It’s that time of the year again. The Fall 2011 Xbox Dashboard update has arrived and brought with it a slew of changes. Fans and detractors alike have turned out in force, clamoring to make their side of the argument the loudest, and therefore the best. No one is wrong. The Kinect integration is miles better than it was before but brought with it a somewhat clunky interface where unwelcome things are given the prized center panel, and the game you were hoping to play is a small box in the top left. Roaming profiles and cloud saving are so ridiculously awesome that you almost don’t notice the weird lag that sometimes crops up when browsing through the menus. Almost. We could argue the pros and cons of the new dashboard all day, but eventually everyone will get used to the new way of doing things and forget about it.
One question, though, will continue to ring out long after all others have disappeared on the gently wafting winds of time. One question that’s been around since the service launched: Why no love for the indie game market? Have the issues finally been answered in this update? Let’s take a look and see for ourselves.
2010 was a pretty great year for XBLA games. It’s hard to think it could be topped. Yet here we are at the end of 2011 with a crop of games that are arguably even better than last year. XBLA has continued to grow throughout 2011 and the diversity of games continues to rise.
We saw the year kick off with unique games like ilomilo, zeit2, and Stacking and it ends with impressive titles like Dungeon Defenders, Joe Danger: Special Edition and Trine 2. We’ve come a long way since the days of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved.
As a result this year’s XBLAFans Game of the Year awards were even more hotly contested than last year, with a few of the categories coming down to just a couple of votes. The list of nominees for the grand prize was almost excessive and could easily have gone into double digits. So without further ado, we are proud to present the second annual XBLAFans Game of the Year awards. Read More
We talk to Stardock about their Xbox Live Indie Game Elfsquad7
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Forget Power Rangers, Voltron was the original team robot. We sit down with Producer Russell Brock to discuss why.
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We still have a two more XBLA’s Most Wanted features waiting in the wings for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, but we thought we’d take a minute and ask you, the everyday gamer, what your number one XBLA game wish is. Remember to be realistic–we aren’t going to see any Super Mario games on XBLA–but have fun with it. Who knows, you just might have your favorite game featured in a future Most Wanted column, and if you do you’ll have all of your wildest dreams come true.
If you need a refresher, hit the jump to take a look at all of the games we’ve featured this year. If a game seems interesting to you, be sure to comment on it. We can’t guarantee it’ll come to XBLA, but we do know that developers and publishers frequent forums and journalistic sites looking for what the fans want.
We sit down with Patrick Dwyer of Robomodo to talk about their upcoming game, Bodoink.
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The real world can be depressing at times but so too can the world of video games. If you’re looking to take a break from war, zombie outbreaks and bleak post apocalyptic realms then check out our Top 5 cutest characters found on XBLA. In the first of a new weekly feature, we’ve analyzed each XBLA character in turn and selected only those scientifically proven to induce warm fuzzy feelings in your tummy. So without further ado let’s check out this week’s Friday Top Five.
XBLA Primer is where we catalog XBLA games from a certain developer and give you the 411 on all their games. We also tap a little into their backstory and why they make great XBLA games
Michael Wilford and co. said that their new studio would focus on the digital market and XBLA was something they always thought would take off. Now with over four XBLA titles under their belt and being acquired by Microsoft, we thought we’d bring you a little list of some of their titles to bring you up on Twisted Pixel’s wackiness in the XBLA game market.
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It’s just the regular crew of myself, Perry and Todd for a regular episode of this here podcast.
This week there’s plenty to talk about, as we’ve all been playing Iron Brigade after the big update and European release. Both Perry and Todd have played a bunch of this weeks release of Joe Danger: Special edition. Read Perry’s review to find out more about his thoughts on the game.
Then we discuss a bunch of news from the last week, including the new dashboard, Xbox Live on iOS and the XBLA trailers from the VGA’s.
Please subscribe, comment, review the podcast on iTunes and tell your friends! We appreciate it! Check us out on twitter (@XBLAFans) where you can win codes for games, give us feedback or just ask a question.
Big thanks again 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/XBLAFancastEp41.mp3[/podcast]