Reviews

Zombies Ruined My Day was developed by Mancebo Games and retails for 80 MSP. A copy of the game was provided for review purposes.

Zombies Ruined My Day tells the tale of one man who finally got a date with his dream girl, only to have it completely upstaged by a zombie apocalypse. He has only two options, be eaten or save his girlfriend and the world. He chooses the latter and that’s where the game starts off. In Zombies your goal is to mow down hundreds of zombies while staying alive and rescuing survivors. Each level has a set number of zombies that come out in waves. The trick is figuring out which zombies to kill first and how best to do it. Fortunately there is plenty of firepower to help even the overwhelming odds.

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Aban Hawkins and the 1000 Spikes was developed by 8 Bits Fanatics and retails for 80 MSP.

Aban Hawkins is a classically inspired platformer with a penchant for pain. The games protagonist, Aban, has a strange name and an Indiana Jones identity crisis. He is trekking through dangerous ancient temples searching for treasure. Saying his job is extremely dangerous is an understatement as every step tends to bring impending doom upon him. At its heart this is a simple platformer that ramps up the difficulty very rapidly. It is likely to elicit rage and laughter all at once since it is so sadistic.

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Seizonrenda was developed by Inland Studios. It was released October 30, 2010 and retails for 80 MSP. A copy of the game was provided for review purposes.

Seizonrenda is a twin stick shooter taking place on a barren moon. The goal of the game is to survive and score points. Waves of floating asteroids and sentient enemies continually fall to the moon in increasingly complex patterns. The action is fast and gets complicated quickly as more and more enemies pile onto the screen.

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Wolfenstein 3D was developed by id Software and released by Activision. It retails for 400 MSP and was released June 3, 2009.

Wolfenstein 3D is the great granddaddy of modern first person shooters. It essentially invented the genre and laid the groundwork for Doom to be released a year later. In 1992 it was a technical tour de force that became the fastest spreading shareware game of its time. You play as BJ Blazkowicz whose goal is to escape from Castle Wolfenstein and foil the Nazi plot. The action is bloody and brutal, but the real question is whether is stands up after almost 20 years.

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Who is God was developed by Magiko Games and retails for 80MSP. A copy of the game was provided by the developer for review purposes.

Who is God is the next in a line of platformers released by Magiko Games. However this one is different from their Platformance titles. Instead of trying to survive deadly obstacles your single goal here is to go vertical. The higher your altitude, the better your score. In fact the only thing scored is your height in the air. To accomplish this you simply jump from platform to platform, or rather you bounce from one spot to another; there is no jump button. This differentiates it from more traditional platformers while keeping the pace tight.

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Toy Soldiers: Cold War was developed by Signal Studios and published by Microsoft. It was released on August 17, 2011 as part of Summer of Arcade for 1200MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

About two years ago, Signal Studios released the original Toy Soldiers on Xbox Love Arcade and it has since been one of the top selling XBLA games to date. With that success, a sequel was inevitable. Now, two years later, Toy Soldiers: Cold War sets out to improve on a formula that was pretty damn good to begin with.

Toy Soldiers: Cold War is an action tower defense game where you play as an American army of toy soldiers who are trying to keep the Soviet forces from invading their toy box. Aside from basic tower defense elements, Toy Soldiers: Cold War also contains many user-controlled vehicles, special abilities and the option to manually use each tower/emplacement. These additions make Toy Soldiers: Cold War a hectic, action-packed game that allows gamers to play it however they please. For players of the original Toy Soldiers, this is no surprise. But if you’re a classic tower defense gamer, you better prepare for an incredible change of pace that adds up to countless hours of fun. Read More

Veks and Silence was developed by i ENDER i and retails for 400 MSP. It was released on August 8, 2009. A copy of the game was provided by the developer for review purposes.

Veks and Silence is a side scrolling shooter akin to Metal Slug and Contra. In it, you take control of the hero, Silence. An odd character to be sure, Silence is overweight and always has a paper bag over his head, but what he lacks in looks he makes up for in sheer firepower. The game begins with a corporate-generated zombie apocalypse that has filled the world. Silence is the reluctant savior. Carnage and mayhem are sure to follow.

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Techno Kitten Adventure was developed by 21st Street Games and published on Xbox Live Indie Games on September 6, 2010. It was re-released June 7, 2011 for 240 MSP. A copy of the game was provided for review purposes.

Gigantic hands, flying animals, rainbows as far as the eye can see–these are just examples of some of the wackiness you’ll find in Techno Kitten Adventure. The game has a simple premise: fly for as long as you can and collect points while avoiding obstacles and enjoying the techno beats that are blown. It seems simple, but does the game give you that cute kitty satisfaction, or does it fall a few furballs short?
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Skullgirls, a fighting game being developed by long time pro Mike “Z” Zaimont and his team at Reverge Labs, plans to do a lot of things that fighting game enthusiasts have been wanting for years. Reverge Labs wants to make a solid game full of interesting mechanics, but also do little things here and there to remove the minor irritations that people can’t stand about games or fighting games in specific. During this panel at Evo 2011 much was discussed including all of the characters, game mechanics and features, and we’ve gone through and picked up as much of the relevant info as possible provided below the jump and cut into neat, cheweable pieces. Let us know if you need more steak sauce with that: Read More

Fruit Ninja Kinect was developed by Halfbrick and was published by Xbox Live Arcade. It was released August 10, 2011 for 800 MSP. A code was provided by the developer for review.

If you have an Xbox 360, you may have a Kinect. If you have one you know the games library is still a bit small. Up until now all Kinect games were retail. Fruit Ninja Kinect is the port of the popular smart phone game Fruit Ninja, and it has the distinction of being the first Arcade Kinect game. Now you can truly be a ninja and take out your anger on a healthy army of fruit.

The game’s premise is simple: fruit flies up onto the screen and you move your hand in a slicing motion to cut it in half. Cutting three or more fruit in one swipe yields a combo multiplier. Some modes feature fruit that have special properties such as slowing time, others feature bombs which the player must avoid. It also supports simultaneous two player competition.

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