Klei, developers of Shank and its recently released sequel, Shank 2, recently announced their new project, Mark of the Ninja. We have the fortune of bringing you another interview with Klei’s founder, Jamie Cheng. This time, he’s been kind enough to talk about Mark of the Ninja in some detail regarding the team’s approach to the game and their gameplay goals. We’ve also got preview content coming up after PAX East, so stick around after this!

Shank is definitely a kinetic, quick paced beat ’em up and never denies that, but Mark of the Ninja is no brawler; in fact it’s far from it. So we had to ask: why a stealth game?

According to Cheng, the team at Klei that’s been working on Mark of the Ninja grew up with ninjas and, simply put, they wanted to make a game that does ninjas justice. “When I play other stealth games you don’t feel like a ninja, you feel like Shank actually. We wanted one where you actually felt sneaky, felt like an actual ninja.”

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Shoot Many Robots was developed by Demiurge and produced by Ubisoft. It was released on March 14, 2012 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

Shoot Many Robots joins the realm of this recent genre deemed “shoot and loot” wherein players mow down enemies for stuff ad nauseum, laughing all the way (ha ha ha!). The premise is incredibly simple (as the title indicates) but the gameplay is solid, replayable and so magnificently supported by its features that this game’s simple concept becomes the key to its brilliance.

A sad sad day when robots destroy P. Walter Tugnut’s truck takes a turn for the worse when he finds out they also destroyed his house. Walter is able to escape in his RV where he must thenceforth embrace the best of both worlds on his crusade to eliminate the robot outbreak. Him and his three brothers (all named P. Walter Tugnut) travel through farmland, destroyed urban environments and through dark ominous factories to bring the fight to the mechanical menace.

This 2D sidescrolling shooter embraces simple platformer gameplay complete with hovering, slides and ground-pounds. Up to four players can play offline, online or any combination thereof. Each player collects loot in boxes dropped in crates and from robots which they can then purchase from the store with nuts they collect throughout each level. Equipment ranges from regular and special weapons to hats, backpacks and “pants” which alter the player’s stats and abilities.

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We totally missed January, but the Monthly Recap is back for February! Yaaay. There’s an immense amount of news this month because for some reason February is XBLA month. There’s roughly a million game announcements and DLC as well. I suggest hitting CTRL + F and searching for the copious news about your favorite game. Or games. Or just read all the news, because that’s a good idea.

Beyond the “things that happened”, there’s also several Friday Top Fives and Most Wanted’s this month as we continue to beef up our feature repertoire. Our chief feature, A Year In Review (2011) is definitely worth checking out for some insight into the fluctuations in XBLA cost versus review scores. Lastly, amongst the five podcasts is our Music Special which showcases some of the best XBLA soundtrack tunes since its inception.

Without further ado, welcome to February all over again! Read More

Everything you need to slice your way through
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The darkness is near, but the guide to it is here.
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Welcome back to the regiment, marine! That’s right, our very first big guide is back for the DLC nearly a year since the original release. Five new levels, two new survival levels, and over 50 pieces of loot and we’ve got the how-to to all of it. Big thanks to our Andrew Crews, Ryan Reynolds, Shawn Saris and his friend Tyler for helping us get through this challenging installment of Iron Brigade DLC. The DLC is currently available for 400 MSP and you can check out our review if you’re not sure you whether or not you should be jumping back into this game after it’s been so long.

For those of you who are diving back in or already have, we’ve got level guides to each of the five levels including what loot is acquired on those levels (so you don’t have to check the loot-specific guide) and strategies for getting gold medals (though they aren’t necessary for achievements this time around) and of course a wave breakdown for each. On top of that we’ve got the traditional loot guide complete with images for all the weapons, chassis and emplacements including all the stats and unlock locations. Lastly we have our guides to both survival maps, both of which provide quite a bit of a challenge. On top of that, each level and survival level have videos accompanying them, so do feel free to check those out if reading is too much work for you (the link can be found in the actual page if you want both). Without further a do, enjoy your guide to the Rise of the Martian Bear! Read More

Shank Characters:

Our full Shank 2 Guide will be launching next week. In the meantime, please enjoy this guide to the unlockable character skins which we will be updating throughout the week. 

Shank

Pros

• +10% Health

Unlocked by default

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ENEMIES! Goons everywhere, and the shanks are a-hungering for some combo money score bonus awesomeness! Seriously though, Survival is a tough gig. You’ve got 30 waves to live through and …
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[springboard type=”youtube” id=”AtR_0rSxBls” player=”xbla001″ width=”480″ height=”400″ ]

Fight ‘Til Dawn is timed, and it has a multiplier, that means a couple things should be taken into account at …
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Radio #6 – (1:50)

Enter the security booth again and the radio is there. Again.

Dr. Meadows – (2:25)

Head north east towards the massive drums of… whatever is …
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