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Microsoft have vowed to help disappointed Xbox One owners whose consoles have arrived broken. Faults include noisy and broken Blu-ray disk drives that in the worst case scenario will …
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We know you’ve been waiting for them, and here they are! Black Friday sales for Xbox Live Arcade start now, and, assuming you don’t already own them, you will definitely want to take advantage of this opportunity to pick up some of the best games of the outgoing console generation on the cheap. Notable XBLA games include Mark of the Ninja, Bit.trip Runner 2, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and Battleblock Theater, most of which are at least 66 percent off! Some of these games will only be on sale for 24 hours, so check and double-check the tables below to plan your purchases. Happy Thanksgiving!

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Final Exam was developed by Mighty Rocket Studio and published by Focus Home Interactive. It was originally released on November 8, 2013 for $9.99. A copy was provided for review purposes.

Final Examis a game that feels dated from the start. The zombie setting feels like an overused trope here, decided upon not because of any significant meaning to storyline or gameplay mechanics, but because zombies were popular at the time the game was being developed. Any game that casts a group of four people working as a team against zombies is going to owe something to Valve’s Left 4 Dead; Final Exam, owes a little too much — the first boss is called the Tank and looks like a ripoff of the monster from Valve’s popular first-person shooter. The game runs at 30 frames per second, which makes everything feel just a little slower than it should. There’s a neat idea or two to be found here, but nothing that adds up to a game worth any significant investment of time.

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Now that the craziness from the launch of two exciting consoles in the course of two weeks has finally abated, I wanted to take the time to let our …
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Telltale Games is known for making great video game adaptations out of existing franchises, and a new rumor suggests the studio will be taking on yet another huge property. Multiple …
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In case you haven’t heard of this Minecraft thing, 2 Player Productions has the full story on what is now one of gaming’s most iconic franchises. Minecraft: The Story of …
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Hey everyone. With Xbox One now out on the market, its new friends and follow system is here. Back in May, Microsoft confirmed the friend cap, originally 100 on Xbox 360, would be raised to 1,000 total friends. In addition, fellow gamers can now follow other gamers without actually friending each other, thanks to the allowance of an infinite amount of follows and followers. How does the follower system work exactly? Let’s break it down.

Say there is Person A and Person B. Person A chooses to follow Person B, thus Person B has one more follower. If Person B decides to follow Person A back, then Person A and Person B have now just become friends.

Much like how some of you may follow our staff on Twitter, we thought we’d share some of our staff’s gamertags with those readers who are picking up the Xbox One. We feel that having you follow our staff will not only strengthen our relationship to our awesome community, but also better coordinate future community playdates, allow for bragging to each other about our leaderboard standings and so forth. So, here’s a few of our gamertags to follow:

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Shortly after the hysteria of the Xbox One launch resides, developer Undead Labs will give zombie survival fans a reason to go back and fire up their “old, antiquated” Xbox 360s.

Next week on, November 29, the first DLC for State of Decay, entitled The Breakdown, will be released at the cost of $6.99. The expansion, which is largely based on gamers’ feedback, is said to be “less story, more survival.” Based off of the trailer, The Breakdown DLC will contain infinite play, increased difficulty, new playable heroes, new weapons and new challenges.

Also, on the same day, title update four for State of Decay will be released. The update consists of “bug fixes and goodies like the new loot distribution system.”

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On Friday, Microsoft will launch its next-generation console, the Xbox One. If you’ve been paying attention to the games industry at all this year then you already knew that, and you also know all the blah, blah about TV features, the new UI, the improved Kinect camera, upgraded graphical power and the like. But if you’ve ever purchased a games console before — and since you’re reading XBLAFans, chances are fairly high that you have — then you know that none of those things really matter when you get down to it. Sure, all of that stuff might be exciting, but games are what really matters.

One of the developers that’s helping to round out the Xbox One’s launch lineup is Twisted Pixel, a former indie studio now owned by Microsoft known by XBLAFans readers for bringing several great games to the XBLA platform. Twisted Pixel’s launch title, LocoCycle, would have been an Xbox Live Arcade game had it been an Xbox 360 exclusive title; instead, it’ll arrive first on Xbox One Friday before coming to the Xbox 360 at an unspecified future date. And since there is no XBLA on Xbox One, Twisted Pixel’s goofy action game, which stars a sentient motorcycle with wheels that dish out martial arts attacks, will be sold in the Xbox One dashboard alongside of every other Xbox One game — not just those that sell for $20 or less.

XBLAFans caught up with Twisted Pixel Studio Director Mike Wilford and asked him what it was like working on a game for the Xbox One launch. “It’s been cool! We obviously love console gaming and have been making console games for a long time now, but none of us have been involved in a launch before,” Wilford tells XBLAFans via email. “It certainly has its challenges, but it’s awesome to be a part of it.”

We asked him if anything felt different about releasing a game alongside a major console launch, or if LocoCycle was a game release like any other. Although he called this release “a special occasion,” he took care to point out that, of course, Twisted Pixel takes all of its game releases seriously. “But as a kid I would always be so excited to bring home a new system and spend hours with each launch game that celebrated the dawn of a new era of gaming with untold potential. Now we get to contribute to that feeling and it’s so awesome!”

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With the Xbox One set to launch in only a few days (November 22, 2013), it’s time to take a deeper look at what the console offers at launch and whether its initial wave of features and games makes an immediate Xbox One upgrade right for you or if you should hold off for a while until the console’s feature set and game library has grown. To do so, XBLAFans will look at what the console will have to offer on November 22 and attempt to determine whether or not that launch offering makes sense for you.

Do you consider yourself a tech trendsetter?

Are you one of those people who always have to have the newest tech? Do you constantly upgrade your phone to the latest version in order to stay up to date with ever-changing technology? If so, then the Xbox One is for you. After eight long years with the 360, the next generation of living room gaming is truly about to commence (sorry, Wii U, we still love you for what you are) and you shouldn’t let yourself get left behind. If the console’s recently updated specs weren’t enough to convince you, then the new UI walkthrough might be the final push you need. The video will show you how the Xbox One will change not just your gaming experience, but your overall home entertainment experience for years to come.

Microsoft has done with the Xbox One and Kinect what no other console has been able to achieve: it has solved the problem of navigating a UI on a TV from the comfort of a couch. From the very inception of consoles, it was evident that a mouse and keyboard were awkward to use while sitting on a couch, which led to the introduction of the controller. For many years the controller was a brilliant way to game, and it’s still an integral part of today’s gaming experience. However, as consoles have grown from pure gaming systems into entertainment hubs, current-gen console UIs have grown clunky, their menus becoming unmanageable. With the Xbox One, all of that clunkiness is gone; you can switch from app to game to TV to Skype within seconds all with the power of your voice. Nothing about Microsoft’s incoming console says next-gen more than its new UI.

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