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Riptide GP. It was the flagship game for NVidia’s Tegra 2 chip on Android devices, and the second release from Hydro Thunder Hurricane developer Vector Unit. Having gained footing as a developer with Hydro Thunder, Vector Unit took the opportunity to go indie and put their amazing water engine to use on mobile devices. The result is something that is truly one of the best mobile gaming experiences to date.

The game is essentially a futuristic jet ski racer. Like the now-aged Wave Race 64 water physics play an important role, but instead of canned water, Riptide uses a dynamic system. Jet skis produce wakes, which in turn change up the way you have to race. The environments are over-the-top, just like another classic favorite, Jet Moto. With racers a dime a dozen it takes something special to stand out–something that keeps you coming back. Riptide GP has it in strides.

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Weekend Rant is a non-regularly occurring weekend mini-editorial. In layman’s terms that basically means that if a staff member has something they want to rant about they can do so on any given weekend.

There’s a list of disturbing trends that have developed within the gaming industry this generation, and they revolve around cooperative play. Co-op is nothing new to gaming. It has existed since the earliest days of coin-op arcade machines going back decades. This generation however, co-op has evolved. No longer do we just get to tread through a game’s campaign with a friend, sometimes we get an entire stand alone co-op campaign. In other instances, we get completely unique cooperative modes with their own setup and rules like the highly successful Horde mode in Gears of War, or Zombie mode in Call of Duty. More than ever, developers are taking advantage of the fact that its just plain fun to play games with your friends. The evolution of co-op has also unfortunately created problems. And its about time we start talking about them.

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Microsoft has finally made a move to rectify one of the most longstanding and common complaints about the 360’s dashboard: Xbox Live Indie Games had extremely low visibility. Effective immediately, gamers will no longer be required to manipulate their way through the deepest bowels of the dash in order to peruse the list of available indie titles. A tile labeled “Indie” is now prominently located right underneath the Arcade square on the Games Marketplace.

Independent Xbox 360 developers are also about to get some more love in the form of an XBLIG companion app for Windows Phone 7. The app — currently being beta tested by a few select individuals — is said to be about 90 percent of the way to completion and will provide gamers with a simple way to keep up-to-date on the 360 indie scene. It works by yanking data from RSS feeds of blogs covering the XBLIG scene as well as the XML and CSV data from all the titles. In addition, the developers themselves will vote upon titles that they feel deserve to spotlighted on the service.

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Just Add Water has revealed to VG 24/7 that they will not be publishing the XBLA version of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, nor will Microsoft. However, fans shouldn’t take that as a signal to dive into a well of despair. There is reason for hope, as the developer also confirmed that they are currently exploring their options with “two or three” external publishing partners. News of a concrete deal could surface as soon as April 8.

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Alan Wake’s American Nightmare hits XBLA next Wednesday, and to celebrate Remedy Games have launched a brand new trailer with a bit of a grindhouse feel. The game is …
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Digital Reality and Grasshopper Manufacture have revealed Sine Mora‘s final character, bringing the exciting line of weekly reveals to a close. Tying up a long list of characters that …
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From Mario to Sonic, one of the most prevalent genres in gaming has always been platforming. It hasn’t been as important as it used to be but games like Rayman Origins prove people still care about platforming. On the XBLA side, the platforming genre has seen many leaps forward with hard difficulty, precise platforming or a creepy atmosphere. We’re not even done with the genre either with upcoming games like Pid and Fez. Today we thought we’d take a look at five really great platformers and discuss why they’re so good on XBLA.

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The more we read about it, the more adorable and quirky Kim Swift’s upcoming Quantum Conundrum sounds like wacky fun. In an exclusive interview with Joystiq, she revealed more …
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We’ve been closely following Biart’s process on getting a publisher for their spearfishing game Depth Hunter and some more details on its possible release are soon coming. Answering a …
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Guilty Gear is a fighting game favourite amongst fans of the genre and it looks like our own XBLA will be getting its own version with Guilty Gear XX …
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