With Captain America and the X-men having made their way back into theaters last month, now is a good time to look at one of the finest digital adventures featuring Marvel’s pantheon of heroes and villains. Before licencing issues would force Marvel to disavow the existence of any property whose movie rights were controlled by Fox, and before the company’s gaming department chose to focus on free-to-play mobile games, Marvel fans of all ages were treated to an excellent look at the Marvel Universe, Lego style, courtesy of Warner Brothers and Traveler’s Tales. Waitaminute….Warner Brothers? As in DC Warner Brothers? Well it’s simple. Warner Brothers has the licence to publish Lego Games, Lego has a licence to make toys based on Marvel characters, so it was only a matter of time before this game was made, and it excels as both a Marvel game and a Lego game.
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This past week, we learned that Disney Infinity had been cancelled due to Disney Interactive’s decision to abandon console gaming. To add insult to injury, the company is closing down its internal studio Avalanche Software, leaving close to 300 people without work (hopefully not for long). This summer will see the release of two final playsets based upon Alice:Through the Looking Glass and Finding Dory. Even Worse, Microsoft decided to shutdown its Project Spark, the Xbox One and PC set of game creation tools that allowed users to create and upload games LittleBigPlanet style. Microsoft ended active development on the game back in September, releasing all the game’s dlc for free. As of August 12, the game will no longer have online access, as players will be unable to download content or upload to the cloud. The reason given for Project Spark’s cancellation was that most of the people involved with the project had moved on to other areas within Microsoft, it wasn’t feasible to continue supporting the project. Fortunately, unlike the last time Microsoft cancelled a big name game (Fable Legends) no studio was shutdown nor was anyone fired as a result. At any rate, this isn’t a good look for Microsoft, as this is at least the third title the company has cancelled (the first two being The Phantom Dust reboot and the aforementioned Fable Legends). Maybe we’ll hear about a replacement for Project Spark next month at E3.

As far as Disney Infinity, click after the jump to learn about scrapped plans, speculation, and possible reasons for cancellation.
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Earlier this week we learned that the next Call of Duty will take gamers into space. Meanwhile, EA/Dice are looking towards the past to bring gamers the future of EA’s Battlefield shooter, WWI to be specific. Check out the trailer below, and a few tidbits after the jump.

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The trailer for this year’s Call of Duty hit the web today. Check it out, and click to learn more.
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Several games in the recent past have used Africa as a backdrop. Far Cry 2 had you stepping in a war between 2 warring African powers, Far Cry 3 had you trying to escape an island near Africa that was ran by a homicidal cartel of human traffickers, Resident Evil 5 had you gunning down infected villagers in war torn shanty towns, while Call of Duty (along with other military FPS games) had you gunning down enemy insurgents in similarly war-torn villages. All of these games of course have something in common; you’re basically the one-man army out to kill every bad guy in sight in decrepit war-torn lands. Then again there are Cabela’s hunting games, but who plays any of those? Africa has a rich mythological and spiritual history that makes it ripe for gaming. Not only that, the continent itself has a vibrant gaming scene full of young and hungry developers eager to make their mark upon the world. Kiro’o Games, one of these developers, has tapped into Africa’s rich culture with its debut action rpg, Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan.
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In what is no doubt good news for RPG fans who have yet to play Monolith Soft’s masterpiece, the Wii version of Xenoblade Chronicles is now available as a Wii U virtual console title for only $19.99. If you had trouble locating a physical copy of the game, and weren’t sold on the New 3DS version, now you can buy a digital version and play it with the Wii U gamepad. Xenoblade Chronicles was designed by Tetsuya Takahashi, and is a spiritual successor to Square’s Xenogears and Namco Bandai Xenosaga while being a spiritual predecessor to Xenoblade Chronicles X, which was released in the U.S this past December. The game tells the story of a world created on the remains of two warring giants, and a mysterious blade known as the Monado. Xenoblade earned praises for it’s unique storyline and battle system, and its main character, Shulk, became a playable character in the latest Smash Bros game while female character Fiora is a playable character in the recently released Project X-Zone 2. The original Wii release had a limited printing run, so newer copies of the game are increasingly rare and have costs consumers as much as $100. Fortunately, now that a digital version is available, everyone should be able to experience this classic.Mountains Photo

Today Nintendo announced that The Legend of Zelda Wii U would be delayed until March 2017, and will launch alongside a version of the game for its upcoming NX system. Although we’ll know more about the upcoming Zelda game at this year’s E3, we won’t hear any details about the forthcoming NX system. This is no doubt a dissappointment for Wii U owners, as besides Pokken Tournament, the lackluster Star Fox Zero, and the forthcoming Persona/Fire Emblem crossover Tokyo Mirage Sessions ?FE, there isn’t a whole lot to look forward to for the system this year. This is reminicent of the GameCube/Wii transition, then the hyped up Gamecube Zelda title (which would eventually become known as the Twilight Princess) would up being a Wii launch title. Nevertheless, we’ll be looking forward to learning about the new Zelda game.

If you’ve been keeping up with the news this past week, you’ll know that we lost one of the greatest women’s wrestlers of all time along with one of the greatest musicians of all time. Before that however, former baseball player and would be video game mogul Curt Schilling got shitcanned from ESPN for being a hateful transphobe. This reminded me of when he was in charge of two game studios and a franchise, all of which ended up tanking. Pity too, because the game they released, Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning was an excellent action RPG, and it could have been the start of the next big franchise. Sadly it would end up being a costly flop for all parties involved.
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