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Saints Row, the first huge title of fall 2006, is now on shelves everywhere!

XNA Game Studio Express will be released tomorrow, and you can download it here when it becomes available..  XNA Game Studio Express is a set of tools based on Visual C# Express 2005 that allow students and hobbyists to build games that target both Windows and Xbox 360.

Burnout 5 has been announced for the Xbox 360! 

“Burnout 5 is a complete reinvention of the series, built from the ground up for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. To create truly next-generation gameplay, we needed to create a truly next-generation game, from top to bottom.”

The game will give players the ability to crash, bash and smash their opponents in Paradise City - “the ultimate seamless racing battleground”, which is said to have a massive infrastructure of traffic-heavy roads. According to the press release, there is no need for menus in the game, as every intersection is a potential crash junction, and every alleyway is an opportunity to rack up moving violations. Gamers will be given a Drivers Licence as they start the game, and this will record the player’s most aggressive, reckless and destructive exploits behind the wheel.

The press release then goes on to say that the Xbox 360 has the

” technology allowing gamers to literally rip their cars in half.”

In a recent interview, lead programmer of Marble Blast Ultra, Pat Wilson, has announced new content coming for the game, as well as some fixes:

Friends Leaderboard bug: This was reported very early on and will be fixed.

Crash exploit: There is a way to crash a server on several maps. This will be fixed.

The other fixes on the table:

Removing the advantage of dropping during a multiplayer game to protect your rating. This is very destructive behavior for the game because it breaks up servers. It also allows the host to unfairly effect the game for all other people in the server should they decide to kick the server back to the lobby to prevent a stat hit. We brainstormed many solutions to this and discussed it quite a bit, because we don’t want to provide a bad play experience for people who want to leave a server for other reasons. The implementation we chose, I feel, strikes a good balance, and I think it will have a positive effect on the game.

When you re-spawn in a multiplayer game, you should be facing the gems.

The HUD should inform everyone of voice activity so that abusive players can be identified by the host and kicked from the game.

Shadowing on the text for the scoreboard on the HUD to make it more readable on all levels.

There are eleven new maps. [Level Designer] Alex [Swanson] really outdid himself on this batch. I won’t list them all, but we got to really play with the gameplay even though we kept the game-type the same. Playing “Spires” is very, very different than all other multiplayer levels. All the gems are at the top of high-friction covered spires and platforms, and all the powerups are on the ground. The strategy is totally different, and it requires players to improve their flying, falling, and marble control skills. Alex also crafted a multiplayer level, “Bowl”, that mimics the skiing movement that makes single player levels like “Black Diamond” so much fun. “Blast Club” is another level in the style of “King of the Marble” but with a larger, more varying playing surface, and a different central conflict point.

That content will also be FREE.  No release date given.  Gamerpics for the game are also planned.

Lastly, in a recent interview with OXM, Francis Choi, Associate Producer of F.E.A.R. mentioned that the Xbox 360 version of F.E.A.R. will be “even more beautiful” than its PC counterpart.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 at 9:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.