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It would seem that falsely predicting the arrival of The End is something reserved not strictly for ancient Mayan civilizations, but also for modern video game developers. Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition developer 4J Studios responded to fan questions on Twitter yesterday about the impending arrival of the floating island known as “The End” is actually not impending at all: the island will not be patched into the XBLA version of the game along with Title Update 8 (TU8), as the developer said it would back in December.

The reason for the delay is that the studio has been forced to dedicate time to creating fixes for bugs that popped up in Title Update 7 (TU7), which released on December 19. 4J tweeted that its assertion that The End would come to XBLA as part of the next title update was made “before we knew we were releasing a bug fix update for TU7. The bug fix update will be TU8, so The End will be later.”

Some of the bugs that will be addressed include one the “Kick Player” bug that freezes the player’s Xbox when the host tries to kick him or her and one that mistakenly prompts players that they cannot sleep in beds when monsters are around.

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Developer Telltale’s episodic zombie adventure game The Walking Dead has received no shortage of critical praise, winning myriad outlets’ Game of the Year awards (including XBLAFans’). According to …
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Update: Lab Zero has informed XBLAFans that the studio has been working with Microsoft and has successfully shrunken down the size of the update some, though they declined to go into specifics about the current size of the update. Look for a full follow-up article coming soon. Original story below.

Lab Zero Games, the studio now responsible for all things Skullgirls following publisher Autumn Games and original developer Reverge Labs parting ways last summer, still hasn’t been able to get the patch that released for the PSN version of its fighting game in November onto the Xbox Live Marketplace. The holdup, apparently, is Microsoft’s XBLA update file size limit.

A tweet from the official Japanese Skullgirls Twitter account went out on Friday claiming that the update is exponentially larger than what Microsoft will allow. The update Lab Zero put together for its fighting game is roughly 590 MB in size — a whopping 147.5 times the size of the paltry 4 MB limit the developer says Microsoft places on updates. A rough Google translation showed that the Skullgirls team is under the impression that it’s possible to be granted an exception, but the process is arduous.

The revelatory tweet came on the same day that the main Skullgirls Twitter account stated that the team was “frustrated.” It’s not clear whether its frustrations are directed at Microsoft size limits or the two sides’ inabilities to get something worked out, but XBLAFans has followed up in an attempt to find out exactly what the team is unsated with and will update this story if we get a response.

Regardless of where the developer’s frustrations lie, Lab Zero Games is working with Microsoft to get the patch out “as soon as possible,” so there is still hope that it will make its way to XBLA. Skullgirls fans might not want to get their hopes up too high for it to appear anytime soon. The patch has been “held up in MS submission and holiday limbo” since as far back as December 12, according to an earlier tweet by the game’s official account. Though the team was said to be “pushing hard” later that very week, the calendar is nearing an entire month later and it sounds as if little, if any, progress has been made.

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What we are playing is a weekly column published on Sunday. Select members of the team talk about the games they’ve been playing over the past week and which they’re …
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Weekly Roundup compiles all the biggest news stories, reviews and features from the week into one handy post on the weekends.

With the shadow of the holidays firmly behind for us another year, we can get back to focusing on the other thing that brings us all together, Xbox Live Arcade. A lot of work behind the scenes this week, as several existing XBLA games got some tinkering under the hood. We outline some strategies for guarding Middle-earth, talk DLC for our ‘Best HD Remake of 2012’ and dish on the many flavors of our favorite peripheral. Here’s to another great year of Xbox Live Arcade.

Here’s our week in review:

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The team at Shoryuken has noted that Capcom is gearing up for the upcoming release of Darkstalkers Resurrection, a high-definition port of both Night Warriors: Darkstalkers Revenge and Darkstalkers …
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Skulls of the Shogun may be the first XBLA game offering cross-platform play over Windows 8, Surface and WP8, but those hoping for a cross-platform purchase unlocking the game …
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The holidays are a busy time, especially around these parts. Sometimes goods news falls through the cracks, but now’s the time of year to reach deep for anything that might have gotten lost in the hustle and bustle of the season. Recently announced by publisher Atlus and developer Old School Games, a subsidiary of Saber Interactive (best known for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and most recently, Inversion), God Mode throws open the gates of Hell for some unabashed third-person cooperative action.

God Mode offers up a retro-romp through The Maze of Hades where you and as many as three friends, online or off, shoot, smash, and blast your way through wave upon wave of mythological mayhem. Moving from zone to zone with your recently deceased characters, you’ll have to finagle your way through the frenzy, fighting for health/armor/ammo pick-ups while filling your Rage Meter with each successive kill to unleash special abilities. Though the action seems fairly straightforward, collected gold and experience plays into Cadaver Customization, where you’ll be able to shop for new weapons, upgrades, abilities and an absurd array of appearance pieces.

Speaking to IGN, studio head Matthew Karch touched on the pick-up-and-play friendliness they’ve instilled, “It doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is lighthearted fun and focuses on arcade style action over a deep story. I think this makes sense for downloadable games, where players are looking for some quick, thoughtless action.” While not everyone agrees downloadable players don’t want narrative and depth, there’s certainly room for the mindless obliteration of the legions of the damned.

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At this point, it’s safe to call Minecraft a legitimate phenomenon – especially the Xbox 360 Edition, where it’s one of the best-selling games in XBLA history and spent …
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Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD is a bit of a mixed bag. For the casual player it provides nostalgia with enhanced visuals. The bugs seem minor. For the hardcore it leaves feelings of imprecision in control, and the in-game glitches become like a giant white headed pimple–no matter how much you try to look away it steals your focus. The community and media at large are torn on whether the game is amazing or abysmal. The Revert Pack DLC is more of the same. In the end it comes down to whether you enjoy the core game or hate it. That being said, let’s keep this short and not beat around the bush.

Here’s what we liked:

More to love – For fans of the game the Revert Pack is a must buy. The three greatest levels from Pro Skater 3 (Canada, L.A., and Airport) along with one new music track, Metallica’s “All Nightmare Long”. Also included are four new skaters: pros Steve Caballero and Geoff Rawley and Metallica members James Hetfield and Robert Trujillo. The four new skaters provide decent balance in the game’s starting selection, and the levels are faithfully recreated. The Metallica track is, well, Metallica. You’ll either love it or hate it.

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