Being a massive fan of Pom Pom's multi-directional shooter Mutant Storm Reloaded, possibly my favorite ever Xbox Live Arcade game, I was delighted to see a post on XBLArcade.com both praising Mutant Storm Reloaded and looking forward to Mutant Storm Empire, the next, long-in-development title in the series.

The blog notes: "Before buying Reloaded I had actually already played the first few levels of Mutant Storm Empire at DigitalLife in NYC back in October 2006. Empire eliminates the loading between levels by adding a series of corridors, through which you pass from level to level. It is a stroke of genius which makes the gameplay even more frenetic and fun. With that little taste of Empire, my Mutant Storm fanboyism was born."

The XBLArcade.com folks also comment: "We still don't know why a game that looked so great (albeit, just the first few levels) has been MIA for so long. We still don't know when Empire is actually coming out, but at least we've got some new videos. The only problem is that these videos just make the wait even more painful (in a good way though)."

As I've previously speculated in late May, when the title got an ESRB rating, it was probably making puzzle action title Bliss Island for Codemasters that slowed Pom Pom down, but surely with a rating and new videos out, the title's release can't be that far off?