Previews

Long gone are the days of the original Dungeons & Dragons, long gone are the arcade antics of Gauntlet, but verily they are not forgotten! Crimson Alliance brings us back to the old days of having only a fighter, a wizard and a rogue (well, an assassin, but close enough!), an isometric camera, and four buddies ripping up baddies. However, Certain Affinity knows what assumptions come with that isometric camera and that fantasy theme and strives to take the gameplay above and beyond the genre’s conventions. In our interview with Mike McCarthy, game designer for Crimson Alliance, he called their game “The thinking man’s pick-up-and-play hack ‘n’ slash”—and we would most definitely agree.

Crimson Alliance is very heavy on the action and very focused on providing a balanced experience for all three characters. Better still, gameplay doesn’t require much setup time so players can get straight to the action. A wizard, fighter and assassin will be playable in the full game, but the Comic Con demo only had the wizard and fighter; we chose the wizard to test how well he would do solo. As it turned out, the wizard felt incredibly capable: very offensive and full of awesome multitasking greatness rather than simply a robed supporter.

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Two friends are on an adventure, one finds a gem and one finds a hat. But Hatty wants the gem, so his unnamed friend gives it to him and Hatty starts to cry. Everyone wonders why. The confusion is interrupted by giant cat guards that arrive to send the unnamed friend to prison. Oh, and we’re in a theater. On an island. That’s the setup for Behemoth’s upcoming game, Battleblock Theater.

Battleblock Theater will be a 2D platform puzzle action game, otherwise known as a plactuzzleformer, featuring four player couch and online co-op as well as an online arena for adversarial play. Players can also play solo, but the game is definitely intended as a co-op experience. Levels scale to fit the amount of players to ensure that the difficulty is always appropriate as you advance the story. On the multiplayer side, there will be plenty of different gametypes, ranging from the casual to the hardcore (five have been announced and there are more to come).

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Every promotion has an end, every Summer of Arcade a final game in the lineup, and this year’s anchor is Toy Soldiers: Cold War. Toy Soldiers: Cold War is a sequel to Toy soldiers, a real time strategy game where players place down a variety of towers to defend a base from waves of enemy soldiers and armor. However, as a tower defense game, Toy Soldiers goes above and beyond the call of duty allowing players not only to place towers, but to use them in first-person. They also jump into land and air vehicles to really get a feel for the battlefield.

Toy Soldiers: Cold War brings with it tons of gameplay changes, improvements and expansions. Of course, the game has the typical machine guns, mortars and anti-air, but new to the game are anti-tank and makeshift weapons.

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One part Metroid, one part Limbo, one part 60 frames per second and everything dark and mysterious… that’s what makes Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (henceforth ITSP), fourth in the lineup for this year’s Summer of Arcade promotion. Until Comic Con it was assumed that ITSP was to be a single-player-only experience, one that earned “Best of Show” at E3 from us here at XBLAFans for its bold visuals, inquisitive gameplay and multiple approaches to progressing through levels. But the single-player-only assumption was just that: an assumption. ITSP will feature a four-player cooperative (couch, online and any combination of the two) game type called Lantern Run.

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We’ve been following Summer of Arcade’s Bastion since last summer, when we first saw the game’s official trailer. Imagine our excitement when we got our greedy gamer paws on Supergiant’s playable demo at E3. With vibrant environments, intuitive gameplay, and excellent voiceacting, Bastion is shaping up to be everything we ever hoped for—and more. Read More

We hate to jinx it, but it looks like XBLA is finally getting the high quality survival horror title that we’ve all been waiting for. We took an intense hands-on tour with Lexis Numérique’s AMY at this year’s E3 in order to give you the inside skinny on this up-and-coming underdog.

First, you’ll need a run-down on the story. AMY‘s dystopian future is set in a 2034 midwestern America ravaged by some kind of comet-borne infection. You play as Lana, an infected woman that is protecting Amy: an eight-year-old autistic girl that is mysteriously immune to the infection. Naturally, Amy is being hunted by just about everyone; monsters, the military, and geneticists are all trying to get a piece of her. Read More

Inside a booth hidden in the back left corner of the South Hall at E3, Robot Entertainment showcased Orcs Must Die, as the looming shadow of the astronomically larger Activision booth served as foreshadowing of the impending storm coming for developers of digital downloadable games. Come this September, the onslaught of retail AAA titles, with massive marketing budgets beings, and all eyes will be on them. But in the months leading up, the digital download space will be offering on of its most impressive lineups ever of polished and innovative titles, including one of our favorites: Orcs Must Die.

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When I look at From Dust I see the vast, treacherous deserts plaguing an aboriginal society. I see people literally walled off by rocks formed from years of volcanic ash. I see a lifestyle of forced reliance on the temperamental flooding, life-giving waters. I see a microcosm of human history, and it’s all under my control.

Launching this summer, From Dust is a god game where players will have to keep their villagers alive without directly controlling anyone of them. Instead players will have to shape the landscape of the earth to make inhabitable for their people. A typical interaction requires players to create a pathway from one totem to another, before a timer runs out. Players can pick up and drop sand, water or lava and utilize these in any combination to accomplish their goal. Should they be unsuccessful a roaring flood will wash away their village and they will need to start over.

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I’ve always agreed with the comedian Whitney Brown one thing: if I became a vegetarian it would not be because I love animals but because I hate plants. Thankfully someone heard my cry. Halfbrick has adapted their bestselling iOS game Fruit Ninja, bringing it the Xbox 360 and trading in touchscreens for full body tracking. Until the actualization of Fruit Ninja Kinect, there has never been an adequate way to unleash this pent up rage against nature’s bounty. All joking aside, coming into E3, I was skeptical if Kinect could handle the precision required for a title like Fruit Ninja. By the end of the week, I was not only a believer but an advocate.

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I’m convinced that shortly after ‘Splosion Man was released there was a surge of controller sales. Why? Because as fun as it was it was also one of those games that caused a lot of controllers to be thrown in fits of rage. But still we came back over and over again. It drew us in with its humor, its gameplay that was deceptively difficult, and its bargain price. As of year-end 2010 sales for the game were over 390,000 units. Clearly this was a game that, no matter how difficult, appealed to the masses.

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