What if we turned our head to the left and looked at the blocks from this angle? What if we jumped every time there was a slanted line, and held the left trigger whenever there was a square? What if the secret to opening this door involves standing still for twenty minutes? Is this a glitch, or are we supposed to be able to fall out of the window? Is that a QR code on the wall? Should we talk to more owls? Yes, all of these are perfectly valid questions you’ll be asking as you experience Polytron’s Fez.

Fez is more about cryptography than it is platforming. Sure, there’s plenty of jumping around from object to object and climbing things, but that’s only surface-level stuff. It’s deeper – much deeper – than initially anticipated, proving to be an absolutely magical, albeit maddening experience.

It starts off as we expected, giving us control of Gomez, a 2D sprite living in a 2D world with 2D people and 2D things. Everything is flat, sprite-based and adorable, until Gomez is gifted the titular Fez that bumps everything into the third-dimension. This magical, mysterious hat lets the shoulder buttons break free of the second dimension, allowing Gomez to shift the four-sided world over. A giant block also happens to explode once he gets his fez (a tragic coincidence), and for the remainder of the game he needs to travel the world collecting small cubes that can be used to make larger blocks. Collecting blocks opens doors, which lead to other rooms with more doors and blocks and treasure maps and anti-cubes and artifacts.

His ability – to shift the world around on an axis – has plenty of practical uses. Gomez can rearrange the dimensions to line up objects that otherwise wouldn’t connect and reach platforms in previously inaccessible places. It becomes more complicated than that as the game goes on, adding in other interesting elements that play with the unique formula. If you’re signing up for Fez specifically to jump on things, you’re not going to be disappointed; it does that well. When it puts on its platformer hat, Fez has some of the smartest design we’ve seen in years, with mind-bending segments that require precision timing as well as a mastery of the game’s unique world-shifting mechanics.

But eventually, we ran out of places to go and doors to open, and were drastically short of the number of cubes we needed. We opened the map (which became more vital as the web of interconnecting doors became more wild) to see dozens of rooms we didn’t (or couldn’t) get to – some with question marks hovering above them, hinting that there are secrets to be found. This’ll happen after a few hours of play, causing the game to suddenly transform from cute, indie platformer to absurd, puzzle-cracking masterpiece.

Those doors and cubes we mentioned earlier? They’re important. Very important. A major part of Fez is finding out how to open doors that lead to different areas that include more cubes. These doors oftentimes have very specific button presses needed to open them. Usually, you’ll need to hit the right combination of buttons, as prompted by a nearby object, in order to pass through; then, and only then, will the door open.

Sounds simple, right? Well, there’s a problem: although the code needed to open the door or access a cube is usually written in the room, it’s often hard to find – covered by an object, or hidden in a picture. What’s more, the codes aren’t written in English. Or Spanish. Or any actual recognizable language at all. They can be blocks, or squiggly lines, or shapes representing numbers.

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Whereas reboots of its contemporaries have chosen to move with the times (think Metal Gear Solid or Street Fighter), Neon looks to celebrate its birth in the golden years of Van Halen, Ronald Reagan, ninjas and skyrocketing urban crimerates. The colors are loud, the snares are gated, and the inner-city youth are skipping class and packing switchblades. Developer WayForward Technologies has previously performed similar don’t-call-it-a-reboot duties for franchises including A Boy and his Blob, Centipede, Bloodrayne and Contra, as well as its current work on Silent Hill: Book of Memories.

Double Dragon Neon is headed for XBLA and PSN this July. Smoky, greasy arcade cabinets and dodgy strangers watching over your shoulder will cost extra (but should be listed as mandatory). For a taste of what the game’ll be striving to live up to, here’s our loving remembrance of the Game Music of the Day: Double Dragon (opens in new tab). Game music of every day, more like.

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So in short, Remedy is just as prone as anyone else to putting on a grindhouse DVD and yelling at the screen, and it wanted to share that enthusiasm while giving Mr. Wake another outing? Good enough for us. Due on Feb 22, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare will run you 1200 MSP and, as you can see, allow you to shoot at least that many enemies…

The post Alan Wakes American Nightmare gets Tarantinoesque in first Dev Diary appeared first on Game News.

Above: At least Indie fans have plenty to choose from

Indie games also can’t access new features such as Cloud Saves, Beacons or presence on the XBLA iOS app. This isn’t the first time indies have felt slanted by Microsoft’s service: for a long time now, XBLIG titles have had to make do without features such as Achievements, Leaderboards or the ability to launch without an XBLA connection.

The new update comes alongside a revision of Microsoft’s Terms of Service, which must be approved before players can access XBLA. The new TOS severely limits Microsoft’s liability and restricts subscribers’ options in the event of a dispute, forcing XBLA users to submit to binding arbitration and forbidding participation in class-action legal proceedings against Microsoft. This is in line with the revisions by Sony to the PSN’s TOS earlier this year.

If all this trampling of indie devs and legal rights has you steamed, you could consider blocking advertising in protest. For now, anyway – we’ve a hunch advertisers’ concerns may be addressed more promptly than those of bedroom coders. Then again, perhaps you should be grateful: in territories such as the Pacific, ratings hassles prevent XBLIG titles from showing up on the dashboard at all…

The post Indie Games are the biggest losers in new XBLA update appeared first on Game News.

Now that you’re all firmly divided into “glowing with nostalgia” or “squinting with confusion,” maybe the more refined among you can tell the young folks about how Voltron was a pretty big deal in the 1980s. The cartoon and game alike focus on a team of young pilots and their color-coded spacecraft, all of which are also robotic lions, and which can be combined into one gigantic fighting robot, the titular Voltron. So it’s essentially Transformers plus Power Rangers by way of Macross, all bathed in a 1980s neon glow and suffused with some sort of message about teamwork and/or the brutal annihilation of interplanetary evil.

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The game, which features clips and key moments from the cartoon, looks to follow the show’s formula pretty faithfully: rove about shooting things in your lions for a while, then join up to form Voltron and smack some skyscraper-sized monsters about. The challenge of five-player co-op play as Voltron ought to add a unique element to the title. If nothing else, it’ll answer the question of, “how was Voltron controlled anyway?” (Turns out the answer’s likely to be “clumsily, with swearing.”)

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Above: The full image, which debuted on Game Informer’s website

Three things about this image stand out to us. The first is the sign to the right, which lists Night Springs as an actual location. In the original game, Night Springs was a fictional place that appeared on a TV series that was essentially a twisted, poorly-written version of the Twilight Zone. The fact that it’s a real place reveals one of three things: either Night Springs is actually a real place (not likely), we’re going to be playing a game that takes place inside of Wake’s mind (more likely), or Alan Wake’s Night Springs is a spinoff series that has nothing to do with the original game’s plot (also likely).

The second thing that stands out is his attire. Wake is dressed more like a construction worker here than a best-selling author, and he appears to be toting a nail gun instead of a pistol. This ties into the possibility of the game taking place outside of the real Alan Wake world, as there’s no reason he would randomly pick up carpentry (unless he really wants to put the house from the original game back together). The third thing we noticed in this image is the lights, which confirm that the gameplay will likely be the same as it was in the last game. Not only is Wake using a flashlight, but the presence of a massive, bright street light definitely reminds us of our time with the original.

We’ll know more in a few weeks, when the full trailer is shown off during the Spike TV VGA awards. In the meantime, feel free to continue speculating!

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According to the listing, the game is to be released for the Xbox Live Arcade at some point in the future, with Microsoft Korea listed as the publisher. Though the XBLA version hasn’t actually confirmed by the developer it makes sense that they would port their game over to Microsoft’s console. Beyond simply being deserving of further acclaim (seriously, it’s like Trials HD had a baby with Sonic the Hedgehog), it would help build up the franchise in time for the currently in-development sequel. Though the original was PSN-only, the sequel, Joe Danger: The Movie, is scheduled for release on the Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3, leaving you with no excuses not to check it out.

Then again, it’s not like the Joe Danger series has incredibly strong continuity. Joe doesn’t gain a new love interest or save the world, he just jumps bikes over stuff, so you won’t need to feel too bad if you skip the first when you pick up the second. Well, maybe just a little.

The post Joe Danger rated for Xbox Live Arcade by the Korean Ratings Board appeared first on Game News.

Diabolical Pitch is Grasshopper’s first foray into Kinect, and is scheduled to release on XBLA before the end of the year. Between this and Rise of Nightmares, the platform’s starting to make good on promises of extending beyond the casual audience – do titles like this pique your interest?

Sep 22, 2011

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