Features

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

Read More

Last week we took a look at the top five XBLA in-game songs that help establish a mood while you venture through five various games. But for this week let’s take a look at the top five XBLA end game songs that make the payoff for making your way through a campaign that much more sweet. These are the songs that mark an epic ending to a great adventure. The kind of song so good, it’s almost worth paying through the game a second time just to hear it again. But luckily we have YouTube for those of us who want listen over and over again. And with that said, let’s take a look at our list:

Read More

Folks who can’t pony up the dough for an HDTV are up in arms over the lack of splitscreen  gameplay in Minecraft. It’s not broken or anything–at least that’s what they say. But SDTV players are entirely locked out of any splitscreen games, the option only available if your console is hooked up to some sort of HD output, Kotaku reports. It’s left some players on the Xbox.com forums completely clueless as to the problem, while others up in arms. It’s something that most reviews, including our own, didn’t catch–so yes, SDTV gamers are few and far between.

We’ve spoken our distaste about this recently, but this goes far beyond not being able to read text. This is locking players out of major features, players who spent money with no warning they’d be locked out. Players who are confused and mad. Take a look at just a few of the complaints below.

Read More

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]

RSS | MP3 | iTunes Read More

Another week, another set of great tracks. This time around we’ve upped how many we’re showcasing. Too many great creations come out each week. To download these tracks by entering Track Central, selecting Get Tracks, then pressing X to search. Enter the gamertag below to find the track. Be aware that the search is case sensitive. A big thanks to the Trials Evolution community for the borrowed videos. Hit the jump to see this week’s picks.

Read More

What we are playing is a weekly column published on Sunday. Select members of the team talk about the games they’ve been playing over the past week and which they’re …
Read More

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

Read More

You know those songs you come across in a game sometimes that are so good that you find a safe spot, put the controller down and just listen to the music? Those moments where you completely forget what you are doing while you are mesmerized by the melody? Well that’s what this list is dedicated to. Those moments in gaming where the music captures your attention and your imagination. Moments of music so good, you wish the level would never end. Music so captivating that you hum these songs to yourself for days, weeks, months or years later. These are the top five in-game songs in XBLA.

Read More

We’ve got to clear out the queue. We have tons of great tracks waiting in the wings to showcase, so we’re periodically going to run Trials Tuesday on Thursdays as well. So here you have it, five more tracks to dig your tires into: three trials, two skill games. As always you can find these tracks by entering Track Central, selecting Get Tracks, then pressing X to search. Enter the gamertag below to find the track. Be aware that the search is case sensitive.

Read More

When Xbox Live Arcade launched in 2004 on Microsoft’s debut console, six titles well-known for their arcade roots appeared on the service at a fraction of retail cost. After Xbox Live Arcade re-launched on Xbox 360, the “Arcade” titles being released had a meager size limit of 50MB and retained the trend of being quick, shallow experiences. Today, some downloadable titles earn more critical attention than major blockbusters and may even reach Microsoft’s mandated size limit of 2GB.

“Now is an excellent time for high-quality, original, specific, relatively low-priced games, and I think this will continue for the foreseeable future,” said Greg Kasavin, writer and designer at SuperGiant Games. “Though it’s very difficult to make games, it’s never been easier due to the digital platforms and free tools out there these days.”

Read More