Hybrid

Hybrid is a downloadable third-person shooter video game released on August 8, 2012 for Xbox Live Arcade. It was developed by Bellevue, Washington-based 5th Cell, the creative studio behind the Scribblenauts series, Drawn to Life series, and Lock's Quest. Utilizing the Source game engine from Valve Corporation, this is the first Xbox 360 title from developer 5th Cell.

Gameplay
Hybrid is a multiplayer online third-person shooter set in a post apocalyptic world amidst a war between two factions: the Variant and the Paladin. Unlike most shooters, Hybrid does not allow free movement. Instead, the player can choose to fly from cover to cover by moving the cursor over it and selecting to move there.

Development
Hybrid was hinted at for many months, prior to its official announcement. The unnamed XBLA title from 5th Cell was talked about for nearly a year before any real information was released—other than that it was going to be "pretty big".

On October 21, 2010, a mysterious 7-day countdown appeared on the official 5th Cell website featuring an ashy ground with footprints and a clearly imprinted logo, causing speculation among the gaming community at the seemingly uncharacteristic theme.

At the close of the countdown, on Friday, October 29, 2010 at 1:00am EST/PDT an exclusive debut teaser trailer was shown on GameTrailers, revealing the somewhat shocking fact that the game would be a third-person shooter. At that time, 5th Cell also launched the official Hybrid website, displaying two dog tags linking to two different hubs of information about the game as relayed by the opposing factions.

Release and Reception
Hybrid was released on 8th of August 2012 as part of the Summer of Arcade promotion on Xbox Live. However, several issues caused the whole server to be down hours after its released. As a result, the game had to be removed from the Game Marketplace while 5th Cell and Microsoft solved the server issues. Due to Hybrid being a pure multiplayer game, many fans were upset by the delay. The issues were fortunately fixed within a few hours. Many critics praised the game's unique take on third-person shooters and its easy-to-understand gameplay.

The game is available on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 1200 Microsoft Points. It has a Metacritic score of 73/100.