So the release of this game may not be breaking news. As part of Xbob LIVE’s XBLA Summer of Arcade program, Konami will be releasing Castlevania: Harmony of Despair exclusively for the Xbox 360 on Wednesday, August 4th. But we just got some new screenshots we wanted to share with you guys. Check it out!

For those who haven’t heard about this game, the concept is this: The game takes place in a world inspired by Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia, and stars some of your favorite castlevania characters such as Alucard, Soma Cruz, Jonathan Morris, Charlotte Aulin, and Shanoa. It will feature various gameplay modes such as Co-op and Versus Survival Modes, as well as the most exciting game mode, the six player online co-op mode. Imagine facing some of the deadliest bosses with your friends online, playing as some of your favorite Castlevania characters! Oh dear.

Way back when this site first came up, we did a review of a game called Defense Gride: The Awakening. This was my first exposure to the tower defense genre, and it was awesome! And I’m excited to see another one coming out as an Xbox LIVE Arcade title: Invasion Defender.

As far as we can tell, this follows the classic tower defense formula, with two additional elements to give the game a bit more of a challenge. First of all, the enemies attack back, forcing you to monitor all of your units constantly and places an even greater importance in the placement of your defense units. The second feature is the addition of intelligent AI who will assess the situation and find the safest route from A to B, forcing the player to strategize even more.

Judging from the screenshots, it looks like the game is set on Earth, or Earth-like planet, with semi-current weapons. No hordes of aliens this time around. And it might be just me, but it seems like the graphics aren’t as detailed and sweet as they could be. These screenshots look like they are from a really detailed handheld rather than a console game. But then again, tower defense games are all about the strategizing. I’m definitely looking forward to playing this.

Invasion Defender is now available on Xbox LIVE.

Features List:

• Battle your way through over 50 waves of enemies in 3 unique locations as you fight to prevent the invasion force from taking over.

• Bolster your defenses using a range of upgradable turrets and walls.

• Intelligent AI will find not only the quickest but also the safest route through your defenses making strategy even more important.

• The enemies fight back adding another element of difficulty as you fight to keep the lines secure.

• Gain “Lifetime Score” to unlock new locations and weapons, including the devastating tactical nuke super weapon.

• 36 special medals to be achieved for completing various challenges.

• Hardcore mode for an extra tough challenge.

Question: Can you really have too many zombie games?
Anwer: No.

We have today yet another title to add to the roster of zombie killing games: Twin Blades: The Reaping Vanguard available for download on Xbox LIVE in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, UK and US.

I first saw this game when the iPhone/iPod Touch version was released. It looked pretty sweet with a combination of a very retro side-scrolling shooter/beat’em-up gameplay with colorful, modern manga-like graphics. Not to mention the hilarity that you take control of a cute, bubbly-eyed, scythe-wielding, gun-toting nun to put an end to the undead madness that’s infected the city! You can check out the features list at the end of the article. (BTW, They could make a GREAT B-horror flick from this!)

But I didn’t care much for it because of the frustration I foresaw in the controls. I just couldn’t imagine having to play a sidescroller of this type with a touch screen. But lo and behold, now its available for the X360. Now the game looks much more appealing to me. And to boot, its priced at a low cost of 240 Microsoft Points (about $3)!

But wait! There’s more! Twin Blades has a free DLC scheduled for release in 1st Quarter of 2010. The retail price on this puppy will be raised once this DLC is released. I don’t konw about you, but I’m a sucker for free things, and knowing that the price will go up sometime next year, it’s making me want this more and more! At $3, I’m fairly certain this game will at leat pay for itself in entertainment.

Features List:
- 6 range weapons ranging from machinegun to explosive nukes
- Upgradable skills which can be bought and trained
- 7 different kind of zombies, mind the grabbers!
- 5 cool musics and exclusive sound effects which will immerse you into the epic slaughter
- A local Challenges & High-Scores system which keeps track of players’ progress

I was quite excited when I heard about this game. One reason was obviously for the game itself, but another reason for my excitement was the fact that this game was being published as a non-profit, charity project. I’m not saying that the idea of non-profit and charity gets me all riled up. Its the fact that video games have evolved into such a form of media that it now has the scope and breadth in expression and audience to incorporate a project like fundraising, opening even more doors for both consumers and those that work in the industry. I think that’s very exciting. Anyhoo, let’s check out the game.

Reminiscent of Lumines, Chime is a music puzzle game developed by Zoe Mode and published by OneBigGame, a non-profit publisher, for the Xbox LIVE Arcade. The basic idea of the game is that the player must fill a grid with irregular shapes. Each shape is associated with a sound effect from the background music track, and the player must form rectangular blocks called quads, with these shapes for points and multipliers. 

As larger quads are formed, the player unlocks more elements of the underlying song. During this process, the player effectively creates a unique remix of each song as they progress, ending in 100% grid coverage, and unlocking the song in full. For thos confused, check out the tutorial video at the bottom.

OneBigGame has confirmed the final line-up of artists on Chime:

Philip Glass – Brazil
Markus Schulz – Spilled Cranberries
Moby – Ooh Yeah
Paul Hartnoll (Orbital) – For Silence
Fred Deakin (Lemon Jelly) – Disco Ghosts

All of these artists have donated their work for this game.

The charity and fundraising OneBigGame is involved in centers around the improvement of the lives of children around the world. You can find out more about them here. This is definitely a game to look out for, both as a fun game and a possible pioneer for video gaming in a new direction.

Blitz arcade anounced its plans to release Encleverment Experiment, “a clever game for gamers who think they are clever.” The release date is being finalized for this Xbox LIVE Arcade title.

Think of this game as a hybrid of Mario Party and Brain Age. Players join Professor Ivor at his funky lab where the players’ memory, reflexes, and dexterity are challenged. The goal of the game is to acquire noodles, the in-game currency.There are two modes to Encleverment Experiment: Take-a-Test Mode (single player) and Game Show Mode (1-4 players)

Take-a-Test Mode

Players take the Professor’s five-round tests in Math, pattern recognition, reactions, and memory. Similar to Brain Age, players can keep tack of their improvements over the previous 30 tests.

Game Show Mode

Single players take on 15 AI opponents at a time, with each victory unlocking the next contestant. Each show consists of 6 rounds randomly chosen from the 16 available mini-games. The final match is against the Professor himself!

With multipler players, each player competes to finish teh Professor’s challenges as quickly as possible. Players can challenge randomly generated quizzes, or customize their own “Home-made Games” via an eaxy-to-use Editor feature. The show also features events such as “Score Stealer Game” where the first person to answer correctly gets to steal points from the contestant of their choice.

There are 16 mini-games and puzzles, including:
Griddled (find the only word in a word search-style grid);
• Copy Cat (remember the sequence of new eye colors every time the cat blinks);
• Semi-Vinyls (piece together broken records like a jigsaw puzzle);
• Stepping Tones (match sounds to colors); and
• Oddest One Out (identify which one of four patterns just doesn’t “fit”).
• Each mini-game offers four levels of difficulty to cater for gamers of all ages and ability.

What if all the traffic light control is in your hand?

This chaotic idea sounded like a perfect puzzle game, but no one has done it. At least as far as we know.

Wondering what all those colors in the screenshots are for? GLPeas released a real-time traffic management puzzle game call Carcophony. It looks chaotic indeed, isn’t it? Let’s check out the video and see how crazy it gets.

The game isn’t so ADHD friendly, isn’t it?

It’ll cost 400 Microsoft Points and is available now. You can also visit official Carcophony website for more information. – http://www.glpeas.co.uk/carcophony.html

Many of you heard from the today’s official press release about remaking of The Secret of Monkey Island. If you’re an avid old school PC gamer as some of us are, there’s a good chance that you’re already excited from today’s news from LucasArts. Remember all the pixelated graphics with awesome ‘sound’ from PC speakers? (Or Ad Lib, or Sound Blasters if you were lucky enough to have one) Yeah, let that nostalgia effects tickle your hippocampus.

We have various screenshots of The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition and the original versions of it. We don’t know which one you would prefer, but we’re just glad that there are people who would appreciate the classics and keep trying to spread that love.

Here are the screenshots of new remake:

And here’s the good ol’ classic version:

How do you like it?

Capcom  sent us an interesting screenshots of their upcoming title (jointly developed with Marvel), Marvel vs Capcom 2. It’s a fight between Hulk and Zangief.

It’s a very interesting fight indeed.
Just in case you missed our news about this title, here are some of the key features of this game:

• Over 50 characters from the Marvel and Capcom Universes!
• 3 on 3 tag-team matches
• New online matching mode, including Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix’s “Quarter Match” mode ; enjoy the arcade experience from your console
• New optional visual filter smoothes out the game’s graphics
• Four button controls introduce new players to fighting games; compatible with the Mad Catz Street Fighter IV joysticks and Fight Pad
• Available for the first time via digital distribution on Xbox LIVE Arcade and the PlayStation Network

If we remember correctly, this was one of the hard-to-find, rare title that people paid around $100 just to get hands on PS2 version. But it’ll be re-released on a digital form (Xbox LIVE Arcade and PSN) so consider yourself lucky if you wanted but couldn’t afford one until now.

While I may not fully agree with the recent “casual games” terminology that has emerged as of late, I do acknowledge the fact that there are some games with widespread, general appeal. I am here to tell you that Droplitz is one such game. While it was merely one of many games available for hands-on play at the Atlus booth and most people were spending more time gazing upon their Trauma Center nurses more than any piece of software, I can guarantee that many iPhones will be spinning with leaky pipe pieces before too long.

The concept behind Droplitz is simple–there are several sources along the top of the screen, and several collectors along the bottom of the screen. Using various pipe pieces, the player must create connections between the two groups. After establishing a connection, a purple (red on the iPhone?) droplitz begins to traverse the path spawned by the player. It’s at this point that the real fun begins.

Connections between the top and bottom of the screen can be stacked in combos. As long as the purple droplitz has yet to reach the collector, you have time to create more links–and every link created brings along another purple droplitz to traverse the path. Making use of those windows of opportunity, massive combos can be chained up and these combos can be carried over with “Chain Reactions.” Each time all the purple droplitz have reached the bottom, all the pipes used evaporate, the speed increases slightly and new pipes drop in to repeat the process.

With a fitting soundtrack that suggests the degree of urgency necessary to really get into a puzzle game, the game will easily call you back time and time again to test your ability on a variety of difficulties and board sizes. Coming out on Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation Network, Microsoft Windows and iPhone later this year, puzzle game enthusiasts owe it to themselves to give this one a second look.

Power-ups, "Infection" mode, and themed levels all add diversity to the mix.