The Graphically Enhanced Classic Gives Fans Enough Carnage, Smokin’ Guns and
Multiplayer Mayhem to Make Life Worthwhile this January 13th
Start off 2010 with a serious bang as Majesco Entertainment Company today released Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter for Xbox LIVE Arcade for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. For just 1200 Microsoft Points, players and bad-A%#s in training can download the high-definition retelling of the original Serious Sam to blast, battle and obliterate the forces of the evil Mental.
“This game takes my good looks, swarthy charm and timeless cool from the original version and ups it to a level of god-like brilliance,” says Sam ‘Serious’ Stone, everyone’s favorite loud mouth protagonist. “Gamers can even play online with up to three friends to wipe out the thorn in my side known as the Sirian Army.”
Developed by Croteam, the creators of the Serious Sam franchise, and produced in partnership with Devolver Digital, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter follows our hero Sam as he frantically battles his way through time to ancient Egypt. Throughout 15 levels of awesomeness, he takes on a seemingly never-ending onslaught of enemies, from the charging Sirian Werebulls to the screaming Headless Kamikazes. Whether blowing apart nasties with monstrous cannons or ripping them to shreds with the lead-spewing minigun, the tools and the talent are at your disposal to ensure non-stop butt-kicking action over Xbox LIVE Arcade for Xbox 360.
Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter is rated M for Mature and now available for download from Xbox LIVE Arcade for Xbox 360 for 1200 Microsoft Points. For more information on the game, please visit the official site at www.SeriousSamHD.com.
Independent video games developer NinjaBee is kicking off the New Year with a new game for Xbox LIVE Arcade. Each Tuesday in January the developer will show off new art from the project on its blog www.NinjaBee.com/blog/, leading up to a more detailed, official announcement at the end of the month.
“2010’s gonna be a big year for us,” said NinjaBee’s Art Director Brent Fox. “We’re putting our biggest effort to date into making this game standout. The game is going to give people what we hope will be the most complete and best avatar experience on Xbox LIVE Arcade.”
The new game is NinjaBee’s third XLA title to allow gamers to play as their avatar. NinjaBee’s other avatar-based games on XLA include A Kingdom for Keflings and Band of Bugs. Several developers at NinjaBee also worked on the free Xbox LIVE Dashboard mini-games featuring avatars: Dunk Tank, Football Toss, Snowball Fight and Fireworks.
The new avatar-based game is the second game NinjaBee has announced it is bringing to XLA in 2010. The other, Ancients of Ooga, was announced last fall.
About NinjaBee
NinjaBee, located in Orem, Utah, began developing games in 2004. With every game they make, NinjaBee’s goal is to create a unique, top-quality, fun experience for people of all ages. Their popular titles include Outpost Kaloki X, Cloning Clyde, Band of Bugs, Boingz, Doritos Dash of Destruction and A Kingdom for Keflings.
Evolution Dreams Studio is about to launch two brand new games, Avatar Quest and Pirate Mayhem, both to be released January 2010 on Xbox Live Indie Games. And the developers of the studio want to share their happiness giving away tons of tokens of their previous XBLIG: Words in a Word, Bomb Disposal Expert and Planet Delta.
But there is more as their friends of Ninja Fever, the developers of Dual Zone, want to collaborate giving away some tokens as well in this Awesome Giveaway.
So, here is the deal, Evolution Dreams Studio is giving away… 50 tokens!! The biggest XBLIG giveaway of all time!!
Kaotik puzzle is an action-puzzle videogame for up to two players versus, in which you win by filling your opponent screen with blocks. You will receive blocks from your opponent. When there is no free space in you screen you lose. You can defend yourself by arranging the blocks to make them disappear, so you make more free space. When you make disappear your blocks creating chain reactions, you will send attacks to your opponent.
When you start the game, you have to select one of the six characters available. Each character makes the game different, by changing the kind of cursor, the kind of attack and the way you have to arrange the blocks to make them disappear.
Game rules:
Each player has a screen make of 6 x 12 empty spaces. In the screen, colored blocks appear from the bottom to the top. By arranging the blocks on a certain way (depending of the character), the blocks disappear, and the blocks in a higher place will fall down. If the player doesn’t make disappear the blocks fast enough, the screen will be full of blocks and the player will lose.
When a player makes disappear at the same time, more blocks than strictly necessary (called combo) the extra blocks will be send to the opponent screen in a way of garbage blocks. The kind of garbage blocks is different based on the character the player is using.
When the player makes disappear the blocks, and the higher blocks fall in an arranged way, those will disappear too, making a chain reaction, which send garbage blocks to the opponent in a higher quantity than a combo.
About characters:
Six characters are available in Kaotik Puzzle. They are designed in a nice and friendly way. Each character is a set of a kind of cursor (the tool you use to move the blocks), a way of arranging the blocks (how you have to arrange the blocks to make them disappear), and a kind of garbage blocks (the kind of attack you will send to your opponent).
The characters are the Cyborg, the Ninja, the Gangster, the Scientist and the Cowboy.
About cursors:
There are 5 different cursors:
- One block cursor:
When the player uses this cursor, it can exchange the block on the cursor with the one just on the left, right, higher or lower block.
- One block cursor (picking):
This cursor allows the player to pick a block and carry it on the cursor to any other place. When you pick another block, it will be exchanged with the one you are carrying.
- Two blocks cursor:
It allows the player to exchange the block in the left side of the cursor with the one in the right side.
- For blocks cursor:
It allows the player to rotate the four blocks on the cursor in clock-wise or counter-clock-wise.
- Six block cursor:
It moves the six blocks on the cursor (the whole row) to the left or to the right. The block on the last place will appear on the first place.
About the game type (or the way to arrange the blocks):
To make disappear the blocks you have to arrange the blocks depending on what character the player has chosen. The game types of the characters are three connected (in any direction), three in a line, and four connected. When you a playing in two players versus, you can freely choose from nine different ways.
About the attacks (or garbage blocks):
There are six different garbage blocks, one for each character.
- Unknown color block:
They are gray blocks with an interrogation symbol. After some seconds, they become normal blocks. The stronger the attack is the longer will stay in gray.
- Bombs:
They are shiny back balls that bother and fill the opponent screen. A bomb disappears when a normal block disappears next to it.
- Stronger bombs:
They look like the normal bombs, but more shiny. When normal block disappear next to a strong bomb, the bomb becomes a normal bomb. Basically the stronger bombs are like bombs the twice harder to make then disappear.
- Discs:
Discs are like the normal blocks but in a circle shape. They won’t disappear if they are in the disc shape. When a normal block disappears next to a disk, the disk becomes a block.
- Numbered blocks:
They are black blocks with a colored number inside. When a normal block disappears any place on the screen, the number on the block decreases. When the number gets to zero, it becomes a normal block.
- Time bombs:
These bombs have a timer that looks like some marks filling a circle. When the timer is full, the bomb explodes, leaving nine normal bombs. You can “dissemble” the bomb by making disappear normal blocks next to it. When that happens, the bomb gets kicked out of the screen.
Remember that one time in band camp when you talked about doing cool things with your Xbox Avatars? I hope that cool thing involved taking a snowball and shoving it right in the face of other Xbox Avatars. The creative minds at Hotwave Games presents an insanely awesome thing to do with Xbox Avatars. Snowball fight!!! I present to you…for your Winter eyes only…Avatar Wave: Snowball Fight.
Why dream of a white Christmas when you can download and create your own with Avatar Wave: Snowball Fight!? It’s the next best thing to actually making your own snowball and hitting little Billy in the face with it. The best part is that with Avatar Wave: Snowball Fight the screaming mom heading straight towards you for breaking her little boy’s nose is out of the equation. Don’t break a nose, break an Avatar!
Avatar Wave: Snowball Fight puts your Avatar against others in a snowball fight for the ages. Make sure your Avatar is dressed for the occasion! It’s 1-4 players so you and some friends can finally go at it in a pile of snow. Come on I know you’ve always wanted to. Take a look at the game in action here.
You can toss snowballs in Arcade and Survival mode as well as play online on Xbox LIVE against other snowball fighters across the country. It’s the perfect game for the holiday season and the only one that won’t have Billy’s mom chasing after you. You can safely throw as many snowballs as you can.
“Snow is the most dominant in the feeling of Winter and thus we decided to make a snowball fighting game,” said Lead Programmer, Percy. “In the development process, we always keep the gameplay simple so that a wide range of players can have fun with it. Players can find some tactics in the game and they can defeat enemies easily by mastering those skills!”
Give your audience the gift of news about this game. It’s available now on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 240 Microsoft Points. From the Xbox dashboard, just head to Games Marketplace > Indie Games. You can queue it up for download here on Xbox.com: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585503c1/
Massive New Outbreak of Cross-Over Cult Hit Begins Today on Nintendo DS; Additional Strains Coming Soon to iPhone, Micosoft’s Xbox 360 and XBLA, and More; Art Contest Launched
To celebrate this ultra-extreme occasion, PopCap is holding a three-month long “Peggle Fever” celebration at PopCap.com featuring daily giveaways of games and merchandise, free access to the new bonus level pack for Peggle Nights, and more. Peggle Fever also features a first-of-its-kind Peggle art contest, with the grand prize winners receiving all-expense paid trips to PopCap’s Seattle headquarters as well as having their creations included in a future installment in the Peggle series. More details of the contest, which begins today and runs until June 3, 2009, are at www.popcap.com/promos/peggleart.
Combined with Peggle’s existing availability on PC, Mac, iPod, mobile phones and the Web, the new adaptations arriving over the next 90 days will make Peggle one of the most widely available casual games ever. Not to mention one of the most “customized,” as PopCap co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Jason Kapalka explains: “Peggle is a pretty special little game, and it deserves all the attention to detail and high touch polish we’ve given it. We’ve gone beyond just porting Peggle and have really opened up new territory for the game with the iPhone’s input and control mechanisms and by partnering with Q Entertainment on the development of Peggle Dual Shot for Nintendo DS. Add to that the cool multiplayer modes in the Xbox 360 and XBLA versions, and these are really adaptations of the game designed to tap the unique aspects of each respective device and service. It’s been really cool to see how the game has evolved and expanded.”
Separate press releases detailing the launch of Peggle Dual Shot and the art contest were issued today. To date, Peggle and Peggle Nights combined have been downloaded more than 45 million times – yet the games remain modest commercial successes by PopCap standards. Nevertheless, the Peggle titles are the most lauded casual game series in the last two years and have garnered nearly 100 rave reviews, with a devoted cult following that encompasses a surprisingly wide range of people. From great-grandmothers to seriously hardcore gamers including the editorial staffs of several leading video gaming magazines, Peggle has fans of every imaginable type.
Doritos: Dash of Destruction
Format: Xbox 360, Xbox Live
Cost: Free download
Points: 200 total
This is just a quickie review, for the game, Doritos: Dash of Destruction. It’s on Xbox Live Arcade right now as a free download, obviously to help the Doritos brand. You control either a Dinosaur trying to destroy the Doritos truck, or a Doritos truck trying to avoid the dinosaur and make deliveries to the “chips” on the board. There’s not much depth here, but you get 6 levels (12 total) of easy distraction. They do have a skill level increase, but nothing too difficult. The dinosaur missions are a bit tougher, because he’s fairly large, and not as easy to control. It’s also the most fun to be the dinosaur, as you can destroy all buildings in your way. You can’t jump, so water is your enemy. With each level, you get upgraded, either with cybernetics or vehicle upgrades.
The graphics aren’t too flashy, and it’s worth mentioning that NinjaBee, creators of Kingdom for Keflings. If you’ve played that game, you know their quirky graphic style, and it’s here, making the game fun the see the first time around.
The music is unmemorable, but didn’t get in the way of the game either. You know when the new cars appear, or the dinosaurs are coming.
There’s not a whole lot of replay value, and you can probably finish the game in 20 min if you’re hardcore. The kids love being a dinosaur, and have probably fully played out the game many times over, just to destroy the buildings. It is a fun, fast way to get 200 points, but that’s about it.
Rating 2.5 of 5 – Nothing wrong with the gameplay or graphics, it’s just what it was designed for, a short, playable advertisement for Doritos.
Name: Things on Wheels Publisher: SouthPeak Games Developer: Load Inc. Platform: Xbox Live Arcade Genre: Racing Release: Q4 2008 Website:www.loadinc.net
Overview:
ToW is a straight forward racing game pitting tricked out remote control (RC) cars against one another in unique, household settings. Best described as “a tribute to ReVolt,” the arcade side is reinforced by a simple pick up and play system that makes it easy to get anyone into the mix. For the racing connoisseurs out there, the state of the art car physics and control dynamics of ToW’s competitive racing will surely impress. Play locally with friends on a split-screen, or online via Xbox Live. Use in-game bonuses to vex the competition as you work your way into first place. Focused on crazy arcade style racing, ToW is the type of game that will have you screaming for more!
Features:
• 1-4 Players including cooperative and multiplayer via Xbox Live
• Full voice support
• Realistic controls and physics for each car
• RC models ranging from Muscle cars to Sportster class
• Regular downloadable content updates planned
• 12 off the wall achievements available
• Unique tracks and settings as you race through an Art Deco Mansion
• In-game bonuses and obstacles offer players interesting options while racing
Lips Fact Sheet
July 2008
Title: “Lips”
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: iNiS Corp.
Format: DVD for the Xbox 360 video game system
ESRB Rating: Pending
Availability: Holiday season 2008
Price: To be determined
Product Overview:
Microsoft Corp. is taking a whole new stage with “Lips,” an all-new music franchise exclusively for Xbox 360. “Lips” is the only singing game that offers wireless motion-sensitive microphones and the ability to sing from your own music collection of DRM-free songs.* Start channeling your favorite pop star because it’s you, your friends and most important your music that turns “Lips,” the new singing game for Xbox 360, into the world’s ultimate party experience this holiday season.
Keiichi Yano, celebrated developer behind some of the industry’s most beloved rhythm games, brings his vision of collaborative and social musical entertainment to “Lips.” The first and only singing game that offers interactive motion-sensitive microphones to make your party rock all night long, “Lips” encourages players to toss apprehensions out the window and join the party.
Features:
Top game features include the following:
• Two wireless interactive microphones. Featuring stylish interactive motion sensors and lights, the microphones respond to singers’ actions and can be used as percussion accompaniments. With the freedom and encouragement provided by the high-quality wireless microphones, everyone can live their singing dreams in style.
• The best music. “Lips” will include a diverse selection of songs, including your favorite blasts from the past such as “Bust a Move” by Young MC, as well as new songs from breakout artists such as “Mercy” by Duffy and “Young Folks” by Peter Bjorn and John.
• Sing your music collection. “Lips” allows people to customize their experience with the songs that matter most to them by singing along with friends to the music from their personal collection.*
• Play along. Using the standard Xbox 360 controller, up to two people will be able to join the fun and choose from a variety of percussion accompaniment to play along with the music in “Lips.” By placing control of various tambourines, claps and of course the ubiquitous cowbell at the fingertips of anyone with a controller, “Lips” creates a social entertainment experience for friends, co-workers and kids alike.
• Constant flow of new music. From the songs that will come with the game, to your own music collection and the ability to download new tracks from Xbox LIVE Marketplace, “Lips” will continually provide new music to bring people together and keep the party going.
UNO RUSH Fact Sheet
June 2008
Title: “UNO RUSH™”
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Microsoft
Format: Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360™ video game system
ESRB Rating: TBD
Availability: 2008
Product Overview:
UNO RUSH™ is a challenging and exciting party card game for up to four players. Developed by the same Microsoft team that brought the original, best-selling UNO® to Xbox LIVE® Arcade, UNO RUSH™ boasts exciting gameplay and social features – multiple variants, house-rule options, local and Xbox LIVE multiplay, camera support, avatar support, full XSAM (LIVE Party Chat) support and more – plus fast-placed gameplay to keep the party going! Sort your cards whenever you have a second to think, because they’re played automatically on your turn. Think fast, keep an eye on your opponents’ cards, predict the flow of play, and above all, don’t forget to call UNO!
Features:
“UNO RUSH” features include the following:
Full Avatar support
Full XSAM (LIVE Party Chat) support
Couch play for the whole family – Up to 4 players per console
Full guest support for multiple users per console over Xbox LIVE
Xbox LIVE Vision support
Big Button Pad support
Co-op Play for teams of two
Achievements
