A ranking of my XBLA games... #12 and #11

XBLA is easily just about the best ting to happen this gen. Fun, easy to pick up games, at your disposal 24/7. Indie developers finally have a chance to showcase their stuff. Really just awesome. So, yeah I'm going to rank all 12 that I own. If a game isn't on the list, I probably didn't like the demo all that much.

With that, here are the games I don't own, but kinda liked the demos for. Honorable mentions if you will.

Wik: Fable of Souls- A reasonably lengthy demo, which gave me a good taste for the game. I kinda enjoyed it, but I just wasn't feeling a purchase.

Heavy Weapon- Feels like this old school game I can't recall right now. It's reasonably fun, but I had too big of a XBLA backlog anyway, so, I did not purchase it.
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Ok...

#12: Hexic HD
This one is free, which is nice, but that's about all I like about it. It's made by the maker of Tetris apparently, but he doesn't have his same magic here. I like my puzzle games to be exciting, or kind of brain bending (see, Jewel Quest and Zuma). This one os neither. Half the time I just felt like I was looking for random colors, and didn't have any real strategy. And the only mode that might offer some excitement, the timed mode, never really grabbed me. Most people seem to love this game... but I just never got into it.

#11- Smash TV
With the success of Geometry Wars, developers seemed desperate to make a quick buck on the "move with one joystick, shoot with the other" formula. One of th egame sthat came out to capitalize on this was Smash TV. It is basically a more modern Robotron. It came out to rave reviews, and the demo was kinda fun, so I bought it. This is another one I could just never get into though. The game throws a lot of enemies at you, yet, I never quite felt excited by the game. Maybe I'm totally spoiled by Geometry Wars, but it seems like every other game like it just falls flat for me, including Smash TV.

Review Progress: Not currently working on anything. My next review will probably be on Crackdown, once I finish it (really not a long game).

Comments 5

Genj Mar 4, 2007

That's weird because Smash TV always was talked about like a cult classic. I always wanted to play it, but the whole two joystick thing makes it tricky to play properly on MAME.

icehawk Blogger Mar 4, 2007

There are a lot of people who like it, it's not that bad co-op in fact. Just not a big fan of the gameplay style I guess.

goldenvortex Mar 5, 2007

Oh man, I remember Smash TV. Apart from the host, it really sucked. It think it was because the transition from a arcade joystick to the SNES controller was a rather bumpy and unpleasant one.

pup Mar 5, 2007

I'm not sure if Icehawk realizes just how long Smash TV has been around. Smash TV hit arcades back in 1990, so it's a retro-game, not a descendent of Geo Wars.

icehawk Blogger Mar 5, 2007

I actually know that, though the writeup makes it seem like I don't to be fair. I just meant to say that I think a lot of developers were in a rush to port their games that came before Geometry Wars when they saw it's success (like Robotron as well).