Blog

The “point and click” adventure game genre simply refuses to die. Ron Gilbert, creative mastermind behind Monkey Island, leads Double Fine‘s upcoming console-bound return to adventure games, The Cave. Gilbert isn’t redesigning the wheel here (though I wouldn’t put it past him) but The Cave definitely has everything for the contemporary adventure game fan.

The Cave is an adventure game of the 2D platform and puzzle variety wherein you guide three characters along a journey through a mysterious, question-answering cave. Seven characters — amongst them a Hillbilly, Knight, Scientist, Monk, Time Traveler, Adventurer and a set of creepy Twin children — each find themselves with a deep desire which they believe the cave can satisfy. Though they have an overt motive for venturing into the cave, Gilbert says there’s something deeper going on in The Cave. Read More

While it could easily be argued that Nintendo doesn’t fit in very will with mature gamers at times, they do have somewhat of a monopoly on a few types of games. Take the Super Smash Bros series, for example. They’ve had total control of the fighting sub-genre they helped make popular since the first game in the series. Sure, great games like Small Arms have had their day in the sun, but Mario and his crew have remained the relatively unchallenged kings. They’ve remained at the top for so long that Sony decided to try their hand with the long-titled PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. It too boasts the best that Sony-owned franchises have to offer: characters like Nathan Drake, Kratos and Sweet Tooth. So why hasn’t Microsoft joined in and created a mascot fighter. Kotaku tracked down Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft’s game studios at E3 and asked that exact question. His response was that players “do not want” that type of game. We disagree, as do the Smash Bros series’ collective 21.45 million copies sold

And what of Mario Party? Would you believe that Mario Party 8 alone has sold more than 7.6 million copies? Mock if you want, but that series is successful because it’s fun. They’re games that anyone, old or young, can get into, understand, and have fun with. It’s great for family game nights, college dorm competitions, double dates, and more.

So where’s our Avatar Party? Such a game does not exist, but it could, and could potentially draw in those players who reluctantly turn on their Wii once and a while to play Smash Bros or Mario Party. We think combining the two could be a potential gold mine, even if we’re not using system-based mascots. So join us as we try something new. Instead of pitching the return of an old game we love, we’re pitching a new one entirely: Avatar Party.

Read More

[springboard type=”youtube” id=”ma9onTpSk6M” player=”xbla001″ width=”640″ height=”360″ ]

So our amazing friends at Zen Studios have given us permission to stream one of the new tables this Sunday night. We …
Read More

The ever popular Minecraft is still storming the charts on Xbox Live and Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition remains for the second week in a row, the number 2 most …
Read More

NeocoreGames has released the first in-game screenshots of their upcoming action-RPG, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. Up until now we’ve just had a teaser trailer and some concept art to go on, but these screens finally give a glimpse of what the game will actually look like. Though the interface seen makes us think these may be from the PC version of the game, so that aspect could very well differ from the XBLA version. The game definitely looks like a fairly traditional isometric action-RPG, with a dark gothic styling.

The Incredible Adventures will follow the son of famed vampire hunter Van Helsing, who himself is also named Van Helsing, fancy that. It promises ” a tale wrought with wry humor and snappy dialogue” and “a larger-than-life hero possessing a dark yet romantic charm”. Of course that tells us nothing about the gameplay, luckily we checked it out at E3 and will be bringing you more details in our preview soon. Read More

Back in May we reported that Polytron had sent their first patch for mind-bending puzzle-platformer Fez to certification. The update was set to rectify many issues that had popped up after the games release, such as frame-rate dips and crashing. Unfortunately a couple of problems caused the update to fail cert and it was sent back to Polytron, who then ran into their own issues trying to reproduce the error. Thankfully those have finally been resolved the the update is now back in cert, meaning it should hopefully appear in a few weeks. You can find the full Facebook post about the issue below, if you’d like just a little more detail from the developer themselves.

If you haven’t already checked out Fez then have a read of our review to find out why you should, and if you get stuck you can always use our handy guide.

Source: Polytron’s Facebook page Read More

Have you ever had a friend that just doesn’t seem to get it? No matter how many times he’s informed that you’re just not into a band, a sport or some other such thing he just keeps on dragging you out to experience it. He can only be denied so many times before you reach the end of your Seinfeldian Excuse Rolodex and bite the bullet. So it is with MMA and one of my closest friends. Despite maintaining a serious passion for a number of sports, MMA excites me about as much as the prospect of playing Superman 64.

It’s of little surprise, then, that enthusiasm was low while trekking across the convention hall en route for an appointment to play 345 Games’ Bellator: MMA Onslaught. The nice folks at 345 ran through a quick overview of their fighting game and demoed a match in the blissfully peaceful office off the show floor. John noted how much better the visuals were than the last time he had seen the game. Then Matt McEnerney, senior producer at 345, and company showed off the game’s surprisingly deep RPG elements — character creation and progression. Once they were done tinkering, the fight was on. The more of the game that was shown, the more I suddenly found myself eager to give a try.

Read More

Signal Studios (Toy Soldiers) enjoyed the special honor of having its next project, Ascend: New Gods, unveiled on gaming’s biggest stage last week. The action title was debuted during Microsoft’s pre-E3 press conference, live in front of millions of gamers watching around the globe. Speaking with Games Industry International, Signal Creative Director D.R. Albright III said that the opportunity came about as a result of the strong bonds the studio established with the publisher while working on Toy Soldiers. Although working with a gargantuan corporation like Microsoft has on occasion tried Albright’s patience, he admitted that “certainly [Signal] wouldn’t be as successful” without its support.

“Ultimately, we do get a shot at doing things a lot of developers don’t get to do,” Albright stated candidly. “For example, Ascend had the only working Smart Glass demo at E3, at least for games. On the surface, this might not seem like a big deal – or maybe we are the only suckers who said yes. Either way, that ends up getting Signal a mention in publications like US Today which is a big deal. We probably only have small developer/XBLA level privileged access. I might know more about what’s happening than some guy commenting on a Neogaf forum, but I am pretty sure that the CoD and Assassin’s Creed folks are privy to a lot more information than me. That’s ok. It makes sense from a business standpoint that they would.”

So if the bond between the XBLA developer and Microsoft is so strong, is there any real possibility of Signal one day being taken into the Microsoft fold proper? The creative director was non-committal on the issue, but asserted that the ball was in the console holder’s court. However, he added that all of that funding and preferential treatment that flows from the software giant to its internal studios is certainly attractive, though working in a structured environment of such a massive size isn’t the most exciting proposition in the world to Albright.

Read More

Babel Rising launched on XBLA yesterday and while we weren’t too impressed, the game’s publisher, Ubisoft, have teamed up with Redlynx to create a new Trials Evolution track based …
Read More

Update: The patch will be downloadable Today, June 15th, 2012.

At 2 million units sold, Minecraft is a hit amongst gamers and it’s still continuing to improve over time. With the promise of patches and updates, we’ve got first word of a list of fixes and features coming soon from Play XBLA. To name a few including autosaves, gamertag display in split-screen, and enabling/disabling settings with hints and tooltips. Read the jump to catch the rest of the list and we’ll let you know when this will be available to you crafters alike.
Read More