PAX East

Our friends over at Play XBLA have provided a list of the games they’ll be showing off at PAX East in Boston next month. We …
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The AAA titles are continuing to look for ways to make the player feel that they have an effect on the game world. We have seen the continued success of games that feature choice, as well as multiple endings. The only issue is that many games still contiue to tell the story through in-game movies, to help move along the narrative, as well as captivate the player. Most players do not like the feeling of losing control. They hold a controller for a reason. With Bastion, it is not the cutscenes or trailers that are capturing people’s attention, it’s the narration. This isn’t just some voice walking your through a tutorial. The dynamic narration in Bastion is telling the story that you are creating. The narration in this game is designed to react tho the actions of the player, and tell the story the player is creating. Having only seen a demo at PAX, I cannot say how well this is implemented throughout, but the experience certainly stuck with me.

I reached out to Greg Kasavin, Creative Director at  SuperGiant Games to delve a little deeper into the concept of dynamic narration; from how it came to be, to how it’s turning out. Read More

Want a cooperative game that has a similar feel and style to Shadow Complex, but the gunplay of Halo? Well then you want to play Fallen Frontier. The game is currently in development at Moonshot Games, a new studio which houses some ex-Bungie developers, and already it’s looking impressive.

Fallen Frontier is a 2D platformer that has a dark, cel-shaded art style. Moonshot also added a small bit of photographic art touches, like very subtle wall sections on the forefront. It adds something small, but it’s worth mentioning because it’s the little things that really sets this title apart from the others.

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A tad late, a lot longer and a bit rougher. That’s how one would describe this weeks podcast, John, Tyler and Andrew are joined by new writer Stephen to talk about all things PAX East. Both Andrew and Stephen attended so they share their thoughts and experiences from the show, while a jealous John and Tyler quiz them.

Apologies for the spotty editing and audio this week folks, various events and technical difficulties conspired to make this show as big a hassle as possible. Still we persevere and bring you a new episode.

We’re also changing hosts for the podcast, these changes might not be reflected on iTunes right away. We’re still working out the technical details but in the meantime you can listen below or download the MP3.

We’re now on iTunes! So please subscribe, rate and review us there. As before if you have any feedback or general comments then feel free to get in touch. You can either post something in the comments below or shoot us an email to podcast@xblafans.com

RSS | MP3 | iTunes

[podcast]https://xblafans.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/XBLAFancastEp4PAXEastSpecial.mp3[/podcast] Read More

Hothead Games announced the release date to Swarm late this evening via their twitter feed.  Gamers will be able to “get flocked” this March as the game launches in …
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For those unable attend PAX East Shadow Planet Productions doesn’t want you to miss out. So they’ve released a whopping ten minutes of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet gameplay. Check out …
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The Behemoth announced their new character,the Pink Knight for Castle Crashers for PSN last month.  Sales from the Pink Knight DLC go towards breast cancer research.  While …
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PAX East will be upon us in roughly 24 hours, and XBLAFans has rounded up as many booth locations for great XBLA games as we could, all in one convenient post.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t wander around PAX looking for other booths we didn’t know about, but we love our readers and so put the most comprehensive list we could together.  Check it out after the jump.  If you know of other XBLA games shown at PAX East send the info to tips@xblafans.com.  If we could get link to the source (if possible) and the booth number as well that’d be super-great!  Have fun at PAX!

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The team at Ska Studios posted some new screen shots for The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile. The sequel to The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, Vampire Smile will release later this year. …
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Good news to any Behemoth fans who plan on attending some upcoming trade shows. The Behemoth has revealed plans to show off more of their next game, BattleBlock Theater. According to a blog post over on The Behemoth’s site the dev has refrained from showing the Story mode until now because they weren’t sure it would fit with a trade show environment.

They have decided to finally pull back the curtain however, excited to show everyone the collaborative gameplay. We have listed the handful of places The Behemoth will be showing off the mode below and hit the jump for some (small) screenshots of the game cinematics.

PAX East (Boston, MA) March 11-13th

Tokyo Anime Fair (Tokyo, Japan) Business Days- March 24-25th; Public Days March 26-27th

Comic Con International (San Diego, CA) July 21-24th

PAX Prime (Seattle, WA) August 26-28th

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