Village Gamer

Toronto’s Phased Games has released Snax Lite on the Xbox 360. Priced at 80 Microsoft points, Snax Lite is available on the Xbox Live Indie Games service. In Snax Lite, you’re the chef at your barbecue and all your friends are dying just to get a piece of the grill action! Cook up and serve your guests in a limited time frame. It’s a race against the clock and the grill! Snax Lite (Cooking Arcade Game) features 6 Challenging levels of fast game play action and a Massive 80 Minute Marathon Mode. Do you have what it takes to become the Master Chef?

Nexon has taken down the web site previously used to publicize Sugar Rush, a game developed by Vancouver’s Klei Entertainment. A spokesman from Klei thanked all of their beta testers, but there is unfortunately no further word regarding the future of the game, which was well received by the gamer community. Klei Entertainment, who owns the rights to the title, is actively seeking a new publishing partner.

Fit Brains has added a new game to their site. Paradise Island 2 is a word game designed to help with improving word stem recognition, deduction and concept formation as well as combining syllables and fragments. Just a few minutes per day spent with the games on FitBrains will help keep your cognitive abilities sharp – or even teach you a few new skills – all for free. Village Gamer highly recommends Fit Brains for everyone.

Three Canadian developed games are gracing the FAQ page of the new Xbox 360 Games on Demand site. The featured games are Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed and Need For Speed: Carbon. Games on Demand is available for purchase on Xbox LIVE as part of today’s Xbox LIVE Update. You will be able to browse and purchase games through the Xbox LIVE Marketplace on the Web starting August 13. Village Gamer was selected to experience the preview of the Xbox Live, and so far we’re liking the additions, even though some of the Avatar Marketplace add-ons seem to be a bit pricey and I haven’t really seen anything in the Avatar Marketplace that I would like to purchase for my avatar. I’m not sure yet how I feel about being able to purchase new titles directly from Xbox, and I’m sitting on the fence as far as “the end of retail” models. I’m one of those people who will purchase Collector’s Editions for certain titles (like Assassin’s Creed 2), and I would hate to see those options disappear, even if it is far off in the future.

The folks from Bioware have departed for GenCon, with promises of cool stuff for Dragon Age: Origins fans, and then they’re headed for GamesCon in Germany. I guess we’ll just have to wait for PAX to see all the cool stuff for ourselves.

And in my final note for the morning, just a reminder for those of you who are thinking about going to GDC Austin – early bird pricing ends in two days.