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We go round 2 with The Walking Dead and bend time itself with a spot of spelunking. What do you mean Spelunky’s been available on PC free for three and a half years?! Just jesting.
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One can’t skim the internet without running into a forum thread about the potential release of Shenmue 3–the next installment in a saga that began on Sega’s Dreamcast in November of 2000. Fans of the series sip on every drip of information on its development, though nothing of the sort truly exists. Shenmue’s creator, Yu Suzuki, even left Sega last year though some reports suggest he still has a consultant role within the company. Despite these gloomy prospects, die hard fans are still hopeful that the third of the series will finally breach the coffin it had been placed in so long ago.

William Shakespeare once said: “Love me or hate me, both are in my favor…If you love me, I’ll always be in your heart…If you hate me, I’ll always be in your mind.”

Had William Shakespeare been around in the 21st Century, we believe he’d be referring to Shenmue. Never will you discover a title so adored by critics and gamers and abhorred by others in the same demographic. You play as Ryo Hazuki, an unassuming young man on a quest to avenge his father’s death. In order to achieve this, Ryo must emphatically harass the locals of a small Japanese town by asking questions like the infamous, “Are you guys sailors?” Ryo finds himself in a lot of trouble during his exploration of leads, but he can always stop by the arcade and play an emulated, in-game version of a few arcade hits. Read More

The first developer diary for Worms Revolution ventures through the history of the Worms franchise, from its creation by Andy Davidson and the first release in 1995, to the newest installment …
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Guardians of Middle-Earth, the latest Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game to aim for the Xbox Live Arcade scene since Awesomenauts, wastes no time jumping into the action. We talked at length about the game in our preview from E3, but Monolith explains further how they manage to carefully select what elements of MOBA are strongest here. “We wanted to get players in and out of the game quickly”, designer Scott Compton told us in a roundtable press conference, “We wanted to get players in and out of the game quickly. 45 – 60 minutes is too long of a game.”

This Lord of the Rings MOBA was built from the ground up to be about the action and overall have shorter match times than other games in the genre. To achieve this, the foundation had to be set with the controls. While the answer to how a MOBA would work on a console has been of some debate lately, Monolith claims they had a rather easy time with it. Compton told us that “putting the player in direct control was a really satisfying experience. Using the left stick and “driving” the character around on the battlefield, rather than clicking and orienting your character that way.” Using rectangular, wedge and circle attack radii all aimed with the left stick, the game achieves precision even without a mouse. Read More

Microsoft and 4J Studios bringing Mojang’s world-building simulator, Minecraft, over to Xbox Live Arcade was a big deal when it was announced and was promoted as such by grabbing some of the spotlight during Microsoft’s pre-E3 2011 media briefing. As such, it stands to reason that the console holder and the Swedish studio behind the original version of the game hammered out a deal months ahead of time before carefully fine-tuning the specifics of its E3 announcement. Sure, that’s reasonable all right, but that’s not the way it happened, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Studios Phil Spencer recently informed Destructoid.

“So I have a funny ‘behind the curtains’ story on Minecraft,” Spencer explained. “It was about a week before E3 last year when we made that deal as a first party. I believed in the project and we knew the studio. The graphic behind me last year on stage — if you were like, ‘What is that?’ it’s because it was created in one night. Even the people inside Microsoft, as they were looking at it, were thinking, ‘What is that Minecraft thing and why are we putting it on stage?'”

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Board games are making a comeback. While everyone remembers the classics – Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue (and so many others) – the board game industry has expanded dramatically over the past decade or so, thanks in part to the success of Settlers of Catan. Many of the most popular board games of today have made the transition over to XBLA, including Catan, Carcasonne, and Ticket to Ride. Despite that, we think there are some others that would fit right in among their XBLA brethren. Read More

Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3 was released today on Xbox Live Indie Games. The first 2 episodes of the RPG series were originally released …
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Mini Ninjas Adventures was released today for 800MSP as one of those rare Friday XBLA releases. A follow-up to 2009’s Mini Ninjas, players will assume the role of a ninja …
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The Walking Dead was developed and published by Telltale Games. It was released June 27, 2012 for 400 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

With the first episode of The Walking Dead, Telltale Games gave us something very special. It was a game with a compelling story in which choice mattered. You cared enough about the believable characters and world they had created that the decisions were never easy.

We thought Episode 1 was pretty amazing so Episode 2, Starved For Help, had a lot to live up to. If you’re reading this then you probably already played the first episode, and you will have to own it to play this one. You’ll be pleased to know Telltale has not only met the expectations set by the first episode but easily exceeded them. Read More

Ubisoft have announced a video game tie in for the upcoming release of The Expendables 2, heading to XBLA this summer. The game, which is based on the over-the-top action film set to hit cinemas in August, allows players to take on the role of four of the world’s most crusty legendary mercenaries: Barney Ross, Gunner Jensen, Hale Caesar and Yin Yang. Players must rescue an extremely valuable, kidnapped billionaire, in an adventure which concludes right where the new movie begins. Gameplay appears to be a standard 4 player twin stick shooter which is said to be playable both online and offline. Check out some more screenshots after the jump.

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