Roughly halfway through his excited explanation of the Xbox 360's new community features and curious new system of user representation, a few game titles were unveiled. The head of the Live Services team, John Schappert, announced four new titles coming out for Xbox Live Arcade -- some as soon as next month. I know two I'll certainly be purchasing.
Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2, from Bizarre Creations, due out "next month." Did you have a hard time keeping track of the hundreds of neon enemies on-screen during the last game? Yeah, you're hosed. GW2 looks to incorporate quite a few new wrinkles, including the "Waves" portion of the last Project Gotham tie-in, and what looked an awful lot like 4-player simultaneous play -- including competitive and co-op, from the few seconds we saw it. No promises, but it looked frantic and awesome. Oh, and someone in the demo footage had a multiplier of more than 1,000. I call HAX.
Galaga Legions, from Namco Bandai Games, also coming "next month." From the same team that re-invented Pac-Man, comes a "sequel" to Galaga, which looked to have much more in common with Geometry Wars than the original title. Hundreds of enemies and bullets on-screen at once, in colorful, frenetic 3D -- a far cry from the slow-but-deadly shmup of old.
Portal: Still Alive, from Valve, slated for "this Fall." GLaDOS is back, and she sounds as dark and calculating as ever. The passive-aggressive AI narrated this announcement to a cheering crowd, wherein we were promised an XBLA exclusive set of new test chambers, puzzles, and achievements for Aperture Science enthusiasts. Nothing was shown, but I think we can imagine about how this would work, no?
Finally, an unspecified South Park game. It's coming out in 2009, and has something to do with South Park. Now you know as much as we do.
No word on pricing yet, but seeing as I love both Geometry Wars and Portal to death, I'm glad I've got some spare Microsoft Points sitting around. More news on these titles to come, most likely.
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July 16th, 2008 at 1:16 am
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July 17th, 2008 at 1:49 am
[...] GC: Has that also had a hand in Portal: Still Alive? [...]
July 18th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
[...] on the show floor at this year’s E3, the Microsoft displays rotated between a few of their new Xbox Live Arcade titles. When Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 was made available to play, the colorful, frantic graphics [...]
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