Games Galore

In a turn of events that totally surprised me i bought a total of 11 games in the past week. This is split into the following categories , 4 XBLA Games and 7 normal games. While i never buy this many games at one time , this time i had to make a exception because i was really falling behind with Xbox gaming recently.Also the 7 normal Xbox games I bought were not for me but for my brother who I have been trying to get a bit more involved in gaming.

Ok so time for a quick run through the XBLA games that I have played so far and what I have enjoyed or not enjoyed. As soon as i get a chance to play the normal xbox games I will hit the blog with another post.

XBLA Games

Braid

This game really caught me off guard ,what MS usually does is when a new or heavy hitting game comes out its basically advertised all over the dashboard. While this is a nice way to advertise it usually annoys me because the games are usually not that good. When I saw that ad for braid I definitely did not want to download it.

After googling a bit more info for the game I decided to at least get the demo and see how it looks. This is where the game surprised me for the second time at +-140mb for a demo I was a hoping that the game might at least be above average. After finally downloading the game and playing the demo all I can say is wow.

Each level is beautifully painted and every puzzle is unique , while this is a bold claim after the purchasing the game i can definitely say that this is true. On top of that if you enjoy a platform puzzler then you will really enjoy these puzzles as they require a bit of thought on the players side. A very innovative thing i saw in the game was the use of paintings, these paintings are created by the player after picking up pieces of the painting through the stage. Once completed or even partially completed the player can actually use the paintings canvas and painting it self as part of the environment.

The picture above is an exapmle of how the story is told , in between each level the player find these books which explains abit more of the story as you progress. Sharp eyed players will notice that this is not the only way the story is told , the other means is through the paintings that the player collects and build.

It also pretty obvious that the roots of this game stem from the original mario games. While the creators have tried to not make it too obvious the little mario ‘gems’ found around the world complement the game to make it perfect and add a little humor to the game as well.

The image below taken from the official site describes perfectly some of the mechanics used in the game.

Also if by now you still have not bought the game , make sure that you go and get it , its worth every MS point .

Geometory Wars 2

This is the second game that i bought and without a doubt one of the better games available on the XBLA.

Based on the original Geometry Wars with a whole lot of extra oomph added to give it that extra kick needed to make it survive in this competitive market.

The number of features and improvements added to the game are tremendous and it really show. For starters the game is now fully HD compliant , so when playing it at higher resolutions the graphics are not distorted at all. Quite a few new enemy ships have been added and the original enemy ship designs have been redone to complete the new look to the game.

By far the biggest change to the game is the addition of the new game modes. With 5 new modes + co-op play (versuses or co-op) there is a ton of fun to be had with this game.

Modes Include :

• Deadline : Get as much score as possible before the timer runs out.
• King : Stay in the circle to shoot the enemies and gain points.
• Pacifism : No weapons kill enemies using the new bonus bars.
  
• Waves : Waves of increasing number of ships attack survive as long as possible.
• Sequences : Enemies spawn in the same sequence’s , see how many sequences you can survive.

If you are looking for a great co-op game this is definitely it , just keep in mind this is a game for the persistent and challengers. If you give up easily you will really not enjoy this game as the difficulty at times can be quite steep. But if i could convince my siblings who hated the first geometry wars with a passion to play this version then i don’t think many people will have a problem getting hooked to this game.

If ever you are online and want to hit a game of GW2 send me a message and we can get some gaming on.

~stalkerh