Features

Last week was a big Kinect week on XBLA, so we decided to get Xbox Kinect Fans writer Nick DePetris to join us and share his thoughts. Sadly that means no Todd this week, but don’t let that put you off we still have a fun packed show for you.

Nick kicks things off by telling us about Double Fine’s Happy Action Theater and Rhythm Party, both of which are pretty interesting additions to the Kinect library. Myself and Andrew played a bit of Iron Brigade DLC pack, Rise of the Martian Bear, which we don’t mind telling you is pretty tough!

Perry drops many a news bomb on us, check below for links to the full stories we discussed.

In Crews’ Community Corner Andrew chooses a twitter question in which @wolvie75 asked what our dream Summer of Arcade line up would be, choosing from the previous promotions. You’ll have to listen to the show to find out our answers though. Also be sure to check out Carcassonne for Remember The Days and let us know what you think on twitter.

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. We are also now on Stitcher, so you can stream the show on your smartphone, give it a go!

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/XBLAFancastEp48.mp3[/podcast]

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Judging by the amount of games we expect to release this year, we already know that 2012 is going to be the biggest year yet for Xbox Live Arcade. With that in mind, we decided to ask each of our staff members to choose one game that they’re really looking forward to playing this year, and tell us exactly what we have to look forward to and why. Without further ado, we present to you XBLAFans Most Anticipated Games of 2012.

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The Martian Bear Rises
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Crimson Skies is a very elaborate universe set during the 1930’s, or to be more accurate an alternate 1930’s. The United States is in ruins, having Balkanized into several small jurisdictions. Planes have become the most common form of transportation, leading to the birth of air pirates.

There have been two video game installments, Crimsons Skies and Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge. Both games revolve around Nathan Zachary, leader of an air pirate gang known as the Fortune Hunters. Crimson Skies always provided players with great flight controls, minor plane customization and a world that is deep, rich, and very intriguing.

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Over the years, we’ve seen many video games turn to Movies or TV shows. From Pac-Man to Sonic to Viewtiful Joe at one point, some of these characters are some we want to see on our small screen when we get home from work or school. So for today’s Friday Top Five, we’re taking some XBLA games and seeing how they would turn out as Movies or TV shows.

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We love ourselves a good 2D anything here at XBLA Fans, so this week we interviewed Jamie Cheng, Founder of Klei Entertainment. Klei is known for many things, but chiefly here on XBLA we know them for developing Shank, a 2D brawler filled to the brim with weapons, stabbing, shooting and most of all, shanking. We’ve interviewed Jamie before about the game, but this time we got in-depth and talk at length about all things Shank, Shank 2 and Klei in general.

Specifically speaking Jamie discusses a bit of his opinions on Shank and how he and his team wanted to improve on what they achieved with Shank. We discuss some of the flaws in Shank and how they’ve been addressed in Shank 2. On top of that, we discuss the reasoning behind choosing a survival mode as this game’s multiplayer mode instead of another co-op campaign. There’s also plenty of Klei-related talk for those interested in learning more about an indie developer.

Any fans of brawlers should check out Shank and Shank 2, the latter of which has had plenty of awesome coverage over the last couple months. There’s single player footage and footage of the new survival mode as well as all kinds of cool things for fans like this Shank 3D papercraft. There have been quite a few changes to the Shank experience for Shank 2 and Jamie and I spare no detail when discussing them, especially with survival mode.

Shank 2 is out on XBLA on February 8 for 800MSP.

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

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Andrew returns this week for a bumper episode, lots of games and news to talk about and we even debut another new segment!

We kick things off talking about last week’s releases of Quarrel and Puddle, unlike some other weeks we’ve actually played enough of these to have an informed discussion!

Perry of course brings all the big news stories, for the full posts of those check below for links.

For this week’s Todd Talk, Todd has some feelings on The Behemoth’s recent statement that they’re going back to the drawing board with Battleblock Theatre.

Finally, we debut Community Corner, in which Andrew grabs some twitter questions from you guys and also sets a challenge. This week he wants everyone to check out Switchball and send their thoughts to us on twitter, so get to it!

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/XBLAFancastEp47.mp3[/podcast]

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A look at 2011, seeking trends and other information any XBLA Fan would be interested in…
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2011 was a standout year on XBLA, we saw a cavalcade of amazing games released throughout the year. Many of the more memorable games were entirely new franchises, with …
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Is Summer of Arcade Worth the Hype?

Believe it or not, we have been paying more money each year for lower average metascores. If that is the case, why …
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