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We know it’s what you’ve all been waiting for–the ability to start up a talk show with your avatars. Okay, so we secretly admit it’s kinda cool too. That …
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Long gone are the days of the original Dungeons & Dragons, long gone are the arcade antics of Gauntlet, but verily they are not forgotten! Crimson Alliance brings us back to the old days of having only a fighter, a wizard and a rogue (well, an assassin, but close enough!), an isometric camera, and four buddies ripping up baddies. However, Certain Affinity knows what assumptions come with that isometric camera and that fantasy theme and strives to take the gameplay above and beyond the genre’s conventions. In our interview with Mike McCarthy, game designer for Crimson Alliance, he called their game “The thinking man’s pick-up-and-play hack ‘n’ slash”—and we would most definitely agree.

Crimson Alliance is very heavy on the action and very focused on providing a balanced experience for all three characters. Better still, gameplay doesn’t require much setup time so players can get straight to the action. A wizard, fighter and assassin will be playable in the full game, but the Comic Con demo only had the wizard and fighter; we chose the wizard to test how well he would do solo. As it turned out, the wizard felt incredibly capable: very offensive and full of awesome multitasking greatness rather than simply a robed supporter.

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Two friends are on an adventure, one finds a gem and one finds a hat. But Hatty wants the gem, so his unnamed friend gives it to him and Hatty starts to cry. Everyone wonders why. The confusion is interrupted by giant cat guards that arrive to send the unnamed friend to prison. Oh, and we’re in a theater. On an island. That’s the setup for Behemoth’s upcoming game, Battleblock Theater.

Battleblock Theater will be a 2D platform puzzle action game, otherwise known as a plactuzzleformer, featuring four player couch and online co-op as well as an online arena for adversarial play. Players can also play solo, but the game is definitely intended as a co-op experience. Levels scale to fit the amount of players to ensure that the difficulty is always appropriate as you advance the story. On the multiplayer side, there will be plenty of different gametypes, ranging from the casual to the hardcore (five have been announced and there are more to come).

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Every promotion has an end, every Summer of Arcade a final game in the lineup, and this year’s anchor is Toy Soldiers: Cold War. Toy Soldiers: Cold War is a sequel to Toy soldiers, a real time strategy game where players place down a variety of towers to defend a base from waves of enemy soldiers and armor. However, as a tower defense game, Toy Soldiers goes above and beyond the call of duty allowing players not only to place towers, but to use them in first-person. They also jump into land and air vehicles to really get a feel for the battlefield.

Toy Soldiers: Cold War brings with it tons of gameplay changes, improvements and expansions. Of course, the game has the typical machine guns, mortars and anti-air, but new to the game are anti-tank and makeshift weapons.

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Are you ready to go off large jumps and destroy bases with weapons on your vehicle? Renegade Ops looks to be that answer from Sega and Avalanche Studios. In …
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One part Metroid, one part Limbo, one part 60 frames per second and everything dark and mysterious… that’s what makes Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (henceforth ITSP), fourth in the lineup for this year’s Summer of Arcade promotion. Until Comic Con it was assumed that ITSP was to be a single-player-only experience, one that earned “Best of Show” at E3 from us here at XBLAFans for its bold visuals, inquisitive gameplay and multiple approaches to progressing through levels. But the single-player-only assumption was just that: an assumption. ITSP will feature a four-player cooperative (couch, online and any combination of the two) game type called Lantern Run.

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Update: The trading system does not actually involve ripping off faces of any sort. The Behemoth has clarified that rather there is a trading post in-game where players can view their other players’ inventories and select what they want and the other player can do the same.

The Behemoth, developers behind XBLA sensation Castle Crashers and upcoming title Battleblock Theater, were kind of enough to meet with me at San Diego Comic Con. During that fantastic interview with Dan Paladin he revealed and explained Battleblock Theater’s unlock and trading system. (Link to interview forthcoming)

Fans and players of Castle Crashers will recall the massive frogelope (antler laden frog, I don’t know) wherein all the weaponry was stored was sometimes more trophy case than armory as players without the unlocked weapons could not access them. To circumvent that players would take the weapons into levels, swap them for easy to find weapons and allow newer players to pickup the rarer weapons they didn’t have. Dan says Behemoth got get rid of all that convolution and put in a full-fledged trading system into Battleblock Theater. Read More

It’s been three weeks since Ronimo Games released details on their first Awesomenaut mercenary, Froggy G. Well the jig is up, because there’s a new sheriff in town: Sheriff …
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We already knew Pinball FX2 and Ms. Splosion Man were going to combine to make a new pinball table, but now Destructoid wants in on the action. The robotic …
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XBLA Summer of Arcade game From Dust is available a day early at the Microsoft Store. Though scheduled to release tomorrow on XBLA it is nonetheless available for purchase …
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