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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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Hello Games told us the inspiration behind Joe Danger: The Movie was a bunch of VHS movies. One of the members of the team didn’t want them and were going to throw them out but they were some awesome movies like Robocop, Die Hard and other awesome action movies. So what if they applied all those ethics to our dear stuntman Joe Danger? You get balls to the wall action with so much variety than their previous game.

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If you’ve ever played R.C. Pro-Am, Micro Machines or Pixeljunk Racers, you’re familiar with  top-down racering. Bang Bang Racing from Digital Reality looks to continue that tradition while adding a little more in terms of gameplay.

Going through the demo, you’ll have a choice of all varieties of racers, from better handling to more nitrous to acceleration. It had some pretty standard racing stuff with some neat looking tracks. Nothing too amazing but nothing too boring either.

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Majestic-12 is a 3D side-scrolling shooter being developed by Exis and is being published by Reverb. The story of the game begins with you controlling your choice of one of five characters and setting out on a mission waging war against the aliens that have ambushed the defenses at Area 51 and captured the rest of your comrades.

The game features a very colorful bullet hell that takes a ride through eight stages broken up in to sixteen missions. Each stage will feature two bosses one at the end of each internal mission. Six of these stages are 3D side-scrolling action packed environments filled with many upgrades and power-ups for your characters. The other two stages are 2D shoot-em-up levels that feature a style similar to the one Sine Mora offers. The screens aren’t overwhelmed with loads of enemies and bullets but instead focuses more on precise and strategic placement of each shot fired. The 3D levels however feature a bit more of wide bullet patterns that require more precise maneuvering. It’s quite a nice blend of styles and it really helps keep the game fresh as it goes. Read More

There isn’t a lot to say about Arkedo Studio’s upcoming game Hell Yeah! that you can’t tell just by looking at the name of the game. The art style, the crazy minigames, the twisted humor; all of that feeds into what is going to be without a doubt the most insane game ever to hit XBLA. Of course, this wouldn’t be much of a preview without talking a little bit about what we learned from the demo at PAX, so let’s get on with it!

First things first – the full name of the game is Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, which pretty much sums up the plot. You play as Ash, the Prince of Hell, a dead rabbit who is caught by paparazzi doing some rather obscene things with a rubber ducky. Naturally, this causes the whole of the underworld to lose what little respect they had for you, so in order to gain it back you have to kill, well, everything. Sound awesome? We thought so.

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Quantum Conundrum was a game I was madly looking forward to at this year’s PAX East. Hearing about the use of different dimensions sounded super interesting with Portal creator Kim Swift heading up the design. Finally sitting down with the controller in hand, you play as the nephew of Professor Fitz Quadwrangle, trying to find your uncle throughout his mansion. It’s got nice and subtle references to Portal but that’s where the comparisons stop.

Your uncle does narrate but not in that deadpan delivery of GLaDOS. The professor is a bit more light-hearted and voiced by Star Trek actor John De Lancie. He starts by walking you through the mansion and the different set of dimensions.

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The Splatters was developed by SpikySnail and published by Microsoft Studios. It was released on April 11, 2012 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

The Splatters is a bright and lively twist on the puzzle genre. The object is to use blobs of paint to smash into “bombs” of the same color. Getting to all these bombs is where things start becoming tricky. You’re forced to slide, bounce, rewind and splatter you blob around each level. In each stage you start with a specific number of colored blobs and bombs all spread around the board, making you have to think two, three, or even four steps ahead of yourself at times. One of the major focuses during each level is combos; combos are how you will complete a level within said amount of moves (blobs) as well as how to increase your score. The Splatters will feel familiar on many levels like control, but is definitely designed to stand out on its own.

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I almost missed it. I almost wearily shambled right out of the Boston Convention Center this past Easter Sunday without playing what just might have been the most gorgeous XBLA title on the show floor. Luckily, Kinect Fans Managing Editor Nick DePetris issued a last minute reminder that readers had been flooding the site with requests for coverage of developer Humble Hearts’ Dust: An Elysian Tail. So off the two of us went to Microsoft’s blessedly carpeted booth one final time before departing PAX East 2012.

Sandwiched between the 360s running four-player previews of Minecraft and Tequila’s Deadlight demo was the side-scrolling action title from the inspired mind of one Dean Dodrill. That a sole man could craft something so wonderfully creative is extraordinary. It’s almost impossible to believe that Dodrill is the only member of Humble Hearts given how excellent his work-in-progress is at this stage of development. He’s been working on it for several years (see its victory at Microsoft’s 2009 Dream.Build.Play Challenge for evidence of its lengthy development cycle), but there are still some months to go before its vague 2012 release date arrives.

The titular main character is an adorable-but-deadly anthropomorphic hero questing through the alluring world of Falana with a charming fairy sidekick in tow. Falana features dark and dreary caves with medieval castles looming in the background. Players will venture into at least one cavern that is darker still, but they’ll also emerge from the “it was a dark and stormy night” motif and find themselves in a gleaming, tranquil forest with cute woodland animals prancing about at some point in the adventure. I’m hardly the first to compare the aesthetics to the masterfully animated Disney films of old, and I am unlikely to be the last.

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