Microsoft and LucasArts announced today that “Kinect Star Wars” and the Xbox 360 Limited Edition “Kinect Star Wars” console bundle will both be available on April 3rd, 2012 in North America for $49.99 and $449.99 respectively.  Star Wars fans of all ages will soon be able to bring the Star Wars universe home and become part of the films like never before with the power of Kinect for Xbox 360.

With five dynamic modes – Jedi Destiny: Dark Side Rising, Podracing, Rancor Rampage, Galactic Dance Off and Duels of Fate – “Kinect Star Wars” makes it possible for Star Wars fans of all ages to delve into immersive Star Wars experiences. In addition to the previously announced Jedi, Podracing and Rancor modes, Xbox 360 and LucasArts have today unveiled new additions to the game, including:

• New experiences within Jedi Destiny Mode, including:

• Space battles: As you travel the Galaxy to face an evil that threatens to undermine the fabric of the Republic, you’ll engage with forces of the Empire in intense space battles

• Speeder Bikes and Landspeeders: Pilot iconic Speeder Bikes and Landspeeders on your epic journey

• New duels: Battle opponents like Count Dooku and Darth Vader on your journey to become a Jedi

• New Duels of Fate mode, a battle-by-battle experience to sharpen your Jedi skills against the Dark Side.

• New Galactic Dance Off mode loaded with Star Wars-themed pop tunes where those still honing their Jedi skills can take a break to battle Darth Vader on the dance floor or bust a move “Solo style.”

The Limited Edition Xbox 360 bundle will also debut alongside Kinect Star Wars on April 3rd, and is available now for pre-order through participating retailers. This first ever custom Xbox 360 and Kinect bundle includes an R2-D2 blue-and-white themed console, a custom Xbox 360 Wireless Controller inspired by C-3PO and the first ever white Kinect sensor.

Priced at $449.99, the Xbox 360 Limited Edition Kinect Star Wars Bundle will include:

• Kinect Star Wars game
• Custom R2-D2-themed Xbox 360 Console with custom sounds
• White Kinect Sensor
• Custom C-3PO-themed Xbox 360 Wireless Controller
• 320 GB Hard Drive
• Xbox 360 Wired Headset
• Kinect Adventures game
• Exclusive DLC – now known to be the C-3PO unlockable for Dance Mode.

See larger image Xbox 360 Limited Edition Kinect Star Wars Bundle (Video Game) List Price: Price Not Listed New From: Check Amazon For Pricing In Stock This title will be released on April 3, 2012.

Children have no problem making their own fun.  Give them a few outdated toys, a handful of couch cushions, or a backyard, and a child will use their imagination as the catalyst to somehow create something entertaining for themselves.  This is an ability that’s likely lost on most people as they age, but Double Fine Happy Action Theater is a quick and enjoyable return to form.

DFHAT is a composition of 18 scenarios, the vast majority of which impose no goal or direction on the player.  The game simply provides a setting and lets the player make their own fun.  Smashing a city and swatting at helicopters a la King Kong, or feeding and subsequently scaring a group of pigeons is surprisingly cathartic when you aren’t prodded to do these things; rather, you do them because you can.

It’s immediately clear that while developing DFHAT, Double Fine made sure to place an emphasis on accommodating the way kids would play it.  DFHAT has no menus that are necessary to play the game; each situation starts as soon as the last one ends, and they cycle endlessly.  There is no drop in/drop out process to go through; players can join and quit DFHAT seamlessly and the game does a great job acclimating accordingly.  Lastly, each scenario only carries on for a few minutes, which is probably on par with the attention span of most children.

While the functionality of DFHAT is tailored to children, it doesn’t mean that the game is made exclusively for them.  Adults will be able to find enjoyment in each of the scenarios at least a couple of times through, and it certainly works better as a party game than a solo endeavor.  However, it seems that adding young ones to the equation will make for exponentially more opportunities to replay the game.

Ultimately, it’s near impossible to provide a review for a game that doesn’t strive to be a game.  DFHAT quite competently puts all the pieces in place for players to have fun, but it’s up to the players to make something of those pieces.  So, in lieu of a collection of deep statements about where the developer succeeded or failed, all I can really offer is that I had fun while playing DFHAT, which must mean that I was doing something right.

Scarygirl is a fairly typical blend of side-scrolling 3D fun, with a uniquely psychedelic art design complimented by decently implemented gameplay and traditional platforming charm.  While it may not be a groundbreaking or sensationally must-have experience, Scarygirl does elevate itself above most other subpar adaptations of popular non-video game franchises. That’s right, Scarygirl is actually an adaptation of a flash game which is in and of itself based on a popular graphic novel. Scarygirl’s  first foray into the gaming community is a solid one to be sure, but I found myself wishing it could have been a tad more compelling.

You take control of the titular Scarygirl, an adorably creepy orphan who has been brought up by a giant octopus and an esoteric rabbit (who gets on onion highs and shares his trippy trances). She’s been suffering through some pretty gnarly nightmares featuring a strange, big-headed man and she must journey to the Big City to seek out this mysterious interloper and unlock the secrets of her sinister past. For a lead character, Scarygirl possesses the appropriate amount of charisma and quirk, a tenacious little monster who can transform into an actual terror once enough foes are vanquished. Enemies and side characters are equally eclectic, ranging from talking eggs, toy cats, and ego-maniacal chihuahuas.

Gameplay boils down to a tried-but-true platform based combat where traversing the levels, defeating swarms of kooky enemies and collecting gems is the name of the game. Scarygirl is gifted with a tentacle arm that serves a multitude of functions; whip-like melee weapon, grappling hook, lasso, and even a helicopter (for chasms and cliffs and such). This singular appendage is the cornerstone of the Scarygirl experience, helping to both defeat enemies and survive the environmental hazards thrown at you when endeavoring to reach level’s end. Coupled with the ability to temporarily defend attacks and grapple/toss enemies at one another without a thought, Scarygirl has plenty of tricks up her sleeve while handling with great precision (once you get the combos down).

Exchange your hoarded gems with ambling salesmen for new moves and weapons to attach to your tentacle. Moves include things like squeezing the life out of foes and bouncing them into the air like a pogo stick while new weapons like Chinese fans and Rage Hook mean you have some options when dispatching your enemies. These enemies often swarm you from both sides, and will pounce from all directions as soon as you let your guard down. Often, this means you get saddled with some cheap hits and unfair damage, but as you collect more heart containers this doesn’t prove as big of a problem although I personally found the sucker punches to be frustratingly annoying.

While each level had great designs and a unique look, gameplay eventually devolved into trying to get from point A to point B with little variety in the middle. Enemies were varied and their attack patterns switched up from time to time,  but really all Scarygirl boiled down to was the sum of its parts; beat up the badguys, find the gems, and get to the end. Don’t get me wrong, with its spooky atmosphere (with a pretty groovy soundtrack) and zany cast, Scarygirl has a lot to offer in terms of characters and world, I just don’t know if the gameplay will keep players invested enough to see things through to the end. Maybe the game’s drop in/ drop out co-op will level the playing field and encourage players to share the world of Scarygirl with a friend, but for me it was an appreciated but ultimately non-essential addition to things.

Interested terrors can try out the demo for free, or lay down 800 MS points and purchase the full game  on Xbox LIVE Arcade.

This week, LA Noire invades the Deal of the Week. Pick up Game Add-Ons and Avatar Gear 50% off their standard asking rate. Check out the list of deals below.

Game Add-Ons

• Reefer Madness Vice Case – 160 MS Points (or $2.00)

• Nicholson Electroplating Arson Case – 160 MS Points (or $2.00)

• A Slip Of The Tongue Traffic Case – 160 MS Points (or $2.00)

• The Naked City Vice Case – 160 MS Points (or $2.00)

Avatar Gear

• The Badge Pursuit Challenge & Button Man Suit – 80 MS Points (or $1.00)

• The Broderick Detective Suit – 40 MS Points (or $0.50)

• The Sharpshooter Detective Suit – 40 MS Points (or $0.50)

All deals will be active from January 24th through January 30th. So suit up and go solve some murder cases!

[LA Noire DLC - Deal of the Week]

Elite Drop 1: Liberation, a militarized Central Park in the heart of NYC, featuring a vast landscape ripe for long-range sniper and LMG kills. Mounted turrets on opposing ends of the map offer overwhelming firepower to anyone brave enough to man them.

See larger image Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Video Game) List Price: $59.99 USD New From: $35.95 In Stock Used from: $29.90 In Stock Release date November 8, 2011.

One thing Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has going for it are the brains behind its creation. While Big Huge Games are no strangers to success, partner  38 Studios is a new company with a lot to prove. This means that thinking outside the box and looking for ways to differentiate itself from the pack  leads to innovative tweaks to your typical sword and sorcery formula. You also have Todd McFarlane (yes, THAT Todd McFarlane) designing everything from armor to weapons to creatures while the story and lore is being penned by renowned fantasy author R. A. Salvatore. Oh, and Ken Rolston is leading the team as executive designer. Does he sound familiar? He should, considering he was lead designer on Elder Scrolls entries Morrowind and Oblivion. So, Reckoning has the pedigree, but does it have the actual game to back it up?

After choosing your race (One of four groups breaking down to Humans, Light Elves, Dark Elves, and Nomads), your looks, and your skill set you realize that you are, in fact, dead. Not to worry! Thanks to the wonders of Gnomish science, you’ve been brought back to life as a veritable blank slate, with no memory of your past and a destiny that, unlike everyone else in the Kingdoms of Amalur, is yours to write as you so choose.They throw a lot of lore at you in a short amount of time, and none of it seems all too new. You’ve got evil immortal elves waging war with all the mortal races, and your return from beyond the grave signals a change in the world.

Blah, blah, blah, it’s not necessarily riveting stuff, but from the time I spent with the demo, it’s obvious the developers are trying to craft a distinct world entrenched with a deep history and richer cultural dynamics. With only forty minutes to explore the open world portion of the game, I found myself rushing from NPC to NPC trying to play through as many quests as possible, so it’s tough to decide whether anything really resonates. There at least seems to be some interesting people and agendas at play in this world, and the handful of quests I embarked on were either interesting spins on genre favorites or new territory altogether.

Combat is a fascinating mix of magic and hack-n-slash, something the developers compared to “Oblivion meets God of War“. As a third-person title, your character is front and center at all times, chaining moves (you earn more complex ones as you level up) between primary and second weapons in order to create combos. You can also throw magical attacks into the mix. I played with a nice lightening spell and a promising shadow cast, which confused my enemies for a few seconds. Fighting was fast and fun, and when I gained enough “Fate Energy” (or something) I unlocked a temporary sort of God-Mode where I tore through enemies and utilized weaponry summoned from another realm. Quick time events are thrown into moments like these, which lead to brutal kills and awesome finishing moves.

All the other staples of a great roleplaying experience are there. Weapons can degrade and also evolve through smithing and enchantment, while the world is full of fantastic loot for you to add to your arsenal. The skill trees (broken down into the areas of Might, Finesse, and Magic) look to have a ton of variety to upgrade through, while the Destiny system (your characters Class and bonuses) can be leveled up and swapped out at any time. So, if you get bored playing the Thief, you can turn around and start leveling up the Warrior if you so choose. Unfortunately, the game suffers from a wonky camera (you have to fight the damn thing at times to get anything done) and a tendency to bug out when you get thrown into bigger fights. Conversations aren’t exactly riveting, and the cartoony style of the game (akin to the new Star Wars MMORPG) might not appeal to everyone.

Reckoning is still very much a dark horse for me, an unknown quantity that could rise to become an entertaining romp through the RPG genre or fall flat on its face and fade into obscurity as an experiment that should’ve been shelved. Honestly, only time will tell.

While the nitty gritty details surrounding the Xbox Live Arcade House Party have been slowly trickling down the grapevine for weeks, the last specifics were finally revealed today by, the host with the most, Microsoft.

The emphasis of the announcement may have been on the releases and their prices, but Microsoft also confirmed that the guests with the best attendance will receive a parting gift for their dedication.  Anyone that purchases all four House Party games will get a nice 800 MS Point kickback.

Here is the full list of games, release dates, and prices:

• February 15 – Warp – 800 MSP
• February 22 – Alan Wake’s American Nightmare – 1200 MSP
• February 29 – Nexuiz – 800 MSP
• March 7 – I Am Alive – 1200 MSP

Anyone interested in learning more about any of these titles would be well-advised to check out this post which gives a bit of a description about each one.

Sometimes, I forget what a wonderful thing Xbox LIVE Arcade is. When the right kind of content is released, it can be quite an incredible place, a platform for getting your hands on independent content crafted with love, care and a certain amount of hands-on flair that is hard to find in many of the major mainstream releases these days. Bogged down with marketing strategies, multiplayer servers and user demographics, too many below average titles get the exposure they don’t deserve. With Arcade, smaller yet better honed experiences get a chance to be played at a (mostly) reasonable price. Trine 2 reminded me of why I consistently fall in love with titles that stray from the beaten path, because they often stumble upon something quite magical.

Trine 2 is a 3D side-scrolling fantasy game, a sort of action/physics puzzler with heavier emphasis on the puzzling. The sequel to a rock solid title released 2009, I couldn’t help  finding myself wishing I had gotten my hands on the original. Don’t get me wrong, this entry does a great job of both providing some backstory to get new players invested while proving more than capable of standing on its own, I was intrigued with the world presented and wanted to go back and see the game’s heroes origin story. Alas, I’m getting a tad ahead of myself.

In Trine 2, you get to play as a trio of heroes selected by an ancient artifact known as the Trine to save the kingdom. These individuals (a thief, a mage, and a knight) came together once before to defeat an evil menace, and in the process became the stuff of legend. Some time has passed, and the heroes have fallen back into their respective lives only to find the Trine beckoning them together once again. The story is simple and effective, proving to be more an excuse to move things along as opposed to the cornerstone upon which the whole experience turns. What really gets you invested are the characters and how they interact with each other.

First, you have Amadeus, a nervous wizard who specializes in summoning mystical blocks (akin to Companion Cubes) out of thin air and levitating nearly anything on-screen. Then there’s Pontius, an overblown knight with a penchant for getting into trouble. He’s a combat specialist who wields either sword and shield or his two handed sledgehammer. Rounding out the team is Zoya, a quick footed thief whose ranged archery attacks and grappling hook make her quite the killer combo in either combat or puzzle solving. The banter and relationships that develop are endearing and do much to engage the player with the world. With this colorful cast of adventurers and their clever commentary, there’s never a dull moment.

Gameplay boils down to properly utilizing these heroes in the myriad of elaborate environments the developers constructed for players to traverse. At any point, you can swap between these heroes and you must use their specialized abilities to overcome the sizeable obstacles that end up in your path. When goblins attack, pull out Pontius to deal some heavy damage, while a fallen log will prove no match for Amadeus’s levitation spells. Is the key to a door floating above a spike pit? Have Zoya sever the rope bridge with an arrow, then grapple onto it with her hook. Even better, upgrade your hero’s skills by outsmarting the environment and retrieving hard-to-reach enchantment stones to earn skill points. Soon, you’ll be able to levitate enemies, freeze your foes, and create even more possibilities in terms of combat. Be careful, though; each hero has a life meter which if depleted will make that individual unavailable until the next checkpoint.

Visually, Trine 2 is surprisingly stunning. The developers really fill the screen with some fantastically colorful vistas, elaborate creatures and magical atmosphere. Light seeps through windows in dusty motes, dragons breathe fire with a billowing intensity that causes the air to blur with heat, while enchanted water gushes and flows with sparkling clarity. The color palettes and level designs are both creative and unique, creating a vivid world that always seems to surprise in ways that are akin to James Cameron’s Avatar.

With a three player co-op system, some clever achievements, and an uncanny ability to appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers without pandering or alienating anyone, Trine 2 has a lot going for it, especially considering it’s what some might consider to be a “mere” Arcade title. Trine 2 really does have something for everyone, and it’s a nicely sized game which should prove to keep players engaged for hours on end, or minutes at a time depending on your schedule. While it might not be reinventing the wheel or anything, this game is a really well made entry and a title worthy of a playthrough or two.

Mr. Hawk’s long-running video game franchise is getting a reinvention of sorts this summer.  The next installment of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater will be an amalgamation of the series’ first two titles, in an effort to revitalize the skating legend’s brand by taking it back to its roots.

Recently, the first seven levels to be included in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD were announced.  All seven courses are fan favorites and sure to resonate when the game’s released.  The revealed levels are:

• Warehouse
• School 2
• Mall
• Phoenix
• Hangar
• Marseilles
• Venice

As an aside, the screens that were released confirm the inclusion of Rodney Mullen, Nyjah Huston, and, of course, Tony Hawk.

With many rumors, and leaked images over the past few days, Capcom has announced that Resident Evil 6 is in full development and scheduled for release on the Xbox 360 on November 20, 2012 with a Windows PC version to follow. Blending action and survival horror, this latest installment in the multi-million selling franchise is the most ambitious, immersive and feature rich title of the series to date and promises to be the dramatic horror experience of the year.

It has been ten years since the Raccoon City incident and the President of the United States has decided to reveal the truth behind what took place in the belief that it will curb the current resurgence in bioterrorist activity. Due to be by the President’s side is his personal friend and Raccoon City survivor, Leon S. Kennedy, but when the venue suffers a bioterrorist attack, Leon is forced to face a President transformed beyond recognition and make his hardest ever decision. At the same time, Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance member Chris Redfield arrives in China, itself under threat of a bioterrorist attack.  With no country safe from these attacks and the ensuing outbreaks, the entire world’s population is united by a common fear that there is no hope left.