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A few weeks back Team 17 announced Worms Revolution, an all new Worms game set to be released on XBLA sometime during the third quarter of this year. Fans of the franchise immediately began to wiggle with joy upon hearing news of the game being built from the ground up on a completely new engine. Today, we’re able to deliver the first concrete details on that engine. In a nutshell, Revolution‘s environment’s will be rendered in 3D, with the game outwardly looking like a classic 2D Worms game, with much better graphics. Team 17 has promised that deformation and destruction of the game’s environments will be on par with the franchise’s classic side-scrolling entries. Team 17 has also revealed that Revolution‘s environments will have four central themes; sewers, gardens, farms, and a beach known as “Rock Pool”. You can check out concept art of each setting by following the link below. Don’t even try to claim you’re not already thinking about blowing these places to bits.

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Skullgirls was developed by Reverge Labs and published by Autumn Games and Konami. It was released on April 11, 2012 for 1200 MSP. A copy was purchased by the reviewer.

What happens when a talented artist with tons of characters designs and a fighting game pro with a character-less fighting engine meet up? Skullgirls happens, that’s what! Skullgirls, a true labor of love, set out to defy expectations of fighting games and provide a solid engine. Fighting games have given birth to a number of strange mechanics over the years, and a lot of the games themselves are strange. For instance, Skullgirls lets you view hitbox and hitstun data in training mode, which you can access straight form versus mode! Variable team sizes are balanced, and it’s impossible to accidentally hit the pause button mid-fight.

Skullgirls takes place in The Canopy Kingdom which is home to the Skull Heart, and the tournament for its acquisition. There’s evidence of a very deep, rich story and environment, though only the surface is touched in the game. Each character has a different reason to go for the Skull Heart, which, if acquired, grants one wish. However, if the wish is even slightly impure, it comes out corrupted, and the wisher becomes the Skullgirl.

Suffice to say the story is actually pretty cool, and props to Reverge for actually telling one, but that’s not the focus. Skullgirls is all about the fighting, casual or competitive, so let’s see if it stands up to the greats.

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This summer will mark four years since The Behemoth-developed beat ’em up Castle Crashers made its debut on Xbox Live Arcade and quickly became the go-to cooperative game for seemingly every XBLA gamer with three people on their friends list. The tiny studio behind the game hasn’t rested on its laurels since achieving well-deserved success by capturing gamers’ hearts with Crashers — its followup to Alien Hominid — though. The team, which now boasts a whopping two full-time artists, has been slaving away at Battleblock Theater for more than three years now.

This past weekend the team dragged its stellar co-op platformer out to PAX East for the second year in a row, but you won’t hear anyone complaining, especially not yours truly, about once again playing the game at the annual Boston convention. Unless of course, they’re begroaning the fact that the title is still only playable in custom-made arcade cabinets at cons and not in the homes of Xbox owners everwhere. The impatience is understandable to some degree; Battleblock looks and plays wonderfully, so gamers want it for themselves. Now. Despite appearing to be quite far along in development, however, the game is still sporting a non-specific TBA 2012 release date.

Although the wait might be getting unbearable for some fans, it looks like all of us will be rewarded for holding on when this one finally comes out. Jumping and punching through the stages of the world’s first reality theater performance was even more fun the second time around. And accidentally intentionally tossing your co-op partner to his death? Yeah, that hasn’t gotten any less enjoyable.

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Jeremiah Slaczka of 5th Cell recently gave GameTrailers a virtual walk through of a match in their upcoming tactical third-person shooter Hybrid, and there’s …
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Fez was developed by Polytron and published by Microsoft/Trapdoor. It was released on April 13, 2012 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

A few years ago Fez started making noise in the indie game scene as a game that had the potential to create a sense of immersion that would rival even the most cherished indie titles like Braid or Limbo. Polytron took their time with the game but now that Fez has finally released on XBLA, it’s clear that their time was well spent. Creating a game that forces gamers to truly think and explore these days is a fairly tall order. But Fez does just that. A sense of adventure and exploration accompanied by the classic 8-bit look will leave gamers swearing they have gone back in time to era they grew up in. An era where subtle clues were left behind for gamers to discover and slowly piece things together providing a true sense of accomplishment. An era where things may have initially looked simple but were far more complex once properly studied. Read More

Fable Heroes has passed Microsoft’s certification process and is ready for release on May 2. The game will cost 800MSP and will be among the first games to feature …
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Back in the days when men were men and XBLA was for arcade games, a beautiful little title called Geometry Wars 2 hit the marketplace. For many XBLA lovers it was the pinnacle of arcade-style gameplay, featuring six modes of score-attacking frenzy and leaderboards that to this day drive people back into the game’s depths to try and catch their friends. Unfortunately, as the production and development effort of XBLA titles increased, the platform has mostly moved on from games like Geometry Wars 2 – but there is hope. The launch of Kinect is bringing a whole new crowd of gamers into the fold, and developers are picking up the challenge in a big way, releasing amazing games like last year’s Fruit Ninja Kinect and (the reason we’re talking about this) the upcoming Wreckateer.

Wreckateer is a title that looks from a distance like it shouldn’t cause much of a stir. However, the second you see it in person you know it’s something special. The basic premise of the game is that you’re trying to destroy structures by launching things at them. Sound familiar? Even the folks at Iron Galaxy know that their game will draw comparisons to Angry Birds, but they’re fine with that. As they told us, Wreckateer is essentially a mash-up of the aforementioned pig crushing simulator, Boom Blox, and Burnout Crash, which to anyone keeping score means it is essentially a mash-up of some of the greatest quick-fix arcade games to come out in recent times.

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Haunted Temple Studios’ Skulls of the Shogun took me by surprise at last year’s PAX East. It was my first look at the game, and its attractive cartoon art style immediately drew me to it. Within a few minutes of playing, it was obvious that the developer had backed the visuals up with incredibly fun turn-based combat.

At this year’s show Haunted Temple CEO and Creative Director Jake Kazdal stated that many members of the crowds that had continually gathered around his studio’s booth throughout the weekend had followed a similar path of attraction to the inspired strategy game. “I think it’s a different dynamic for this kind of game, and people really seem to be digging it,” Kazdal said. “The art style sort of draws [convention attendees] in, and then they start thinking like ‘Wow, this is different than any other strategy game I’ve played.'” Although inspired by the Advance Wars and Fire Emblem games, Skulls of the Shogun definitely has a unique and wonderful vibe all its own.

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Our very own John Carson has turned into quite the comedian lately (I think he’s channeling his namesake). When talking about how excited I was for Fez I mentioned …
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Believe it or not my favorite part about video games isn’t the games themselves but the way they bring people together. Arguably no show demonstrates this bond better than PAX. Thousands of likeminded individuals flooded Boston this past Easter weekend. It didn’t matter where you worked or what you did or what you had to do when you hit the ground again on Monday; for one glorious weekend everyone was an equal: a gamer. It didn’t matter if your weapon was a die, a mouse, a controller or one’s own body. Everyone at this show had a passion for games.

A few of us from XBLA Fans made the trip and had the honor of mingling and checking out some of the upcoming XBLA titles for 2012 and beyond. We were able to hear developers in their element talking to fans about their projects. It was an amazing experience. Our own Andrew Crews has already elaborated on this issue, but in the end you remember the little things. That being said, there were some amazing games. Check out our full breakdown below!

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