Join Peggle Masters Bjorn, Luna and Berg for a sneak peek of the next gen timed exclusive.
I'm not at all familiar with Peggle, and so was somewhat bemused to behold journalists overcome with paroxyms of delight upon being granted a hands-on with its sequel, Peggle 2, on the Xbox One at Gamescom this year.
Plus: how many camera-shy staffers can you spot?.
We work hard here at OXM. Thankfully, we play hard too, and when we play hard, we like to eat pizza, drink beer, and play some good games with some good people.
Episode 1 "Faith" hits Xbox Live first on consoles.
"Goodness, grandma - what an impressive portfolio of point-and-click adventure titles you have!" "All the better to entertain you with, my dear!" That's right, the first instalment of Telltale's comicbook adaptation The Wolf Among Us will appear on Xbox Live very shortly.
"We'll be posting official info about it later today at the Newswire.".
Lo, another ray of light has appeared at the end of the long, dark tunnel that is GTA Online. Rockstar has released GTA 5's 1.03 title update on the PlayStation Network, and says (via a comment on the latest NewsWire post) that the patch "is coming soon to Xbox LIVE".
"You get little differences you have to adjust for".
I pity the female characters in free-to-play shooter Warface. Not only have they apparently been created for the sole purpose of titillation, but they're being sent off to fight severely under-dressed and lacking in any semblance of body armour. With the winter months fast approaching, I get cold just by not having the top button on my coat done up.
"I'm not allowed to leak things," hints Microsoft Studios boss.
Valve's Chet Faliszek once told me that console-versus-PC multiplayer was a "gimmick", a gratuitous feature that's fatally hindered by differences in control scheme. That hasn't stopped players asking for it, however. Among the latest to pop the question is Steve Farrelly from AusGamers, who queried Microsoft Studios corporate vice-president Phil Spencer on the subject while discussing Xbox One's decidedly PC-ish architecture.
"If we don't have that, I suspect it would be another studio making one, if there was one to make.".
Hey, guy/girl on the internet who keeps creating 'compromising' pictures of Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite. What you do in your own time is your business, alright, but Bioshock creator Ken Levine wants you to stop it. Seriously, you're killing him: "It's like coming across a picture of your daughter. I die a little inside with every page view."
Takes place after main storyline, get it for 20% off with the Season Pass.
Ubisoft has announced the first Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag single player DLC pack, which does, as rumoured, star Edward Kenway's first mate Adewale, a former slave. It'll release before March 2014, and can be acquired for 20% off when you buy an Assassin's Creed 4 Season Pass, out alongside the game itself on 1st November.
Developer still "working on a permanent fix for these issues".
I think I've cracked the GTA Online Bugs Conspiracy, everybody. It can only be another of Rockstar's fourth-wall-breaking jokes. GTA 5's online component hasn't really launched in an intermittently unplayable state, you sillies - the developer's just parodying Call of Duty and Battlefield, heavyweight multiplayer franchises that seldom quit the starting blocks without a wobble. We're all part of a grand satirical experiment, my friends! Why aren't you laughing? Why?
"Honestly, put a character in the game that you feel passionate about putting in the game.".
Is addressing the games industry's well-documented gender imbalance as simple as making up the numbers - mandating the creation of more female protagonists, for instance? Perhaps not. Speaking to OXM as part of the conversation that gave you this Below preview, Capybara's Nathan Vella has cautioned against making design decisions in the service of a wider political agenda, insisting that players are smart enough to spot when developers are doing things for the sake of it.
Welcome to Abstergo Entertainment.
Ubisoft has given away some new details about how the modern day sections of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag will work, via a new post on its official blog. If you're one of the many AC players who never quite warmed to Desmond, rejoice; you're not playing as him anymore. You're playing as yourself.
"Host advantage isn't as big a deal as some people think it is," says Mark Rubin.
Dedicated servers for multiplayer games are, according to some residents of the internet, a universal panacea for iffy multiplayer performance - but just how much of that claim is grounded in fact? Are there scenarios in which player hosting actually delivers better results? We had a chance to chat with Infinity Ward's executive producer Mark Rubin about it at Gamescom in August.
"One thing we know our community has been looking for is a new challenge".
This summer's indie zombie hit State of Decay has just hit one million units sold across Xbox Live and Steam, just in time for its first DLC, Breakdown, to be sent to Microsoft for pre-certification testing.
Infinity Ward is elusive on specifics.
Call of Duty: Ghosts won't just receive dedicated servers on Xbox One, Infinity Ward has confirmed - there will also be server allocations for "current gen, next gen and PC with Ghosts," according to Infinity Ward's Mark Rubin, implying that our trusty old Xbox 360s will benefit. I say "implying" because Rubin stopped short of confirming individual platforms, which is a bit intriguing.
Cover star Stephan El Shaarawy gets an upgrade.
Oh look, football game news! I understand nothing that follows, but you probably do if you clicked on that headline, so please accept details of the first FIFA 14 Xbox 360 patch with my compliments. Apparently there is a man called Stephan El Shaarawy, and he has been "upgraded". Sounds painful.
It's "super-cool and super-rich" regardless of platform.
Fear not, crew of the good ship Xbox 360 - you've got just as much right to fly the Black Flag as your compatriots on those swanky next gen galleons. Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag will look best on Xbox One and PS4, Ubisoft Montreal's art director Raphael Lacoste has told OXM, but will be more or less the same game beneath the glitter.
Zeno Clash UE also 65p, Dishonored dev's Dark Messiah down to #163;5.99.
A quick heads up on the free Xbox game front, ladies and gentlemen - if you're the owner of a Brazilian, Korean, Japanese or South African Xbox Gold account, you can presently download stylish UFO puzzler Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet for nada.
"We can't change too many of the core rules," insists Mark Rubin.
Infinity Ward appears to be making ch-ch-changes with Call of Duty: Ghosts, its vaguely post-apocalyptic and canine-loving Xbox One debut, but there's such a thing as a bridge too far. That's according to the studio's executive producer Mark Rubin, who explained to OXM at Gamescom that the franchise is, to some extent, the victim of its own success.
Kinect exclusive should still be an essential purchase "two or three years from now".
Rare's Simon Woodroffe wants Kinect Sports Rivals to be among the first games you buy for an Xbox One - even a few years after launch. The developer has extensive plans for post-release support, he told OXM at a recent preview event, and hopes that the game's cuddly aesthetic will stand the test of time.
GTA5 now the fifth best-selling game of all time in terms of revenue, just behind four CoD titles.
Grand Theft Auto 5 is now officially the twelfth biggest-selling game of all time, despite only being on our shelves for three short weeks. It's also just pipped the lifetime sales of its predecessor, GTA 4, with the combined muscle of Michael, Trevor and Franklin tipping Niko Bellic from his gold-plated throne, constructed solely from old discarded car parts.
