For indies, working with Microsoft is a horrifying mess…right?
Dead Space’s Isaac Clarke once had to drill into his own eyeball in order to survive a ship infested with mutated freaks. Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad of Assassin’s Creed fame was made to part with a portion of one of his fingers in order to join the Levantine Brotherhood of Assassins. Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft once had the misfortune of falling onto a piece of sharpened rebar that pierced her midsection — and all she was trying to do was go for a nice little exploratory boat ride. And that’s not even mentioning the myriad scores of locust soldiers that have found themselves on the wrong end of Marcus Fenix’s trusty chainsaw or colossal boots over the years.
You don’t hear any of them complaining about having to endure those, shall we way, slightly disagreeable circumstances, though, do you? That’s because those mere flesh wounds were nothing when compared to the great tragedy of our time: working with a certain platform holder to release your independent studio’s game on Xbox Live Arcade. I shudder at the very thought.
If you’ve followed Xbox Live Arcade over the past several years here and on other sites, then you already know of what I speak. There lives in Redmond, Washington a great beast, massive in size with glowing red-ringed eyes of fury. It is a devious creature hellbent on tricking those smaller than it into believing they’re partners, only to turn on them in their hour of need, stomping down on their hopes and dreams harder than Fenix has brought down his boots on so many locust heads. Such disdain does this gluttonous monstrosity have for the smaller creatures roaming the forest of the game industry, that it is more than happy to sacrifice its own interests if it means snuffing out the light of those cowering under its great shadow.
So evil is this…Wait. Isn’t this getting just a little out of hand? Is Microsoft really that terrible of a company? Does it truly care nothing for the needs of independent game developers? Is its thirst for video game console dominance so insatiable that it doesn’t mind torpedoing its, um, pursuit of video game console dominance so long as it means making life miserable for independent game studios that, by developing games for its platform, are actively working to help it succeed with its, uh, video game console dominance? It is if you’ve listened to the little guys with big megaphones.
Sanctum 2: beauty and the beasts
“To take what everybody loved about Sanctum and elevate it,” Reverb Publishing’s Ted Lange says, speaking to the motivation behind Coffee Stain Studios’ upcoming sequel. Lange is leaning comfortably in his chair, discussing Sanctum 2 with XBLAFans in a small white room on the second floor of a San Francisco gallery. As point man for the game, you would expect a flurry of information and glossy rhetoric about the many wonderful things that are in store. But Lange exhibits a calm enthusiasm, content to let the game speak for itself — which says quite a bit.
The original Sanctum released exclusively for PC and Mac markets, garnering praise for its innovative concoction of methodical tower defense and furious FPS elements and selling notably well for an independent venture. Though there were criticisms. Sanctum shipped with only three maps and a similarly restricted number of weapons. There were no connecting threads between each of the maps or explanations for these vibrantly glowing aliens in the first place. Who was this spunky redhead with an arsenal of future-tech? Why must she single-handedly stem the onslaught?
XBLA’S Most Wanted: Deus Ex
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.
Crimson Alliance gets new trailer
Crimson Alliance started off completely covered up in shrouds with only some shadowy concept art being given to us piece by piece. As time has gone by we’ve been …
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Blocks That Matter review (XBLIG)
Blocks That Matter was developed by Swing Swing Submarine and released on May 12, 2011 and costs 240 Microsoft Points. A copy was provided by the developer for review purposes.
Sometimes our only salvation during times of need are the products of our own intuition — creative outputs that have lagged behind because of the brevity of our attention spans — in Blocks That Matter, this is a lowly driller-robot that is tasked with a mission to finally repay its Swedish creators that have been kidnapped by a shadowy duo with sinister intentions.
You are Tetrabot, a robot that resembles a washing machine with arms, legs, a drill and a spin cycle that crushes blocks that do in fact matter, because they are not only obstacles in Tetrabot’s adventure, but also the solutions to the game’s complex puzzles. You “collect” blocks by drilling into them, and then pause the action to place them into the playing field, providing pillars to jump off and reach higher terrain. The catch is that you can only place four blocks at a time and they must connect to each other. This one-of-a-kind gameplay element will make Braid veterans scratch their heads in delightful confusion, but also make them appreciate one of XBLIG’s most remarkable titles.