Fruit Ninja plushies for offline ninja training and cuddles
Finding it too cold this winter to keep up with your ninja training? Then why not just snuggle up to these cute Fruit Ninja plushies instead. The new Fruit …
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XBLA Wednesday: Fruit Ninja Kinect
Summer of Arcade rolls on! Today’s release is Fruit Ninja Kinect, a Kinect-based port of the popular touchscreen game. It’s from Halfbrick, the same gang that brought us Raskulls. …
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Fruit Ninja Kinect review (XBLA)
Fruit Ninja Kinect was developed by Halfbrick and was published by Xbox Live Arcade. It was released August 10, 2011 for 800 MSP. A code was provided by the developer for review.
If you have an Xbox 360, you may have a Kinect. If you have one you know the games library is still a bit small. Up until now all Kinect games were retail. Fruit Ninja Kinect is the port of the popular smart phone game Fruit Ninja, and it has the distinction of being the first Arcade Kinect game. Now you can truly be a ninja and take out your anger on a healthy army of fruit.
The game’s premise is simple: fruit flies up onto the screen and you move your hand in a slicing motion to cut it in half. Cutting three or more fruit in one swipe yields a combo multiplier. Some modes feature fruit that have special properties such as slowing time, others feature bombs which the player must avoid. It also supports simultaneous two player competition.
Tuesday New Releases: October 9th, 2018
It’s the second Tuesday in October, and you know what that means. Today’s new releases are short and sweet. Three indie games grace Xbox One with their presence, and one …
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PAX West Game Guide 2018: The Indies
We might have bit a bit more than we can chew this PAX. The infamous PAX plague didn’t help by any means. But we’ve finally been able to write up …
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The 20 Best Backward Compatible XBLA Games
A few weeks ago, some of the XBLA Era staff of XBLA Fans took to Skype to debate the merits of the Backwards Compatible XBLA Games. We wanted a pound …
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Firewatch making it’s way to Xbox One September 21
Acclaimed, first-person mystery, Firewatch will be spreading into Xbox One later this month on September 21. Set in the woods of Wyoming, players take on the role of a man …
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Never Alone review (Xbox One)
Never Alone was developed by Upper One Games and E-Line Media and published by E-Line Media. It was released on November 18, 2014 for $14.99 on Xbox One. A copy was provided for review purposes.
Do you remember the arrival of the first tightly crafted indie Xbox sidescroller that disproved the notion that a Big Developer with a Big Budget was needed to create games of the highest quality? Neither do I, and that’s because it’s an event guilty of such unrestrained reproduction that it’s hard to recall its inaugural occurrence. Was it the release of Limbo? Mark of the Ninja? Braid? Something else? Regardless of what game kicked off this most welcome — even if now slightly clichéd — trend, it’s seemed apparent since its announcement that Never Alone would be the next game to continue the movement.
Its pretty graphics, intriguing setting and story aspiring to teach players something new caused many to think that Never Alone would be the next big little game. Maybe that’s an unfair burden to have placed on it. Maybe gamers should have instead anticipated only a game that would deftly introduce them to a culture that was heretofore both underrepresented and misrepresented in popular media. Certainly Never Alone does just that, offering a glimpse at the Iñupiat people’s ways that’s worth seeing. But while Upper One Games and E-Line Media have wonderfully succeeded in educating their audience, they’ve come up disappointingly short in entertaining it.
Check out these sweet Black Friday/Cyber Monday XBLA sales!
We know you’ve been waiting for them, and here they are! Black Friday sales for Xbox Live Arcade start now, and, assuming you don’t already own them, you will definitely want to take advantage of this opportunity to pick up some of the best games of the outgoing console generation on the cheap. Notable XBLA games include Mark of the Ninja, Bit.trip Runner 2, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and Battleblock Theater, most of which are at least 66 percent off! Some of these games will only be on sale for 24 hours, so check and double-check the tables below to plan your purchases. Happy Thanksgiving!
Xbox 360’s best XBLA games of all time: #10 – 6
Xbox Live Arcade began its life on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 simply enough. When eager gamers bought up Xbox 360s on launch day (November 22, 2005), they found a free copy of Hexic HD pre-loaded on their hard drives. Of course, it was another launch title that secured the platform’s success. Bizarre’s Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved both gave birth to the twin-stick shooter craze and demanded gamers take Xbox Live Arcade, which started in disc form back on the original Xbox, seriously as a digital games platform. Bizarre’s side project paved the way for the enormous variety of retro revivals, HD remakes, original indie projects, major studio releases, free-to-play games and more that have come to call XBLA home in the years since.
Today, we’re approximately one month away from the launch of the Xbox One, which will signal the end of XBLA as we have come to know it these past eight years. While Microsoft’s Xbox line will continue to be home to myriad low-cost downloadable video games, the XBLA moniker will not make the transition to Xbox One. It’s going down with the figurative (and literal) Xbox 360 boat. So what better time than now to count down the best XBLA games to ever grace the Xbox 360?
It wasn’t easy, but our staff has sorted through all of the best XBLA releases over the years and picked the ones that we feel are the true standout stars of the platform. Check back with us throughout the week as we run down five of Xbox Live Arcade’s top games every night. And don’t forget to head to the comments to let us know how much you love (or hate) our picks.
(Editor’s Note: Voting was conducted in early September. No games released post-Summer of Arcade 2013 were considered eligible.)
10.) 1 vs 100
Ryan Thompson, Contributor — One of the promises of the Xbox 360 console that went largely unfulfilled was the idea that Xbox Live would expand to a point of truly joining together the entire community of players. The truth is that not a lot has changed since players began playing Halo 2 online almost a decade ago: we still join lobbies and play with small groups of people.