The jury is still out on the new Xbox 360 dashboard. Some love it, others hate it. Me, I don’t mind it. You know who doesn’t like it? Nathan Foults of mommy’s best games. Foults hates it so much in fact that he’s created an indie game mocking the new update.

Game Type, available now for 80 MS points starts off with users having to find the game through a satirical version of the new dash; complete with obtrusive ads. Once you fin the game, it’s a side scrolling shooter where the content of the ads has come to life. Yep. Really. The best part? The main character is the “hoodie girl” Microsoft has chosen as the logo for the games section of the new dashboard.

Like most games from the studio,its actually fairly good, and for 80 MS points..you really can’t go wrong.

After years of being in a public beta, Minecraft for PC is finally out, so what does MineCon turn its attention to? The Xbox Live arcade version of the game set to hit…soon..ish. Take a look at the trailer for the game, outlining some of the new features.

In their second installment of the series, Signal Studios made their best attempt at successfully translating a popular online game genre into the console business. If you’re a fan of “defend the castle” gaming genres and you are looking for a few hours of entertainment then this game could be for you. If you are looking for a game you could play repeatedly both by yourself and with friends until your thumbs blister, then steer clear.

The short campaign, which roughly took 5 hours to complete, is repetitive and rather boring. The poor attempt at a storyline is based off the cold war between Russia and the United States, taking a fictional approach to the physical combat that could have been. The storyline is virtually non-existent and you don’t even follow a unit or soldier through the campaign.  Besides the short briefings before each level, which in many instances is shown too quickly to actually read in their entirety, there is little continuity in the game. While the game focuses primarily on a single player option, a multi-player option is also available, although not developed anywhere near its’ full potential.

Like every other of its kind, as you successfully progress through the levels, both the computers and your own units increase in strength, although the layouts of the levels remain relatively unchanged. The overall game experience doesn’t change much other than the upgrade in units you achieve. There is the occasional boss but they don’t offer much of a challenge or any inventive twist.  They have a big gun or two and spout troops like they would if you weren’t playing a boss.

The graphics are acceptable, but nothing to rave about. The levels themselves are relatively small when compared to games like Halo wars and Civilizations for xbox 360, but they fit the necessary size for the game style. They could have been bigger in order to give you more turrets and the computer more insertion points. This could provide the need to be more strategic and increase difficulty or fun. While they do incorporate some physical items, such as other dolls and children’s toys to make it feel like you are playing in toy world, the overall experience differs only slightly from a traditional cartoon-like battle game. When the units are destroyed, they break apart into plastic pieces with no blood, which along with the toy theme makes this war game a little more kid friendly.

There are a few positives to this game. Unlike its online counterparts, you are able to control the turrets individually and vehicles such as tanks, helicopters, and a fighter jet. This allows you to make the difference in battle instead of depending on the AI to fight your battle. Since the AI is only a moderate help, it is necessary for you to assist in the victory.  This feature is one of the few saving graces of the game, but again a flaw arises as vehicles run out of power, limiting your ability to use them successfully for the duration of each round of attacks. The turret control is quite an entertaining feature.  Mortars and artillery can be pretty difficult to control due to terrible view options, but the rest of the turrets can actually be pretty fun.  Another non-unique feature are the bonus kill streak awards.  These involve bomber runs, nuclear missiles, and a special forces GI (which dominates all). These are both useful and rather entertaining when you are able to achieve them.

Aside from the main campaign, you can also sharpen skills and spend a little time playing mini games.  These also leave something to be desired. Though it is fun to have unlimited ammo and countless enemies to shoot at, without the worry of your base getting destroyed, the short time limit of 30-60 seconds fails to give you enough time to really enjoy it.  The Survival mode can provide at least 20 – 30 minutes of fun, although with the same premise as the main campaign, can lose its’ entertainment factor quickly.

Blast Factor: At $10, I don’t consider Toy Soldiers to be a waste of money; however, buyers beware, you are getting a game worth $10 and not much more.  I do consider it to be a great way to pass a snowed-in winter afternoon, without having to dish out $60 for many other mainstream games.  Although this genre can be found scattered through the virtual bins of Internet free gaming websites, the Xbox controls and mediocre graphics add a little something extra that cannot be obtained in the PC realm. The fun wore off too quick to even spend the $10, but the hours playing Toy Soldiers can serve as an excellent placeholder waiting for the newest release of your favorite game. My advice is to spend $1 on a bin of toy soldiers, gather up some of your friends and host your own Cold War fictional combat reenactment.

Twisted Pixel and Kinect. Do I have your attention?

The Austin, TX based indie developer and Blast Games favorite has announced that their next game will be The Gunstringer, a Kinect title that follows a skeleton marionette looking for justice and vengeance. The gameplay is reminiscent of the on-rails section of Twisted Pixel’s latest game Comic Jumper.

No release date has been given, but check out the debut trailer below!

Tecmo today whispered in our ear telling us “Tecmo Bowl Throwback” will arrive on the Xbox Live Arcade next week.

The game will officially arrive on XBLA April 28 and on the PlayStation Network “soon.”

The nostalgic gridiron game will set you back 800 MS Points or $10 for those of us who appreciate real, non-confusing methods of counting money.

You think you know, but you have no idea.

Uber Entertainment brought its debut effort to PAX East last weekend and it was one popular attraction. Lines of gamers crowded around some sixteen screens awaiting their turn to play the intriguing, artsy shooter.

What’s it all about? Look for our hands-on preview thoughts later this week. But, to get you excited for it, check out what Uber showed at the show, embedded below. Suffice to say, get excited for this game.

Hop, skip or jump over t Uber’s Web site for tons more details on the intriguing game.

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet,  a game featured at the this year’s Independent Games Festival and created by acclaimed artist Michael Gagne, has been announced to be making its way to XBLA sometime in the future.

One look at the trailer and I think you’ll be sufficiently intrigued. The art is amazing. It certainly looks like something completely original and cool. It reminds me of Patapon with a really bad attitude.

Download games are just getting better and better every day. Behold:

Via: G4

Developer of the Battlefield series, DICE, announced today that their recent downloadable offering, 1943, has sold 1 million units on XBLA in just 8 months. This makes1943 the fastest to reach the 1 million mark in the service’s history. Thanks to some ingenious marketing and a proven shooter experience that skips many of the bells and whistles typically incorporated with a box title, 1943 has set a very high mark for what can be accomplished in a $15 game. This one lets you fight in 24 player battles on land, at sea and through intense aerial dogfights. It does only have 3 maps, though more are on the way.

Here’s to more awesome shooters on the cheap. Sometimes less is more. 1943 is also available for PSN and soon for PC.

Perfect Dark, the widely-praised and critically-acclaimed Nintendo 64 shooter from Rare Ltd. is coming to the Xbox Live Arcade in just a few weeks and we chatted with Nick Ferguson, a producer on the project to shed some light on the re-release.

Marc Normandin: The original Perfect Dark was a hit with gamers and critics alike when it released nearly 10 years ago on the Nintendo 64. First-person shooters have come a long way since then, as far as level-design and immersion goes: everyone has their own opinion on this, but let’s hear why you think the design is timeless enough to work for gamers today, in 2010.

Nick Ferguson: Perfect Dark plays very differently to recent shooters like Call of Duty and Halo. Whereas COD is a tightly scripted rollercoaster ride, Perfect Dark gives players a huge amount of freedom in how they choose to navigate the levels and complete mission objectives. The visuals may not be as spectacular, but the mission design is very smart and the system of level objectives that change based on difficulty has never been bettered.

Halo introduced the concept of limiting players to use of two highly focused weapons at a time and built great, strategic gameplay decisions around that. Perfect Dark works at the opposite end of the spectrum – players can start levels with access to an incredible toolkit of weapons and equipment, including a gun that can fire through walls (Farsight), a laptop that doubles up as both a machine gun and remote sentry post (Laptop Gun) and a weapon that turns enemy characters into allies (Psychosis Gun).

Like both Halo and Call of Duty, Perfect Dark on Xbox LIVE Arcade also has a deep and engrossing multiplayer mode that rolls all the great content from the single player into competitive online play!

MN: Obviously the Xbox 360 controller is a different beast than the N64 pad, and not just because it doesn’t resemble a Star Wars space fighter. How will the game control, two generations later? Has anything significant been added or subtracted from the controls in order to make this work (or work more effectively?)

NF: We’ve worked really hard to preserve the original "feel" of Perfect Dark on a twin-stick controller, and we’re really happy with the results. The original game made ingenious use of the N64 controller, but there was a lot of advanced functionality that required buttons to double-up for actions like cycling weapons backwards or even reloading. We’ve put those functions on their own buttons on Xbox 360.

We’ve adapted the feel of Perfect Dark onto the dual analog layout that modern gamers are familiar with so if you never played shooters on N64, you’ll be able to pick up and play Perfect Dark with ease. We’ve even included control schemes based on Halo ("Spartan") and Call of Duty ("Duty Calls") so players familiar with those titles can dive right in. Having said all that, if you played Perfect Dark on N64 for hours and hours back in the day I think you’ll find the new controls will fit you like a glove.

MN: One of the things that kept people playing Perfect Dark for countless hours, even before online play, were the various game modes. There was a single-player campaign, a co-op campaign, a wealth of multiplayer modes and options, a shooting gallery, as well as challenge levels that were worthy of their name. Is all of this being retained? Has it been modified? Has anything else been added to this for the XBLA release?

NF: Everything players remember from the original game has been retained in Perfect Dark for XBLA. This includes the Firing Range and Device Training in the Carrington Institute to the use of bots (Simulants) in multiplayer. The biggest change that drags Perfect Dark roaring into 2010 is the fact we’ve plumbed LIVE functionality into every aspect of the game — from Co-op and Counter-Op modes which can be played online, to the Combat Simulator multiplayer modes which now support 8 players over Xbox LIVE.

Players who remember the glory days of couch multiplayer will be pleased to hear we’re retained all the split-screen game functionality from the original, too! In fact, players can even compete via split screen over Xbox LIVE. On top of LIVE multiplayer, we’ve added all the things players have come to expect from their XBLA games including Leaderboards, Achievements and a ton of unlockable content including Avatar Awards and an exclusive free Premium Theme.

MN: What tech benefits will we see by switching from our dusty cartridge to a download-title in 2010? The framerate in the original, for instance, was notoriously poor in multiplayer.

NF: Xbox 360 lets us run Perfect Dark at full 1080p HD resolutions at a solid 60 frames per second. The game has never looked better, and that silky smooth framerate also applies to the multiplayer mode — even when we’re running in 4-player split screen. We’ve updated every texture and remodeled all the characters and weapons to make them look great in HD. Locations have all had a lick of paint, from new skyboxes to updated geometry and level objects. Pipes that used to be flat polygons on N64 are now fully-rounded 3D objects. Finally, the game makes great use of 5.1 surround sound and original master recordings have been used to update the soundtrack without compression!

MN: Perfect Dark is known for its weaponry. Confession time: what is your favorite gun, and why? Favorite secondary function?

NF: love the Laptop Gun, not just because of the awesome sentry gun secondary function but because of the way it kicks off the action on Carrington Villa’s Perfect Agent difficulty setting. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I won’t spoil the surprise! A close second would be the Psychosis Gun. A weapon that turns your enemies into allies – what more can you possibly want!?

MN: Finally, not everyone has played Perfect Dark, so why don’t you tell the readers why they need to own this updated classic. The floor is yours.

NF: Perfect Dark is an incredible game that just got the tune-up of the decade. Some classic games don’t age well, and even when they do it can be hard to look past blurry graphics, outdated controls and a sluggish framerate without a healthy dose of nostalgia for the original release. We’re incredibly proud and privileged to be bringing a top-notch update of a legendary game design — one that was years ahead of its time – to Xbox LIVE Arcade in 2010 where a new generation of players will get to discover its unique charms all over again.

Perfect Dark comes to the Xbox Live Arcade March 17.

Perfect Dark, even in its original form, is worth playing today. The level design was (and still is) top notch, the array of weapons was as varied and imaginative as anything that has come to be since, and the game was stuffed with more game modes than most of today’s gamers would know what to do with. What does this mean for the repackaged version that released on Xbox Live Arcade? It means that a Rare classic is getting a second chance, now with a shinier coat of paint and online features.

If you played Perfect Dark Zero when it released for the Xbox 360, but haven’t played the original, please don’t judge the Nintendo 64 classic by its prequel’s attributes—this game is the reason Zero was such a letdown to many. Plus, for just 800 points, you’ll be picking up a game with more to do than many of today’s retail releases, never mind the fact that it towers over every single XBLA game—even Shadow Complex—in terms of depth and the hours you will sink into it.

Perfect Dark stars Joanna Dark, a British secret agent with gadgetry and weaponry at her disposal in a sci-fi themed future. She works for the Carrington Institute, who at present are investigating dataDyne, a wealthy corporation with their hands in some shady business. What starts as a simple romp through a near-future world turns into a race to save the president, shut down super weapons and end an alien threat in space. The voice acting is what you would expect from a game released originally in 2000, and the script is as corny (in an enjoyable way) as you would expect from a Rare release. Characters don’t open their hands, but flail fat looking fists around when they talk to let you know it’s their turn to speak—character’s lips don’t move with the words, so some kind of indicator was necessary.

That’s about the only thing that hasn’t aged well over the past 10 years though. The campaign is a bit short, but there are four difficulties—the first, Agent, is meant to familiarize you with the story and the levels. Special Agent adds additional enemies, moves some weaponry and shields around, and gives you more tasks to accomplish within each stage as well. This makes each playthrough a bit different, especially since the final difficulty does more of what Special Agent did, only harder. The game is also designed with speed runs in mind, thanks to some generous auto-aim, fast walking speeds and online leaderboards that can track your progress. Once you complete the game on Perfect Agent, a Perfect Dark difficulty unlocks as well, and you can unlock bonus levels through some of the other game’s modes in order to use previously non-playable characters.

Graphically, while not stunning by any means, Perfect Dark has cleaned up very well. The textures are highly detailed, the game was originally meant to run in 16:9 widescreen, meaning there is no weird transition issue, and the game’s art itself is also well done. This game was too ambitious for the system it was on—it required the expansion pack for the N64 just to play, and despite that still chugged along at an inconsistent 24 frames per second. Now it sits at not only 60 frames per second, but 1080p, full HD.

There are two areas where Perfect Dark shines as bright as any other first-person shooter on the Xbox 360, and that’s in the weaponry and the additional game modes. There are 32 weapons for you to choose from—the Carrington Institute weapons, which range from standard issue shotguns and pistols to sci-fi rifles, the dataDyne weapons, as well as an array of alien weapons from both the Maian and the Skedar. At their most basic, these are standard weapons, but each gun holds a nifty surprise—a secondary fire mode. Your AR34 assault rifle has a scope you can walk around with. Your Callisto NTG fires high impact shells rather than at an assault rifle rate. Your shotgun can have a double blast. The K7 Avenger becomes  a threat detector for locating mines, defense turrets and enemies. The Devastator, a grenade launcher, shoots sticky grenades. The Slayer rocket launcher has a camera-guided missile that you control to ram into targets. Most famously, the Laptop Gun becomes a turret that you can place anywhere, and it will fire until it runs out of bullets or enemies to kill. The thrill of experimenting with these guns will keep newcomers glued to their televisions, and veterans will do the same in order to excel with old friends and tactics.

As for game modes, there’s seemingly no end to them. You have multiplayer, which consists of six different game modes: Combat (death match), Hold the Briefcase, Hacker Central, Pop a Cap, King of the Hill, and Capture the Case. Capture the Case is basically capture the flag, Hold the Briefcase has you scoring points for holding onto a case the longest before losing it via a bullet to the head, Hacker Central has you invading enemy territory to hack into their computers, King of the Hill and Death Match are self-explanatory, and Pop a Cap has everyone targeting a specific person at a time. You can customize these matches to include stimulants (bots) as well, and these can be tailored to your preferences. Use the JudgeSim, whose only goal is to kill the current leader in order to keep the score even. The VengeSim wants nothing other than to attack the last person to kill them. The TurtleSim has a ridiculous shield to fire through. There are many others, and there are also difficulty levels for all of these sims—Meat, Easy, Normal, Hard, Perfect, and Dark. The Perfect and Dark sims are meant to move faster than you are capable of—you will find yourself shot at without ever seeing who did it, despite them being in front of you.

You can play these modes online now in eight-player multiplayer, but there is also four-player local, a godsend for those of us who want to revisit the days when we played nothing but Perfect Dark with friends at home. My one complaint in regards to multiplayer is that instead of eight simulants you can now use just four—this was most likely done to keep things streamlined so the game always maxed out at eight players, on or offline, but the original, despite its jarring frame rate issues in multiplayer, supported up to 12 players at a time thanks to the eight stimulants and four humans. [Edit: This is untrue--after completing the first eight Challenges, you unlock the ability to use eight bots in multiplayer  alongside up to four human players.]

The original game had maps from Goldeneye in addition to the Perfect Dark ones, as well as some unlockable Goldeneye weapons—these have returned, and are now available from the start. You can’t get Goldeneye on your 360 (or your Wii, for that matter), but you can play Goldeneye maps and use its weapons while playing the better game.

Perfect Dark also features 29 Challenges, which can be played with 1-4 players. These range from the simple (kill enemy bots with standard weaponry) to the slightly ridiculous (kill enemy Dark sims in a level without radar), but you unlock additional content for the game as well as a higher ranking for your profile by completing them. You can’t unlock things like the Dark sims in multiplayer until you have completed a certain number of challenges, so it’s worth your time to explore this portion of the game.

Additionally, there is a firing range for you to test out all of the game’s weaponry. There are bronze, silver and gold level challenges within the firing range, and you will find yourself sinking time in here in order to earn the best scores possible as well as unlock bonus levels. It’s also a great place to test out the secondary fire modes and capabilities of weapons without having to worry about someone trying to shoot back at you.

There’s still, amazingly, more to do: there is a co-operative campaign mode, as well as a counter-operative mode. Co-op is self-explanatory—I couldn’t care less that it doesn’t make sense from a story point of view to have two characters at once, because including co-op is a win. Counter-operative has one player take on the role of Agent Dark, while the second player uses a guard within the level—if the guard is killed, you simply take on the role of another guard until there aren’t any left.

One last thing—there are three control schemes. 4J Studios translated the N64 pad’s controls to the 360′s very well in the classic style. If you’ve played a lot of Perfect Dark, this is what you will want to use. If you’re more of a Halo guy, go with “Spartan”, and for Call of Duty fanatics, there’s “Duty Calls”.

Blast Factor: One of the most critically acclaimed shooters in gaming history is available once again with a new coat of paint, multiple control schemes, as well as all of the things that made the original great and then some. If you have played this before, go get it. If you have never played it, go get it. If the cartridge is sitting in your Nintendo 64 that’s kept in your bedroom on your other television (guilty), go get it.

Perfect Dark is available for 800 Perfect Dark is available for 800 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live Arcade. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

The recently announced non-Tomb Radier game, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, has a new First Look at Gamespot. In addition to this subtle re-branding with the game’s name, the upcoming download-only title for XBLA, PSN, and PC will feature a top-down, fixed camera, rather than the 3rd person camera that was the standard for the Tomb Raider series.

The new screens look really amazing and I can only imagine that the elevated camera position will lend itself to some very acrobatic platforming fun – but, you know, with guns and stuff.  Lara has no release date yet, but we will certainly let you know when she gets one.  Catch all 6 screens and the full preview over at Gamespot.

Visceral Games, the studio once named EA Redwood Shores, and the team responsible for “Dead Space” and “Dante’s Inferno” expressed interest in developing for the Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network in a recent GamaSutra interview.

Visceral Games general manager Nick Earl sees the digital space as a venue the studio can suceed in.

“Our express purpose is to make the sort of AAA hits that are just naturally found on 360 and PS3. We also do some PC work as well. That’s not to say that we don’t have smaller efforts under way and direct-to-consumer efforts on XBLA and PSN.”

“We had really, really strong results with Battlefield 1943, which was created in a studio even bigger than Visceral and had to pay for its share of infrastructure.”

But when it comes down to it, Earl believes it’s all about the final, polished product a studio puts out.

“It comes down to quality and innovation and being able to bring something that’s interesting to the gamer. I think we’ll have some interesting offerings over this year and next that show our confidence in the space,” he said.

No idea what Visceral may or may not be working on at the moment, but color me interested. What about you? Interested in a bite-sized offering from a big studio like Visceral?

Source: Destructoid

If you somehow missed this summer’s hugely popular Battlefield: 1943, today’s the day you’ve been waiting for, as the game’s price point has been hacked and slashed down to a very approachable $10.

So.Much.Fun.

The savings are only for the Xbox Live Arcade version (sorry PS3 gamers), and is this week’s Xbox Live Deal of the Week.

If you’re looking for something to hold you over between today and March 2, when Battlefield: Bad Company 2 releases, we can’t think of anything better (besides this).

Hop, skip or jump over to the game’s Xbox Live Marketplace page to get going.

Microsoft Games Studios owns Rare, the development studio famous for smash-hit N64 games Goldeneye 007, Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark.

Goldeneye 007 will likely never make its way to the Xbox Live Arcade, or any other download spot for that matter, but Perfect Dark, a game that plays very similarly to it has been officially dated for release on the XBLA sometime in March for $10.

A trailer for the game surfaced today and truly makes me with it was the 90s again. Four-player splitscreen multiplayer? Yeah, it’s got that. How many current Xbox 360 games can say that?

1080p, 4 player split-screen, 8 online and 60 frames-per-second. Bring it.

Here’s the trailer.

Capcom’s earnest attempt to rekindle the flames of the Mega Man series will be tested next month when the publisher unleashes Mega Man 10 on digital platforms across the board, but it’ll hit Wii first, before Xbox 360 and PS3.

Mega Man 10 arrives on WiiWare March 1, PlayStation Network March 11 and the Xbox Live Arcade March 31. The game will be available for $9.99 across the board.

As for the game itself; it’s a continuation of the 8-bit style of Mega Man 9 and will feature all the weapons, special weapons,power-ups, game-modes and side-scrolling bliss you can wrap your head around.

Take a look at the Capcom blog for tons more about the soon-to-be-released project.

Some say Earth was created in seven days…

…How many will it take to save it?

The folks at Square Enix aim to creatively answer that question with their new release 0 Day Attack On Earth.  In this un-railed Raiden-esque title, players must defeat a horde of aliens in 3 different major cities around the globe before everything is left in rubble.  At your disposal: a large variety of customizable aircrafts including jets, planes and helicopters; each complete with their own unique strengths, weaknesses and power-ups.

Each level in 0 Day Attack On Earth is represented by a day in which the squid-like, seemingly half-organic half-machine aliens are attempting to take over one of the cities.  In these levels, players will not only have to take out the massive hostiles, but they will have to halt the destruction within a certain amount of time.  Along with the most dangerous of the enemies, which are complete with fire-fuel ammunition and uber-quick tentacles, are slightly small and slightly less hazardous foes.  While these enemies are considerably less treacherous, the loot they drop (in the form of translucent green cubes and balls) can help you regenerate health or gain powerful upgrades for your ship (including shields, heat-seeking missiles and multiple-stream blasts).  Players will have to decide how much time they will dedicate to upgrading their ship and how much they will spend actually trying to clear the level.

Visually, 0 Day Attack On Earth looks pretty dang good.  Similar to Raiden, which this game seems to draw a lot of inspiration, 0 Day Attack On Earth features both 2-demensional backdrops with 3-demensional character models.  However, unlike Raiden, 0 Day Attack On Earth is unrailed and contains fairly large maps (a detail that I loved).  Background settings are vast, but lackluster in aesthetics.  While indeed the background images are 2D, it seems that there was no major effort to make the buildings and parks pop out or look interesting.  Sure, they had a few buildings enter the 3D realm, but it was mostly a miss for me.  Conversely, the enemies look very good in the game with their accompanying tentacle motion, flame-based weaponry and postmortem explosions.   Furthermore, the gameplay in 0 Day Attack On Earth is pleasantly intense at peak moments of chaos.

Another thing that separates 0 Day Attack On Earth from Raiden is the level of camaraderie players will experience.  Instead of a simple two player co-op, 0 Day Attack On Earth players will be able to enjoy a 4 player co-op experience or even two different 8 person versus modes, which include Capture the Flag and Control Point.  Unfortunately, 0 Day Attack On Earth doesn’t have many players, so actually joining a "quick match" is pretty much impossible.  However, if you and a group of friends purchase the game together, getting one of these multiplayer matches started should be no problem.

Also, the camaraderie theme continues within the gameplay.  Certain enemies will attach to your ship during parts of the campaign that one will not be able to save themselves from.  Instead, players will need to rely on their friends shoot off these attached foes and continue the purging of the aliens.  In fact, the camaraderie is pushed so persistently that, when you save a teammate, two voice bubbles pop up from the ships that fall victim and perform the rescue that say "Welcome!" and "Thanks!"

The controls in 0 Day Attack On Earth are heavily focused on the two joysticks on the Xbox 360 controller.  The left stick is used primarily for steering and forward motion while the left stick, when pointed in an outward position, is used a firing control, replacing both of the triggers on the controller which would be the most intuitive for that function.  Needless to say, for those who are not well versed in these controls will have a bit of learning to do.  Luckily, even the most challenge gamers (myself included) will not take much time to adapt to these odd controls.

Blast Factor: Overall, 0 Day Attack On Earth is a solid game.  For the relatively low bar many XBLA titles have set, 0 Day Attack On Earth is one of the good ones.  This Square Enix title brings a classic style back for a reboot and it is quite exciting.  While the multiplayer is ambitious, I was a little disappointed with the inability to actually join a game and try them out.  Given a good enough following, I can see 0 Day Attack On Earth becoming a very good overall game.  However, until we can actually try out some of the multiplayer, were just going to have to be patient.

0 Day Attack on Earth is available on 0 Day Attack on Earth is available on XBox Live Arcade for 1,200 points ($15). A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

I’ll just lay a smidgen of bias out on the table before I proceed.

I love Rare-developed games, and so today’s news brightens my smile and gladdens my soul, or something like that.

*Drool*

The studio today said that after Perfect Dark releases on the Xbox Live Arcade next month, the hits won’t stop coming, and is all about re-releasing its games in the future.

Here’s what Rare boss Mark Betteridge said:

“There’s nothing to announce yet after Perfect Dark, but we’ve got over 25 years of IP to dip into so there’s no shortage of possibilities.”

Now, I know it’s extremely hopeful to even wish for, but I’m still holding out for 007 Goldeneye to come to XBLA. With online multiplayer and re-done visuals, how could you not want it?

Source: Destructoid

D3 Publishers side-scrolling, sarcastic, kind-of-hates-himself Matt Hazard returns to the Xbox 360 in their Xbox Live Arcade game, Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond. The game costs 1200 Microsoft points, and is available for download. Many of us (or at least a few of us) remember Matt from the October 2008 release of Eat Lead: the Return of Matt Hazard, a third-person shooter similar in style to that of Gears of War. Even fewer of us remember him from his original side-scrolling arcade games.

Much like its predecessor, Blood Bath does an excellent job of satirizing the gaming culture of the next-gen, poking fun at countless genres, even pointing out that you can find Eat Lead in the bargain bin at your local retail store. ("Budget cuts, bad reviews… but that’s besides the point." claims your command buddy right at the beginning of the game.) While the writing is charming, there isn’t much story to be found; essentially you’re thrown into a side-scrolling shoot em’ up with the threat of having your past-self be deleted by your nemesis, Neutronov. D3 cuts out voice acting and replaces it with standard text boxes, so unfortunately, Neil Patrick Harris and Will Arnett won’t be repeating their performances from Eat Lead. Unfortunately Blood Bath never quite takes full advantage of the parodies that it creates throughout the game, and the player is left with one-liners that never actually go anywhere.

Graphically, Blood Bath is well-made for an arcade game. 3-D character design and levels make this game pop, and the gore that will amass on your screen as you plow down wave after wave of enemies is incredibly satisfying. You are rewarded for killing enemies with showers of blood. Smooth and polished, Blood Bath’s art style stands out from other 3-D and 2-D side-scrollers. D3 offers 8-levels of walking left to right while spraying bullets in random directions until you hit something. Eventually, the gameplay gets repetitive, but between levels there are different bosses that you will face to break the monotony. But once those battles are over… back to the horde. What D3 does do for this okay 1-player game is the addition of 2-player co-op, which is definitely one of its stronger selling points. Because lets admit it; blood baths are more fun with friends and 2-player has been around since Contra.

Here's Matt Hazard, accidentrally trapped in Wii's de Blob

Mechanically, the controls all work generally the way they should. However, there are tedious occurrences that happen far too often during play. Matt can jump, shoot, throw grenades, and even shoot into the background at approaching enemies, but what he can’t do is stop and shoot. A lot of the enemies you face are above you, and you have to jump and maneuver up and down obstacles to progress through the level. More often than naught, Matt would aim his gun up to attack… and then run into death water. Or cannon fire. Or a spiked wall. Or a piranha. Yeah, you get the drift. It gets almost impossible in the harder difficulties to actual control your fire, especially because of the amount of enemies that are thrown at you. But if facing a challenge is appealing to you, these harder modes will definitely present one.

[Editor's Note] You can stop to shoot if you hold down the right bumper, which allows you to fire at a 360 degree angle while stationary.

Blast Factor: Regular story mode lasts from 2-4 hours, but there is always second run-throughs with your friends waiting to happen. With a little more effort and focus, this game could have been a lot cooler, and ultimately a lot more fun to play. Unfortunately for Matt Hazard, his second appearance seems about as lack-luster as his first, but hey, he really is trying his hardest to stay alive.

Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond is available for the XBLA and PSN at a cost of $15 or 1200 Microsoft Points. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Today’s the day you’ve been waiting for, as both The Ballad of Gay Tony and Episodes from Liberty City are available for Grand Theft Auto fans that own an Xbox 360. You can pick up the brand new DLC for one of our Game’s of the Year from 2008, Grand Theft Auto IV, over Xbox Live; you’ll be fabulous in no time as you enter the world of Gay Tony and the club scene of Liberty City. Don’t own Grand Theft Auto IV? Or maybe you missed out on the first expansion, The Lost and the Damned? Rockstar has you covered on that note too, as Episodes from Liberty City is a standalone Grand Theft Auto experience, with its own multiplayer component and no GTA IV requirements whatsoever.

We’ll have a full review of the new packaged title, Episodes from Liberty City, in the near future. Personally, I’m looking forward to it for the same reason I love Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars: it looks completely over the top and like Rockstar pulled out all of the stops on both a humor and action level.

"We’re thrilled to share the final chapter of this epic Liberty City tale," said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. "The team at Rockstar North has exceeded every expectation with The Ballad of Gay Tony, creating an explosive conclusion to the Grand Theft Auto IV saga."

See, explosive. Explosive is good.

You can pick up Episodes from Liberty City for $39.99 at retail, or The Ballad of Gay Tony for 1600 MS points.

Bust-A-Move, Puzzle Bobble, whatever you want to call it, is a time-tested, addicting and fun puzzler from Taito. It has appeared on various consoles over the past 15+ years, and has now made its way to Xbox Live Arcade, following the release of Bubble Bobble Neo a few weeks ago. There seem to be two camps when it comes to re-releases of classics on newer console hardware: either the game is clearly tossed out for a quick buck based on reputation, or the developers add something to the title to make your second, third, or whatever the count is purchase of the game worth your while. Luckily, Bust-A-Move Live! is much more of the latter than the former, making it a fun puzzler you should pay attention to on the XBLA service.

Here are the basics: there are various colored orbs hanging from the ceiling, and you shoot them down by blasting more of these colored balls from below. Chances are good you have played Bust-A-Move or one of its variants in the past (Snood, perhaps?) so most people should be familiar with the concept. Three of the same color orbs touching means you’ve cleared those from the puzzle–continue to do this to clear the entire puzzle in single-player, or do this as much as you can to stave off losing and outlast your opponent in multiplayer.

There are different orbs with different powers as well–the flame burns away whatever pieces it touches, while the rainbow turns into the color of the object it was touching when they are cleared–and they are simple to use, as you just shoot them like any other orb. The most useful may be the crystal, which when shot eliminates every ball of that color along with it–this is also a great piece for multiplayer, since your cleared pieces make their way over to your opponent’s screen.

There’s plenty of single-player fun to be had here. Start with one of a few puzzles (named A, B, C, and so on) which then branch off into different options, and continues that way until you reach the end of the alphabet. You can replay this mode a few times without repeating puzzles, but even repeating them is worthwhile as you can improve upon your scores and times–the game tracks this information for you, and as any puzzle addict can tell you, things like that add a lot of replay value.

Multiplayer is also great, as you can play locally with a friend or over Xbox Live. There are various game modes here–different object sets, different ways of attacking your opponent with cleared pieces (traditionally from the top, more annoyingly from the bottom)–and matches are not one off events either, so don’t be discouraged if you get wrecked online or have a bad match the first time around, as there’s another chance for you right around the corner.

The music can at times become a little annoying, though there are parts of the song that plays again and again I enjoy–these parts sound like they belong in Chrono Trigger rather than Bust-A-Move, but it’s appreciated just the same. Like the music, the graphics can be hit-or-miss; they are bright and colorful as they should be, but the menus are bland with giant, ugly font, and the inclusion of avatars in multiplayer is just a bad decision–their fat, exaggerated heads get in the way when you’re trying to make shots down in the corners. You know, in some of the most important areas for accuracy in an entire Bust-A-Move match.

Blast Factor: It’s hard not to like this game, as it is Bust-A-Move. The next-gen additions don’t add a ton to the title–as stated, avatar inclusion is more annoying than fun, and the bland presentation takes away from some of the graphical high points–but you’ve got a time-tested puzzler available for you with online and local play, and chances are good that some people out there have not experienced the addiction that is Bust-A-Move as of yet. Now’s your chance to fix that issue.

Bust-A-Move Live! is available exclusively on the Xbox 360′s Xbox Live Arcade service for 800 Microsoft Points. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

The Bubble Bobble series, born in 1986 as an arcade title, has since been ported to everything from the Commodore 64 to the Sega Game Gear to even the TI-86 line of graphing calculators. Taito, the Japanese developer of the franchise since day one brewed a most delectable game formula that to this day has fans crying out for more. The simple recipe of jumping, pushing, and popping bubbles to defeat your enemies has proven to be timeless and always enjoyable.

Enter Bubble Bobble Neo for the Xbox Live Arcade. In this remake, the gameplay remains solidly intact but its updated graphics, four-player support and newly three dimensionally animated character models really make it a desirable download for fans of the series and lovers of casual games alike.

The first thing you’ll notice in Neo is its full sensory overload of a main-screen. You’ve got a wondrous reprisal of the original’s soundtrack (which will be stuck in your head), as well as bright and popping colors to enjoy every time you fire up the game.

And when you actually start playing you’ll find three game modes, but they basically boil down to either single or multiplayer. Once you’re in the game your job is to kill every bad guy on the particular single-screen stage,in the same way you did 20 years ago. Playing as one of the dragon brothers Bob or Bub, you’re able to shoot bubbles out of your mouth and trap enemies.‚  Next you can either vault off the bubbles or pop them. The former allows you to reach higher heights, necessary on some levels, and the latter kills the baddie and earns you point multipliers in the form of anything from gems to bananas. Once you’ve mastered the art of jumping, bubble shooting, and popping, you know all you need to beat the game; it never gets more advanced in the control-department. That said however, there are over 100 levels in the game, and the latter stages are tricky, finger busting toughies to say the least.

This is where cooperative play becomes not only more practical, but a lot more fun too. As enemies soon become far more belligerent and starting shooting fireballs, someone in the room can quickly and simply tap the A button and jump in with you right then and there. What I did was say, “hey, I don’t really need you until level 15 or so, mind waiting?”

The other two game-modes are Arrange Mode and Versus Mode. In Arrange Mode the mayhem balloons to four players at a time, and even though I was only able to muster up two more to play with me for a total of 3, we had a blast and adding the fourth player would have been even better.

And the Versus Mode, my personal favorite, pits four players against each other in a game of survival. Basically, hordes of enemies overflow the screen and you’re tasked with surviving as long as possible while attempting to rack up the most points. And, as an added level of awesomeness, you can also trap those you’re playing with in a stream of bubbles to keep them from scoring.

There’s no online multiplayer support in Bubble Bobble Neo, and yes, that would have been nice. But the franchise has always been rooted in local multiplayer. I know I had one hell of a good time playing with friends on the same screen and fully expect you to as well!

Once you’ve exhausted the hundred levels, clobbered your friends in versus mode, and posted your highest score to the leaderboards, you might still want more. And if you do, you’re in luck. Taito released two additional maps as DLC for the game and each bring 50 more stages for a total of 100. Now, they’ll set you back 240 MS Points each, but you can’t put a price on nostalgic happiness can you?

Blast Factor: Bubble Bobble Neo is a quickly addictive XBLA title that will please followers of the franchise and entertain newcomers. Co-op and four-player modes are added benefits that will keep you playing for hours and hours. Updated graphics that pop and sizzle are great, but the core gameplay is what defines the title and everything feels great in that department.

Bubble Bobble Neo is available today on Xbox Live for 800 MS Points.

Atlus today announced that Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition is on the way to the Xbox Live Arcade, bringing a slew of new content and features based off‚  ever-important gamer feedback.

Atlus is touting the Ultimate Edition as the definitive version and according to the press release “new features, and added content combine with a series of tweaks and improvements based on fan feedback to deliver the definitive version of the critically-acclaimed game.”

Look for the first-person melee action game on XBLA spring 2010 at a to-be determined price.

Additionally, Atlus teased more saying; “as-of-yet-unannounced other new mode exclusive to the Ultimate Edition” will be in the “vastly improved and enhanced version” next Spring.

As always, we’ll keep you in the loop as we hear more.

Legendary puzzle-game makers PopCap and famed RPG studio Square Enix teamed up today and announced “Gyromancer,” an RPG Puzzle game that’ll likely steal hours and hours away from our busy lives.

Thrusting together PopCap’s Bejeweled Twist and Square Enix’s mastery of the RPG genre comes the new project due out on XBLA and Steam sometime in the unnamed future.

“We’ve always enjoyed a strong partnership with PopCap Games and Gyromancer represents our goal of developing unique gaming experiences, ” said John Yamamoto, president and chief executive officer of Square Enix, Inc. “We believe that Gyromancer will appeal not only to core gamers, but will further introduce the RPG genre to casual gamers as well.”

Want more? Here’s the official announcement trailer shown at the Tokyo Game Show today.

LucasArts does more than squeeze money out of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises you know, as evidenced by today’s announcement of “Lucidity,” a brand new intellectual property coming to the Xbox Live Arcade at the end of the month.

In this 2D puzzler/platformer you’ll guide main character Sophie around a cute little two dimensional world via manipulating the game environment instead of Sophie herself–the game’s AI takes care of that.

Make sense? Probably not. This debut trailer should help!

We talked to the developers, and learned about how potentially awesome Shadow Complex was. We then played Shadow Complex, and learned that it was indeed ridiculously good, the kind of game that makes you expect more out of the XBLA service in the future. Now the game is out today on Xbox Live Arcade, meaning you should go and grab $15 and get yourself some Microsoft Points.

You don’t have to love Super Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in order to dig Shadow Complex, but if you do, prepare to see your nostalgia married with current-gen technology. While you’re sitting and pondering this purchase, I’m going to go start another game of Shadow Complex, because it’s just that good.

If you’re like me, you miss one of the finest genres ever created, one that has been missing from home consoles for about 15 years. The exploratory sidescroller, a la Super Metroid, has just gone missing the past few console generations, which is a shame given that Super Metroid is one of those inarguable “greatest games of all-time” types. ChAIR believes that the genre deserves a second life, and with their most recent game, Shadow Complex, they may have just breathed life back into it. I spoke to Donald Mustard (creative director) and Geremy Mustard (technical director) about Shadow Complex, its story, and its inspirations.

BLAST: How about you tell our readers a bit about ChAIR?

Donald Mustard: We formed ChAIR a little over four years ago, with the intent to create really awesome games and really cool intellectual properties to create and control to set those games in. Our first game was Undertow for the Xbox 360, and just next week we’re coming out with Shadow Complex, which we’re very excited about.

About a year ago, we were purchased by Epic Games. We are now a subsidiary, part of the Epic family. That is so awesome for us, because Epic came in, and gave us all of the time and resources and expertise that we needed to create a really powerful game. The awesome part about being part of Epic is that we get access to the Unreal Engine 3, which is, in our opinion, the very best game technology that’s ever been created. We love using it, and that’s a huge advantage to being part of the Epic family.

BLAST: Shadow Complex has a deeper story than many sidescrollers and other games in the genre, which makes sense given you have Peter David working on it. Tell us a little about how you get Peter to work on it, and on the story itself.

DM: The story of Shadow Complex takes place in our Empire universe. About two years ago, we released a novel called Empire by Orson Scott Card. The novel is about a second civil war breaking out in the United States in the near future, and the ramifications of what that would entail. The story of Shadow Complex runs parallel to the events of that novel and sets up a lot of the events to the sequel to that novel, Hidden Empire, which will come out this December.

Shadow Complex is reminiscent of some of our favorite games from the past, like Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, games that are all about exploration and this environment that you’re placed into. One of the challenges that we wanted to take on in Shadow Complex was to layer in more story than we have seen in those games in the past. We thought it would be awesome to partner with something who understood quick, concise dialogue, and we thought “Who better to do that then a comic book writer” They really have to marry their words with a strong visual style, similar to games in many ways.

We don’t see any reason not to set our sights high, so we made a list of our favorite comic book writers of all time, and Peter David was at the very top of that list. We were able to get in contact with his agent, and through that we got his phone number and we called him up. We talked to him about what we were thinking about Shadow Complex, and what the ideas were, and he really loved the idea of it so we were able to somehow convince him to come and partner with us in writing the story and script. We think the end result is just awesome, he did an amazing job of creating a compelling narrative with cool characters, but still allowed for so much of that open-world freedom that we kind of needed in the game.

BLAST: I see a bit of Metroid Fusion in this title as well, since that game had more story and you have the voices coming in over the walkie and such, in a similar way. How did you prepare for that game, as the play style”"even though it does its own things as well”"it mirrors them [Super Metroid & Metroid Fusion]; did you do anything special to prepare for that?

DM: For us, for everyone at the company, Metroid, Super Metroid, Zero Mission, and Metroid Fusion are some of our favorite games of all time. And we just saw this hole in the genre. I’ve been waiting almost 15 years for someone to make a new console version of these exploratory sidescrollers. Imagine if no one made a first-person shooter for 15 years, how weird that would be. Then 15 years later, Call of Duty 10 comes out; after 15 years, how fresh do you think that would feel? We decided that no one is making these games, even though they are so awesome, so when we finished Undertow we decided it was a great opportunity to take a stab at creating this type of game. That’s what we set out to do. So at the very beginning of the development process, we looked at the Metroid games to see what they did right, and what we thought they did wrong, and how to bring them back with a re-design and modernize it with everything we’ve learned in the last 15-20 years about game design about pacing and narrative flow, and then fuse that with the very best game technology that we have. The Unreal Engine, bringing in all the graphics and AI and all the things we can do now in modern games. We’re pretty happy with the result, but it remains to be see–you can answer this question better than we can”"were we able to take the old and create something that was fresh and new for gamers today?

Geremy Mustard: One of our goals along those lines was”"well those types of games are still out on handhelds, like the Game Boy”"but that’s a pretty niche market, for the kinds of people that remember those types of games, and we wanted to really bring it to the next generation and bring it to the new generation that has been weaned on Halo and the modern first-person shooters, and we wanted to make that type of game accessible to those kinds of players as well. Hopefully that will be the case.

BLAST: Do you have any kind of insight or idea as to why this type of game disappeared from consoles for 15 years?

DM: Super Metroid came out in 1994, and then in ’95, the Playstation came out, and then everything was 3D, 3D, 3D. The idea that a sidescroller, no matter what the design was, could be successful, went away. Now, as games have become more mature, and the technology has become more mature, the platforms have matured; look at what Microsoft is doing with Xbox Live Arcade. It creates opportunities for all kinds of games being developed, regardless of the design. There is really an opportunity now for any kind of game to be developed on these next-gen systems regardless of where you set the camera.

BLAST: One thing I noticed while playing is that Shadow Complex looks like it’s set up for speed runs, which is kind of interesting given that speed runs seem to be one of those things where you exploit the design. You even have an achievement for completing a speed run.

DM: We do! One of those things we have fond memories of was the ability to do speed runs in games and sequence break them. While I will always believe in my heart that while I was speed running Metroid and sequence breaking Metroid that no game designer ever intended for that to happen”¦I think they intended for that to happen, and they made the game support it. So we thought, “Of course we have to support that.” Of course we have to allow the technology to even consider that someone out there will think of ways to break things that we never even thought of, and so we wanted to make sure that we could support it and allow them to complete their game however they want to figure it out. So because we decided to support that, it allowed for some really awesome stuff to happen, and as we ran through the testing process of the game we started to see all the cool ways to speed run the game and sequence break the game, and we allowed that to stay in. So yeah, you can absolutely speed run the game really, really fast if you know where everything is and you’ve played it several times and leveled up your character even enough to unlock some of the really cool secrets and abilities we have to assist you in speed running. A lot of that is built in.

GM: Honestly we see that as one of the coolest forms of replayability that we have in our game, and that these types of games have. Even though you’re kind of playing through the same experience, it’s quite different as you try to play in different ways. Obviously you can see from the older games, people continue to play Super Metroid to try to do speed runs and sequence breaking, there are all kinds of videos on YouTube and stuff about that. We know it’s a very valid form of replayability to get value out of the game, so we wanted to support that as well as we could.

DM: Geremy’s right; playing the game in new ways almost creates an entirely new game experience. Some of these people, after they beat the game a few times, will be able to reach the foam earlier in the game, and will be able to beat the game with just their foam and the pistol. That is a completely different gameplay experience than any other way of playing the game, it’s almost like a new game at that point. There’s some really cool stuff for players that are more interested in finding new stuff to discover and interact with in the game in new and unique ways, it can really extend the life of the game.

BLAST: So the game comes out Wednesday, if it’s successful do you see yourself doing anything else like this in the future? Any other style of throwback, or more in the Metroid/Shadow Complex style of game?

DM: The short answer is we would love to. We love the challenge of making this kind of game, and through the creative process we learned so much about how to create these kind of non-linear, exploratory games. If a game like this can take off, not only would we love the opportunity to create more games like this, but what I really hope is that other people would make games like this. The one problem with Shadow Complex is that Geremy and I already know where everything is! We don’t ever get to play it and enjoy a fresh, new Metroidvania style next-gen game. I hope someone else will make it so that I get to play. Uh, not another Shadow Complex though [laughter]. You know what I mean.

At the end of the day, we are beholden to what gamers want. If they want it, we’ll make more.

GM: We have some sweet ideas for a sequel to Shadow Complex, so if your readers want it, tell them to go buy the game. [laughter] [Editor's Note: Go buy the game.]

Shadow Complex releases Wednesday, August 19 for XBLA at 1200 Microsoft Points. You can read our review here.

We like Battlefield 1943. A lot. We may even like like it, with little hearts and notes all over the back of our reporter’s notebooks. The game has been out over a month, and we both reviewed it and made it our Editor’s Choice pick for downloadable titles from July, but that doesn’t mean we’re done talking to you about it. Today we have an interview with producer Gordon Van Dyke of Digital Illusions CE (DICE), the developer of Battlefield 1943, on the success of the title, the inspirations behind it, and the future of the franchise.

BLAST: Where did the idea for Battlefield 1943 originate from?

Gordon Van Dyke: The original idea came from the Frostbite engine reaching this mature state, where we could now do what they wanted to do back for Battlefield 1942. They wanted all of these bells and whistles that we have now, like destruction, as the biggest example. We also kind of wanted to experiment; World War II is a really good era”"I hate to say that without context”"but it’s a really good era for gameplay. It really works well with the planes, the dogfighting, the tanks, the projectiles”"you can kind of put an arc on them to do some clever things, like getting it over the ridge of a hill. The soldiers and weapons too, you know what’s there, you know what’s available. It kind of just worked for a very small project, with a small team, and it worked for creating something unique that wasn’t risky process wise or design wise.

BLAST: What were you and your team’s goals for 1943?

GVD: The main goal was to have an accessible game that we could deliver in a unique way, and that was when we decided to go digitally, over Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network, and then on PC with things like Steam and Direct 2 Drive. We wanted it to be a game that was easy to jump into, kind of quick, and that kind of removes the idea of a disc. That was the main goal, to create an accessible Battlefield on top of that. Accessibility was our mantra.

BLAST: The race to 43 million kills was pretty ingenious; it was a good way to reward gamers for playing. Is there more of this thing coming, either with 1943 or with future Battlefield titles?

GVD: It really came out of an accident. We have this designer, and he and I love to fly the planes. Coral Sea came out in an update for Battlefield 1942, so we kind of wanted to do that again. We really wanted to do that map. But it was outside of our project’s scope, it was outside of our resources, so he just went and made it. By himself. So he was just like, “Hey we should try this out, I made it already, what’s the big deal?” So we got in there, and thought it was so much fun, but realized it wasn’t going to work for everyone. It was a constant, “Should we even release this?”, because it’s not going to be something that everyone wants to play, then it became, “How should we release this?” Do we charge for it? Someone always wants to monetize”"it is a business”"but I’m a big advocate for trying to make sure we give back to the consumer, give back to our fans, ‚ give back to the people who really love the game.

We started playing around with ideas on how to deliver this after we got it approved, and we knew we didn’t want to charge for it, and we wanted it in-game, not as DLC. One of our first ideas was to give it to the top 70,000 pilots first, on a leader board with pilot rankings. Then we sat down with PR and marketing, and marketing came added to the idea by saying, “Well, what if we do something to unlock it for everyone?” Everyone’s first thought then was total kills. We can track total kills, so we can do that. It kind of came towards the end, so we really scrambled to get it in the system so we could see who got the 43^rd million kill. We got it working, we just needed to do some parsing with the data. Lots of things came together at the last second, and it came out of randomness, but the goal was the community, and I think that being our primary objective, always in this game and going forward with future Battlefield games, it just came out of that.

BLAST: I had a lot of fun participating, even if I only had so many kills during it.

GVD: When we first announced it, we saw people posting this on forums and on Twitter, that even if they didn’t get many kills, at least their deaths would count for something. That’s a really good point, I didn’t even think about that! But that was the main goal, because everyone can participate. Even if you’re not the most elite player, your kills count for something and even your deaths count for something. It’s kind of win-win. Some of it was kind of accidental, but a lot of it had to do with the objective of the community.

BLAST: Is the PC version of 1943 going to have any differences from the console versions?

GVD: We’re still working on that, but some things will definitely be different, since it’s not a console ripped port or anything. A lot of that sometimes goes visually. If someone looks at a game, even if there’s a lot of difference, if it has the same menus on console and PC, then they may think that it is a port, so there’s a lot of little things you need to tweak and consider. It is a lot different in the guts, but some changes can visually be updated. We’re looking at the desires of a PC gamer too, as it is different. We’re looking at some of the things we had for 2142 and looking at what we can improve, like inviting your friends, things of that nature.

BLAST: Since 1943 is such a success-I saw earlier that it set sales records for both XBLA and PSN”"does this mean that there may be more Battlefield 1943, like another standalone, or some kind of addition, like an African campaign?

GVD: It’s definitely a possibility, I don’t think we’re closing our doors off to any ideas, but we’re coming down off of this, and right now our focus is that we iron out any issues, like we did with the servers. Every time we added a block of servers, it filled up immediately. I was up for 43 hours after launch, talking to the team in the States as well as my team in Sweden, so I just had no margin for sleep for a few days.

That was the most gut-wrenching thing, I know people were really frustrated, and from their perspective they don’t really know what’s going on in the background. It was gut-wrenching for us too, for the team, for myself, because we want people to play. That’s the main thing when you’re a producer, a designer, a developer, making games, you want people to play games, and you want them to enjoy it. As much as those people were frustrated, we were just as frustrated too behind the scenes.

Thanks to Gordon for speaking with us. Battlefield 1943 is available on Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network for 1200 Microsoft Points or $15, and a PC version is forthcoming.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for X-box 360 is a near exact replica of the classic Dreamcast game.‚  All fifty six characters split down the middle with Capcom heroes like Ryu and Mega-man and Morrigan on the left side and Marvel heroes like Capt. America and Cyclops and Juggernaut on the right side.‚  The three on three tag system, one of the most innovative inclusions to a fighting game to date, is alive and well as a welcome addition to the less team oriented fighters populating the genre today.

The difference between MvC2 and many other fighters, like Soul Calibur IV or Tekken or Virtua Fighter (there are many), is that each player is allowed to pick three characters for each fight.‚  Once you’ve selected your characters and their assist type, which means that with the tap of the left bumper or the right bumper another character you’ve chosen who isn’t on the screen fighting at the time will jump in and shoot something or heal you or grab your opponent and jump back out, the battles ensue.

The combat is fast and frantic, but with only four main buttons:‚  Low Punch, High Punch, Low Kick, High Kick, and the two assists, the battles are all about button combinations and timing.‚  By offering players the ability to select three characters, the variety in teams is wide.‚  Even the best players can be beaten if they pick an un-unified team whose assists don’t work well with their move set.

If you’ve missed the jazzy theme song that guides players through the game, you’re in luck.‚  The song still sings above all of the action in the game, on repeat, which will probably grow on your nerves after the 10^th “I wanna take you for a ride.”‚  I can’t complain, the song is nostalgic and something fans of the game have to deal with.

The display options offer to pretty up the game and smooth out some of the pixels, but if you’re a purist and insist on playing MvC2 in it’s original pixilated form, the option is also available.

The real charm of the whole purchase is in the online play.‚  With Ranked and Player matches of up to six players with four spectators per round and minimal lag, the throwback fun of standing around an arcade cabinet while you wait your turn returns.‚  There’s nothing like basking in the smell of teenagers sweating around a machine in a dimly lit room, but MvC2′s online play is still incredibly fun.

Fingers crossed for some downloadable content for this package.‚  Although all fifty six characters have six costumes, some more wouldn’t hurt.‚  Some new levels and characters (a new theme song?) would surely help keep MvC2 at the top of gamer’s minds in terms of fighting games.‚  As is, the package is no different than the Dreamcast version, excluding online play.‚  But that’s good enough for me.

Blast Factor: A classic fighter, with everything unlocked from the beginning, now available on Xbox Live Arcade with the online play that never made it over from the original Japanese release. If you loved it before, get it, but if you’re new to the series, be sure to give this a shot.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is available on XBLA, as part of the Summer of Arcade, for 1200 Microsoft Points.

This summer, all before August 19 actually, the Xbox Live Arcade has been/will be updated with five sizzling hot titles, and, if you’re an avid XBLA’er and gotta catch (purchase) ‘em all, Microsoft has a rebate check for you!

The games in question? “Splosion Man” (July 22, 800 MS Points), “Marvel Vs. Capcom 2″ (July 29, 1200 MS Points), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled” (August 5, 800 MS Points), “Trials HD” (August 12, 800 MS Points), and finally, a product of Gears creator Epic, “Shadow Complex” (August 19, 1200 MS Points).

Shadow Complex

Add them up and what do you get? 5200 MS Points or $64.97. But with Microsoft’s rebate, you’ll gratuitously earn another 800 MS Points, but, since you can’t redeem them for cash, you have saved in theory, but can’t spend those 800 Points on real world items, like 10 $1 slushies from 7/11.

That said, they all look to be quality titles, and if you do pick them all up, those 800 Points are enough for some Rock Band tunes, or anything else on the marketplace. Woo hoo. But hurry, the promotion ends August 31!

Retro game revivals are nothing new, so it’s hardly surprising to see Square Enix milking Taito’s vast collection of 80′s-era arcade games. The latest is Arkanoid Live!, a downloadable revamp of the version that hit the DS a while back. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, Arkanoid was a supped-up version of Break Out. Break Out, in turn, was basically a one-player cross between Pong and Space Invaders.

Essentially, you control a paddle at the bottom of the screen, and use it to reflect a bouncing ball back up to destroy a pattern of destructible blocks at the top of the screen. Arkanoid added a sci-fi motif and power-ups to the simple gameplay. It was never a complicated game, but offered a surprising amount of challenge. Playing Arkanoid today, however, it’s hard to image too many people taking it seriously. Even with the addition of lasers, aliens, rocket-propelled balls, and bizarre techno backdrops, the game is still incredibly primitive and, frankly, boring.

Even the presentation is remarkably spare. Although the game sports a plethora of overly busy and sometimes intrusive backgrounds, the game screen is just colored blocks and a simple ball. Even the aliens are basic geometric shapes. Some of them are balls that break up into more balls, thus confusing the action further. And adding confusion to the playing field is never a good thing here. The speed of the ball deflecting off blocks can be harrowing, and the game tends to add challenge by forcing you to try to navigate around unbreakable blocks.

The developers wisely included the option to turn off most of the extraneous elements. You can toggle aliens and the backgrounds off if you like, giving the game a purist feel. It also makes the action easier to follow since there’s not as much eye candy on the screen.

Since the game is entirely based on simple physics, some of these levels can be absolutely maddening, and it’s a bizarre design choice that the Arkanoid doesn’t have any save functionality. There are four “episodes” in the single player story mode, each with 31 levels, and you have to finish all 31 in one sitting. This might have been fine in olden times when you were plugging quarter after quarter into an arcade machine, but is a ridiculous oversight now.

The inclusion of multiplayer is the shining part of the game. Basically offering a competitive puzzle game feel, two-players try to either clear all the blocks off their respective screen first, or just certain colors of blocks. There are multiplayer specific power-ups meant to thwart the other player, and a huge array of levels to compete in. In terms of casual multiplayer gaming, Arkanoid Live! isn’t a bad choice.

Blast Factor: At 800 points, Arkanoid Live! seems over-priced for what it offers. For fans of the arcade classic, it’s certainly a solid revamp, but the game simply hasn’t aged well since the 80′s. The multiplayer adds a definite value boost, but overall this one is strictly for the retro crowd.

Arkanoid Live! is available exclusively on the Xbox 360′s Xbox Live Arcade service for 800 Microsoft Points

Battlefield 1943, the multiplayer-only sequel to the PC game Battlefield 1942, released on Xbox Live Arcade two days ago and on the Playstation Network yesterday. You may not have heard, but there are three maps to begin with, but four maps in total. The fourth map will be released when the community reaches 43 million kills total, which is a great idea, and preferable to paying for a DLC map pack. It’s like Noby Noby Boy, except stuffed full of World War II era violence. The more we play as a community, the more support we see for the title.

The official countdown towards 43 million kills begins today–it’s fun to watch the Ps3 and 360 owners race, after all. That is why we want to recruit our readers as hired guns, of sorts. All you have to do is take a picture of the statistics page for your gamertag or PSN ID on Battlefield 1943, where your total kills are displayed on a leaderboard. Whoever contributes the most to the war effort amongst our readers by the time that fourth map is finally unlocked will receive either a Microsoft Points or Playstation Network card for $20, which is $5 more than the game costs. You get your money back, and a little something extra for the future, courtesy of Blast.

The rules are simple: Take a picture of your television screen, and e-mail it to marcnormandin@gmail.com (Hey, that’s me!). I’ll publish a reminder the day (or day before)‚  it looks like the fourth map is about to be unlocked so everyone can send in their last-minute photos. Please make sure to timestamp your photo for authenticity, and we’re using the honor system here, so no photoshopping kill totals. Photoshoppers will be hunted down and flogged by the runner-up (Blast is not responsible for your airfare). We’ll verify that you are who you say you are over your network of choice, and then you get free stuff. Neat, huh? And all you had to do was play a game you already bought.

The multiplayer only sequel to Battlefield 1942 will hit XBLA and PSN on July 8 and 9 next week, according to the game’s Twitter account (to make it even more official, a press release just dropped into my inbox as I type this). If you are a fan of Battlefield 1942, then you won’t need my recommendation to get this, but as added incentive, once the community reaches 43 million kills, a fourth map, Coral Sea, will be available to play. If everyone plays this new version at the pace I played the old one, we’ll be there the day after it releases.

You can check out my hands-on with the game, back when it was first announced before New York Comic Con in February. It felt great then, so with a few months of extra love under its belt, it should be an exciting addition to both consoles and the PC. We’ll have a review for the game next week after it hits, so be sure to look out for that.

Released episodically on the PC almost two years ago, Sam & Max Save the World should prove to be a great joy for old-school lovers of point and click adventure. How many of such gamers migrated to console machines since the early 90′s, however, is up to speculation. For newcomers to this classic genre, Sam & Max could prove to be either a blissful blast from the past or a perplexing taste that most will completely fail to acquire.

Containing six separate but related episodes, Save the World is a fairly meaty adventure. Each episode ranges from two to four hours, making this downloadable $20 title longer than most full-priced releases. That said, those 20 hours (give or take) only really work if you can buy into the gameplay style offered here.

For those not familiar with what most refer to as a LucasArts-style adventure (the original Sam & Max Hit the Road was one of the shining stars of the late 80′s/early-to-mid 90′s LucasArts adventure collection), here’s the rundown. Basically point and click item hunts, these adventures task the player with moving from location to location, hunting for items, checking out every interactable thing on the screen, and enjoying a plethora of snarky comments along the way. Sam & Max in particular is billed as an interactive sitcom, and these episodes certainly play out for absurdist humor.

All those collected items inevitably form the basis for solving the various puzzles in the game. You’ll find eclectic, often nonsensical use for tear gas, Swiss cheese, bowling balls, video tapes, and a wide array of other oddities. Combine objects or use them on the characters and environments to advance, thus providing fodder for new gags. And make no mistake, Sam & Max is really about the gags and the dialogue.

Sam is a big dog and your controllable character. He’s the straight man to the psychotic rabbit-thing Max. Together they’re a pair of freelance police (private dicks really) in a surreal cartoon landscape of brain-washed child actors, conspiracy-theorist inconvenience store clerks, crazy psychotherapists, cops, robbers, and other bizarre takes on noir stereotypes.

Save the World is essentially a direct port of the PC version “" only with all six episodes available right from the start “" and this is perhaps the biggest problem. You move Sam around by clicking the area of the screen you want him to go, which is a clunky control system on a console. The game doesn’t exactly scroll from location to location smoothly, and having to use a mouse cursor to interact with everything simply doesn’t work well with a game pad. The exception being the occasional mini-game, such as a really awful driving sequence that feels completely pointless and plays even worse.

The other issue is that the dialogue is mostly amusing, but often seems to be straining. It’s clear the writers were trying to be clever and take on not just private detective clichƒ©s, but also modern topics like the Internet, child stars, work-out videos, and apparently any random thoughts that crossed their minds. Unfortunately, the dialogue isn’t nearly as clever as it wants to be most of the time. The game is still fun, but after a while, the characters become a bit too predictable and clichƒ© in their own right.

Blast Factor: For classic adventure game lovers “" especially past fans of the series “" Sam & Max Save the World is a must-have addition to any gaming library, but most of those gamers probably already played the PC version two years ago. For console gamers, Sam & Max is a welcome opportunity to try something very un-console like, but it will certainly take some patience to put up with the out-of-date control scheme and hit or miss comedy. Still, it’s cheap, good looking, and charming, and there’s hours of bizarre item hunting awaiting the curious gamer.

Sam & Max Save the World is available on Xbox Live Arcade for 1600 Microsoft Points.

Life’s more enjoyable when you’ve got a great little game to play, wouldn’t you say? That’s exactly what The Behemoth, creators of the award winning Castle Crashers, had in mind when developing the gem of a game, and today they are celebrating the coming of the one millionth participant in the side-scrolling mayhem.

One million is quite a feat indeed for an XBLA game, especially given the rocky start Crashers had, but when you package the amount of pure win Behemoth included in the final build, you’ve got a grand recipe for success.

If you aren’t one of the million crashing castles already, and have a desire for hilarious and downright fun gameplay, Castle Crashers will fill that void, and leave you with a smile on your face. Really, try the game.

It’s amazing how much progress digitally distributed games have made as of late. This generation saw the rise of Xbox Live Arcade, the Playstation Network, and the WiiWare service as ways to release a lot of indie projects and smaller titles that may not have worked in the retail space. Recently, Nintendo began the DSiWare service for those who upgraded to the new model of the Nintendo DS, and Sony is going to do the same with the PSP Go, which does not use the UMD format for games, and instead uses digital distribution and houses much more memory.

The reason I bring this up now is because I’m amazed at the quality of the games released on these platforms lately. Just take a look at the front page of Blast Games, and you will see reviews for Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again, Mighty Flip Champs!, and Swords & Soldiers. In each review, we talk about the value that the game gives you, at $8, $8 and $10 respectively. Cutting out the production cycle of the physical game–and in the case of the DSiWare titles, cutting out the more-expensive-than-discs cartridge format–means that the consumer can pay less and the publishers can spend less; it’s win-win all around. If Minis March Again is an indication of the level of polish and depth that Nintendo expects out of DSiWare releases from both itself and third-parties in the future, I think you will start to see DSi sales go up as people realize full retail offerings are coming at a reduced digital price. That is a game that could have appeared at retail, but may prove more successful to Nintendo in its digital-only format. Time will tell, but it’s a good sign for consumers that they are willing to try it.

You can’t beat low-cost innovation, and even though you don’t have a physical copy of the game with art work and a case, you will end up saving a lot of money purchasing games this way. While I’m not sure I want all game releases to end up this way, these early experiments with digital distribution in gaming are proving to be fruitful, and my wallet certainly says thank you.

According to Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb’s Twitter account, Perfect Dark, one of the definitive releases in Rare’s (formerly Rareware) history, will be coming out on Xbox Live Arcade this winter, and will be in 1080p.

I have been hoping for a long time–basically since the arguments started–that both Nintendo and Microsoft would come to an agreement so that both the Wii and Xbox 360 users could relive this wonderful title, but as of now, it looks like just the 360 crowd will have it. Still, it’s a good first step.

I’ll let you in on a little fanboy secret here, the kind of thing I normally like to hide while writing. I have spent days of my life (literally days; the game keeps track of your days, hours and minutes played) playing Perfect Dark’s multiplayer mode. I still play it now, even in 2009–I have a smaller HDtv that my Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast are hooked up to, and I play a bit of Joanna Dark’s finest hours when I get the itch (in 16:9 widescreen no less, since Rare implemented that in a game from nine years ago). Unless something horrific happens between now and the game’s release, I’ll be buying this, and hopefully, I’ll see you online, where we can tag-team hordes of Dark bots. Horribly unfair Dark bots.

Hat tip to Kotaku, for publishing this story first.

Activision and id Software came together today and announced that Wolfenstein 3D, arguably the father of the first-person shooter, will bust its way to Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network next week.

The re-release will be everything you remember from yesteryear, namely the intensity of escaping Castle Wolfenstein and filling Nazis full of lead throughout the game’s 60 levels, and will be upwards compatible (of sorts) with big brother next-gen Wolfenstein to come August 4.

After you’ve viciously destroyed countless numbers of Hitler’s soldiers, you’ll be awarded gold in which to fashion customizable weapons in the HD version upon its release at the end of the summer.

Wolfenstein 3D arrives on XBLA and PSN next Wednesday and Thursday respectively and Activision made no mention of pricing. Sorry.

Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures is a four part episode-based title that first began on PC in April with The Fright of the Bumblebees, a harrowing yet hilarious tale set in the equally funny and familiar clay-mation universe of Wallace and Gromit.

Today, via the Xbox Live Arcade, Fright of the Bumblebees was made available for all to enjoy (except if you live in India or Japan) for 800 MS Points/$10.

Xbox 360 gamers catch the shaft a bit from publisher Telltale Games, as they’ll pay $10, as opposed to $8 and change for PC fans, per episode.

Fright of the Bumblebees is a truly first rate adventure experience set in the loveable confines of West Wallaby Street and surrounding areas, and fans of the franchise itching for more cheese-loving, dog-saving fun, would do well to pony up the scratch and pick up this truly wondrous title.

We played, reviewed, and loved both Fright of the Bumblebees and The Last Resort, the second installment (not available on XBL at the moment), and if the port to Xbox 360 went swimmingly, we see no reason why you won’t love it as much as we did.

Start your download here, even if you’re at school or work.