XBLA: Today In Community Games - Snakes , Crystals and Sin Waves
Since Day 1, over 10 more games have popped up in the XNA Community Games cue, and again we've been dealt with a variety of quality. Continue reading for the full list of impressions.
Snake 360
Trial Play: Now we've all played Snake before, you've probably got a version on your phone. This is an enhanced version of that, complete with multiplayer, high score charts, and 100 levels. As a Snake game it's pretty full featured, and if you're a Snake fanatic this might be the thing for you.
Easy Golf
Creator: Barkers Crest
Genre: Sports & Recreation
Price: 800 Points
Trial Play: A nice little Golf game. The graphics are fine, even with a few shadow glitches, and the floaty physics can be a bit off putting, but figure this - it has a course editor. It's a full blown editor which allows you to make exactly what the one guy who made this did. It's very robust with terrain formation and freeways and all you need for a golf course. It's got online play too. For 800 Points it's a pretty good deal.
Rift
Creator: Brandon Bloom
Genre: Shooter
Price: 200 Points
Trial Play: A very simple shooter, but it doesn't seem to really work off of any real patterns. The slow-mo stuff is kind of cool, but seems way too simple and not very fun.
Crystal Crush
Creator: Running Pixel
Genre: Puzzle & Trivia
Price: 400 Points
Trial Play: A puzzle game where instead of controlling the new pieces dropping in, you control the world around them. You move the middle Hexagon around while new crystals come from the corners of the screen. Like most puzzle games, it can get you hooked or leave you dissatisfied. Check out the trial.
No Frills Sudoku
Creator: JeBuS
Genre: Puzzle & Trivia
Price: 200 Points
Trial Play: It's Sudoku. If you didn't grab Buku Sudoku you might want to grab this. Hopefully this will be the last Sudoku title.
Painball
Creator: radlogicgames
Genre: Shooter
Price: 200 Points
Trial Play: A low tech demo. You shoot balls at oncoming red enemies. Very simple, and not really fun.
Fatal Abyss
Creator: CyanideGames
Genre: Shooter
Price: 400 Points
Trial Play: Another space shooter game, except now you're facing what feels like a hundered enemies on screen at once. There isn't a whole lot of Rhythm to the game, you're just trying to barely survive the onslaught. Could have been a lot better.
Audiball
Creator: Indiecisive Games
Genre: Music
Price: 200 Points
Trial Play: A rhythm game made to be played with your Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitar. As I don't have either I didn't attempt to play it, but if you do own either definitely give it a shot.
Dokee and the Musical Rain
Creator: Baltico X
Genre: Family
Price: 400 Points
Trial Play: First up, it's incredibly simple and a little ugly, but the people behind this game aren't making it for me. He's citing that this game is made for the very young, like 2 or 3 years old. He also claims that all the money from the game is being donated to children's charities and causes in Venezuela. Good on him for that.
Planet Delta
Creator: Evolution Dreams Studio
Genre: Puzzle & Trivia
Price: 400 Points
Trial Play: In this puzzle game you drop multi-colored blocks. The difference is on how you drop them, the game plays much like a UFO Catcher or Skill Tester machine, where you must try and judge how far the "arm" must go and build up a power meter to destroy them.
sin(Surfing)
Creator: Raph
Genre: Sports & Recreation
Price: 200 Points
Trial Play: Now this is a strange little game. You are a stickman surfing across a sin wave, and you try and get the biggest amount of points. It's surprisingly fun despite it being so simple.
Exisled
Creator: L0STlogic
Genre: Shooter
Price: 400 Points
Trial Play: Use your attack helicopter to destroy the enemy base while keeping yours alive. Decent graphics and the helicopter controls well. The game seems to be quite difficult and you seem to get shot at a lot of things out of screen range. Still, good effort.
Satellites
Creator: Thomas Bedran
Genre: Card & Board
Price: 200 Points
Trial Play: Think Chess, but with Satellites. You can move one of your satellites per turn, and then a beam is shot out from your side. The beams will bounce off your own satellites as well as your enemies, and the goal is to destroy the opposing bases using your tactically placed satellites. A cool concept which surprisingly works. Give it a go.
Garrett the Slug
Creator: The Unallied
Genre: Action & Adventure
Price: 200 Points
Trial Play: No.
Comments
It's hard to want to spend money on many of them given that the demos are short or sometimes even unrepresentative of the game itself.
I wish we were given some way to rate these titles. I'd like to know what other people feel about them. You can rate Netflix items, you should be able to rate this.
Hell, even rating normal XBLA games would be great.
Posted by: Tony | November 22, 2008 6:38 PM