documentary posted by Ubisoft, Orkin recounts the process behind how Gunslinger came to fruition. From the beginning when Techland didn’t know if they needed a traditional story since this was a “downloadable game”, through the process of  developing Silas Greaves and presenting the tall tale history of the Wild West.

“They came to me with the idea of the entire game being narrated a la Bastion,” Orkin recounts. “They told me they wanted narrative tricks in the game; that things in the game world would change depending on the narrators story. I thought that idea was pretty brilliant and mirrored exactly how the history of the West came to be written in the first place.”

To delve into that rich history of the Wild West, Techland wanted the larger-than life personas that cut out a living during the time. “They wanted the game to feature some of the most iconic Western legends and characters from the past,” Orkin says. “Together we crafted a story based on that premise. The character would be someone who brushed against all those famous characters.”

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505 Games has announced Rekoil, Plastic Piranha’s competitive first-person shooter, is headed to Xbox Live Arcade. Heralding Rekoil as a return to the balanced, infantry-based action of yesteryear, the title forgoes modern trends like killstreaks insisting that “a player’s skill is always at the forefront.”

What’s more interesting is the heavy emphasis Plastic Piranha has placed on the modding community. Rekoil is designed from the ground up to allow for flexible gameplay configuration. Whether that be community support with modding tools, or allowing players to set up servers based on their preferences, Rekoil‘s class-based combat should be diverse enough to accommodate any play style.

So what does this mean for Xbox Live Arcade? A closed ecosystem that doesn’t support modding, an eSports scene or the flexibility of the PC? We reached out to 505 Games for a better understanding of how these marquee features might be integrated into a closed, digital platform. We’ve yet to hear back, but if that changes, we’ll update accordingly.

For now we can only assume Rekoil will come to XBLA as a packaged first-person shooter, and pretty set in its ways. Without modding and server configuration, we’ll have to wait to see some gameplay before we have something to really get excited about. To catch a glimpse at the locales you may encounter when Rekoil lands, check out the gallery after the jump.

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Thunder Wolves was developed by Most Wanted Entertainment and published by bitComposer Entertainment. It was released June 12, 2013 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

Thunder Wolves is about one thing, and one thing only: blowing stuff up. There’s not so much a plot, as a collection of directives loosely stringing one over-the-top level to another, always boiling down to the same principle. Everything painted with red gets blasted to smithereens. There are softer moments, though whether Thunder Wolves is legitimately reaching for depth or just parodying cheeseball melodrama doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, you’ll likely foster stronger emotional bonds with your arsenal of helicopters than the sensational stereotypes piloting them.

Across the game’s thirteen levels you’ll pilot as many choppers, ranging from attack to recon, all loaded for bear with a variety of ordinance. In rare cases, you’ll swap out of the pilot seat to perform an on-rail shooting segment, lob bombs from a circling gunship or drive a dump truck. These instances mix up the gameplay but are never more engaging than the core experience, annihilating enemy bases and stemming the flow of oncoming waves. That’s really what Thunder Wolves has to offer – a simple, straightforward exercise in lighting things up from your volitant chariot.

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Mars: War Logs, the atmospheric cyberpunk action RPG, is finally coming to Xbox Live Arcade. Announced late last year, War Logs had always targeted XBLA, but took a detour for an early PC release. Fortunately, Roy Temperance and his murky past will finally arrive on the red planet this Friday, July 26 for 1200 MSP.

We’ve logged quite a bit of information ourselves about Spiders’ upcoming offering. From their cleverly named Silk engine that weaves War Logs‘ impressive visuals to the fluid combat system, lifting more than a little inspiration from Batman: Arkham Asylum.

To get a sense of what’s in store for those looking to take the plunge into the martian world, hit the jump to hear Spiders’ motivations behind the ambitious downloadable title.

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The next bundle to land on Xbox Live Arcade launches today. Dubbed the Space Shooter Bundle, the package sends four titles into a modest orbit around 1600 MSP, saving you …
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Microsoft Studios, the digital publishing arm of the Washington-based mother ship, recently cleared some time on their Twitch channel to host the folks from Signal Studios and their upcoming free-to-play RPG, Ascend: Hand of Kul. For over an hour, Ascend‘s developers fielded general questions about the game, the ongoing closed beta and an eventual release.

While an exact date hasn’t been locked down, Lead Designer Ian Scott commented on the ballpark release window. “We don’t know specifically but I would guess over the course of the next couple of months,” Scott said. “More and more people will have access [to the beta] and then the game’s going to kind of gradually launch into open release.”

“We’re going through the process of doing another update which will open up more stuff to get to the end of the game,” explained President of Signal Studios, D.R. Albright III. “When we do that, which should hopefully be within a few weeks, we’re going to release the rest of the beta codes. Then we’re going to update again [based on] that information, and that’s when it’s going to go live.”

The Ascend beta has been running strong since the beginning of the month, welcoming players who originally signed up to get a taste of what’s to come. While we can’t get into specifics about the beta content, it’s a small sample of the early game and from what we’ve played, you should be excited to get your hands on it. But it’s not all fun and games.

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Another day, another bundle of Xbox Live Arcade games designed to fill out your digital library for one low cost. This time around Microsoft’s packaged five action titles for …
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