Ten years after the release of the Vandal Hearts II, Konami, At this year’s Konami Gamers Night showed off Vandal Hearts Flames of Judgement the prequel to the original two. The story is as follows:

On the continent of Sostegaria, two rival kingdoms stand on the brink of war. Caught in the tide of battle is young orphan Tobias Martin. Driven to defend his homeland, and to avenge those already fallen, Tobias enlists with his comrades to fight for peace. But all is not what it seems, and they face a threat far deadlier - and closer - than they know.

Konami has announced the following features:

Classic gameplay, expanded and streamlined - Combines the speedy RPG pace of the original Vandal Hearts with improved user mechanics and top-notch presentation.

Strong story - Serving as the prequel to the original Vandal Hearts, Flames of Judgment delivers a rich, focused, and character-driven storyline.

Multiple endings - The player’s actions throughout the game will determine the party’s future and more!

Available on XBLA - Download from the comfort of your couch.

Party members adapt to the player’s style of gameplay - Player characters naturally and automatically improve at whatever they do, providing a wide, range of customization options.

Konami has not announced the following features, however, when I was at the Konami Gamers Night event I was able to speak with the assistant at the kiosk. When I question him about the prospects of downloadable content he replied with, “We can’t comment on that at this time.” Could that mean missions, quests, continents, and items avaliable for download? We can hope!

Check back, as more information is revealed about Vandal Hearts we’ll be here to cover it.

Castle Crashers has finally arrived. Quite possibly the single most anticipated title on Live Arcade, this supposedly simplistic game has been in development for years, and The Behemoth finally saw fit to grace us with its tour-de-force medieval-action-rpg-beat-em-up-masterpiece. If only it didn’t have some fatal multiplayer bugs, it would have received a near-perfect score from us.  Let us speak of what makes it excellent, shall we? OK then, onward!

Castle Crashers falls within the beat-em-up genre, so it’s similar to your Final Fights, your Sengokus, your Streets of Rages and your Double Dragons. Unlike any of those games, however, Castle Crashers features RPG mechanics and a plethora of unlockable content, including over twenty playable characters (many of which feature unique magical attacks), seventy or so weapons, and twenty animal orbs. So taking that into account, I suppose Castle Crashers is a lot more like Capcom’s Dungeons & Dragons brawlers. This is both rad, and awesome.

In Castle Crashers, players take on the role of one of four Knights, each a different color to differentiate their magical abilities: Green for poison, orange for fire, blue for ice, and red for lightning. The game begins with our heroes partying-down to steins of mead and old-timey folk music as the castle is attacked by an evil Wizard in command of a Barbarian horde. They ransack the castle, make off with an enormous magical crystal, and four of the Kingdom’s most attractive wenches. Obviously, this will not stand! Players embark on an action-packed adventure through jungle, swamp, desert, volcanic, and arctic environments in their epic quest to destroy the forces of an evil alliance, rescue the wenches, and reclaim the magical crystal for the King. As players do battle with giant Catfish, Barbarian Generals, harlequin Ice Kings and murderous necromancers, they’ll level up, gaining attribute points to apply to four areas of character development – strength, magic, defense, and agility. Additionally, the game features these incredibly cute animal orbs – helper drones that perpetually float behind the player and bestow certain buffs or otherwise assist in various ways. It’s this inclusion of role playing mechanics and a vast library of unlockable content that give the game its surprising depth and potentially endless replayability.

Castle Crashers’ sound and graphical assets are simply wonderful to experience. Dan Paladin’s iconic style and inescapable talent is evident in every aspect of the game’s art design. Characters are cute and yet somehow remain badass enough for me to want figures of them all. Environments are gorgeously decorated and while not very detailed, don’t really need to be. This is a game that exudes charm and humor as you play it, right down to the shit-rocketing deer. Castle Crashers’ sound design is equally sublime, populated with what seems like hundreds of unique sound effects that fit almost too well into the game. Lastly, the game features original music of many genres, from pounding techno beats to hard rock, and even includes a bit of folk. The whole package is a feast for the eyes and ears, and considering how fun the gameplay is, I guess the thumbs, too.

You might think that all of these great aspects to the game would land it a perfect score, but alas, Castle Crashers was released with some glaring bugs that shouldn’t have slipped past final beta testing. Aside from making online play all but impossible for most players, people have reported complete loss of savegame data, potentially losing days of work, which is disheartening at best and infuriating at worst. As much as I would love to grace this fantastic game with a perfect score, a shipped game is a shipped game, and I have been completely unable to play online even once since the game launched. Fortunately, The Behemoth is working on a patch to address these issues, and has further DLC coming in the future.

If you haven’t signed up for a Live Gold account yet, this game is your justification. Get Castle Crashers.

Jonathan Blow’s time-manipulation platforming opus has finally made its debut on Xbox Live Arcade, to much well deserved acclaim. Considering the game was put together by a tiny team of people without any financial or corporate backing, it’s a stunning achievement. Put simply, Braid is one of the best examples of what a platforming title can be, and while the game is quite short with almost no replay value whatsoever, it’s a game that everyone should play.

Braid tells an intentionally ambiguous story surrounding the life of a short little man in a suit, Tim, and his relationship/obsession to find a girl he labels “The Princess”. The story is contained within magical books the player reads at the start of each world, detailing the efforts Tim goes through to find and “rescue” the Princess so he and she can finally be together, as well as surreptitiously introducing new gameplay elements before the player actually encounters them later on. It’s an interesting method of delivery, and one the player probably won’t pick up on immediately unless they’re really paying attention.

The charm of Braid’s gameplay lies within the manipulation of time, which is an unlimited ability of Tim’s not bound by any sort of restrictions like a silly power meter or paltry resource the player must collect. The game is meant to be taken at the player’s own pace, and indeed this is really the only way to play it, as some of the puzzles contained within Braid are downright maddening to complete. As is usually the case with most puzzle games, the challenges presented in Braid are actually no where near as complicated as they appear, and completing many of them will undoubtedly give you an enormous, if brief, sense of accomplishment. This entitled sense of self-satisfaction is probably Braid’s most important achievement in game design.

Graphically, Braid is gorgeous. Everything is splashed with color; backgrounds (and some foregrounds) are essentially animated oil paintings. Environments are beautifully designed and completely unique to each of the game’s six worlds, and while there are really only six actual entities in the game to animate, they’re extremely well done and move fluidly. Audibly, Braid features some amazing sound design and an absolutely fantastic sound track. Sound effects are cute but functional without being overly annoying, and it seems as if they were designed specifically not to detract from the incredible musical score.

Despite all of these great features, Braid has got one problem that could potentially question one’s decision to purchase the title: replayability. The game basically has no replayability whatsoever. It will take a new player around six hours to complete, and once that’s done, the only reason to keep playing is to finish the time trials. Other than that, there is really no reason to pick the game up again. That said, Braid is still a game that everyone, everyone should experience, if only to see what the talent of a very small team of developers can create on a minimal budget.