News

Super Time Force received a free update this week. The new Ultra Update includes the Helladecks, made up of 50 new challenge levels that force players to use their time-rewinding skills in a different way, and a new Ultra Force mode which is unlocked after you complete the game and is said to be an alternate style of time-forcing with extra-powerful versions of the Time Force team. Achievement hunters will also be pleased to know that the update brings five new achievements worth a total of 375 Gamerscore.

Sling TV recently launched a new app exclusively for Xbox One. The new app, which allows viewers to watch live TV instantly without a cable company, offers the same great features gamers have come to expect, including the ability to Snap, Pin to Home and use voice or gesture controls with Kinect for Xbox One. Microsoft are also offering a limited time deal of three free months of Sling TV service with the purchase of an Xbox One console via the Microsoft Store (US only).

And finally, current Xbox One darling Ori and the Blind Forest secretly paid tribute to one of XBLA Fans all-time favourites Super Meat Boy. Meat Boy himself can be spotted behind a hidden wall in the Blind Forest, apparently fallen victim to a bed of spikes. Check out the video on how to spot this charming easter egg after the jump.

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The Binding of Issac: Rebirth will at last be gracing the Xbox One after a period of exclusivity on the PlayStation 4 and on PCs. While there are changes to …
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Even if you’ve never played a video game before in your life, you won’t have trouble deducing where not to go in Adventures of Pip. A series of floating skull and crossbones symbols hover above each of the platformer’s bottomless pits. It’s an unambiguous message from the developers conveyed through art.

Tic Toc Games CEO Shereef Morse didn’t want to leave anything to guesswork. “It’s like, ‘Hey guys, you don’t want to go down there, all right?'” he told XBLA Fans at PAX East last month. “We said, ‘Why leave it to guessing, right?'”

Not unlike the studio’s approach to visualizing the dangers of bottomless pits, its central gameplay mechanic is also a very on-the-nose artistic reference to something — art itself. Adventures of Pip tells the story of a one-pixel underdog named Pip who gains the ability to be rendered in more pixels as he quests towards defeating the evil Skeleton Queen. If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s meant to: Adventures of Pip is also the story of the games industry’s art evolution and what game art has had to give up in order to evolve.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Adventures of Pip tells the story of gaming’s art evolution @xblafans #gaming #XboxOne ” quote=”Adventures of Pip tells the story of gaming’s art evolution “]

The idea for this metaphor began germinating around 13 years ago — even if Morse didn’t realize it back then. In 2002 Morse was working as a production manager at WayForward Technologies, and he hired a promising young artist, Marc Gomez, fresh off an education at California Institute of the Arts. Gomez would go on create art for A Boy and His Blob, Contra 4 and Bloodrayne: Betrayal among others. The only thing those three games have in common with one another is that they share absolutely nothing in common, which is exactly the point. Years later, when Morse hired Gomez as his creative director at Tic Toc, it occurred to him that Gomez’s art styles had frequently changed during his time at WayForward. So had the industry’s at large.

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Grip Games is working with Terrible Posture Games to bring their hit FPS Tower of Guns to consoles. This high-octane shooter is built on old-school sensibilities, offering fast-paced action and a hailstorm of bullets. Players will enter the Tower of Guns, a challenging gauntlet made of seven randomly-generated floor. Blast away enemies and defeat giant bosses using an arsenal of big weapons, modifiable equipment and upgradable abilities. Every death will start you at the beginning of the tower and completely reset its layout, but at least you’ll start off stronger and better equipped.

Tower of Guns will shoot its way onto Xbox One on April 10 for $14.99. Check out the trailer after the jump.
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It’s times like this I wish Invader Zim was still on television, because now would be the perfect time to sing “The Doom Song”. Developer Vertex Pop announced via …
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During the Game Developers Conference earlier this month, Lionhead’s head of engineering touched on the philosophy and technology that will be used for Fable Legends‘ cross-platform play. Raymond Arifianto explained …
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Stealth Inc 2: A Game of Clones will be releasing first on Xbox One this Friday, April 3, for the price of $14.99. It is being published by Curve Digital, a fairly large independent game publisher.  Stealth Inc 2 is a stealthy puzzle platformer and has plenty of new features added since the original released back in 2011, including a level editor with the ability to share creations. There is a new trailer released to hold fans over until its release on Friday. It can be seen after the jump.

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The XBLA Fans Twitch Stream Team has grown drastically in recent months thanks to the support of our viewers. I’d love to personally encourage each of our readers to check out at least one broadcast this week. We will be updating the site on a weekly basis with a plethora of streams for you to enjoy.

In addition to our scheduled streams below we also sometimes do impromptu streams. The best way to stay informed of those is to follow XBLA Fans on Twitter and follow us on Twitch.

If there is a game you want to see streamed, please contact us.

All times are listed in EST.

Monday 3/30

• 8:30p – 10:30p K4rn4ge – Trials Fusion New DLC!
• Possible Neverwinter Online Early Access stream sometime tonight!

Tuesday 3/31

• 10p – 2p Zero Jehuty – Neverwinter Online
• 2p – 5p Snapple Cap – Neverwinter Online
• 5p – 8p K4rn4ge – Geometry Wars 3 New Update and/or Trials Fusion New DLC!
• 8p – 11p Cain141 – RBI Baseball ’15

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Tickets for MineCon 2015 are going on sale today. Tickets will be sold in two waves; the first 5,000 tickets will go on sale today (March 27) at 6pm …
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For the month of April the Xbox team has decided to celebrate the fact that over 100 million games have been downloaded through the program and over five billion …
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