News

Opening night for Suda 51’s newest bloody adventure Black Knight Sword is next week, December 12 on Xbox Live Arcade. This theatrical hack-and-slasher comes from Grasshopper Manufacture and Digital Reality, the same star-crossed teams from Japan and Hungary that brought us Sine Mora earlier this year. We saw the game earlier this year at PAX East, where we noticed a striking similarity to a certain other over-dramatized villain. The reverent nods continue in the press release they sent earlier today:

Bring out yer dead! Bring our yer dead! And, no, it won’t cost ninepence because The Black Knight from Black Knight Sword is here to rid the world of treacherous evil for the thrill of killing. The wicked, bad, naughty, villainous, duplicitous, and super evil Dark Princess must pay the penalty! So never fear, The Black Knight will make his grand debut in Black Knight Sword on Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft Wednesday, December 12. Even without arms or legs, The Black Knight will partake in an adventure through a strange spin on a classic fairytale to defeat the wicked creatures of the night.
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Mobile app stores are heavily populated with shameless Super Mario Bros. clones, but the latest entry in the series of the original imitator is now officially headed …
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It’s December 2012, which means we’re rapidly approaching the end of the Mayan calendar and the possible end of the world. While others …
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Developer Might and Delight has announced that it plans to make its puzzle-platformer, Pid, more accessible by adding an Easy Mode to the game’s existing Normal and Hard …
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The recent appearance of Mensa Academy (purportedly American Mensa Academy in North America) on the Xbox Live Marketplace seems to indicate the title is finally ready to put your mind to the test …
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This week’s Deal of the Week gave Xbox Live Gold Members the chance to pick up Deadliest Warrior and Deadliest Warrior Legends at 50% off:

• Deadliest Warrior  – 400 …
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We’ve been talking a lot about Guardians of Middle-earth over the past few months, with a steady stream of character reveals and tutorial videos for the Tolkien-inspired MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) title. Though beyond the multimedia fanfare preceding its imminent release, Guardians of Middle-earth carries weighty ambition as the first true title of the genre developed specifically for consoles.

The MOBA is a notoriously delicate genre, requiring nearly constant post-launch supervision in order to maintain the balance of character power as player strategies evolve over time. That balance necessitates regular updates and patches, the kind of support that’s seemingly at odds with the “closed system” of a console, which normally requires any changes be vetted by the manufacturer’s certification process.

When we spoke with producers Bob Roberts and Ruth Pomandl last month, they briefly touched on their plan to issue real-time updates without needing to repeatedly pass through the lengthy and expensive, recertification process. In an interview with VG247, Roberts further explained the importance of fine-tuning character balance and how they intend to continue those tweaks after the title has gone live.

“We did also build a system for having a lot of our balance database saved in cloud storage, that you’re going to download every time you launch the game. It’s a very small, quick update that doesn’t have to go through certification, so we can update it every day, every week – however often we need to if we see critical balance issues.”

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Over the course of the past month, Zen Studios has released a new blog post each week detailing the various character types players can expect to see in the upcoming CastleStorm. With the final entry posted last Wednesday, we’ve compiled all four entries right here for your convenience. Be sure to check the links to each blog post to learn more details about these characters and even tips on how to use them in-game.

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

Another week of Xbox Live Arcade brought to a close. It’s been a relatively quiet one, compared to the mad dash of last week’s seasonal sales. Though there isn’t much to write home about in terms of marquee XBLA titles, there’s quite a bit to look forward to in the coming weeks and months on Xbox Live Arcade. With so many big games coming down the pipe, what are you looking forward to getting your hands on?

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We’ve now received a host of official details relating to the upcoming release of Capcom’s popular 2D fighting game Darkstalkers Resurrection.

A compilation of two games from the cartoon-style, horror-pastiche fighting franchise Darkstalkers (specifically, Night Warriors: Darkstalkers Revenge and Darkstalkers 3), Darkstalkers Resurrection will hit XBLA in “early 2013” for 1200 MSP.

While the games are said to be faithful recreations of their arcade counterparts, Capcom has included a variety of HD filter options and viewing modes. Reportedly, these viewing modes range from full-screen to an over-the-shoulder arcade mode, replicating the arcade experience.

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