News

Slow news day but we did get some exciting news on the upcoming Summer of Arcade starter Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD. Joystiq talked to some Activision reps about …
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A job listing for Crystal Dynamics has been uncovered and hints that their new IP is being moved to next-gen consoles. Earlier this year a blog post from Square …
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How did you respond when Hershel asked about your bum leg? Did you save Shawn, Duck or leave both to be eaten? Who did you side with in a dispute between Kenny and Larry? These are just a handful of decisions players faced while playing through episode one of The Walking Dead, “A New Day.” Player choice plays a big role in how the episode – and future installments – play out, story-wise. Are you at all curious to know whether most players made the same choice as you did, or if you were in the minority? Developer Telltale Games released a video that breaks all of episode one’s choices by percent – check it out after the jump (WARNING: If you haven’t played “A New Day” yet, be warned – the video contains major spoilers).

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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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Guardians of Middle-Earth, the latest Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game to aim for the Xbox Live Arcade scene since Awesomenauts, wastes no time jumping into the action. We talked at length about the game in our preview from E3, but Monolith explains further how they manage to carefully select what elements of MOBA are strongest here. “We wanted to get players in and out of the game quickly”, designer Scott Compton told us in a roundtable press conference, “We wanted to get players in and out of the game quickly. 45 – 60 minutes is too long of a game.”

This Lord of the Rings MOBA was built from the ground up to be about the action and overall have shorter match times than other games in the genre. To achieve this, the foundation had to be set with the controls. While the answer to how a MOBA would work on a console has been of some debate lately, Monolith claims they had a rather easy time with it. Compton told us that “putting the player in direct control was a really satisfying experience. Using the left stick and “driving” the character around on the battlefield, rather than clicking and orienting your character that way.” Using rectangular, wedge and circle attack radii all aimed with the left stick, the game achieves precision even without a mouse. Read More

Microsoft and 4J Studios bringing Mojang’s world-building simulator, Minecraft, over to Xbox Live Arcade was a big deal when it was announced and was promoted as such by grabbing some of the spotlight during Microsoft’s pre-E3 2011 media briefing. As such, it stands to reason that the console holder and the Swedish studio behind the original version of the game hammered out a deal months ahead of time before carefully fine-tuning the specifics of its E3 announcement. Sure, that’s reasonable all right, but that’s not the way it happened, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Studios Phil Spencer recently informed Destructoid.

“So I have a funny ‘behind the curtains’ story on Minecraft,” Spencer explained. “It was about a week before E3 last year when we made that deal as a first party. I believed in the project and we knew the studio. The graphic behind me last year on stage — if you were like, ‘What is that?’ it’s because it was created in one night. Even the people inside Microsoft, as they were looking at it, were thinking, ‘What is that Minecraft thing and why are we putting it on stage?'”

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Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3 was released today on Xbox Live Indie Games. The first 2 episodes of the RPG series were originally released …
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Mini Ninjas Adventures was released today for 800MSP as one of those rare Friday XBLA releases. A follow-up to 2009’s Mini Ninjas, players will assume the role of a ninja …
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Ubisoft have announced a video game tie in for the upcoming release of The Expendables 2, heading to XBLA this summer. The game, which is based on the over-the-top action film set to hit cinemas in August, allows players to take on the role of four of the world’s most crusty legendary mercenaries: Barney Ross, Gunner Jensen, Hale Caesar and Yin Yang. Players must rescue an extremely valuable, kidnapped billionaire, in an adventure which concludes right where the new movie begins. Gameplay appears to be a standard 4 player twin stick shooter which is said to be playable both online and offline. Check out some more screenshots after the jump.

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Obnoxiously titled hack-and-slash game Dungeon Fighter LIVE: Fall of Hendon Myre launches on Xbox Live Arcade July 13. We thought as much.

Dungeon Fighter LIVE (presumably you have to shout …
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