Weekly Xbox Indies - 7/24/09
Wow, this was not a great week for Xbox Live indie games. There was one standout game, and a few that might be worth a look, but the majority was pretty bad.
In more exciting news, Microsoft has announced some new features for the Xbox Indie games that will go into effect when the new Xbox dashboard hits on August 11th. One of the new features will be a price restructuring, with the 200 MS point price phased out in favor of 80 MS points. There will also (finally) be a feature so that games will prompt you upon startup if there's an update to download. Also a number of new countries can enjoy Xbox indie games including Japan, Germany, Singapore, and Sweden. August 11th can't come soon enough.
Yay
Physics Sandbox - 200 MS points. Physics Sandbox is just what it claims to be. You get a wide, empty, sidescrolling environment, a ton of tools at your disposal, and free reign to create whatever physics-based contraption your mind can invent. It can be a bit intimidating starting out with a blank canvas, but the game provides examples to show off some of the possibilities and give you some ideas. There can be slowdown when lots of objects are moving at once, and you may need to frequently consult the help screen, but the sheer possibilities for creation overcome the game's setbacks. You'll be creating your own Rube Goldberg machine in no time.
Ay?
Super Xblox 360 - 200 MS points. On the surface this is just a basic Tetris clone for up to 4 players. However, there's also a unique single player mode that gives you the ability to rotate the entire stage on its side. It's not always useful to rotate the stage, and often it can cause more harm than good, but it's an interesting twist on the classic gameplay that's worth checking out.
Cyborg Mice Arena - 200 MS points. This is a twin-stick shooter with a lot of bells and whistles. There are achievement medals and tons of weapons to unlock and upgrade. However the gameplay that accompanies all of the extras isn't quite as exciting. The isometric view can make aiming difficult at times. And though you can destroy enemy spawn points, there's no way to tell what enemy type comes out of which spawner, making it difficult to prioritize which to go after. But the extras go a long way toward making up for the game's shortcomings.
Vega Magnitude - 200 MS points. A space shooter needs a pretty good gimmick to stand out. Vega Magnitude's gimmick is to have each face button fire a different colored weapon, which can only hurt color-coded enemies. For the most part it works, but with a single infinitely scrolling background and only two or three enemy types, the game can get repetitive after a while.
Nay
Rock Paper Scissors Xtreme! - 200 MS points. I almost want to put this game in the "Yay" category because I feel like the developer made it as a satire of what a lot of the Xbox indie games have become. This game includes not only the title game, but also a fortune teller, rumble massage, and controller race (using the controller's rumble feature). It is a collection of almost all of the most useless apps people have made for the 360, seemingly assembled together to mock anyone who would buy it. I fully support mocking those people.
TabeBALL - 200 MS points. Everyone loves foosball! Unfortunately not when it controls like this. Moving players into position is fine, but good luck maneuvering the kick to actually hit the ball.
Math Gardener - 200 MS points. You've gotta hand it to hotshot10101, at least he's persistent and consistent. He produces yet another math game that's a great learning tool but not high on fun factor. When it comes right down to it, Math Gardener is essentially a series of multiple choice equations, which I'm pretty sure is more of a quiz than a game. Math Munchers or Math Blaster this is not.
LED Display - 200 MS points. LED Display lets you type in any message you want, in a number of fonts and colors, and watch that text scroll across your screen like an LED banner. Moving on...
Ice 9 - 200 MS points. It's popular to try and go the "simple yet addictive" route with indie games, but often that second part is hard to accomplish. Take Ice 9 for example, which has a cannon shooting (presumably) ice, and you need to collect all of the ice before it reaches the edges of each circular level. The controls felt a little fast and loose for my liking, but even once I got the hang of it there wasn't any hook to it to keep the game interesting.
3D Magic Images - 200 MS points. You know those "magic eye" pictures? The ones where you put your face real close to the page, squint, and there's a picture of a sailboat or something. Well, this is a collection of about 70 of them. It's interesting to have them in HD, although personally I think it's a bit awkward to view them on a large screen and found it harder to focus my eyes than if they were just on a page.
Choc-a-riffic - 200 MS points. This makes me sad. This game is already available in the community games from the same developer under the name A Great Easter Egg Hunt. It was a middle of the road puzzle-platformer with some neat physics. Apparently now that it isn't Easter anymore the game needs to be released again with a new name. At least when Karnn Age released a second Lite version it was half the price. This is the exact same game, and it just seems dishonest to put the same game up for sale twice with only a name change separating them.
TheAmazingRumblingHypnoDisc - 200 MS points. Do you like looking at swirling pictures? How about looking at swirling pictures while your controller vibrates? Well if you really want a seizure that badly, then this is the app for you.
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Posted to Video Games on 24 July 2009
Other stuff like this: bad games, community games, indie, xbox 360, Xbox Live, XNA
