The Xbox Live Marketplace is having a rather large sale on Ubisoft titles. Splinter Cell: Conviction is on sale for $9.99. Outland, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World , and Babel Rising, are each on sale for 400 MSP (about $5). Each game offers some form of co-op.
Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is coming to the PlayStation Vita. The little action platformer was more entertaining than I expected, offering a fun distraction on the PSN. The cooperative campaign is a simple pick up and play affair. The game should be right at home on Sony's handheld.
Axis Animation became famous for their award winning trailer for Dead Island, but their more recent work is even more impressive - creating all of the CGI cut scenes for Halo 4 and Halo 4's Spartan Ops mode. A video posted on Axis Animation's Vimeo page showcases some of the cutscenes from Spartan-Ops and all of the passes of work it took to get them there. It's an interesting watch for anyone that wants to know the process of how something like this goes from paper to video.
Soul Sacrifice won't be out until next year, but you'll be able to play it before 2013, as long as the world doesn't end. The gruesome fantasy game will allow players to sacrifice themselves (and each other) to cast powerful magical spells. According to Siliconera, SCEJ recently announced that a demo would be available later this year. They didn't say if the demo would be available in the States, so you may need to warm up those Japanese PSN IDs. Co-op play will be supported in the demo. You can even transfer your saved game to the full version when it comes out in March.
While the previous bromance is over, there's a new one brewing in Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel. At the heart of it all appears to be some gorgeous environments just ripe to be exploded into tiny bits of debris and dust.
Competitive PC gamers may know the MOBA genre well, but they are almost completely foreign to console gamers. One aspect of MOBAs that isn't talked about often is the cooperative modes many of these games offer. Players versus Bots are a big part of training for MOBAs while learning the ins and outs of a game. Monolith, a studio with roots in PC development, is bringing MOBAs to the console using the Lord of the Rings license with Guardians of Middle-Earth and we're diving into it.
Lionhead’s fantasy role-playing game, Fable II, pulled a Houdini and completely vanished from the Xbox Live Marketplace earlier yesterday. For a short time, no one could view the title through either the “Games on Demand” tab or Fable II episodes on both Live and Xbox.com. Luckily, things are back to normal.
We're five weeks into Halo 4's dedicated co-op mode, Spartan Ops, and the missions are starting to surprise us after what was a slow start. New this week are actual failable missions in which the spartans must defend key objectives. The levels themselves are mostly a retread of old, but we do see some vehicle action which always helps keep things fresh. Here's our walkthrough of Episode 5 of Halo 4's Spartan Ops campaign.
Heads up gamers. See that crew of snipers from Far Cry 3's co-op mode up there? I wonder what Leonard, Tisha, Mikhail and Callum are shooting at... Could it be Xbox 360 and PC co-op aficionados? Maybe. You see, Ubisoft Massive will be launching a DLC co-op pack in January, which is awesome. But it's exclusive to the PS3 version of the game, which is lame. (Unless you pick up Far Cry 3 on the PS3, then it's still awesome.)
"There is a cave, boy... a cave... of wonders!" When we first heard about Double Fine's latest game, The Cave, certain members of the staff (mainly, Mike and myself) were ecstatic. Then, Mike got his hands on the game at PAX and was able to fill in some of the details with how the game plays. Since that time, though, we haven't heard too much about The Cave or, indeed, from the The Cave itself. As its release date on XBLA, PC, PSN, and Wii U eShop looms ever closer, a little more background to this whole adventure is revealed as The Cave itself introduces us to some of the cast of characters... And what motivates them to explore its dark depths...
We're headed into the final week of our Child's Play 2012 Charity drive and sitting close to 30% of our goal. What does that mean? For one it means if you have donated you are pretty much guaranteed to win SOMETHING at this point - maybe even that awesome signed Loot Chest Edition of Borderlands 2 you see pictured above. We've got a pretty extensive prize list with plenty of goodies, certainly helping out some sick kids and getting something off that list is worth at least $5.
Guardians of Middle-Earth is out later today on PlayStation Network and tomorrow on Xbox Live Arcade, along with a retail release of the game which includes a season pass. The game is one we've been eyeing up since it came out of nowhere at E3 2012, it's a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game for the console featuring characters from the Lord of the Rings universe.
