Sega teases Daytona USA announcement with video and contest
Start your engines racing fans, Sega just might have something special coming your way! Earlier today Sega made a blog post that included a teaser video hinting at an …
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14 years ago
Five gaming trends that need to end
Everyone has that list of things that bug you about video gaming, the sequel syndrome, DLC overflow, etc. Having been a part of the media side of the industry for a while now I’ve developed a few of my own. These are things that I just can’t stand, and I’ll wholly admit that I might not always be fully educated on all the matters, but I think making five changes can help the gaming industry and community for the better.
14 years ago
XBLAFancast Special – Orcs Must Die! interview
Orcs have been a problem throughout the universe for all eternity. Well. Maybe not, but they still have to die! And so they will in Robot Entertainment’s action tower defense strategy game Orcs Must Die! Justin Korthoff, Community Manager at Robot Ent, joins myself and John Laster to discuss the game’s origin, some details about Robot Ent, and of course the awesome points of the game.
Justin goes over the bit of time following Ensemble Studios’ collapse all the way up through the beginning of Orcs Must Die!, and how small the game started at first. On top of that is the birth of a lot of the game mechanics, how three traps turned into over 20, and how the crossbow and various other elements of the game were balanced to ensure that each of the game’s levels played differently. This podcast is full of great insight into the processes regarding this game’s development and the result of those design strategies.
Venture forth and listen!
[podcast]https://xblafans.com/xblafancast/XBLAFancastOMDInterview.mp3[/podcast]
14 years ago
What we are playing: Week of October 2
What we are playing is a weekly column that appears each weekend. Various staff members let the world know what games had them hooked the past week and which ones …
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14 years ago
XBLA’s Most Wanted: Quake II
Call us nostalgic if you want, but we want yet another Quake game to come to Xbox Live Arcade. We’ve got Quake Arena Arcade, which is an enhanced version of Quake III Arena. We’ve got Quake IV via retail, and we’ve already petitioned id Software for the original Quake on XBLA. Now it’s Quake II‘s turn.
Here’s the thing: it’s already been released on the Xbox 360 once before, in a manner of speaking. It came as a bonus feature with Quake IV. It had the entire game, system link, and four player splitscreen. While it didn’t feature any graphical improvements or Xbox Live support, it was a proper port (read: not emulated) and so gets the ball rolling for an XBLA release.
14 years ago
Gladiator Map Pack now available for SkyDrift
Digital Reality has announced that the Gladiator Map Pack for SkyDrift is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The Gladiator Map Pack gives players access to the new …
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14 years ago
Section 8: Prejudice sale and contest
To celebrate the Section 8: Prejudice sale this week, we are partnering with TimeGate Studios to give away some T-Shirts and some DLC tokens to go with the game …
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14 years ago
Extreme Friday XBLA sale
If you thought this week’s XBLA sale was big, wait until you see the special one-day only offers that were teased earlier this week in Microsoft’s dashboard …
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Fez delayed to early 2012 but enjoy this new screenshot!
We’re all a little saddened today that the stylistic Fez will sadly not be making it this year. Creator Phil Fisher went on Twitter to show off a new …
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14 years ago
XBLAFancast – Skulls of the Shogun Interview Special
Upcoming turn based strategy game Skulls of the Shogun is being developed by a core team of three gentlemen at Haunted Temple. We were lucky enough to talk with the founder and design director Jake Kazdal (the guy in the dev diary). Fresh from his showing of the game at Fantastic Arcade, Jake was kind enough to venture into the netherworld and sort out some of the details, or rather, pretty much all of the details on Skulls of the Shogun.
Of the massive plethora of topics discussed, up first was mechanics. While the game may look shallow at first, we can guarantee you the tactics go far deeper than one might imagine, without being all that complicated. Spirit walls, eating skulls and haunting structures are just some of the finer mechanics in Skulls of the Shogun. Jake goes on to discuss art direction and story, telling of his time spent in Japan and the myriad of influences that period of his life has had on the development of Skulls of the Shogun.
[podcast]https://xblafans.com/xblafancast/HauntedTemple_InterviewSpecial.mp3[/podcast]