June 24, 2008 – 5:00 am
Starting tomorrow, you’ll be able to grab these two new games on the XBox Live Arcade: Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm and Ticket To Ride. The games will be available for the recently standard XBLA price of 800 MS Points ($10) each.
Happy Tree Friends is a game adaptation of the overly violent and disturbing cartoon, putting you in control of Lumpy the Moose, who must save his animal friends from grisly ends. Here’s the official blurb:
Based on the popular and twisted Web series, Lumpy and his accident-prone friends face one gory, horrible disaster after another in Happy Tree Friends False Alarm™! Armed with a helicopter pack, Lumpy rescues his pals by blasting open areas where they may be trapped with flaming napalm or explosive nitro, or he can put them into a deep freeze if they are about to stumble into danger. Try to keep the friends from peril in ten exclusive disaster-filled scenarios, each with three frantic levels, and brand new cutscenes.
Ticket To Ride is based on the award winning board game from 2004 that has players competing to run train tracks across the United States (and, in later expansions, across other countries) to connect cities and complete routes for profit. Here’s the blurb for this one:
All aboard! Travel from coast to coast and visit all the stops on the exciting train adventure Ticket to Ride™. Plan your routes and connect your cities across the country to become the ultimate traveler. Earn points as you claim your tracks and complete your tickets for your chance at the big score. From sea to sea, crisscross the nation as you build the longest route and take home the prize. It’s hours of fun for your family and friends. Who will come out on top when the steam clears? Get your Ticket to Ride and see!
Ticket To Ride is one I’ve personally been looking forward to, but I’m intrigued enough by Happy Tree Friends to at least give the demo a download.
May 29, 2008 – 11:16 am
The June 4 game release on the XBox Live Arcade will be Roogoo, a 3D puzzler produced by SpiderMonk Entertainment. Featuring characters and graphics that look like the love child of Mighty Muggs and Katamari Damacy, here’s the official blurb from the developer:
Roogoo tasks players with guiding meteors in the form of shaped blocks through a series of rotating disks as a means of saving planet Roo and the entire Roogoo race. If aligned correctly, the disks allow the blocks to reach the ground and scores are awarded. Various obstacles and enemies will impede the blocks’ movement and with the flow of meteor blocks steadily increasing as the game progresses, players will have to think on their feet to save the Roogoo and rack up seriously high scores.
Roogoo will ship with more than 45 levels and includes single player as well as split-screen multiplayer and party play. The game will be on the Arcade next Wednesday for 800 MS Points ($10).
May 26, 2008 – 11:08 am
Ever since the XBox Live Arcade went online with the launch of the XBox 360, there’s been a steady flow of new games being released every week. I’ve always taken a certain satisfaction in knowing that all the games always would be there for download if I ever got an urge to give some of them a shot that I’d missed when they originally sprang onto the marketplace. And indeed, I occasionally do go back and sample the older wares, and it’s cool to see such a huge selection still available and growing by the week. Granted, a lot of it is arguably crap, but I like to think the consumers can make educated decisions on what they want to spend their hard earned Microsoft Points to purchase.
No longer! Marc Whitten, the general manager of XBox Live, has announced that Microsoft is about to start yanking poorly performing older games from the service. The criteria for a game to be pulled from the service include:
- The game is more than six months old.
- The Metacritic rating for the game is below 65%.
- The conversion rate for the game is less than 6% (meaning that less than 6% of people who download the demo end up unlocking the full game).
Metacritic is a site that collects review scores from various websites for games, movies, music, TV shows, and DVDs, and presents an overall collaborative score for easy digestion. It’s always lurking in the corner for game companies and developers, as many consider the Metacritic score the real benchmark for how good a game is and how well received it is by the general public. This is the first time I can recall hearing a major company cite it as a tool for determining their business practices, though.
Microsoft will be giving three months’ notice before removing games from the Arcade. At the end of those three months, the game will be zapped into the ether, never to be buyable again. If you already own the game after that time, you’ll still be able to play it online and off, and you’ll be able to redownload it as long as you’ve already purchased it.
Source: NextGeneration
May 20, 2008 – 11:16 am
In a recent interview, XBox Live’s David Edery revealed a plan to increase the maximum filesize for XBox Live Arcade releases. This has been a point of contention for quite a while, as some developers have felt stifled by the previous size limit for their products. The only real reason the size limit exists is for the benefit of those who have bought XBox 360s without hard drives (the original Core model and the current Arcade model). Nintendo Wii aside, it’s puzzling as to why someone would want to have a current gen console without a hard drive, but there you go. Here’s what Edery had to say about the issue:
Q: And you’re upping the size of Xbox Live Arcade games as well to 350 megabytes?
David Edery: Yeah, it’s a steady progress. We’ve been listening to our partners, listening to our customers to try and get a feel for what’s right. We don’t want the size limit to hit the roof because we think there’s some value in promoting small pick and play experiences that don’t cost USD 20 million, it’s good for the ecosystem.
Source: GamesIndustry ( via Evil Avatar )
May 14, 2008 – 6:54 pm
The next two games to be released as XBox Originals on the XBox 360 will be Stubbs the Zombie and Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows. Stubbs is a fun 50’s-era zombie game that was a sleeper hit on the original XBox, and Gauntlet is a hack and slash dungeon crawler with RPG elements. Both games will be available for download through the XBox Marketplace on Monday, May 19, and each will cost 1200 MS points ($15). Alternately, you could grab either game off eBay, complete with box, disc, and manual for less than ten bucks and save your 360’s hard drive space for things like Rock Band songs.
Source: Major Nelson
May 13, 2008 – 10:06 am
Following the releases of Catan, Carcassonne, and Lost Cities, another board game with a big fandom following is on the way to the XBox Live Arcade. This time it’s Days of Wonder’s Ticket To Ride, a strategy game that has players competing to build cross-country railroad routes. Here’s the official word:
It’s official: another popular board game will join the Xbox LIVE Arcade games lineup. Alan R. Moon’s award-winning railway building game “Ticket to Ride” will be rolling in to XBLA this summer.
Developed by Playful Entertainment, “Ticket to Ride” challenges players to plan cross-country rail routes across North America and visit all the city stops in-between, racking up points as they race to reach the most destinations. The game will support play with up to five people on Xbox Live or four people on the same console and supports the Xbox LIVE Vision Cam for hours of family-friendly fun.
If you want to get a jump on how to play the game, take a look at Scott Nicholson’s instructive video at his website: Link
May 12, 2008 – 1:05 pm
This week’s XBox Live Arcade release will be Sierra Online’s Assault Heroes 2, the sequel to the previous XBLA hit that recently got a price reduction. From the official press release:
“Assault Heroes 2″ reveals that the original enemy in “Assault Heroes” is merely a pawn of a more sinister force, which players must now seek out and destroy. Armed with stronger weaponry and the ability to hi-jack more powerful enemy units, players must prepare to face relentless enemies and outrageous bosses in climactic battles, including an all-out skirmish in outer space.
In the sequel, players can experience the full fury of war outside of the safety of their vehicle with even more intense on-foot gameplay, where increased firepower and the new dodge roll feature are necessary to survive. Players can choose to fight alone or battle with a friend using the enhanced two-player cooperative mode. Either way, players will travel through diverse and interactive environments on land and in space to overcome the newest enemy and save mankind.
Assault Heroes 2 rolls onto the Arcade this Wednesday for 800 MS Points ($10).
Source: Gamerscore Blog
May 6, 2008 – 9:56 am
Now available for download for Rock Band is the Scene Pack, containing the following tracks:
- It Hurts by Angels & Airwaves - 160 MS Points ($2)
- Date With The Night by Yeah Yeah Yeahs - 160 MS Points ($2)
- This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race by Fallout Boy - 160 MS Points ($2)
These three songs are also available to download together as a pack for 440 MS Points ($5.50)
May 5, 2008 – 11:50 pm
Major Nelson at XBox Live has announced that MTV Games, Harmonix, and McDonalds have teamed up for a new Rock Band promotion. Starting tomorrow and running through June 1, two songs a week will drop to 80 points a piece for that week only. Here’s the list of songs and when the price drop will be in effect:
- 5/6/08-5/12/08 :
Crushcrushcrush - Paramore
Rock ‘n Roll Band - Boston
- 5/13/08-5/19/08 :
Shockwave - Black Tide
Sugar Magnolia - Grateful Dead
- 5/20/08-5/26/08:
We Care A Lot - Faith No More
All the Small Things - Blink 182
- 5/27/08-6/2/08:
Gimme Three Steps - Lynyrd Skynyrd
Dirty Little Secret - All-American Rejects
Source: Major Nelson
