Previews

There are a myriad of reasons — some massive, others minuscule — for wars throughout history. Wars ranging from the disagreement you had with your mother to World War II to the intergalactic alien space combat we’re likely to experience in the near future. No wars have been particularly fun until video games came along, removing the consequences and the guilt of war. Yet still wars are brutal, sad, scary sort of affairs, no matter what your role is in them — and then there’s Happy Wars.

Happy Wars’ pseudo cell-shaded art style (mixed with a bit of watercolor, perhaps) hearkens back to the days of Cel Damage and Jet Set Radio. The zany visuals and overall lighthearted presentation prove war isn’t always depressing and vile. White is pit against black in this 15 vs. 15 multiplayer action game in an effort to capture towers and destroy the enemy team’s castle. Players can pick from a warrior, mage or cleric class and acquire new skills as they level up and attempt to out-maneuver the enemy team.

Our demo was cut into thirds, with a tutorial and gameplay rundown to start, an explanation of the deeper features of the game following that, and lastly a match played to completion on the game’s desert themed level. Read More

They’re crowding the front of the room on the 54th floor of a Los Angeles hotel, cameras flashing in rapid succession. A small group of men are before them, footage of their last work playing on a large screen. It’s difficult to get a good view of the promo vid that is running while all of the members of the Korean gaming press are nearly tripping over each other to secure the best possible angle from which to grab the perfect shot for their readers back home. The level of excitement among this crowd is palpable, if not completely understandable.

After all, what’s being shown at this point is nothing new, the footage is of 2010’s Dungeon Fighter Online (released in 2005 in Nexon’s home country of Korea). The speakers have thus far provided a nice little history lesson for the uninitiated, but those in attendance have hardly been treated to breaking news or exclusive footage at this point. With more exciting photo ops and demos of this fall’s hottest games vying for attention during E3 week than any one journalist can possibly tackle, why is the foreign press causing such a hullabaloo over a PC game that released seven years ago in their country?

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The Lord of the Rings franchise is no stranger to video game adaptations. Of the many we’ve seen over the years, most of them are translated directly from the fiction into a playable form. We’ve guided Frodo on his journey to Mordor and fought to defend Minas Tirith as Aragorn. Guardians of Middle-Earth is not an adventure but instead a war waged by good and evil in a massive arena.

Guardians of Middle-Earth is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game with many of the genre staples. Unlike other MOBA forays on XBLA (Awesomenauts, Monday Night Combat), Guardians of Middle-Earth is the classic isometric experience complete with three lanes (in the main map), creeps, towers, the whole shabang!

Well. Mostly. There’s no hiding the core MOBA-ness of this game, but the developers at Monolith also want to bring new mechanics to the table and tailor the experience to the console. For instance, you can upgrade your minions and towers, but there’s no shop and there are shrines to fight over which grant buffs. How’s that for new mechanics? Read More

Few things are more impenetrable than the mighty castle. Around the 10th century or so, major countries defended their population from sieges with these massive stone structures. Typically castles were constructed several miles apart in strategically superior locations. In CastleStorm, they’re right next door to each other.

Perhaps the real estate was good at the time or maybe the world of CastleStorm is just ridiculously crowded but things get cozy in this 2D tower defense. Your castle has a massive ballista on the front of it, which you use to mow down waves of ground forces and lay siege to the enemy castle. If the one-size-fits-all weapon weren’t enough, you can also dispatch your own forces and use magical abilities to affect the battlefield. Destroy the enemy castle or capture their flag to secure victory.

Real time strategy and the second dimension have blended before with games like Grim Grimoire and Swords & Soldiers, but it’s not the most common of sub-genres. That said, CastleStorm blends the RTS with even smaller genres including artillery shooters (Worms) and tower defense. The resulting smoothie is not only delicious, it offers a unique flavor. Read More

Walking home from school these days is getting more and more hazardous. In the past, all you had to worry about were shady characters with lollipops, but it seems that now we have to worry about being teleported to mysterious planets. What is the world coming to?

In the 2D platform-puzzler Pid — the first title from ex-Bionic Commander: Rearmed developers Might and Delight — a schoolboy finds himself marooned on a mysterious planet inhabited by all manner of robotic creatures. You’ll encounter anything from giant missile-firing robots to small droids repeating simple tasks. Knowing nothing of this planet or its programmed population, making friends might be a bit difficult for Pid.

Couple these hostile automatons with hazards like massive spike traps and you’ve got yourself a dangerous situation. Thankfully you find the ability to summon light elevators (yes, light elevators) from your very finger tips.

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Once upon a time, the opportunity to play it was passed over in favor of speaking at length to the man behind it. A tough decision for sure, but one for which there are no regrets. But this is E3, with all its glitz and gaudiness, its bass and babes, its bombshells and busts — both on the babes and on the press conference stages. This is the show, and Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit might just be the game coming to Xbox Live Arcade. Abstaining from experiencing firsthand at The Big Show, one of the most promising upcoming games for XBLA, simply wouldn’t do. Even waiting just a wink longer until XBLA Fans’ scheduled time with the game later in the week arrived just wouldn’t do. Read More

5th Cell made their name with fairly cutesy games like Drawn to Life and Scribblenauts. Both handheld games with a kid-friendly art style and gameplay that encouraged creativity. So when they revealed their first XBLA game and it turned out to be a third person shooter, we were certainly surprised.

What we weren’t surprised about was the fact they had decided to do things a bit differently. Drawn to Life was a fairly traditional action platformer but it stood out by letting players draw characters and objects that inhabited the world. Scribblenauts is a fairly simple puzzle game in theory but has endless possibilities thanks to players having the whole dictionary at hand to help them complete levels. It’s because of these unconventional takes on traditional game ideas that we fully expected 5th Cell to put their stamp on their third person shooter, Hybrid.

In Hybrid players do not have direct control over their characters movement, not in the traditional sense anyway. While the right stick does move your camera and onscreen aiming reticule, the left stick will only move you around while on cover. To move from cover to cover, you’ll have to point the camera at the cover you want to go to and hit A, at which point you can strafe among other things. It sounds like it might over-complicate things for no reason but in reality it takes third person shooter gameplay and makes it a bit more tactical.

We don’t want to get too bogged down on the minutia of controls and such. Instead we asked some of our writers who took part in the recent beta to tell us about their experience, check out what they had to say below.  Read More

Vessel is already out on Steam, so we didn’t want to bore you with a giant preview. We did, however, stop by the booth at PAX East to chat with  head John Krajewski, who confirmed that the physics-based puzzle platformer is still safely on its way to XBLA. As a quick recap for those of you who aren’t familiar with Vessel, you play the part of a genius scientist whose liquid-based automatons have gone a little mad, and it’s up to you to stop them. To help you on your way you’ll have to use the predictability of the automatons and a sweet liquid-sucking-and-blowing backpack to make your way through the world.

John didn’t need to say much, he mostly stepped back and let the demo speak for itself. One area Vessel shines in is the difficulty department. The puzzles increased in difficulty over the course of the demo, and while some of them took a while to figure out, it wasn’t in a frustrating way — in fact, it left us with a sense of accomplishment that some games struggle to achieve. Almost overshadowing the puzzles are the amazingly beautiful backgrounds and sounds. While much of the demo took place in steampunk-y factories, there are also outdoor areas that looked just as good. If that wasn’t enough, Strange Loop tagged Jon Hopkins – former producer and contributor to Imogen Heap, Coldplay, and Brian Eno – to create the incredible soundtrack.

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It’s the zombie apocalypse. Your small band of survivors is under siege and two of your compatriots are in immediate danger. You only have time to save one. Who do you choose? This is the thrust of the new “Choices Matter” trailer for Telltale Games‘ The Walking Dead game, which hits XBLA Friday. The video’s game footage is intercut with commentary by  episode three designer Harrison Pink, who explains some of the role player choice will have in the first episode – and the entire “season” of games – when it releases.

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Double Dragon means a lot of things to a lot of people. Developed originally for arcades in 1987, a single player version was released for the NES that became one of the defining brawlers of its time. The series eventually went on to span five numbered titles across a variety of platforms up through the Super Nintendo before disappearing into the annals of history – that is, until recently, when 2D powerhouse Wayforward Technologies (A Boy and His Blob Wii, BloodRayne: Betrayal) stepped up to man the helm for a shot back into the ’80s with the upcoming title Double Dragon Neon. We stopped by the Reverb booth at PAX to take a look at what’s on its way.

The first thing you’ll notice is the color. Wayforward didn’t choose the name Neon simply because it sounds cool, they decided to back it up by throwing a rainbow onto the screen and turning the metaphorical color amps to 11. As Assistant Production Manager Pete Rosky told us, it looks a bit garish, but that’s all part of the fun. The ’80s feel carries through to every design aspect of the game, from the ridiculous look of the characters and enemies to the incredible synth rock, which you can hear in the video below. Even the life meters have a bodaciously colorful style, complete with lightning bolts to measure your special power energy.

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