Review: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (360)

From the very moment the game begins, to the very last second, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons on Xbox Live Arcade has one of the most unforgettable, emotionally draining and melancholy game narratives ever in a game. Coupled with good puzzle-action gameplay and a superior visual style that will invoke memories of classic titles Ico and LIMBO, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a great game that will haunt the heartstrings of anybody that plays it.

From the opening scene, we see loss in the lives of the brothers – in this case, Little Brother – who lives with the guilt of seeing his mother drown. Too small, too tiny, too frail to do anything but watch her sink into the depths of her watery grave; it is an important moment, because is establishes his fear of the water that will appear whenever water obstacles must be traversed. And then there's his Big Brother, faced with looking after his guilt-ridden little brother while facing a new family dilemma: Father is sick and injured, and only a special medicine can heal him, which will require a long and dangerous journey that the brothers must make to save his life.

Review: Sanctum 2 (XBLA)

With more and more tower defense games around, developers have had to come up with new ways to make their's stand out from the others. Coffee Stain Studios created its own new combination genre, meshing tower defense with first-person shooting for their Sanctum franchise, now in its second installment.

Gameplay is simple in Sanctum 2: the gamer must defend cores from incoming enemies by constructing weaponry towers to protect them. But like a lot of tower defense titles, gamers don't just sit idly by, viewing their towers' success or failure against incoming wave after wave of alien enemies in many bizarre forms (an overwhelming number of them resemble insects and bugs). While the towers are doing their part, gamers can go into first-person mode to jump directly into the war zone and unleash FPS fury.

Review: Star Wars Pinball (360)

After giving the iconic and classic comics universe a proper pinball treatment with its excellent collection of Marvel pinball tables, Pinball FX 2 applies the same reverence to another iconic classic, the Star Wars universe, with Star Wars Pinball on Xbox Live.

For a movie franchise that loves its trilogies, Star Wars Pinball has three tables included: Clone Wars, one devoted to the badass bounty hunter Boba Fett, and the best of the three, Star Wars Episode IV: The Empire Strikes Back. All three have the expected level of quality that all FX 2 tables have come to be known for in respect to the ball physics and pinball sounds. FX 2 pinball gives gamers such an unbelievably realistic pinball experience, it's hard sometimes to realize you're not actually standing at a table in the arcade or local pizza shop with a few quarters or tokens lined up on the table glass waiting for the next game.

Review: Capcom Cabinet Pack 2 (PSN, XBLA)

Ghouls and Ghosts

Capcom has been making games skilled at eating up your quarters for decades. So there's nothing more satisfying than being able to re-visit some of the classics that we remember, this time with unlimited quarters! You aren't taking my entire allowance in one sitting this time, Capcom!

Groups of games are being released in batches – last month we got Black Tiger, 1943, and Avenger and this batch we get the amazing Ghouls and Ghosts, Section Z and Gun.Smoke.

E3 2012: Hybrid XBLA Hands-On

Hybrid is a third person online shooter set in a post apocalyptic world during a war between the Variant and Paladin. There's no walking in the environments, rather you fly from cover to cover. Once behind cover, you can move along it or you can jump over it or fly to another piece of cover. This may sound a little nutty at first, but this mechanic works extremely well.