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XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) News, Announcements, Reviews, and Impressions Thread
- Thread starter Vert boil
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Oh, wow. Thanks.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Today's demos...
0-D Beat Drop: A Tetris-style block dropper with an added rhythm element; you have to drop a block to the timing of the beat in order to remove blocks. I actually thought the music was okay. The demo was very limited though, so I couldn't get a sense of how much different music there was. The presentation was exceedingly trippy. I could maybe see myself buying this, but probably not.
1942: Vertically scrolling shoot-em-up. Standard powerup system. Sort of washed out colour scheme. There was only one level in the demo, but it was fairly easy. One thing I liked is that when you beat the boss, you lose your weapons and need to run away from the boss with the screen scrolling vertically down. Probably wouldn't buy.
Beat n Groovy: This is a simplified version of Beatmania with hideous, Bratz-inspired art design, and played on a controller. The song in the demo was definitely on the awful end of your standard Beatmania stuff. Definitely wouldn't buy.
Ben 10 Rise of the Hex: Very simple 2d platformer. I've never heard of the (?)show that it's based on. You can transform into monsters. Combat sucks. There are no secrets or collectibles. I don't think you can die, at least not unless you stand there and let enemies beat you up. There are 15 levels, so you're looking at maybe 2 hours of gaming. Definitely wouldn't buy.
Blazing Birds: Badminton for robots. Very low budget presentation. Mechanics seem to work fine although I never fully mastered the controls. I liked that you can pick your country, O Canada! Wouldn't buy.
Bliss Island: This is a sort of weird collection of minigames. Very cute, in an early-N64 kind of way. You only get three games in the demo, but there's 21 in total. One game involved having to shoot berries into a big frog's mouth, one involved a Flingsmash-y run through a cave. I don't think there's enough depth to justify buying this.
Bloodforge: I played this when it first came out and hated it, but there was a major patch to try to fix most of the problems. I don't remember what my problems were. I had a much better impression this time around. But the demo is still pretty problematic. You fight three or four waves of dudes and then watch a video. Is the game nothing but combat, or is there traversal as well? I don't really like God of War-style beat-em-ups anyway so I probably wouldn't buy this.
Bloodrayne: Betrayal: What a surprise this was. It's an HD 2D beat-em-up platformer. Castlevania felt like the strongest inspiration, right down to the very fast metal music. But what was the real surprise here was the pretty deep combat system that I didn't even come close to mastering. I finished the first stage and got graded an F :/ It's also very very hard. I loved the fountains of blood. This was really, really cool. I might buy this.
Boogie Bunnies: Bust-a-Move, except that instead of shooting diagonally, you shoot straight, and you can also shoot left or right from the walls. I really liked the presentation here. I own maybe a dozen versions of Bust-a-Move or similar so I don't think I'd buy it, but if it's something you like, I think this would be a good choice.
Dance It's Your Stage: This is a dreadful DDR clone. You "dance" using the two analog sticks... so there's two note tracks. First things first, the music and presentation are so bad. So bad. Second, unlike DDR they play the entire song, so it feels like it never ends. But the controls are the real problem; trying to push "Up Up" is pretty tough just from a control POV because you need to let the stick pop back to the center and push it again. Just crummy.
Deadliest Warrior: I wanted to like this, but the demo didn't give me much to work with. It's a 3d fighter where you have a full range of motion. The only mode available was a 1 on 1 fight between a Ninja and a Roman Legion, you can pick which character you want. You seem to be able to choose from multiple weapons but I couldn't figure out how to switch. Combat felt decent, and the way you get injuries reminded me of Bushido Blade... but not having the tutorial / training mode open in the demo was pretty frustrating.
Jet Set Radio: Instant nostalgia bomb, the game is as bright and crisp as I remember it. I'm not sure the controls have aged well in light of more complex skateboarding entries that are available, but besides that everything seemed great. I love the way the levels are so carefully put together, and that when the cops come the rest of the traffic in the first level stops so you need to plan your lines through the level well. I found tagging a little frustrating on the 360 analog sticks. I'd definitely buy this.
Strania: This was very cool. It's a shoot-em-up that reminded me of Einhander. You have three weapon slots, of which two are active--you rotate your slots so that the front two weapons are active. So you can sort of mix-and-match your weapons, which is very cool. I really enjoyed the demo and it wasn't too difficult. I might be willing to buy this.
Unbound Saga: Comix-Zone inspired brawler. Combat seemed very shallow, even though the presentation was nice. Checked reviews which were pretty negative and generally said the combat was very shallow, so I won't be picking this up.
Zeit2: This is a horizontal shmup with a few original mechanics. You have a shield powered by energy. Every time you shoot you lose energy, so accuracy is prized. You can fast-forward time to get more points. If you miss an enemy, you lose energy. You can rewind time to get enemies you missed, but your ability to rewind is limited. The visual style was very blue and simple but nice. There seemed like a lot of content and challenges and modes, so I'm pretty confident you'd get your money's worth.
0-D Beat Drop: A Tetris-style block dropper with an added rhythm element; you have to drop a block to the timing of the beat in order to remove blocks. I actually thought the music was okay. The demo was very limited though, so I couldn't get a sense of how much different music there was. The presentation was exceedingly trippy. I could maybe see myself buying this, but probably not.
1942: Vertically scrolling shoot-em-up. Standard powerup system. Sort of washed out colour scheme. There was only one level in the demo, but it was fairly easy. One thing I liked is that when you beat the boss, you lose your weapons and need to run away from the boss with the screen scrolling vertically down. Probably wouldn't buy.
Beat n Groovy: This is a simplified version of Beatmania with hideous, Bratz-inspired art design, and played on a controller. The song in the demo was definitely on the awful end of your standard Beatmania stuff. Definitely wouldn't buy.
Ben 10 Rise of the Hex: Very simple 2d platformer. I've never heard of the (?)show that it's based on. You can transform into monsters. Combat sucks. There are no secrets or collectibles. I don't think you can die, at least not unless you stand there and let enemies beat you up. There are 15 levels, so you're looking at maybe 2 hours of gaming. Definitely wouldn't buy.
Blazing Birds: Badminton for robots. Very low budget presentation. Mechanics seem to work fine although I never fully mastered the controls. I liked that you can pick your country, O Canada! Wouldn't buy.
Bliss Island: This is a sort of weird collection of minigames. Very cute, in an early-N64 kind of way. You only get three games in the demo, but there's 21 in total. One game involved having to shoot berries into a big frog's mouth, one involved a Flingsmash-y run through a cave. I don't think there's enough depth to justify buying this.
Bloodforge: I played this when it first came out and hated it, but there was a major patch to try to fix most of the problems. I don't remember what my problems were. I had a much better impression this time around. But the demo is still pretty problematic. You fight three or four waves of dudes and then watch a video. Is the game nothing but combat, or is there traversal as well? I don't really like God of War-style beat-em-ups anyway so I probably wouldn't buy this.
Bloodrayne: Betrayal: What a surprise this was. It's an HD 2D beat-em-up platformer. Castlevania felt like the strongest inspiration, right down to the very fast metal music. But what was the real surprise here was the pretty deep combat system that I didn't even come close to mastering. I finished the first stage and got graded an F :/ It's also very very hard. I loved the fountains of blood. This was really, really cool. I might buy this.
Boogie Bunnies: Bust-a-Move, except that instead of shooting diagonally, you shoot straight, and you can also shoot left or right from the walls. I really liked the presentation here. I own maybe a dozen versions of Bust-a-Move or similar so I don't think I'd buy it, but if it's something you like, I think this would be a good choice.
Dance It's Your Stage: This is a dreadful DDR clone. You "dance" using the two analog sticks... so there's two note tracks. First things first, the music and presentation are so bad. So bad. Second, unlike DDR they play the entire song, so it feels like it never ends. But the controls are the real problem; trying to push "Up Up" is pretty tough just from a control POV because you need to let the stick pop back to the center and push it again. Just crummy.
Deadliest Warrior: I wanted to like this, but the demo didn't give me much to work with. It's a 3d fighter where you have a full range of motion. The only mode available was a 1 on 1 fight between a Ninja and a Roman Legion, you can pick which character you want. You seem to be able to choose from multiple weapons but I couldn't figure out how to switch. Combat felt decent, and the way you get injuries reminded me of Bushido Blade... but not having the tutorial / training mode open in the demo was pretty frustrating.
Jet Set Radio: Instant nostalgia bomb, the game is as bright and crisp as I remember it. I'm not sure the controls have aged well in light of more complex skateboarding entries that are available, but besides that everything seemed great. I love the way the levels are so carefully put together, and that when the cops come the rest of the traffic in the first level stops so you need to plan your lines through the level well. I found tagging a little frustrating on the 360 analog sticks. I'd definitely buy this.
Strania: This was very cool. It's a shoot-em-up that reminded me of Einhander. You have three weapon slots, of which two are active--you rotate your slots so that the front two weapons are active. So you can sort of mix-and-match your weapons, which is very cool. I really enjoyed the demo and it wasn't too difficult. I might be willing to buy this.
Unbound Saga: Comix-Zone inspired brawler. Combat seemed very shallow, even though the presentation was nice. Checked reviews which were pretty negative and generally said the combat was very shallow, so I won't be picking this up.
Zeit2: This is a horizontal shmup with a few original mechanics. You have a shield powered by energy. Every time you shoot you lose energy, so accuracy is prized. You can fast-forward time to get more points. If you miss an enemy, you lose energy. You can rewind time to get enemies you missed, but your ability to rewind is limited. The visual style was very blue and simple but nice. There seemed like a lot of content and challenges and modes, so I'm pretty confident you'd get your money's worth.
Patches don't apply to demos, do they? Either way, this is one of those patches that feels like it does nothing and the game still sucks. At least they fixed the achievements.
Fun fact: I did the "play coop with neither player missing a note" achievement by myself with two controllers, because I didn't want to live down the embarassment of asking anyone to play this with me. It's pretty pathetic, but at least it's amusing exactly how uncool a game can be when it's actually trying to be cool. This is like the epitome of out-of-touch old guys trying to "make what the kids like."
Nope, it takes like 3 hours to complete everything since the game is so absurdly easy. The mechanics stop being interesting very quickly due to the severe lack of challenge and despite being very short it feels way too long.
SlipperyMoose
Member
randomlyrossy
Member
So many questions about this post.
Just a few impressions to add with those reviews:
Strania: I really enjoy this game, and once day, when I beat the game proper, I'll buy that Side Vower DLC! (Getting a Vita and PS3 since it's release junks up my backlog!) I really could jump pump up the credits and continues, and beat it, but I want to earn my way to that point.
Either way, I think the game is great. I love how traditional and weighty it's design philosophy is; Fights before Sunset, defending a battleship that tosses away it's damage parts, selecting just the right weapons to get through specific areas... Just quality all around.
Unbound Saga: Actually, it's anything but "shallow". It's overbulked by poorly implimented secondary features, and sloppy development. Each character plays differently, one being more grapple based, and the other actuallly having stealth and enemy-posioning techniques in her arsenal. But the hits feel funny, the lineup of hitting each other is kinda off (like many of these 3D brawler types), and it's overall just more "budget" feeling than it should be.
I don't regret getting it for 200 pts when it was on sale at all, however. The campy voicework and comic cinematics in-between scenes were very much like what I'd want out of a Comix Zone homage, and the game was OK to play in Offline and Online Co-OP. The art can be inconsistent, but when it's good, it's feels just like an Image or Dark Horse comic from the 90s.
Zeit2: The slowdown / HD access Jitter of this game felt horrible to me. The designs are also crazy boring. I thought about buying it on 200 PTS sale a few months back, but I'd rather just buy a few XBLIGs that feel and play infinitely better.
Strania: I really enjoy this game, and once day, when I beat the game proper, I'll buy that Side Vower DLC! (Getting a Vita and PS3 since it's release junks up my backlog!) I really could jump pump up the credits and continues, and beat it, but I want to earn my way to that point.
Either way, I think the game is great. I love how traditional and weighty it's design philosophy is; Fights before Sunset, defending a battleship that tosses away it's damage parts, selecting just the right weapons to get through specific areas... Just quality all around.
Unbound Saga: Actually, it's anything but "shallow". It's overbulked by poorly implimented secondary features, and sloppy development. Each character plays differently, one being more grapple based, and the other actuallly having stealth and enemy-posioning techniques in her arsenal. But the hits feel funny, the lineup of hitting each other is kinda off (like many of these 3D brawler types), and it's overall just more "budget" feeling than it should be.
I don't regret getting it for 200 pts when it was on sale at all, however. The campy voicework and comic cinematics in-between scenes were very much like what I'd want out of a Comix Zone homage, and the game was OK to play in Offline and Online Co-OP. The art can be inconsistent, but when it's good, it's feels just like an Image or Dark Horse comic from the 90s.
Zeit2: The slowdown / HD access Jitter of this game felt horrible to me. The designs are also crazy boring. I thought about buying it on 200 PTS sale a few months back, but I'd rather just buy a few XBLIGs that feel and play infinitely better.
I was satisfied with my Unbound Saga purchase (at that price point) too, but only because one of the avatar awards is a stack of comics that your avatar picks up and reads and I like comics. It's my most used avatar prop together with the Magic cards. The game itself sucks, but it's very easy achievements if that's one's sort of thing.
I guess I should mention here that I made a Phantom Breaker BattleGrounds |OT| too, because I'm going to do all I can to see the game doesn't end up in the "I never heard of this... WHY?!?" List of XBLA games, heh.
Yeah, it was a great Avatar award. Love it when games have good, obtainable ones, totally makes lightly played purchases feel worthwhile! Considered doing the same for Aqua's Sea Captain suit... maybe the next time it's on sale...
Yeah, it was a great Avatar award. Love it when games have good, obtainable ones, totally makes lightly played purchases feel worthwhile! Considered doing the same for Aqua's Sea Captain suit... maybe the next time it's on sale...
SlipperyMoose
Member
Go ahead
I seem to remember impressions here being that the demo gives no warning of how mercilessly and miserably difficult it is. But then, you liked War of the Worlds, so you're probably up to the challenge
CrunchinJelly
formerly cjelly
I seem to remember impressions here being that the demo gives no warning of how mercilessly and miserably difficult it is. But then, you liked War of the Worlds, so you're probably up to the challenge
The demo was hard enough for me. I think I've downloaded the Blood Rayne demo about a half dozen times and every single time I've quitted due to the difficulty.
Bloodrayne is the kind of game that's just TOO hard, and it doesn't let you ease into at all. A similarly difficult game that starts you off with a lengthy, but comparatively easy, level is Hard Corps. It lets you get your feet wet before it stomps out your soul, whereas Bloodrayne just goes directly to the soul-stomping.
I bought it and still haven't beaten the first boss. It went on the "I am so going to conquer this game some day (but I won't have time before the next console gen comes around)" pile.
I bought it and still haven't beaten the first boss. It went on the "I am so going to conquer this game some day (but I won't have time before the next console gen comes around)" pile.
got Bloodrayne free on PS+... I might own it on 360 as well, not sure? lol. No, I think I passed on it on sale... Liked it, but too much game, and all...
At any rate... Really? "Hard" wasn't the word that came to my mind, as I played through the first stage... "Stiff" came up, as some controls seems a bit too odd, but basically making every enemey a health up item just made me slow down, and notice the game was less hack-and-slash, more like slash-and-survive.
The conversation here makes me wanna go back and seriously play it, because my memories of it are pretty different than what's being mentioned here... It does seem like a pretty cool game, and I easily like it 100% more than I'd ever thought about liking the mainline 3D games.
At any rate... Really? "Hard" wasn't the word that came to my mind, as I played through the first stage... "Stiff" came up, as some controls seems a bit too odd, but basically making every enemey a health up item just made me slow down, and notice the game was less hack-and-slash, more like slash-and-survive.
The conversation here makes me wanna go back and seriously play it, because my memories of it are pretty different than what's being mentioned here... It does seem like a pretty cool game, and I easily like it 100% more than I'd ever thought about liking the mainline 3D games.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Today's demos...
Brain Challenge: Very cheaply presented Gameloft Brain Age clone. I really can't see any reason to buy this.
Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale: I actually didn't find this terrible. I mean, it was a pretty generic hack-n-slash western RPG with obviously limited character development and touchy technical issues, but I didn't dislike it. I also thought the way the demo ended just as a boss was about to attack you was a good upsell. I checked out the reviews, though, and the consensus seems to be the further you get in the campaign, the worse the game gets, with serious balance issues and glitches.
Final Fight Double Impact: The aesthetics of this are very interesting. It's a port collection of Final Fight and Magic Sword, and the default visual style has them both displayed sort of at a diagonal angle, as though you're looking at an actual arcade screen. I thought that was neat. I quickly turned it off so I could actually play the game. I'd like to play Magic Sword, but not really Final Fight. This game made me watch easily a 60-75 second advertisement upsell before I could cancel out, which was very frustrating.
Frogger: Definitely the best of the three Frogger options. This still counts as one of those weird Konami remakes where they left the base game intact and updated the visuals, but not enough to actually make it look modern or good.
Funtown Mahjong: Terrible. Horrible presentation, and did the classic sin of using the English characters in the Japanese font. You can always tell when a company does this because the kerning is dreadful. Didn't do a good job of explaining the rules of a pretty complicated game, bamboozled me with terms, really poor UI, ugly character designs. Not a good Mahjong game. It is actual Mahjong though, not the "match stuff in a pyramid to remove tiles" Mahjong.
Geon: Emotions: Bad tutorial. You sort of roll around a Pac-Man ish maze getting dots, and then when you get enough of them, you roll to the edge, press a button to flip to the underside (where your opponent is gathering dots) and try to get to the center of that area to score a goal. There seems to be an attacking and defending element, I guess for some levels you try to avoid getting dots and instead just attack your enemy? Every character is called an "Emotion" and gets a slightly better version of one or more of the powerups, but this ended up being a lot of bluster for a difference that wasn't really obvious when I actually played the game. Maybe this is good, but I didn't get anything from the tutorial.
Go Go Break Steady: You play a one-note rhythm game (buttons come flying down a lane or in a spiral or any other pattern towards a central note "goal"). If you get it right--there's no good/great/perfect--you play a few rounds of Puzzloop. Then you do more rhythm sections. This occurs while you hear repetitive pop music and watch grafitti-inspired dancers dance. This was actually much better than Dance Its Your Stage or Beat'n Groovy--better style, more interesting mechanics, better music. I still don't think it's for me.
Guardian Heroes: So, Guardian Heroes is a pretty excellent side-scrolling beat-em-up RPG type game with big, nice sprites, a pretty decent amount of depth to the combat system, several classes to play as, and a cool 2.5d-style plane system. But this game is a terrible update to it. Really, really, really ugly upscaling of the sprites--basically they use a blobby HQ2X filter, or something like it, and then add a pencil filter over it. There are some updates to the gameplay, mostly for the better, but the new visuals are terrible. Thankfully you can toggle them off, separately from the gameplay updates. I see that m0dus apparently worked on the game, so I don't want to be mean--the art pieces I've seen him do for the game seem nice, but the actual game itself is uuuuuuuggglllyyyy. I'm not sure why I can't get over the art, because it really is a good brawler. Lots of depth. The tutorial/manual/move list is not very well presented though.
Heavy Weapon: Pretty simple shmup where you're a tank on the ground and enemies come in from above as you fire at them. I like the backgrounds, I like the simplicity, and I like the twist that good guys will drop off supplies every so often and you have to avoid shooting them. The demo was on the easy side but I assume the difficulty ramps up. I could see myself buying this for $5 or in the Popcap compilation.
JAM: Booted it up, suggested I use a Guitar Peripheral, shut it down.
Jetpac Refuelled: I have never played the original Jetpac. I'm not sure I quite understand the mechanics--you need to assemble and then fuel up the Rocket while shooting enemies. That didn't seem very hard. I see in the achievements there are achievements for finishing levels without using weapons, that could definitely add a layer of challenge to the game. The backgrounds in the remixed version are gorgeous, I really like the art here. I think I'd be willing to buy this.
New Rally-X: Direct arcade port of Rally-X, which is basically like Pac-Man only with way fewer dots, way faster player and computer, and a way bigger, vertically-scrolling playfield. I played through the demo. I don't hate it. I'm not sure it's really my kind of game though.
NFL Blitz: Really enjoyed this. Not $15 enjoyed it, especially given that I can't see anyone doing couch co-op with me. But it definitely evoked the old Blitz games. Just an arcadey, quick, simple football game. Really really responsive controls, and boy does it feel good when you manage to pull a breakaway or a long pass. The only negative thing I noticed is that tackling doesn't feel quite as satisfying as I remember it. Still, definitely a much better arcade adaptation than MLB Stickball or NHL 3-on-3 Hockey
Novadrome: Car combat/racing game. No tutorial which lead me to have no idea what was going on. Colours were a bit garrish, controls didn't feel all that tight, and it's not really my favourite genre so I probably didn't give this as much time as it deserved.
Powerup Forever: This is a twin-stick shmup meets flOw. You basically play a twin-stick shmup, and then when you beat a level, your ship evolves and you "move" towards the camera into another plane with different enemies and a different background. I would say it's more interesting than flOw and Mutant Storm and a number of the other twin-sticks I've tried, but less interesting than SSHD or Geometry Wars. Still, pleasantly surprised.
Were you able to get higher than an "F" on the stage? Hard doesn't just mean hard to finish, think of an arcade shmup where coin-feeding can make the game easy, but that's not how you're meant to play
I still have to go back and play through WOTW without dying. Seems like fewer than 10 people in the world have done so, haahah
Brain Challenge: Very cheaply presented Gameloft Brain Age clone. I really can't see any reason to buy this.
Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale: I actually didn't find this terrible. I mean, it was a pretty generic hack-n-slash western RPG with obviously limited character development and touchy technical issues, but I didn't dislike it. I also thought the way the demo ended just as a boss was about to attack you was a good upsell. I checked out the reviews, though, and the consensus seems to be the further you get in the campaign, the worse the game gets, with serious balance issues and glitches.
Final Fight Double Impact: The aesthetics of this are very interesting. It's a port collection of Final Fight and Magic Sword, and the default visual style has them both displayed sort of at a diagonal angle, as though you're looking at an actual arcade screen. I thought that was neat. I quickly turned it off so I could actually play the game. I'd like to play Magic Sword, but not really Final Fight. This game made me watch easily a 60-75 second advertisement upsell before I could cancel out, which was very frustrating.
Frogger: Definitely the best of the three Frogger options. This still counts as one of those weird Konami remakes where they left the base game intact and updated the visuals, but not enough to actually make it look modern or good.
Funtown Mahjong: Terrible. Horrible presentation, and did the classic sin of using the English characters in the Japanese font. You can always tell when a company does this because the kerning is dreadful. Didn't do a good job of explaining the rules of a pretty complicated game, bamboozled me with terms, really poor UI, ugly character designs. Not a good Mahjong game. It is actual Mahjong though, not the "match stuff in a pyramid to remove tiles" Mahjong.
Geon: Emotions: Bad tutorial. You sort of roll around a Pac-Man ish maze getting dots, and then when you get enough of them, you roll to the edge, press a button to flip to the underside (where your opponent is gathering dots) and try to get to the center of that area to score a goal. There seems to be an attacking and defending element, I guess for some levels you try to avoid getting dots and instead just attack your enemy? Every character is called an "Emotion" and gets a slightly better version of one or more of the powerups, but this ended up being a lot of bluster for a difference that wasn't really obvious when I actually played the game. Maybe this is good, but I didn't get anything from the tutorial.
Go Go Break Steady: You play a one-note rhythm game (buttons come flying down a lane or in a spiral or any other pattern towards a central note "goal"). If you get it right--there's no good/great/perfect--you play a few rounds of Puzzloop. Then you do more rhythm sections. This occurs while you hear repetitive pop music and watch grafitti-inspired dancers dance. This was actually much better than Dance Its Your Stage or Beat'n Groovy--better style, more interesting mechanics, better music. I still don't think it's for me.
Guardian Heroes: So, Guardian Heroes is a pretty excellent side-scrolling beat-em-up RPG type game with big, nice sprites, a pretty decent amount of depth to the combat system, several classes to play as, and a cool 2.5d-style plane system. But this game is a terrible update to it. Really, really, really ugly upscaling of the sprites--basically they use a blobby HQ2X filter, or something like it, and then add a pencil filter over it. There are some updates to the gameplay, mostly for the better, but the new visuals are terrible. Thankfully you can toggle them off, separately from the gameplay updates. I see that m0dus apparently worked on the game, so I don't want to be mean--the art pieces I've seen him do for the game seem nice, but the actual game itself is uuuuuuuggglllyyyy. I'm not sure why I can't get over the art, because it really is a good brawler. Lots of depth. The tutorial/manual/move list is not very well presented though.
Heavy Weapon: Pretty simple shmup where you're a tank on the ground and enemies come in from above as you fire at them. I like the backgrounds, I like the simplicity, and I like the twist that good guys will drop off supplies every so often and you have to avoid shooting them. The demo was on the easy side but I assume the difficulty ramps up. I could see myself buying this for $5 or in the Popcap compilation.
JAM: Booted it up, suggested I use a Guitar Peripheral, shut it down.
Jetpac Refuelled: I have never played the original Jetpac. I'm not sure I quite understand the mechanics--you need to assemble and then fuel up the Rocket while shooting enemies. That didn't seem very hard. I see in the achievements there are achievements for finishing levels without using weapons, that could definitely add a layer of challenge to the game. The backgrounds in the remixed version are gorgeous, I really like the art here. I think I'd be willing to buy this.
New Rally-X: Direct arcade port of Rally-X, which is basically like Pac-Man only with way fewer dots, way faster player and computer, and a way bigger, vertically-scrolling playfield. I played through the demo. I don't hate it. I'm not sure it's really my kind of game though.
NFL Blitz: Really enjoyed this. Not $15 enjoyed it, especially given that I can't see anyone doing couch co-op with me. But it definitely evoked the old Blitz games. Just an arcadey, quick, simple football game. Really really responsive controls, and boy does it feel good when you manage to pull a breakaway or a long pass. The only negative thing I noticed is that tackling doesn't feel quite as satisfying as I remember it. Still, definitely a much better arcade adaptation than MLB Stickball or NHL 3-on-3 Hockey
Novadrome: Car combat/racing game. No tutorial which lead me to have no idea what was going on. Colours were a bit garrish, controls didn't feel all that tight, and it's not really my favourite genre so I probably didn't give this as much time as it deserved.
Powerup Forever: This is a twin-stick shmup meets flOw. You basically play a twin-stick shmup, and then when you beat a level, your ship evolves and you "move" towards the camera into another plane with different enemies and a different background. I would say it's more interesting than flOw and Mutant Storm and a number of the other twin-sticks I've tried, but less interesting than SSHD or Geometry Wars. Still, pleasantly surprised.
Were you able to get higher than an "F" on the stage?
Hard doesn't just mean hard to finish, think of an arcade shmup where coin-feeding can make the game easy, but that's not how you're meant to playI seem to remember impressions here being that the demo gives no warning of how mercilessly and miserably difficult it is. But then, you liked War of the Worlds, so you're probably up to the challenge
I still have to go back and play through WOTW without dying. Seems like fewer than 10 people in the world have done so, haahah
This. Plus, it actually ramps up extremely quickly and the first boss (which I think is the third stage on the map) is hard as hell from what I remember. I didn't put much effort into the game, though.Were you able to get higher than an "F" on the stage?
It used to be zero, actually, but I see two madmen have actually managed it over the winter. That's crazy, that game sucks too much for me to even consider it.
toythatkills
Member
I like this. I mean, it's rubbish, but I did have fun with it. It's not as good as Encleverment Experiment though.
Yeah, it's basically impossible with a controller. It's really nice with a guitar though, you can do some awesome things to songs, you can make shit songs sound good, even.
So many of the trials you're playing are on my "will buy the second it goes on sale" list :lol
I finished Warp today with 200/200. It's better than I gave it credit for previously, it's definitely flawed but now I'm done I find myself wanting something else just like it, and there's not much out there, so I kind of miss it.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Yeah, I felt mixed about it when I did my first playthrough but then when I did my second playthrough I liked it a lot more. I missed the time requirement by 5 minutes though. I'm assuming there's a way to cheat the timer to get the achievement?
When I had an SDTV, even though I didn't think the style was my favorite, I liked the art well enough (at least they tried to emulate something like Rakugaki Showtime's style, rather than just put on a simple filter and call it a day. The pencil effect is kinda nice.)
After getting an HDTV, and going back to the game... I still think these claims of "ugggglllllyyyyy" are vastly exaggerated. GH originally was always a game that was more about the chaos than the individual characters; And this port recognized that, and spent more time on refining that aspect, as opposed to redrawing a crazy amount of it as new in-game artwork. THe smoothing does wonders for the larger characters too, though, and they did redraw many elements, such as the Animated character portraits, and new Character select art for every character in the game. Of course I would have loved to see the who thing redrawn, as Han's HD art for the characters are fantastic! To see those moving, with the same, or more animation frames... but alas...
But, moving on, THE RELEASE IS NOT A TERRIBLE UPDATE! Far from it; They increased the number of players in the VS modes (Doubling it from 6 players to 12), made new stages available for said mode, added a whole new Arcade mode, and redid the gameplay, system wide (adding new double jump, dodge, and guard mechanics), as well as specific changes for every playable character in the game.
They added and subtracted moves on a case-by-case basis, retooled the entire magic system to attempt some kind of competetive balance, and even gave up options in the VS mode at a director-level control, allowing you to set things like magic regen and move allowment on a per-character basis.
Also re-tooled the AI into a whole new beast, changed the Karma and EXP systems to make them more fair to play around with, and, ultimately made a mini sequel out of all the system changes they made standard in the story mode. Also gave the game a new translation.
They went above and beyond the call of duty, to basically remake the game as much as they could, within the budget they had for the project. The XBLA port is more of a gameplay sequel to GH than the GBA game. And if all their work isn't appealing.. the original game is included as well! For something that came out as a 10 dollar game, it's a very high-class job (especially since Sega, once again, lost the source code, so everyting had to be re-tooled from scratch, by Tresure themselves...)
Were you able to get higher than an "F" on the stage?
Fair enough. (Though I don't remember my score ATM, probably a D or F I'd imagine). Sometimes, games scoring methods aren't difficult, they're just poorly thought out; I don't remember the game making me think it was going to necessarly be hard, just maybe awkward. Haven't gotten into it enough to see either way, but I thought GAF impressions upon release were less "difficult!" and more "unpolished!"
Will have to look back into it eventually. I did want to play that PS+ copy some more...
toythatkills
Member
You can dashboard if you die to not lose any time, but it's actually not too hard if you know where you're going (and I'd completed it twice already for different endings, so I was pretty confident!) Just cut out any stupid mistakes and you can storm through it. I played again and just about hit the time limit when I wasn't even trying, I died about 35 times and killed a bunch of guys I could have left.
I booted up Bloodrayne to see if I remembered correctly...died three times on the first level. This makes me want to type down a list of the hardest completions on XBLA for no reason:
Impossible tier:
- Asteroids/Tempest (Literally impossible. The devs have admitted that "oops, we tested the game with godmode on. Sorry.")
- Battlezone
- Robotron
- War of the Worlds
Really hard tier:
- Bloodrayne
- Hard Corps: Uprising
- Joust
- Leedmees
- Mutant Storm Reloaded
- Pinball FX / FX2
- Rush'n Attack
- Space Giraffe
- Spelunky
- Strania
- The Splatters
- Trials Evolution (Specifically, the DLC)
- Tron
Anyone done any of these?
Impossible tier:
- Asteroids/Tempest (Literally impossible. The devs have admitted that "oops, we tested the game with godmode on. Sorry.")
- Battlezone
- Robotron
- War of the Worlds
Really hard tier:
- Bloodrayne
- Hard Corps: Uprising
- Joust
- Leedmees
- Mutant Storm Reloaded
- Pinball FX / FX2
- Rush'n Attack
- Space Giraffe
- Spelunky
- Strania
- The Splatters
- Trials Evolution (Specifically, the DLC)
- Tron
Anyone done any of these?
None of those, but I did defeat N+, which gladly handed me my ass about a million times in a row.
toythatkills
Member
No
I've got 300/300 in Trials HD though, which is probably my hardest completion.
I'm sure Ikaruga and its kind should be on your list. Schizoid is mega hard too, one achievement requires you to play as two ships using the left/right analogue sticks simultaneously and is a total mind-fuck. It's gettable if you cheat but only Superman could get it legit.
There are a bunch of games that would be insane-level difficult if it wasn't so easy to cheat, like Exit for example, or even Quarrel.
What's with Leedmees?
I played a lot of Heavy Weapon when it first game out. The game does ramp up nicely, and it has a customization aspect where you are upgrading the tank in any number of ways between levels to better handle the ramped up action. But the star of the show is the survivor mode, in cooperative play.
It's endless, and after a few minutes ramps up to this controller gripping, sweat inducing you can't believe how much stuff is going on levels of intensity. Players have unlimited lives, so the way the game ends is if all players are killed at the same time. The catch is that every time you die, it takes one second longer to respawn. So players die and take longer and longer to get into the action, so as it escalates you get these series of last stands, one player trying desperately to survive long enough for backup to arrive. That ramps up the pressure even further and it's just a crazy, intense and incredibly fun mode. It was a lot of fun to find parties in matchmaking back when it came out. If you do end up picking it up, try to play with a friend or two.
So all this talk of PS4 not having any backward compatibility and PSN purchase on PS3 not transferring over got me thinking. What if Microsoft does the same thing with their next console? Surely, with how many games are available on XBLA and how much of a success it has been, they will make the games work on the next XBox right? I would sure hate if Microsoft announces no backward compatibility to have to keep my XBox 360 around (and not sell it/trade it in) when the next XBox comes out just so I can still play my XBLA titles. Is it more complicated than just saying its all digital content, why can't they design the next system in such a way that it all works? What say you all?
Wibblewozzer
Member
A few thoughts on these:
Tempest - The worst thing ever. I went through a year or so ago trying to play more of my Live Arcade games since I generally start a lot up and move on after trying for a ten minutes. So my goal was at least one achievement or if already had one I should aim for more. I started up with one achievement earned in 2007 and really tried for more. Ugh. I think I spent an hour of frustration before finally just giving up.
Hard Corps: Uprising - I really, really enjoyed this game and beat it multiple times but ultimately stopped working on it because of the load times. If I could pay $5 to cut the load times down to 1/4 the length of what they are I'd keep playing this game and aim to get those Arcade achievements.
Tron - I find this game stupidly enjoyable but multiplayer achievements mean I'd never get close to completing it, even if I did eventually practice enough to reach the end of the game (which is also super unlikely because it's way too hard).
Edit:
I was so happy when I got 200/200 on this. Took some real effort and far too much time for how simple the game is. I remember failing on Boss Blitz like three or four times towards the end of it and wanting to give up.
Time and time again has proven it's more complicated. Wheither you take the experiences of hobbyist programmers who make emulators, or professional emulation providers, which port games to PS3 or XBL, and still end up with errors and worse preformance than original, last gen releases.
I'd LIKE backwards compatability, but I currently also don't mind just keeping my 360 around. I very well might not upgrade immediately, because there's still a lot of gameplay to get out of these systems.
That said, if they announced the Nextbox would automatically have BC with XBLIG and XBLA, and it pulls the games into all the new social and gamesharing features of the new system... I'd surely consider the new system much quicker.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Wasn't Smash TV also impossible, owing to an issue with the Level 100 achievement?
The big problem is that a lot of game development makes very specific assumptions about the hardware the system has in a way that makes it difficult to translate to another hardware architecture. Even though most coding today goes through APIs and almost nothing is bare-metal, it's still tough. It's easier when your new system is so overkill that you can do a software level emulation, but that takes much longer than one generation.
Unfortunately there's nothing special about PSN or XBLA titles. They can use the full power of the system, they aren't restricted in any way. So it'd be impossible to make the new system run XBLA titles without being able to run 360 titles. One partial exception would be for something like XBLIG which are all coded in one particular language using one particular interface set and are very interpreted, not at all low level. Unfortunately Microsoft has moved away from XNA, so it's unlikely they will support that (not that they really need to, let's be honest)
Wibblewozzer
Member
Thinking of a different game? Smash TV is separated into four levels, I believe. Gauntlet, perhaps? I think that might have 100 levels but it's not impossible since I have 200/200 on it. Honestly not sure what you're thinking of.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
I'm thinking of Smash TV, I just had the achievement details wrong:
http://www.trueachievements.com/a17669/game-master-achievement.htm?showguides=1
I did all of Spelunky except for the idiotic collect no gold achievement.
Wibblewozzer
Member
Ah, that explains it. And lovely having a glitched achievement. I should probably go in and at least earn the Level 1 Master achievement now that I'm looking at those. I was able to do that in the past, I'm sure I could do it on 360 with a wee bit of practice.
Release Date is March 13th for XBLA, 12th for PSN. (USA)
Stronghammer22
Member
I've completed 122 arcade games out of 127 on my card, including Space Giraffe. The only arcade game I don't think I'll ever complete is Triggerheart Exelica. The "Perfect Play" achievement is crazy hard.
Space Giraffe seems really difficult -- and it is -- until you understand each of the enemies. I was getting my ass kicked to begin with, I even left it for several years after completing it (reaching level 100, dying a million times) before I went back to try and get 200/200. The biggest obstacle after learning how to deal with each of the enemies is the amount of time and concentration it takes. 3 hours to reach level 100 in one go. You need to get in the zone. Your ears are just as important as your eyes, probably moreso actually, considering how hard it can be to see at times. Everything has an audio cue though, thus it's a case of putting together the noises and what you can see to form a clearer picture.
By the time I was done, I came to truly appreciate the game for what it was. It's not a Tempest clone, even if it does look like it. It's tricky and unusual, but ultimately ultra satisfying when you can play it at a high level.
EYEL1NER
Member
Really? No shit... I didn't know a release date had ever been announced.
I suppose I could have looked that up myself, thanks.
if the new xbox doesn't allow me to play my xbla games, i will seriously consider a ps4 or some other system. those purchases are the only thing keeping me tied to the ecosystem.
Same here. Well XBLA games and all the Rock Band DLC I have bought. I have never bought any other media (movies, music, tv shows, etc) through the XBox 360 so I don't have to worry about that. But the thought of having to still have my XBox 360 to play my 75 or so XBLA games does not sound like something I want to do. I have always been the person who trades in or sells my current console to get another one. I don't have enough time/money to own and get use out of more than one video game console.
Dr Zhivago
Member
These always seemed like half-arsed hack jobs, but even so...
Space Giraffe I found too hard to see what was going on. After arguing against it for ages, Minter eventually tacitly agreed by toning things down for the PC version.
CrunchinJelly
formerly cjelly
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Today's demos:
Arkanoid Live: A crisp version of Arkanoid. Presentation is nice enough, good sound effects. Seems like there's a lot of content, maybe 120 levels or so. You know what grinds my gears about Arkanoid? When you get down to one brick in the level and you spend like a minute just trying to get the ball on the right trajectory to kill it.
Alien Breed Ep1: Low end top-down shooter, gritty graphics. Enemies feel a little bullet spongy. Presentation wasn't great. Won't be trying the other two episodes.
Days of Thunder Arcade: Is this real? A 2011 arcade game based on a 1990 movie? I didn't really like the car handling, which felt pretty uncontrollable, but I loved the sense of speed. Your car goes very, very fast. 80s cheese-rock playing in the background.
Fighting Vipers: It's a Saturn fighting game. The demo lasts 45 seconds or so--just enough for a two-round match. Definitely late-generation Saturn, since the textures and models look a little better than VF2. Hard to really get a sense of the game from the demo, so I'm assuming their strategy here was just to sell to people who already knew they wanted it.
Galaga: It's Galaga! I always appreciated Galaga as the sort of evolutionary link between old arcade games and modern shmups. Like, compare Galaxian/Space Invaders to Galaga and you see a real evolution. Love the sprite work and the patterns enemies move in. Port is the standard Namco port, same menu screens, same loading screen.
Ghostbusters Sanctum of Slime: This was not good. It's a four-player top-down twin-stick shooter based on Ghostbusters. You don't play as the characters from the movie. It is very monotonous. It appears to be balanced for four players, and the CPU AI is not bright at all. It is pretty ugly. The environments are dull.
Invincible Tiger: This is a sort of nifty, very defensive side-scrolling beat-em-up. In the demo you basically just fight 13 waves of enemies one after the other as you move around a few screens worth of area. I like the combat a lot--it's not particularly deep, but it has a rhythm to it. I like that it's very defensive, you get punished for being too aggressive. Definitely not worth 1200 msp though.
KoF Sky Stage: Very narrow vertically scrolling shmup. Nice risk-reward feature: the closer you are to an enemy when you kill them, the more points you get. At first I thought this was an old arcade port because the presentation really sucks, but it's very recent. Man I hate the voices and text, I really don't think I'm very compatible with Japanese characterization, hahaha.
Mad Tracks: Here we have an old-ass Kart-type racer from the early days of XBLA. While it's a little rough around the edges, I thought this was pretty neat. There seems to be a wide variety of activities--one mission open in the demo involves surviving in a circular arena as tons of killer balls spawn and bounce around. The cool mechanic in the racing is that you're a wind-up car and if you continuously accelerate for too long, you run out of winding and have to ease off the gas. So that's neat. But it's a pretty simple game, not really anything in the way of car physics.
Raystorm HD: Shmup, polygons, different weapon types, demo lasted less than a minute what the hell are they thinking with these demos, 1200msp.
Red Bull XFighters: Red Bull's attempt at a Trials-type game. Controls didn't feel as good as Trials. Tricking felt closer to an early Tony Hawk, but it's very hard to get a sense for doing the tricks. All the tricks have "recovery" animations, but the camera angle makes it very hard to see when you're going to land, so it's almost impossible to make good use of your time in the air and not crash. Music is terrible.
Red Faction Battlegrounds: What a dreadful cash-in. It's a top down arena car combat game "based" on Red Faction. The arenas are small and boring. The cars don't really control well. The guns don't have much feedback. The entire game is rendered in IMPACT font so it feels like the UI is screaming at me. This is a really obvious cash-in.
Rush'n Attack (Original): Konami arcade port, standard options set to toggle an HQ2X style filter or original graphics--neither looks great but I think the original graphics look better. Contra-like, except you use a knife as your primary weapon. It's a little tedious... enemies constantly stream in from the left and right, and they don't really actually do anything except run towards you, so I found the game was like *walk three steps* *stop* *turn left, stab, turn right, stab stab, turn left stab* *repeat*. There are no continues and in the demo you can only have 3 lives, which is very very frustrating. I had a lot better time with the remake.
Pool Nation: It's so weird to me that people keep making more and more visually stunning pool games. So, like, before you get to play pool you see a big camera pan over the lounge environment you're playing pool in. Look where our development money went! And then you see the table and it's like the balls are made of polished glass so they can show you their reflection technology. The controls, like most pool games I've played, are a little odd. You aim, then you pull down on the right stick to pull the cue back, then you can lock your power level or not, and you carry forward with the right stick. I was rubbish while I played the demo.
Puzzle Arcade: Jigsaw puzzles...
Puzzlegeddon: You get a 9x9 grid of coloured symbols. You can move any row or column, which causes the symbols to wrap around. You can press a button to trigger an explosion that will blow up any set of matching symbols of 4 or more. This gives you energy. You use energy to attack your opponents. There was no good tutorial to speak of. I really couldn't see myself buying this, because I feel like something like Panel-de-Pon is the better game and playing against the CPU would get very boring after a while.
Shadow Assault Tenchu: It's a top-down single-screen stealth game where you see enemy's vision ranges and try not to get detected and plant traps to make the enemies kill themselves. Didn't like the presentation. The traps seemed a little dull, and I never really got the satisfying feeling of stuff falling into place.
Space Giraffe:
Track and Field: It's track and field. Both sets of graphics look ugly because the old graphics used this very primitive dithering type effect and the new ones are too smooth. I miss Caveman Olympics, how come they haven't done an arcade version of that sucker?
Arkanoid Live: A crisp version of Arkanoid. Presentation is nice enough, good sound effects. Seems like there's a lot of content, maybe 120 levels or so. You know what grinds my gears about Arkanoid? When you get down to one brick in the level and you spend like a minute just trying to get the ball on the right trajectory to kill it.
Alien Breed Ep1: Low end top-down shooter, gritty graphics. Enemies feel a little bullet spongy. Presentation wasn't great. Won't be trying the other two episodes.
Days of Thunder Arcade: Is this real? A 2011 arcade game based on a 1990 movie? I didn't really like the car handling, which felt pretty uncontrollable, but I loved the sense of speed. Your car goes very, very fast. 80s cheese-rock playing in the background.
Fighting Vipers: It's a Saturn fighting game. The demo lasts 45 seconds or so--just enough for a two-round match. Definitely late-generation Saturn, since the textures and models look a little better than VF2. Hard to really get a sense of the game from the demo, so I'm assuming their strategy here was just to sell to people who already knew they wanted it.
Galaga: It's Galaga! I always appreciated Galaga as the sort of evolutionary link between old arcade games and modern shmups. Like, compare Galaxian/Space Invaders to Galaga and you see a real evolution. Love the sprite work and the patterns enemies move in. Port is the standard Namco port, same menu screens, same loading screen.
Ghostbusters Sanctum of Slime: This was not good. It's a four-player top-down twin-stick shooter based on Ghostbusters. You don't play as the characters from the movie. It is very monotonous. It appears to be balanced for four players, and the CPU AI is not bright at all. It is pretty ugly. The environments are dull.
Invincible Tiger: This is a sort of nifty, very defensive side-scrolling beat-em-up. In the demo you basically just fight 13 waves of enemies one after the other as you move around a few screens worth of area. I like the combat a lot--it's not particularly deep, but it has a rhythm to it. I like that it's very defensive, you get punished for being too aggressive. Definitely not worth 1200 msp though.
KoF Sky Stage: Very narrow vertically scrolling shmup. Nice risk-reward feature: the closer you are to an enemy when you kill them, the more points you get. At first I thought this was an old arcade port because the presentation really sucks, but it's very recent. Man I hate the voices and text, I really don't think I'm very compatible with Japanese characterization, hahaha.
Mad Tracks: Here we have an old-ass Kart-type racer from the early days of XBLA. While it's a little rough around the edges, I thought this was pretty neat. There seems to be a wide variety of activities--one mission open in the demo involves surviving in a circular arena as tons of killer balls spawn and bounce around. The cool mechanic in the racing is that you're a wind-up car and if you continuously accelerate for too long, you run out of winding and have to ease off the gas. So that's neat. But it's a pretty simple game, not really anything in the way of car physics.
Raystorm HD: Shmup, polygons, different weapon types, demo lasted less than a minute what the hell are they thinking with these demos, 1200msp.
Red Bull XFighters: Red Bull's attempt at a Trials-type game. Controls didn't feel as good as Trials. Tricking felt closer to an early Tony Hawk, but it's very hard to get a sense for doing the tricks. All the tricks have "recovery" animations, but the camera angle makes it very hard to see when you're going to land, so it's almost impossible to make good use of your time in the air and not crash. Music is terrible.
Red Faction Battlegrounds: What a dreadful cash-in. It's a top down arena car combat game "based" on Red Faction. The arenas are small and boring. The cars don't really control well. The guns don't have much feedback. The entire game is rendered in IMPACT font so it feels like the UI is screaming at me. This is a really obvious cash-in.
Rush'n Attack (Original): Konami arcade port, standard options set to toggle an HQ2X style filter or original graphics--neither looks great but I think the original graphics look better. Contra-like, except you use a knife as your primary weapon. It's a little tedious... enemies constantly stream in from the left and right, and they don't really actually do anything except run towards you, so I found the game was like *walk three steps* *stop* *turn left, stab, turn right, stab stab, turn left stab* *repeat*. There are no continues and in the demo you can only have 3 lives, which is very very frustrating. I had a lot better time with the remake.
Pool Nation: It's so weird to me that people keep making more and more visually stunning pool games. So, like, before you get to play pool you see a big camera pan over the lounge environment you're playing pool in. Look where our development money went! And then you see the table and it's like the balls are made of polished glass so they can show you their reflection technology. The controls, like most pool games I've played, are a little odd. You aim, then you pull down on the right stick to pull the cue back, then you can lock your power level or not, and you carry forward with the right stick. I was rubbish while I played the demo.
Puzzle Arcade: Jigsaw puzzles...
Puzzlegeddon: You get a 9x9 grid of coloured symbols. You can move any row or column, which causes the symbols to wrap around. You can press a button to trigger an explosion that will blow up any set of matching symbols of 4 or more. This gives you energy. You use energy to attack your opponents. There was no good tutorial to speak of. I really couldn't see myself buying this, because I feel like something like Panel-de-Pon is the better game and playing against the CPU would get very boring after a while.
Shadow Assault Tenchu: It's a top-down single-screen stealth game where you see enemy's vision ranges and try not to get detected and plant traps to make the enemies kill themselves. Didn't like the presentation. The traps seemed a little dull, and I never really got the satisfying feeling of stuff falling into place.
Space Giraffe:
Track and Field: It's track and field. Both sets of graphics look ugly because the old graphics used this very primitive dithering type effect and the new ones are too smooth. I miss Caveman Olympics, how come they haven't done an arcade version of that sucker?
toythatkills
Member
This game is brilliant, and its Endurance mode in particular is utterly fantastic.
Agree about the controls (I wish you could customise them) but yeah, it's such a good game.
Yeah, NP. It's odd how SILENT that release has been, except for the videos that IGN has been putting out about the game. I feel like I barely heard about it, even though it's one of the only known fighters I'm looking forward to ATM...
----
Alien Breed: Never did much for me either, though I'd be willing to buy it all for 1200 points during a lull in XBLA releases. Always reminded me of Sega's Alien Syndrome, which is enough for me to try.
Invincible Tiger: Something didn't feel right to me when I played this, don't remember exactly what. I'd buy it on a firesale, but it definately feels more like a 800 pointer, which is something that rarely annoys me. Maybe it's because it was brought to us by Namco, who should have enough money to feel deeper than "mid-sized indie"?
KoF Sky Stage: I had ok fun with this, especially being a KoF Fan. This is developed by the same group that made Raiden's recent 3D games too. Nice novelty, but could see how this wouldn't appeal to non-KoF / SNK Engrish fans easily.
RayStorm HD: I guess the fact that it's available on PS1, and on PS2 on Taito's arcade collection makes them think "all they need to do is see that it's HD now, and then make their decision!" If I didn't legitimately own 2 other versions of it, I'd have purchased, just because I LOVE Zuntata's Music. Now I just await it to go on sale, some day... The DLC ship is also a ship from the previous game in the series, if I remember right, so that's kinda nice. Never been in Raystorm before this version.
Shadow Assault Tenchu: Enjoyed the game enough to 200 it back in the day. It's basically a Tenchu Take on the old PS1 Game "Trap Gunner". The satisfaction comes from basically playing mousetrap with an entire stage of enemies, and watching them go through Tecmo's Deception like setups to end up dead. I would have really liked to have seen this become a splinter series or the Tenchu brand; Trap Gunner gave me many hours of fun on PS1, and this one made me hope I'd see someone carry on it's gameplay onto this generation. In VS mode, I always viewed this game as something of a sneaky bomberman-a-like.
Vert boil
Member
Big GoD sale next week - http://majornelson.com/2013/02/22/the-xbox-live-ultimate-game-sale/
Thanks! Worth pointing out that I think "Brotherhood" and "Revelations" refer to Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Was wondering why the Assassin's Creed games stopped after AC2. :lol
Edit:
Oh, and "World at War" should probably be Call of Duty: World at War.
Edit2:
Also curious that they'll have Halo 3, Reach, 4, and even Wars on sale, but not ODST or Combat Evolved Anniversary.
If the design is any indication I'd guess at some small team making a 2D sidescrolling shooter set in the FC3 universe.
Hey I like this game a lot
ohhh nicccee. hopefully dishonored is at a decent discount.
I often Wonder how Small publishers feel, when MS decides to hold a big sale during the release week of their arcade games. I wish they would have had sales like this, during the early weeks of 2013, when NOTHING came out at all on XBLA.
I wonder if those are all the games, or if we can see some things like Akai Katana, Otomedius Excellent, Deathsmiles2 X, or Warriors: Legend of Troy on that list?