About Nick DePetris

Double Dragon means a lot of things to a lot of people. Developed originally for arcades in 1987, a single player version was released for the NES that became one of the defining brawlers of its time. The series eventually went on to span five numbered titles across a variety of platforms up through the Super Nintendo before disappearing into the annals of history – that is, until recently, when 2D powerhouse Wayforward Technologies (A Boy and His Blob Wii, BloodRayne: Betrayal) stepped up to man the helm for a shot back into the ’80s with the upcoming title Double Dragon Neon. We stopped by the Reverb booth at PAX to take a look at what’s on its way.

The first thing you’ll notice is the color. Wayforward didn’t choose the name Neon simply because it sounds cool, they decided to back it up by throwing a rainbow onto the screen and turning the metaphorical color amps to 11. As Assistant Production Manager Pete Rosky told us, it looks a bit garish, but that’s all part of the fun. The ’80s feel carries through to every design aspect of the game, from the ridiculous look of the characters and enemies to the incredible synth rock, which you can hear in the video below. Even the life meters have a bodaciously colorful style, complete with lightning bolts to measure your special power energy.

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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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For a long time, fans of XBLA knew little about Grounding Inc’s so-called Project Draco – it was being developed by the same guy who made the classic Panzer Dragoon games, it would be an on-rails shooter, and the Unreal Engine made it look unbelievably gorgeous – but that’s about it. Fast forward to about a month and a half ago, the title was officially announced to be Crimson Dragon and a little more information trickled out. It was still hard to get a grip on how exactly this title would turn out, so we took some time at PAX to stop by the booth and play through the demo so we could fill you in on why exactly Microsoft is so stoked about this game.

If you’ve played Child of Eden, you already have a basic idea of how the gameplay will work. Before we go any further though, I want to assure each and every one of you: this game plays a heck of a lot better than Child of Eden. Don’t get me wrong, I loved both Rez HD and its spiritual successor, but at the time it came out the Kinect controls just felt a little… off. Crimson Dragon takes all the best parts of the control scheme and pushes them to a whole ‘nother level – and it works beautifully.

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Back in the days when men were men and XBLA was for arcade games, a beautiful little title called Geometry Wars 2 hit the marketplace. For many XBLA lovers it was the pinnacle of arcade-style gameplay, featuring six modes of score-attacking frenzy and leaderboards that to this day drive people back into the game’s depths to try and catch their friends. Unfortunately, as the production and development effort of XBLA titles increased, the platform has mostly moved on from games like Geometry Wars 2 – but there is hope. The launch of Kinect is bringing a whole new crowd of gamers into the fold, and developers are picking up the challenge in a big way, releasing amazing games like last year’s Fruit Ninja Kinect and (the reason we’re talking about this) the upcoming Wreckateer.

Wreckateer is a title that looks from a distance like it shouldn’t cause much of a stir. However, the second you see it in person you know it’s something special. The basic premise of the game is that you’re trying to destroy structures by launching things at them. Sound familiar? Even the folks at Iron Galaxy know that their game will draw comparisons to Angry Birds, but they’re fine with that. As they told us, Wreckateer is essentially a mash-up of the aforementioned pig crushing simulator, Boom Blox, and Burnout Crash, which to anyone keeping score means it is essentially a mash-up of some of the greatest quick-fix arcade games to come out in recent times.

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There isn’t a lot to say about Arkedo Studio’s upcoming game Hell Yeah! that you can’t tell just by looking at the name of the game. The art style, the crazy minigames, the twisted humor; all of that feeds into what is going to be without a doubt the most insane game ever to hit XBLA. Of course, this wouldn’t be much of a preview without talking a little bit about what we learned from the demo at PAX, so let’s get on with it!

First things first – the full name of the game is Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, which pretty much sums up the plot. You play as Ash, the Prince of Hell, a dead rabbit who is caught by paparazzi doing some rather obscene things with a rubber ducky. Naturally, this causes the whole of the underworld to lose what little respect they had for you, so in order to gain it back you have to kill, well, everything. Sound awesome? We thought so.

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Tipster @lifelower has once again pulled some great information by scouring the ratings boards. This time up we have a rating for a new iteration of the popular card …
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While Microsoft’s CES keynote focused mostly on sales numbers and non-Xbox news, we did get a couple gems out of it. One of the most interesting tidbits is the …
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Man, seems like a lot of games have been getting rated lately. Well, toss another one onto the pile. Grasshopper’s insane upcoming Kinect game Diabolical Pitch is well on …
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Yup, we’re as surprised as this guy. Robomodo’s upcoming Kinect title Bodoink was unable to reach the goal in their Kickstarter campaign. Never fear though, key Robomodo folks have …
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Hot on the heels of our report on the Indie Games marketplace, Microsoft has decided that it’s high time to throw those guys a bone. In a post titled …
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