Blockin' yo cock like a tank at Tiananmen.

Oh man. Yesterday, I woke up at 3:30 AM, worked, came home, took a nap, and woke to a thunderstorm and a fried modem. Everything's cool now, though, so your XBLA blurbs are only slightly stale this week.

1942: Joint Strike
Achievements: 12 (10 offline for 175gs, 2 online for 25gs)
Cost: 800 MS Points

I have to admit, I played my fair share of 1942 and 1943 in brick-and-mortar arcades as a kid, and the P-38 was my favorite plane for a while thanks to that. Not because of any love of aviation technology or WWII history, mind you, but because that joined tail thing it had going on was funky lookin'. Love it.

While I'm almost ready to be tired of these arcade rehashes popping up on XBLA, Capcom at least does a nice job of doing them well, as opposed to Atari and Namco who, for the most part, seem to just be coughing up ports with a spit polish.

For you young'ns, the whole idea behind the 194X series is that it's a top-down, vertical bullet hell with WWII-inspired planes and settings. I think it was the first one that was supposed to be set at the battle of Midway, though the events portrayed were a little... off. I only played the demo, so I'm not sure where this one is supposed to take place, but I flew over a (sweet-looking) volcano at one point in the first level, so I imagine it's somewhere in the Pacific.

This time around, you have a choice of three planes: the original P-38 Lightning, the DH-98 Mosquito, and the funny looking Japanese J7W1 Shinden. Dude, your wings are backwards, and it's Japanese, so of course I played as the Shinden.

As you fly along blowing things out of the sky, weapon powerups and medals drop for you to collect, the latter being something you need to collect for an achievement. Other achievements are obtained through high scores, playing as all the planes, and playing on the hardest difficulty. The online ones are just for rocking some co-op, which I think is a nice addition.

All in all, it's as solid a successor to its franchise as Commando 3, and I suggest you pick this one up as well, despite the lack of a SFIITHDR (long acronyms much?) beta with this one, so far as I know.

Go! Go! Break Steady
Achievements: 12 (8 offline for 125gs, 4 online for 75gs)
Cost: 800 MS Points

Not a sequel to Go! Go! Hypergrind, as much as I would love one. Rather, this one is more a bizarre marriage of elements from Zuma, Gitaroo Man, and Bust-A-Groove.

Yeah, that makes no sense in print, but it actually plays out pretty well. The game could best be described as a rhythm/puzzle game fusion. You're a break dancer, and while your character dances in the background, you get thrown alternating sets of button patterns and curves of "Beatniks," which are little heads of different colors. You have to fire new Beatniks into the mess to make sets of three and clear them, as well as setting up combos, and your results on that front determine what your next dance move (and the button pattern for it) will be. The more complex the move, the more difficult the approach of the button pattern is to follow; sometimes they'll come in a wave pattern, or even a spiral.

While I'm not the biggest fan of the visual style they went with, it's kind of urban and cute enough, so it's not a dealbreaker. There's a lot to keep track of, honestly, but it's just barely below the Too Damn Distracting mark. I suggest it if you're looking for another rhythm game to play, but otherwise you might as well pass.

So the other day, I finally got my hands on an underappreciated gem from the early days of the 360, Condemned. While not nearly as creepy as I had been led to anticipate, it was still a good ride.


Condemned: Criminal Origins
Achievements: 50 (all offline, 970gs)

Yeah, that's right. Only 970gs. No one knows why they didn't cram another 30-pointer in there or distribute those extra 30 amongst some other achievements, but whatever. This game is great.

In Condemned, you're an FBI agent who starts off the game investigating a serial murder case in a town that's apparently going to hell fast, and lucky for you, your career seems headed there just as quickly by the end of the first level. Framed for a crime you're quite certain you didn't commit and the weirdness level climbing rapidly through the roof, you set off to clear your name and, if possible, make the guy who screwed up your life pay.

I remember passing over this because I repeatedly keep making the mistake of thinking survival horror games are going to scare me, but once again, this one did not. It's freaky, sure, and there are some good surprise attack points throughout the game, but for the most part, it's just a solid story that makes it worth playing rather than any spook factor.

Another neat thing is that, besides the mostly melee-oriented combat in a first person world, there's also an element of investigation to things, since you're a detective of sorts and trying to find evidence to clear yourself. It's a nice little distraction from wondering how many hobos you're going to have to bludgeon to death around the next corner, and all the visuals for the investigation tools are neat, if in many cases completely impractical.

My only real complaint is that the game is fairly short, even if you're going in blind. Achievements are mostly of a catch-em-all, with things to collect in each level (dead birds and hunks of metal, oddly enough), with a few more for level completions and weapon usage. As a heads-up, let me recommend you play through the game the first time only hitting people with melee weapons, and switch up as often as you can; you get achievements for a total melee clear up through the second-to-last level, and for hitting enemies with every melee weapon ever. Even firearms count as melee weapons, since you can switch to melee mode with the right bumper and pistol-whip or whack them with the stock, though in both cases the weapons take damage and eventually break. There is an achievement for going and shooting enemies with every firearm as well, but you can just reload the library level and disarm hobos for most of the guns (.45, revolver, pump shotgun, submachine gun), and there's a sawed-off shotgun behind the desk on the second floor. Then you just keep going to the next level, the school and grab the rifle in the "hut" by the playground and finish the level to unlock your points.

Definitely play this, but make sure you rent or borrow it, even if it's cheap by now. The unlockable extras are neat, especially the original demo of the school level that they kept a lot of elements from, but not worth really keeping this around unless you're a collector.


Oh yeah, a heads-up for you contest types. They're running a Play & Win with Gears Of War for GoW2 stuff, including limited edition copies of the game and a custom Gears 360. It's one of those reg online or download-the-gamerpic contests, so it's easy to get in, and then you just have to play once every hour you get a chance to get entries in. That is a potential twenty-four entries a day, if you find a way not to sleep. It's running until July 27th, so hurry up!