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Spartacus Legends was developed by Kung Fu Factory and published by Ubisoft. It was released June 26, 2013 for free.

Despite being made as a tie-in to a television series on Starz, Spartacus Legends is a free-to-play fighting game that doesn’t require any previous knowledge of the show. The game puts you in the role of battle-hardened slaves rising up the ranks to become legendary gladiators. Buckets upon buckets of blood will be shed as you fight your way through Roman arenas. There was a lot of potential here for this to be a fun, mature fighting game. In the end, the game’s bright ideas were murdered by a slew of technical problems.

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Through a post on the Undead Labs’ official forum, the developer has revealed the details of State of Decay‘s upcoming Title Update 3. Undead Labs’ founder, Jeff Strain, provided …
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Yesterday, in an interview with Official Xbox Magazine, Lionhead Studios’ Creative Director, Gary Carr, spoke of Microsoft’s commitment to courting indie developers on the Xbox One. He describes Microsoft as “very passionate” about building strong relationships with Indies, noting that the gaming business’ future is in jeopardy without independent developers.

Gary adds that while the big players like Sony, Microsoft, and Amazon “kind of hold it all together,” independent development is a major force behind innovation, and both big and small players alike can co-exist. Carr’s comments regarding an upcoming presentation from Phil Harrison could be interpreted as a hint that Microsoft may be re-evaluating its approach to publishing on Xbox One.

In a separate interview, Phil Spencer also discussed some of the challenges faced by both the Xbox 360 and Xbox One with regards to game publishing. The ease of development and publishing for the Xbox 360 has been both a blessing and a curse for the console. There have been some immensely high-profile, high-quality releases from a number of independent developers, but much of the Indie marketplace has also transformed into a dumping ground for woefully mediocre titles and clones of clones of clones.

At this point, so far into the console’s lifecycle, it can be difficult to reliably identify Indie games worth playing, and this has led to a significant shift in Microsoft’s publishing strategy for the Xbox One. Thankfully, Phil Spencer is aware of the parallels to Apple’s heavily-curated, closed ecosystem, and addresses them to an extent.

However, the goals are still potentially antithetical to each other; in order to attract good developers who create great content, a market cannot or should not heavily restrict access to its publishing tools. Conversely, a completely open market, where everyone can publish nearly anything, can also lead to a weakened content ecosystem, suffering from the same quality bloat seen in the Xbox 360’s Indie marketplace.

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Another day, another bundle of Xbox Live Arcade games designed to fill out your digital library for one low cost. This time around Microsoft’s packaged five action titles for …
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Standing in front of a PC demo station at E3, City Interactive Creative Director Steve Skelton describes Alien Rage to XBLAFans as a shooter that takes “the modern sensibilities of shooters — you know, control setup, mechanics, and applying the old-school fun and games, run and gun, frenetic action to it.” Unfortunately for fans of that style game, that pairing has considerably slowed down the raw speed of Unreal Tournament and Quake III (the “old-school” games mentioned by the developers as inspiration) to create space for those modern sensibilities.

Alien Rage takes place on a space station in which something has gone horribly wrong – the premise is not unlike that of the first episode of the classic Doom. There are no hellspawn here, however. The playable level pitted us against aliens that might remind older players of the first Predator film, complete with invisibility on a select few of them (these cause distortion to the surrounding air and environment, a particularly nice effect).

Since so much of City Interactive’s efforts were spent attempting to channel the magic that makes Unreal Tournament such a fondly remembered classic, it’s worth exploring some of those elements more specifically. Part of what made the late-90s/early-2000s generation of PC shooters what they were was that there were no limitations on the number of weapons a player could carry, which allowed players to be extremely creative in finding solutions to problems. Taking out an enemy around a corner in Unreal Tournament could be accomplished by setting a series of traps down with the bio-rifle, by bouncing a grenade off of the far wall or by detonating a shock rifle combo that would reach around the corner with its massive explosion.

Alien Rage limits the number of available guns to two, following the conventions of more modern shooters such as the Halo series. This means that while the player may have up to two or three different strategies for any given encounter, the full range of options will never be simultaneously available.

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In a post on Undead Labs’ official site, Geoffrey discusses new details about how State of Decay‘s Sandbox Mode may operate. He describes the team’s core, guiding philosophy in crafting …
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Capcom took a brief moment today during San Diego Comic Con to blow a few minds and announce a new Strider game headed to current and next-gen consoles early next year.

The techno ninja who first made his debut more than twenty years ago is getting a 2.5D graphical overhaul, some slick new toys and a seamlessly connected environment through which he’ll hack, slash, flip and generally just go about being a ninja. The revival has a distinct Shadow Complex vibe, and is being helmed by none other than Double Helix Games, the studio currently developing the long-awaited Killer Instinct remake.

Though information released indicates the title will be developed for all the usual suspects, including Xbox One and Xbox 360, there’s no official word yet as to whether or not Strider will hoist the orange banner of Arcade as previously rumored. Considering the release window falls well into the next generation of hardware, it could be that Xbox Live Arcade will have already been phased out, as we learned earlier this year.

In any case, look for Strider to bring a little more ninja to your X-marked console of choice. You can check out the official announcement trailer after the jump, and if you’re still hungry for more, kick back and take in seven minutes of gameplay footage immediately following.

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The annual Evo Championship Series brings together the best of the best in the fighting game world. As such, the allure of so many dedicated practitioners of virtual fisticuffs …
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Magic 2014: Duels of the Planeswalkers was developed by Stainless Games and Wizards of the Coast and published by Microsoft Studios. It retails for 800 MSP and was released on June 26, 2013. XBLA Fans awarded Magic 2014 a coveted Buy It! award in our recent review.

Magic 2014 features a smaller, more focussed challenge mode than previous years, although it is still fun and can get tricky later on! Our guide provides step by step details for completing each of the challenges by name.

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Magic 2014: Duels of the Planeswalkers was developed by Stainless Games and Wizards of the Coast and published by Microsoft Studios. It retails for 800 MSP and was released on June 26, 2013. XBLA Fans awarded Magic 2014 a coveted Buy It! award in our recent review.

In this years edition of Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers (known herein as Magic 2014) the campaign mode has been revamped to provide a story driven twist to accompany the usual spell slinging shenanigans. In this guide, we’ll be walking you through the campaign mode to ensure that you can assist Chandra in catching her man.

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