Weekly Roundup: January 5 – Controllers, Clouds and Crimson Dragons
Weekly Roundup compiles all the biggest news stories, reviews and features from the week into one handy post on the weekends.
With the shadow of the holidays firmly behind for us another year, we can get back to focusing on the other thing that brings us all together, Xbox Live Arcade. A lot of work behind the scenes this week, as several existing XBLA games got some tinkering under the hood. We outline some strategies for guarding Middle-earth, talk DLC for our ‘Best HD Remake of 2012’ and dish on the many flavors of our favorite peripheral. Here’s to another great year of Xbox Live Arcade.
Here’s our week in review:
News
- Stop the forces of darkness from exsanguinating mankind when Blood Knights finally arrives on February 20th.
- Your subterranean adventures just got a little more manageable, as Spelunky squashes bugs with its first patch.
- Victims of the recent Xbox Live cloud outage are starting to see the silver lining, as a free month of service has been credited to those affected.
- After a lengthy lull, the Kinect-integrated shooter Crimson Dragon reemerged when the demo was “mistakenly released” on the Japanese Xbox Live Market.
- Touting a bevy of small adjustments and matchmaking tweaks, Happy Wars‘ recent update title update aims to keep the combat fresh and efficient.
- Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition collects yet another milestone as it surpasses the five million sales mark this week.
Features
- Matthew Smail offers up a wealth of know-how in our Guardians of Middle-earth Guide.
- Take a spin with the man behind the wheel of Zombie Driver HD, as Paul Acevedo chats with Exor Studios’ COO, Pawel Lekki.
- Xbox laureate Steve Melton chronicles every Xbox 360 controller variant ever produced by Microsoft, and where to get your hands on them.
Reviews
- Love it or hate it, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD rolls out more of the same in Steve Melton’s Revert Pack DLC review.