XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based upon only that.

I cheated with this week’s new Xbox Live Arcade game. Typically for these pieces, I download the trial and play that for about ten minutes. But this morning, I bought Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 without a moment’s hesitation. In order to still write about this game XBLA Hors D’oeuvres-style, I’ve restrained myself to playing for only about 15-20 minutes — just enough time to unlock and try all six of the game’s modes.

As I made pretty clear earlier, I’m absolutely digging the game and every single one of its game modes. This is truly the sequel Geometry Wars fans have been wanting.

Unlike most games, a fact sheet can actually give you a pretty good idea of why this game is so good. Geometry Wars is fundamentally solid, and by throwing in multiplayer support for up to four players and six different game modes, you really can’t go wrong with a $10 title.

I won’t bother going into detail about each game mode, but suffice it to say that each one is brilliant. On their own, modes like Pacifism and Waves wouldn’t hold up well as standalone games (as many a PGR4 purchasers found when they paid $60 to play Waves). But as part of a compilation, they’re great fun — particularly Deadline (score as much as you can in three minutes), which gives the game a great Pac-Man: Championship Edition-style feel to it as you compete for the highest score on the leaderboards. You can pop online and easily play for three minutes or three hours, which is perfect for an XBLA game. Just don’t be surprised if the latter ends up being a much more accurate estimate.

The game doesn’t go and reinvent the wheel by any means; if you didn’t enjoy previous Geometry Wars titles, then don’t expect RE2 to change your mind. The different modes do, however, force you to radically alter your approach while still working within the confines of the Geometry Wars gameplay you know and love.

There are some really nice touches that Bizarre included to entice you to work your way up the leaderboards against your friends. The single-player menu displays the six game modes and your high score in each, as well as those of your friends, making it extremely easy to keep track of where you stand. Perhaps even better than that is the in-game display gives you a target for who to gun for next. You’re #3 on your friends leaderboard? Then it’ll show the high score of the #2 person, allowing you an easy snapshot of what you’ll need to achieve before you can start the smacktalk.

What else is there to say? Go try the game for yourself — Geometry Wars fans will not be disappointed, and whether you’re a first time player or a GW vet, you’ll find something to blow you away.

XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based upon only that.

I stand by my earlier assessment that Go! Go! Break Steady’s description is irrevocably stupid. But after playing the game for just a few minutes, I can see that there was no better way to describe the game and that — more importantly — it’s a hell of a lot of fun to play.

Part DDR and part Zuma, Break Steady consists of two completely different game mechanics which don’t make a lot of sense to pair together. They do, however (or is that somehow?), go along with each other quite nicely.

You complete sections of a song by pressing a corresponding face button on your controller and are then taken to a section where you shoot a ball into a curved line of balls to match three of the same color. Once you shoot all of your balls (which, from what I can tell, will be from one to three depending on your performance in the preceding DDR section) you’re sent back into the DDR action — which isn’t as monotonous as it could have been, thanks to the buttons coming in from different angles and moving in ways you’re not used to seeing. You repeat until time runs out, all the while listening to some rad music that is reminscent of Jet Grind Radio.

The similarities to Jet Grind don’t end there. The game isn’t cel-shaded, but it has a distinct visual quality that makes it look much more vibrant than your run-of-the-mill Zuma or DDR clone. (That isn’t to say that’s what Break Steady is, but it’s pretty easy to see some of the game’s inspirations.)

I struggled during my first song despite playing on easy, which is pretty pathetic given the number of hours I spend with my hands wrapped around a controller — you’d think tapping a designated button at the right time would be easy. My second song I found much easier as I grasped what I was really doing.

Before your first song, you can hop into the tutorial, which at first makes the game feel extremely intimidating. But it was actually extremely short and concise without leaving anything important out, which is an impressive feat.

I’m still surprised by how impressed with the game I am, but developer Little Boy Games did an excellent job in taking two completely different genres and melding them together a la Puzzle Quest. Definitely give this one a look and don’t pass it up like I nearly did because of a stupid description.

XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based upon only that.

The 194X games hold a special place in my heart, as they were among the first shooters I ever played — certainly the first vertically scrolling shooter. Naturally, an updated version of 1942 seemed like it was right up my alley, particularly considering the number of games similar to this that I play, I’d be glad to get the nostlagia factor in there.

Capcom wasn’t promising the world with Joint Strike, but basically just what you think when you hear “updated version.” I thought that’s all I wanted, but as it turns out, I was very wrong.

It should be said that I play a lot of shooters nowadays, and while you could argue that I’m somewhat burned out, I don’t believe I am. I play Super Stardust HD on an almost daily basis, and I play any number of games — from Assault Heroes to Geometry Wars — pretty regularly on 360.

So perhaps it’s due to that fact that I find myself balking while playing Joint Strike. The game looks and sounds great, with the same aesthetic quality that makes the old 194X games stick out in my mind to this day. But everything about the gameplay feels overly simple, like Capcom hasn’t decided to join the 21st century.

Joint Strike isn’t meant to be a dual/twin-stick shooter like the games I mentioned, so don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with this Galaga-style shooting. But in this day and age, you expect there to be more to a game than dodging fire and pressing a button. Take Ikaruga, for instance, which has you swapping between black and white to avoid enemy fire and damage enemies. That’s far more engaging than collecting medals and getting the occasional power-up.

One of the only new features that Capcom has talked about in press release are the new titular Joint Strike attacks, which I couldn’t try out since I was flying solo. Perhaps that adds something to the mix that I’m not experiencing on my own, but I can’t help but think that you’re in for a watered down experience whether you’re playing with a buddy or not.

Since I wasn’t the one who wrote any of the three previous stories about Schizoid, I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into when I started up the game. I decided to forgo looking at any of the game’s instructions and jumped right into the game, which turned out to be a good decision.

In Schizoid, you control one (or two) ship that is either red or blue. Enemies will appear throughout the stage which you have to destroy, but with an Ikaruga-like twist: the blue ship can only destroy blue enemies by running into them, and likewise for red. Enemies of the other color can destroy you, so the two ships need to work together to take out enemies and keep them off your partner’s back (whether that’s another player, the CPU, or even you, if you think you’re good enough to control both ships). The game starts off fairly slow, but after a few levels, one of the challenges presented to me completely won me over with the game’s unique co-op play.

Normally, I’m more than hesitant to believe any of the claims you see in press releases or on official game websites. But Xbox.com’s description that “No other multiplayer co-op game has such tight cooperative gameplay,” it means it. That’s not to say it’s the single greatest co-op game ever, but it does use the red-and-blue concept in a brilliant way.

The first level is extremely basic and is followed with a message telling you that you’re not crazy, the game really only requires you to use the analog stick. A few more levels went by without much of a fuss, and then I was faced with a level with four stationary red targets. Playing the blue guy, I assumed I had nothing to do, but then I saw that the sentries were shooting out little blue dots in all directions. I went and acted as a shield for my red CPU teammate, and it drove right in and took out the red enemy. It sounds very simple on paper, but in a world of co-op games that rarely require tactics as complicated as flanking, this struck me as being a supremely cool usage of your teammate.

Schizoid looks very cool, too. It looks and feels a lot like flOw with more vibrant colors. That is most certainly meant as a compliment, as I think flOw is one of the most interesting games — from an aesthetic point of view — in quite some time.

Much like Golf: Tee It Up, which also came out this week on Xbox Live Arcade, this is a perfect game for the platform. It’s not overly complicated and is ideal for a quick pick-up-and-play session, and being able to play online makes this a must-buy for me. I highly implore you to check it out, because this is a very unique game to the Xbox 360.

XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based upon only that.

You can immediately tell as soon as you see a screenshot of Golf: Tee It Up! that the game is going for a Hot Shots Golf type of vibe. And that is indeed how it plays: an extremely easy and simple to pick up golf game that focuses less on your ability to calculate the wind and type of golf ball you need and more on reflexes and easy to pick-up-and-play controls. In those regards it absolutely succeeds. You won’t be sinking hours and hours into the game to learn its many nuances; from what I could tell, the game isn’t the deepest golf game around. But that’s perfectly alright, because a simple golf game for $10 is the perfect type of experience for Xbox Live Arcade.

As soon as I started the game, I was able to deck out my character with all sorts of crazy clothing. I slapped on some bunny ears, monster feet, a tie and sunglasses, and I was off to the course. There was no tutorial that popped up instructing me what to do, which wasn’t much of a problem. I made it through the first five holes with only a single above-par performance, using only the very bare bones controls of the A button and the left analog stick.

There is, of course, more to it than that. Wind does play a factor despite what I said earlier, but it’s not terribly difficult to compensate for. On each hole, you’re given a certain number of seconds to use a bullet-time style effect where time slows down as the ball is rolling or soaring through the air. This allows you to make minor adjustments to where the ball is going to land and in which direction it moves. You can’t drastically alter your shot, but it can mean the difference between a 30-yard put and landing in the cup.

There are 36 holes in total, of which I sampled only a dozen. I’m hoping they continue to be as varied as the early holes. It’d be fun if some of them end up in exotic places like a volcano, although I’m not holding my breath on that. (But that’s what DLC is for!)

I’ve mentioned a number of times that I’ve been playing the hell out of Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2 recently. That’s a full priced PSP game, and while it certainly does have more depth to it and more content, but in ten minutes with Tee It Up, I had just as much fun. With the ability to play online with four players in versus or co-op modes, this game seems like an absolute bargain for $10.

My one gripe with the game is the inability to skip the sequence following your swing. I’m very impatient while playing golf, and I don’t really feel like being forced to watch my ball slowly roll downhill when I can’t do anything about it because I stupidly wasted all of my bullet-time juice on my drive. I just feel like the game is rubbing it in at that point.

Regardless, I bought the game as soon as I was done with my ten minutes — and it was only partially because I had just sunk an eagle and wanted the achievements. I’ve got an itch to get back to playing it right now, and I can already tell this is going to be another one of those fun, relaxing games you can kick back and play with a few friends.

XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based only upon that.

This seems to happen every week lately — one of this week’s new Xbox Live Arcade games, Happy Tree Friends was released without any prior knowledge on my part that it was an existing property. The whole cutesy animals crossed with blood-splattering violence thing isn’t an entirely new concept (see Conker’s Bad Fur Day for more of that), but it certainly feels fresh in a sea of futuristic space marines.  (Is that redundant?)

Happy Tree Friends plays like a platformer crossed with a strategy game where you don’t have any direct control over the characters. Instead, you remotely interact with the environment to allow safe passage through dangerous, obstacle-laden levels. It’s a pretty neat idea, but from what I could tell from the tutorial and first level, there’s not going to be enough diversity to keep it from becoming stale.

The game reminds me a lot of Kirby: Canvas Curse, an early DS platformer where you didn’t directly control Kirby. Instead, you drew lines on the touch screen and Kirby would move along them as he came into contact with them. You could tap Kirby and that would cause him to dash, and that was how you played the entire game.

In Happy Tree Friends, you’ve got four abilities — water (lets you freeze things), fire, nitro, and action (basically an ‘interact’ button for pressing switches and levers). You use these to manipulate different things in the environment, like using the action button to open a door, freezing your characters so that they don’t walk off a moving platform and then melting the frozen critters so they can keep moving, or setting them on fire so that they more quickly.

Great idea, but from what I could tell, this turns into an affair where you simply scroll ahead of your characters, see an obstacle, and just pick one of the four abilities to take care of it. There’s really nothing more to it, and it doesn’t take much effort to figure out that you need the action button to open a door, or to freeze a leaking vent with water so that you characters can pass. What could have been intricate puzzles amount to a very simple exercise in logic as you wait for your characters to keep moving.

Don’t get me wrong — it’s entirely possible the game does have more complex puzzles as you move along. This was just the first level, after all, and throwing some complicated puzzles at you right off the bat would likely turn people away. But for a person like me that is looking for a challenge, the trial leaves me unconvinced that I should drop $10 in hopes that the game ramps up the complexity of the challenges as you progress.

XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based only upon that.

I had never heard of the board game Ticket to Ride before the Xbox Live Arcade version was announced. I just don’t play many board games anymore, so my knowledge of the subject is, for the most part, limited to Monopoly and Life. A quick glance at the screenshots for Ticket to Ride and even my first two or three minutes with the trial version of the game had me prepared for a real snorefest, but as it turns out, this is a surprisingly fun and extremely approachable game.

Now, I obviously can’t speak to the level of depth the game has, given that I’ve played it for a grand total of ten minutes. But it doesn’t really seem to me like there’s much to it, unless there’s some hidden layer that isn’t readily apparent. You draw some cards at the beginning (and throughout the game, too, if you so choose) giving you an assignment to build railroads connecting two locations, which you do by collecting cards representing trains. Certain routes require different numbers of cards, and only of a certain color — that’s the general premise, and from what I’ve seen, all there is to it.

That isn’t to knock the game. It might not be Risk, but if you break it down, Monopoly isn’t the most complex game in the world, but the number of ways for things to play out make it so easy and fun to play over and over. I feel like that’s going to be the case with Ticket to Ride, which, as I write this, I’ve become convinced I’ll be buying and playing online for the foreseeable future.

This is a really perfect fit for a board game on Xbox Live Arcade. It’s simple to play and should be a great game to pick up and relax with a few friends online. Visually, it’s good looking enough, although that might only stem from the fact that it’s a board game, and it would be difficult to actually make a board game look ugly on a game system these days. Ditto for the audio, which doesn’t play a major role, because, once again, this is a board game. But the background music is pleasant enough and the little audio effects here and there aren’t overused, which could have been a real problem had they decided to keep throwing things at you. (For reference, check out the Project Gotham Racing pack in Uno, and then you’ll see.)

While it might look complicated and headache-inducing, you should give Ticket to Ride a chance. That is, unless you hate fun.

XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based only upon that.

Pokemon Snap was never something I enjoyed. I remember being forced to play it and I found it to be as dull as could possibly be. But, it garnered its fans because it worked well enough and anything with the Pokemon named attached to it is guaranteed to sell a million of 76 million copies — it’s a simple statistical fact.

Sea Life Safari is a lot like Pokemon Snap for obvious reasons, with a sort of Finding Nemo-ish vibe to the whole thing. The trial of the game is quite brief, but it does give you an excellent look at what the game has in store. Perhaps more than any other Arcade title (with the possible exception of something like Buku Sudoku), you already know whether or not you have any intention of playing the game.

If it weren’t for these stories, I doubt I’d ever have bothered to play Safari. Being subject to Pokemon Snap was bad enough, and while that isn’t to say Snap or Safari are bad games, but it just isn’t my thing. This is clearly geared towards the younger crowd and as a family-friendly title, and it certainly succeeds at the latter. I’m not entirely sure how excited a kid would be at the prospect of photographing digital sea life when they could be playing Guitar Hero or hopscotch, but the game is very colorful and the fish have over-the-top reactions that I think will put a smile on your kid’s face if you play the game with them. (Provided the kid is no older than six or so.)

Photos are judged on a number of criteria, including the direction the creature is facing, if the photo is centered, and if you’ve caught an interesting pose. Beyond that, there’s no real twist to the game (at least not from what I saw) — you just try and take the best pictures you possibly can and enjoy the ride.

I played through the tutorial, which took around five minutes and is the entirety of the trial, and I felt like I had played enough. There’s no way I’d consider buying it, personally, but I can certainly see the appeal of having a relaxing and friendly game to play. If you have kids, you should absolutely check this out and see what they think. At $10, it’s much cheaper than a trip to the aquarium, and it’ll have them more engaged that flipping on the Discovery Channel would. (Plus, they can help score you some achievements in the process.)

XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based only upon that.

I was fairly enthusiastic about getting to play Elements of Destruction, as you probably noticed in this week’s XBLA Wednesday story. I always found it fun to create a sprawling city in SimCity and then annihilate it with tornadoes and UFO attacks, so surely a game based on destroying everything with lightning, earthquakes and tornadoes would literally be a game made of fun.

As it turns out, I was very, very wrong. Not only is the game excruciatingly repetitive (and it’s sad when that fact is glaring in a 10 minute play session), but there’s very little challenge in this game that seems to be far too simple for its own good.

In the trial, there are three different methods of annihilating the world: tornadoes, earthquakes, and lightning. (I don’t know if there’s more beyond that, but that’s all I had access to.) After picking which of the three to use with the right analog stick and pressing A to unleash it, you’re asked to do a very small minigame of sorts, where you either mash the A button or make a circle with the analog stick — nothing particularly exciting. I certainly understand why the developer would choose to do this; if it was simply a “attack here” setup, it’d get boring mighty fast, but these become such a nuisance. Maybe it’s because they are so minor that they got on my nerves so quickly, but needing to stop each time I wanted to initiate an attack distracted me from the action.

Not that there really is much action. Basically, all there is to the game is doing the aforementioned button press and watching the fairly poor visuals as things blow up. It’s a pretty boring affair, leaving me with plenty of time to notice other problems. Ugly graphics and an irritating character aside — I won’t even comment on the things he says — I quickly got to noticing how barren the lands are. There also appears to be no correlation between the environment where I was playing and the actual location. I mean, I’ve never been to Canada, but I’ve gotta think there’s more going on up there than this.

After each level, you get a chance to level up things up, including each of your elements. The problem is that it doesn’t seem like these changes are actually going to have any significant on the game. More spectacular and carnage-inducing destruction would certainly be a nice incentive to level up each element, but when the game doesn’t look any good to begin with, it wouldn’t matter how nice the attacks are supposed to look.

I suppose small things like the disconnect between the game’s version of Canada and the real thing don’t matter with so many fundamental problems with the game. Still, I couldn’t help but notice them while I yawned in between each stupid-simple minigame. It’s actually pretty sad that the game’s destruction wasn’t enough to keep me entertained — or, at the very least, focused — but it just wasn’t all that rewarding. This was a great idea for a game, but instead of focusing on something that could have given the game some depth, like a combo system, Elements thinks it can get by with the novelty of blowing crap up. From what I played, though, it can’t — especially for $10.

Yes, XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are back. If you’re not familiar with the concept, they’re a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based only upon that.

The parallels between Commando 3 and Crackdown are pretty incredible, if you think about it — both, for the most part, flew under the radar, are cel-shaded and come attached with entry into a big name beta (with Crackdown it was Halo 3, and Commando 3 has Street Fighter HD). With that in mind, I’m not surprised at all that I found my time with Commando to be very enjoyable.

You’re thrown right into the action without any unnecessary cutscenes or tutorials, and there’s never a lull in the action. But even with the constant mayhem, the game’s first level feels incredibly well-paced, and the trial packs in one of the best teasers I’ve seen in an XBLA game to date. You make your way through the first level (which took me about seven minutes) and are then faced with a huge, “Holy ****”-sized tank battle, only to be yanked to the game’s “Buy me!” screen. It might have been nice to get a look at what boss battles are like, but the action was convincing enough for me to buy the game right then and there.

In an extremely crowded market of twin-stick shooters, the thing Commando has going for it (aside from the Street Fighter HD beta, of course) is its distinct visual look. It most certainly isn’t going to blow you away, but it’s definitely going to get a few double-takes since the cartoony graphics are a breath of fresh air in a sea of Assault Heroes and Mutant Storms.

It needs to be said that Commando 3 doesn’t stray too far from the norm in terms of gameplay. There’s no opposite color twist like in Ikaruga or anything else; this is just straight-up, old-school shooter action. Because of that, a lot of people might be turned off, and I don’t blame them. I constantly refer to the “bloated twin-stick shooter market” every time it seems like yet another game fitting the bill is announced, but Commando just plays so well that it makes it difficult to complain when other games, like Assault Heroes 2, just seem plain dull.

The three different characters do a good job of mixing the action up, as they have a pretty significant impact on the way the game plays. And like the characters, vehicles actually make things feel different — unlike Assault Heroes, where vehicles simply feel like another weapon. The jeep in the first level is a bit messy to drive, and not being able to choose the direction you shoot only exacerbates the problem. It’s rather annoying to be zipping around on a vehicle, and then drive into a wall while the enemy gets cheap shots on you while you try to figure out how to turn around — it’s a bit like driving a bumper car, in that respect.

Even with those small gripes in mind, I still had a great time with the game. Yes, it is another twin-stick shooter, but it’s a damn good one that’s worth checking out. It might not be as good as Ikaruga, but it’s still extremely fun.

Yes, XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are back. If you’re not familiar with the concept, they’re a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based only upon that.

I don’t know if I should phrase it as being “lucky,” but the trial of Frogger 2 allows you to try out both time attack and story mode. After what I had written earlier, I had to immediately try out story mode and hope the the screenshot I was referring to was an aberration. Instead, I was treated to some extremely-slow moving text (which thankfully you can speed up) telling me the written-for-a-baby story of how Frogger can’t swim and an alien who crashes its UFO and is now sad because some of the parts fell off and have gone missing. Naturally, Frogger is heroic, can speak, and isn’t frightened by the prospect of what’s essentially a capsized UFO and its occupant. He’s going to come to the alien’s aid in the only way he knows how — by turning into a carrot! (Wait, no. That’s the plot to a Rob Schneider movie. Apologies.)

Aside from those story elements of the game — which are just as horrifying as I expected them to be — it’s still the same basic gameplay from the original Frogger game, only now you’re traversing much more complicated levels (in that there are impassable boundaries that you have to go around) and various items to pick up. (Although time attack mode is much more no-nonsense, with nothing but basic beat-the-clock gameplay.) You’ll run into enemies like snakes and bees, but for all of the layers of complexity it’s added, it doesn’t feel like a deeper game than the original, and actually feels like a step backwards.

The beauty behind Frogger is its simplicity. You can see the entire level; you can see your obstacles moving from side-to-side; you see Frogger and your goal. The only difference from level to level or session to session was the introduction of enemies like snakes and crocodiles and different variations in traffic. You always knew what to expect, but at the same time you were never able to establish a routine you could pull off with your eyes closed.

That’s where Frogger 2 fails in my eyes. The levels — whether you’re playing the story mode (where you might be compelled to pick up items) or not — aren’t the same as that one simple, perfect layout. And it’s understandable; these days, gamers expect hours upon hours of content and more — more levels, more guns, more enemies, more everything. So what the developer did was oblige and give more levels and modes than the basic Frogger game. And because of that, it fails, because no single level or combination of the levels I played in the trial game could come close to the magic of the traditional Frogger level.

If you look at a strategy game like Civilization, for instance, you’ll see that many of the game’s tasks were streamlined over time. From Civ III to IV, a number of the excruciating micromanagement bits became automated because they were simply superfluous. The lesson learned was that adding more complexity to a game doesn’t necessarily make it deeper.

That’s exactly the problem Frogger 2 faces. True, it might be impossible to, as I said, capture the magic of that original Frogger level. And that’s clearly not what the developer tried to do, because that setup had already been done so perfectly that there was nowhere to really go with it. But this new direction just didn’t do it for me. You could argue that if they made a game that was entirely derivative from the original, it’d get knocked for not trying to do anything different. And you might have a point. And maybe it’s just me, but this just doesn’t feel like what a game entitled “Frogger 2” should have or could have been.

Yes, XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are back. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based only upon that.

I was set to break my own rule of playing no more than ten minutes of an Arcade game for this here feature. You start off by playing the tutorial, and six minutes in, I had seemingly gotten no closer to the actual game. I didn’t want to write my impressions based on nothing more than the game’s tutorial, but it worked out where the trial actually cut me off a few minutes later — so I guess that’s all they want you to experience with the trial version of Roogoo. Suffice it to say, that’s not a promising thought.

To put it simply, you basically are playing a videogame iteration of that toy you had as a kid where you had to match a shape with its outline and you could push it on through. In Roogoo, that’s the fundamental gameplay mechanic, where you want to push a shape through its respective hole(s) as quickly as possible in order to save the meteors from the evil Meemoo, blah blah blah. Playing this game for its story is like watching Baywatch to become a better lifeguard.

At no point in the course of my time playing the trial of Roogoo would I consider myself as having fun. Instead, I felt like I was playing something designed for smart five-year-olds; that isn’t to say the game isn’t challenging, but I didn’t find any gratification in getting the shapes through their holes as quickly as possible. And if you don’t get that, what’s the point of playing? That’s like the shooting in an FPS game not being any fun.

Things do get mixed up a bit once enemies and an additional shape are thrown in, but even then, I feel like what I’m doing is a job. Having one simple, fundamental game mechanic be the focus of your game is fine — Rez doesn’t have much to it in that regard, and that’s one of my favorite games of all time. When you find yourself being happy to be done with a level because you just want to be done with it — not because you want to advance and see what’s next — that’s a pretty good indicator that the game you’re playing isn’t very good.

It could very well be that I was only able to play an early tutorial section in the tutorial. Things could certainly get more exciting later on, but the point of this article is to get the same impression for a game that anyone else would get from downloading and playing the trial. And what I got out of my ten minutes is a strong reassurance that my money would be best spent elsewhere.

Yes, XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are back. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re simply a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based only upon that.

Right off the bat, I wasn’t particularly enamored with Aces of the Galaxy. It’s an on-rails space shooter that seems to have about as much strategy as those web games where you see how many times you can click your left mouse button in ten seconds. The trial lets you try the game’s first two levels; after I was through with the first (which took around four or five minutes), I was dreading another level.

But around halfway through the second level, I found myself genuinely enjoying the game. It wasn’t like the game suddenly become more sophisticated; it was more that I had let go the expectation of something more sophisticated and was able to enjoy the game for what it was.

Of course, some people might not be able to do that or they simply might not enjoy a game where your objective is to blow the crap out of everything. It’s essentially a third-person, 3D Galaga shooting gallery. Before each game, you’ll get a mission briefing of sorts, as some sort of alien thing will talk about how they’re going to crush you. Lame seems like an understatement; one of the lines was literally, “You know in your blood-regulating organ you cannot win.” I’m not even going to say anything. I don’t think it’s needed. It speaks for itself.

It’s such so terrible. God.

So while you won’t find the story to be particularly gripping (or have any semblance of anything decent or good), that’s just not what this game is about. Everything looks good, and flying through an asteroid belt with mines scattered throughout can be pretty intense. The whole goal is to get as high of a score as you possibly can, so I wish there were level-specific leaderboards rather than just for your total score. It’s not a big gripe, but it would’ve added something for those who aren’t good enough to make it all the way through the game’s 25 levels.

Aces does some unnecessary things with its “temporal shift” feature, which is just a fancy name for slow-mo. Maybe it becomes a useful tool later in the game when you need to hit an enemy in a specific spot, but from what I saw in the trial, it’s only in the game because it sounded good on paper.

With co-op multiplayer but on- and offline, I can see the value of the game for $10. Judging from the fun I had playing for ten minutes, this is an ideal game to pick up when you have a few minutes to spare, unlike other XBLA games like Penny Arcade Adventures or Rez. It’s not for everyone, but old Galaga fans and people who enjoy blowing spaceships up should get a kick out of Aces of the Galaxy.

Yes, XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are back. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re simply a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based only upon that.

I think the most telling part about Buku Sudoku is that I really had a hard time putting my controller down after 10 minutes. (I actually ran over and play for 11:36, according to the handy in-game clock.) If you’ve ever played a Sudoku puzzle before, then you’ll know precisely what you’re getting into. I’m far from an expert on this particular genre of logic puzzle, but I do enjoy the occasional Sudoku.

When I wrote this week’s XBLA Wednesday story, I said, “As much as I like Sudoku, though, I can’t imagine buying this. When I first heard about it I was excited, but then I realized: Do I really want to stare at numbers on my TV screen?”

As it turns out, I really do.

I didn’t want to waste any time going through options or game modes, of which there are quite a few more than you’d expect from a Sudoku videogame. As such, I was surprised when I jumped right in and found myself playing on 4×3 grids, with the extra three spaces being occupied by the letters A, B, and C.

There’s been a lot of buzz about all the different control schemes you can play the game with; you can play one-handed, with the Big Button Pad, a DDR dance pad, or an Xbox 360 Universal remote (my Harmony remote even works!). I can’t really speak to the other controller methods, but it’s great that the developer included all of these choices. If you want to play on your DDR dance pad, then why should anyone stop you? (To prevent you from looking like a fool, but hey that’s your prerogative.)

Even without achievements (I’m on the trial version, remember), the game envelopes your mind in the same way the game does on paper. That was surprising, as I expected the inability to jot notes in the margins and things of that nature would create a disconnect with the game, but it really didn’t. Plus, the small graphical effect when you correctly solve a line or square provides you with some satisfaction that a paper version can’t.

The only real problem is the potential for straining your eyes; I’d recommend that you take a break from this game pretty frequently, especially if you wear contacts. Otherwise you might end up with a lot of people wondering if you’re high with those bloodshot eyes.

$10 (800 Microsoft points) might seem like a bit much for a Sudoku game, but from what I’ve seen, the game is extremely well made and packs in a lot of value (over a thousand puzzles, several multiplayer modes) for that price. I’m really looking forward to picking up the full version and using this game (and its save feature) as a good way to pass the time in between sessions of GTA.

Rocketmen: Axis of Evil
Developer: A.C.R.O.N.Y.M Games
Publisher: Capcom
Price: $9.99
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3
Category: Arcade Shooter
ESRB Rating: E10+ for Everyone Ages 10 and older (Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes)
Release Date: March 5, 2008

One of the highlights of last years E3 for me was my trip to visit and interview the folks at Capcom about their upcoming games. I was jazzed about the upcoming Harvey Birdman game, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles looked like it was going to resurrect the arcade rail-shooter on the last platform I’d have expected and the Street Fighter II ultimate hand-drawn coolness edition was in the works. One of the titles that flew somewhat under the radar at the time was the Xbox Live! arcade game Rocketmen : Axis of Evil. I even wrote a quick preview of it during our E3 coverage.

Even the PR guy who politely showed me around did not have any clue what the game was based on so I guess he was surprised when I mentioned that the title was an interesting choice for a license built around a constructible card game where ship-to-ship combat was the main focus. Instead of the Star Control-like  melee I would have expected instead I was watching someone grind through a swarm of burly Martians in a Smash TV-like top down shooter.

I mentioned my shock and soon found myself bellied up to the demo unit blasting through hordes of enemies with some guns. Almost a year later.. well its the same situation. I fired up the game after getting it on the Xbox Live! arcade service and tried to remember that experience in Santa Monica.  Problem was that well.. the early version I played did not translate to the final version I found myself playing now.  Normally you’d assume that was a good thing, games should evolve and get more polished with time – except this time apparently that was not the case.

Rocketmen: Axis of Evil is a cell-shaded cartoony game set in a comical universe. The player is a member of the Earth federation in a campy knock-off of the classic Buck Rogers universe. Humanity on Earth is fighting to break the backs of the oppressive, militaristic Martians with the help of its Sexy Purple Venusian allies. All the tropes of these pulp sci-fi settings are included but somehow the humor and delivery don’t quite gel.

The game and it’s various levels are introduced through stilted animation. The story is suitably insane and “fun” but when you actually get control and find yourself wandering the hallways of spaceships and battle stations things quickly go from bad to worse. The top-down shooter is a seemingly simple sort of game to get right. Players roam with a camera centered on them, enemies dies and drop power ups and bennies and you have multiple weapons and special items that allow you to wade through the bad guys up to the inevitable boss conflict that marks the end of a section or level. Simple formula right?

Well Rocketmen hits this formula hard but manages to choose a few changes things that push the mindless shooting and gear gathering into a tedius monotony and frustration. This effect happens primarily because the game’s camera is not flexible. Players walk through levels and the camera moves only in a “forward” direction. There is no backtracking to collect missed items. In fact during the entire game I continually got frustrated because I’d crossed that magical forward line of progress that forced the camera to move and block out the area behind me because I was dodging enemies. This effect is game-breaking in its nature and will drive all but the most dedicated misogynists to other pursuits.

The second odd choice concerns the special weapons of the game. The player can pick up a good variety of weapons that have the expected array of fire effects like cone fire or multiple spray or really big lasers that can slice through a swarm of foes easily.. the problem is that the developers, for some really odd reason, decided that rather than limiting the bullets or shots from a special weapon once picked up the guns effects would be based on a timer. Great. So I kill a swarm and run to pick up the big laser Gatling and immediately I have to fire it?

Even if there are no enemies and the next spawn point for them is seconds of walking away? This is a bad choice for the player and often I found the gun running out of juice just as I began to wade into the next onslaught of enemies.

Rocketmen: Axis of Evil is not what I expected – which was a light and fun top-down shooter – instead I found a game that bothered me more than my last Wisdom Tooth extraction. I mean at least with dental work they often give you pain killers to help dull your mind to the pain its experiencing. Maybe that’s the answer here as well. The game is available on both Xbox Live! and Sony’s Playstation Network for a negligible ammount, but frankly even that is too much to pay for this experience.

XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 15 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based only upon that.

Commanders: Attack of the Genos seemingly came out of nowhere; I had never heard of the game, and suddenly it was being released on Arcade. Strategy games are certainly a genre that XBLA is lacking, so I was more than willing to embrace Commanders. What I walked away with was the feeling that I was playing Advance Wars in 3D on my TV – and there’s nothing wrong about that, especially for only 800 points ($10).

Now, don’t get me wrong; Advance Wars is a far superior game in almost every regard. But Commanders plays out in very similar fashion. The trial version of the game allows you to play through the tutorial and the first few campaign missions, of which 15 comprise the full version. I made it through the tutorial and about a mission and a half, skipping the story elements because I could instantly tell that it was going to be far too Saturday cartoonish.

But, really, you don’t need story to enjoy a turn-based strategy game. What’s important is that the game is balanced and, in the case of an XBLA game, the controls are easily accessible. The controls are definitely very pick up and play friendly, and the short tutorial will be more than capable of explaining the fundamental elements of the game. I didn’t play the game nearly long enough to assess whether the units and Commander powers are balanced. From what I saw, the basic light infantry and scouts work much like you would expect them to, and presumably that familiarity will hold true throughout the rest of the game.

Speaking of familiarity, however, this game seems like it’s far too unoriginal for its own good. For those who have never really dabbled in the genre, this is a fine springboard for bigger and better things. But to anyone who has ever spent more than an hour with a serious strategy game, you’ll probably be bored out of your mind within 15 minutes.

That being said, it IS a nice strategy game on Xbox Live Arcade, and hopefully it does well enough that we’ll see a sequel that can innovate on the basics so that first impressions for strategy game vets aren’t quite as mundane as mine were.

XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 15 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based only upon that.

I’d never actually played or even heard of Discs of Tron prior to hearing it was coming to the Xbox Live Arcade; I’m simply too young to have played it when it was first released, and unlike many other classic titles like Pac-Man or Pong, it hasn’t been ported to every single platform ever. Having played the original Tron on Arcade, I had a vague idea of what sort of experience to expect. And I wasn’t too excited.

After two minutes, I had grasped the extraordinarily basic concept: you’re on a small platform (sometimes more than one) in a closed room, facing an opponent in the same position, and by throwing out up to three discs you have to take out your opponent. It was reminiscent of Gladiators, almost, except this was supposed to be futuristic and sports graphics that clearly are 25 years old.

It took a little getting used to, but the simple controls and concept make this a very simple pick up and play type of game. But the question is, would you actually plunk down $5 for a game that makes Pac-Man’s gameplay seem diverse?

The trial only allows you to play through the first two stages, which aren’t much of a testament as to how a new level could really alter the gameplay. With only two tries under my belt, I was surprised to find that it was taking around two minutes to complete what the trial offered. So, I did what anyone in this position would do – try to set the best time record possible.

51 seconds for the first two stages is what I got with minimal effort, which makes me wonder if anyone who is halfway decent at Discs of Tron is ever challenged outside of the game’s online multiplayer.

While it was fun at first, I really don’t think the game holds up well after you pass the initial stage of enjoyment. With the sort of variety you see in games today, it’s hard to justify purchasing Discs of Tron without being a truly hardcore fan of Tron.