If you didn’t get enough out of our Hybrid build guide or are simply curious about how the folks at 5th Cell play Hybrid, check out these tips and tricks from the QA team. If you need more, there’s even some level guides available now as well.

Attacking

Jump Jetting

• Dodging: Get used to moving around while you’re attacking to avoid enemy fire. Not only will this tactic make it hard for your enemy to shoot you but the bots won’t be able to hit you if you’re moving in a circular motion.
• Boost Timing: Use boost often, but make sure you have it ready when you need it. Boost right when you take off and a second before you land to get through the landing sequence faster. If you boost too late, you won’t be able to fire for a short time after landing.
• Retreat: Make sure to retreat if you’re low on heath or something unexpected occurs. If you’re low on heath, try not to land at a cover in the enemies view since the landing sequence is slow.
• Scanning: You can use your selection arrow to identify an enemy’s position even if they are obscured from view. Select a cover you think an enemy is hiding and jump jet to it. While jetting to the cover press the vault button (Y) to move your selection arrow to the far side of cover and move it from side to side. If your arrow gets displaced from one of the main 3 positions there is an enemy there. Read More

For those of you out there still fighting the good fight between Variants and Paladins, we’ve got some extra assets for the war effort. 5th Cell was kind enough to send us some full images of each map currently available in Hybrid. They’ve color-coded the maps and we’ve added IDs to each cover (they’re different from the ones in-game because these are easier) for your assistance. Orange cover areas are ground-based, purple ones are below ground/other cover, and green ones are on the walls. We’ve provided some simple tips for you to design map strategies around, but feel free to download the maps and work your own magic on them.

Airfield

• Combat tends to localize over N, N1 and N2, controlling N1 and N2 simultaneously leads to map domination
• There’s a route from R1 – R3 and B1 – B3 which is great for escapes and surprise attacks
• R and B are the most defensible positions on the map, artifact/overlord gameplay will almost always centralize around those two points
• Having people at both R1/R3 and B1/B3 respectively is the key to removing map dominance from N1/N2
• The B2/R2 and B4/R4 spots on the map are great hiding places for catching people off guard, waiting for regeneration or resetting cooldowns

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Welcome to our guide for all things Dust: An Elysian Tail! Dust is without doubt my pick of the games released on XBLA this summer and an all-around fantastic game. While it’s almost impossible that you haven’t heard of this game by now, definitely check out our review for the game.

Dust can be pretty challenging at times, with a few tough bosses to defeat and a whole host of hidden content. In an identical way to classic games such as Castlevania and Metroid, Dust expects that players will revisit previously completed levels in order to unlock new areas and secrets.

In this guide, I’ll be providing some general tips and some combat hints on this page as well as a boss guide (beware spoilers) and a guide for the Bakers Dozen achievement (for finding all the hidden characters) on separate pages.

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The Bakers Dozen Achievement is all about rescuing your favourite characters that have been hidden throughout the world of Dust: An Elysian Tail. Don’t forget that when you get to any one of the cages that these guys are imprisoned in, you will need four keys and some quick hands to beat the locks!

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This year we decided to collectively look at each of the Summer of Arcade games. So all this week we’ve been posting roundtable discussions of the games in order of release (Tony Hawk, Wreckateer, Deadlight, Hybrid). Today we end with the most well received game in the line-up. Humble Hearts’ Dust: An Elysian Tail, takes a tried and true formula and adds some oft-times breathtaking art to make an incredibly solid package.

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We’re more than halfway through our roundtable series looking at the Summer of Arcade 2012, which means it’s time to talk about 5th Cell’s take on the third person shooter, Hybrid. Though fun and unique, it’s not without it’s issues, some of which our EIC took issue with. Hit the jump to find out what he and our other staffers thought of the game in general.

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We’ve hit Tony Hawk and Wreckateer, now our rountable moves onto the third title in this years Summer of Arcade. Deadlight is the first game from Tequila Works and unfortunately it was not well received by most. We discuss just what went wrong. Read More

Continuing our look back at Summer of Arcade 2012, today’s roundtable discussion focuses on Iron Galaxy’s Wreckateer. The cheapest of this years line-up at 800 MSP and the only Kinect title, it also ended up being one of the better reviewed games. As you’ll see our staffs discussion reflects that. Read More

This year’s Summer of Arcade promotion has been a contentious one, most would agree it was one of (if not the) weakest offerings we’ve seen since the promotion began in 2008.

Now that all the games have been released, we here at XBLA Fans thought it’d be a good time to look back at the five games that were part of the promotion. Starting today and continuing every weekday we will be posting a roundtable discussion between our writers, focusing on a game a day. We’ll be going by order of release so let’s kick things off with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD. Read More

Update: We now have a section on general tips & tricks sent to us by the QA team at 5th cell as well as level guides coming soon.

Welcome to our Hybrid build guide! This guide will provide builds to use throughout each of Hybrid‘s modes and are designed to account, collectively, for a good 90% of the game. Hybrid is designed with a lot of variety, in fact it’s one of the things we liked in our review, so ultimately you and your team mates will deviate from builds, even the ones we have made for you here. However, it’s important to have a starting point, especially if you’re not familiar with Hybrid regarding what actually matters and what doesn’t. For instance, most shooters don’t subscribe to the idea of “suppression”, it’s usually not very effective, but it works in Hybrid and it works well.

Do enjoy the builds we’ve provided for you here, but keep in mind that these are starting points! Add your own flare or personal preference to really do well with them. If you have any suggestions, feel free to comment on the guide and in a few weeks we’ll add good ones to a community section at the bottom of the guide. While the builds we’ve created for you here are more general, feel free to get ridiculously specific- all the way down to map and mode.

Enjoy the guide, and enjoy the game!

P.S. Variants represent clan tag [XF] Read More