Ever heard of Death By Cube? You should have, because it’s absolutely mental. Square Enix’s blood-soaked and hilarious looking shooter Death By Cube has been finally been given a release date, coming to Xbox Live Arcade on January 20. Awesome!

Death By Cube is a top-down shooter with an air of Robotron about it. It features cubes, obviously, and blood. Loads of blood. It was revealed back in April of last year under the name of Project Cube. Looks enjoy it will be a lot of silly fun, so I shall look forward to trying it out. Anybody else up for it?

Hit the jump for a video.

[Via Square Enix's DLG Twitter]

Via Destructoid

If you like playing Madden and fantasy football, then you’re in for something swell. Yesterday, EA Sports launched Madden Ultimate Team as a free update to Madden NFL 10 (it’s a patch, so you’ll be prompted to download it the next time you start up the game). Remember how last-gen iterations of Madden games included a system of digital trading cards you could collect by accomplishing in-game tasks? Well, Madden Ultimate Team greatly expands on that concept, delivering a full-on meta-game with cards for players, coaches, stadiums, and more, so you can build an All-Pro team and compete with it on the internet.

Watch the video above for a primer on Madden Ultimate Team. You get a starter pack of cards to kick things off (your team will initially be pretty crappy). If you want to get more cards, you have to purchase them with in-game currency, “coins.” To earn coins, you can play games against another player on the web or the computer — or you can just take the microtransaction route and literally buy card packs using real money (PlayStation Network) or Microsoft Points (Xbox Live). Card packs come in Bronze (500 coins/$0.25), Silver (1500/$0.50), Gold (3000/$0.99) and Platinum (9000/$2.99) varieties; as you might expect, the more high-priced packs offer a chance at better cards.

The game also has an auction block that grants you to sell your own cards for coins, or purchase cards that other users are offering up for bidding. But Madden Ultimate Team’s Executive Producer, Jeremy Strauser, notes that the mode isn’t just about assembling a team of the ideal players: “You have to also manage coaches, injuries, and team chemistry.” So hop on the web and see how your team stacks up against your friends’ teams on the leaderboards!

Via Destructoid

If you’re like me, you’ve a sh*t ton of various game compilations on your shelves. I love old games. The classics, if you’ll. But there’s too many discs and carts, and it’s a big hassle to dig them all out. This one for this system, that one for that other system, some on your portable, and so on. They’re all mismatched, and you’ll probably never play all of the games on them, anyway. And who’s going to play them with you?

Microsoft killed several birds with one stone with Xbox Game Room. Now you’ll have your own arcade that you can fill with the games you like, leaving the duds out. You’ll get games that come straight from the ROM, with all the original options (or dipswitches) available to you. And instead of going at your old favorites alone, you can invite friends over to your arcade and play with them. You can also visit their arcades and try out their games. Best of all, you can have all your games in one place. Sell those old compilations.

Hit the jump for our impressions of Game Room.

Hellion: Mystery of the Inquisition is a game I’ve been following for quite some time, and this very first piece of gameplay footage looks … rough. Very rough indeed. Billed as a “preview” of the game’s first-person swordfighting, I am guessing that it’s very early footage which would excuse the roughness. Still, I wouldn’t have released this if I were the developer.

Halfbrick has recently opened the official Web site and blog for upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game Raskulls. As you might expect, it’s pretty damn adorable. There’s loads of information about the game and plenty of media to look at. I’ve played the game and can tell you right now that it’s a great tiny celebration title and well worth keeping an eye on.