About Michael Cheng

Every cat has its day. From the publishers Team 17 and developers Italic Pig comes an action-adventure puzzle-platformer featuring the legendary Schrödinger’s Cat. One day, a catastrophic event occurs that causes all primitive particles to escape from The Particle Zoo. The zoo is locked down and emergency services are called into action. Join the cat as he collects his army quarks to create up to 14 unique abilities to solve problems across 30+ levels of gameplay to defeat the forces of evil.

Schrödinger’s Cat and the Raiders of the Lost Quark comes to Xbox One for a price of $9.99 on May 13.

Check below the jump for a trailer.

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Glory to the days of Robotron 2084.

If that is something you find yourself saying, Ultratron might be for you.

Set in a world where all humans have died out, one remaining humanoid battle droid sets out to avenge the human race. Along the way, many enemies such as Turrets, Chasers, Spawners and Minelayers attempt to impede the path of the battle droid’s quest in 40+ levels of glowing neon. If that’s not enough, four giant bosses- Ieiunitas, Bellum, Lues and Letum will attempt to give the battle droid some trouble.

Ultratron is a twin stick shooter that features retro-futuristic sound, graphics and a simulated CRT-curve to take the player back to the days of retro. The game will be available for purchase at the price of $9.99, €9.99 or £7.99 and is said to have launch discounts as well.

Check below to see a PC trailer for Ultratron.

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Project Root was developed by OPQAM and published by Reverb Publishing on Xbox One. It will release on April 28, 2015 for $9.99. A copy was provided by Reverb Publishing for review purposes.

Shoot-em-ups are one of my favorite pastimes. There is an odd sense of satisfaction from seeing bullets fly by your ship (or equal equivalent) while shooting your own back and trying to survive. Failure occurs often, there is a thrill in seeing how long you’ll last before dying. In the old days, you’d coin feed an arcade machine until you (eventually) beat it. Nowadays, most shmups have reached niche status and rarely see support in the retail market. For every Deathsmiles or Akai Katana that sees a localization, there is another title like Eschatos and Ginga Force that fans hope lucks out with a region-free Japanese release. Occasionally, we saw XBLA shmup releases such as Triggerheart Exelica and Guwange, which are compact experiences. Project Root is one of the first shmups to reach the Xbox One and try something different: free roaming. As a fan of the genre and sub-genres like bullet hells, I was excited to try it.

Project Root can be fun. It really can be. However, the amount of time and effort to create that opportunity far exceeds the benefit. The game relies heavily on the player upgrading their ship to succeed, yet the experience system to level up for upgrades is atrocious. A majority of your experience will come from a first-time level completion bonus. If you can’t beat a level, you’re in for a miserable time. As is typical for progression systems, the other way to gain XP is to gradually fill the experience bar by killing enemies. The rate of gain, however, is slow, especially on the first few levels where you need it most. It takes one to two hours to level up once via killing enemies, and all of that effort is for a modicum of XP; it may not even be enough for the upgrade you’re pining for. Tack on having zero checkpoints and it becomes a frustrating sortie of trial and error. Adding salt to the wound, upgrades and progress do not carry over to other difficulties, so all of your hard work doesn’t matter if you want to try something harder or cruise through something easier. Outside of free roam, Project Root does nothing new or exciting to add to the genre. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone outside of the absolute diehard shmup fans that must have every shmup game.

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Aaru’s Awakening was developed and published by Lumenox on Xbox One. It was released on April 21, 2015 for $14.99. A copy was provided by Lumenox for review purposes.

Despite having cleared every level and obtaining all gold medal times in a day, a strange sense of self-doubt looms about my opinions on Aaru’s Awakening. Indeed, this title contains some fantastic features and tries a few things differently from many other games on the market. However, Aaru’s Awakening holds questionable design choices that have left me disgusted and passively angry. After all the trials and tribulations, I’m fed up with this game. As a platforming experience, this title falls somewhere between too difficult for casual play but easy enough for enthusiasts.

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Werewolves in space. Yeah, that’s actually a thing.

Wales Interactive’s Infinity Runner is a first person endless runner featuring a prisoner that is desperately trying to escape the confines of a ship that is falling apart while avoiding dangerous traps that are inside. The character’s movements in-game are inspired by mixed martial arts and parkour. Somewhere along the line, the legend of a werewolf exists in confines of the ship.

Features of this game includes 14 action filled levels, a story and arcade mode, werewolves in space and a wolf leveling system.

Infinity Runner is planned to release for a low price of $6.99 and is coming to Xbox One on April 22. The game will be on the Xbox Live Marketplace in a few hours. This title’s concept may be difficult to describe in words so look below for the launch trailer of this first person sci-fi action game.

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The internet can be a strange place. Sometimes you end up finding things you weren’t looking for, like the release date to the Xbox One version of AirMech Arena.

Thanks to the Uplay App on Xbox One, that date looks to be May 11, 2015. There has been no official announcement on the internet and there are equal possibilities that the day may change without notice. However, with a generic Spring 2015 release window for the title, AirMech Arena will be coming soon regardless of this date sticks.

For those that may not know, AirMech Arena is a free to play Real Time Strategy/MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena)/twin stick shoot-em-up that pits a team of up to three players against up to three players or CPUS in fast paced action with a goal of taking down the other team’s fortress. This game has seen success on the Xbox 360 and is looking to expand this success to the Xbox One.

Uplay has been kind enough to also upload the actions that can be done to earn Uplay points and the rewards that can be purchased with Uplay points. Take a look below to see what those are.

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Tower of Guns was developed by Grip Games and Terrible Posture Games and published by Grip Games on Xbox One. It was released on April 9, 2015 for $14.99. A copy was provided by Grip Games for review purposes.

Tower of Guns is another in a series of recent roguelike games to reach the Xbox One via the ID@Xbox program. At first glance, it’s is a throwback to old school first-person shooters in both design and gameplay. While unexciting to start with, Tower of Guns grows on the player with the strange charm of its story mode and the straightforwardness of its objective. After that, it will make you rage. Roguelike games tend to spawn enemy and room patterns that will eventually kill the player in brutal manners. In some games, defeat can be deflating and cause the player to not want to play again. Meanwhile, Tower of Guns is a fantastic game for players who refuse to lose and find motivation in trying until they win. Even if you lose, progress is made toward unlocking new guns and new perks to use for future attempts to finally beat the tower. It’s a win/win for all (not a guarantee). So what do I like about the title? Take a look below.

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Some players were lucky enough to get their happy on a little early yesterday. On Thursday, April 9 at 5:00 pm PST/8:00 pm EST, Happy Wars for Xbox One …
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The Giana Sisters are back for another adventure; this time up to a four person multiplayer race in local co-op or online matches. As a game inspired by Micro Machines and Speed Runners, Giana Sisters: Dream Runners is a race to place first and leave everyone else in the dust. Obstacles look to impede your path and your opponents aren’t going to stop racing if you stumble.

Five characters are usable to navigate the maps but only 4 versions of Giana will be available at first. Eventually a ninja and a robot will also be unlockable. The developers wish for the races to be fair so all characters will have the same skill set.

Players will be able to dash, twirl, crouch and use something called gem boost which speeds up a character for a short time at the cost of all gems on hand.

Sound intriguing? Check out the trailer after the jump.

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Resident Evil Revelations 2 was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. The last episode was released on March 17, 2015 and the complete season is available for $24.99 on Xbox One. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

Alas
We’ve finally reached the end of the crossroads, and it’s been a long journey. You can find reviews of individual episodes at the Resident Evil Revelations 2 hub, which gives finer details on each leg of the campaign. If I were to score to just the campaign, it would be “Try It.” The campaign is somewhat short but fair at its current price tag, and it has a bunch of interesting concepts filled with exciting highs and lows — and a few other concepts that just didn’t work very well. It is not, however, the only gameplay option available.

Resident Evil Revelations 2‘s Raid mode is an arcade-like experience featuring players hunting down hordes of enemies in an arena-like setting while trying to survive and ultimately reach a goal. Players level up from killing enemies, which allows drops of higher level weapons and weapon parts and gives skill points to upgrade perks that increase character durability. It’s similar to a role-playing game in which you play to see your character grow stronger, tackle harder levels, progress forward and hopefully beat the toughest challenges. Raid mode is addicting to play through and features 15 playable characters (two are DLC characters and one is unlockable from an extra episode) and six different weapon types with multiple weapons in each category. I’ve put over 200+ hours into it, which is much more time than I spent on the campaign. Raid is not without its faults, however, as you’ll find out below.

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