Jun
30

Review: Acupwnture

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As the designated falling block aficionado of Two Fedoras, I love seeing what the Indie community can produce to iterate on such an already markedly established genre with so many classics.  This brings us to XBLIG’s latest offering: Acupwnture.

Acupwnture is an unfortunately titled falling block game that, in attempting to be a difficult and unique member of its genre, almost misses the point of being a falling block puzzle game in the first place but still manages to deliver some solid block fun.

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Jun
29

XBLIG Update: The Vampire Boycott Is Over Edition

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Practically ever since the launch of Twilight began to glitter the ultimate human predator, I have more or less been in the midst of an all out vampire boycott. In fact, the only exception in the last two years was playing Castlevania: SOTN on XBLA. Oh and I don’t want to hear any whining from you True Blood soap opera fans either. Now to the point, I’ve momentarily placed a moratorium on the blood sucking boycott for one very special game that we’ll be having a full review of in the near future(between now and when the Sun becomes a Red Giant engulfing the Earth). I’m bored with ending these the same way every time, so just know that the bold stuff is mine.

Dino ‘Splode
Dino ‘Splode is an exciting action platformer where the player controls a nearly nuclear dinosaur named Sandwich. The player travels through various unique locations, solves puzzles, survives harsh environments, and makes their way through the bloodthirsty and constantly feuding Caveman nations.

Developer: Owen Deery

Price: 240 Microsoft Points

Fairly enjoyable platformer with a kind of amusing sun/exploding lizard mechanic that creates a sense of urgency which persists throughout play. The speed of the game feels a little off though, I think it is worth genre fans’ time to give it a demo play.

This Is Hard
Think you’re man enough to conquer the depths of THIS IS HARD? Trek your way through nefarious traps and deadly zombies to escape with your life. Who would fill the world with so many sharp and explosive objects? Conquer these challenges, or join the undead masses.

Developer: Stegersaurus Games

Price: 80 Microsoft Points

Awesome, hilarious, and fun go get your run on.

Sharpshooter
www.yyrgames.com – An intense test of your target-shooting skills! Experience 20 unique games, dynamically-adjusting difficulty, and optional Double Mode where you play with two guns at once! Compete with a friend in two multiplayer modes, or compete online with Internet Ranking! Will your skills be enough to earn the top grades? Also includes “The Best of Xbox LIVE Indie Games, Volume 1.”

Developer: yyr

Price: 80 Microsoft Points

Mildly amusing thumb work out, yyr games typically runs competitions on their new releases as well. Competitions with MS Point rewards, so go check that out at their site if you end up getting the game.

Sword&Magic
This game is a horizontal scroll shooting game. The character of two people can be switched. It raises the level when EXP is collected, and power improves. The trial version is 4 stages. The product version is 12 stages.

Developer: HUNTERS

Price: 80 Microsoft Points

Interesting side-scrolling shooter in which you swap characters in and out during play. The art is a little janky even by pixel art standards and the bullet patterns seem a bit inelegant. It still seems worthy of checking out the demo.

German 101
Learn German with 1000 flashcards featuring the most commonly used words.

Developer: Glass Joe

Price: 80 Microsoft Points

This one, obviously, isn’t a game in the traditional sense of the word. I still felt like mentioning it as it seems the developer put a lot of effort into its creation.

Vampire Rage
Cursed for an eternity with the loss of a loved one. Revenge is a dish best served cold! Vampire Rage is a fast paced shooter, themed around vampires and the undead. Can you handle the RAGE?!

Developer: tricktale

Price: 80 Microsoft Points

A very very impressive demo experience. I would be willing to speculate that this one could be the best vertical scrolling shooter offering since Shoot 1UP! Just the environment and its various layers of parallax are enough for a thrill.

Ancient Trader
The smell of exotic spices and the thunder of the sea accompany your journey as you discover new islands with thriving harbours full of goods. Sail through unknown waters where no ship went before, compete with other traders, fight mythical sea-monsters and gather ancient artefacts to claim a legendary treasure. Ancient Trader is a quick, pick-up-and play arcade family-entertainment strategy game.

Developer: Fourkidsgames

Price: 240 Microsoft Points

This one has a really nice look to it. I don’t know how good or bad the gameplay is as it seemed hard to get a feel for it quickly which could mean there is some gameplay depth there. It may have helped if I had read any of the help or tutorials, but those are for pussies.

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Jun
25

Shoot 1UPdate makes Score Trek more fun

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Mommy’s Best Games just uploaded a new video describing an update to their groundbreaking XBLIG shmup, Shoot 1UP. Which to be honest if you don’t own it already you’re probably regretting not having that living will.

Always in pursuit of perfection, MBG thought they could make some improvements on the already substantially enjoyable game by polishing up its “Score Trek” mode. The Score Trek mode itself acts as sort of a marathon mode which allows you to play through the game multiple times, saving level advancements and building up epically high scores for what can best be described as a gentlemanly comparison metric that doesn’t involve public indecency charges.

You can still find Shoot 1up on Xbox Live for a measly 80 Microsoft Kajiggers.

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Radiangames’ Crossfire trailer debut

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Oh Radiangames, you slick operators you. It seems like just a couple months ago you were releasing one of my favorite twin stick shooters on the XBLIG platform. But already, not even a summer has passed since JoyJoy was released and you’ve already got a new crazy good looking shmup in the pipeline. I think it pretty much goes without saying that I’ll be throwing down some mad points for Crossfire when it comes out, the expense be damned!

Read a little more maybe?

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Steam Indie Deals: Your choice of two stacked indie bundles.

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Pick yourself up five indie games for a very reasonable $19.99 over on the Steam platform. The titles of the Northern Lights Indie Pack include the ninja robot brawler Plain Sight, the recently updated Bob Came in Peices, Seumas McNally Grand Prize winner Blueberry Garden, waxy physics puzzler Crayon Physics, and the photogenic Saira. That’s a total savings of 64%.

But wait there’s more…

There’s a second five pack of games also available for $19.99 featuring the following games: AaAaAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, Gridrunner Revolution, Metal Drift, Starscape, and Zombie Driver. This little Summer Indie Action Pack stacks up a solid savings in the neighborhood of 60%.

You can pick up both of these bargain bundles as we speak over at Steam.

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Jun
24

It’s no use Mr. James, It’s turtles all the way down

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After having heard a lecture given by the philosopher and psychologist William James concerning the solar system, a woman rose to her feet and explained that the Earth does not circle the Sun and that it it instead insisted that it rode atop the back of an enormous turtle. Mr. James questioned the woman asking “If your theory’s correct, madam, what does this turtle stand on?” “A second far larger turtle, of course!” she snorted back. “But what does that stand on?” pressed the philosopher. “It”s no use, Mr James”, snorted the old lady triumphantly, “it”s turtles all the way down!”

Finally, this video comes along and provides us with conclusive evidence that the woman was not entirely accurate in her description of the universe. It’s clearly not turtles all the way down, as the order is observably and thus empirically established to be “Cat, Tortoise, World, Turtle, Turtle, Turtle, …”

source: QI’s Stephen Fry & Geekologie

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Jun
22

Productivity Killer: Kill Me!

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It’s been way too long since we’ve had a Productivity Killer to share with you all. Fortunately Brooks just derailed my train of thought today by sharing this little game with me. It’s a 2D puzzle platformer of sorts in which you utilize your recently discarded, still warm carcasses as tools to progress through the game. Kill Me! was created by Klaus K. Kristenson, Magnus A. Poppel, Sune W. Pedersen, and Mads P. V. Larsen and is available for free web browser based play here.

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Jun
21

XBLIG Update: The Vacation Edition

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Alright, it has been a considerable length of time since our last update, so as you can imagine that means there was a ton of games to go through. I did my best to hit all of them and catch us up to todays releases. I gotta say there have been a ton of really good looking releases since I left on vacation and hopefully I’ll have time to go back and play them all the way through. On the other hand there was also a lot of total shit too — “Try Not to Fart,” seriously? Stay classy Silver Dollar Games.  Anyways, the descriptions of the games below have been carefully concocted by the marketing arms of their respective developers. Our scant commentary will be displayed in bold.

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Jun
19

New 8 Bit Horse breakdown: Metroid 2

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My original Game Boy was my constant companion when I was dragged around by my parents to wherever it was they had to be, and it kept me out of trouble. As such, I have some rather fond memories of Metroid 2 as it was one of the titles I was gifted with to hold my attention. And boy did it.

I never quite beat that game, as my young mind wasn’t quite yet fit enough to process the sprawling maps and intricacies of spin-jumping. But that didn’t matter.

It seems the guys of 8Bit Horse share my love of that classic game, and made it the latest in their line of super-involved 2d game breakdowns.

Soak it in, and bask in 2d greatness. via 8 bit horse

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Jun
15

Dreaming of the Dreamcast: 10 Dreamcast games I want to see make the gen jump.

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I love the Dreamcast. In fact, as consoles go the Dreamcast will always have a very special place in my heart, not as my first console, because it wasn’t, but rather as the console that irreversibly changed how I thought about games. It was on this system that I first experienced the MMO environment with a little game called Phantasy Star Online. Suddenly games became this amazingly social experience where my friends and I could gather, make incredibly obscene ascii art, and just generally have a blast.

It is with this in mind that you can understand the unbridled excitement with which I read the news that Sega had finally decided to grant my wish and would begin to bring Dreamcast games to current generation platforms. The announcement came along with two titles: Sonic Adventures and Crazy Taxi. Now these are two great games that are a perfectly logical starting point for Sega. But as a Dreamcast fanboy, it is hard to not immediately begin construction of your own list of games you want to see ported. So without further stalling for time, I present to you my dreamy dreamcast port list.

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