Mr.B4, and host Jeffrey break down Limbo and all of its under-tones.  If you’ve played the game – which you SHOULD have already – listen on and enjoy!

Please rate & review the podcast feed on iTunes (http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/spoilars/id368841094) You can also visit http://Spoilars.blogspot.com for direct download links, game selection polls, and all Spoilar!! related content — as well as right here on our favorite small-blog on the net, Rejectedgamer.com

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 - Matt H.

Inventive control mechanics and bizarre art direction are all it takes to knock me out. I have the lumps to prove it.

Developer: Ace Team Publisher: Atlus Platforms: XBox360, PC

        Call me a sucker for “something new”, and I’ll agree with you completely; so it is no surprise that I really enjoy, Altus published, Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition on XBLA. Like nothing else on the download market, this “trippy” adventure following protagonist, Ghat, as he fights his was thru Zenozoik — yes, really; Zenozoik — is a bundle of ass-kickin’ fun. Attempting to explain what’s going on in Zeno Clash is not important. What is more important is why you should make this a purchased title for your hardware.

        DICE is to first-person platforming, as Ace Team is to first-person brawling. The familiar perspective feels wonderfully refreshing, when weaved with mechanics traditionally left out of FPS games. These hand-top-hand fighting mechanics work so well, I’ll be surprised if their aren’t more games, in the future, using them. Every element of “throwing-down”, from pacing to stamina and reflexes, play a role in every intense moment of Zeno Clash. I guess I should note that there is shooting also, but shooting guns is not what you come to Zenozoik to do. Just ask the sliding V.S screens.

       Along side a lengthy story-mode comes Tower Challenge and Zeno Rush game options. Tower Challenge allows up to two players to climb levels of a tower while fighting off enemies on their way to the top, and is indeed a true challenge. Zeno Rush plays like speed-run with a hammer bonus. Either mode you choose to play, expect to throw tons of upper-cuts in the process.

       Not many games “bleed” originality quite like Zeno Clash. That, to me, is the staple of a game I want to play. To many games lack the creative and inventive juices their packages promise to present. To many developers are afraid to stand by a vision, especially if that vision is reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland on 3 more tabs of acid. I commend both Ace Team and Atlus for bringing that bizarre vision to XBLA in a package well worth its weight in gold.

       Do yourself a favor tonight, and purchase Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition. It’s not Modern Warfare 2, nor is it Halo. It’s better. It’s originality meets the “balls” to stray away from traditional game mechanics. When you just don’t feel like icing a few lumps, take it to Zenozoik and drop some Beak-nosed freaks. (A)

 - Jeffrey D

Keep on the lookout for a review of it right here at rejectedgamer.com.

If you can’t wait for that, then check out this video of the game in action.

Be sure to also check out their website for more info on this, as well as other projects that they have in the works.

Intro music performed by “Incubus” off their album “Make yourself”
Outro music performed by “Bilithic” off their album “empire”

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Publisher: Tecmo
Developer: Pieces Interactive
Genre: Musical platforming
Platform: XBLA – PSN

Unlike your favorite Italian plumber platforming games, Fret Nice doesn’t rely on head-stomping as its primary attack maneuver. Instead you’re instructed to play riffs on your guitar in accordance with specific enemy attributes; a simple premise that is fairly intuitive and quite an interesting mechanic. When using a standard game-pad, Fret Nice is reminiscent of the Patapon or Loco Roco games; and controls just as well as it should be expected to. On the other hand when using a guitar peripheral the control scheme throws all intuitiveness out the window, and leaves you with confusing – and often broken – controls.

Looking past Fret Nice’s controller woes won’t be hard for anyone looking to jump into a bright, colorful, and competent platforming game which looks and feels like nothing you’ve ever seen this side of next-gen. Each of FN’s levels, and bonus stages, are well crafted and full of surprises down to the great boss encounters. The only thing holding back consumers from jumping into the world of Fret Nice is its aesthetics. While I’m a fan of the art design Pieces Interactive have chosen to roll with here, its bright, acid-trip appearance will most definitely scare off anyone who can’t open up to another’s approach. Those same people will be missing out on an enjoyable experience.

Not everything is grey and brown. Not everything is something before it. Fret Nice is a step forward in the right direction of music-based platforming games. And as disappointed as I was to see the idea of controlling my in-game avatar via plastic-axe fall short, it opened my eyes to how much fun Fret Nice is on the merits of its mechanics alone.  [A-]

-Jeffrey deMelo

Topics include:

- Stoked: Big Air Edition
- Bittos+
- Drawn to life: The next chapter
- NBA 2K10
- Blood Bowl
- Army of Two: The 40th Day
- Mass Effect 2

Intro & Outro music selection performed by “A Wilhelm Scream” off their album “Ruiner”.

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Intro music selection performed by “A Wilhelm Scream” off their album “Mute Print”
Outro music selection performed by “Big L” off his album “The Big Picture”

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Developer: Holographic Dreams
Publisher: Holographic Dreams
Genre: Other
Price: 80 MS Points ($1)
Rating: Unrated

Now the game has nothing to do with any flight simulations for Dog Fights or missions in launching a payload of Missiles at various targets. So what you have left is one of the very basic aspect of gaming, dealing in the area of collision detection. Your task is to attempt and safely move your Red Square around very limited flight area, as you avoid the Green Squares darting all around and at you. The longer you survive in the air, the better and higher your score will be in the end.

 Simple… only each time your Red Fighter (Square) collides with any Green Enemy (Square) on the screen, you’ll take on some damage and start to loose portions of your Jet powered Square. Take on to much damage or end up colliding head on with an Enemy, then its game over for that flight session. This game also tests out your memory, as the flight paths of Enemy Squares are the same every time and thus allows you to try and remember what happened the last time you were tested.

The game is easy to play from the control stand point, I mean you simply move the left or right analog sticks around to dart your Square like no other Pilot has ever flown before. When you first start the flying test, you’ll think its going to be easy and will quickly learn its not as easy as it looks. One thing for sure is this game is very challenging and it will push you to try and score higher on the list of Pilots.

For me it brought back memories of those very old school console games from those early days of Atari, only with some bumped up graphics in some areas of course. The game is priced at only at 80ms points and is worth that I feel. Holographic Dreams has really set a mood here and I feel Pilot Test has provided a challenge in such a basic game that uses Collision Detection.

Would it have been nice to see some other Test exercises in this Pilot program or at least some other flight paths perhaps? Sure it would have, but for what this game is, I think they did a pretty good job in setting the mood and creating a game that is a challenge. I’d say you should at least give it a try and see if you can come close to scoring higher on the charts. (B+)

Syndicated from IndieGameBlog - Robert Owens

Intro music selection performed by “LostProphets” off their album “The Fake Sound of Progress”
Outro music selection performed by “Qualitybeats”

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Developer: Beringela
Publisher: Pencel Games
Genre: Puzzle & Trivia
Price: 80 MS Points ($1)
Rating: Unrated

The game level settings are very pleasant to the eyes and finished out with very enjoyable soundtracks and sound effects. The controls are very simple and straight forward, making this a very easy game to pick up and enjoy for all. This game is suitable for all ages to play even with the very mild terror that is forced upon the games only captives, the Gerbils trapped in various blocks.

No one is really sure how or why these Gerbils have been placed in the variety of blocks and used to create any number of buildings for you to demolish later. Bringing down the houses takes place through the use of bombs, ropes and disintegrators, all depending on what is available for any of the 24 puzzle levels your currently playing.

The rest is then all up to you and the physics you will unleash upon the various Gerbil filled blocks. The more you play it the more this game will draw you in and drive you to reach that next level of game play. I think the physics here work really well and you can’t help but smile a little as you place a bomb next to one of the blocks or use a rope to bring down a section of wall and see the looks on the surrounding Gerbils.

If your looking for a nice change of pace from your normal gaming action or simply a title to play with the whole family or something to do while your chatting in a Party on Xbox Live, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with all of the fun explosive action Gerbil Physics delivers here. I recommend you buy Gerbil Physics and help support Indie Game development on Xbox Live. (A)

Syndicated from IndieGameBlog - Robert Owens

It’s 2010, and with that comes more episodes of Week in Review.  This week’s topics include: Spyborgs, Half-life 2, Little Big Planet PSP, Ikaruga, PulseMan, Bayonetta, Dante’s Inferno, Tvshowking, & Space Invaders X2

Intro music performed by: Qualitybeats; Outro music performed by: Necro off 2002′s NonPhixion album “The Future is Now”.

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If your in the mood to kill some zombies and demons, or your learning about the history of video games and video game culture, there’s no better stop then DOOM for the Xbox Live Arcade developed by Id Software and published by Activision. For $5 (400 points) worth of awesome you to can buy yourself a ticket to hell and back wrapped in a nice tiny downloadable package.

DOOM is one of the first games in the First Person Shooter genre to set the benchmarks and standards for modern day FPS games. It has the basic premise of many of today’s features such as Episodic content, Player created content, Cooperative play, and the coining of the term known as Deathmatch for the Multiplayer mode and a whole other myriad of great features for it’s time. But now that it’s been brought up that the game is a bit dated the question remains, how does it hold up to today’s standards?

Well surprisingly it holds up pretty well. Granted the graphics are bit dated, and a storyline seems non-present. However, the thing you have to understand is this game was created in 1992, and in 1992 the best you had up until that point was hi-rez 8-bit (if you can call 8-bit hi-rez), and 16-bit pixelated images. So while it’s true your actually playing a pseudo 3-D shooter. (2-D images that rotate on a vertical axis to face the user.) Every FPS at the time was in fact a pseudo 3-D shooter. There were basically two images you saw when it came to bad guys, front side and back side. And you only got the back side if you hadn’t “triggered” the CPU to see you. Otherwise, you had a shuffling and groaning zombie coming towards you constantly facing and ever watchful. As for the storyline, the concept is simple. If it moves shoot it until it stops, find the exit, proceed to next level.

The A.I. in these games is sadly pretty basic. The enemy “sees” you and it attacks you. It will try to move around anything you might be using as cover. Occasionally you can get it stuck in a corner if you side step the A.I. fast enough. But don’t think that automatically makes the game a push over. The programmers seeing potential flaws in the A.I. and coding process at that time have engineered a ton of scripted events involving picking up key items in the game. It makes you think twice about picking up power-ups, weapons, and extra ammo just laying on the ground or flipping on that switch in the empty room, because while the rewards and temptations may be great the repercussions could be potentially hellish as swarms of the dark lords minions come down on top of you, making that next potential power up your last potential error.

However, this shouldn’t be a grave concern as the game has 5 different difficulty levels to choose from. With the highest difficulty making each level particularly flowing with a sea of the demonic forces, and the lowest level relatively easy enough for even the newest of recruits to the FPS genre. Between the different monster types there is 10 different creatures and bosses to test your mettle against. And of course, there’s a plentiful amount of weapons to dole out the damage with. Some of these such as the BFG 9000, Plasma Rifle and Chainsaw are notorious to the specific game and some are so arch typical such as the pistol, assault rifle, and chain gun that they are now seen in almost every FPS to date each with there own distinct ammo, damage and sound.

Another great and original aspect for it’s time is the sound, lighting and atmosphere the different rooms create. Each type of switch, door, trap, gun, power-up and monster has a distinct sound. This helps in not only locating distinct power-ups and avoiding monsters, it can be useful in some of the darker rooms where only moments of gleaming light and gunfire show specific areas of the map. There is a mini-map pickup in later levels to help alleviate the confusion of missed areas and dark rooms, which can be accessed by using the d-pad. DOOM is one of the very first games to also use larger and smaller rooms to create the atmosphere of being in huge warehouse like areas, small rooms and even outdoor areas in a few places.

Also, some of the music while being 8-bit MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) controlled is above average for it’s time. It sets the mood quite well for what is to come in the level ahead. Almost every level has different background music for each one. From seemingly hard rock/metal to get the user pumped up, to creepy ambient sounds played in the background. There’s even a level that has a quirky sounding xylophone going while your cheerfully slaying legions of undead. Eventually the background music does loop, which can be slightly bothersome if you get stuck on a particularly difficult level but you shouldn’t hear it restart for than a handful of times as the average time for completion of a level is between 2 and 10 minutes.

That means there’s roughly 8 maps a episode, and 4 episodes worth of content to purge and explore. One episode episode is even a community created mod, then called a WAD, that became popular enough that Id Software decided to package with future remakes of the game. Multiplayer is essentially a free for all on each of the campaign maps without the monsters but with an even greater foe, your friends! You and 3 other friends can hop into a map as a different colored marine and blow each other apart with your favorite weapons from the campaign. Coop is pretty self explained. You and a friend go through each level together as two marines helping each other find weapons, power-ups and ultimately the exit.

So what are you waiting for? For 400 points you and your friends can not only have a lot of fun playing a classic old school FPS. You can also proudly say and show off those achievement points stating you own and know a little bit more of gaming history. And if you have already played and are wondering when they are going to make an updated version of the game. The answer is they already have, it’s called DOOM 3 and it’s one of the games found on the xbox reverse compatibility list. Pick up a copy at your local game store and try this modern update to a fan favorite, you won’t be disappointed.

~ Michael “Dr Bloyur Hedov” Owens

Reviews:

• DSi: Guitar Rock Tour
• X360 DLC: Fallout 3 – Mothership Zeta
• DSi: Art Style Pictobits
• PC: Tales of Monkey Island – The Siege of Spinner Cay
• XBLA: Shadow Complex
• X360: Batman Arkham Asylum
• X360 Preview: Halo 3: ODST

Thanks for listening, Please leave us a comment on the show or send us an e-mail at: feedback@rejectedgamer.com

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Developer: Chair Entertainment
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Genre: Action
Price: 1200 MSP ($15)

Having read Orson Scott Card’s Empire book, as the background for this games story, I’m thrilled with how well the game has turned out and I love the story arc that Peter David has created for the game based on the Empire book. The events in this game run parallel to that of Empire and they fit really well together. Now I don’t want to give away to much from the book or the games story here and will simply say that a Rogue group within the United States has brought us towards another Civil War and our Hero has suddenly found himself right in the middle of all of this.

Jason Flemming sets off to find his girlfriend while out on a hike and equipped with only a flash light in hand, he soon discovers a strange group of men are leading his girlfriend into a hidden mountain side facility. You quickly learn the game controls and how the features of the map work here in these first few levels, as you begin to explore the surrounging areas and make your way inside the facility. You also learn that the group who took your girlfriend, will do what ever it takes to stop you. While searching from room to room, you’ll discover that you need more than a flashlight in order to survive and soon begin to locate other items that might help you progress along.

The controls are laid out nicely and are fairly standard to most games and easy to understand. You move left, right, up and down with the left analog stick and then aim at various targets & objects with the right analog stick. The right trigger is used for the primary firing of your weapons and the right bumper will fire any special weapons such as grenades. The left trigger allows you to crouch and will become your friend on the harder levels, as you look for cover and the left bumper turns on and off that trusted flashlight and clues you in on how to pass certain areas.

Now on to those button controls and starting off with the A button for jumping… lots of jumping from one place to another I’ll say. The B button is for any special actions you might need to perform and you’ll be prompted in most cases when to do so. The Y button reloads your weapons, unless you forget and the hero will auto load for you then. That leaves us with the X button for running to an from all sorts of danger and don’t forget to try some combos like sprinting towards a guard, followed by a nice jump and then landing on top with a finishing melee attack (X, A, B for those following along), all at the right time of course to be successful now.

Shadow Complexis a 2.5 D side scroller and is visually stunning to see and explore; all of this in crisp 3D animation graphics and with great physics provided by the Unreal Engine. Some of my favorite levels have to be the ones with water involved and I’m thrilled, as well as other fans of Undertow, that Chair Entertainment has included a few of these with in the facility to experience. For the most part the game is perfect graphic wise and I only found a couple places where the AI fell into a wall as I took them down during game play, other than that the game was perfect from a visual stand point. 

The sound effects, music and voice acting I think are really good in Shadow Complex and help with setting the mood to all of the action on the screen. From the firing of various weapons or explosive devices, you will have a nice experience in the sound department from Shadow Complex. Even the side elements of fire, water and electricity that you come in contact with will add to this whole audio experience and give you a enjoyable experience.

 The cut scenes and voice acting portions are well done and add to the progression of the games story line, something I’ve always been pleased with by Chair Entertainment and their handling of cut scenes in Undertow. I also like their use of melee cut scenes for the various hand to hand combat attacks through out the game, so don’t always reach for your gun now.

In beating Shadow Complex, as far as the story line goes, it took me just a little over 10 hours on my first play through and it allowed me to explore about 79% of the map and find 42% of the items with in the game. This scored me 6 out of 12 Achievements once I completed my first run through the game. I started out playing on the Hard Core level (3 out of 4 difficulty levels) and found this to be very challenging and I could drop down a level or two in some of the harder portions if needed; a nice feature of this game, that can be done on the fly and at various times.

Finding items through the facility will help you power up and gain access to more areas and is key to your success. As you begin to level up it will become easier to aim and hit your targets and take them out. Leveling up in health and weapons is also a must when taking out some of the boss levels in Shadow Complex and your going to love these levels. The game is also a puzzle game as you try to come up with the best paths to take and find ways in to more areas.

The games playable area in Shadow Complex is a vast area made up of a variety of terrains to explore and as you progress into various areas they will become viewable on the games map screen. If I have any hang up in this game, its with some features of the game map. The game is not exactly scaled to a 1 square, 1 screen, here you are relationship. The problem is if your looking for a certain item in a square, it might not exactly be on the particular screen your located at. Sometimes you will need to climb up an over and around into different areas that appear to be a square over. So keep this in mind while your looking all around for certain items.

This game is filled with so many rooms and situations and each seems to build over and over as you dive deeper into the game. Most of the levels stick to the side scrolling theme, but the use of depth of field comes into play with AI in the background and it gives the game a totally different perspective at times. At least a few times you will locate a mounted gun and at this point the game will switch into a first person view as you lay waste to all of the opposing forces that are attacking you. 

I tell you I really enjoyed the ending of Shadow Complexand how they wrapped stuff up in this game, even though it seemed to pop up all of a sudden and was perhaps a bit over the top in some aspects, but it was still a real blast to play. I feel that they have concluded this story arc and left plenty of room to bring back Jason for a sequel later on. If you hadn’t heard about it yet, Orson Scott Card is expected to release his second of three books in the Empire series this December, so perhaps we very well might see a Shadow Complex 2 & 3.

That’s not all, there is even more value and play with the Proving Grounds section and it extends the fun for this game well past the fairly long story line. I think you should wait and play these levels after beating the games story mode first. Some spoiler information and things could show up early if you don’t. This section is set up as more of  a training simulator of sorts with the levels designed in pretty much black, white, and shades of gray here. You have various speed challenges to complete from some standard training levels and then on to three sets of Challenge Packs, that have a total of seven levels to beat in order to move on to the next. You can play these over and over and work at earning higher medals in the Proving Grounds portion of Shadow Complex.

Checking out the Leaderboards area allows you to keep track of your progress and see how you stack up against your friends. Its also cool to see which friend is next on your list to bump off with the latest kill or bomba punt you perform as you play in the game or simply take a break between the action and check out the full leaderboards and see where all of your friends are stacking up at.

Shadow Complex recieved lots of praise after it was announced at this past years E3 and it clear lives up to all of the hype. Fans of classic side scrollers like Metroid and Castlevania will love what this game has to offer on the Xbox 360. Shadow Complex is a game you will want to play over and over, from speed run mode and trying to get through with as few of the items or in completing other challenges and trying to hit every part of the map and gather 100% of the items, you will clearly enjoy this sure to be an instant hit from the Xbox Live Arcade. (A+)

Robert Owens

James is back at it again now with I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 and under the Indie Games section of Xbox Live now. I first learned about this title via Twitter and I wasn’t sure if it was real or not at first, but I’m glad that I went ahead and purchased this one.

I can tell you this as well, just skip the download demo all together for this game and go straight on to purchase this one right now. Its the best 80 pts that you’ll spend for a singal game and if your a fan of top down shooters & dual analog stick games, then this game has it all, plus plenty of Zombies man and its only a $1.

Developer: Jamezila
Publisher: Ska Studios
Genre: Top Down Shooter
Price: 80 MS Points ($1)
Rating: Unrated

The old school, block letter graphics that greet you first in this game will perhaps have you worried, but don’t be scared just yet. The game will soon launch with what appears to be a grassy field and a loan Zombie slayer on the screen, all ready for some action now and then the music will start to play. James said the lyrics for this game were created on the spur of the moment and I have to say its a fun little tune to listen to as you play through the game, as you start to fight to stay alive now. I think I’ve actually played this game so much that the tune is now stuck in my head, but I don’t mind that all.

You have the ability for up to 4 slayers to play locally if you like in this game, but I recommend that you make a go at this on your own for your first outing and see what this game really has to offer here, you can always add friends locally later on if you like. The pressure will slowly begin to mount as more and more of these Zombies arrive and soon you will be over whelmed with a flood of them.

As you work on clearing out the levels here, you will start to find various upgrades for your weapons of destruction like flame throwers, lasers, machine guns, rocket launchers, and many more. The game also gives you power ups of extra health and what appears to be protection shields of sorts. The only thing I think that is missing here is perhaps some online play with your friends and some leader boards for high scores, but that doesn’t take away from this fun little Indie Game at all.

I hope  I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 will really climb to the top of the charts here on Xbox Live and that Ska Studios will do really well with this one in conclusion. Its a highly addictive game to play over and over and it will have you working to beat your higher scores in no time. Trust me here and take a look under the Indie Games section and get this one, you will have a blast killing off these Zombies. (A+)

- Robert Owens

This 2D side-scrolling, motocross obstacle course having, physics-based puzzle game may seem to be what all the “Fox” apparel wearing, moto-heads need for an XBLA title. While that statement is true, fans of physics-based puzzle games will most likely also have a blast playing through the obstacle courses that make up Trials HD. The challenge will have you addictively playing for hours on end, in attempt to set your name on the leaderboards of bad-asses that have actually completed each course. Have you noticed I haven’t dropped the name “Excite Bike” yet?

Developer – RedLynx
Publisher – Microsoft
Genre – Puzzle
Price – 1200 MSP ($15)

Getting through the series of obstacle courses and tournaments is your only objective in Trials, and though it sounds easy – in later stages, it’s not. The in-game physics make every single moment of Trials completely unpredictable without practice. Slightly more lean, or throttle, while on the dirt-bike usually results in landing off-balance, landing farther than your target area, flipping the bike, or every other variable that comes with the mastering of a motocross precision art. It’s easy to get on a 125cc and move forward, but getting over the obstacles ahead takes a little more mastering.

Within minutes of playing Trials HD, players are easily hooked by the “weighted” control of the bikes, and the entertainingly easy starter courses – but sooner than later the learning curve kicks in and the “truly determined” will remain to test their skills of climbing 70 foot inclines and jumping 30 foot gaps with no kicker.

Beside the standard obstacle course fair in THD, there is also a stunt mode which pits you against the leaderboard in various stunt scenarios like riding your bike in a cage-ball, testing your skill in flipping your bike without crashing, and “ski-like” long jumps. While these stunts sound a little mundane, the constant leaderboard pop-ups seem to help glue the controller to your hands in hope of taking a top spot.

Even after endless hours of Trials HD, the obstacle course editor loops endless replay ability to this title – sorta. A course editor of its caliber can really keep a title like THD alive, but unfortunately sharing custom courses with the world can only be done through your friends list, resulting in a lack of downloadable courses. I’m hoping for an update to make the custom course sharing more of a “community-thing”…but who knows?

Explosions, back-flips, and a ton of “rag-doll” hilarious-ness added to the “crack-like” addictive gameplay that composes Trials HD – alone is worth its price-tag. The challenge of “gold medal-ing”, topping the leaderboards, and finishing every course will give any player a great 12+ hours of gameplay – and then there is the map editor. At first glance, one would think Trials HD is a next-gen “Excite Bike” – but it’s some much better than that. Trials FTW! (A)

- Jeffrey d