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About Ross Adams

A gamer for almost 20 years, a fan of podcasts, podcasts about games and maybe one day games about podcasts?
Latest Posts | By Ross Adams
XBLAFancast – E3 2012 Special #1
12 years ago

XBLAFancast – E3 2012 Special #1

Shawn Saris and Perry Jackson join me to talk about some of the stuff we saw at Microsoft’s press briefing today at E3. First up is the Summer of Arcade announcement, then we talk some about the various new features coming to Xbox Live.

Please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on iTunes. We appreciate it! Check us out on twitter (@XBLAFans) where you can win codes for games, give us feedback or just ask a question. We are also now on Stitcher, so you can stream the show on your smartphone, give it a go!

[podcast]https://xblafans.com/xblafancast/XBLAFancastE3-2012Special.mp3[/podcast]

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XBLAFancast Episode 64 – Pre3
12 years ago

XBLAFancast Episode 64 – Pre3

It’s an early regular show this week as we’re planning to have a few E3 specials ep throughout the rest of the coming week. Our EIC John Laster joins myself and Todd for this quick fire show, we talk this weeks and last weeks releases plus a little what we’ve been playing. After that it’s a crazy amount of pre-E3 news, then we round things out with a couple of twitter questions.

In an effort to get this episode up speedily and early the audio quality and consistency has taken a slight dip. Apologies for that, the rest of the podcasts this week will be the usual quality you’d expect.

Look for a special episode on Monday or Tuesday focusing on Microsoft’s press conference, we expect to hear about the Summer of Arcade titles at some point in or around the conference. We should also have some audio from the folks we have at E3 so look out for those too.

Please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on iTunes. We appreciate it! Check us out on twitter (@XBLAFans) where you can win codes for games, give us feedback or just ask a question. We are also now on Stitcher, so you can stream the show on your smartphone, give it a go!

Big thanks to Chris Green for the awesome theme music, be sure to check out his site BlurredEdge and why not follow him on twitter too @BlurredEdge.

[podcast]https://xblafans.com/xblafancast/XBLAFancastEp64.mp3[/podcast]

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Contest: Guess the 2012 Summer of Arcade games
12 years ago

Contest: Guess the 2012 Summer of Arcade games

E3 2012 is just days away and if the last few years are any indication that means we will soon find out which games will feature in this years Summer of Arcade promotion. In previous years it has been host to some true classics, including: Trials HD, Shadow Complex, Castle Crashers and Braid.

Places look to be hotly contested this year with just about every unreleased XBLA game currently sitting with a nebulous “summer” release window, many no doubt hoping to make the cut. With some of the biggest selling games on Xbox Live being entries in previous years it’s easy to see why. It’s anybody’s guess which games will make it, and in that vein we want you to tell us which games you think will be a part of the promotion this year. This isn’t just for fun either, we’ve got prizes! Find out how to enter and what you could win below. Read More

XBLAFancast Episode 63 – Watery Field Zone
12 years ago

XBLAFancast Episode 63 – Watery Field Zone

The most non-American edition of the XBLAFancast ever, maybe. With no Andrew or Todd this week it’s up to myself and my two Canadian buddies Shawn and Perry to keep things going.

This week we talk about Mad Riders a bunch, plus a whole lot of other games. Perry drops all the news, like all of it. Then we have some twitter questions, thanks to @Lunchbox700 and @NodNolan for those, to round things out.

Please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on iTunes. We appreciate it! Check us out on twitter (@XBLAFans) where you can win codes for games, give us feedback or just ask a question. We are also now on Stitcher, so you can stream the show on your smartphone, give it a go!

Big thanks to Chris Green for the awesome theme music, be sure to check out his site BlurredEdge and why not follow him on twitter too @BlurredEdge.

[podcast]https://xblafans.com/xblafancast/XBLAFancastEp63.mp3[/podcast]

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Mad Riders review (XBLA)
12 years ago

Mad Riders review (XBLA)

Mad Riders was developed by Techland and published by Ubisoft. It released May 30, 2012 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

If you’re a racing fan then you’re already somewhat spoiled for choice on XBLA, with games like Hydro Thunder Hurricane, TNT Racers and Skydrift, and many more are on the horizon. However for all the diversity of those games, XBLA has yet to see an ATV racer. Techland and Ubisoft are changing that with the release of Mad Riders, a mostly fun racer that doesn’t quite have as much personality as its name would imply. Read More

Hybrid – When being different pays off
12 years ago

Hybrid – When being different pays off

5th Cell made their name with fairly cutesy games like Drawn to Life and Scribblenauts. Both handheld games with a kid-friendly art style and gameplay that encouraged creativity. So when they revealed their first XBLA game and it turned out to be a third person shooter, we were certainly surprised.

What we weren’t surprised about was the fact they had decided to do things a bit differently. Drawn to Life was a fairly traditional action platformer but it stood out by letting players draw characters and objects that inhabited the world. Scribblenauts is a fairly simple puzzle game in theory but has endless possibilities thanks to players having the whole dictionary at hand to help them complete levels. It’s because of these unconventional takes on traditional game ideas that we fully expected 5th Cell to put their stamp on their third person shooter, Hybrid.

In Hybrid players do not have direct control over their characters movement, not in the traditional sense anyway. While the right stick does move your camera and onscreen aiming reticule, the left stick will only move you around while on cover. To move from cover to cover, you’ll have to point the camera at the cover you want to go to and hit A, at which point you can strafe among other things. It sounds like it might over-complicate things for no reason but in reality it takes third person shooter gameplay and makes it a bit more tactical.

We don’t want to get too bogged down on the minutia of controls and such. Instead we asked some of our writers who took part in the recent beta to tell us about their experience, check out what they had to say below.  Read More

XBLAFancast Episode 62 – Shut up!
12 years ago

XBLAFancast Episode 62 – Shut up!

First thing’s first, apologies for the low quality audio in this weeks episode. Numerous technical difficulties caused some issues which led to some parts of the show to dip in quality, I did try to salvage it as best I could but it’s not perfect. Thankfully the show is still mostly listenable and everything should hopefully be fine next week.

This weeks episode sees the return of former podcast co-host and current Game Music Fans Managing Editor, Tyler Cameron. He shares a familiar story of getting sucked into Minecraft and not quite knowing why. Perry is on the review for Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 2, he gives us his not so great impressions.

Todd Talk this week is all about episodic gaming, after which we discuss what we think does and doesn’t work when trying to make an episodic game.

Please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on iTunes. We appreciate it! Check us out on twitter (@XBLAFans) where you can win codes for games, give us feedback or just ask a question. We are also now on Stitcher, so you can stream the show on your smartphone, give it a go!

Big thanks to Chris Green for the awesome theme music, be sure to check out his site BlurredEdge and why not follow him on twitter too @BlurredEdge.

[podcast]https://xblafans.com/xblafancast/XBLAFancastEp62.mp3[/podcast]

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XBLAFancast Episode 61 – Your junk’s gonna get fried
12 years ago

XBLAFancast Episode 61 – Your junk’s gonna get fried

It has been a pretty big few weeks for XBLA, so fittingly it’s a pretty big episode. We start things off by of course talking about Minecraft, myself and Todd played a ton and we’re sort of beguiled by it.

Perry brings lots of news, so much that Todd has to jump in to tell us all about some big Awesomenauts leaks. We round things out with a big twitter topic and discussion of the Remember the days game.

Please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on iTunes. We appreciate it! Check us out on twitter (@XBLAFans) where you can win codes for games, give us feedback or just ask a question. We are also now on Stitcher, so you can stream the show on your smartphone, give it a go!

Big thanks to Chris Green for the awesome theme music, be sure to check out his site BlurredEdge and why not follow him on twitter too @BlurredEdge.

[podcast]https://xblafans.com/xblafancast/XBLAFancastEp61.mp3[/podcast]

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Minecraft sells over one million copies in less than a week
12 years ago

Minecraft sells over one million copies in less than a week

By  •  News

Trials Evolution, RedLynx‘s wonderfully infuriating sequel, broke records a few weeks ago. After a day, Mojang‘s build-em-up Minecraft looked set to beat that record. Microsoft has now confirmed Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition has eclipsed previous XBLA …
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XBLAFancast Episode 60 – The Misadventures of Scuba Steve
12 years ago

XBLAFancast Episode 60 – The Misadventures of Scuba Steve

A return to the full regular roster leads to a slightly longer show than usual this week. Myself, Perry, Todd and Andrew get straight down to business with game talk, starting with Fable Heroes. We weren’t too keen on it ourselves but you can check out Christine’s review for a more in depth look at the game. After that is a lengthy discussion of Awesomenauts, in which Todd tells us all about MOBAs while Andrew and I lament our disconnection issues.

Perry of course brings all the big news stories from the past week, then Todd uses this weeks Todd Talk to ponder bots in multiplayer games and what their roles should be.

Andrew rounds things out with Crews’ Community Corner, this weeks remember the days game is Golf: Tee It Up!. Be sure to send your thoughts to us on twitter.

Please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on iTunes. We appreciate it! Check us out on twitter (@XBLAFans) where you can win codes for games, give us feedback or just ask a question. We are also now on Stitcher, so you can stream the show on your smartphone, give it a go!

Big thanks to Chris Green for the awesome theme music, be sure to check out his site BlurredEdge and why not follow him on twitter too @BlurredEdge.

[podcast]https://xblafans.com/xblafancast/XBLAFancastEpisode60.mp3[/podcast]

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