Weekly Xbox Indies - 10/31/09
Yay
Frequency - 240 MS points. Frequency is an action/puzzle/platformer. You play as a robot capable of firing three colored bullets, blue, yellow, and red. But you also need to keep your colored ammunition in stock, so your robot has the ability to absorb any of those colors from enemies or objects in the environment. Taking red ammo from a red car is pretty straightforward, but things get more interesting with color combinations. See some green grass? That grass can turn into both yellow and blue ammo. The ammo also acts as your health, so switching between colors quickly becomes vital to your survival. Think of it as Mega Man meets Ikaruga, except without the unforgiving difficulty. On top of all of this there is a great story for the game, which came as a complete surprise, but a very welcome one.
Amniotic - 80 MS points. Sure, Amniotic looks like just another (absolutely gorgeous) twin-stick shooter, but it takes the genre in an interesting direction by incorporating elements of the popular game Flow. Enemies will drop orbs when you defeat them, which can be collected and added to your cell like a tail. This tail acts as your health bar, and when an enemy touches you or any part of the tail segments fall off. The orbs collected by enemies also act as weapon upgrades, which keeps the pace of the game fast with your cell constantly getting stronger with each orb collected. The game mechanics are fun on their own, but it's worth mentioning that this game looks amazing, especially considering the file size constraints of the $1 price point.
Arkedo Series - 02 SWAP! - 240 MS points. The second game in the Arkedo series is a puzzle game based on the Puzzle League/Tetris Attack formula. Colored blocks come up from the bottom of the screen, and you need to match them into rows or columns of three or more. The twin stick controls work surprisingly well, and the bright colorful graphics give it a great sense of style. If you're a puzzle fan, SWAP! is an excellent download.
Beat Hazard - 400 MS points. Beat Hazard is a twin-stick shooter that allows you to upload your own music to impact the gameplay. Your ship's rate of fire is determined by the beat of the music, so the better you know the track you're playing, the better you'll perform. The game comes with 10 songs for those that don't want to import their own, and they all work quite well for a fun experience, but the game gets really fun when your own music is involved. I tested the game with the Persona 3 soundtrack, and for the most part is worked quite well. You quickly learn that not every song will turn into the most fun experience, with the game favoring techno or hip hop beats over peaceful pianos. But if you have the music library to back it up, Beat Hazard will last you for a long, long time to come.
Run Away - 80 MS points. Run Away is a simple game where your doodle character seems to piss people off wherever he goes, forcing him to run away from the would-be attacker. The gameplay is incredibly simple, breaking down into either jumping over obstacles or rolling under them, but it is also undeniably fun.
Ay?
SFG Soccer - 400 MS points. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly the right person to judge SFG Soccer, seeing as I know very little about the sport. That being said, SFG Soccer seems to be a fully featured soccer game with several world teams (though clearly not accurate to each country's real-world equivalent) and the ability to upgrade your team through a career mode. Your enjoyment with the game will depend on your enjoyment of the sport, but soccer fans should at least give it a try.
Mr BeatLoop - 240 MS points. Mr BeatLoop isn't so much a game as a music creation tool, but it's a fun one at that. The process of setting beats with the game's 8 instruments is simple enough that someone with no musical talent (me) could even create some surprisingly impressive tunes. It's a lot of fun to play around with to create different beats, although how well it will hold your attention in the long run may be a different story. At least give the trial version a look.
GANBARE NATSUKI SAN - 80 MS points. In this puzzle platformer the gameplay hook is that you have, well, a grappling hook that lets you rotate around platforms in the levels. Japanese developer Alpha Secret Base has created some great Xbox indie games, but their latest effort with GANBARE NATSUKI SAN doesn't have quite the level of polish that their past games did. It's still a fun game, but I didn't get the same sense of overwhelming joy that past games like Green Island and Kaiten Patissier had.
Link Attack - 80 MS points. Link Attack is puzzle game with a "Communist propaganda style" that adds some much welcomed personality to the game. The puzzle gameplay revolves around linking like-colored blocks by shooting lines to connect them.
Pass the Pad! - 80 MS points. Pass the Pad! is a party game that is actually hardly a videogame at all. The game gives you a few letters, a theme, and tasks you and your friends to come up with as many words that include those letters and fit the theme. It's fun, but again this all takes place outside of the videogame so it's up to you and your friends to judge valid words and keep score. It's essentially a facilitator for a game rather than a game on its own.
Primary Attack - 80 MS points. Primary Attack is a puzzle strategy game where up to three players take turns placing their assigned color (red, yellow, or blue) on the board. The player with the most tiles in their color at the end of the round wins. Sounds simple, right? Things get more complicated with combining colors, so placing a blue tile next to a red one turns it purple, in which case no players get points. Likewise, if there's a purple block on the board and someone puts a red tile next to it, it will turn back to red again. This lends to a lot of strategic play as players block each other's moves to fill the board.
T-KARA - 80 MS points. T-KARA is a sliding tile puzzle game where you need to match shapes on the board to a designated pattern. There are times when frustration can set in if there is one piece out of place, but the satisfaction for actually completing the puzzles makes up for it. If you're the type of puzzle fan that enjoys Rubik's Cubes, then T-KARA is the puzzle game for you.
Nay
Guns Loaded - 240 MS points. Guns Loaded is a bullet hell shooter that is almost excellent. If only it were easier to tell when the enemies that fly in from the foreground and background were on the same plane as your ship. If only the bullets coming at you were in patterns to dodge rather than haphazard scatterings. If only the bullets weren't the same size and color as the stars in the background. Unfortunately, these aren't exactly minor complaints, and so it's hard to recommend the game.
Tiger Storm - 240 MS points. Tiger Storm is a fairly generic twin-stick tank shooter. There's nothing terribly bad about the game, but there also isn't anything in the game that hasn't been done elsewhere and done better.
Very Hungry Pumpkin - 80 MS points. Very Hungry Pumpkin is a cute kid's game where a pumpkin tries to collect candy while avoiding the onslaught of trick-or-treaters. the costumed throngs also collect the candy, so you have to be quick. The game isn't particularly challenging, and after a minute or two the repetition sets in, but younger gamers may have a fun time with it.
Equitunes - 80 MS points. Equitunes is a puzzle game that gives you a grid with filled and partially filled cells, and challenges you to fill in the nearby cells. The puzzles were decent, if not particularly challenging, until I realized that the game also allows you to move the filled cells around, which makes the game much easier than it already was. And as the difficulty vanished, the boredom set in.
Drinkards - 400 MS points. Drinkards is a drinking game, and a poor on at that. Each round the game gives you a drinking task that is clearly catering to a specific hetero audience. There is also a mini-game that is supposed to determine your sobriety, but it the controller sensitivity automatically loosens up with each progressive round, so it kind of cheats to make you seem drunk even if you aren't yet.
Halloween HD - 80 MS points. Halloween HD is one of the many blatant attempts to cash in on the holiday. It has 4 "spooky" scenes with accompanying sound effects.
omg cats game@#$ - 240 MS points. This is a screamer app, or at least that's the impression that I get. This means that you play for a while and then something appears on-screen screaming to scare you, or any friend you convince to pick up the controller. I can't say for sure, but the trial ends with a message saying that something "unexpected and scary" happens in the full version, and generally that's what it means. There's a base game to get to the screamer that consists of moving a ball through a pipe maze with pictures of cats plastered onto the background. It actually plays a lot like a PS1 game I used to have called Irritating Stick, which is about as fun as it sounds.
Updates
Horn Swaggle Island - price drop to 240 MS points. Camera zoom option and better visibility on SD TVs added.
Air Legends - price drop to 80 MS points.
SummerVacation
Remote Masseuse
シャイニング ブラッド shining blood
Kodu Game Lab
Bobbin's Quest
Tarot
BlockBUSTER - price drop to 80 MS points.
Scrambled Egzz - price drop to 80 MS points.
Colosseum: Hammerball
Johnny's Minefield
Gamerbots: Third-Robot Shooting
The Headsman
NaviFairy
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games, Videos on 31 October 2009
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: indie, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, xna
Frequency? Harmonix gonna sue somebody.
Well, technically the "u" is a "µ" (micro) symbol.