The last trailer for Grapple Buggy — the sophomore Xbox Live game from Weapon of Choice creator Nathan Fouts — goes beyond the debut trailer’s mechanical preview to give you a better idea of the branching energy-crisis storyline lying somewhere underneath, and the cutely low-budget voice-acted conflicting relationship between human pilot Nova Commander Javeya and her alien sidekick Drozo.

The game is still hovering somewhere between either Xbox Live Indies and Arcade proper, though there’s a good amount of time between now and its newly pushed back 2010 release date to get the channel straight.

There’s a good amount of both padding between there and here and very light questions from the TV crew, but skip to the 6 minute mark on the video above to see G4’s recent profile of Fez creators Polytron for, if nothing else, new footage of the game’s world — including a wicked bullet-time rotating explosion — and musician Jason ‘6955’ DeGroot disappearing into his hoodie. [via Polytron]

GET THIS: THE RETRO-MODERNIZING MASTERY OF CHAIR’S SHADOW COMPLEX

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8.20.2009

Brandon Boyer

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It’s essentially impossible to enter into a conversation about Shadow Complex — the just-released Xbox Live Arcade game from Epic subsidiary Chair Entertainment — without conjuring either or both two earlier classic franchises, Nintendo’s Metroid series, or Konami’s PlayStation re-invention Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and, for once, it’s not simply lazy comparison, so much as overt, love-letter homage.

And because of it, you have to admit to (or, I will, anyway) at least a small amount of cultural bias — that the game’s surprise debut at Microsoft’s E3 conference brought with it at least a tinge of underlying skepticism, a nagging back brain thought that, “so, the Americans think they can do ‘metroid-vania’, now, do they? Right, good luck with that.”

As it turns out, our luck was the last thing Chair needed: Shadow Complex is, put simply, perhaps the best reinvention of the exploratory sub-genre since Nintendo and Konami’s own subsequent episodes, and certainly the best console iteration to sit next to their more diminutive Game Boy Advance refinements. (more…)

After a week’s worth of opaque teasing on the nature of revolutionaries, Lionhead have officially announced Fable III at the ongoing GamesCom convention, a game it says will put the player in the role of a revolutionary leader taking “very different paths to power, bringing about prosperity and poverty, peace and sometimes anarchy to their people”, due for release in late 2010.

Lionhead says the game will begin “five decades after the events of the last chapter, and you play as the child of your hero from Fable II. As you rule your kingdom as king or queen, you will be called upon to make choices and sacrifices that will test your morality and can affect your entire kingdom. Themes of heroism, leadership and consequence are taken to a grand scale as you fight to unite a divided people.”

In the meantime, and to ensure that there are enough child heroes populating the world by then, the studio has also announced the re-release of Fable II as an episodic downloadable series, bolstered by the Xbox 360’s new full-game digital download channel, Games on Demand.

The launch will begin September 29th, with the first episode being dangled for free, where players can complete the early-childhood section of the game, then choose to either purchase and download the next of five separate installments, or get the entire game at once. The episodes will also be compatible with players deciding to later purchase the game at retail, and with the previously released add-on content.

Musical/lyrical/visual incongruity’s got to be the oldest trick in the horror movie maker’s handbook, and with good reason, it seems: it works awesomely, even in Left 4 Dead. The startled witch bit is terrifying. [via Alice]

If you missed EA’s live-stream of this morning’s GamesCom conference, you missed Double Fine head Tim Schafer showing off my favorite new detail of Brütal Legend‘s combat: a double-team attack that can be pulled off with any number of partners in the game, but specifically the first, where lead character Eddie had his female cohort mount his shoulders, concert audience style, and used his lifted lighter to ignite her flame attack.

But still, what you do get is the trailer above, with little slices of wooly mammoth, beast riding, and mosh-pit-protected brilliance, along with bits of its online multiplayer, which is demonstrated at greater length (and with 100% more rhythm-game attacks), below:

And, the capper: Double Fine has also announced that a demo for the game will be released via PSN and Xbox Live next month, with a slice of gameplay to tide you over for the following month until its October 13th release.

And the second in what will be a very trailer-heavy morning (with Europe’s GamesCom conference in full swing) is another from Harmonix, this time the first gameplay of their TT Games partnered Lego Rock Band, showing just what it means to devastate with the power of its plastic-rock, and I’ll be damned if turning the music chart gems into Lego bricks isn’t the cutest extra touch.

RETURN OF THE WORM: INTERPLAY, GAMELOFT REVIVING EARTHWORM JIM FOR XBLA, PSN, WIIWARE

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8.17.2009

Brandon Boyer

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IP holders Interplay have just sent over news of a new partnership with mobile game giant Gameloft to revive Shiny Entertainment’s 16-bit cult classic Earthworm Jim as a cross-platform downloadable by the end of this year.

Details are still slim on what form the remake will take, but the companies say the game will debut exclusively on Xbox Live Arcade for one month, followed by ports to PlayStation Network, WiiWare, and mobile phones, the iPhone presumably included.

The deal is separate from Sega’s own ongoing campaign to let players vote which 16-bit Genesis classic they’d like to see hit Xbox Live Arcade (though the poll, which was meant to run through the 21st, appears to be down at the moment), but shouldn’t be an issue either way, because the answer there is quite obviously a network-playable version of Toejam and Earl, if you have even like a half a lick of sense.

[Illustration via Autumn Society artist Pedro ‘gogopedro‘ Delgado]

Alongside the third trailer above — about which I’ll say stick through it specifically for the last five familiar seconds — Harmonix has revealed the last 19 tracks of the 45 included on disc minus, apparently, a secret final track.

I’m only weeping because the one track I’ve been holding out basically desperate hope for is nowhere to be found, meaning my last recourse is to cross my fingers for the rest of Revolver to come as DLC. Either way, the final tracks included are below:

• “Boys” / Cavern Club
• “A Hard Day’s Night” / Ed Sullivan Theater
• “I’m Looking Through You” / Shea Stadium
• “If I Needed Someone” / Shea Stadium
• “Ticket to Ride” / Shea Stadium
• “Drive My Car” / Budokan
• “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Getting Better” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Good Morning” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Hello, Goodbye” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Hey Bulldog” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Dear Prudence” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Helter Skelter” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Something” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Come Together” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Don’t Let Me Down” / Rooftop Concert
• “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” / Rooftop Concert
• “I Me Mine” / Rooftop Concert

Finally, after months of conjecture, Castle Crashers devs The Behemoth have officially begun the process of revealing the inner workings of Game 3, the fantastically and adorably chaotic multiplayer arena game we’ve seen hints and traces of a few times before.

Included here: the first guided look at the “soul mode” section, a directly competitive mode where players use their customized offensive/defensive weapons — there’s a strong emphasis being placed on customization of all aspects of your avatar here, dev Dan Paladin explains — to knock the souls from others and hold on to them as long as you can.

Still to be revealed in later updates: the Zelda 4 Swords-ish reluctant ‘co-opertition’ we’ve previously some of its other modes, any hint at what Behemoth promise is a ‘wonderful’ underlying story, and just why, exactly, the jewel makes the little guys cry.