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The Binding of Issac: Rebirth will at last be gracing the Xbox One after a period of exclusivity on the PlayStation 4 and on PCs. While there are changes to …
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Even if you’ve never played a video game before in your life, you won’t have trouble deducing where not to go in Adventures of Pip. A series of floating skull and crossbones symbols hover above each of the platformer’s bottomless pits. It’s an unambiguous message from the developers conveyed through art.

Tic Toc Games CEO Shereef Morse didn’t want to leave anything to guesswork. “It’s like, ‘Hey guys, you don’t want to go down there, all right?'” he told XBLA Fans at PAX East last month. “We said, ‘Why leave it to guessing, right?'”

Not unlike the studio’s approach to visualizing the dangers of bottomless pits, its central gameplay mechanic is also a very on-the-nose artistic reference to something — art itself. Adventures of Pip tells the story of a one-pixel underdog named Pip who gains the ability to be rendered in more pixels as he quests towards defeating the evil Skeleton Queen. If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s meant to: Adventures of Pip is also the story of the games industry’s art evolution and what game art has had to give up in order to evolve.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Adventures of Pip tells the story of gaming’s art evolution @xblafans #gaming #XboxOne ” quote=”Adventures of Pip tells the story of gaming’s art evolution “]

The idea for this metaphor began germinating around 13 years ago — even if Morse didn’t realize it back then. In 2002 Morse was working as a production manager at WayForward Technologies, and he hired a promising young artist, Marc Gomez, fresh off an education at California Institute of the Arts. Gomez would go on create art for A Boy and His Blob, Contra 4 and Bloodrayne: Betrayal among others. The only thing those three games have in common with one another is that they share absolutely nothing in common, which is exactly the point. Years later, when Morse hired Gomez as his creative director at Tic Toc, it occurred to him that Gomez’s art styles had frequently changed during his time at WayForward. So had the industry’s at large.

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We are testing out new forms of video content with XBLAFans in an effort to bring our readers more choices for how they interact with the site. Check out …
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Grip Games is working with Terrible Posture Games to bring their hit FPS Tower of Guns to consoles. This high-octane shooter is built on old-school sensibilities, offering fast-paced action and a hailstorm of bullets. Players will enter the Tower of Guns, a challenging gauntlet made of seven randomly-generated floor. Blast away enemies and defeat giant bosses using an arsenal of big weapons, modifiable equipment and upgradable abilities. Every death will start you at the beginning of the tower and completely reset its layout, but at least you’ll start off stronger and better equipped.

Tower of Guns will shoot its way onto Xbox One on April 10 for $14.99. Check out the trailer after the jump.
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Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty was developed by Just Add Water and published by Oddworld Inhabitants. It was released on March 27, 2015 for $19.99. A copy was provided for review purposes.

It’s a funny thing, nostalgia. Only last week I was preparing to write my review of the excellent Shiftlings and likening it to the original PlayStation One Abe’s Oddysee and now, here I am, reviewing the actual remake of that very same game. Unbelievably, the existence and imminent release of Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty had completely bypassed me up until last week, so it’s been especially satisfying to experience it alongside a modern peer.

The good news is that because New ‘n’ Tasty is a ground-up remake of the 1997 PlayStation original, it looks absolutely fantastic running on next gen hardware. More importantly, it retains the clumsy, deliberate weight that epitomises the games titular character, Abe, and adds so much to the way that the game plays. People often say that you should be careful what you wish for, so let’s find out if New ‘n’ Tasty lives up to both the expectation set by the original, and the demands of an increasingly picky modern audience.

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Resident Evil Revelations 2: Metamorphosis was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. It was released on March 17, 2015 for $5.99. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

Many elements that contributed to the excitement of the first three episodes are missing and players may be left with a strange sense of both satisfaction and disappointment.

Claire’s campaign starts off after the climactic boss fight of Episode 3: Judgment in the middle of the tower nearing the top. Little did I know, the boss fight was the coup de grâce to Claire’s adventures. Claire’s campaign is very short with the top time on Xbox One clocked in at 6 minutes 44 seconds as of time of writing. The one major scene is incredibly anti-climactic with no player interaction at all. It feels like the player went on a great big adventure with Claire for nothing. With brief puzzles thrown in, less than double digit enemy count and players playing most of the episode with a countdown timer, there isn’t much positive about this segment other than at least its short to replay. I can understand not putting in two major bosses in one episode or starting an episode with a major boss fight but one can wonder if the episodes could have been segmented better.

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It’s times like this I wish Invader Zim was still on television, because now would be the perfect time to sing “The Doom Song”. Developer Vertex Pop announced via …
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During the Game Developers Conference earlier this month, Lionhead’s head of engineering touched on the philosophy and technology that will be used for Fable Legends‘ cross-platform play. Raymond Arifianto explained …
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Stealth Inc 2: A Game of Clones will be releasing first on Xbox One this Friday, April 3, for the price of $14.99. It is being published by Curve Digital, a fairly large independent game publisher.  Stealth Inc 2 is a stealthy puzzle platformer and has plenty of new features added since the original released back in 2011, including a level editor with the ability to share creations. There is a new trailer released to hold fans over until its release on Friday. It can be seen after the jump.

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The XBLA Fans Twitch Stream Team has grown drastically in recent months thanks to the support of our viewers. I’d love to personally encourage each of our readers to check out at least one broadcast this week. We will be updating the site on a weekly basis with a plethora of streams for you to enjoy.

In addition to our scheduled streams below we also sometimes do impromptu streams. The best way to stay informed of those is to follow XBLA Fans on Twitter and follow us on Twitch.

If there is a game you want to see streamed, please contact us.

All times are listed in EST.

Monday 3/30

• 8:30p – 10:30p K4rn4ge – Trials Fusion New DLC!
• Possible Neverwinter Online Early Access stream sometime tonight!

Tuesday 3/31

• 10p – 2p Zero Jehuty – Neverwinter Online
• 2p – 5p Snapple Cap – Neverwinter Online
• 5p – 8p K4rn4ge – Geometry Wars 3 New Update and/or Trials Fusion New DLC!
• 8p – 11p Cain141 – RBI Baseball ’15

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