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Pocketwatch Games has confirmed to Joystiq that its upcoming stealth/action/heist video game Monaco will launch simultaneously on XBLA and PC. Although Monaco has featured at numerous video-game trade shows …
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In releasing the latest CastleStorm trailer – complete with its own karaoke-style theme tune – Zen Studios invites players to submit their own karaoke videos for the #CastleStormSong competition. …
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Back in April, TopWare Interactive announced Targem Game’s interplanetary strategy game Planets at War. After being quiet for months the game has finally …
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In case you didn’t hear, XBLA’s first free-to-play game Happy Wars launched last Friday, and is absolutely worth checking out. If a free game is great, a free Halloween update can only make it better. The new Pumpkin map captures the spirit of the season, as the land is littered with scarecrows, gravestones, and jack-o-lanterns, all illuminated by a giant full moon. The new map can be played in single player training, multiplayer, and co-op modes. Study the battlefield in the screenshots below, then go off and fight in the update available now.

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While most of you will be aware of the release of XBLA’s first free to play game, Happy Wars, you might …
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Pumped for the World Series? When you’re not too busy watching the professionals play, Home Run Stars can make you an all-star hitter. Using the Kinect, have your avatar step up to the plate and play through League mode. Three unique stadiums await, each with their own variety of targets which will help you rack up big points. Compete with your friends online through the leaderboards or 2-player multiplayer. Besides being the next game to include Avatar Famestar, Home Run Stars will be the first XBLA game to have SmartGlass integration. The Duel mode lets two players play locally, one as the hitter and the other the pitcher, without the advantages of screen-peeking. Home Run Stars drops October 26.

Source: PlayXBLA

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Happy Wars was developed by Toylogic and published by Microsoft Studios. It was released on October 12, 2012, free of charge. A copy was provided for review purposes.

There was a time when free-to-play games were regarded as the second-class citizens of the industry, relegated to social networking sites and mobile phones. While those days are over, free-to-play gaming never quite made it to Microsoft’s console until now, raising questions as to whether the model could even survive in a market that thrives on the bigger and better. Happy Wars’ delightful online action is the first to provide an answer to that question – and it’s a good one.

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Occasionally, XBLA Fans likes to take a backseat and allow members of the development community to speak openly and directly to our readers. After all, you came here to read about games, and who better to talk about them than the professionals who create them? With that in mind, please enjoy the following article written by Enigma Software CEO Daniel Parente.

In our first Alien Spidy post, we showed how we took the initial concept for our protagonist, Spidy, and made him into the lovable character he is today –- despite being a spider!

In today’s post, we want to do something similar. We’re introducing the remaining cast of characters featured in the game and how we came up with consistent visuals to keep the art direction and, of course, Spidy himself in line with our vision.

Let’s start with the Ladybug, which has its own unique charm.

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The pesky mythological creatures filled the sky, regularly swooping down to wreak havoc on the undead rock band engaged in a fracas with other, less well-intentioned zombies below. Our group of zombie rockers had been punching, grabbing and throwing its way through the streets towards a cemetery for maybe 15 or 20 minutes at this point, with seemingly everyone but the screaming living trying their darnedest to send us back to hell for good. There was enough chaos being caused by the slow, lumbering zombie baddies and occasional “accidental” punching of each other that the airborne aggressors were being largely left to their own devices.

But there is only so much pushing that a bulky undead drummer is willing to take before he grabs an agitator by her throat and repeatedly smashes her face into the ground. It had fallen to me to make the skies a little friendlier, so that’s what exactly what I did at PAX Prime while playing Ska Studios’ Charlie Murder. Another scream escaped from her throat as she bit the dust, and that was that. However, the magical flying creature impeding our progress had friends. Well, two can play at that game. The other members of the group had continued on their merry little way pummeling the crap out of the enemy zombies, causing various pickups to drop, including guns.

A few pulls of the trigger later and the XBLA Fans crew had achieved complete air superiority. The screams of a unicorn ringing through the headset were music to my ears. On-screen, the tormentors actually took the form of witches on broomsticks, but they were voiced by the studio’s very own one-horn. Ska Studios Art Unicorn Michelle Juett-Silva smiled proudly when explaining that she and her husband, Lead Dishwasher James Silva, had performed nearly all of the voice-over work for their game.

Another stretch of the demo showed off the unicorn’s pipes even more. A quick cut-scene showed some NPCs attempting to escape from the zombies with their lives intact by navigating through the clearly haunted cemetery. They ran right smack into a ghostly little ghost that bore a striking resemblance to the girl from The Ring. (Silva would later admit that they are indeed his homage to Japanese horror films.) The girls can’t attack, but operate more as environmental hazards moving in fixed patterns. Coming into contact with them elicited one of Juett-Silva’s recorded screeches and meant death for the player.

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Undead Labs loves guns. You can tell from their recent blog post that released a list of every gun usable in their upcoming State of Decay. After all, this can’t be a genuine zombie apocalypse survival simulation if you can’t even pack your favorite heat! Counting up the list of the available rifles, assault rifles, pistols, SMGs and shotguns, their current list totals at 87 guns ready to go with the genuine promise of more to come. See a gun missing that you must have at the end of the world? You could try tweeting to @undeadlabs…

Still no word on a release date yet, but keep coming back to XBLA Fans for details on that front as they emerge! In the meantime, you should check out our massive preview if you haven’t already.

Check the full story for the complete list of guns.

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