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SDCC 09: South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play Hands-On

http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/100/1006552p1.html

Cripple fight!

If that got you chuckling, chances are you watch South Park (or are a total jerk). I am a dedicated South Park fan as well and so the announcement of a new South Park game got me pretty excited. And then I found out it was a tower defense game. Let's face it, South Park doesn't immediately conjure images of tower defense. But I was willing to give it a try. After all, it couldn't possibly be worse than some of the other games featuring Kenny, Kyle, Stan and that other guy.

The basics of the new South Park game are pretty simple. There are angry residents marching along a clear path through the snow and you have to stop them from getting through. Featuring four-player online co-op, each person controls a different South Park character. You throw snowballs with A (holding down for a more powerful "yellow snow" shot), build defensive towers with X and use your unique special move with Y. That's really about it.

Hitting enemies with snowballs builds up your special meter, which eventually allows you to unleash your devastating power up. Cartman's is more or less throwing a massive tantrum. With fifteen playable characters to choose from there should be plenty of variety in these powerful moves.

Dead enemies drop coins, which can be snagged and then used to buy defensive items. These are mostly guns of different types, such as a cherry bomb tosser. Figuring out which guns are best will take a bit more play time. But there is a good variety. Along with guns, there are a few other non-lethal options, the most important of which are walls. Building a barrier along the side of the path can be used to protect your characters from attack.

As enemies become more challenging, it will be tougher to protect them. But in the initial levels I played, the only threat was having an enemy touch your character. One touch and they drop dead. If you're playing with fewer than four people, you immediately take control of an open character. Otherwise you get to watch until one of your buddies revives you (done by walking over to the fallen hero).

The game is easy to pick up and play. Even if you're too dumb to lay out defenses, anyone can understand the concept of tossing a snowball. So it should make for a fun, casual co-op experience. The level I played is about as basic as I've ever seen a tower defense level, so I am hoping that things get a lot more complicated later on.

There are eleven campaign levels to go along with seven challenge levels. What I played was a fairly sparse area that didn't seem very complex at all. Hopefully later levels have a bit more to them. One thing that does show promise is the use of interactive environments. In the junk yard, for example, you can target a crane with your snowball to drop a load of cars on enemies.

The Comic-Con demo only had the four main South Park characters unlocked. And the volume was off, so I could hear what kind of smack talk they offered. Trey Parker and Matt Stone along with other cast members provide the voice work, so that will be authentic. Microsoft is keeping mum on the other unlockable characters. However, they told us that a sixteenth character will be unlocked at a specific time. My hope is that this bonus character is Jesus, set to unlock on Christmas day. Somehow I don't think Microsoft has the balls to do something like that. We'll see.

While a tower defense game still seems like an odd choice to me, at least South Park XBLA is going to look and sound authentic. Along with the show's voice actors being on board, you can expect "tons" of clips from the show played as reward for beating levels in the campaign. And the visual style shares the look of the cartoon. So at least there's that.

South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! Hits Xbox Live Marketplace on October 7.
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xbhaskarx said:
'Plants vs. Zombies' Coming to Xbox Live Arcade

Plants vs. Zombies is an all-new action-strategy game from PopCap, known for Bejeweled and Peggle! Zombies are invading your home, and the only defense is your arsenal of plants! Comic-Con is not the only event currently being held, at the Casual Connect in Seattle we met with PopCap's Garth Chouteau who revealed to us that P vs. Z is coming to XBLA, but did not elaborate any further on whether we can expect extras such as achievements, multiplayer or even a release date.
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I wonder how they are going to handle the "click on falling sun" mechanic. It's hard enough to click them quickly and accurately with a mouse, can't imagine trying to move a pointer around the screen with a stick being effective at all.
 
FlyinJ said:
I wonder how they are going to handle the "click on falling sun" mechanic. It's hard enough to click them quickly and accurately with a mouse, can't imagine trying to move a pointer around the screen with a stick being effective at all.
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Yeah I agree it will be interesting to know how they handle that, but I suspect it will work pretty well.
 
SO I was looking at the Avatar-supported games section today, and I noticed Worms 2: Armageddon wasn't showing up. THen I played the games and Avatars are definitely in there. What's the deal with this?
 
Foxtail said:
SO I was looking at the Avatar-supported games section today, and I noticed Worms 2: Armageddon wasn't showing up. THen I played the games and Avatars are definitely in there. What's the deal with this?
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Yeah I mentioned that in another thread. Someone should contact whoever can fix something like that... you'd think Team17 would already have done so.

MightyHedgehog said:
Man, there's a whole lot of tower defense-style stuff coming all at once...
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Not all at once, I'm sure Defense Grid is coming soon, but Plants vs Zombies probably will not be on XBLA for quite a while.

Edit: Or maybe you meant South Park...
 
Foxtail said:
SO I was looking at the Avatar-supported games section today, and I noticed Worms 2: Armageddon wasn't showing up. THen I played the games and Avatars are definitely in there. What's the deal with this?
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XBLA categories are screwed up to begin with.

When I got my fighting sticks I wanted to get every fighter on XBLA. So I browse by genre and go to "Fighting" there's only 1 game listed there: Arkadian Warriors

It's not even a fighting game.

Off the top of my head there should be:

Ultimate MK 3
SF2 Championship Edition
SF2:HD
Soul Calibur
Samurai Shodown 2

and now Garou:MOW and KOF 98

They're listed as "classics". Still it's not a good way of selling these games. XBLA needs to be revamped in this area.
 
That's a fair comment too, but I think the Avatar games section isn't exactly a category. It's more of a seperate marketplace section to give exposure to Avatar games. I also noticed Madballs is up there, which was released more recently than Worms 2. I really wanna start seeing some more content in that section.
 
http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/100/1006884p1.html

ndie comic hero Bryan Lee O'Malley is bringing Scott Pilgrim to one or more undisclosed consoles in 2010. The Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series tells the story of the unemployed and unmotivated title character who falls for the perfect girl, Ramona Flowers. Only problem is that in order to date Ramona, Scott must defeat her seven evil exes (Spoilers: One is a chick). What begins as your typical emo indie book quickly becomes an over-the-top manga-like epic full of colorful battles and ridiculous silliness. The upcoming game is set to debut around the time of the feature film (which stars Arrested Development's Michael Cera).

The game is still early in development by Ubisoft Montreal, so few details are available. What we do know is that the game follows the plot of the movie (which in turn follows the plot of the film). O'Malley expects it to be a side-scrolling beat-em-up. The game will feature the same level of absurd combat from the comics, so expect something more than just a boring button masher. O'Malley himself is a big fan of classic videogames, populating his comics with tons of references to old Nintendo Entertainment System titles.

Though little has been firmly decided on the direction of the new game, O'Malley confirmed it would utilize the cartoony style of the comic book. For him, that was a big win as he finds the overly realistic look of some modern games to be off-putting.

It's yet to be decided if the stars from the film will provide voiceovers for the game, but it would seem to make sense. Filming is still in progress and won't wrap for at least another month. With the movie not likely to come until at least summer 2010, don't expect the Scott Pilgrim game for some time.
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Is Darwinia/Multiwinia actually ever coming out?

They had they dev blog thing on GI.biz, I think it was, but we haven't heard anything solid about the status of the game and/or release date.
 
This is a 10 day notice to repay for your purchases at Your360Connection.com.

On August 6, 2009, customers who have not repaid will have a nonpayment report filed with a collection agency on the credit card that was originally used to purchase our items.

This report may have a negative impact on your credit/credit score - we aim to avoid this step if possible.


The easiest way to repay is through Paypal at the page: http://www.your360connection.com/reversal.html

Paypal repayments may also be sent to sunka2007@yahoo.com

If you pay from a paypal email different from this one, let us know to be removed from the nonpayment list.

Other methods of repayment may be discussed and extended time to repay may be requested by replying to this email.


Note: If you have already repaid, please reply to this email stating the paypal email that you repaid us with.
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he's threatening all the customers who didn't pay him after he got his removed. i read up in the thread he stole it....now he's trying to screw his "customers":lol
 
SDCC 09: Diner Dash Multiplayer Impressions
http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/100/1007573p1.html

July 25, 2009 - Before today, I had never played Diner Dash, but I knew the basics. You play as a waitress. You need to seat guests, take their orders, get their orders to the kitchen, get the food back to the table, check them out, bus the table, and reseat people for massive amount of points.

Whew. Today, however, I got to kick the tires on some multiplayer action, and that tosses a few wrenches into the works. The big thing with two waitresses is that it's anarchy. Anyone can grab anyone's order, bus anyone's table, and so on. Just because you seat someone doesn't make them your exclusive client. There are times when everyone's taken care of and you and your opponent are just waiting at the kitchen window tapping the pickup button so that as soon as the food is put down you can snatch it up and deliver it.

You still get bonus points for matching customer shirt color with chair color, but when you're really killing it, you can spring for upgrades such as more tables and shoes that allow you to go super-fast. This only adds more insanity to the local and online multiplayer. If you want to take it another step online, you can pit four teams of two against each other.

Diner Dash is coming to Xbox Live Arcade this September and to the PlayStation Network and WiiWare sometime after that.
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http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...h-joy-behind-the-scenes-with-splosion-man.ars


Exploding with joy: behind the scenes with 'Splosion Man

Twisted Pixel has already released one above-average Xbox Live title this year, The Maw. In that game you made friends with what amounts to a living mouth and, while the game was rather short, the personality and twisted humor of the game helped it to stand out. This week Microsoft kicked off the Summer of Arcade with 'Splosion Man, the next game from Twisted Pixel. In this title you're a man who... well, explodes. And it's much better than simply above average. How does it feel to create two impressive games in such a short amount of time? According to the minds behind the game, scary.

We spoke with Josh Bear, the CCO and cofounder of Twisted Pixel, about the quick turnaround of the title "We finished Maw sometimes September or October of last year, and Microsoft sat on it for a couple months before the January release," he explained "We started 'Splosion Man in December." It took 10 people around seven months to create the game, with the hope that with a quick production time it could be included in the Summer of Arcade promotion.

'Splosion Man takes place in an underground lab, where the somewhat deranged titular character is trying to escape. He does this by, of course, exploding, and those explosions send him flying across the levels, through obstacles, and around some devilishly designed platforming puzzles. You can explode three times before you have to take a second to recharge, and the simple concept leads to an addictive sort of platforming zen.

What's striking about this game is the amount of attention that went into the animations; when the lead character runs, he switches between a number of different animation cycles, including a memorable animation that sees him pretending to be an airplane, zooming around the levels. When the scientists get caught in your explosions, they turn into neatly-packaged chunks of meat. These things don't add to the game play, per se, but they help the game feel original and complete. This focus on art is a big part of what makes Twisted Pixel special.

"I was originally an illustrator, and our art director, Dave LeYung, is a great animator... he's amazing. When we start thinking about characters, we think about what awesome animations these characters can do." Bear told Ars. "['Splosion Man] has a bunch of run animations that he's bouncing back and forth between, why don't more games do something like that?" He cites other big-name games, Gears of War 2, Resident Evil 5, and notes that most titles can be improved with more variation in basic actions.
The story may not matter, but the fun does

What's striking about both The Maw and 'Splosion Man is that the story is never really explained; you're given a situation to deal with, and the game begins. "Internally we have ideas about why all this happens, but we just leave it open." Originally the idea was 'Splosion Man was a scientist in the base who spilled a soda into an open experiment, but it was agreed that story made very little sense. In the final game you're simply presented with the violent character, and are asked to help him escape.
splosionman2.jpg

"I'm not sure if making it up for yourself is more fun than having a story explained to you, but I don't think it matters, you're just a crazy guy who has to get out," Bear says. He also notes that their next game may provide a fuller narrative arc. For 'Splosion Man, however, the lack of a story makes the entire experience feel even more nihilistic; you're killing scientists left and right and destroying what appears to be a huge lab... and you don't even know if you're the good guy.

One area of contention in reviews has been the boss battles, and Bear admits that area of the game design was trickier than the team had assumed. "The original intention was we wanted to do bosses, we had to get some bosses in this thing," he explains. "The tricky thing... we made this game really quick. Boss battles take a lot of time, we learned."

We chat about the first boss battle, and he expresses frustration that a recent review bashed the boss, even though the method the reviewer used to kill the giant robot was unnecessary. "That's not the only way to do it!" Bear told me. Still, he's glad the boss battles made it. "We had fun with it, I wish we had more time to work on them. I don't think they're the greatest, but I'm still happy with them."
If you're not scared, that's the biggest failure

Twisted Pixel continues to take contract work for other game companies to help fund its own original titles. "I don't know if it gives us more freedom, but it gives us a bigger safety net," Bear explains. "It also helps that we're making really good connections at other companies, we've made some really good contacts and some really great friends." Right now the team is handling work for an unannounced MMO in addition to working on the follow-up to 'Splosion Man. He claims they're thinking about porting the game to the PC, saying it would be a better fit than the Maw was, but no decision in terms of a port has been made.

When asked if its scary to create games that are this high concept, Bear becomes philosophical. "We've had such good luck with Maw and 'Splosion Man, people are coming to expect humor and quality, and it's going to end sometime," he says, laughing.

"Everyone here busts their ass to make this stuff, because we love it, and there's going to be a time when people don't like what we come up with," Bear told Ars, growing serious. He says that while the company has to be profitable to survive, as a gamer he simply wants to make games that he wants to play. It's that simple."If you're not scared, if you always think you're totally awesome, that's the biggest failure; you're not pushing yourselves anymore."
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South Park Tower Defense's Working Titles Sucked

http://kotaku.com/5323176/south-park-tower-defenses-working-titles-sucked

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While South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! is a long title for the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game, some of the working titles were even more of a mouthful. Snowballing, anyone?

At the "Save South Park One Snowball At A Time" panel at Comic-Con yesterday, South Park Digital's Chris Brion explained how the tower defense / action hybrid's name evolved from the original title, "South Park: Suck My Balls."

After a little bit...it was probably two months when Microsoft asked us to change it. Questions arose about Xbox Live Marketplace censoring. Would we just censor the U-C-K (S***)? Or if we censored the whole thing people might think it was Fuck My Balls. We ended up coming up with a name we felt was much improved.

That title? South Park: Snowballing.

"That one lasted about two or three weeks and went through a couple of levels before somebody finally said, "Wait a minute."

So they had to pull that one, and their next tile, "Baru Baru Suki Suki" got nixed right away, despite its pseudo-Japanese charm. In the end, they stuck with the Japanese feel, giving us South Park's Let's Go Tower Defense Play!, which I'm still not so sure about.
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SDCC 09: The Warriors: Street Brawl Hands-On

http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/100/1007598p1.html

If you're reading this, chances are you're too young to remember The Warriors. Heck, I'm too young to remember The Warriors. Released 30 years ago, The Warriors is a street tough movie about one night in the life of a gang. Violent and gritty, the film still has a loyal following to this day. Paramount is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its cult film with The Warriors: Street Brawl for XBLA and PSN. This has no connection with Rockstar's 2005 game.

A 3D side-scrolling brawler, The Warriors: Street Brawl attempts to return beat-em-ups to their former glory. Clearly inspired by Streets of Rage, you play as one of six characters, walk along the streets and beat the crap out of everyone you meet. With four-player online or offline co-op, you can share in the brutality with your best mates. Just don't expect any blood -- this is a T-Rated game.

The commands are simple and can be picked up in about five seconds by anyone who as ever played a brawler. You have light and heavy attack buttons, a block button and a grab button. Each character also has their own special super move. There's a power meter for this, but you can still pull off the move at any time -- it just costs health if you're out of energy. And what would a brawler be without some sort of berserker mode? You can unleash rage, turning you Warrior red for a brief time. With fire in his hands, he can do far more damage and is temporarily invincible.

If fists just aren't cutting it for you, grab a weapon and use that to bludgeon your many enemies. You can even destroy parts of the environment to make new weapons. Personally, I find nothing more satisfying that smashing in the head of a Rogue with a bat. Crack!

As you bash enemies, power-ups and other collectibles appears. Some increase your energy or rage meters, others heal, but most add to your points. This is an arcade-style game after all.

The Warriors takes place in a single night, just like the film, so expect a lot of dark areas. There are 21 missions in total, so this should be a fairly significant experience. Along with the Story Mode (which features comic-book-style panels to tell the story), there's an Arcade mode and a Boss mode (fighting all six bosses in succession).

The most notable thing about the demo I played is that the characters take up a huge portion of the screen. You really get to see your favorite Warriors in action. My main concern is how this will affect the gameplay when you have four people playing at once and a dozen enemies surrounding them. I have a feeling it's going to be impossible to see your own character or tell what is going on. But since this demo was single-player, I couldn't say this with certainty.

The Warriors: Street Brawl feels like your classic beat-em-up. It's not reinventing the wheel, but using a well-worn one that we're all familiar with and love. How it plays out over all 21 missions is the real test -- because most beat-em-ups start feeling redundant after only a few missions.

We'll all know soon enough as The Warriors is set to become available on Xbox Live Marketplace in late September and a little later on PlayStation Network.
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SDCC 09: Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space Hands-on

July 26, 2009 - Everyone remember the first season of Sam & Max? Good, because Sam & Max: beyond Time and Space is season two, and it picks up with all the off-the-wall hilarity you'd expect from this adventure game franchise. If you're not familiar with this series, this is an adventure game where you click around and have the dog detective known as Sam investigate items and locales with a crazy rabbit-like thing named Max.

Wait a second. If you're not familiar with this stuff, why'd you even click on this story?

Anyway, I got to play a part from one of the season two episodes -- Night of the Raving Dead -- and I had a pretty good time. The episode begins with a zombie outbreak and the commissioner turning to Sam and Max for help. With a zombie in their office, the boys set out to get to the bottom of things. Eventually, this leads them to a nefarious location known as "The Zombie Factory." Turns out that the factory is actually a nightclub run by a Euro-douche named Jurgen, but he's a vampire with nipple rings and is dead set on killing Sam and Max.

Spoilers: Jurgen succeeds in his mission.

As if that didn't sound interesting enough, there are some cool gameplay bits here. When you try and talk to zombies, you can't understand what they're saying, but after Sam and Max get killed and come back as the undead, they can communicate with other zombies but not with the living. Anyway, all this sends the duo on a quest to retrieve their souls.

I could go on about the multi-colored disco floor and the oodles of humorous lines in here, but I don't want to spoil everything for fans -- although this game has been out for a while on PC and you could just read our review of that. Moving around the screen and clicking on objects was a breeze, the game looked good, and the story seemed interesting. It seems like this one will be a no-brainer for adventure fans when it gets released, which is a date no one was willing to talk about.

Stay tuned.
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Invincible Tiger Co-op Playtest

http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/100/1006975p1.html

July 23, 2009 - We've spent some quality time with the kung-fu brawler Invincible Tiger before, but just recently got a chance to try out the cooperative mode. If you haven't been following the game, this is an arcade style beat 'em up inspired by '70s martial arts films. A layer of dirty film grain has been laid over the visuals and developer Blitz Arcade (which recently delivered the puzzle game Droplitz) has really captured the feel of the movies Quentin Tarantino grew up watching. Oh, and it can be played in 3D.

Players work their way through a series of fixed-screen environments, beating the crap out of any bad guys that come your way. The story follows martial arts master Han Tao on his quest to recover a stolen artifact. Two can play through the campaign cooperatively both locally and online. Unfortunately, the second player isn't added to the many cut scenes. When the game pauses for exposition, which happens fairly frequently, player two will disappear, and magically return once the action resumes. It's not a deal breaker, including the second player in cut scenes would have shown that the developers went the extra mile to polish the cooperative mode.

Other than that, there isn't any difference between the single-player and co-op modes. Adding a second player merely means another pair of fists and feet to deliver swift justice to the game's evil cronies.

We also got to check out the 3D visuals with a regular old pair of red and blue 3D glasses. Previously, we played with the fancy pants goggles that cost many bajillions of dollars and the game looked fantastic. Regular anaglyph 3D was considerable less dramatic, and actually started giving us a headache. So if you plan to play Invincible Tiger in 3D, you'll probably want to go with the high end digital 3D mode. The problem is, not all TVs support this technology. Luckily, the game still looks nice and plays well without any crazy 3D visuals.

Invincible Tiger is on track for a late summer release on Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network.
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http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/100/1006904p1.html

SDCC 09: Metalocalypse: Dethgame Hands-on

July 23, 2009 - We've said it before and I'll say it again - licensed games usually have a hard time breaking free from the shackles of their license and turning into a good game. Metalocalypse: Dethgame, which is on display at this year's San Diego Comic-Con, looks like it will wind up no better than the other countless licensed games of old. Granted, the game is pre-alpha right now so it's possible that things will turn around, but what's on display is not good. At all.

You play as a nameless Klokateer, a minion of sorts for Metalocalypse, and the game opens with you standing in front of a urinal and peeing. Using the left analog stick, you can aim your pee and urinate to the left and right. This doesn't actually do anything or even leave yellow puddles on the ground, but that's how it starts. After you finish and zip up, which happens automatically after a while, you wonder through the barracks and into a training room where you start beating up punkster guys and gals. And that's pretty much the entire game.

After you finish this first batch while learning how to perform regular and heavy attacks and pick up a club and beat some people down, you head down a hallway and into an opening where giant smashers are smacking into a pair of conveyer belts. On either side of this room are spinning cylinders with blades attached, and if you or someone else runs into it, they (or you) are chopped to pieces. You can of course pick people up and ram them into the machine as a contextual kill, but it's not as cool as it sounds.

If that doesn't do it for you, you can always knock someone down, kick them numerous times in the groin and then pee on their face as they try to block your yellow stream with their hands.

Yeah...

After you kill everyone in this room, you then move into a chamber area and find a control room filled with gas that is killing everyone. Despite the fact that you wind up killing these people anyway, you're told via an intercom that you need to jam something into the machine to stop it. So, of course, you run inside the room, pick up some of these punksters and jam a few of them into the machine.

Some of these ideas have their merits I suppose (I'm not talking about the peeing bit), but the animation and gore that you see here isn't exactly rewarding. At this point, it looks more like a bad Quake 2 mod turned into a third-person action game.

Here's what it looks like when you pee on someone's face.
To top things off, the references to Metalocalypse are as common as seeing a pig fly. If it weren't for the name and music playing in the background, I would have no idea that this was a Metalocalypse game from the demo. Maybe things will change later on or with a later build, but right now it does very little to make proper use of the license.

One thing that could be decent is that if you head to the control options you'll see a second "page" for the controls for some sort of band minigame where you play red, green, blue, orange and yellow notes. This formula sounds very familiar, but if we can rock out to tracks from the Dethalbum (or even Dethalbum II), then there might be something worthwhile in the end.

As it stands now, I don't see a very bright future for the game. Again though, this is a pre-alpha build, I doubt it'll get a whole lot better than it is. We'll see.
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http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/100/1005736p1.html

Ion Assault Preview

July 21, 2009 - One of the most pleasing offshoots of the online console revolution kickstarted by Xbox Live and PlayStation Network is the revival of 2D shooters, their bite-size gameplay serving as perfect snacks for audiences bloated by the big blockbusters. Bizarre's Geometry Wars has led the way on Xbox 360, while PlayStation 3 owners have themselves the equally compelling Super Stardust HD – and in their wake are a veritable glut of impersonators.

Ion Assault has all the fizz and spectacle that you'd expect from a 360 shooter.

It's a crowded market and, on first impressions, one that Ion Assault, a brazen hybrid of Super Stardust HD and Geometry Wars, will be hard pressed to make its mark on. The four-sided grid which contains the action will be familiar to anyone who's dabbled in any of Bizarre's retro-tinged efforts, while the colossal asteroids that provide some of the cannon fodder bring to mind the PSN's own retro jewel, Super Stardust HD.

At the very least the two sources of inspiration are blended together with panache and for a genre that's reliant on replicating such vintage thrills it seems churlish to complain when Ion Assault flaunts its influences so brazenly. However, it's got enough ideas of its own to lay claim to precious hard drive space, most prominent of which is the particle system that informs much of the game.

Particles swim along the surface of each arena and by absorbing them with the player's ship it's possible to unleash a more powerful shot. Combine this with the ability to bounce shots off the arena's extremities and absorb them back and a whole new layer of depth is given to the more simple strategies required by most arcade shooters.

Developer Coreplay have their roots in the demo scene - something evident in the tech-heavy aesthetic.

Furthermore, a twin stick shooter Ion Assault may be, but its control scheme differs fundamentally to that of Geometry Wars, Super Stardust and their legions of clones. Whereas most games map the direction of firepower to the right stick – so down is down and up is up - Ion Assault instead uses it to rotate the ship, something that's initially confusing. Indeed, at first it seems like a pointless attempt to differentiate itself from its many competitors, but extended play gives it space to settle in. While we certainly prefer the method employed by most other shooters, it's a design decision that is ultimately far from game-breaking.

Once acclimatised, Ion Assault delivers the familiar thrill of a no-frills shooter and each of its five stage bouts climax in some show-stopping boss fights. Online leaderboards and four player co-op will provide the longevity, and an attractive price tag of 800 Microsoft Points makes it a perfect impulse buy when it lands this summer. Expect the full verdict in the coming weeks.
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SapientWolf said:
That looks trippy as hell. Is it still up for Summer 09? I thought that was reserved for Summer of XBLA games.
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The Summer of Arcade campaign only encompasses 5 weeks. Summer, the season, lasts more than 5 weeks.
 
Foxtail said:
Definite purchase for me, IF they get the gameplay right. The style looks good and the humor fits it very well. I've never bought a Tower Defence game before, but this could be the first one.
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The South Park game looks like it could be pretty lousy, don't judge the entire genre based on it when there are other (probably better) tower defense games coming to XBLA like Defense Grid and Plants vs Zombies.
 
SapientWolf said:
That looks trippy as hell. Is it still up for Summer 09? I thought that was reserved for Summer of XBLA games.
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There will almost certainly be more than five games released over the next five weeks, just like last Summer of Arcade.
 
xbhaskarx said:
There will almost certainly be more than five games released over the next five weeks, just like last Summer of Arcade.
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Uh No. they already announced the five games, Splosion Man - Turtles in Time - Trials HD - Marvel vs Capcom 2 - Shadow Complex. Not in that order
 
george21000 said:
Uh No. they already announced the five games, Splosion Man - Turtles in Time - Trials HD - Marvel vs Capcom 2 - Shadow Complex. Not in that order
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And yet Fable Pub Games was released last year during the summer of arcade. We already know that Bubble Bobble Neo! is coming out August 5th at least.
 
I recently spoke to Telltale about where the Wallace Episodes were, and their reason for the delay was "Summer of Arcade". I would expect Sam & Max to be out a little further than that - you don't want to cannibalize either it or the original S&M sales.
 
george21000 said:
Uh No. they already announced the five games, Splosion Man - Turtles in Time - Trials HD - Marvel vs Capcom 2 - Shadow Complex. Not in that order
Click to expand...

And he's saying that there will be other games/DLC released alongside those games per week, just like last year.
 
Rlan said:
I recently spoke to Telltale about where the Wallace Episodes were, and their reason for the delay was "Summer of Arcade". I would expect Sam & Max to be out a little further than that - you don't want to cannibalize either it or the original S&M sales.
Click to expand...

huh, makes sense. thanks for that.
 
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