XBLAW 7/2/08

Hey, brochachos. Big catchup day for XBLA, all demo-based but I'll still be making Buy recommends despite my inability to purchase much right now.

Aces Of The Galaxy
Achievements: 12 (11 offline for 190gs, 1 online for 10gs)
The poor man's Starfox.

Rails shooters! Woo! And it's very pretty, even though the visuals remind me a lot of the spacefleet and asteroid belt battles in Lego Star Wars. Very fun.

The only online achievement is playing a co-op match. Sounds easy enough. I'll say buy it, if only because I love blowing shit up.

Buku Sudoku
Achievements: 12 (9 offline for 145gs, 3 online for 55gs)
GRIDS.

It's sudoku. That game where you put numbers in little boxes and try not to have the same in any given line or mini-grid. There's shitloads of books on this out there. It's a craze. You should know what this is.

Not a bad little representation of the puzzle, though. The music's a little elevatory, but other than that, it's fun if you're into Sudoku. I'm not sure how online competition works unless it's a speed run thing, but okay. Buy it if you like number puzzles. If not, avoid it entirely.

Elements Of Destruction
Achievements: 12 (10 offline for 175gs, 2 online for 25gs)
Blow me like a tornado.

You're a guy who's been turned into a ball of energy that can take the form of different sorts of weather and natural disasters, and your mission is to fuck shit up before people can stop you. Awesome. Pretty simple controls, with different mechanics (stick twirling, button mashing, etc) for different Elements, so you don't get bored just hammering A all the time. Not all that complex, but fun enough. I'd say buy it.

Achievements are mostly story benchmark-based in offline mode, and then the two online ones are one for co-op, one for competitive play. Decent incentive to try everything. I should mention the "Time Bandit" achievement has the most disturbing pic I've seen in a while for one of these things:


Seriously, what the hell is going on here?

Frogger 2
Achievements: 12 (9 offline for 150gs, 3 online for 50gs)
Feeling froggy? Wanna jump?

Ugh, I suck at Frogger. Naturally, I suck even more at Froggering while trying to collect ship parts, coins, music notes, balloons, and god only knows what else for some ugly looking alien thing that crashed in my pond.

The music is obnoxiously cutesy and makes me want to punch things, but the graphics are an okay update while keeping to the classic top-down view. Nothing real amazing about the achievements save for some catch-em-all stuff and them wanting you to play online a lot for one of them.

I guess if you're really into hopping, you can put on a custom soundtrack and have at it. Not worth 800 points, by any means.

Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm
Achievements: 12 (all offline, 200gs)
Wasn't this cool three years ago? Hoo man.

Lemmings with a license. You're the retarded moose and I guess you have to clear the way for the little bastards, or something. I dunno, I just burned them all to death like I thought I was supposed to and failed the trial mission.

Achievements come from doing everything. If you're really still into this crap or want to pay for 200gs, feel free to waste your money.

Roogoo
Achievements: 12 (10 offline for 172gs, 2 online for 28gs)
D'awwwwwwww so kyooooooot.

Remember those pegboard toys you had as a kid? Where you would try to hammer the round peg into the square hole? Or am I just too old and kids these days have no idea what that phrase even means anymore?

Well, if you do have some idea what I'm talking about, that's what this game is, except the board is round now. Shapes drop, you rotate the boards as the shape falls through in order to get the shapes to the bottom board. Oh, and you're a teddy bear or something, but you yourself don't seem to come into play much save for standing on the bar that tells you when you fail.

Clearly a kid-oriented game, so I'm not sure why they implemented online multiplayer, but it's cute and some easy gamerscore. I'm not sure why they priced it at 800 points, save for the fact it looks really good.

Sealife Safari
Achievements: 12 (all offline, 200gs)
It's Pokémon Fishyfish Snap.

Some crusty-looking dude has hired you to take pictures of fish. Which I'm kind of down with, given my National Geographic-loving, I-wanna-be-a-marine-biologist childhood. Seriously, though, it's totally Pokémon Snap underwater, up to and including little things you throw at fish to fuck with them and get different pictures and on-rails movement.

The fish and environments look cool, though. If you liked Snap, or just want a pretty chill game to relax to, you could spend your money on worse.

SOULCALIBUR
Achievements: 12 (all offline, 200 gs)
WELCOME BACK TO THE STAGE OF HISTORY (BITCH)

If you don't know about Soul Calibur, do yourself a favor right now. Stop reading, go up to the address bar in this window, go to eBay, and find yourself a Dreamcast and this game. I'm serious, and really hope the DC version was the one they ported for this. It's the best damn weapon-based fighting game series of all time, possibly the best 3D fighter series, and this is probably the best game in the series.

Should you not want to do that, just stop reading this blog forever, because I have no reason to talk to you again. BUY BUY BUY.

Ticket To Ride
Achievements: 15 (13 offline for 195gs, 2 online for 55gs)
A long train held up by page on page. A long reign held up by rage.

Based on the boardgame of the same name, this game is in the vein of Catan, in that you're trying to connect stations with continuous train routes and block your opponents from doing the same. Longest Route is totally a reward, which is why I love this crap (LONGEST ROOOOOAD). You're given specific routes to fill, however, and the more of those you fill, the better off you do.

Just a heads-up, the extra 50 gs are from an expansion that isn't available yet (TtR Europe), but I imagine will be out in a month or two. I say buy, but I love this game because it can get kind of cutthroat, even if cheating's pretty much impossible in the XBLA version.

Warlords
Achievements: 12 (10 offline for 160gs, 2 online for 40gs)
I don't care if you guys need a Cleric.

Another Atari update with classic/evolved play modes, except this one, I've loved for ages. Finally, no more unlocking it as a secret on one of the Lunar discs on Playstation!

The idea is, you've got a fortress, and your a paddle blocking this ball from breaking things down. You can hold the ball briefly to change the attack angle more accurately, and in the evolved mode, now you can tilt for quicker direction shifts and a better element of surprise. Pretty straightforward, like these tend to be. I really need to stop using that as a descriptor.

Definitely worth 400 points, so unless you prefer your fun super-complex, pick it up posthaste.

Wits & Wagers
Achievements: 12 (9 offline for 150gs, 3 online for 50gs)
Your intelligence is stupid.

So it's a quiz show, but your intelligence isn't all that matters. All participants pick an answer to the same question, and you bet on which answer you think is actually correct, so even if you don't know something, you can try to bluff people out or at least try and have a good eye for who knows their stuff. If you've ever played the board game Balderdash, it's reminiscent of that, but not just with words.

Or, if you've played the boardgame Wits & Wagers, it's exactly like that.

There's camera functionality included so you don't have to pick one of the myriad ugly faces for your character they threw in there, but instead of taking a shot of your head, it just takes a shot and throws it on a little TV with arms and legs. Kind of lame, but it could be worse.

Achievements reward you for playing the crap out of this game; you actually get points for answering all 700 questions available in the full title. Whoa. Not bad if you're into trivia, and were looking for something with questions on things other than movies.

Wolf Of The Battlefield: Commando 3
Achievements: 12 (11 offline for 194gs, 1 online for 6gs)
Real men shoot from the hip.

Oooooh man. It's a shame most kids who pick this up nowadays are going to think, "Oh, it's like Assault Heroes." SHUT UP. ASSAULT HEROES IS LIKE THIS, PRICK! YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW. Capcom brings back the classic in style, with help from Backbone Entertainment, who've never done me wrong.

Not only is the gameplay just as fun as Commando ever was, but the stylized art is kind of cool, and there are little animations for every single menu. They really went all out with this. Granted, I expect said animations to start annoying the piss out of me eventually when I'm just trying to get things done and get back to playing, but who cares? SHINIES.

Of course, the other big selling point is that buying this apparently gets you in on the Street Fighter II HD Remix beta, which I guess is neat.




Who'm I kidding? HD Remix looks sick as hell. You probably ought to spend points on this.


Aaaand I think that means I'm caught up now. Whew. You might end up with a double post today since I've got stuff on the way from Gamefly again, but hey, nothing wrong with that. Just means I'm keeping up now.

Outside of the realm of the 360, I finally started up .hack//GU volume 3 yesterday, and it is, of course, love yet again. Dunno how long it's going to take me to finish it, since I'm holding off on playing it every day to keep the points whoring going, and I've been running a leveling mission between every story event, but so far things still fail to disappoint.

The funniest thing was walking in to my new @HOME, checking my Ryu Books, and OH LOOK ALL BUT THREE ARE MAXED OUT HERE HAVE SOME EXTRAS AND GO AWAY. My only complaint is that leveling in this one is kind of a bitch, but it got harder between 1 & 2 as well, so I expected it. Here's hoping the movie comes out over here.