Feature List

Weekly Roundup compiles all the biggest news stories, reviews, and releases from the week into one handy post on the weekends

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Those of you with a keen eye might have noticed a certain limbo-esque feel to one of the Trials Evolution levels briefly shown in the Arcade Next promotion trailer. …
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Sega seems to be doing a lot of porting these days don’t they? From re-releases of Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure to even franchises on the Sega Saturn with Guardian Heroes and Radiant Silvergun. With the HD Jet Set Radio finally on the way, we thought we’d take a look at five games that should be re-made in HD for our digital platform. Some of them could be huge online hits and some are just bizarre games that would work great under a 1200 or less MSP price-point. So let’s worry about Y2K again before worrying about the apocalypse in this list.
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Klei, developers of Shank and its recently released sequel, Shank 2, recently announced their new project, Mark of the Ninja. We have the fortune of bringing you another interview with Klei’s founder, Jamie Cheng. This time, he’s been kind enough to talk about Mark of the Ninja in some detail regarding the team’s approach to the game and their gameplay goals. We’ve also got preview content coming up after PAX East, so stick around after this!

Shank is definitely a kinetic, quick paced beat ’em up and never denies that, but Mark of the Ninja is no brawler; in fact it’s far from it. So we had to ask: why a stealth game?

According to Cheng, the team at Klei that’s been working on Mark of the Ninja grew up with ninjas and, simply put, they wanted to make a game that does ninjas justice. “When I play other stealth games you don’t feel like a ninja, you feel like Shank actually. We wanted one where you actually felt sneaky, felt like an actual ninja.”

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First off, apologies once again for the spotty audio this week, techinical difficulties once again mean we’re stuck with the lesser quality backup.

We mix things up a little this week, after a talking about the latest releases it’s onto Todd Talk, in which Todd tells us his thoughts on leaderboards. Todd then has to leave us but that means Perry can drop his news bombs mostly uninterrupted. We finish as always with twitter topics and discussion of Andrews game of the week. Be sure to try out Mutant Storm Empire for next week and share your thoughts 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/XBLAFancastEp54.mp3[/podcast]

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When I arrived at Haunted Temple Studios, the cab driver gave me a smug look. I’d asked him to stop one door over from a strip club at what looked to be an abandoned construction area. The gears in his head were turning and his face read “this kid just doesn’t want to admit he’s going to Dreamgirls.” He continued to prod me about being in the wrong location, but my trusted iPhone assured me this was the address Jake Kazdal, founder of Haunted Temple had given me. I wandered into the construction area hoping this was the right location. The glitz and glamor of the neighbors distracting the average onlooker from the amazing gem inside an unmarked building next door made arguably the perfect metaphor for an indie studio’s plight in the industry. Inside this large open, warehouse of a building, Jake and his team were putting the finishing touches on Skulls of the Shogun, literally hours after rescuing the game from a flood.

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I’ve always had a soft spot for ambition; for the people out there who take risks, when the big money says play it safe. I’d rather watch and cheer for the Phil Mickelson’s of the world who would rather shoot over or through obstacles than lay up and take two shots; the Boise States who are willing to go for two on a trick play in overtime; the indie developer who spends their entire life savings on a dream. In a world dominated by discussion of monetization models and social metrics, I even have a soft spot for an established three hundred and fifty person studio that creates an IP department for prototyping and creating new ideas on the console space, while many companies are running the other direction. I had the opportunity to speak with Frima Games about their upcoming project, Lives and Death, at GDC this year, and what I saw, while still in the prototyping phase, is definitely ambitious. Read More

Phil Fish began Fez years ago and went through countless cycles of development. Some of this was documented in Indie Game: The Movie and after a showing at GDC, a Japanese developer asked his opinion on Japanese games to which he replied “your games suck”. Since then, the whirlwind of hate he’s receiving is pretty crazy, people saying he has zero games out and doesn’t deserve to say things like that. Others even saying he doesn’t deserve the grand prize at the IGF awards, purely for either winning one already or for his comments. I offer one request about all of this hub-bub though.

Can’t we just give him a break?
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While the world cries in pain over the “varied” endings in Mass Effect 3 we were given yet another little jab to the heart. During development of ME3 Bioware Montreal was working on a competitive first person shooter in the Mass Effect universe. The idea was eventually transformed into the multiplayer mode found in Mass Effect 3, but we think the idea of a multiplayer-based game in the universe is utterly brilliant.

For the curious with an iPad you can download the app The Final Hours of Mass Effect 3, which chronicles Team Assault and several other goodies. You’ll even find test footage of the game. We think it’d work amazingly well as an Xbox Live Arcade game. Think about it, as Battlefield 1943 is to the Battlefield series, so could Team Assault be to Mass Effect.

With a few changes, anyway. . .

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Weekly Roundup compiles all the biggest news stories, reviews, and releases from the week into one handy post on the weekends.

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