Desert Bus For Hope, or more commonly just Desert Bus, it without question one of the most important events in the cultural calendar of the gaming community. Organised by the ‘Loading Ready Run’ geek and gaming sketch comedy crew, it galvanises and unites gamers across the world in support of a common altruistic goal. As in previous years, the funds raised from Desert Bus 2012, the sixth such event organised thus far, will be donated to the gamers’ charity Child’s Play, which donates games and gaming systems to ill children in hospital. Last year the Desert Bus team raised $383125.10 for Child’s Play,a substantial rise over the 2010 total of $209,000, and will be hoping to match or exceed the 2011 amount this year.

The primary feature of the event is members of the gaming public sponsoring the team to play the (exceedingly boring) Pen & Teller Sega CD mini-game “Desert Bus,” which simply involves driving a virtual passanger bus along a completely straight road through a near-featureless desert for eight real-time hours. There are auctions for hand-made Craft-A-Long items, and for corporate-donated box and gift sets. Coveted auction items, especially rare or signed “Magic: The Gathering” cards can elicit eye-wateringly large donations, highlighting the incredible generosity of the gaming community at large. A live webstream of the event is always broadcast, so that viewers can watch and interact with the crew via social media. Donations are pledged in return for the crew performing actions on camera, such as playing games or singing silly songs, and they are sometimes joined by special guests from the Victoria area or actors from the earliest series of the team’s sketch shows.

The crew seem to be well on-track with their preparations, with the Craft-A-Long (overseen by Tally Heilke) currently accepting submissions of hand-made goods. A video was created featuring Ashton Cummings explaining what does (and does not) constitute a suitable donation and posted on the Desert Bus website on May 16th, followed by a further video on May 18th politely requesting fans not plan to visit the team for the duration of the Desert Bus event now a date has been confirmed. Follow the link below to redirect to the Desert Bus site to see if you too could contribute exciting fan-made, hand-made items to the Craft-A-Long:

http://desertbus.org/

Cars

apc

bobsleigh

benson

biff

bobcat

boxville

buccaneer

burrito

brzbus

casco

cadge

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forklift

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patriot

phantom

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police

rancher

rhino

schafter

seinove

skimobile

taxi

vanpony

willard

winky

trash

railmu

flatty

snowplough

Bikes

enduro

jz125

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faggio2

spike

Helicopters

autogiro

bchopper

annihilator

bentham

maverick

hind

napalm

scamp

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heli_tfe

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cuban800

Boats

squalo

bassboy

chika

fisher

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fishboat_d,

marquis

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small_gb2

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whaler

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sporto

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Trains

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chairlift

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lighty

Darrell Gallagher, the head of Crystal Dynamics, promised gamers a completely new perspective on the franchise, with improved graphics, brand new mechanics and a complete rewrite of the Lara Croft backstory, thus making a definitive break from the increasingly cumbersome and contradictory presentations of Lara coping with her dead father’s legacy shown across the many games and films.

The new title is billed as a complete original, with no links to any previous games, resetting the entire Croft narrative onto a newly graduated 21 year old Lara surviving a shipwreck off the coast of Japan. The gameplay focus has undergone a profound shift also, with it being necessary to keep Lara alive through carefully rationed food and supply pick-ups, rather than gaily hurling her off every precipice you come across. The player will journey with Lara through physical and emotion hardships of greater impact than previous games, as well as more involving puzzle-solving and action sequences fighting off the island’s inhabitants.

The team have promised fans more trailer and teaser footage at the coming E3 to show the changes that have been made to the classic brand. Until then, we can only speculate as to the true reason for the delay: is it is simply that the studio needs more time? Or is this a strategic move to release the title against less heavyweight competition? Or to invest resources in building additional DLC? Either way, the passion and conviction of the team in the direction of their new game is palpable; hopefully, when the title is realeased, whenever that is, the gaming public will agree!

As of today, Minecraft 360 has sold just over 1 million copies in just five days. That’s just insane!

However, with a costly 1600MSP price tag, it’s surprising to see people still buying it. When you consider that the Xbox edition doesn’t yet support mods, dedicated servers or Kinect support, the PC version seems like the best way to go. On the other hand, with further updates to come, I’m sure that people will enjoy Minecraft on the Xbox due to it’s easy controls and split screen capabilities.

Let us know what you think of Minecraft!

‘Legend tells of an ancient artifact that can grant a woman’s wish.

The Skull Heart.

However, if she is impure of heart her wish will be corrupted and she will be turned into an immensely powerful, twisted being of destruction.

The Skull Girl’.

As with most 2d fighters a tenuous story has been put in place to hold everything together. To provide some justification for the characters kicking seven shades out of each other. To be honest though, no-one really cares about the story in a fighting game. Going back to the days of Street Fighter 2 people would play again and again with little to no worry for the story, just wanting the thrill on being able to beat up their friends and take out years of inner turmoil and frustration. What truly matters are the following three things.

• Good multiplayer
• Simple but deep controls, so that new players can easily access the game but for the fans of the genre to master would take hours of practice.
• Something to make the game stand out from the crowd.

So where does Skullgirls fall in these three categories, bearing in mind it’s just an Xbox Live Arcade title you would imagine that it could slip up along the way, however with the recent releases of Trials Evolution and Minecraft, games which could be released at full retail in their own right, the quality on Live Arcade has grown drastically in the last year.

Straight away the game stands out for all the right reasons. Head Artist Alex Ahad has carried over his work and style from Scott Pilgrim so what we are looking is stunning and nothing short of beautiful. The general style of the game is as though you are watching a 40’s film reel, but with lush colours and animation always being at the forefront it’s hard to pull your eyes away from the action. Also the solely female cast is an interesting twist in the fighting world, which I can only recall being replicated in ‘Rumble Roses’. There has been some criticism in the character design in Skullgirls, there is no doubt that the game is aimed at a male audience, a number of the characters such as Valentine (the large breasted lady in the nurses outfit) have been attacked in some channels as being overtly sexual. It’s hard to deny that this isn’t the case, but to begin to compare it to games like ‘Dead Or Alive’ with a dedicated breast movement engine is taking things a step too far. It’s more a feature of the game as opposed the key feature, more often than not you are more likely to be paying attention to just how gorgeous the graphics are.

There is a downside to the level of quality which is on display, there is the occasional slow down in the action. This was not a common fault it must be pointed out, in fact the first time it happened I actually thought it was a problem on my end, as there had been so little wrong with the gameplay up to this point. The game appears to slow down during the 3 v 3 bouts in the game, maybe struggling to keep up with the action. One of the characters ‘Double’ also appeared to cause slowdown more than others, possibly due to the nature of her character that she can morph into all the other characters causing too much strain on the games engine.

So the game certainly stands out and with a little bit of controversy as well which never hurts sales. How does the game play hold up is the most pressing question though. The answer is very very well. The first port of call upon playing should be the wonderfully in-depth tutorial mode, which whilst starting slowly with the rather mundane basics of the fighting genre (move, jump, block, punch) it soon advances and actually teaches you how to advance in the game. Unlike comparable fighters which gives you sea of moves to complete and expects you to work miracles, Skullgirls takes the time to take you through the dynamics of the in-depth combat system teaching you tricks, which you will need in the main story and versus modes.

The story mode is wonderfully constructed, the interactions between matches are witty and humorously written by a team who clearly know their stuff and should be commended for a part of the game which is often skipped through and as tenuous as it is the story is held together well in these segments. What lets the game down in respect of the story mode is how short it is. Each character only has five or six fights and with only eight playable characters, there is not much in the way of a single player. It should be noted that despite the low number of characters, it’s very much a case of quality over quantity. Each character is drastically different from the others, all with their own nuances and personalities. There is no multitude of Ryu clones.

The AI is quite cheap and poorly constructed at times it appears to read your inputs and respond to them making the boss battles especially frustrating. This aside I still managed to complete the game with all characters and the in-depth tutorial in under five hours meaning that unless you are going to play multiplayer then you are going to want to avoid this game.

At the time of writing, there appears to be very little online presence for the game at the moment. I tried to join a game this morning and was waiting ten minutes before a game became available, which is a shame as the variety on the multiplayer is wonderful addition. Being able to play one on one, three on three or any combination in-between with sole characters being stronger and having more health at the cost of not being able to use assist attacks. Leading to a lot of strategy required for online play, but again the lack of community at the moment doesn’t bode well for the longevity of the game online

What is also a notable negative is that there is no in game manual. Whilst I can understand the game being download only it does take away from being able to pause and check the input for a move, instead the game directs you to the games website for full manual and move sets, but this is just a personal preference and doesn’t take away from the actual gameplay.

Should you purchase Skullgirls then is the overwhelming question.

Yes.

Whilst it may lack longevity, if you were to play this with a number of friends it’s a wonderful experience and what online there is available is fun and competitive. Yes the single player is short, but anyone who buys a fighting game for just single player is missing out the true point of the genre. This is easily one of the most eye catching titles available on Xbox Live Arcade and if you are a 2D fighting fan, this has to be part of your collection. The game looks and sounds gorgeous and plays like a dream and more importantly is a fun alternative to the mainstream fighters available.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 

Fable Heroes Box Art

Released: May 2^nd, 2012

Genre: Beat ‘em up

Developer: Lionhead Studios

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

Format Reviewed: Xbox 360 Arcade

Players: 1-4

Cost: 800MSP

Welcome to Fable Heroes, one of Microsoft’s Arcade NEXT releases. For only 800MSP, you can enjoy everything there is to offer from the same developer that brought us Fable. The game not only features a single player (with three bots), it also features up to four player cooperative move through Xbox LIVE. As well as Online Leaderboards for each level, there is also Time Trials for that competitive side of you to enjoy.

Fable Heroes has the player adventuring through Albion and fighting against familiar enemies from past Fable titles and new enemies to collect coins. These coins are used to unlock new items and characters in both Fable Heroes and the upcoming Xbox game, Fable: The Journey. The game also throws boss fights in to the mix as well as smaller groups of enemies.

Fable Heroes Characters

If you ever enjoyed going down the arcade to stick some of your pocket money in the arcade machines to play the likes of Street Fighter and/or Streets of Rage, then Fable Heroes could well might be the game for you! Taking on the same style of a side scrolling beat ‘em up, Fable Heroes pits you against various levels and mini-games to collect gold coins, win rolls of a dice and more!

The Board

However, Fable Heroes doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. Combat throughout the game is nothing more than a bashing of a few buttons. The worlds that you play in are not that spectacular and overall gameplay can become a little dull. However, at the end of each level, you get to make a choice of two different ways to go – one to a boss fight and one to a mini game.

The boss fights are the same each time, whether fighting a robot, spider or troll, it’s slightly annoying. The game doesn’t present different strategies for the bosses, instead, they all do the same thing and leap in the air, go underground and spawn a few minions. This continues for sometime while your team beats the heck out it and kill it. The bosses feel as though they have too much life. After playing one level and a boss, it’s hard to do it all over again and play another level.

However, going the other route takes you to the mini game for that level which can be quite fun and entertaining. The first one I was thrown in to was an exploding chicken mini game where we had to kick exploding chickens away from us and see who survives the longest. The mini-games reminded me of Mario Party, which I enjoy.

Throughout the game, your objective is to kill enemies, collect coins and level your character up. In turn, the amount of gold coins you collect determines how many rolls of the dice you get. The amount of gold coins you have allows you to buy various power ups at different prices. The power ups that you buy from the monopoly-like board aren’t actually apparent until you complete the game which makes the redundant in the short-term.

Fighting Gameplay

The characters or puppets as they’re known in the game feel sluggish, it feels like there is some sort of lag between moving your control pad and your character actually moving. Think game characters underwater, this is how the character feel on ground, it’s very annoying and it feels as though the developers of the game forgot to polish it out. This is worsened with various power-ups you unlock is the levels. However, they don’t feel like power-ups never mind the negative power-ups! These better power-ups speed your character up or slow down time, makes it harder to control your character sometimes.

Awesome Visuals

The overall feel of Fable Heroes is great. It’s colourful, cheery and enjoyable. The cartoon style of the game makes it easy for anyone to approach and get stuck in. However, if it’s replay factor you’re after, this one might not be for you. Unless you like to repeat levels to gain loads of coins for the upcoming Fable: The Journey, then one run through of Fable Heroes will be plenty. With Microsoft bumping the maximum achievements of XBLA titles up to 400 gamerscore, you will have to play a few levels over again to get those extra gamerscore points, which adds to the replay factor of the game. Hardcore Fable fans will surely love the game however, to me, it’s just another game in the Xbox LIVE arcade library.

Rating: ★★★★★★½☆☆☆ 

6.5/10

Showing off their new engine in the process we are shown a bit more background into Connor’s character and internal conflict.  We see lots of enemies on screen at 0nce with heightened detail than previous games and a bear in the mix for fun .

Whilst Assassin’s Creed fans may have been unfulfilled with Revelations, number three seems to be putting everything right.

The game is out on May 15th in North America and May 18th elsewhere!

The UK team consisting of  Xbox LIVE Europe editor Daniel Maher and Xbox LIVE producers Andy Farrant and Ashley Denton had lots of messages on Twitter wishing for them no stay and continue the massively loved community-based shows.

Now, Microsoft will be focusing on providing content from third parties to be more “timely and locally relevant”.

Major Nelson explained, “Whilst this means that the Inside Xbox brand will effectively be retired in Europe, the focus remains on continuing to provide the Xbox Live community with the latest and best in games and entertainment news and information.”

Dan Maher tweeted earlier, “So, to be clear and succinct: Inside Xbox is no more, as are our jobs” and went on to say “Your support during the last four years has meant the world to us.”

From everyone here at GTD, good luck in whatever you do – you guys will be missed!

Bloodforge Box Art

Bloodforge

Released: April 25^th, 2012

Genre: Third-person Hack ‘n’ Slash

Developer: Climax Group

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

Format Reviewed: Xbox 360 Arcade

Players: 1

Cost: 1200MSP

Welcome to Bloodforge, the latest addition to the ‘Arcade NEXT’ line up Microsoft has continued to bring us. Alongside, Trials Evolution, Fable Heroes and Minecraft, this one looks the least promising. It’s a shame really as the whole concept has a lot going for it and the game sounds pretty cool, but Bloodforge kinds of makes a bloody mess of it.

You take to the game as Crom, an extremely strong and powerful warrior who gave up the life of war for his wife, Milayna. After hunting, he returns to the woods, where he lives with his wife, to see his hut has been burnt down and his wife under attack. Crom kills a few demons, and then another demon that transforms back in to his wife. It’s then, Crom realises the enormous mistake he has done. Confused about the whole thing, Crom follows a goddess, who transforms into a crow, who leads Crom to a rare gauntlet and tells him if wants to get his revenge, he needs to cross Bloodforge.

Crom

As with every game, first impressions are the best. With Bloodforge, it didn’t go down so well. Camera angles are awful, gameplay is boring and repetitive and the game just feels like you’re watching cut scenes every 2 minutes or so. As soon as I played for a bit, I knew I wasn’t going to like it. However, saying that. The graphics and visuals of the game were spectacular, giving the game a very graphic novel feel to it.

Great looking visuals

Unfortunately, Bloodforge gives the player a very bad first play experience. The camera is awful and hard to use and tends to spin around at any given moment, meaning you can’t see what’s behind you unless you stop, turn and look in that direction. Even if players can’t control the camera too well, it seems to bump into the environment of the game and hit invisible walls – it’s simply a pain in the back side.

Controls of the game are OK, not great but bearable. Crom is a beast of a guy, he’s massive and it seems like he can deal plenty of damage however, trying to block attacks and retaliate can be very bothersome. If you roll out of the way for one attack, the delay between the next time you can control Crom leaves you open for damage. It can make boss fights very irritating.

Gameplay is repetitive, boring to say the least. Walking along, a few enemies spawn and you have to take them out. You can easily take three of four enemies out without even getting hit, no problem. Then you walk some more and guess what, more enemies spawn. No worries you think, but more will spawn until finally, you actually reach the end of the path – so you repeat the process until finally you reach a boss. And then you start again.

Talking of bosses, they look gruesome and very bad-ass! They look like awesome! However, it’s still the same as any other game and doesn’t promote any new kind of fighting gameplay. They throw a few enemies at you, take a few hits, a for more enemies and finally a few more hits until they die – quite boring.

Massive Boss

Although Bloodforge brings spectacular visions and style to the table, it also brings awful camera angles, repetitive gameplay and a weak story. With the game being released in Microsoft’s Arcade NEXT promotion alongside games such as Trials Evolution and Minecraft, it’s hard to really recommend the game to anyone else, as well as the fact of the pricey 1200MSP for the game. But hey, if you think you can stomach a repetitive game but fancy buying it for the visuals, go right ahead!

Rating: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ 

5/10