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Monday Night Combat is a true fusion of genres. The title is a third person shooter tower defense hybrid very much in line with DoTA. This should be no surprise considering the lineage of the Uber team: many of the developers worked on the DoTA game Demigod. The hybrid concept alone creates a very addicting blend, but the developers kept building on the idea. They created a humorous, quirky design that draws clear parallels with Team Fortress 2. They developed six highly varied character classes, each with their own unique style, moves and weaponry, as well as a create-a-class option. They then pushed the limits for an Xbox Live Arcade game with in-depth persistent career through single player, co-op and online multiplayer modes. In the end, it becomes increasingly hard to classify this game, as it breaks many typical molds; however the game is easy to describe: it is flat out awesome.

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Along with all of the new Kinect games and slim 360, Microsoft unveiled its list of games for their annual Summer of Arcade event. Summer of Arcade began the …
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After months of speculation and rumors, SEGA has officially announced that Dreamcast games will be returning in digital form to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network later this year.

Sonic …
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Doom II was developed by Nerve Software/id Software and published by Bethesda Softworks. It was released on May 26, 2010 and retails for 800 Microsoft Points. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Fifteen years ago, Doom II was released on the PC and was at the cutting edge of first-person shooters. Of course, games have gotten exponentially more complicated over the years, but this doesn’t mean that Doom II is unplayable – far from it, actually. The game is still fun and full of personality, even if it is a pixelated mess by today’s high definition standards.

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Playdead’s silhouetted puzzle-platformer has been given only one destination in it’s production afterlife following a mistake that was made when 2010 IGF Finalist, Limbo, was rated by the ESRB …
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Since the launch of Xbox 360 Arcade, Microsoft has struggled to keep sales up during the second quarter of the year, according to research firm FADE (Forcasting and Analyzing Digital Entertainment). But last April, Microsoft might have figured out how to beat this – a huge sale. According to the numbers, XBLA sales in April 2010 were up 11 percent over last years sale. Add that into the increase of total Arcade sales (7%), bringing the total revenue for the year thus far up to $33.8 million.

With a huge inventory blowout on older games, XBLA grossed over $500,000 just off these titles, with many actually seeing a 200-400 percent increase in sales. Add in a strong lineup of releases like Toy Soldiers, Mega Man 10, Perfect Dark and Battlefield 1943, and Microsoft might have a winning formula, with Toy Soldiers leading the sales for two months even with a 74 percent drop in sales from the first month to the second.

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The following article is based around an email interview conducted by our team with Jamie Cheng, CEO of Klei Entertainment. For the uninitiated, Klei Entertainment is currently developing Shank for Xbox Live Arcade for summer release.

Redefining digitally distributed games

About five years ago, a young video game developer with some big ideas on how small game companies should work walked away from a position with an established developer in the hopes of completely redefining how digitally distributed games were made. Jamie Cheng sold his shares of THQ and went out on a limb to accomplish his dreams. This is where the story of Klei Entertainment begins.

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The following article is based around an email interview conducted by our team with Rob Hewson from Dark Energy Digital. For the uninitiated, Dark Energy Digital is currently developing Hydrophobia based around the HydroEngine.

Many games begin with a dream; Hydrophobia began with a PHD.

To follow the beginning of Hydrophobia’s creations one must start with Huw Lloyd, R&D of Dark Energy Digital. Described as brilliant by colleagues, Huw sought to put his PHD in Astrophysics to use, attempting to succeed where other had constantly failed: creating lifelike water in a video game.

Water presents some unique difficulties to developers. Both simultaneously clear and reflective in nature, the appearance itself is hard match. But even if one could nail what it looks like, water isn’t solid object; it’s a liquid. It takes an entirely different branch of physics to properly represent movement.

And that’s where the HydroEngine comes into the story. Dr. Huw Lloyd and Dark Energy over a three year period of development created an engine they feel can accurate model water and other flowing objects for the first time. This entirely dynamic process allows for different effects each time based on the situation. The engine also interfaces with solid body engines, such as Havok, allowing for lifelike, floating debris.

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Two offerings for today on Xbox Live Arcade. First up is Zeno Clash, a first person action game. This PC remake looks like a more …
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So Tecmo Bowl Throwback has been on Xbox Live Marketplace for a few days now. Our review is still pending, but in the meantime, we’ve broken down …
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