11 years ago
Special Forces: Team X price tag gets shot down
It’s been out less than a month but Special Forces: Team X has already seen a price cut. The team-based shooter from Zombie Studios was originally released on XBLA …
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11 years ago
Special Forces: Team X review (XBLA)
Special Forces: Team X was developed by Zombie Studios and published by Atari, Inc. It was released February 6, 2013 for 1200 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.
It’s been nearly three years since Zombie Studios’ last crack at an XBLA shooter, Blacklight: Tango Down, and in that time, they’ve cultivated a hard-core PC following with its free-to-play successor Blacklight: Retribution. Now heralding the return of Zombie’s shooter-centric capability to Xbox Live Arcade, Special Forces: Team X delivers a mostly satisfying multiplayer fix with enough style to overlook the one-note experience. STX isn’t targeted at the ultra-competitive; it’s designed around ease of use, accessibility, and plucking enough chords to resonate with everyone in some way, even if it never particularly excels at any one of them.
It’s impossible not to see the reflection of other titles in the glossy presentation of Special Forces: Team X. The lean character bodies and cel-shaded visuals immediately drum up thoughts of Borderlands, while the handling, cover-system and gun mechanics are unabashedly lifted from the Gears of War series. This isn’t a slight on the title, to the contrary, there’s an admirable confidence in the way Zombie Studios has surveyed the landscape, imitating proven success, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. The amalgamation of gaming’s giants makes for a beautiful creature both accessible and familiar, but there’s something missing behind the eyes, and it’s little more than the sum of its parts.
11 years ago
XBLAFans’ most anticipated 2013 XBLA games: Part V
Here we are once again at the start of what’s sure to be another fantastic year of XBLA releases. Each day this week XBLAFans will be rolling out a list of eight of our most anticipated Xbox Live Arcade releases of 2013. While we can’t possibly cover every single XBLA game planned for this year, we’ll be giving you a varied list of 40 of the most promising titles we expect to release on XBLA in 2013. Once it’s all done, be sure to check back in next Monday when each staff member makes his/her picks for the game he/she is most looking forward to.
Special Forces: Team X
Developer: Zombie Studios
No stranger to downloadable shooters, Zombie Studios’ upcoming Special Forces: Team X capitalizes on its expertise honed crafting Blacklight: Tango Down and Black: Retribution. Don’t be fooled by the colorful cel-shaded visuals; Special Forces targets frenetic third-person team-centric combat with brutal executions and an arsenal of real world weapons. Its dynamic map tile system puts players in control of generating the environment in a pre-round vote, with over a hundred possible combinations of individual tiles to choose. All this coupled with a healthy rank progression and customization system means Special Forces: Team X stands to deliver quite the bang for your buck when it hits XBLA on February 6 for 1200 MSP.
11 years ago
Weekly Roundup: January 13 – Shoguns, Skullgirls and Special Forces
Weekly Roundup compiles all the biggest news stories, reviews and features from the week into one handy post on the weekends.
It was a busy week for two of 2012’s biggest XBLA games: The Walking Dead and Minecraft. Minecraft saw its The End content delayed out of its next title update to some unknown future point. Meanwhile, we learned that The Walking Dead has sold a lot of episodes, that it may allow players to carry over saves to the next season and that gamers who bought a faulty Xbox 360 retail version of season one will be given a free XBLA copy. If you’re still looking for more XBLA coverage, be sure to keep an eye on the site every weeknight this week as we detail the biggest games coming to Xbox Live Arcade in 2013. What games are you looking forward to this year? Let us know in the comments below.
Here’s our week in review:
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11 years ago
Special Forces: Team X heading to XBLA February 6
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Zombie Studios have recently announced that Special Forces: Team X will be heading to XBLA February 6, 2013. The game is …
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12 years ago
Special Forces Team X sneaks onto xbox.com
Announced mid-August, Special Forces Team X didn’t have any clear platforms listed out of the gate. This morning a listing snuck (sneaked?) onto Xbox.com, which with games like these usually indicates an Xbox Live Arcade release. If the gameplay looks mildly familiar, that’s because it’s Zombie Studios latest project. They’re the team behind Blacklight:Tango Down and its non-XBLA sequel Blacklight: Retribution. But Xbox Live Arcade has already seen its fair share of multiplayer shooters. Blacklight: Tango Down, Breach, Counter Strike: Global Offensive and most recently, Hybrid. What sets this apart?
Apart from its cel shading and third-person focus, Special Forces allows players to play dynamically generated levels. Each round players vote for one of a number of tile combinations for a given map. It’s like Halo‘s Forge maps, except as near as we can tell you don’t get the opportunity to customize the maps yourself. That may be a slight downer, but no other XBLA shooter has dynamic map generation, meaning that the replay value here is likely to be huge. Zombie Studios boasts over 100 different combinations between the game’s maps. Player characters can be customized, too. Weapons, appearance, player skills and taunts will all be at your leisure to modify.
Hit the jump for a general list of features and screenshots. Oh, and don’t worry about the CENSORED tags in the trailer. Zombie says they were just for fun. They won’t be in the game.
12 years ago
Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition leaps onto the marketplace today
While Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition has been known about for a while now, we still haven’t gotten a for sure release date currently. Showing up today out of nowhere, …
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12 years ago
Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition screens hop across the street
Konami has released several new screenshots for Zombie Studios’ Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition, and unlike George Costanza‘s Frogger high score, these screens have successfully made it across the street to their destination: your browser window. Of course, not even Schlomo and Slippery Pete could have blundered this one. Ah, references.
In any case, this latest incarnation of the 31-years-old franchise, players will be able to square off against each other or the CPU in four-player matches to determine “who’s really the top frog.” And how!
12 years ago
Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition confirmed
Konami has verified the existence of Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition following an Australian Classification Board leak last month. It launches on Xbox Live Arcade this spring.
Hyper Arcade Edition arrives …
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12 years ago
New Frogger game possibly leaping onto XBLA
Xbox Live Arcade could have a new release in the classic Frogger series coming its way. A listing for Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition surfaced on the Australian Classification Board today. The game received a G rating (no surprise there) from the board and is under development at Zombie Studios, and is to be published by Konami.
The listing only goes so far as to identify Frogger as “multiplatform,” but a separate blog post by game developer Daniel Lee seemingly lets the tadpole out of the bag, so to speak. It seems that Lee is hard at work on a iOS “port from console versions” of, you guessed it, a Frogger title. He reveals the project in question to be under development at Zombie Studios and on its way to Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. Lee even went so far as to release a few screens, which can be seen below.