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Doodle Jump for #Kinect – #XBLA Box Art pic.twitter.com/PUwmlsAhZM

— lifelower (@lifelower) May 31, 2013

Anybody with a smart phone has probably played Doodle …
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Game over, man!
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As the rumors suggested, the long-anticipated State of Decay is confirmed to hit Xbox Live Arcade this week on June 5! It will retail at 1600 Microsoft Points. State of …
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The classic first-person shooter Wolfenstein 3D is once again available on XBLA. Originally released back in June 2009, the game was briefly missing from digital stores due to publishing rights being reverted back from …
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Call of Juarez: Gunslinger was developed by Techland and published by Ubisoft. It was released May 22, 2013 for 1200 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

There’s a revered mysticism to the myths and legends of the Old West – larger-than-life characters carving out their own niche in American history through gritty living and frontier justice. No one can say for certain how much of it is true, and Call of Juarez: Gunslinger acknowledges that, embraces it and delivers one of the best examples of storytelling you’ll find west of the Mississippi. Its modern approach in form and function elevates the material rather than overshadowing it, and in the process creates a wholly unique experience that’s not to be missed.

Here’s what we liked:

How the West was won, sort of – Gunslinger weaves the tale of famed bounty hunter Silas Greaves as he recounts his murderous exploits to a handful of saloon patrons over the course of an afternoon and too many whiskies. You’ll play through a series of flashbacks as Silas, all the while his narration and foggy recollection frame and change each level like an evolving campfire story that plays off the audience. When he backs himself into a corner or spins a yarn too ridiculous to believe, he’ll slyly conjure up an escape route, parting the mountainside to reveal a new path or remembering things a little differently and going back to reveal how it really happened. It’s this light-hearted, self-aware delivery that makes Gunslinger so effective. Though the story itself is quite good – especially in those moments Silas grapples with personal demons – the banter between Silas and his audience and the way it transforms the game world mid-mission is the creative and endearing draw of the campaign.

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Xbox Live Arcade is a dead platform downloading. Microsoft’s designated home for small and inexpensive downloadable video games will not make the jump to the next generation. When the Xbox One releases later this year, all of its video games will live in the same space. The nearly nine-years-old Xbox Live Arcade might continue to exist on the Xbox 360 and slowly fade away during the transitional year(s), or Microsoft might quickly yank it like a Band-Aid through a dashboard update. In either case, XBLA has been read its last rights.

One day soon, gamers everywhere will turn on their Xboxes and find all available games under an aptly named Games section of the dashboard. It’s tempting to read this move as another case of Microsoft pushing independent developers farther away from the green glow of the Xbox spotlight. It’s tempting to assume that the new dashboard will shine that light even brighter on big-budget game releases and multimedia options, and that may well end up being the case. However, some indies, believe it or not, actually enjoy working with Microsoft. Additionally, Microsoft’s Phil Spencer told Eurogamer that he feels the new layout, which includes a recommendation system, will “solve fantastically some of the challenges that independent developers face, particularly around discovery and connecting their game to an audience, by some of the platform features we have in the machine itself.”

We’ll have to check back in a few years into the Xbox One’s life to verify whether or not Spencer spoke truly — but no one wants to wait that long. So here and now, what does the elimination of Xbox Live Arcade mean? Will it continue the Flight of the Indies? Or will it better a system that obviously has more than a few kinks and bring back the downtrodden and departed?

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Contrast is 2D/3D puzzle-platformer from Compulsion Games, where you take control of Dawn, an imaginary friend of a young girl, Didi. The setting is a 1920’s dreamworld, where you …
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CastleStorm was developed by Zen Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released May 29, 2013 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

In CastleStorm you’ll sometimes shoot sheep. Out of a ballista. Into a castle. It’s made possible by a unique propulsion technique: rainbow excrement. Zen Studios’ CastleStorm is obviously not a game that takes itself seriously. It has a story, but it’s intentionally dumb. There are blue guys. There are red guys. The red guys steal a shiny object of immense power from the blue guys, and the blue guys, somewhat reluctantly, go to war in an attempt to retrieve it. Cutscenes filled with overtly cheesy and occasionally humorous jokes frequently interrupt the tower-defense-meets-Angry-Birds gameplay, but the joy of launching projectiles, which are only occasionally weaponized beasts, out of your ballista and towards enemy castles and opposing forces marching on your own castle will keep you coming back for more.

Here’s what we liked:

Plenty of options — At first, CastleStorm will seem simple to a fault. You have a castle. The enemy has a castle. You have a ballista. The enemy has a ballista. You have soldiers. The enemy has soldiers. It’s a feeling that quickly evaporates as you progress through the campaign and unlock an impressive variety of unit types, ballista projectiles, magic spells, castles — including those you build yourself — and upgrades. Though you will encounter the occasional mission objective that changes things up a bit, most levels involve you defending your castle and flag while electing to either capture the enemy’s flag or tear their castle down to its foundation. Thanks to the numerous tools of destruction at your disposal and those employed by the enemy, this formula never gets old. It’s challenging and satisfying to implant arrows in troops’ heads, crash down gates with flying quadrupeds and blow castle rooms to smithereens with bombs. Good thing, too, because success in later levels is achieved only by nimbly managing your war assets. Fail to do so, and you’ll be overwhelmed as the no man’s land between the safety of the opposing castle gates quickly becomes the enemy’s land.

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At a quick glance, the new Xbox One controller looks a lot like its predecessor, but look closer and you’ll notice some significant design changes. One such change is …
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CastleStorm, the medieval 2D physics-based destruction game from Zen Studios, will be launching on XLBA tomorrow. Built on the fond childhood memory of building and destroying Lego castles, CastleStorm …
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