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XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) News, Announcements, Reviews, and Impressions Thread

O

OdysseusVA

Banned
Stumbled across these grabs of Far Cry Classic

farcry19fbxp.jpg


farcry2afzyv.jpg


farcry3iga3t.jpg


Non-borked AR

iZTGQ628dhIOQ.jpg


Vert boil said:
Some .jpg's instead of those large .png's.

http://www.abload.de/img/farcry19fbxp.jpg
http://www.abload.de/img/farcry2afzyv.jpg
http://www.abload.de/img/farcry3iga3t.jpg

There's also a video on youtube showing the achievements and intro movie but it's from a dodgy guy.
Click to expand...

Thanks :)
 
A

aku:jiki

Member
Getting Perfect Dark. Everyone else should still get Sine Mora and Spelunky! And the Toy Soldiers games if simplistic tower defense action is your thing. No one should get Bloodforge.

I've been playing The Cave and feel bad that I waited on it for so long. It's actually a very charming point and click adventure game disguised as a platformer. In fact, the platforming is the worst part and I wish they would've just skipped it. The humor and writing is the best part, but I also like the pretty and stylistic graphics and all the weird shit you find. If anyone is worried exploring a cave might sound boring in the long run, like I did, there's no need; the cave has a tropical island (complete with sun, somehow!), giant mountain ranges, nuclear launch sites, a carnival, a museum from the future and so on. The stories are pretty twisted and humorously dark too, much more so than Gilbert's previous work. Minus points for these awful achievements, though, forcing you to beat the game like 80 million times.
 
S

SAB CA

Sketchbook Picasso
MarkusRJR said:
I really wanna buy Spelunky but...
Click to expand...

See, the great thing about Spelunky, is that it's gameplay is very well developed; Even if you don't make it very far, it's fun just to play around in it's 2D sandbox. Throwing together a set of items you purchased, or lucked out in finding, can make each time into the caves amazingly varied.

And with any luck, the carrot laid before you, to goad you into going deeper each time, is well presented; You'll find new characters, be able to explore deeper, and will see new configurations and mutators to stages presented each time you play.

And if you can ever achieve some local Co-OP or VS, it's totally worth it; the VS mode could have been a separate arcade game in itself in some ways, and Co-Op meshes with the gameplay very well.

It's a truly great game, of a quality that not many releases achieve, XBLA or beyond.

aku:jiki said:
I've been playing The Cave and feel bad that I waited on it for so long. It's actually a very charming point and click adventure game disguised as a platformer. In fact, the platforming is the worst part and I wish they would've just skipped it. The humor and writing is the best part, but I also like the pretty and stylistic graphics and all the weird shit you find. If anyone is worried exploring a cave might sound boring in the long run, like I did, there's no need; the cave has a tropical island (complete with sun, somehow!), giant mountain ranges, nuclear launch sites, a carnival, a museum from the future and so on. The stories are pretty twisted and humorously dark too, much more so than Gilbert's previous work. Minus points for these awful achievements, though, forcing you to beat the game like 80 million times.
Click to expand...

Gotta offer the Alt opinion here: Being Sega published and full of promised personality, my brother and I jumped right into Cave when it first released (got on Wii U)... and ended up very disappointed.

The characters make no attempt to interact with each other, which instantly felt like all their personality was only partially-realized. Very few animations in the game actually make them feel unique (beyond their abilities), and the fact that they can remain silent while their compatriots perform acts that should SCREAM for some kind of reaction, just feels very poorly planned.

The humor is amazingly predictable after a short while; while multi-playing, we just started to roll our eyes at the mildly witty, predictably "dark" humor, because everything felt like it could be seen coming from a mile away. Cynical and Snarky, I would have liked him to go further, and "read the gamers email" like the Bastion Narration, rather than just rifle off one-liners with predictable context.

The actual gameplay was the best part for me; but even that felt oddly janky, (The jumping felt like something from a middling XBLIG) yet this I can forgive more easily. The idea of making so much of the game unique to each character was actually very refreshing. Though it has the unfortunate side effect of making the in-between sections feel like unfocused dashes with poorer gameplay than the standout character-specific sections. (I was quite disappointed in how little my character powers actually mattered.)

The need to play through the game with a repeat character, since the number for "fresh characters per playthrough" is uneven, is also a bit annoying. To see it all, you're going to have to repeat something, which means that segment is feel more stale than it should.

Much like Deathspank series, the game rises and falls by how much you like the world and it's writing; the gameplay itself is not fun or developed enough to wholly carry it on it's own.

Being able to play Co-Op was kind of nice, however, yet even this is an offline-only feature. So be wary...
 
C

CrunchinJelly

formerly cjelly
Vert boil said:
Updating at the moment, double check prices before buying. I'll update throughout the day.

DOTW

Bloodforge - 600msp (was 1200)
Fire Pro Wrestling - 400msp (was 800)
Fruit Ninja - 400msp (was 800)
Limbo - 600msp (was 1200)
Perfect Dark - 400msp (was 800)
Sine Mora - 600msp (was 1200)
Spelunky - 600msp (was 1200)
Toy Soldiers - 400msp (was 800)
Toy Soldiers: Cold War - 600msp (was 1200)

-----

CoD: Blops 2 - 3200msp/40$ (was 4800/60$) US price, check your region
(lots of tat as well)

Deca Sports Freedom - 1600msp/20$ (was 3200/40$) US price, check your region

Gears of War: Judgement
--Digital Armor Skin - 200msp (was 400)
--Epic Armor Skin Pack - 1900msp (was 2800)
--Epic Weapon Skin Pack - 1100msp (was 1600)
--Total Skin pack - 2700msp (was 4000)
--VIP Pass - 1200msp (was 1600)

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection (2 and 3) - 1600msp/20$ (was 2000/25$) US price, check your region

Sonic Free Riders - 800msp/10$ (was 2000/25$) US price, check your region

Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012 - 1600msp/20$ (was 2400/30$) US price, check your region

-----
Gold only offers,
These should expire at the end of this week, June 30th.

Fable 3 - free

Joy Ride Turbo - free (Japanese Gold account needed)

----------

Released today,

boxartlg.jpg


Kinect Sports Gems: Boxing Fight - 240msp
(cheaper in CA again, 160msp)
Click to expand...

I'll grab Fire Pro for that price.
 
A

aku:jiki

Member
I won CastleStorm, Battleblock Theater and Motocross Madness from the PlayXBLA weekend challenge, woo! Battleblock seems pretty great, but I didn't want to dive in since it's a huge undertaking and I've been waiting for so long on it anyway, and tomorrow is Magic and Spartacus... Motocross Madness also seems pretty great from the couple of levels I played. The "team" features, i.e. you collaborate to unlock things with people on your friends list, are actually pretty cool, as long as multiple people you know bought it I guess. I had like 10 people on it so "we" had completed a ton of challenges.

CastleStorm, on the other hand... What were some of you guys smoking when you were praising it and can I have some so I can forget about this game? I think I hate every single thing about it. Way too much focus on the stupid ballista and way too much focus on upgrading your stuff (i.e. it starts out fucking useless and it takes a few hours before it's even decent). I had to stop and go back and grind earlier levels because I had updated the wrong stuff and I simply couldn't beat a level with the projectiles at level 1. The worst part is trying to play on hard, though. The only difference, from what I can see, is that they take away your aiming arch on the ballista. I'm supposed to aim completely blindly?! Who's braindead idea was that, in a game that penalizes you for not maintaining a high accuracy? Worst idea ever! Second worst thing is that halfway through the campaign they force you to switch sides and take away all the upgrades you just spent 5 hours getting. At that point I said fuck this shit and quit.

Oh, and also, some of us have been mailing with Most Wanted about the terrible achievement glitch in Thunder Wolves and their community guy, I guess, has been pretty great and helped come up with a solution! Game unbroken! All you need to do is recover your gamertag when the glitch happens, and it starts working again. So, retracting my un-recommendation and telling everyone to get it again!
 
F

Family Fry

Member
Man the amount of games I've won via PLAYXBLA cheeve challenges, used to score a lot from Twitter also.Recently their challenges have been pretty solid, I may take a stab at next weeks if I can.

Congrats on winning aku:jiki I was just about to mention, don't forget to check out the BattleBlock Blog for Special Prisoner Head unlocks, they only give them away once every week/fortnight.
June 21st
FeaturePost_Wheels.jpg

It’s summer. The time when we lose our focus because we’re catching too many rays–or wishing we were. Being resident San Diegans, we’re all about having that summer fun.

FeaturePost_WheelsSo as a special start to the summer, we’re going to have another prisoner unlock every week of July 2013 (this includes those Furbottom’s Features unlocks) and you can add these new star prisoners to your list of BattleBlock Theater buddies.

Let’s start off the summer by giving you Wheels!

Just sign in to Xbox LIVE, access your full version of BattleBlock Theater and within minutes the prisoner will unlock in the game!
Click to expand...

THEN!!! I STUMBLED UPON THIS!
7Izupgd.jpg

I WANT ONE NOW!
 
S

SAB CA

Sketchbook Picasso
aku:jiki said:
CastleStorm, on the other hand... What were some of you guys smoking when you were praising it and can I have some so I can forget about this game? I think I hate every single thing about it.
Click to expand...

First thing to learn about Castlestorm: It doesn't depend on the Ballista nearly as much as you think. As the game opens up it's abilities, you can pretty much play as you wish. The Ballista is a powerful tool, but it's not the end all, be all by a long shot.

The game teaches you things like this, by having missions that force you to play with restrictions.

Upgrades... The only thing I felt I NEEDED to upgrade at some point, were troops. I can think of 1 mission that I wish I could have had an upgrade for (one where you have to play a new Hero character VS a horde of enemies), but you can swap between difficulties to mitigate this.

Blind Shooting: Yeah, it is odd. I'm surprised they went in that direction, but I completely understand it; accuracy is easy to 100% with a large amount of the weapons. Just pic a direction, shoot, then push the button that activates homing / cluster fire / etc. It very much seems like the game calculates "you hit something" towards your accuracy, making it very hard to really "miss" with many special projectiles.

Hard has stronger enemies too (more noticeable with golems and other special types), the enemies hurt and attack more aggressively (especially VS your Hero Summons), and the ballista fire / strategy they display is more cutthroat.

Last, they "took away all your abilities"... for like.. 1 mission. And after that, they dump a bunch of stuff with variations on you, many more at once than the first campaign. I actually found it a good palette cleaner, as I moved on; all the items are not a 1-to-1 clone (Vikings have some busted-powerful magic), so giving the player some time to remember the basics of the game again was appreciated.

With Hero Summons, Multiple Magics, Troop summons (range or melee), multiple classes of projectiles (some which require no aiming at all, and some that are purely only worth using if you're going for all headshots), the game offers you a LOT of ways to conquer situations. If one way isn't working for you / pisses you off, there's probably another way to solve the situation. That's probably what I love most about the game; it's rare XBLA games try to have so many gameplay styles in it, and even more rare that they all feel worthwhile to the game. Parts of it can be janky, but taken together, it's so much more.
 
A

aku:jiki

Member
Well, Spartacus sucks. Expected, I know, but as a fanboy for the show I was hoping it'd at least be decent. It looks like shit in motion - I cut someone's face off as an execution and it looked like some N64 level shit - and plays about as well. Maybe it'll play better as I upgrade my gladiators, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

I have no idea why someone thought it would be a good idea to take clips from the show and run them through the "cartoon filter" all editing programs have but no one uses because it looks retarded. At least it has music from the show...

Edit: LOL, WHAT? This can't be right. I went into the f2p store and picked the highest amount of gold you can purchase, which was 3000. It's 12000 MSP! Oh, and you can't just go in and buy Gannicus or Onomeus or something. You have to level up your ludus and unlock them first. Boo!

SAB CA said:
With Hero Summons, Multiple Magics, Troop summons (range or melee), multiple classes of projectiles (some which require no aiming at all, and some that are purely only worth using if you're going for all headshots), the game offers you a LOT of ways to conquer situations. If one way isn't working for you / pisses you off, there's probably another way to solve the situation. That's probably what I love most about the game; it's rare XBLA games try to have so many gameplay styles in it, and even more rare that they all feel worthwhile to the game. Parts of it can be janky, but taken together, it's so much more.
Click to expand...
You're overplaying the versatility of the game quite severely. Like you just said, there's only three methods of attack; spells, troops and the ballista. None of them will really get you the win, at least not the 5 star win, on their own and you have to combine the three constantly. There's no way you can just ignore the ballista, at least not before your troops and certain bonus rooms are level 8-10 (which none of mine are so I don't know).

And, come on, you know what I meant about the vikings campaign. They reset all your shit back to level 1, essentially. That's like saying "welp, your party died lol" halfway through an RPG and making you start over on leveling and getting gear back. That's not fun, it just makes the first half feel worthless and pointless.
 
A

aku:jiki

Member
Okay, Spartacus sucks a little less if you stop being a cheapskate and spend your free starting money on some gear for your guy. I was getting stomped without gear, it got a lot easier with a helmet and some upgraded underpants. That's silver, the game's free currency, so no need to buy gold yet.

The gold prices are absurd, though. 50 gold is 400MSP, and to compare, some shitty starting swords are 11 gold. I'm sure a badass endgame sword is going to be like 500 gold, which would cost you 3200MSP! Oh hell naw.
 
S

SAB CA

Sketchbook Picasso
aku:jiki said:
You're overplaying the versatility of the game quite severely. Like you just said, there's only three methods of attack; spells, troops and the ballista. None of them will really get you the win, at least not the 5 star win, on their own and you have to combine the three constantly.

There's no way you can just ignore the ballista, at least not before your troops and certain bonus rooms are level 8-10 (which none of mine are so I don't know).
Click to expand...

The thing about the game is that it never locks you out from something useful, while using another tool, basically. Every option has a layer of depth to it that can make up for a lack of use of one of the other weapons. Bonus room usefulness can be mitigated by skilled gameplay; they simply serve to ease burdens, no relieve you of them.

So, while most games like this would have you rely on each option 33% of the time, you can shift your dependencies as you need here, and still get the win (yes, even the 5 star, depending on stage and bonus objective.)

Examples:
- Hero has combos, which provide knockback on final hits. They also can "advancing strike" combo (by holding forward while striking) or root in place (hold no direction), thus allowing you to either hold a line, or push it. They have melee that allows headshots, can block ballista blows, and their B special can be STUPIDLY powerful when charged up, especially depending on the hero. They can also jump and guard cancel melee (better than some Beat-em-Ups, oddly.)

-Ballista has it's heavy fire special mode, achieved by getting 5 kills in quick succession. At first, this is HARD, because all you can do is basically headshot, and hope for the best. Eventually, when you get better specials, you can achieve the 5 kills in one shot, and then ARROW SALVO / ROCK SHOWER / Etc the heck out of the battlefield, or the enemy castle. This offers an absurd amount of fire power, and none of this seems to count against your accuracy, because if any part of a cluster weapon hits (a soldier, a castle), it counts as no miss. Thus, you can use the Ballista as a last ditch, and win a stage with no misses, if you find distanced aiming too hard without a targeting line.

- Bonus: Since you can precision aim with the D pad, you can actually set the Ballista at 1 point in the battlefield (that allows constant headshots) and keep it there during the entire battle. Feel out the first few shots in far zoom, landing body and head shots, and once you find the headshots, Keep it there! Combining these methods does let you step over almost all the annoyances of trying to get high accuracy in large stages.

- Spawned soldiers come in large variety, and all move at different speeds. Also, different ranged soldiers can either attack the fort door (for easy flag victories), or just keep soldiers at bay. You can either play the "constant soldier" outpout style, a ranged control style, or rely on a few brutes, that you power through to the door. You can level different sets of soldiers (on Knights, I depended on champs and healers, on Vikings, druids, as their range-magic + constant advancing is unlike any other class), and have success in your own way.

And this is all supplemented by the ability to build your own skill layout, AND castle (Or just pick from well-made detail castles). So while I like headshot harpoons, you might rely on 3 shot harpoons, or only auto-target / close range shots, and a whole different set of soldiers. While I want 2 heros to alternate between summoning, you might render this option moot for me, by relying on dragon / gryphons + high level magic.


And, come on, you know what I meant about the vikings campaign. They reset all your shit back to level 1, essentially. That's like saying "welp, your party died lol" halfway through an RPG and making you start over on leveling and getting gear back. That's not fun, it just makes the first half feel worthless and pointless.
Click to expand...

This would be true... if the campaigns earnings and levels didn't carry to Multiplayer and bonus modes. As it stands, I felt the 2nd campaign felt like a free DLC campaign. You never LOSE anything, you just get a new set of toys to play with. Basically, all they're doing is making sure one doesn't assume the Vikings are just palette-swaps of the knights, by making you watch the (highly accelerated) progress of a 2nd skill tree.

I think it felt very similar to my (limited) time playing different races in StarCraft; each group is the same on the outside, but different in detail. Thus, each SP campaign goes through the whole "lvl 1 to max" progression over again, but they limit the pain by making sure each classes starting options offer a bit of what the last classes max options made you wait for.

I would have been satisfied with the 1 campaign, for a $10 game, so I just screamed "BONUS!" and proceeded along my merry way, surprised at the amount of value this game offers...

====

Seriously, I don't make these claims for Castlestorm lightly; Playing through a solid amount of offline Co-Op and VS, on varied difficulties, and playing campaign stages on both difficulties, I'm very impressed with how deep each option is.

In previews, I anticipated a fancy Angry Birds X Boomblocks, with timed troop management and auto-playing hero summons, with click-and-forget magic spells. But the actual game is SO much deeper than that.

I'll accept that the game might be "grindier" than I felt though.

I liked playing the multiplayer, retrying stages, and playing each stage on varied difficulties, all while chasing max stars, and playing the variety of bonus Survival modes. So a person who wants to power through the game might have a more difficult time, especially if they play on Hard exclusively. But considering that ANYTHING you do in ANY mode all leads back to money for the campaign / Multiplay, the reliance of grinding is severely reduced.

All this met by a very solid technical underbelly (miniscule loading time, lightning quick retry / restart options, gourgeous overall graphics full of quality textures and effects, no frame drops, high enemy /projectile counts, and lots of physics based destruction and projectiles), and robust multiplayer and single player options, makes it a stand-out in the XBLA library to me.
 
Vert boil

Vert boil

Member
Spartacus Legends isn't that bad. I'm enjoying playing in more than I thought I would.

Its pretty loose with silver (earned currency) and at least in the beginning there is a slow dribble of free gold (paid currency). Easy to grind for silver as well, either take a risk in The Pits, replay easy battles or just keep losing to Oenomaus in the beginner area if you don't want to risk death.

The only annoying things so far,
Loading can take a little too long.
Sometime you have to wait up to 30 minutes (I think) for the roster to update so you can buy a specific type of fighter for silver instead of gold.
If you had a Boost enabled and it's run out, you have to manually deselect it or you'll get a pop up every time you select a fighter.
 
A

aku:jiki

Member
Vert boil said:
Spartacus Legends isn't that bad. I'm enjoying playing in more than I thought I would.
Click to expand...
Yeah, my mistake was trying to save my money and not buy gear. The game was frustrating and stupid-hard then. With some money spent on armor, the game got a lot easier and more fun.

Vert boil said:
The only annoying things so far,
Loading can take a little too long.
Sometime you have to wait up to 30 minutes (I think) for the roster to update so you can buy a specific type of fighter for silver instead of gold.
If you had a Boost enabled and it's run out, you have to manually deselect it or you'll get a pop up every time you select a fighter.
Click to expand...
This. That part of the game is god awful. I'm stuck in all three districts I'm currently trying to play through right now, because I cannot find a good dual sword or two-handed sword character. There's no point in me buying a rating 13 guy, that's just a waste of money. I just have to grind easy fights over and over and try to pass the time and pray that the game randomizes up some gladiators that don't completely suck ass.

Even worse is that I beat the first boss, Onomeus, and leveled up my fame by doing so. Leveling up your fame automatically refrehses the gladiator purchasing screen, which means that the game cycled away Onomeus! I can't buy him now... I hear he comes back but that's just annoying. I wanted him now, even killed off a gladiator to free up a slot.
 
Vert boil

Vert boil

Member
aku:jiki said:
Yeah, my mistake was trying to save my money and not buy gear. The game was frustrating and stupid-hard then. With some money spent on armor, the game got a lot easier and more fun.

This. That part of the game is god awful. I'm stuck in all three districts I'm currently trying to play through right now, because I cannot find a good dual sword or two-handed sword character. There's no point in me buying a rating 13 guy, that's just a waste of money. I just have to grind easy fights over and over and try to pass the time and pray that the game randomizes up some gladiators that don't completely suck ass.

Even worse is that I beat the first boss, Onomeus, and leveled up my fame by doing so. Leveling up your fame automatically refrehses the gladiator purchasing screen, which means that the game cycled away Onomeus! I can't buy him now... I hear he comes back but that's just annoying. I wanted him now, even killed off a gladiator to free up a slot.
Click to expand...

Yep, trying to be stingy with upgrades would make the game a pain early on. I spent ever bit of silver I received early on, really helped with my shitty fighting game skills. I've saved all of the free gold I've received so far because there's going to be a point very soon where I hit a skill wall and I need to cheat a little.
That really sucks about not being able to buy the boss if you level up by beating him.


I was playing with a sword and shield guy early on unless I was forced to use another class but have switched to a mallet guy. The sword guy had died enough for the next revive to cost four gold so I bought a cheap mallet guy to test out and he melts through some of the guys I was having trouble with so quickly. Feels good. >:)

Almost forgot... hello Goatse.
itsgoodseeqqst4.jpg
Click to expand...
 
S

SAB CA

Sketchbook Picasso
Mushroom Men LIVES? That's unexpected. Last we heard from it was all the way back on early Wii, yes?

As far as Spartacus... Played on PSN last night, fun enough to play, those $150 DLC coins are a comedy, and man, that writing is so badly over the top. Guess it fits the personality, though.

Doesn't seem bad at all for a "freebie", and I'm glad it has some Single-Player (even though when only online) aspects. (Look, Next Gen already!)
 
S

SlipperyMoose

Member
toythatkills said:
Some alright looking stuff coming out, but it's not going to be a vintage year, is it?
Click to expand...

They have had some pretty good releases this year with big games like State of Decay, BattleBlock Theater, and I suppose Charlie Murder will be pretty good but not for me. But yeah, the XBLA 360 reign is coming to an end. I hope we continue to see awesome games introduced on Xbox LIVE on the Xbox One like we did the 360.
 
C

CookTrain

Member
I remember making threads about Cloudberry Kingdom long ago when it was a wee Dream Build Play candidate and I was so sad when it disappeared into development obscurity, seemingly lost forever more.

Now it's back! :D
 
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