Excerpt: "In an ambitious leap for 5th Cell from handhelds and mobile devices to consoles comes a futuristic third-person cover-based shooter. While that perhaps sounds uninteresting or displeasing, the concept of how you actually mobilize yourself from cover to cover and movement in general might surprise you. Equipped with a jetpack, you take cover and can move on that plane and can jump from cover to cover putting yourself in danger of being hit if timed wrong. Surfaces aren't always normal orientation, sometimes you'll take cover on walls sideways or on the ceiling being upsidedown.
Music is subtle throughout the game but synthesized keyboard and beats in menus and at the start of games helps evoke the futuristic setting you're placed in. The Unreal Engine works real hard here, producing top-notch visuals at 60fps with none of the infamous "texture load-in" we've come to expect from other games of this engine. Weapons sound good and different while packing a punch from your bass."
Each and every month, various games and DLC are permanently discounted on the Xbox Live Marketplace.
- AT
This year was a year dominated by the rise of the Arcade. Half of the games in my top 10 were 15 dollars or less and that’s a huge testament to how big the Xbox Live Arcade has gotten in the past year. Apart from the ones on my list, other games like Fez, Journey (PS3 download but you get the message), and Trials Evolution are getting major consideration for awards on multiple other websites. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a fair share of retail releases that impressed on multiple levels. Tell that to Sleeping Dogs, Mass Effect 3, Far Cry 3, Assassins Creed 3, and Dishonored and they will prove you wrong. It wasn’t the best year, that’s for sure, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t impress in many ways.
Ben Rowland wrote: Hybrid’s lineage is perhaps one of its most interesting aspects. This unlikely project has 5th Cell, the developer of Nintendo DS-exclusive games such as Scribblenauts and Drawn to Life, making the leap into the realm of online shooters. Hybrid is a third person multiplayer-focused shooter that attempts to bring some new ideas to a genre that’s well beyond the point of saturation. While Hybrid makes a valiant attempt and succeeds in a few areas, it unfortunately isn’t the genre-bender that we had hoped for.