Minecraft  continues to be a bankable commodity on a litany of devices, including the Xbox Live Arcade Place. It also continues to be a fucking enigma to me.

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I don’t give a fuck about Shenmue  or its sequel. I don’t. I know that deducts like, a zillion space-bucks from my e-peen, but whatever. So this news doesn’t do anything for me. However, there’s a lot of people that are going to be simultaneously joyous and apopleptic about this shit. If the rumors in the streets are true, Sega has been sitting on HD versions of Shenmue 1&2  for a year. Biding their time. Waiting.

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I had no damn idea there was an Achievement Policy when it came to games Xbox Live Arcade games. Intriguing. I assume it was to prevent cheap games from being covertly marketed as achievement farms? (Not that it stopped them)

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Oh fuck my tits get hard when thinking about my Dreamcast. What a fucking system. I’m not even stunting. One of the true glories of the system was Jet Set Radio. Christ, I haven’t thought of that game in a serious minute. Anyways, it’s coming to XBLA and PSN this summer in tuned-up HD swagger.

Hit the jump for the trailer.

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No one really gives a fuck about the Fable  franchise besides  Peter Molyneux. Don’t lie. You don’t. You don’t. It’s tepid at best. Filler at its least threatening. However in a week of leaks, Xbox.com has let forth info on  Fable: Heroes  early. First impressions? It’s an arcadey co-op brawler. It looks awesome.

Hit the jump for images.

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I loved Bastion, the indie game that dropped on XBLA last year. A grindy little game with heart that also featured a hell of a soundtrack. Last week at the  New York Video Game Critics Circle Awards,  songwriter Darren Korb and singer Ashley Barrett performed the ending theme to the game. It’s awesome.

Hit the jump to check it out.

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I love chainsawing anthropomorphic killer insects, decapitating bandits and poking around bloody crime scenes as much as the next man, I really do. But as 2011 draws to a close, I’ve started to get all introspective about my gaming habits. I’ve drawn the grim conclusion that the stench of death and destruction hangs heavy over nearly all of my digital indulgences this year. Thank God then for Hello Games and their PSN downloadable hit Joe Danger: now spruced up and gift wrapped in a timely fashion for the 1% of XBOX 360 owners that were craving something colourful.

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Sonic CD. The game that led to me crying and pleading with my parents that I totally oh my god oh my god oh my god  needed a Sega CD. It worked on me. It worked! A lot of people don’t like the game, but I recall enjoying it. Enjoying the delicious compact disc nature of its experience. Now it’s coming to XBLA. Fist-pumps? Yeah!

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[pixelation | weekly gaming & life column every wednesday or uh thursday]

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I picked up and played through the XBLA game Limbo yesterday. I had heard so much god damn fawning about it, watched a video about it and deemed it dope, and had tons of expectations. I paid way too much, stared at the download bar, and booted the son of a bitch up.

I was bored within moments.

Aesthetically, the game was everything you want in some indie game to fawn over. Dark and brooding? Word. Lack of UI which is totally innovated (except not really)? Word. Simplistic visuals? Word. It was a paint by numbers indie game. And everyone seemed to love it. But me.

What the fuck was going on?

It was during my aggravation at having to push around blocks and listening to the (not really) beautiful swirling ambient music that I had a moment of clarity. A thunderous strike of denouement. I play games like a fucking buzzsaw. Perhaps Limbo is generic and boring (I think it is), but more than likely it couldn’t have been further from my preferred type of game. As a caffeinated mess, I twitch whilst holding the controller. I run into everything. I want to smash through walls and rip people apart.

I said, “Perhaps this isn’t your type of game!”

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My final project for my summer course is finished. It’s been attached to an email. It’s been fired, an electronic missive, scattering across the digi-webs towards my professor’s inbox. And as soon it is received, it shall begin crushing the university’s bandwidth, daring to be downloaded. Enormous. Blathering. Finished.

A week’s worth of work. Thousands of words, a couple dozen pages. Diet Mountain Dew cans consumed into the infinity-range. Spent veins, spent cells, smiles abound.

Hey, it’s like, summer or something?

I’ll be bored and ready for class in two weeks.

Monday Morning Commute. Every Monday I’m going to detail the various things I’m either currently or will be watching, reading, playing, and listening to in the next seven days. It’s Monday. You’ve got a long week of school, work, or compulsive masturbation to get through. Tell me the arts that you’re indulging in, to stave off suicide.

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