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Did you pick up any of our XBLA Fans swag when we launched our range of avatar leisure wear? If so then why not join us for a game …
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Ever since the dawn of time man has dreamed of flight.

Okay well that might be a bit hyperbolic, but certainly the popularity of science fiction and the curious mind of one Leonardo Da Vinci are why we are so in love with jetpacks. Strapping a super-powered engine to your back and floating around the sky, all the while hoping your butt doesn’t get singed, this must indeed be the pinnacle of mankind’s achievements, should we ever arrive there. In the mean time, Hybrid‘s got all the jetpackin-est action we could hope for and more, and it’s one of the best implementations of a jetpack in gaming history. No, that’s not hyperbolic.

Hybrid is a simple game, when you strip away some of the superficiality. It’s a third person shooter that’s one part cover-camper and one part on-rails bullet hell. Sound strange? It should. This three versus three competitive multiplayer (only) game mixes the strategy of locking to cover with the skill and reflex-reliance of strafing and shooting while flying through the air.

The whole game centers around this mechanic, wherein you select a location to travel to, rather than manually moving there and directing your character. Once in the air, you can speed up, strafe in all directions with your jetpack, return to your previous cover or select a new location. When in cover, you can move along the walls or hop over them, but that’s it. The game is loadout-based with a dense armory system which grants you an unlock for any weapons or abilities you’d like from a specific category every time you level up (like Gotham City Impostors).

On top of the actual gameplay during matches, there is also this massive global war meta game to account for. Five continents divided into 20 districts each must be fought over to gain dark matter for your faction. The Variant and Paladin factions contest these zones, completing matches in a zone they select to progress its capture; the better the team does, the more progress they make. The first faction to 100 dark matter wins the season and is awarded with a special helmet and achievement. Read More

Weekly Roundup compiles all the biggest news stories, reviews, and releases from the week into one handy post on the weekends.

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A new launch trailer has been released for Dust: An Elysian Tail. The game, which marks the end of this year’s Summer of Arcade promotion, comes from the one …
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In the wake of upcoming turn based artillery giant Worms: Revolution, the sheer vacancy of this genre becomes ever more apparent. The genre is populated almost exclusively by Worms, but there are a few other games which have made a name for themselves over the years. One such competitor which has maintained popularity throughout its existence is Gunbound. This free to play online artillery game just had its 7th anniversary since its inception in Korea back in 2005. Developer Softnyx’s approach to the genre includes an extensive item-based stat customization engine as well as several different “mobiles”, each with different elements and stats. At the heart of the game is aiming and shooting, but there’s something strangely deep about it too.

When you boot up a game of Gunbound today in 2012, you’ll note not much has changed in the UI over the last several years. The game has never had a graphical update (that we can tell), you still can’t change the resolution, and there’s still not enough information on each mobile in the mobile selection screen. That said, the amount of content has at least doubled in every respect including mobiles, items, maps, and game modes. While estranged from its early adopters by a lack of true game experience upgrades, if Softnyx were to join Nexon (developers of Dungeon Fighter Live) on Xbox Live Arcade and beef up the presentation of Gunbound, this mobile blastin’ multiplayer game could be just as addictive as it was on PC. Read More

Fret not, XBLAers – Avatar items listed for sale by actual currency this week don’t indicate a move away from MSP, according to a statement put out by Microsoft today. The appearance of dollars and cents (or Euros or yen or what have you) in the Marketplace was a simple glitch, the company says.

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Battleblock Theater is a terrible place, forcing prisoners to perform deadly plays for the entertainment of giant cats. That isn’t to say it’s all bad, at least the prisoners …
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Anyone who has grown up in the last decade or so most likely has an affection for Cartoon Network. We’ve seen some rad old shows show up on their programming line-up from Batman to Bugs Bunny, but they’ve also had a great share of original programming. Things like Ben 10 or Johnny Bravo proved that modern animation could still be as good as the olden days. Here at XBLA Fans we thought some of that original programming could use an XBLA game or two. So here’s our top five shows that need XBLA games:
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Microsoft have announced that more skins are on the way for best seller Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition and whilst there have been no release dates given, Microsoft have revealed on their PlayXBLA blog that they’ll be adding a whopping 45 skins. So far, the pack is set to include Agent Level 5  from Crackdown 2, Joanna Dark of Perfect Dark fame, Damon Baird from GoW: judgement, Pretztail skin from they ever lovable Viva Pinata, and Left4Dead‘s Bill. Valve had already announced a Left4Dead themed skin pack containing all 8 survivors from the 2 games, but it’s unclear whether this is a separate pack or whether they’ll all be bundled in Skin Pack 2.

Minecraft’s first Skin Pack for the XBLA version was released last month for a mere 160 MSP and also contained 45 skins, so we’ll be hoping for a similar price point on this one. PlayXBLA have promised to reveal more of the new skins over the coming weeks, but why not take a guess at what might be included in the comments below.

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German video game publisher Kalypso Media has delayed the release of platformer Alien Spidy to the fall. Time had been running out on the game’s originally planned summer …
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