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Update: After our story went live, a Twitter user claiming to be a member of Lizard Squad informed XBLA Fans that the cyber attack on Xbox Live took place between 9:00 and 11:00 pm UTC on Sunday. In a follow-up tweet, he stated that the alleged perpetrators “did manage to fix the lower restrictive server that allowed local play to be revived in a couple of hours.” Our original story is below.

Many gamers, including some XBLA Fans staffers, experienced difficulty playing multiplayer games over Xbox Live last night. If you were one of them, you now know who to blame for your woes.

Lizard Squad, the same collective of nefarious internet users behind attacks that brought Xbox Live to its knees this past holiday, has claimed responsibility for the network problems. In conjunction with the group Like No Other, Lizard Squad apparently hit Xbox Live with another shot from its weapon of choice: a DDoS attack.

Though XBL appears to have since fully recovered from the attack, this may have just been the opening salvo of Lizard Squad’s latest offensive. “More to come, it’s about time to re-ignite lizardsquad,” the group tweeted last night. Gamers may recall that the biggest holiday DDoS attack was preceded by a smaller one.

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Choice is everything in episodic titles from Telltale Games like Game of Thrones. Players make decisions in conversation trees and during action sequences that affect how the remainder of a season will play out. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

But for some players of Game of Thrones Episode 2: The Lost Lords, in-game choices aren’t amounting to much. Some copies of The Lost Lords for Xbox One are plagued by an issue preventing players’ choice data from migrating across episodes.

“We are aware of an issue with the Xbox One version of Game of Thrones – Episode 2: The Lost Lords, where customers’ choice data may not carry over correctly from Episode 1,” Telltale wrote on its forums. “We are working to determine the cause and will update here as soon as we have more information to share. We appreciate your patience and want to get you playing with your choices intact as soon as possible.”

That forum post was made on February 4 when the game was released. Today, Telltale posted an update explaining that it had submitted a patch it believes will resolve the issue to Microsoft for certification. The studio estimates this patch will be available within the next seven to 10 days.

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It’s normal for XBLA Fans to report that Game X, Y or Z has been removed from the Xbox Marketplace, usually due to expiring licenses.

What you don’t often …
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Game of Thrones Episode 2: The Lost Lords was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Telltale Games. It was released February 4, 2015 for $4.99. A copy was provided by Telltale for review purposes.

In my review of Game of Thrones Episode 1: Iron From Ice, I mentioned that whilst things were being set up rather nicely for the series ahead, the episode in isolation was a little uneventful. Thankfully, The Lost Lords goes some way to correcting this and features more action, more opportunity for intrigue and at least one twist which I certainly did not see coming.

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Phil Spencer tweeted the above image, saying, “Nice to finally be doing this on my Xbox One dev kit.” You see that itty bitty text in the center that says “Press Y to save the screenshot?” That’s probably what he’s talking about.

Last October, Phil Spencer promised to let you save screenshots on your Xbox One in a future update, and it looks like it’s coming soon. We only just got the February update that brought Game Hubs, custom backgrounds, faster controller connectivity, and other things, so he’s keeping his team busy.

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The Escapists was developed by Mouldy Toof Studios and will be published on Xbox One by Team 17 Digital. It is set for release on February 13, 2015 for $19.99. A copy was provided for review purposes.

The Escapists positions itself as a kind of craft-em-up roguelike set across a number of fiendishly designed secure facilities including prisons and POW camps. Think of it as somewhere between Terraria, Monaco and any number of top down action-RPGs. The main difference is that in order for you to be successful, The Escapists demands significantly more time and patience than almost any other game I’ve played — and what’s more, it’s perfectly suited to being a cute 8-bit indie title.

With only a very small number of simple core mechanics to rely upon, The Escapists turns the table on the typical sandbox approach taken by similar games. Instead, players are literally forced to adhere to a strict regimen of roll calls, mealtimes, break-times and work whilst simultaneously plotting their escape. It’s an inspired system that asks an awful lot from players and results in the rewards being all the sweeter.

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“It’s like Gone Home,” my roommate tells his curious D&D buddies of the game I’m playing for review. A cursory glance at the screen would lead you to believe that he wasn’t wrong, either. The game in question, Life is Strange: Chrysalis from Dontnod Entertainment and Square Enix, does feature a similar protagonist. Main character Max Caulfield is a young, confused girl looking for answers about the disappearance of another girl. After five years away in Seattle she’s returned to her small hometown of Arcadia Bay, OR to attend a prestigious boarding school. Chrysalis‘ setting puts Max in classes, at the school dormitories and at an old friend’s home. She’s not literally alone like Kaitlin Greenbriar in Gone Home, but as the shy kid in the back of the class, Max often feels like it.

If you stopped reading this review after that first paragraph, no one would blame you for describing Life is Strange as that game that’s “like Gone Home.” The two titles have one big difference, however: Gone Home is about solving puzzles, while Life is Strange is about solving conversations. And whereas video game puzzles usually only have one correct solution, conversations have room for many possible options to carry a game forward.

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Welcome to the Life is Strange review hub. Here we’ll collect our reviews for the individual episodes of the series as they are released. Once the series is complete, …
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Have you joined in on the fun yet?

Resident Evil has become Capcom’s fastest selling digital title in history across North America and Europe.

Yoshiaki Hirabyashi, Capcom’s Producer on …
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Question: What is Shiftlings?

Shiftlings is a puzzle platformer set in an intergalactic reality show featuring two space custodians traveling the cosmos completing complex challenges.

Their special ability is their connection to each other via one hose. That hose allows them to pass gas instantly between them allowing for one to become massive in size and weight which lowers mobility but offers new ways to solve puzzles.

Shiftlings will offer over 50 levels across five worlds and will offer both single player and two player local or online cooperative gameplay.

All this and more coming soon on March 4.

Check out Sierra’s Orientation video for Shiftlings after the jump.
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