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You approach a stranger in I Am Alive‘s Haventon. He’s a dirty, grungy type of wanderer bearing a knife. You could unholster that pistol at your side and unload a few rounds into him. Oh yes, you could do that. Thing is, you might actually only have a few rounds on you. So then what’s your course of action once he’s lying in a pool of his own blood and his menacing buddies come ambling out from around the corner? Uh-oh.

Furthermore, what if the stranger wasn’t a bad guy at all? Judging the true intentions of wanderers in Darkworks’ action-adventure title won’t be easy, and players will have to carefully scope out situations before acting. Well, if they want to live long enough to get a crack at sizing up the next poor soul wandering the city’s wastes they will, anyways.

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Further information about upcoming XBLA game Crimson Dragon was revealed at an event in Tokyo yesterday. Previously known as Project Draco the kinect game was officially renamed at the event by lead developer at Grounding Inc, Yukio Futatsugi. We knew all about that already thanks to the Australian ratings board, but it was also revealed that the game plays as an on-rails shooter with online multiplayer co-op for up to three players. The game hosts six different dragon types to play with, each with different attributes and three of these were demonstrated at the event: the balanced “Blood Skin”, strong but slow “Dark Shoulder” and “Snow Wing” who excels in learning new skills. Futatsugi favoured Snow Wing, for its learning ability since new skills can be gained by eating food in the game, though it’s not guaranteed to take every time.

Famitsu also published a wealth of new screens for the game and you can check these out after the jump.

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Klei Entertainment just recently released Shank 2 this past month and we really liked it but what’s next for the Vancouver studio? In an update today, they announced their brand new game Mark of the Ninja, a stealth based action game with a similar style to their previous games. They’ve pulled back the emphasis on hardcore action for stealth which you can see on their website. You can go through a text adventure with the end providing a teaser of some gameplay with the ninja utilizing the environment to trap a guard, catch the trailer after the break (thanks to Vox Games for that). Mark of the Ninja sneaks to XBLA this summer.

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Sine Mora is less than a month away and we’re booming with excitement over the shoot ’em-up from Digital Reality and Grasshopper Manufacture. In this new teaser, we see …
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To celebrate our recent milestone of 50 episodes, which also coincided with our one year anniversary, we decided to do something a little different. In this special episode of the XBLAFancast we focus on the music of XBLA, with some choice tracks from some of the best soundtracks XBLA has to offer. So please, sit back and enjoy the XBLAFancast music special.

Please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on iTunes. We appreciate it! Check us out on twitter (@XBLAFans) where you can win codes for games, give us feedback or just ask a question. We are also now on Stitcher, so you can stream the show on your smartphone, give it a go!

[podcast]https://xblafans.com/xblafancast/XBLAFancastMusicSpecial.mp3[/podcast]

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Vita, Darkness, and Kinect, oh my!
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With the release of Renegade Ops earlier this year, the name Desert Strike was name dropped a lot. In reality the games aren’t all that similar, but the few times you get to fly a chopper around reminded many of the long forgotten series.

Most remember the first game in the series Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf, which put players in control of an Apache attack helicopter. However there were actually five games in the series, with a sixth planned but ultimately cancelled (though it morphed into Future Cop: LAPD). The 16-bit era Strike games, Desert, Jungle and Urban were all fairly similar with the only changes being settings and the ability to pilot other (ground based) vehicles in the latter games.

With the jump to the PlayStation the core gameplay of the series remained the same but Soviet and Nuclear Strike boasted live action FMV. Of course this was all the rage at the time, usually looking extremely low budget and coming off as incredibly cheesy. While the FMV in the Strike games was a little cheesy and the acting slightly hammy, it was very well produced and often extremely effective. A lot of the praise goes to the fact they used FMV for everything, meaning you could look up videos on every enemy, weapon or mission objective. Even now we often have to trawl through a huge body of text to find out objectives or even learn how to play the game. Read More

XBLA House Party promotion continues on February 29 with the launch of Nexuiz for 800 MSP. To whet your appetite for the release, a new launch trailer was can be seen above showing the action packed gameplay of the first person shooter. In addition to the launch trailer, check out the extended coverage of the game in the video below. Nexuiz is a game that aims to reboot the classic genre of arena shooters and features over 100 different mutators to add to the excitement. Be sure to check out the release dates and prices of all the House Party games and our interview with Kedhrin Gonzalez from Illfonic where we speak about the game.

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It’s not a matter of trying to swindle gamers
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Warp was developed by Trapdoor and published by Electronic Arts. It was released February 15, 2012 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

Kicking off Microsoft’s House Party event, Trapdoor’s Warp is a stealth/ puzzle game that draws from some of the most celebrated franchises in the gaming library (Portal and Metal Gear Solid come to mind). Players take control of Zero; an ostensibly adorable alien held captive by human scientists in an underwater labyrinth of labs and curious mechanical contraptions. The dastardly men of science are performing all manner of foul experiments on the little fella, but it’s not long before Zero’s harnessed the power of his titular talent and is embarking on a violent quest through the belly of the science facility in a bid to retrieve his lost abilities and unite with an enigmatic alien life form that contacts him telepathically (and acts as a handy guide).

While he looks all cuddles and kisses on the outside, Zero’s a bit of a barbarian; capable of teleporting inside of his human captors, causing them to burst in a crimson shower and just about everything in Warp is anchored by Zero’s natty teleporting ability. Read More