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Aban Hawkins and the 1000 Spikes was developed by 8 Bits Fanatics and retails for 80 MSP.

Aban Hawkins is a classically inspired platformer with a penchant for pain. The games protagonist, Aban, has a strange name and an Indiana Jones identity crisis. He is trekking through dangerous ancient temples searching for treasure. Saying his job is extremely dangerous is an understatement as every step tends to bring impending doom upon him. At its heart this is a simple platformer that ramps up the difficulty very rapidly. It is likely to elicit rage and laughter all at once since it is so sadistic.

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While playing Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team this past week something occurred to me; Xbox Live Arcade is the perfect venue for developers and publishers to introduce players to a gaming universe. Kill Team is a perfect example. Here you have a straight forward old school arcade style co-op shooter set in the Warhammer universe. I bought it because I had always read a lot about the Warhammer universe online and because I’m a fan of shooters. I invited a buddy down, we had our fun with the game and I quickly picked off the last few achievements in Kill Team by myself in the following days to officially “complete” everything the game had to offer.

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The first developer diary for upcoming XBLA title, War of the Worlds, is now available. Head of Development, Mike Mica and the rest of the Other Ocean Interactive team …
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http://youtu.be/D-5ZH5mx7UQ

Revenge Labs have posted the first in a series of videos showcasing their upcoming Skullgirls. Every Friday evening they will upload a new match video taken from the latest …
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Move over Wills and Kate, XBLA royality James Silva and Michelle Juett of Ska Studios just got engaged. Yesterday at PAX, during a special showing of their 2012 XBLA …
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If you’re a gaming fan then chances are you’ve came across figurines of your favourite game characters before. You might even own a few. Now XBLA fans can join …
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Update: Our Friends at PlayXBLA have informed us that there are currently no plans to bring Halo to Fruit Ninja Kinect.

Hidden away in the HaloFest booth at PAX …
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Three years ago today The Behemoth gave us Castle Crashers, a game that truly brought the brawler back to the limelight. It’s hard to believe that the …
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Before Deus Ex: Human Revolution graced our consoles and reignited our admiration for the FPS/RPG hybrid, there was its predecessor (technically, the second iteration of the series) Deus Ex on the PC that basically created it.  Gamers at the time were delighted to discover a game similar–mechanically and atmospherically–to System Shock, but  intrigued by a storyline complex enough to challenge contemporary literature.  It confronted the social implications of human augmentation as well as the overarching status of the fictional political stage in America–a future rife with corruption and conspiracies but also feuding organizations bent on national hegemony.

You play as J.C. Denton, a government agent of the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO).  Denton is your typical anti-hero equipped with a raspy voice and a general curiosity that gets him into many sticky situations.  But what makes Deus Ex so great is how it allows the player to approach these scenarios.  For example, if the game shoves you into a seedy section of Hong Kong and requires you to bypass a dozen or so criminal types, you can go gung-ho and blast your way through, hack a door that leads to a side entrance, silently take down your foes or even dive into a pool of water and avoid the gunfire all together–all of which lead to the goal of that particular level.  The game is about choice.

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We got a chance to talk with Jairo Silva, Senior Game Designer on inXile Entertainment’s upcoming Xbox Live Arcade title, Choplifter HD. The game’s premise is simple, there are people out there that need rescuing and you’ve got to be the one to rescue them. The majority of the game therefore consists of managing your helicopter’s fuel and damage while either dodging or eliminating threats and of course touching down to pick up stranded civilians from a variety of perilous situations.

Jairo details much of  Choplifter HD‘s finer points for those who aren’t entirely sure what’s going on from the gameplay. Beyond that as with every indie developer we at XBLAFans always like to talk about what it’s like on the inside, so listen in and find out some of what the team has done in working with the original designer of Choplifter to make this version a more modern, fleshed out game- the game Dan Gorlin wanted to make years ago.

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

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