Yay

AvaGlide - 80 MS points. Don't let the fact that AvaGlide is an Avatar game fool you, it's a really good game. It's like the next-gen Pilotwings game that Nintendo refuses to make for some reason. You can pilot your hang gliding Avatar through three challenge modes on three different courses. Ring Rush has you flying through rings for the fastest time while collecting stars for points, Delivery Dash has you dropping packages on giant targets, and Star Smash has you collecting stars and aiming for the high score. All of these challenge modes can be played alone or with friends, though the multiplayer is only for local play on the same system and has each player taking turns instead of split-screen. There is a bit of a learning curve for controlling your hang glider as you figure out the best ways to dive and glide to maintain speed or turn without stalling in midair, but the handy free play mode lets you casually glide through the levels to help you become accustomed to the controls without any objectives to worry about. AvaGlide's visual style is fairly basic, though charming at the same time like an HD version of Wii Sports Resort. This only further emphasizes the feeling that your playing part of some lost Pilotwings sequel. AvaGlide is easily the most polished Avatar game to come from an Xbox indie developer yet, and is definitely worth a look with its mere $1 price tag.

Ophidian Wars: Opac's Journey - 80 MS points. Opac's Journey is a side-scrolling platformer from the Metroidvania school of game design. You control Opac as he travels through a series of interconnected caves, collecting power-ups along the way (from statues that looks suspiciously similar to Metroid's Chozo) that will help you reach new areas. Probably the first thing that drew me in to Opac's Journey was how well done Opac's character sprite was done. He looks and animates like a character straight out of a 2D Castlevania game, with a suit of armor like a cross between Dead Space and Big Bad Beetle Borgs. My obsession with 2D animation aside, exploration and platforming are the real stars of Opac's Journey. This is in part because those mechanics are very well done in the game, but also because there are no enemies and no combat. For a game title that includes the word "wars" I was expecting at least a few enemies, but the game still works surprisingly well in their absence. The abilities Opac collects range from double jumps to gliding and even sticking to walls, all of which help you find new paths through the caverns to reach the surface. These abilities can also be upgraded with roots you find throughout the game adding even more functionality, like changing your wall sticking ability to wall climbing. There are also checkpoints scattered throughout the game in case you fall into a bottomless pit. These checkpoints also serve as the story for the game, as activating each one provides a note left for Opac. If there is a downside to Opac's Journey, it's that the game clocks in at around 1 hour with no save ability, forcing you to complete the game in one sitting. The short length, combined with a cliffhanger ending makes Opac's Journey feel like a prologue to a series of games under the Ophidian Wars title. That being said, it's a really good prologue, and especially toward the end the checkpoint notes hint at a much greater plot that I hope to see play out in future games. And despite my complaints about the game's length, it's hard to argue with $1 translating to 1 hour of entertainment.

PLATFORMANCE: Castle Pain - 80 MS points. Platformance is hard. Typically I begin these reviews with a sentence paraphrasing the genre or style of a game, but for Platformance I think "hard" is quite an accurate descriptor. But the reason Platformance is in the Yay category is because despite its difficulty it isn't punishingly difficult. In Platformance you control a charmingly pixilated knight on a quest to find and rescue a princess. There is only one level to play through, but it is a massive level. So massive, in fact, that you can pull the camera back two levels of zoom to see either more of the area around you or a map of the entire level. When zoomed out all the way, the knight looks like a tiny speck on the screen, and serves more to show you how much further you must progress than providing a playable viewing angle. The level is littered with traps, whether they be spinning blades, deadly spikes, or flying balls of lava, each of them causing instant death. Thankfully, there are generous checkpoints after almost every obstacle, so death never sends you back too far. The developers knew they were making a hard game, and the checkpoints help to encourage you to keep playing rather than succumb to the challenge. In addition to the deadly traps, there is a Pac Man style ghost that will follow you through the level. Unlike the traps, the ghost will cause a game over if it touches you, adding an element of urgency to the game. There are three levels of difficulty, with the harder ones adding even more death traps for those players who are truly masochistic. Players who shy away from precise timing in platformers might want to pass on Platformance, but if you like a good challenge then Platformance is worth a look.

This Way That Way - 80 MS points. This Way That Way is a puzzle game where you must guide a cute colored blobs to each level's exit. This would seem like a simple enough task, except for one quirk: once the blob stops moving, he can't move in that direction again until he's moved in every other direction. For example, this means that if you're walking down and stop, then you can't walk down again until you have walked up, left, and right. Things get even more complicated when moving enemies (who don't have the same movement restrictions) are introduced to the levels, though it's quick and easy to reset a level so the difficulty never approaches frustration. Fans of classic puzzle games like Chip's Challenge or Sokoban-style puzzles will find a lot to like in This Way That Way's unique movement mechanics.

Opposites - 240 MS points. Opposites is a fantastic competitive puzzle game. The game board is set up like two sideways Tetris pits, one black and one white, with their bottoms connected. If you're the black player, white puzzle pieces come in from the side of the screen that you use to clear lines in typical Tetris style. Clearing lines causes the board to shift, taking board space away from your opponent and giving you more room to place pieces. Where Opposites gets really interesting though, is that the white player can use the negative space created by your pieces to put in their own puzzle pieces. I fear that my description isn't doing the game justice, so hopefully the above screenshot helps to give an idea how the two players can play off of each other. While Opposites is best played with a human opponent, you can also play it solo with AI taking over for the other player. Just as a warning though, the AI is quite good. Opposites takes the simple concept of opposing colors, and turns it into a truly amazing puzzle game. I cannot recommend Opposites enough to puzzle game fans.

Spring Up Harmony - 240 MS points. Spring Up Harmony is a slight twist on the ever popular timesink Peggle. You still shoot a ball at pegs to clear as many from the board as possible, but in Spring Up Harmony the pegs and ball are color-coded so that only the right color can clear a peg. And the pegs don't so much "clear" from the board as fall, and you can catch the falling pieces in a basket at the bottom of the screen for points. Peggle also lets you collect the ball in this way, but it's made easier in Spring Up Harmony since you actually control the basket.

Ay?

Avatar Pinball - 80 MS points. Avatar Pinball puts your Avatar in a giant pinball machine to get knocked around. There are a couple of different modes, the most interesting of which lets you have limited control over your Avatar using the analog stick in addition to the paddles and bumpers of the pinball table. There's also a multiball mode that sends a barrage of randomly generated Avatars, sock puppet mode with an approximation of the iconic sock monkey, and regular old pinball with an actual ball. If there were more than one table to play on, this would have been right up in the Yay category for recommendation. But despite its various modes they lack variety without more tables.

Air Forte - 80 MS points. Air Forte is an Edutainment game on a number of subjects from math to geography. At the top of the screen you are given a target, such as multiples of 4, and you must fly an airplane through the clouds holding the correct answers. While this on its own isn't exactly the most compelling gameplay mechanic, I can't help falling in love with Air Forte's bizarre story and dialog between levels. It's made by the same developers as the excellent indie strategy game Flotilla, and uses that game's colorful cast of penguins, cats, frogs, and other animals that are overflowing with personality. Yes, I'm recommending an edutainment game based on its story.

WordWise - 80 MS points. WordWise is a spelling puzzle game mixed with a bit of Mahjong. Letters are spread on the board in various stacks and patterns, and your goal is to clear the letters by spelling words. Letters can be pulled from anywhere to spell a word, so long as the letter isn't being covered by another. With the number of word games that have emerged on the Xbox 360, WordWise has a hard time standing out, but it is still a very polished and fun word game if you have room on your hard drive for one more.

CoreDase - 80 MS points. When Xbox indie games first started there was a wonderful game called Artoon where you bounced a ball around levels to clear all of the blocks. Unfortunately Artoon is no more, but CoreDase brings that games gameplay mechanics back to the 360. There are a few new tricks this time around too, like bouncing on the corner of a block to bounce farther and blocks that only appear after you have landed on a switch block. Corner bouncing I found to sometimes be problematic since there is a very small sweet spot for getting the boost, which led to frustration on several levels that require the maneuver. But the core gameplay mechanics are still fun, and in Artoon's absence CoreDase is a worth a look.

SketchBox 360 - 240 MS points. SketchBox 360 brings the experience of an etch-a-sketch to your Xbox with many control options to either draw easily or simulate turning dials by rotating the analog sticks. I wouldn't recommend the game so highly if it were just that novelty though, so thankfully SketchBox 360 also has some well made minigames to round out the experience. Trace Race has you and a friend trying to trace a shape as fast as possible, Bumpers has you navigating mazes, and Sketchet Ball is the obligatory Pong clone. I don't know if it's quite worth the price compared to the vast library of the high quality $1 games on the 360, but as a novel distraction, SketchBox 360 is still pretty fun if you bring along a friend.

Wordsearch Rush - 80 MS points. I've always had a soft spot for wordsearches, so I knew I was going to enjoy Wordsearch Rush. I do find it odd though that there is no word bank to let you know what to be searching for, which may put off some players. Especially when dealing with a wordsearch theme like of the periodic table, it would have been much more enjoyable to have a word bank. Of course, that is not the only themed search in the game, but it was the one I found most problematic. Something that Wordsearch Rush should be commended for though are the bonus stage searches, which task you with finding as many instances of a single word as you can in a board made only of the letters in that word. Wordsearch Rush is a decent worsearch game, but the lack of a word bank may be too much of a hindrance for some players.

Super Avatar World - 80 MS points. To say that Super Avatar World borrowed from New Super Mario Bros would be an understatement. From the visual style and rotating platforms to the bubbles your Avatar respawns in after death, Super Avatar World isn't trying to hide where it got its inspiration. The controls are a bit looser in Super Avatar World than the game it mimics, often giving the feeling that your Avatar is skating on ice when trying to make precise movements, which is the main factor keeping Super Avatar World from being recommended higher up, but it's still a decent platformer for a console in need of more of the genre.

Nay :(

Blox - 80 MS points. I wasn't going to review the Nay games this time because of the sheer number of them, but since the developer of Blox sent me a review copy they deserve a write-up at least for their own sake to know why they're ranked here. The main problem is that Blox is identical to the developer's last game, Ice Crush 10,000 B.C. Well, not identical, because it has a less interesting visual style making Ice Crush the better version of the game. I'm not a fan of developers releasing the same game twice, especially when the second release takes away the charm and personality of the original. You can find my review for Ice Crush 10,000 B.C. here.
Avatar Bowling - 80 MS points.
Cyber Lander: Mission Space - 80 MS points.
Basketball Machine - 80 MS points.
Killa Hurtz - 240 MS points.
Seaside Racing - 80 MS points.
The war of the end of the days - 80 MS points.
Overkill - 80 MS points.
Chemical Chaos - 80 MS points.
Runic 3D - 80 MS points.
How Smart Are You? IQ Test - 80 MS points.
Hive Attack - 400 MS points.
Operation Old Spice - 80 MS points.
Fly, Butterfly, Fly! - 80 MS points.
D.O.T.S. - 80 MS points.
Classic Minesweeper - 80 MS points.
Bubble Buster - 80 MS points.
Sudoku Geek - 80 MS points.
Phat Fly! - 80 MS points.
Four Corners - 80 MS points.
Cerebral Arena - 80 MS points.
Immunogen - 80 MS points.
B-A-Maze'd - 80 MS points.
The Quest for Freshness - 80 MS points.
Starfield Battle 2 - 80 MS points.
Spaceship Game for Kids - 80 MS points.
Ballern2D - 80 MS points.
Avatar High Five - 80 MS points. ......You have to be kidding me. Super Boise, you should be ashamed of yourself.