Xbox Live Community Watch - 5/15/09
For anyone out there that still hasn't jumped on the Xbox Live community games bandwagon, this is an excellent week to start. Sure there are duds, there always are, but this week in particular the community games that are good blow the official XBLA game offerings out of the water. Tiny Dancer already gushed over Clover (and its hunky creator) earlier this week, so let's see what else this week brought us. And don't forget to check after the jump for the less favorable releases of the week as well as which games have received updates for those of you that may already own them.
Yay
- Clover - 400 MS points. Though it's side-scrolling, I'm not sure I'd call this a platformer. This is an adventure game through and through, and an excellent one at that. Puzzle solutions are smart, the art and music are stunning, and the thought-provoking story makes this one of the most mature games I've seen. I don't mean that in an M-rated way (which is actually often quite immature). This is a game you'll be thinking about long after it's finished, and that's something that far too few games can claim.
- Trino - 400 MS points. Trino is about forming triangles to capture enemies. It starts out simple, but as the levels progress the enemies get tougher and you can create more triangle traps at once. The result is a near perfect difficulty curve, and one of the most addicting games I've played in a long time. I dare anyone to play the trial version without getting hooked, and with over 40 levels it's well worth your points to pay for the full experience.
- A Robot's Conundrum - 200 MS points. It may not have the graphical polish of the above mentioned games, but this is one great puzzle game. You play as a boxy little robot that needs to safely navigate cargo to the bottom of each level. The 30 campaign levels are very smartly designed, and you can also play them all in co-op mode which adds a slew of new solutions to each puzzle through teamwork. If cooperation isn't your thing there's also two player battle stages where it's a race to the bottom of the level. There's also a level editor mode, which is always a welcome addition.
- Pellmell - 400 MS points. A side-scrolling shooter featuring co-op for up to 4 players. With over 100 levels, several difficulty settings, and the unique ability to adjust the scrolling speed as you play, there's a lot to like in Pellmell. It's a bit odd that the story is sectioned off as a block of text off of the main menu rather than integrated into the actual game, but you generally don't play an action-heavy shooter like this for its story, so that can be forgiven.
Ay?
- Chalked - 400 MS points. I really wanted to love this game. The art style is amazing, and I found the quirky vocal soundtrack and sound effects very endearing. But the gameplay? You play as either bad guys planting bombs to destroy buildings or the good guys trying to stop bombings, all in a wonderfully drawn, black and white city. Unfortunately, regardless of which side you pick the A.I. for the opposing side isn't particularly strong, as I often found them standing around ignoring me. It's not very fun or challenging to catch bad guys that are standing still, or to avoid good guys that don't chase you. I know I've criticized multiplayer games for not having single-player modes in the past, but this single player game is just begging for a multiplayer option. If it gets a multiplayer mode in an update, or even just an A.I. boost, download it immediately, but in the mean time give it a try and enjoy some awesome art.
- Johnny Crush - 800 MS points. A first-person shooter where you play as humanity's last hope against a seemingly endless swarm of giant bugs. It's some decent mindless fun, but it gets a little distracting when the insectoid enemies have more legs than they do frames of animation. Considering that this is one of the more expensive community games available, it becomes a bit harder to forgive the technical faults and give it a full recommendation.
- Jammer - 400 MS points. Jammer is a music rhythm game where you get to create each song piece by piece. Several rhythm sequences will scroll on the screen, and the ones you choose to play will be the featured parts of the song, making for a potentially different musical arrangement every time you play each of the game's 10 songs. The game also boasts guitar controller support, though I was unable to see how that worked since my guitar controller was recently broken (grrr).
Nay
- Iris - 200 MS points. In its current form, Iris is broken. I do not know how this game passed community standards to be released. It is supposed to be a music visualizer, providing a light and color show to accompany any music stored on your 360 hard drive. Instead all I saw was a black screen claiming that the game was loading while my music played. At first I let it sit, but after 5 minutes of loading I tried pressing buttons. I got a rumble response from the controller with each button press, and even managed to pause the music, but all the screen ever showed me was the loading screen. Eventually I had to reset my system in order to quit (since even the 360 guide button didn't work during the loading screen). I tried downloading it again and got the same result. Hopefully an update will be coming soon, and I may give a new description for the game when a working update is released, but stay as far away from Iris as possible in the mean time.
- Math Sniper 3D - 200 MS points. Math Sniper 3D combines all of the fun of math with... sniping people as they run out of a school building? Oh dear. Ok, so supposedly you're sniping spies that know the answer to a given math problem, but that's really not what it looks like.
- Ring of Fire - 200 MS points. This is actually a drinking game usually played with a deck of cards, where this community game is a substitute for that card deck. As drinking games go, it's not even a particularly good one, and if you are going to play it, you're better off with a real deck of cards.
- Reflex Turbo 3 - 400 points. Reflex Turbo 3 offers three games in one. The first is a moderately fun asteroid shooting game, which should last you a solid 3-5 minutes. The other two are either a button mashing hurdle race or a reaction-testing game where you press A when the music stops. There isn't really any coherent theme connecting any of the three games, and I can't see myself coming back to play any of them again.
Updated Games
Planet Delta
Biology Battle
Aquarium HD
Ping Time
Supercow
Mithra - Episode 1, Chapter 1
Slottso Party
Air Legends
Classicard
NaviFairy
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 15 May 2009
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: community games, indie, xbox 360, xbox live, xna
I am the developer of Iris. I just wanted to make it clear that I spent alot of time trying to alleviate the issue with loading a PC library from the Xbox 360. But there is honestly nothing that can be done about the load time, it is something that is in the XNA framework itself. Which makes it very frustrating. I have made a few Microsoft Connect issues to try and get them to fix the issues that is causing this load time.
I have created an update for Iris that will hopefully improve the trial experience though. I hope to have that out in the next week or so.
If the framework gets updated, and the PC library loading time gets resolved, I'll keep you informed. For the meantime however, loading a library from the Xbox 360 is the most efficient thing to do, as the load times for those are very low.
I just realized you said the music was playing WHILE loading. The only way that can happen is if you are playing the music through the dashboard player, instead of through Iris. You need to make sure the 360 media player is stopped and play it through Iris.
I was not playing any music through the media player before starting up Iris. What I find especially strange is that the loading screen will stay up for well over 15 minutes if I leave the system on, and yet the trial is only supposed to be 8 or 10 minutes long.
I will re-download the game each week to see if a working version is available, and if it works I will gladly write up a new response and re-rate the game. I will admit that I was only running it through the trial version if that would make a difference. It must be working for some people though, since IGN has featured it as one of their top community games.
I have an update that is at 91% through review right now that SIGNIFICANTLY improves PC library loading times. I found that the problem was stemming from reading the info of the songs after creating the library. So I have offloaded the reading of the data until you browse the library itself. So this update should greatly improve the usability of PC Libraries. However, the use of PC libraries is only allowed in the full version now. The update should be out in the next few days hopefully. Let me know if you want me to get you a copy of the ccgame file if you would like the review the full version without buying it. Thanks!
Update to Iris is now released!