What has always been a dry period for big triple A releases, the summer has become the best chance for smaller games to get some real attention. There have been some truly amazing games released on the Xbox Live arcade and it has quickly become one of the best features of Xbox Live. This E3 has seen a lot of titles announced to kick off their Summer of Arcade and they all look really impressive.
Perhaps the
most covered game of the line up is Bastion from Supergiant Games, an action
RPG with a truly astounding hand painted visual design where the game world
builds around you as you travel through levels. The biggest question that’s on
my mind regarding this game is the length and content, when you hear “RPG” you
automatically assume there will be a certain amount of content, it’s just an
expectation of the genre. When you consider the typical length and the pricing
attached to an XBLA game, I for one certainly can’t help but be curious about
what kind of RPG elements the game will have. As of this writing there is no
specific release date for Bastion.
Another big
stand out title for me was Toy Soldiers: Cold War, the previous game certainly
flew under my radar as this is the first I’ve heard of it. The game comes
across as a perfect mix of real time strategy elements and over the top arcade
shooters. The engine has been completely reworked for this sequel and includes
several new additions, the most striking one being the barrage attacks. During
these your player will become more powerful for a set amount of time and be
able to lay waste to entire units of troops, helicopters and tanks. These can
be earned by building up your combo metre, so far I’ve only seen the commando
barrage which looks extremely fun to use. Both local and online coop has been
added and there will be versus game types where you’ll compete for high scores
which can be uploaded to leaderboards in the usual fashion. Toy Soldiers will
be released on July 20th for the Xbox Live Arcade and looks to be a
great start to the summer of arcade titles we’ve got to look to.
Now it’s not
very often that a Kinect game interests me, in fact to be completely honest it’s
something that never happens. Halfbrick studios has managed exactly that though
with their upcoming and awesomely named Fruit Ninja Kinect. The game has a very
simple premise but manages to make using Kinect look extremely fun and fast
paced, something that other motion controlled games haven’t up to this point. This
game has appeared on mobile platforms and tablets and it makes perfect sense
for the next step to be Kinect, where you can swipe with your arms as wildly as
you please. There are three confirmed modes so far, Classic mode lets you chop
up all the fruit you can while having to avoid bombs for as long as you can manage.
Zen mode is your score attack mode essentially and arcade mode is a timed game
where you must cut up as much fruit as possible in 60 seconds. Both cooperative
and competitive multiplayer have been confirmed, just make sure you play this
game in a large room to avoid hitting your buddy in the face. Halfbrick have
also confirmed that the game will offer a mix of free and paid DLC, Fruit Ninja
Kinect will cost 800 Microsoft points when it goes on sale and there is no
release date as of now.
These are
just a handful of the upcoming Xbox Live arcade games due for release over the
five week “Summer of Arcade” promotion that Microsoft is doing. If, like me you
have a backlog of games that you were planning to blast through in the summer
you might have to put them off. The standard for XBLA titles is something that
is constantly being raised and doesn’t look like that’s going to stop any time
soon.