XBLI - Xbox Live Indie Game Reviews, Community Games, XNA

Not a Goodbye

2009-10-12T11:57:00.008-04:00

The XBLI project is coming to a close. That doesn't mean those of you who've relied on my recommendations have nowhere to go. Instead, you can simply follow my main blog, RedRingCircus, where I'll showcase the most worthwhile titles via Indie Spotlights.

There's are several reasons I'm doing this:

-I'm one man with a day job. The Trial Rundowns were cutting into other writing activities, and if I ever want to write about games professionally, I have to stay fresh.

-RedRingCircus has a history, and XBLI simply doesn't get a ton of attention. By moving Xbox Indie coverage back there I hope to spread good game recommendations to more people.

-I proved what I wanted to prove with XBLI: that I could almost-singlehandedly provide Xbox Indie coverage with regular article deadlines every Tuesday. It can now stand as a portfolio piece. Mysterious game industry recruiters take note!

-While it was fun, I'm done bashing on bad games. They're not going away any time soon, and it creates a lot more work for me. When I cover a bad game it stirs up a hive of angry developers that ask for justification. In turn I must spend more time on bad games to make damn sure I'm providing thorough insight. The results are often funny, but this wastes everyone's time in the end.

So thanks for reading, and move on over to RedRingCircus, where you'll be seeing the first fruits of this switch shortly.

P.S. Bitmobbers, I'll begin posting the RRC Indie Spotlights over there as well.

XBLI Trial Rundown - 10/6/09

2009-10-06T08:13:00.000-04:00

Arkedo Series - 01 JUMP!
JUMP! is not a long game. Its 30 platforming levels can be completed in about an hour or two. But that's not the point - despite its length, JUMP! is everything that's right about Indie games. The polish and charm are both so far beyond most of what's available on XBLI it's staggering. Sure, you could argue it's so refined because there's not a ton of variety in level design or enemies, but that's exactly the kind of thing Indie gamers are going to let slide.

JUMP! is bright and colorful, it offers pitch-perfect controls, plus a ton of retro game references and off-beat jokes. It has style through and through, and it looks and plays like something Capcom, Konami, or even Nintendo would release. Again, maybe it doesn't last as long as a Mario and maybe it doesn't have as much variety as Megaman, but it's a small-time game that costs $3.

This is the way to make small budget games. They shouldn't be overly complex or provide hours of content (unless you can genuinely pull it off), instead developers should polish and perfect a small and simple game. Filling it with charming artwork and little touches doesn't hurt either. If JUMP! isn't enough proof that this method works than look to 'Splosion Man - it's basically the same idea.

Food for thought for XBLI developers aside, JUMP! is awesome - get it! (240pts)

Slingstar
Gameplay twists seem to come in waves on XBLI, and Slingstar's might be the next big thing. The idea is to attack not with your guns, Geometry Wars-style, but with two satellites tethered to your sides. Your movements toss each satellite around like a flail, colliding with a variety of bizarre enemies. It's not the most intuitive form of combat, but it is original and the swinging feels right. Slingstar might not click with you, but if it does you'll be in for a pretty unique title that'll feel like a vacation from the scores of twin-stick shooters on XBLI.
(80pts)

NINJA BROS. 忍者ブラザーズ
NINJA BROS. adds further evidence that the developers of NINJA TRAIN can make some damn fine games, and make them about ninjas. This is a more substantial offering compared to the so-quick-it's-awesome NINJA TRAIN, but it brings it's own unique gameplay flourishes. You control a ninja who can only run left and right, jump, and duck. That would be boring, except you actually play as up to four ninjas at once, each in their own micro-level on the screen. Pressing left and right moves all your ninjas simultaneouly, while each ninja is color-coded to jump at the press of its corresponding button. It's a brain-melting platforming/puzzle game with one of the most unique ideas to come out of XBLI in a while, but some control issues hold it back from the Game of the Week crown.
(80pts)

Fields Reloaded
If you're familiar with the original Fields, released back when XBLI was known as Community Games, two things should spring to mind with Fields Reloaded - one, the hip-hop/gangster premise is an insane departure, and two, this is actually a pretty decent iteration on the original. Fields Reloaded is a scrolling shooter where your main weapon is a bubble that slows time. The game is full of weirdness that suggests an amateur effort, but it still manages to be pretty enjoyable. Third times a charm though, and while Fields Reloaded has some rough edges, Fields Revolutions will probably be goddamn awesome.
(80pts)

Rail Gun Charlie
If Rail Gun Charlie was trying to pay homage to the bizarre visual style of Space Giraffe, it has succeeded brilliantly. The game is a trippy mix of twin-stick shooter and space sim, with your movement confined to a 2D plane while you can shoot in 3D. It's a weird combination, but it allows for brisk movement while at the same time challenging your aiming ability. The idea is to protect friendlies from capture while defeating all the enemies. While the game could probably use some more polish in graphics and controls, the overall package is incredibly odd and charming. (240pts)

XCross
XCross is a competent take on the popular game Picross. It's a little bit Minesweeper, a little bit Sodoku, and pretty damn challenging. I'll admit I was quickly perplexed by the so-called "easy" levels. Despite my confusion, I have to admit that Picross is a pretty beloved game and this version does it justice. It even has avatar support and a soothing soundtrack. (240pts)

Paint Boll (80pts) - Paint Boll is that game Combat for the Atari - you know, the pack-in game from 1977. The only difference is that Paint Boll is actually a lot worse.

Galactic Escape (240pts) - Galactic Escape offers an extreme juxtaposition of polished aesthetics and gameplay that just falls flat. It's one of those jet propulsion games but you play it in a pitch-black maze with a flashlight. Imagine gaming's equivalent of threading a needle.

SpiderEvader (80pts) - There's a cool concept hidden within SpiderEvader - by occasionally blinding you the game forces you to rely on sound to progress. It's too bad the game seems way more focused on superficial scares to sway your purchase decision.

RadRiverRun (240pts) - RadRiverRacing isn't an exciting, out-of-control romp down a raging river. It's just a balloon collecting game with infuriating controls.

Alien Encounters (240pts) - Alien Encounters is a casualty of over-ambitious game design on a small scale. It's impressive in the context of garage game design, but examined as a game that is sold for money through a professional channel it's laughable.

PushCrates (240pts) - Videogames combine several art mediums and an element of interaction. While sometimes one medium will suffer at the expense of another, no game should be so lacking in visual artistry as PushCrates. The look of the game is completely utilitarian, designed with the barest minimum of effort to showcase gameplay that's obvious and uninteresting.

SummerVacation (80pts) - XBLI games always seem to come in pairs, so here's your other crate pushing game for the week. It's too bad that this one from the creator of the excellent GREEN ISLAND is marred by awful controls and visuals.

D-Cypher
D-Cypher could appeal to people who enjoy logic puzzles but it's hard to imagine someone losing an afternoon to endless code-cracking. The game needs another hook to go from competent-but-dull to truly engaging.
(80pts)

Alien Pyramid Challenge! (80pts) - If you feel that games like Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp or A Fading Melody are more than competent, by-the-book platformers that don't hold a candle to the classics, then by all means give Alien Pyramid Challenge! a shot. These kinds of platformers aren't awful, but their world and controls are far too rigid and static.

Tarot (240pts)
Pumpkin Carver (80pts)
The Visualizer (80pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 9/29/09

2009-09-29T08:26:00.001-04:00

This was a rough week for Indie Games. A slew of awful releases are complemented by a bit of hope here and there. The end result features a few new and noteworthy additions, but nothing on par with say, last week's Fishing Girl. There's always next week!

Astro Taxi
Astro Taxi is awesome for being both a nostalgic and original game. It adopts Commodore 64-style graphics and uses them to create a 2D version of Crazy Taxi. The goal is to propel your rocket-powered taxi to and from various platforms around the level - all the while you must be careful not to crash or forget to use landing gear. It's not going to blow you away, but it manages to nail a sweet spot where the propulsion-based physics are challenging without being overly frustrating. (240pts)

MoleGame
MoleGame is whack-a-mole, and it's about as short-lived as that simple carnival game. Still, it's slim-pickings this week for XBLI and MoleGame isn't half-bad. It nails its simple controls and feedback in a way that so many Indie games fail to do. The game doesn't last more than a minute, but if you buy it you get a few different modes and it's pretty fun to go for a high score. (80pts)

Junkyard Battle
Junkyard Battle is a physics-based object stacking game. You use a crane to create a tower of junk and reach a specific height threshold. It's a multiplayer game, but the single-player training levels are pretty fun on their own. The only issue is that the feel of the game is a bit off. The physics aren't quite right, and objects tend to slide off of each other in odd ways. Still, it's something different on XBLI, and it sets a solid groundwork for more physics games. (80pts)

Astero Defender (80pts) - While it's kind of fun to see how far you can get within the length of the demo, this 2D shooter has little else to offer. Lazy enemy patterns, awkward collision detection, and poor graphics completely sour the experience.

War Ships (240pts) - War Ships is an unnecessarily confusing take on Battleship that assumes a level of trust among a couch full of players that's just a little too optimistic.

VectorForce (80pts) - VectorForce may be the closest XBLI has come to offering a true "bullet hell" 2D shooter. The problem is that the onslaught of death is repetitive and the feel of the combat is completely dull.

Tartaros (240pts) - Tartaros is an awful example of game design that's so bare bones you can practically understand the math behind it with a passing glance. When Indie games begin to strip away the magic of game design and programming you have to wonder if this is all worth it.

Jake's Room (80pts) - Another example of game design hot out of someone's Direct X textbook, Jake's Room screams Computer Science project. Your teacher may have given you an A, but that doesn't mean you should be selling this.

Cassie's Corner (80pts) - Cassie's Corner is so pathetically pandering that they included the off-beat blond and her boobs but forgot to finish the actual game. Cassie reads quiz questions which involve interesting, Snapple cap-style facts, but you're never given the answers. What the hell?

Picture Slider (80pts) - Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it doesn't get you any points here. Picture Slider is nearly identical to 15 Puzzle, and that game already nailed sliding puzzle controls and presentation.

Criminals Under Arrest (80pts) - Spelling errors, poor graphics, and sloppy combat spell doom for this 2D brawler. There's a million other brawlers out there and this one isn't worth your time.

Lander Mania (80pts) - You've probably played some form of Lunar Lander before, the game where you propel yourself around and try to make safe landings. Lander Mania is exactly that, only unpolished - it's a bad version of an already boring game.

The Adhara War (240pts) - This is a pretty good idea - mix turn-based strategy with twin-stick shooter battles to decide the outcome. Unfortunately, neither feature is implemented well at all.

Fireworks Screensaver (80pts)
Clownfish Aquarium (80pts)
The Fart Machine II (80pts)

NEWS: New XBLI Peer Review Rules Kill Free Games, Bad Demos

2009-09-28T15:30:00.004-04:00

>>NEWS

via: XNA Creators Club News

It looks like titles such as Ninja Train or GREEN ISLAND won't pass the peer review process in the future, thanks to an update of terms that adds stricter rules to XBLI trials.

The newly added text in the Peer Review Guidelines quickly outlines restrictions that seem like a response to some recent releases.

"All games must have a trial mode that showcases the actual game experience. If you fail to do so or use this method to provide your game for free your game will be failed in the Peer Review process. Games are NOT available for free currently on the system. This system is NOT a video hosting service and should not be used as such."

Recent releases that break these guidelines include Ninja Train, which is essentially a free game because you can play it within the span of the trial. Others, like 2GoVids Rachel Star Stunt Show and Fire don't let you get near the actual content during the trial time. Rachel Star's game is a particular offender for being little more than some videos and a menu.

While these guidelines are upsetting for how they limit the impact of bite-sized games on XBLI, the changes should improve the service overall. Still, anyone feel like that quote above comes off like a nagging mother? "And another thing...!"

XBLI Trial Rundown - 9/22/09

2009-09-21T22:55:00.000-04:00

Fishing Girl
Fishing Girl captures just about everything you could want in an Indie game. It's cute, artistic, simple, cheap ($1), and addicting. You rarely press more than one button and yet you could easily lose a couple hours to this endearing little fishing game.

Separated from her love, the fishing girl must fish for enough money and upgrades to save her man stranded on a far-off island. You take control, casting the rod with a timed release of the A button, and then lure a variety of fish by reeling them in, again, with the A button. A shop gives you new rods and lures which in turn give you access to bigger, rarer fish and more money.

The game is short thanks to a time limit, but you can extend this time by quickly catching lots of fish. Plus it's backed by some fun achievements - finding all the fish, casting the furthest distance, and saving a lot of money are all rewarded in various ways.

Aesthetically, the graphics are simple and appealing, but the game could definitely use some music or ambient noise. Then again, when was the last time you had an excuse to start up your own soundtrack?

Overall, Fishing Girl isn't just the game of the week, but one of the best Indie games yet. It encapsulates everything that's right about small-time game development and is sure to leave a big smile on your face. (80pts)

Pixel Man
Pixel Man pushes the limits of technically-poor yet classy presentation with four or five colors, simplistic environments, and stiff, single-button controls. It's also kind of an asshole - blind jumps, frustratingly precise jump timing, and dead-ends all impede your progress in ways that are generally considered bad game design. The twist? Infinite lives and thirty brief levels mean the whole thing is over and done with in about half an hour. All the while you'll wonder whether you should be reading into it - the way the levels toy with you certainly suggest a vague message on choice and consequence. (80pts)

PyroManic - Solo
Last week I officially had my fill of Ikaruga-inspired color-matching shooters. Imagine my lack of surprise when yet another one came along. But as much as I want to make fun of PyroManic and toss it in with the rest of the crap, it has enough polish and arcade-y charm to sneak into this week's noteworthy releases. The idea is to stop an ever-increasing downpour of colored objects by shooting them with the corresponding face button on the controller. There's not really much of a twist to it other than a cool beam which turns enemies into gold. What I like most is the really welcoming arcade aesthetic which an announcer that wouldn't be out of place in one of those dingy public game rooms of the past. (240pts)

On A Roll
On A Roll should be immediately familiar to anyone who was around for the 16-bit era - from the unforgettable title cards for levels, to the fast, looping action, this is a Sonic clone through and through. The somewhat sad truth is that this little Indie game seems to understand more about what made Sonic a great series than the guys at Sega these days. Even the music sets the mood perfectly. And while it seems a little more challenging than the typical Sonic game, On A Roll looks to satiate anyone's thirst for a quick, action-packed 2D romp. (240pts)

Sol Survivor (800pts) - Competent tower defense game that needs another coat of polish before it can rise above this crowded genre. Decent, but instantly forgettable.

Hollow Ball (80pts) - Hollow Ball offers a bit more than the typical Pong clone, but not enough to truly differentiate it.

Graviton AI (240pts) - Graviton's developer insists this is a deep and strategic game and then locks out all the features. Anything that might make it more than a bad 2D shooter is missing in the trial.

Dead Meat (80pts) - Dead Meat's slow pace and shambling zombies would be interesting in a well-designed environment, but in a big gray box it's really boring.

Azubi's Pool Of Bethesda (240pts) - Imagine a budding game developer running out of bible studies to go design their religious Minesweeper clone. Then imagine that they thought there was no rhyme or reason to Minesweeper, and that the idea was to blindly place marks until you lost. Now hope that in this imaginary situation they're at least able to make something better than this.

Johnny's Skydiving Lessons (80pts) The premise of Johnny's - chasing your own parachute through the clouds to avoid certain death - is hilarious, and so of course the actual game isn't really any fun. Figures...

Origin (400pts) - Thank you for creating a different take on Breakout. The only problem is that it's exactly as awful as regular Breakout.

War: The Card Game Advanced (80pts) - "...with a twist!" is often a legitimate way to describe something, but in the case of XBLI it's usually a red flag. The twist is either nowhere to be found, or completely undesirable. War is the latter, adding button mashing to one of the worst card games in the history of the world.

Velocity (80pts) - Velocity isn't too terrible - it's like those light and rotating mirror puzzles that are in so many games. The problem is that it's far too difficult and uninviting from the start to keep most people interested.

Hypnotizing (80pts)
2GoVids Rachel Star Stunt Show (80pts)
Fire (80pts)
Chillax HD (80pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 9/15/09

2009-09-15T15:01:00.001-04:00

GREEN ISLAND
GREEN ISLAND harks back to the days before Gamestop homogenized game stores. It's reminiscent of a time when you could walk in to your local Microplay or Gamezone or whatever and grab some oddball import from Japan. A great mix of bizarre, old school graphics and just enough English to be completely decipherable, GREEN ISLAND is a taste of how exciting and unique XBLI's open, worldwide market can be.

But it's not just that GREEN ISLAND is an oddball release, it's also an excellent puzzle/platformer. The goal of the game is to navigate through 50 levels and collect all of the gems scattered around. Simple enough, but it's complicated by fans, rotating platforms, and maze-like areas that are tackled with nothing but a bubble gun. Yep, in true Japanese gaming tradition, bubbles play a prominent role in GREEN ISLAND - they're climbable and they can be used to make bridges, fill gaps, or hit switches.

The game never really goes out of it's way to test your patience, but grabbing all the extra golden orbs and going for the best time is part of the fun. Plus, the trial let's you play all 50 levels, meaning you can test a whole slew of levels to influence your buying decision.
(80pts)

Filler
I have never played a game like Filler and part of me finds that unbelievable. It's a game that's based on the kind of simple and immediately entertaining concept that's been copied ten times before you even hear of it. So excuse my possible ignorance when I call Filler a unique and cleverly elegant puzzle game. The idea is to inflate balloons as large as possible in order to fill two-thirds of a two-dimensional box. The only problem is an ever increasing army of bouncing balls that are intent of popping your balloons before they're finished.
(240pts)

I Heart Shift
I Heart Shift isn't noteworthy for being a quality game, but rather for being weird as hell. It combines puzzle game color-matching with a twin-stick shooter and tops it all off with some unpleasant sound design. Ultimately, the experience quickly falls flat, but there's a hint of potential here and you can't deny it's something different.
(80pts)

Bailout!
Bailout! looks and plays like an Atari 2600 game, but smartly adds a modern day economy and advancement system. As a rich man in a failing economy, you must run left and right, collecting falling bailout money, avoiding suicidal stock brokers, and kicking away peddlers. Along the way you gain access to better and better skills, allowing you to move more quickly, hold more money, or shield yourself from attacks, to name a few. In our next-gen world, Bailout! may not be much to look at, but it has that addictive sense of achievement and advancement that's the backbone of some of the best modern games.
(80pts)

PebbleDash Lite (80pts) - Learning that the original PebbleDash was a remake of the old school game BoulderDash didn't change my mind. Charging less money helps a bit, but it's at the expense of content.

Duologue (240pts) - With at least one Ikaruga/Geometry Wars-inspired shooter per week releasing on XBLI, the line had to be drawn somewhere. Duologue doesn't offer anything new and it doesn't do it with style either.

Gitigiti (80pts) - It seems that the harder you try to play Gitigiti, the more likely it is to punish you. This "cross-breeding RTS" works best when you mindlessly direct your units toward the enemy. Real-Time Strategy without the strategy? No thanks.

Bust a Wall (80pts) - This week's most generic attempt at Break Out!

Electron Defense (240pts) - A tower defense game that makes no attempt to do something interesting or unique.

The Headsman (80pts) - The Headsman is certainly clever, if not very fun. You'd never imagine XBLI as an avenue for band promotion, but The Headsman prominently features a music video from cheeseball metal act Deathlike Silence. This video:

Crazy Coins (80pts) - Crazy Coins is eerily similar in premise to the afforementioned Bailout! Unfortunately it's not so similar in execution - it's essentially the same game with worse controls, worse aesthetics, and no sense of progression.

Charlie Cat's Hot Air Balloon (80pts) - While cats manning AA guns are always hilarious, Charlie Cat borrows more from flash games than the classic 2D space shooters it's trying to emulate.

Enemy at the Gate 80pts - Imagine Missile Command without the emphasis on carefully placed shots and you'll end up with a game that's painfully dull, or called Enemy at the Gate.

Warfare Soundboard (80pts)
Words Search (240pts)
Pulsar (240pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 9/8/09

2009-09-08T15:58:00.002-04:00

Halfbrick Rocket Racing
When I started this new format for Trial Rundowns, I didn't expect to have a hard time choosing a game of the week. If anything, the hard decision would come during those weeks when every single game sucked. So imagine my surprise when I had to choose between four great games this week. Halfbrick Rocket Racing, Avatar Drop, Kuchibi, and Avatar Golf are all impressive releases that are worth your time.

Halfbrick Rocket Racing is your game of the week for a few reasons - all of these titles are great fun, but Rocket Racing barely edges out the competition by offering something a little more unique to the Indie Games' library.

Rocket Racing is an overhead, futuristic racing game - think R.C. Pro-Am mixed with Wipeout. Your vehicle of choice is a rocket car with powerful, individually-controlled jet engines. The default control scheme has you throttling the triggers for precise control, but most people will find the beginner layout to be ideal. Once you adjust to the controls, it's all about beating your times on 40 different courses or taking on your friends in local multiplayer.

The twist in Halfbrick Rocket Racing is its edge-of-your-seat wall-hugging mechanic. Crashing into walls will cause a time penalty, but brushing your rockets along them will give you a record-smashing, race-winning boost. Combine this with real online leaderboards, and you have a recipe for a lost afternoon. (240pts)

Avatar Golf
Avatar Golf is a casual take on golf with online play, leaderboards, and a great course creation tool. It also happens to have avatar support, but that's just a gimmick in what is otherwise a fully-featured game. The course editor is a particular standout feature. The toolset is simple to use, and your designs aren't bogged down by too many artificial limits. It's super simple to create a pirate-ship laden moat around the green, surround that with a village, surround that with a forest, and then unleash it on unsuspecting friends. The only thing holding this game back is some atrocious loading that can significantly bog down the experience. (400pts)

Kuchibi
XBLI is overflowing with great puzzle games, and Kuchibi is no different. What sets it apart is a clever mix of Pipe Dream (or the hacking minigame in Bioshock) and a little bit of Hexic. Just as in Pipe Dream, the goal is to connect pipes and create long chains, but you can eliminate a chain at any time. This is where the Hexic bit comes in, as you create elaborate, high-scoring arrangements, you must carefully ensure you don't send the whole thing toppling down too soon. (240pts)

Avatar Drop
Avatar Drop is blazing trails in the realm of avatar violence. Microsoft says you won't be shooting at your avatar, but at least you can drop them the sky and mangle them on floating obstacles. Your goal is to navigate your avatar through the vertical course, popping balloons and diving through rings for points. Aside from that, it's just a lot of fun to toss your avatar around. There's not a lot to Avatar Drop, but it's a hilarious and well-made distraction for only a buck. (80pts)

シャイニング　ブラッド shining blood
Shining blood is an odd treat - it plays somewhat like Virtual On or other mech games, but it looks like Rez played through a filter of crimson. The goal is to navigate your sluggish mech through an arena of odd enemies, figure out how to kill them, and move on to the next arena. It's certainly not a perfect game, but it gets by with an almost avant garde design that will compel enthusiasts to explore its depths. (400pts)

Crystal Spear remake
Question of the week: What is Crystal Spear a remake of? I certainly can't find it anywhere. This game, remake or not, is another one of those bite-sized experiences that's hard to deny. You have your fun within the trial time, navigating in first-person perspective through a hallway of obstacles. You continuously increase in speed as long as you don't crash, and you can slow time to make last second dodges. You may find you've had your fill by the end of the trial, but that's the idea, the developer even encourages it. (80pts)

The Answer to Life (80pts) - Pure evil condensed into 5MB. The Answer to Life is little more than a text-based gimmick. But hey, it comes with yet another version of Get the Ball so it can't be that bad, right?

Sky_Arena (80pts) - While it's nice to see the son of God taking a stab at indie game design (the developer's name is Jesus), this half-baked flight sim doesn't offer the kind of divine perfection you'd expect from our savior.

魔法の国のメロディファニーダンシング (240pts) - After stumbling through some Japanese menus you're dumped into a pit of despair (dancing anime girls) with no means of escape.

Mini Golf 360 (80pts) - If this is an approximation of real mini golf then the developer should have calculated a few more decimal places.

Color Break (80pts) - Color Break is Pong mixed with - surprise - Ikaruga. All these color-matching action games aren't necessarily a bad thing, but this one just falls flat.

Dark Skies: Constellations (240pts) - Cool stargazing app, unfortunately priced.

Fireworks Spectacular (80pts)

Wizard's Tower Screen Saver (80pts)

Flash Cards for Kids (240pts)

Stereo3D Gallery (80pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 9/1/09

2009-09-01T08:31:00.001-04:00

Track Architect
Track Architect is a lot like the indie, toy-car version of Trials HD. It has the same basic premise as that recent XBLA hit - your goal is to get to the end of a track without succumbing to the hazards of a sensible, if not realistic, physics engine. It's never as easy as racing over some rolling hills either - you're tasked with navigating collapsing bridges, rows of dominos, and powerful gusts of wind.

The architect side of Track Architect comes in the shape of a super-simple track editor. Without a way to share levels, this ends up being one of the games foibles, as the track editor seems like an excuse to limit the amount of in-game levels. Those who have no interest in creative game design may find themselves quickly burning through the game with little reason to go back. Thankfully, at a mere dollar, you can have your fun with the small offering of levels and come away without regret. (80pts)

Ninja Guardian
There's a lot of odd coincidences on XBLI - Ninja Guardian is the second ninja platforming game to come out in about seven days. Ninja Train was the first. They both feature tiny, cutesy ninjas, stylized presentation, and an obscured or limited view of the action. But while Ninja Train offered little more than a light snack, Ninja Guardian is more substantial. You must bound from platform to platform, maintaining momentum in order to reach your goal above. The actual jumping is automatic, but you must move left to right while each platform falls out from under you. The game demands quick reflexes - the moment you realize there's no nearby platforms and plummet to your death can be frustrating, but you'll most likely jump right back in and try again. (240pts)

Arrow Run
It turns out that when all the commands in a quicktime event are laid out on the screen before you, it's actually pretty fun. Arrow Run proves this with an experience that could be described as Dance Dance Revolution Racing. The idea is to quickly navigate a maze of arrows by inputting the corresponding d-pad direction. The visual noise in the sea of arrows will slow you down, as a false move leaves you stuck in place briefly. It's surprisingly entertaining for such a simple premise - especially one inspired by one of the most irritating gameplay tropes of this console generation. (80pts)

15 Puzzle
15 Puzzle is the video game version of that tile-based, sliding jigsaw puzzle we've all seen in countless happy meals, dollar stores, and gimmick shops. Normally I'd be hard on something that's a simple adaptation of a kid's toy, but 15 Puzzle's mix of perfect controls and beautiful, hi-res photography makes for an enjoyable experience. Sure it's derivative, but it does what it does with class. (240pts)

Hot Potato Online
Reminiscent of Bomberman, but unique in its own right, Hot Potato Online offers a customizable, fast-paced online multiplayer game. It'll be interesting to see how the game fares over internet connections, but the core idea is a blast. Your goal is to toss a bomb around and make sure it's not in your hands when it explodes. Simple enough, but the twist comes with a variety of environmental hazards that will ricochet the bomb, teleport it to other parts of the arena, or make it explode on contact. This could be great for parties, and it's worth mentioning that profits from the game will go to the Child's Play charity. (400pts)

Colotristar (240pts) - Looks like Bejeweled, plays like something else. It would be engaging except for some sluggish animations that bring down the entire experience.

ダウンタウン激凸ドッジボール! (800pts) - Those with fond memories of Super Dodgeball will want to give this game a shot, but the overlong matches and insane cost will deter most.

BallsAndBlocks (80pts) - This Marble Blast Ultra wannabe is too sluggish and stress-inducing to enjoy.

Hotel Danger (80pts) - Hotel Danger is fun for the five minutes it takes to discover all the reasons it's terrible.

No apps this week!

XBLI Trial Rundown - 8/25/09

2009-08-25T17:42:00.002-04:00

Dodge These Balls
Dodge These Balls is a competent but mind-numbingly simple game. You're tasked with navigating your own ball through a set of balls that periodically increase in number. The fun begins when the number of balls on screen starts to get out of control. If it popped up as an event in something like Mario Party, it would be a hit. But as a standalone game there's very little to latch on to. (80pts)

Zombies 2.0
Zombies 2.0 appears to be a mix of twin-stick shooting and tower defense. Unfortunately, this mash-up of indie designers' darling genres is marred by some serious issues. Boring combat and an obnoxious flashlight frustrate well before any of the game's depth can be seen. (240pts)

Penguin Slip-Slide Lite
Penguin Slip-Slide is a puzzle game in the strictest sense. You maneuver your penguin in four directions through a maze made of ice - the idea is to find the igloo at the end without slipping off the edge. It comes from a school of puzzle design where there's one solution and that's that. That would be a problem if not for the game's 100 stages. Penguin Slip-Slide is sure to keep you occupied for a while, but once you've solved it there's little replay value. (80pts)

Pastels Square
In the grand scheme of falling block puzzle games (or "Fall thing game the third generation" as it is affectionately described in its marketplace description), Pastels Square is not very good. The graphics are ugly, the controls are limited, and the difficulty curve is way off. On the bright side, its color-matching gameplay is actually somewhat unique, and the poorly translated instructions are tear-inducingly hilarious. (400pts)

Bed Time Nursery Rhymes
Unsurprisingly, Bed Time Nursery Rhymes isn't a game. It's a collection of several classic nursery rhymes, displayed on the screen with artwork and audio dialogue. The audio quality isn't the greatest, but the intention is a good one. The biggest thing stripping this indie game of any merit is that it lacks even the simplest of interactive elements. In a world where games still have a bad reputation, it would be nice to see a game for young kids take advantage of the medium. (80pts)

Shellblast HD
Shellblast HD is a unique take on Minesweeper that you may find even more enjoyable than that classic PC game. Your goal is to defuse a bomb by tracking down and marking danger points on an arrangement of nodes. The game gives you a cross-shaped highlighter to sniff out trouble, and it's up to you to mark all the nodes. By simplifying the deductive reasoning required, Shellblast HD offers an alternate for fans of Minesweeper as well as those who turned it off in frustration. (400pts)

Puzzle?
Puzzle? is a collection of simple word games. You have to create as many words as possible within the time limit, and each game mode has its own twist. These games are a dime a dozen, and honestly it's all about presentation. This is where Puzzle? falters - it's nothing more than a black screen and letters. (80pts)

デッドラGO!
This is a tower defense game with great music, great production values, and hilarious artwork. Unfortunately, all the text is Japanese, so unless you're fluent, many aspects of this game will go over your head. Still, what I was able to glean from the gameplay was decent - it's your basic tower defense game, but whether there's more to it than that isn't entirely clear. (400pts)

Streets of Fury
Streets of Fury is one of the weirdest looking games you'll ever see. The game uses HD, live-action, digitized sprites, Mortal Kombat-style. For that it's worth at least a quick look, but this simple brawler is far too weird and simplistic to take seriously. The all-too-limited cast of characters and their nonchalant attacks make for a game that evokes laziness, even though it may have actually taken a lot of work to make. Better production value could have made for a game that was as fun and awesome as it is bizarre and hilarious. (240pts)

Nasty
Nasty's cover art, with its twin commandos blasting away monsters, evokes old-school shooters like Contra or Gunstar Heroes. The actual game paints a much different picture. Nasty is a painfully dull shooter where you fight annoying controls in order to kill all of the poorly-designed enemies in each drab arena. Skip this and get Weapon of Choice or Veks and Silence instead. (400pts)

LOLCats
I'm surprised it took this long. It's a gallery of lolcats...I don't really have anything insightful to say about that. You should know what to do. (80pts)

Storage Inc
If you're a gamer who ever worked in a warehouse than you probably brainstormed this exact game at one point or another. The idea is to manage a constant flux of shipments using a forklift and your limited workspace. It's a part time-management, part puzzle game as you arrange your boxes for optimal access and navigation. Storage Inc is actually pretty fun for something that so closely resembles work. Part of that is due to the solid controls and forgiving physics. It's also built for local multiplayer, so there's a lot of potential for chaotic fun. (400pts)

Octagon
Octagon's twist on 2D-shooter gameplay teeters on the edge of "inspired" and "borrowed". It's influenced by the color-changing antics of Ikaruga, only it ratchets up the available colors. It would be easy to scoff and toss Octagon with the rest of copycats, but it has enough smart design choices beyond the basic gameplay to remain interesting. The way your color influences the behavior of the enemies and their patterns allows for thoughtful planning and high score opportunities. The first boss fight was also cleverly designed, and the ice world the game is set in looks great. Octagon is a solid, fun game that does a reasonable job of setting itself apart. (240pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 8/21/09

2009-08-21T15:43:00.006-04:00

Today's edition boils your indie gaming time into a bite-sized, three-minute chunk with Ninja Train. Check that one out, but be sure to read below and see if any of the others interest you. And don't forget to give a dollar to the brilliant I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 if you haven't yet.

Lastly, one bit of feedback would be much appreciated: How do you read the trial rundowns? Are the bad reviews entertaining? Are they of value to you? Would you prefer that I cherry-pick the best games and go into more detail, or do you like hearing my justifications for skipping out on the crap? Please let me know in the comments below, thanks!

Game Finder
Game Finder is too little, too late. It's an app that allows you to rate Indie games through three different interfaces. While the first-person, Blockbuster-esque shelf-browsing is pretty cool, it's simply too much effort to go into Game Finder when the Live Marketplace has ratings a mere click away. (80pts)

Goldens
Goldens is going to piss people off. You drive an odd contraption, digging for gold, sucking it up in a vacuum, and firing it out the back into a moving trolley. Figuring out what does what is an experience in itself, but then you have to compete with other players who are all trying to do the same thing. This is where the inevitable anger comes in, as you steal gold from each other constantly. It's a very strange game, but it's one to keep in mind when you have friends over and want to make them angry. (240pts)

Shardscape Assault
While the experimentation in Shardscape Assault's trial game is endearing, it's implementation is ultimately a turn off. The game does away with slow-moving tutorials and thrusts you right into the action. But being in the thick of it in Shardscape isn't fun. Mountains of odd-looking respawning enemies hound you as you grapple with the controls. Meanwhile, the environment does its best to immobilize your already high immobile tank. Top that off with a cryptic system for upgrading weapons and you have a game that's high on ideas but misses the mark in the end. (80pts)

1337 Ship Deathmatch
1337 Ship Deathmatch is an immature title for a amateur effort. It's a multiplayer take on Asteroids, a game which doesn't really hold up these days. It doesn't fare any better as a multiplayer game, and it doesn't even seem as fun as that original, dull, arcade classic. (400pts)

Wacky Karts
Few kart racing games hold up on the quality of their racing alone - Mario Kart, Crash Team Racing, hell, even Sonic R rely on powersliding, power-ups, and shortcuts to spice things up. Wacky Karts offers none of this. Aside from a few barely-useful power-ups, it's just you, the road, and a bunch of opponents who inexplicably drive much faster than you. The game looks pretty good in an "homage to Mario Kart" way, but the actual racing is far too punishing and dull to be any fun. (400pts)

Atomhex
Atomhex is a tricky game to recommend. It doesn't offer much to really set it apart from the scores of other twin-stick shooters. The only gimmick is a color-coded collection of enemies that require some Ikaruga-style resourcefulness to tackle. For the most part, it's business as usual, but solid business in the end. It's an enjoyable game, but there are so many like it that you have to draw the line somewhere, and Atomhex simple doesn't do enough to set itself apart. (80pts)

Arbor Vitae
Arbor Vitae is a flawed and ugly twin-stick shooter that comes with one of the most misguided examples of environmentalism you'll ever witness. Your goal is to nurture and protect a tree from the most innocuous of villains - namely, bugs and pollen. Surely there are worse threats in the world, like lumberjacks. In fact, a game where you protected a tree from chainsaw-wielding lumberjacks would definitely be more fun than Arbor Vitae. (240pts)

Ninja Train
Ninja Train is a bizarre tale of ninjas bounding across buildings, collecting coins, and parachuting through the sky, all from the perspective of a passenger on a speeding train. More importantly, it offers a clever solution for bite-sized gaming on XBLI. Ninja Train is all over in about 3 or 4 minutes, whether you try your best or put your controller on the floor. The game doesn't pull any tricks, and you can get your fill within the trial. On top of that, the catchy music, cute graphics, and quirky stylings make for an enjoyable snack between meatier games. (80pts)

A Frog Game
A Frog Game is so simplistic that I expected an offer for a free iPod at the end. All you do is press A to jump from one lily pad to another, and press a trigger to catch flies out of the air. That's all there is to it. While simple games are the standard on XBLI, there's no unique idea or finesse in the gameplay to elevate A Frog Game beyond a complete waste of time. (240pts)

Crescendo Symphony (RPG/Puzzle Thingy)
Eventually a game is going to come along that is so inexplicably Japanese that I won't be qualified to review it. This new game in the Crescendo Symphony "series" walks that line. It's a one-on-one puzzle combat game wrapped up in an RPG battle system format. You interchange blocks on a grid in order to build the most attack or defense points for your character. Then the two bug-eyed anime girls go at it and scream in high-pitched voices. Eventually, one of you lose, the game ends, and all that's left is to do it all over again. The combat system would be cool in an actual RPG, but on its own Crescendo Symphony seems more like a tech demo with a big-boobed lady. (240pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 8/17/09

2009-08-17T23:18:00.002-04:00

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1
With Ska Studios, the one-man development team, James Silva, is proving that a little charm can go a long way. Dishwasher: Dead Samurai rose to Xbox Live Arcade fame with a hyperactive, 2D shout-out to character action games like Ninja Gaiden and God of War. Meanwhile, he has kept busy, releasing a handful of XBLI titles that have been pretty good themselves. Now he's back with I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1, wherein you happily give him a dollar to wear a giant smile on your face for 15 minutes. There's not really more to it than that - you play a local, 4-player twin-stick shooter, battling zombies and more as the game progresses. The magic comes in after a minute or so, when the soundtrack's chorus kicks in and the visuals go wild to match it. This is XBLI's equivalent to Splosion Man's Donut Song, or the Ode to Joy segment in Peggle - it's sheer, simple brilliance. (80pts)

Golden Tangram
Golden Tangram is an abstract twist on the typical jigsaw puzzle. Here you're given a handful of basic polygons and tasked with making a picture out of them. It's pretty tricky, even from the start. Thankfully, the controls and visuals are decent enough that they don't interfere. If you're into some tricky, methodical puzzle solving, give this one a shot. (80pts)

Power Hour
This game insists it does not condone excessive drinking and yet that's the whole idea. Your goal is to take a drink every minute for an hour and outlast your competition. Anyone dumb enough to play this would probably also finish their session, black out, and wake up in an alley with their pants around their ankles. It also doesn't let you play unless you get your own music playing, which was mostly just really inconvenient for me, because I had to get up and plug in an MP3 player. The things I go through for you, my dear readers! (80pts)

The Drinking Game
Developer North Squard is sending mixed signals by releasing Wacky Water Fun and The Drinking Game within a few days of each other - they even share the same basic interface and title screen. Actually, I could have sworn I've seen this interface before. Yep, Reef Rave...and look at that, Johnny's Minefield is another one of their games that's coming out in 3...2...1...there it is! How does one developer put out so many games in such a short time? Well, if The Drinking Game is anything to go by, they simply don't make much of a game. This slot machine drinking game will likely leave drunkards fumbling with their controllers in frustration. (80pts)

Johnny's Minefield
While North Squard's games are painfully simple, some, like Johnny's Minefield, maintain a good balance between ridiculous simplicity and actual fun. The goal is to traverse a minefield with only a brief preview of where the mines are located. The arrangements are random but grow in complexity as you go along. For a dollar, it's certainly the best of North Squard's offers thus far. (80pts)

Gogs
Gogs is a physics-based matching game with some of the most broken-ass ball physics I've seen since my Comp Sci days. The balls collide awkwardly, and sometimes not at all. DEVELOPER PROTIP: Try checking for collisions more often, or accounting for overlapping balls. Also: get your degree first and then make a game. Then make a few more games, THEN put one out on XBLI, you'll do us all a favor. (80pts)

Zens 360
Zens 360 is a daily proverb app that barely deserves this single sentence description I've provided. The only art assets are the cover art, the backdrop in the game, and an awful font. Here's one: "He who does not buy this game sleeps soundly." (80pts)

ホースレーススターター　Horse Race Stater
Let's paint a scene: It's 1977 and your family is the only one on the block with a brand new Atari 2600. You've only got one game but you're all so excited to try it. The game is Horse Race Stater. You ignore the odd misspelling and incomprehensible Japanese text and dive straight into the game. "Press A," the game suggests. You press it and watch in excitement as a horse race begins. It looks so amazing, and you can't wait to play the actual game. The race ends. "Press A," the game suggests once more. Excitement turns to cautious optimism. "Press A." Yet another race begins, and a dark cloud descends upon the living room as you realize that's the whole game. This is the kind of crap that could have ended this industry three decades ago, why would it be fun for anyone now? (80pts)

LIVELAYER PROTOTYPE
While calling LIVELAYER an enjoyable dungeon crawler is fair, it would be doing all of your eyes a great disservice. While the gameplay itself is fun, and the little sound effects copped from games like Zelda are cute, the game is simply too microscopic to truly enjoy. I played for as long as I could tolerate it, and eventually had to quit before the trial time was even over. Remember trying to read the text in Dead Rising on an SDTV? Yeah, it's like that, even in HD. (80pts)

360 Mega App Pack HD
UPDATE: I got 360 Mega App Pack working, apparently it was an isolated incident. Still, there are few surprises here. You get your massage app, your calculator, clock, memory game, and more, all in one package. I have to give credit where credit is due though, the package has some really nice presentation. It's still doing little more than consolidating a lot of what's wrong with XBLI, but considering it's only a dollar, the package isn't such a bad thing. (80pts)

Review: Bored Meeting

2009-08-17T14:04:00.003-04:00

Here's a review I did a while back on my other site, Red Ring Circus. There was a price drop (down to 80 points) recently so I figured it was worth a repost:

Unlike most of the better XBLI games, which sell themselves on unique concepts, Bored Meeting focuses on uproarious multiplayer fun. It's developer Steven Jones' tribute to Sega's Chu Chu Rocket. More specifically, it's a flexible take on Chu Chu's local multiplayer mode.

A Dreamcast classic, Chu Chu Rocket pits four players on a grid, directing hundreds of mice into a colored rocket by placing arrows. Bored Meeting keeps the basic premise, replacing rodents and rockets with marketing metaphors. One twist: players can create "marketing buzz" to destroy walls, a mechanic used to great effect in certain stages, where players dig through the level to reach their respective goals.

It's a must-buy under the right circumstances, but there are a few catches. As a copycat, Bored Meeting isn't a replacement for Chu Chu Rocket, as it simply isn't as polished or fully-featured. More importantly, this is a four-player party game, and if you can't get 1-3 other friends (and controllers) in a room, there's not much of a game here.

(Download Bored Meeting on the Xbox Marketplace)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 8/15/09

2009-08-15T14:32:00.009-04:00

Either I'm feeling too generous or today was actually a decent day for XBLI. Check it out:

sbdm-1
Of all the input devices in the world, I can't imagine anything worse than a gamepad for this kind of app. sbdm-1 is a music sequencer, allowing you to loop various sound samples in an arrangement. It's the kind of thing that works best when you have the actual machine in front of you, or a mouse, or a touch screen. Although sbdm-1 does a good job of what it sets out to do, it really has no business on an Xbox 360. (240pts)

Megalopolis
The fatal flaw of Megalopolis is that it's restricted to the default 8-minute trial time. Any reasonably complex strategy game is going to take more than 8 minutes to fully appreciate, and this game is no different. Through the first three or four trial attempts I struggled, assuming the game was supposed to be a tough lesson in deforestation, pollution, and natural disasters. It turns out that once you learn to balance your resources, that the game is actually fun and manageable. Megalopolis offers fast-paced and simple city-building strategy that you could lose hours to (as long as you buy it, or have the patience to replay its trial). (400pts)

Contagion
Contagion is a strategy/management game wrapped up in a really interesting premise. The game focuses on the Hermetic Principle of Correspondence, an ancient theory that states that all systems in the universe mirror each other, whether it's the day-to-day of a single cell or an entire galaxy. It's enough to kill an afternoon on Wikipedia, but its translation in the game is a little less interesting. Your goal is to power machines using a spore that generates electricity. Once planted it begins to grow out of control, forcing you to balance containment and power to the machines. Unfortunately, some unnecessarily bad controls do a lot to hamper your progress and strip away the fun. (240pts)

The Last Cannonball
The Last Cannonball is basically a 360 version of that iPhone game where you launch a ball and hope it bounces off of things so that it goes further. Hope is the key word here, there's really no good way to predict what's going to happen. Top that off with poor production value and you've got a game with nothing to offer. (80pts)

Pentominon
Pentominon is a puzzle game that offers a reasonably slick presentation in the tradition of Lumines. At first glance, it plays like Tetris with different shapes. It's also pretty much Tetris at second, third, and fourth glances, but there's a twist that's necessary for high scores. The game isn't really about making lines, but about creating and maintaining a very tricky arrangement: a single, free-floating square with no other shapes touching it. This isn't your typical, pick-up-and-play puzzle game - it's squarely aimed at the more methodical player. It's not for everyone, and it has some issues (action near the top of the screen is too confusing), but overall it's a decent puzzle game. (240pts)

Wacky Water Fun
Wacky Water Fun is a competent carnival game for a dollar. You're tasked with shooting water balloons at targets in order to reach a goal score. Each time a goal score is met, you move on to the next level. Although some may be curious to see where Wacky Water Fun goes after the trial limit, most players will get their fill within a few minutes. This game would have been a worthy purchase if it had offered a little more to do. (80pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 8/12/09

2009-08-12T20:30:00.003-04:00

The XBLI developers prove themselves to be a bunch of assholes today, releasing twelve mostly shitty games for me to play and you to ignore. How long before this stops being funny?

Chaos
Chaos may have one of the most frustrating twists on the twin-stick shooter formula ever. The goal is to use a deflector that you aim with the right stick to slow down enemies. The enemies bounce off the walls and each other, and if they hit you where you aren't deflecting, you die. You're essentially a peacekeeper, jumping into a chaotic situation and telling everyone to calm down. It's an interesting idea, but has that ever been fun for anyone? (80pts)

ULTRA-POWERED MASSAGER!
From the creator of Get the Ball comes ULTRA-POWERED MASSAGER, a collection of three games for a mere dollar. You get ULTRA-POWERED MASSAGER, Get the Ball, and Tap A, all for the price of one game! Amazing! I don't even need to describe these wonderful games to you because they're all self-explanatory. Buy it now and wash away the shame later! (Don't buy this game.) (80pts, but seriously, don't buy it.)

Zombie Mania
Zombie Mania's premise of "zombie Pacman" is a pretty inspired one - unfortunately, the execution is utterly boring. Each stage is overly long, the zombies aren't very threatening, and the world itself is ugly and nonsensical. There's a good game behind this idea, but we might need another developer to take the torch and follow through. (400pts)

Beer Screensaver
Beer Screensaver begs the question: how much can a game utterly fail? It's nothing more than a piss-yellow screen with some bubbles here and there. But the worst part? It's not a screensaver at all! In fact, the developer has to warn at the beginning of the game that their Beer Screensaver actually causes burn-in. (80pts)

Agent MOO: Maximum Overdeath
Agent MOO seems to come from an imagination fueled by Gushers and Mountain Dew. It's an endearing 2D multiplayer shooter with an art style and sound effects that could only be described as homegrown. It has online play, bots, vehicles, and even its own achievements. I want to love it for how ridiculous it is, but the combat (the actual game) is ultimately really limited. Your tactical choices in a fight essentially boil down to jumping around and shooting and hoping you don't die first. (240pts)

PebbleDash
In PebbleDash you can walk around in four directions, like a Zelda game. But then if you walk underneath rocks they fall downward. It's not clear whether you're flying and the rocks are acting on gravity or if you're walking and the rocks have some kind of vendetta against you. Either way, this game is such a terrible homage to classics like Dig Dug or Mr. Driller that even the developer is probably playing those instead. (240pts)

Music Roll
Music Roll may be the most unintuitive thing to ever grace a game console. You should try it just so you can say you've experienced the most perfect example of how not to make an interface. (80pts)

Destruction Tank
From the game's description: "DESTRUCTION TANK is a TPS tank shooting game of full 3D. As for this game of the simple TPS-style, a single play mode and the multi-play with greatest 4 of all the 6 stage are possible by five kinds of tanks. I do not have any problem even if there is not an opponent by a multi-play. Bot makes up for lack of number of people and becomes your opponent." I don't have a problem either because I'll never play this game again. (240pts)

360 Mega App Pack HD
UPDATE: I got 360 Mega App Pack working, apparently it was an isolated incident. Still, there are few surprises here. You get your massage app, your calculator, clock, memory game, and more, all in one package. I have to give credit where credit is due though, the package has some really nice presentation. It's still doing little more than consolidating a lot of what's wrong with XBLI, but considering it's only a dollar, the package isn't such a bad thing. (80pts)

Advanced Rock Paper Scissors
I have a joke for you: An Indie game walks into the market and says, "I'm rock paper scissors with a twist." No one downloads the game and the creatively starved developer literally starves to death. Years later a programmer finds the source code and begins to wipe his ass with it. Another programmer turns to him and says, "That's disgusting, what do you call it?" The first programmer turns to him and says, "The Aristocra...I mean, Advanced Rock Paper Scissors!" (80pts)

Superspace
Superspace has some genuinely cool physics behind it, but it's ultimately more trouble than it's worth. Some games walk a fine line between fun and irritation, but Superspace sits stubbornly in the latter. The game really makes no attempts to be engaging. You'll spend most of the trial shuttling crates around, trying desperately not to crash into any walls while enemies shoot tons of single-pixel bullets at you.
(240pts)

SMART SPLITTER
SMART SPLITTER seems like a blessing after all the other crap that came out today. The idea is to shoot a limited number of balls at an arrangement of blocks in order to create a chain reaction. The presentation is pretty great, and the gameplay is extremely simple. Honestly it's not amazing, as it seems to reward memorization above all else, but the defiantly engrish exclamation of "STAGE CREAR!" is enough to make anyone's day.
(240pts)

Thank god that's over. Now I can get back to Trials HD.

XBLI Trial Rundown - 8/11/09

2009-08-11T18:23:00.001-04:00

Zen Sound
Zen Sound isn't a music app, but it isn't a game either. It's somewhere in between, and ultimately closer to those abstract experimental games like The Passage, or XBLI's own Time Flows But Does Not Return. The goal here isn't to make a song as much as it's to appreciate the act of creating music. You move a pointer around the screen and press a button to play a note. Each time you do this the sound resonates for a bit, repeating with each measure, but slowly fading away. The fleeting nature of each note forces a constant flow of creativity and experimentation - it evokes the joy of making music on a small scale. The only hitch is that it's a bit pricey at 400 points. (400pts)

コロンでジャンプ (Jump!)
Jump! is a lot like those Mario levels where the screen scrolls automatically and you're forced to keep up. It would be weird that someone made an entire game of this, except they didn't - while Jump! is a solid, if unpolished platformer, it's also ridiculously short. You can complete the game within the span of the trial. (80pts)

フェナックむら　ものがたり
This Zelda clone is a little rough around the edges, but it captures the spirit of that classic series. It has all the basic hallmarks including dungeons, treasure, and a boy who rolls out of bed to begin his adventure. Unfortunately, those hallmarks only extend so far, as this game only features a town and two brief dungeons to explore. Using save points over the course of 4 or 5 trial sessions, you can see the credits roll without wasting a dime. (240pts)

X OVER（クロス・オーバー）
This game has a unique approach to limiting your trial time. After a few somewhat challenging waves of 2D-shooting action, it launches a random and seemingly endless swarm of ships at you. I'll admit after several tries I couldn't get past it. I began to get a sneaking suspicion - I don't think there's much more game after that. Either way, this instance of terrible game design left me sour. (240pts)

BitStream
It's odd that BitStream isn't the first game to pit lines against each other in a race. On the other hand, it's not hard to see the promise in the idea - the abstraction of racing lets you remove the strict rules of the real world and boil it down to a simpler form. BitStream does this, but it goes too far, eliminating all of the interesting dynamics inherent in most racing games. You're either going too fast or too slow, and the mess of colored lines all over the track makes it far too easy to lose track of yourself. (400pts)

MADRISM
It took a little bit of research to get even the slightest grasp on this game. Apparently it's an interior decorator/puzzle game - you could have fooled me. You place shapes on a grid, and it seems that you're supposed to connect the various rooms in order to get points. The problem was that a lot of it seemed to either happen incorrectly or accidentally. Madrism may be an example of experimental gameplay, but it seems far more likely that the developers were too lazy to include a tutorial. (80pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 8/9/09

2009-08-09T18:32:00.002-04:00

継長忍鋼伝～春夏秋冬～
Whatever the title of this game is, it must have something to do with pain. It's so ridiculously difficult that I found myself hunting for a slot on my Xbox 360 to insert quarters. The enemies seem to kill you simply by looking in your general direction. The developer is so confident that you won't make any progress within the trial period that they even gave you access to every level from the start. The old-school style of the game is endearing, but otherwise there's very little fun to be salvaged here. (240pts)

GLITNIR
GLITNIR reveals a flaw in the tower defense "genre". It's not really a genre, it's just a good game someone made one time that everyone else is remaking over and over again. The proof is clear: despite how bad GLITNIR's controls and presentation are, it's still fun. That's not because GLITNIR is a good game, but because it's a serviceable copy of someone else's game. (80pts)

Division Omega
Combat in Division Omega is a lot like precise photo-editing, or threading a needle. It combines confusing controls with slow tank-shooting and enemies that seem to wander out of the way of your bullets just in time. The result is that exact frustration that those aforementioned tasks can create, but without any of the reward. (240pts)

Veks and Silence
(UPDATE: The full game is cool, full review coming soon!) Though the visual style of Veks and Silence is extremely busy, it's the most technically impressive XBLI title to come out in a while. Based on the demo stage, you basically walk from left-to-right blasting zombies with a variety of weapons. It's fun enough, but it's unclear whether Veks has legs to stand on beyond its good looks. Stay tuned for a more thorough review soon. It's definitely a game to look out for though. (400pts)

Headshot
Another case for free Indie games, Head Shot is fun but far too simple to justify any kind of purchase. Each round, one man in a crowd will pull a gun - it's up to you to quickly find them and shoot them in the head. This repeats and becomes more difficult with each passing round. Perhaps as part of a minigame collection Head Shot would make more sense, but as it is, it's not all that different from the "Shoot the Target" ads you find on the web. (80pts)

Review: Nebulon (UPDATE!)

2009-08-09T12:40:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago, Nebulon came out and shoe-horned archiac, single-stick-and-button controls into a twin-stick shooter world. It was fun for the way it forced you to work within its limitations. Killing a single enemy could be an epic and dangerous struggle - your main method of attack was to fly headfirst at them in order to line up a shot.

It seems people weren't satisfied with this. The new update for Nebulon brings a twin-stick shooting option to the game, making it nearly indistinguishable from Geometry Wars. Still, even with it's most unique aspect relegated to an alternative control option, Nebulon manages to remain immensely entertaining. The new controls speed up the game significantly, shining light on other aspects that make it unique.

Unlike a lot of 2D shooters, Nebulon doesn't start you off with a bullet-hose as a primary form of attack. Instead, you begin with a pea-shooter, killing bigger enemies in search of shiny orbs. Collect enough of these orbs and you'll gain access to better guns. This leveling system adds incentive to replay the game beyond a high score. Needless to say, the later weaponry is worth the effort, and the new controls help you get there faster.

Each control scheme has its own unique crutch, so even after the update, Nebulon isn't as simple a game as Geometry Wars. Independent shooting controls may make the combat easier, but it also leads to more carelessness with your shots. As you fire for extended periods your ship overheats, leaving you weaponless, with nothing but your dodging abilities for a brief period. It's a unique dynamic that leads to entirely different kinds of hectic moments.

It's great to see that Nebulon has held up, despite buckling to the status quo. The new control scheme does indeed add a lot to the game - and if you're already a Nebulon purist, the original controls are still a button tap away.

Download Nebulon on Xbox Live Marketplace

Review: Spaceman

2009-08-08T00:20:00.002-04:00

This is a follow-up to my XBLI Trial Rundown entry from August 3rd, you can find it here: http://www.xbli.net/2009/08/xbli-trial-rundown-8309.html

One paragraph impressions of game demos are not an exact science - I know this, you know this. Occasionally I will be a bit off in my judgment of a game. Even less often, I will be off and then enthusiastically ramble about it. This was the case with my Spaceman impression.

It's not that Spaceman is bad, it's just extremely uneven. Within a few levels the game becomes very difficult. Shortly after that it becomes nearly impossible. In a way, it's faithful to the simplistic games of the 80s that inspire it. The controls are purposefully rigid, your abilities are highly limited, and mistakes are easily made that can undo a lot of progress. It's so archaically retro that if it had limited lives and a game over screen, Billy Mitchell would already have the high score.

The premise is this: a little astronaut has to make his way across platforms and through mazes in search of a key and exit door. He navigates gaps and inclines using a bubble gun and bombs. The bubble gun creates platforms while bombs destroy them. He can only make platforms above and adjacent to himself, and can only drop bombs in clear spaces to the left or right. The challenge comes in trying to navigate the level while working within these limits. It's a very simple and welcoming concept for a puzzle-platformer.

Unfortunately, the game gets completely absurd. Four levels in and you'll be stuck in logic puzzles that give Rubik's Cube a run for its money. This, without any way to skip levels or try additional modes, sours what would otherwise be a simple and approachable title.

The punishing difficulty, especially wrapped within the context of old-school graphics and controls, will make this a divisive title. It's not for everyone, or most people for that matter. But if you're a masochistic with a penchant for puzzle games, Spaceman will be right up your alley.

(Download Spaceman on the Xbox Live Marketplace)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 8/6/09

2009-08-06T17:23:00.001-04:00

Card Arcade
This week's XBLI offerings were looking rather bleak - thankfully, Card Arcade saves the day with a clever mix of card and puzzle games. Each of the five modes takes an established game like Solitaire, Poker, or Blackjack, and exchanges the game's inherent luck factor with some strategic puzzle solving. It won't win any presentation awards, but the fact is that you're getting five smartly-designed games when most XBLI developers can't be bothered to make one. (240pts)

The Oracle
One would assume that a magic 8-ball app lives and dies by the quality of its fortunes. If the various fake predictions aren't entertaining, then what's the point? It's too bad then, that every other fortune in The Oracle's trial is a request to purchase the game. Maybe the developer saw the writing on the wall, and realized that no matter what the quality of The Oracle, it would still be a magic 8-ball. (80pts)

Spectra Musical Massage
Have we reached saturation on massage games yet? This is getting out of control. Spectra Musical Massage seems like it was originally meant to be a visually-striking media player with an interesting song selection built in. Then the massage game bandwagon came into town and the developers hopped right on. Oh well, one more excuse to put a controller on my crotch I suppose... (240pts)

Mayan Countdown
2012, 2012! It's the mayan countdown, dodo do doooo, do dodo do do! The end of the world is right around the corner and everyone is getting pumped! You can get pumped too with this pointless countdown clock to a pointless event. I'd imagine getting tricked into purchasing this would feel like the end of the world too.
(80pts)

尊い犠牲　Ultimate Sacrifice
The Japanese developers on XBLI have really struck out so far. Ultimate Sacrifice brings us up to 3-out-of-3 pieces of crap from their side of the world. It's a garishly ugly and slow 2D shooter. The indie developers from Japan are proving themselves to be just as capitalizing, exploitative, and lazy as their Western counterparts.
(80pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 8/3/09

2009-08-03T18:37:00.003-04:00

In this episode I finish up with a stream-of-consciousness trial impression for my favorite game.

Ghastly Ghouls
Ghastly Ghouls is a super-simple game where you dodge waves of enemies. The hook is that it gets right what so many XBLI games get wrong - namely, the waves of enemies have a lot of variety. The game ramps up in difficulty at a decent clip, so that despite it's simplicity it remains interesting. The problem with Ghastly Ghouls is that a couple glitches within the span of the demo kept me from enjoying it. Firstly, it's possible for enemies to spawn on top of you. That's a big, cheap no-no that tends to make people angry. Secondly, just as I was doubling my previous high score, the game crashed on me. Hmph. (80pts)

Digital Art Gallery: Callad
These art gallery apps rarely get the best of me, but I found Digital Art Gallery to be oddly soothing. Mellow fantasy music plays while a slideshow of CG females pose provacatively. The art is actually really well done, but it's clearly intended for boners and not for high-brow analysis. Digital Art Gallery sets a nice mood, but at the end of the day you can go to any number of websites displaying digital art galleries while listening to all the ren-faire music you want, completely free of charge. (80pts)

Extreme RPS Online
This is not the first rock, paper, scissors XBLI game, but it's certainly the only one worth a damn. Production value here is great, with some funny characters, smooth animations, and many features. "But it's rock, paper, scissors," you say. Yeah, I'm well aware that that's a horrible premise for a video game. I don't want to condone it, but give it a try because it's actually pretty cute. That and I swear there's some genuine AI built into the game because I felt like I was outsmarting it. (200pts)

Reef Rave
Reef Rave on its own is a pretty ridiculous app. Rave music plays while a tropical-colored visualizer does its thing. But in my case, turning off Reef Rave's soundtrack and firing up a little Ratatat made this into a nice alternative to the 360's own visualizer. The problem is that this app makes no effort to convey this to you or include any features to encourage using your own music. Judged on its own merits, Reef Rave is little more than a pretty picture and some crappy music. (80pts)

Spaceman
NOTE: The score on Spaceman has changed since the original posting. Read the full review for a more detailed explanation: http://www.xbli.net/2009/08/review-spaceman.html

Dr. Spaceman! This game is mad Atari. You're a little dude - Mario with a spacesuit. He's so Pringles. I imagine Bubble Bobble mixed with some vertical Bomberman. The music is space-trippy with a splash of 80s. It gets tough quickly, but it's a simple and entertaining platform-puzzler. Fiddy, jump over that big ass ramp! (240pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 7/31/09

2009-07-31T16:26:00.003-04:00

In this edition, barely three days later, I very nearly drown under the weight of the recent XBLI flood. Without a single game earning that big green smile, I couldn't make it to the end without losing it.

Space Math
Here we are, a little more than a week later, and we already have the next game in the series that started with Math Gardener. Imagine if Bungie, Blizzard, or Valve could release games that quickly? Well, if they did, they probably wouldn't be so world-renowned. Space Math isn't very good, although anything is a step up from Math Gardener. The premise combines Space Invaders with numbers - a problem is displayed, and you have to shoot down the answer without hitting the wrong ones. But just like Math Gardener, this game doesn't do a good job of making math fun, equating problem solving to a shooter where you only shoot one enemy.
200pts

XNcAve
The screens for XNcAve had me thinking, "Gradius clone!" which is exciting because I have a soft spot for Gradius. Imagine my disappointment when I learned that it was actually an aircraft spelunking game (an oddly growing genre on XBLI). All you do is throttle the right trigger to maintain your height while avoiding random cave bits. It's about as fun as threading a needle.
200pts

Game Training Vol. 2: Flight
This is a big step up from the impenetrable Game Training Vol. 1. The original was a collection of nonsensical mini games that were so unpolished they approached abstract art. Volume 2 is quite different - it's a simple flight simulator with a checklist of achievements. That checklist, rather than the thrill of flight, ends up being the game's hook. You fly through rings, pop balloons, fire missiles at ships, and eventually go for the safe landing. Game Training: Vol. 2 would be a blast if the physics behind it weren't so dialed in.
200pts

The Periodic Table
The Periodic Table certainly lives up to its name. That sentence alone should be enough of a review for you. It's a little better than the periodic table in your typical chemistry classroom, if that's any consolation.
200pts

Drop Zone
The most entertaining thing about Drop Zone is the various death curdles of the paratroopers you spend the entire game shreading to bits. You take control of an AA gun while scores of enemies drop from the sky without any consideration for their own safety. In fact, as you progress, even more reinforcements are sent in. It's hilarious, but it's also frustrating - your gun only fires in a few directions, allowing enemies to squeeze by in the gaps of your firing solution.
80pts

Who Did I Date Last Night
...certainly not any of these women. This game presumes that the entire XBLI audience is made up of male supermodels. Either that, or it's simply trying to exploit your libido for a quick buck. Still, there's actually a bit of a game to this sexy version of Guess Who, so that's a step up from a lot of other XBLI offerings. If the game part was a little more dynamic, and the repertoire of photos a little more expansive, this provacative money-grab might have actually been worth more than a passing glance.
80pts

Lord Ownage:UnBritish Invasion
It's not hard to crack a smile at the silly British typecasting going on in the opening menus of Lord Ownage. Even the help screen puts on a good show. The problem is when you actually start playing the game. It's an ugly, frustrating combination of puzzle game style matching and Space Invaders. That could actually be a really great combo, but the need for pinpoint accuracy combined with no way to be pinpoint accurate is maddening.
400pts

Horn Swaggle Islands
As an introduction to the tower defense genre, Horn Swaggle Island does the trick. But for anyone familiar with the genre, it's nothing new. The only difference between this and say, Desktop Tower Defense, is that Horn Swaggle Islands is pirate-themed and the camera is zoomed out way too far. It even has the same bubble-popping sound for enemy deaths.
400pts

Heavy Payload
Heavy Payload could win awards for most boring vertical shooter ever. It's understandable that Indie games are made on little to no budget, and repetitive art assets are to be expected - but when you're repeating not only the same enemies, backdrops, and sound effects, but the same five seconds of dull gameplay, what's the point? Why are you making games? Is someone forcing you to write code against your will? Are you torturing us so that we may empathize with your own miserable existence?
400pts

XBLI Trial Rundown - 7/27/09

2009-07-27T21:01:00.004-04:00

In this week's edition, a really good game finally comes out, and I try to name-drop Geometry Wars at least three times. Enjoy!

Maladras
The Popcap visual style (Zuma, Peggle, etc.) is becoming about as overdone as the neon graphics popularized by Geometry Wars. On the other hand, having a solid graphical reference point in your low budget indie game ain't such a bad idea. Maladras seems to run with this notion, skipping over artistic merit and focusing on polished and unique puzzle gameplay. It's a card matching game with a twist, but before you groan, know that Maladras follows through brilliantly. The cards are laid out before you, face up - the trick is that you have to be able to draw a line from one card to the other, and that line can only change direction twice. It's certainly a little odd, but once you see it in practice it makes sense. (200pts)

Xtreme Polygon
Even in my game development stint, I fell into the same trap: "I liked Geometry Wars, let me show you." It happens because you think it'll be really easy, and it is. At least, until you try to do something remotely interesting. The developer of Xtreme Polygon clearly got bored before that happened. Sure there's multiplayer, but root canals aren't any more fun with a friend, so I don't see why this would be. (200pts)

The Review Channel
Clever, rather than make another Geometry Wars clone (okay, I'll stop), this developer chose to jump the gun on Microsoft. Review Channel is an app that allows users to review each indie game and see the consensus from the rest of the community. Unfortunately this should have been done sooner, Microsoft is adding this feature (for free) in just a few short weeks. (200pts)

Physics Sandbox
On XBLI there are games, there are lifestyle apps, and then there are toys, and Physics Sandbox is a great little toy. You're given a 2D plane and a toolbox to unleash upon it. You can drop in shapes, attach springs, and adjust the laws of gravity. You won't be making fine art, but you've probably done worse things in MS Paint. (200pts)

TabeBALL
TabeBall is foosball on a TV screen. Sure it works (and looks) great, but real foosball is already an approximation of real soccer. Ultimately, the game gets a little more diluted and a little less fun each step of the way. It's a good version of a game that doesn't need to exist in video game form. (200pts)

Max Fun Times
Max Fun Times is apparently a customizable drinking game, but to me it looks like a spinner that randomly tells you how much fun you're having. Sometimes you're having max fun time! If I didn't know better I'd be digging around looking for the box to this game, because it seems like there are missing pieces. (200pts)

Crescendo Symphony
I find myself playing less and less Japanese games every year, but that doesn't change the respect I have for game development on their side of the world. The work ethic and sheer talent results in games that have a ridiculous level of polish and attention to detail. That's why I approached Crescendo Symphony so cautiously. As the first Japanese release on XBLI, it was sure to be beyond most of what's come along so far. That, and it was one of those godforsaken "sexy" bullet-hell shooters. Thankfully, I don't have to embarrass myself for liking Crescendo Symphony because it's yet another sub-par, drab, and repetitive XBLI offering. Move along. (240pts)

Gum Drop Celestial Frontier
Gum Drop Celestial Frontier offers a cool idea: you're a ship with a tractor beam instead of a gun. Your only means of attack is to grab hold of space garbage and swing it towards your enemies. Unfortunately, the idea is a little half-baked. The controls are off and the collision detection with your mothership leads to some awkward moments. Thankfully, its title is so ridiculous that you're bound to try it anyway. (200pts)

Shopping Crazy
This game is absurd on so many levels that I wish I could recommend it. Unfortunately, this tale of drama in the ball pit and infants trapped in mazes of balloons isn't very entertaining. It's basically an adaptation of that tile puzzle where one piece is missing, and you have to shift the rest of them around to make a picture. Does anyone really enjoy those? (200pts)

XNA ShortNovel Series Vol.01
Jam on the A button and a bug-eyed anime girl will yell at you in Japanese for all of 60 seconds. Then the game ends. I'm sure she was super-mad at you for making her take care of your pet tentacle monster. (240pts)

Skwug
Whoa, someone inadvertently made a Nightcrawler video game! If you ever played an X-men game on the Genesis, you're bound to have a soft spot for Skwug. You're a blob who can teleport up to three times before touching the ground again. The idea is to use this ability to work your way through a maze of traps. It's actually also a lot like the recently released 'Splosion Man, so it has a lot going for it. If only this title were a bit more polished, I'd have no trouble giving it the full recommendation. (200pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 7/22/09

2009-07-22T21:42:00.001-04:00

Rock Paper Scissors Xtreme!
It's a common problem: you want to play Rock, Paper, Scissors, but there's never anyone around to join in. Now you never have to worry - Rock Paper Scissors Xtreme! offers hours of finger-snapping fun for any poor, lonely sap who can't find a friend to play a round of fraking Rock, Paper, Scissors with. Oh and it comes with a rumble massage game, yay... (200pts)

The Amazing Rumbling Hypno Disc
Amazing Rumbling Hypno Disc is the first step to world domination through downloadable applications. It is more likely to make people sick than entertain them. Soon, games will simply flash a seizure-inducing pattern of light upon purchase. After that, the release of Mind Control 360 will mark the start of Judgement Day and the end of the world. You've been warned. (200pts)

Super Xblox 360!
Super Xblox 360 was on XBLI a few weeks ago, but was quickly removed. Presumably, this was due to its close resemblance to Tetris. The new version fixes this by replacing all the blocks with dots and adding a bunch of weird shapes. Unfortunately, they didn't fix Xblox's slippery controls. It would be excusable if puzzle games weren't XBLI's strongest titles. Xblox is simply bottom of the barrel by comparison. (200pts)

Choc-a-riffic
My favorite thing about this game is how it tries to mimic Peggle's cute loading screen messages with things like "Making Chocolate" and "Preparing Eggs" but then just before it finishes it says, "Parsing Levels 0/47", "Parsing Levels 1/47", etc. My second favorite thing about this game is that despite a rainbow-colored world and ethereal soundtrack, the developers adorned the first level with pictures of themselves looking angry. They even set one of them on fire. My third favorite thing about this game is that it took that many angry faces to make a game with garish visuals and awkward controls. Then they don't even let you play enough of it to give it a fair shot. (200pts)

LED Display
LED Display is shockingly unintuitive. Thankfully I still figured it out so I can show you XBLI.net's first video review. (200pts)

Cyborg Mice Arena
Cyborg Mice Arena is rough around the edges, let's just get that out of the way. It is graphically uninteresting, and the controls and weapon behavior scream "amateur effort." Despite that, the game has heart - it's an endearing arena shooter reminiscent of the early PSX title Loaded. It features mice that use victory money to upgrade their cyborg arms and flame throwers. How much can you hate it, really? The only concern is in the amount of content available. The demo was promising, but it wasn't clear whether the game was intentionally hiding features, or if it was simply bare bones. (200pts)

Math Gardener
I've generally avoided the educational game offerings on XBLI, but if Math Gardener is anything to go by, I'd rather buy 8 copies of Rumble Massage. This is a terrible, terrible game that makes cracking open an algebra textbook look like an absolute blast. Where is the feedback? Where does it make math any more enjoyable than it is on a piece of paper? Where is the video game in Math Gardener? I can't find it. (200pts)

Ice 9
Ice 9 is either a console port of Hungry Hungry Hippos, or Ikaruga's bullet-eating mechanic turned into a full game. You spin your dot-eater around the edge of a circular arena with the analog stick. Dots emerge from the center in a variety of patterns and it's up to you to collect them all. Low production values aside, Ice 9's core concept is solid for a quick, cheap distraction. Turn up the difficulty level before the end of the trial and you may find yourself addicted to this extremely simple title. (200pts)

Vega Magnitude
Remember how Ikaruga's black/white polarity enemies left people's heads spinning and landed it in the history books as one of the hardest games ever? Well, imagine if you had eight polarities instead! That's the premise of Vega Magnitude, and it sure is hard. But it isn't hard in the, "just one more try," sense like Ikaruga. It's hard in the, "I need to look down at my controller before I shoot at each enemy," way.
(200pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 7/19/09

2009-07-19T12:10:00.007-04:00

Chick Chick Chicky
A lot of XBLI titles are described by their creators as "new takes on classic franchises" and Chick Chick Chicky is no different. The images for this game had me hoping for a Bomberman clone, complete with exploding poultry. Unfortunately, Chicky is just Pacman. That would have been great two decades ago, or if it borrowed anything from Pacman CE (the XBLA remix that makes Pacman tolerable again). As it is, especially without any online leaderboards, the $5 price tag is too steep. (400pts)

Nebulon
It's easy to hate Nebulon at first. It looks a lot like yet another twin-stick shooter, but it tosses out aim-anywhere shooting for super-oldschool, Thunder Force II-style combat. You use one stick to move, and a button to shoot - that's it. Aiming means pointing your ship at enemies and often flying headfirst at them. It's archiac, offering the control scheme of a bygone era, but that's exactly what makes it so novel today. (200pts)

Pop Quiz
What The?! set the standard for trivia games on XBLI, and Pop Quiz simply doesn't compare. These games make their mark through presentation, and while Pop Quiz offers the typical snarky announcer, everything else is lacking. The visual and auditory feedback is virtually non-existent, there's no art direction, and the questions are weirdly specific. Only check this one out if you know what power level Goku was at in episode 165. (200pts)

Fireworks HD
Fireworks HD is kind of cool because it adds an interactive element to the screensaver concept. The only problem is that no amount of fake fireworks (even the 90% extra you'll get if you buy Fireworks HD) can compare to the real thing. Most will be bored of the idea before the end of the trial, but Fireworks HD is an okay app for those that are easily amused. (200pts)

3D Magic Images
Even if I could see these things, I wouldn't condone a product that's going to make people press their noses to a TV screen and go blind. It also happens to be a rather garishly designed app. Stay clear and shove your face into one of those Magic Eye books instead. (200pts)

XBLI Trial Rundown - 7/13/09

2009-07-11T09:48:00.016-04:00

Eye-Ball
Eye-Ball has you taking control of a finger, poking at a floating eyeball to compete in a grotesque game of Pong. A veiny mass of flesh throbs in the background to constantly remind you how unappealing this game is. It isn't even a very good Pong clone. (200pts)

Roid Riot
"Asteroids in 3D" is one of those notions typically reserved for the PC shareware bin at Office Max. In that respect, Roid Riot offers something worthwhile: the chance to purchase a bad game even when you aren't shopping for overpriced computer desks. Sarcasm aside, Roid Riot would be a pretty inoffensive take on a simple concept, but it's hampered by unnecessarily sluggish controls and gameplay. (200pts)

Gamerbots:Third-Robot Shooting
This is depressing. Gamerbots has so much going for it: a Sega arcade-style presentation, awesomely cheesy soundtrack, and customizable robots! So of course, being an XBLI title, it has to go and ruin all that by being a slow-as-molasses third-person shooter. The graphics are even pretty good, but the super-stiff controls and inbred AI show that Gamerbots is little more than a well-intentioned rookie effort. (400pts)

Lotus - Stellar Conflict
Lotus - Stellar Conflict is a simple 2D take on complicated 3D space-flight sims. While the game is played from an overhead view with controls reminiscent of Asteroids, it seems to have the mission variety you expect from a Freespace or Colony Wars. It has you keeping track of ammo, fuel, and shields while engaging in combat that's a little more deliberate than your typical 2D space shooter. While the engagements weren't too exciting, and the voice acting is Microsoft Sam caliber, Lotus is different and polished enough that it may cure your space shooter itch.
(400pts)

Get The Ball
Get The Ball is one more piece of evidence that there should be a way to offer free games on XBLI. It's so mind-numbingly simple that I can't imagine it being worth any amount of money, and yet in its own silly way it's kind of fun. The game is a competitive collect-a-thon in which you guide your circle around a boxed-arena trying collect more balls than the other guy. It's a bit broken though; the balls are so fast and random that it's as much about random chance as reaction time. Still, Get The Ball does a good job a satiating that appetite for collecting lots of stupid little things.
(200pts)

Button Memory
Surprise! It's another damn Simon clone. This time, the graphics and presentation are worse than ever before. I'm going to have to devise from kind of template review for this kind of game because there's so many of them.
(200pts)