Release number two is Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball, a game built on an internet meme older than lolcats (U can haz no orignl ideaz). The mechanics work well enough: ninjas throw red rubber balls at pirates in an attempt to knock their heads off and vice versa. The game would have actually been better with the addition of pointless gore and fatalities; there just isn’t much of interest or worth here. The graphics can be best described as serviceable and bland, the sounds nothing but ARRRRR and WWAAAHHH, and the controls are okay as long as you aren’t too picky about who you are trying to target. It’s a safe little game aimed at kids, but anyone under the age of 16 has never played real dodgeball in school anyway, so they probably won’t either notice or care. All this game did for me was remind me how good Super Spike V Ball was. If a dead horse is going to be beaten, it might as well have been a good horse in the first place.

Shred Nebula, on the other hand, shouldn’t be ignored, but probably will fall through the cracks anyway. My initial impression of Shred Nebula was ‘Oh come one, another dual stick shooter?’ until I moved the right stick and nothing happened. Remember Asteroids? This is Asteroids on steroids much the same way that Galaga Legions was Galaga on crack, except Shred Nebula is actually good. Changing from the right stick moving to having to hold down A for thrust or LB for backwards thrust makes all the difference in the world. Suddenly I can boost in one direction, let momentum carry me and then turn around and shoot backwards. I am not saying one is better than the other, I am saying that Shred Nebula should not be dismissed as another Geometry Wars clone. It’s somewhere between Asteroids and Armada, an amazing DC top-down space shooter with added loot gathering that was also played by nobody. While I can’t fully endorse it as a must buy because of repetitive looking levels and a silly story mode, Shred Nebula deserves at least a few minutes of your time.

In spite of my bitching about hard drive space a few weeks ago, I have continued to buy every damn song that Rock Band puts out. I had fallen behind a few weeks and only recently downloaded The Who pack. I know this is weeks old, but if you have Rock Band and haven’t downloaded this yet, you are seriously cheating yourself. Rock Band is all about ‘playing pretend,’ and no songs have done this better than The Who pack. I don’t know if it’s the inclusion of a few live tracks or if the music itself is just better than most of the other downloadable content, but I had more fun with these on guitar and drums than any other songs I have played, and that includes the songs the game came with. For a few brief moments I was a (sober) Pete Townsend, waving my strumming arm like a drugged up windmill, stopping just short of bashing my plastic guitar on the basement floor. It was sublime.

Galaga Legions comes from the same people behind the Pac-Man sequel, which gave them some credence, but not enough to make the new Galaga an instant purchase. I am very glad I hesitated, because after about a half hour with the demo I was left confused and bored. Galaga has the same look and feel as the Pac-Man remake, which was in turn cribbed directly from Geometry Wars Retro Evolved. It looked like it should be exciting, certainly sounded like it was engaging, but it was simply not a lot of fun. Galaga forces itself to be held up to Geometry Wars by trying to look and sound like the better shooter, and it does not fare well when compared. The basic way Galaga plays has not been changed: it is a shooter based entirely on pattern memorization. There is no randomness or chance; either the player remembers where to be and where to place the satellite or he dies. It is this bit of randomness that made Geometry Wars impossible to put down and what makes Galaga feel like work. It’s very pretty work, but it’s still work. I’d play it for a quarter at the arcade (if there still were any) but I don’t need to own it.

All of this new content coupled with the abolishment of the game size limit and continued weekly Rock Band tracks has finally brought to the forefront something I have been afraid of for a long time: I am actually running out of space on my hard drive. A few weeks ago I wanted to download an HD movie and had to do a great deal of cleaning out of un-played (or terrible) XBLA arcade titles to make room. I had over 50 titles sitting there, and even though I know I can download any of them again, it still felt bad deleting them. Then there is the 400 mb of Guitar Hero 2 tracks, 200 mb of Guitar Hero 3 tracks and 4.5 gigs of Rock Band tracks that I refuse to let go of. Not four weeks later I am too low on space to download a movie again, and I have nothing I want to delete.

Microsoft has put a tremendous push behind XBLA and the marketplace in general. They have created a system where buying something doesn’t even feel like you are spending real money; everything’s price is obfuscated via Microsoft points and I shudder to think about how much money I have actually given them. This wealth of content is hamstrung by not having any place to put it. I can’t be the only person whose launch 360 is getting more than a little cramped. Further complicating this is the asinine price of the 120 gig hard drive. I can buy an internal terabyte drive for my PC for $30 less, so it’s ridiculous. As this problem becomes more widespread, the marketplace could become a victim of its own success. Lower the price of the hard drive, Microsoft. I want to give you more money, all you have to do is let me. There are big games coming, both in expectations and size, and I may have to start playing them on my oversized blu-ray player / paper weight just because it has a 60 gig hard drive.

After writing several pieces for this XBLAh column, I began to feel a little annoyed. Even though the column was my idea, I couldn’t help but feel it was very limiting. I had pigeon-holed myself into writing what are essentially weekly previews for downloadable games, most of which hardly have any sort of impact on anything. I look at other people’s columns, specifically Mike Ireland’s Mightier Pen and realize that is what I want to be doing; discussing the more artistic qualities of video games and their influences on society. Something that’s actually interesting to read and write about.

Braid released on August 6th, 2008 and offered me exactly that. A chance to talk about how video games have evolved, how they can be profound, how they need not sacrifice gameplay, but honor it to create something inspiring. More importantly, it gave me a chance to share my personal feelings on the future of video games. And I feel almost ashamed to tell you that I squandered this chance by not even purchasing the game. Why, you ask? It’s the same reason why the game is getting half of its press, the same reason why forum users are arguing about it, the same reason why Penny Arcade had to write a column about it. The price.

I am not one of those fools who are arguing that the game is not worth $15. Such an argument is based on completely subjective thought and debates on production value and development time are absurd. I have no doubt that to those singing their praises towards Braid, quite vocally I might add, the game is well worth the money obtained from working less than a day at a minimum wage job. I also don’t feel that debuting Braid at $15 is part of some evil plan by Microsoft to eventually raise the standard price of XBLA games, as if there was such a thing. Sure, most original titles tend to be $10, but $15 games have been on the service since launch and I didn’t see this theory being thrown around when the Penny Arcade game was announced for $20.

My reason is far less biased and far more confusing. If Braid was priced at $10, I probably would have beaten it already and would be in line to write a second opinion for James Shield’s excellent review for it. But at $15, I feel very hesitant. This is not unlike the feeling I had for Aces of the Galaxy, a game I praised earlier but also didn’t end up buying. That game was priced at $10 and I probably would have purchased it if was $5. What is it about $5 that makes us so unwilling to part with it? I remember spending about that much on lunch every day when I was in high school. And yet, as I’m writing this, I still feel cautious about spending it to buy Braid.

The situation is made all the worse by the quality of Braid. Unlike Aces of the Galaxy, Braid looks like a game that I most definitely should fork over the extra money for. This is not to say that Aces of the Galaxy is not worth the money, but rather that Braid shouldn’t be about the money. The game is a masterpiece.

How should I know? I’ve only played the sliver of the game found in the demo. But during the sliver, there were some very special moments. In the first world, there is a level with two puzzle pieces that I had no idea how to get. I scratched my head in frustration and being the impatient gamer that I am, I decided to consult youtube for a walkthrough. After watching, it became clear to me that you had to progress through the entire first world and only then could you go back and get the two seemingly impossible pieces. That may not seem very special, but I don’t want to spoil anything so I’ll just tell you that the way it’s handled is absolutely brilliant. So much so that I’ve played the game three times through now and I still have so much fun with that part.

Another special moment came when I played it in front of my parents. I’ve played a number of games in front of them, and they are indifferent to nearly all of them (except for any shooter, which they cannot stand). Within seconds of turning on Braid and walking through the title screen, my dad immediately asked, “Is this like Mario?” I replied with a simple “yes” even though the answer to that is amazingly complex. After several minutes of playing, I was amazed. My parents had become engrossed in the game, by its music, presentation, and mechanics. My mom enthusiastically said, “I like this game. It’s so… adventurous.” I spent some time showing them some of the more intricate puzzles and the time control ability and they were very impressed. I was impressed too. Braid somehow found a way to connect to people who had never really shown interest in video games. And it didn’t do it through cheap and gimmicky tricks. It did it through intelligent and intricate thought.

Profound, intelligent, unique, inspiring, special, masterpiece, art. These words have all been thrown around during the last week or so to describe Braid. I have played but a tiny percentage of the game and I am not afraid to say that I agree with those words. What I am afraid to do still is press A on “Confirm Purchase.” Therefore, I am going to have to be hypocritical here and urge those of you who are in the same position as me to buy this game, no matter how conflicted you are about it. I am telling myself the same thing. Hype happens for a reason, and sometimes it is dead on. The significant thing here is not that the GAMES R ART crowd is more vocal than ever, but that this is one of the few times where they actually have a strong case.

It’s hard to transition from the grandiose thought that Braid invokes to the relatively simple retro Capcom action-platformer Bionic Commando. But there is a connection. There were quite a number of people who argued against Braid’s price point by pointing out that Bionic Commando is only priced at $10. While this is true, it does not have anything to do with the price of Braid and the argument makes very little sense.

Regardless, the $10 price tag for Bionic Commando does seem to be very generous of Capcom. The game looks like it’s jam packed with content and the presentation is like what you would find in a retail game. The game also has plenty of humor, both added by the developers in the re-make or the unintentional humor that was present in the first one that the developers decided to keep. Other than that, there’s not much else to say. The difficulty seemed to be about average, and the only significant problem I had were the controls. While they are quite smooth, considering the circumstances, it’s still annoying to not be able to jump over simple obstacles. The high definition graphics look very nice, but do create a conflict with the retro game mechanics.

At $10, the game is hard not to recommend. I haven’t bought this yet, because I honestly did not have that much fun with it. I think this has more to do with the level in the demo rather than the full game. The bionic arm mechanic has the potential to be wonderful, and I will not doubt that it does fulfill this potential in later levels. The only thing I want to make clear is that you shouldn’t purchase this game over Braid just because it costs less. Play both games, judge them on their own merits, and only you can decide which game is worth its price.

Rounding out this week is Fable 2: Pub Games. Nobody should have any interest in this game unless they’re planning on buying Fable 2. The game consists of several casino-like mini-games, and money earned from them is tied to the money you have in Fable. Again, if you don’t have Fable, there’s nothing all that engaging here, although I was surprised to see that many of the games have a good amount of depth to them. The demo lets you play every game available at low stakes, where not much money is earned. I ended up losing a total of about 100 gold, but the leaderboards show that people have already made millions. At $10, I would definitely not have recommended this before I played it. It seemed like a way to make users spend real money to make fake money, but after seeing the games have some depth, challenge, and strategy to them, I can safely say that the games are fun to play and those buying Fable should consider trying the demo.

Next week’s release is Galaga Legions and it will be the pen-ultimate release for the excellent month XBLA is having. It’s made by the same developers of Pac-Man: Championship Edition, who are now looking to revitalize the ancient classic Galaga. The videos released look phenomenal, but early reports say that the game is too easy and lacks the charm of Pac-Man: CE. We’ll let you know next week. Until then, you should play some Braid. Even if it’s the demo, a few more times.

The original Geometry Wars was the best thing on the 360 for several months after release. After I turned off Perfect Dark Zero for being terrible and finished Condemned in five hours, I turned to Project Gotham 3. It was a good enough racing game, but I am willing to bet that the XBLA game it demoed ate up more hours of playtime than the game itself, and I am far from alone in that line of thought. Geometry Wars was the first big arcade hit; it resurrected the two stick shooter, and is still among the best of its kind several years later. There have been sequels in the intervening years (on systems I don’t own, jerks) but the series has finally come back home with Geometry Wars 2. Not much has changed, gameplay wise, and this is most certainly not a complaint. You move, you shoot things before they kill you, repeat until your eyes fall out of your head. It still works, only it looks much more polished now and has better music.

What has been changed is excellent news for both new players and old fans alike: the removal of a penalty for dying. In the original, dying reset the score multiplier, which usually led to me resetting the game and yelling at the TV. Now, the multiplier is based not on how many enemies are killed but on how many of their shattered husks you collect. This rewards aggressiveness, forgives the occasional bone headed mistake, and makes the game much more playable for extended periods of time. Add to that six game modes that require vastly different play strategies, and the doubling of the price feels like a pretty sweet deal. It’s $10, so go buy it and add me to your friends list so I can crush your pathetic high score.

No other arcade games released this week, but one demo is of definite note: Madden 2009. Is the game any better than last year? I have no idea; the yearly demos of Madden have provided me with all the football gaming that I need. A few games of some random team, and I am set for twelve months. It looks better than last year, but I don’t know nearly enough about football to tell you if it is any better than it has been in the past. Play the demo, and then go back to selling blood for cash. Geometry Wars 2 was just the first in what will be four excellent arcade offerings in a row.

Those of you familiar with my reviews on this site should already know that I’ve gained an affinity towards shmups recently. So much so that I’ve had some strongly opinionated things to say about recent shmups on the service, such as Omega Five and Triggerheart Exelica (Ikaruga would have been here too if it didn’t make my brain melt , but I’m much less inclined to babble on about 1942 Joint Strike. The 194X series was a quality breed of vertical shmups that were very popular in the 80s, but quickly disappeared from the market soon after. Capcom and Backbone Entertainment decided to revitalize the series with Joint Strike by bringing it to both XBLA and PSN. Being the avid shmup fan that I am now, I was not at all disappointed after playing the demo. The game is a traditional vertical shmup, with the biggest difference being that the game is played in widescreen. This allows the game to be rid of those ugly black bars on the side that plague other vertical shooters on the service. Joint Strike’s biggest problem is that it’s too similar and hardly superior to the previous games in the series. If you have access to the original 1942 or even any other 194X games, there’s almost no reason to pick this up. The improved graphics are barely noticeable and somewhat hinder the old school feel of the series.

But I’m being too harsh. The game is fantastic on its own merits, and I enjoyed the one level demo far more than the entirety of Triggerheart Exelica. One thing that can’t be emulated from the previous games in the series is the two player co-op play (both local and online) which always adds to the fun factor and replay value. The one reason I haven’t picked this up just yet is that I hear it’s very short. The game is priced at 800 MS points, but is only five levels long. But if the first level is anything to go by, those five levels in the full game will offer some of the most solid shmup gameplay of this generation. Once again, the important thing here is that shmups are hitting the service and the emphasis on co-op play makes things all the more better.

Go! Go! Break Steady marks the second week in a row where an XBLA release has unnecessary exclamation points in its title (the other one being last week’s Golf: Tee it Up!). There’s not much to say here either, since I found myself indifferent towards it just ten minutes. Basically, Go! Go! Break Steady is a break-dancing rhythm game with a twist. Instead of just having the traditional rhythm game mechanic of timing button presses along with the beat, it also includes sections that are essentially a clone of Puzzle Bobble / Bust-A-Move / Snood / the million other versions of this same game. So instead of being derivative of the already tired rhythm genre, it also implements the extremely tired aforementioned nameless genre (henceforth now called the Puzzle Bobble genre,since I believe that was the original). And therein lies the irony in innovation. No, I’m being cynical. Break Steady is not a bad game, but one that I personally have no interest in. The combined rhythm and Puzzle Bobble mechanic make the game feel as though it doesn’t know what it wants to be. From my brief playtime with the game, the Puzzle Bobble element happens randomly during the song, making things all the more confusing. The art style is hit or miss, and bound to offend some actual people in the break-dancing scene, but I’m sure there are many people out there who would enjoy this admittedly ironically unique rhythm game which has the potential to strike a good balance between fun and challenge. The best thing about this game is that tries to be good. Even in my few minutes with it, I could see that the developers had put a lot of effort into it. That effort should translate to a lot of happy customers. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of them.

Before I wrap things up, I just want to talk about E3 in relation to the Xbox Live Arcade. As mentioned, there was no surprise release but a lot of surprise announcements. Among these was Portal: Still Alive, which is apparently an expansion to the most popular part of the Orange Box. Details on this are still unclear though, since the teaser was just GLaDOS’s voice mentioning something about new tests. Even vaguer was the announcement of the South Park XBLA game, for which the teaser only consisted of Cartman announcing the game. While these two games have potential (particularly Portal), let’s focus on the games we have more information about. Pac-Man Championship Edition was a huge hit on the service, so it’s good to see that Galaga Legions will be hitting the service in fall of this year. The game, developed by the same people that made Pac-Man CE, is attempting to revitalize Galaga,and the short video footage of the game looks incredible to say the least. Another big announcement was that the classic Rare game Banjo-Kazooie will also be hitting the service this year. One thing of particular note is that the Stop ‘N Swap feature that was designed to connect Banjo-Kazooie to Banjo-Tooie (but never did) will now be used to connect this game to the retail game Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Since Nuts & Bolts looks very promising, and the original Banjo is heralded as one of the best platformers of its time, this is just further incentive to purchase both.

The game I’m most excited for, though, is the game that deserves its own paragraph. That’s right, Geometry Wars 2 was finally announced, and it looks even better than Retro Evolved. Do yourself a favor and look at some screens or videos to experience the visual orgasm that is Geometry Wars. It’s not just eye candy, it’s eye erotica. This time the game will feature six game modes in comparison to the two of its predecessor. Those of you who didn’t pick up Project Gotham Racing 4 (you should) will be glad to know that Geometry Wars: Waves will be one of the modes. But the most exciting thing about the game seems to be the cooperative play. Even though it’s local only due to latency issues, it supports up to four players and looks phenomenal. Of course, all of this content doesn’t seem to fit the 400 MS point range like Retro Evolved did, so this one will be sporting the 800 point price tag. Regardless, it still looks easily worth the price and is one of the rare cases where I’ll be buying it without trying the demo. Fortunately, you and I won’t have to wait long, since it’s releasing next week! It has been a very good summer for the Xbox Live Arcade.

I was first interested in Schizoid when I saw the screenshots. It looked very much like Geometry Wars, one of my (and ideally everyone’s) favorite games on the service. Vibrant colors, action on a 2D plane, and tons of stuff going on at the same time. How could it be anything but a GW clone? Well I had never watched any videos of the game so I was a bit surprised by Schizoid’s actual gameplay. The game involves two ships, one blue and the other orange. Blue and orange enemies appear on screen (more are added in later levels) and each ship can only destroy its respective color while being vulnerable to the opposite. There’s nothing unique about this, it’s a gameplay situation we’ve seen since the earliest days of gaming. In fact, the game is so simple that it’s entirely controlled by the left analog stick. The game embraces this with the humorous quip of “It’s not your imagination. The other buttons do nothing,” in one of the loading screens. I find the simplicity to be fitting, however, since the Arcade should be where quick / fun / simple games thrive. Of course simple should not mean incredibly derivative; an original like Schizoid must do something, well, original. Fortunately, Schizoid does not disappoint. The game’s mechanic of two separate ships is just begging for co-op play, which is no doubt what the designers intended. The game’s tagline of “The most co-op game ever” is rather fitting as it works beautifully. Both online and offline co-op are available, and both are a blast to play, especially with someone you know. It is essential that you communicate with your teammate if you want to survive deep into the game. If you don’t have any friends or something, there is also a single player mode where the computer controls the other ship. This isn’t quite as fun but can still be moderately entertaining. There’s also a mode where you control both ships, one with the left analog and the other with the right. That is actually some of the most confusing shit ever and will make your brain leap out of your cranium just to get away from it all. I’d say if you have a friend who games with you for a good amount of time, it easily justifies a purchase.

Golf: Tee it Up! is a game developed by Housemarque, of Super Stardust HD fame on the PlayStation Network. But as you can infer from the names, the two games are nothing alike. Unfortunately, they’re not even of the same quality either. This is not a knock against Tee it Up! but rather a compliment to SSDHD, which is one of the best downloadable games of the generation. Tee it Up! is actually the second golf game to hit the service. However, unlike 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures, a game which I’ve never played but which obviously focuses on miniature golf, Tee it Up! tries to deliver the actual golfing experience albeit in a very arcade-y fashion, akin to Hot Shots Golf. But this comparison is quite deadly since Tee It Up! falls apart when standing next to HSG.

I personally don’t think it’s fair to compare a $10 downloadable title to a $60 retail title, and think that Tee it Up! should be judged on its own merits. That is not to say that Housemarque isn’t at fault for trying to copy the gameplay and art-style of Hot Shots Golf instead of doing something more original. In the end, what’s left is a good but not great golf game that offers a unique experience in relation to the Xbox Live Arcade. The true disappointment is that the game is just not up to par (oh snap) with Housemarque’s previous outing.

Well, that’s all I can say about this week’s releases but I’m still not done. Next week is E3 folks, and while the majority of the hype is surrounding all the potential retail titles yet to be fully revealed, there is also some buzz being generated about the Arcade. Now next week’s Arcade games have already been announced. Coffeetime Crosswords and Shred Nebula (apparently some Asteroids-esque game) are the games and there’s also a free expansion (YAY!) for Buku Sudoku (…yay), along with a price cut for Puzzle Quest (800 points down from 1200), one of the best games on the service. Microsoft, however, has announced surprise immediate XBLA releases during E3 for the past two years with Golden Axe and Sonic 2 coming last year and Doom the year before. This, along with the leaks of a) Duke Nukem 3D hitting the service (with some sort of rewind feature to boot and b) the Geometry Wars 2 achievement list, definitely tell us that something is in store for E3. I personally think (and hope) it will be the long anticipated Castle Crashers that will get the immediate release. Only way we’ll find out is by waiting.

Ticket to Ride, on the other hand, is much more loyal to its source material. I have always thought that board games on XBLA is a brilliant idea: almost all the fun and none of the clean up. The previous two entries, Carcassone and Catan, had limitless appeal if you took the time to sit down and learn how to play them. Catan, for example, was a complete mystery to me for the first couple of games. If one more person yelled “I have wood for sheep,” I was going to kill them. It took a while to click, but when it did and I realized the state was not an overture to bestiality, I played it nonstop. Ticket to Ride is much less complicated than Catan, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. The game is comprised entirely of linking cities together on a map using drawn cards as railroads. It sounds simple, and it is, but everyone else is trying to do this as the same time. Blocking others by taking railroads that you don’t really need is great fun, and a very valid strategy. Playing a game with a full five players can result in just as much deal making and back stabbing as you would hope, though a one on one match usually boils down to the luck of the draw getting the cards you need. Still, this is a definite buy if you liked the other XBLA board games and have the patience to try another.

There have been very, very few perfect games in my mind, and they seem to be coming around less and less often as gaming continues to ‘mature.’ One of these was Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast. At its time, there wasn’t a prettier, better playing, deeper game around in the fighting genre, or any other genre for that matter. It was the best there was on the DC for a long time, and it held up against PS2 fighters very well, being beaten in the end by Tekken 5, and then only just barely. On the cusp of Soul Calibur 4: George Lucas Get His Hands in Everything These Days, Namco has re-released the original on XBLA. The core game has held up surprisingly well, but it is missing a few of the extras we have come to expect in modern fighters.

For the most part, Soul Calibur still looks great. It has been up-scaled to high definition, though adding widescreen support would have been even better. The levels feel empty and small compared to modern fighting games, but the characters are large, detailed and are animated well to make up for it. It even plays well on the standard 360 controller. At first I was surprised, then I remembered that as bad as the 360 d-pad is, the DC d-pad was many times worse. The game felt like I remembered it; I jumped back into Mitsurugi’s sandals and was juggling fools for ring-outs it no time. It has been almost nine years and two sequels and I still remember how to play. I remember all the parries and blocks, and I still can’t do Ivy’s Summon Suffering throw. Some things never change.

The port is not perfect, however, most notably in the sound department: the music and announcer sound tinny and grating. Perhaps they were down-sampled in quality to get below the download size limit, which would also explain the missing opening cinematic. Both of these could have easily been forgiven if the game had received one modern addition: online play. I don’t understand why this was not added. Both Virtua Fighter 5 and the Street Fighter HD beta have proven that online play can work very well for a fighting game. Without this, Soul Calibur is just a port that may still be worth the $10 for nostalgia alone, but that’s about all. It its time, Soul Calibur was indeed perfect, but without modern additions, the game ends up feeling hollow; its time has passed.

WOTB: Commando 3 is the good game. It plays like the classic arcade game SmashTV (though not nearly as hard) with a few tweaks here and there. The reason this game is good is the same as the majority of XBLA gems. It’s fairly easy to jump into, it plays like a classic arcade game, and has enough “next-gen” polish to make it hold up to current standards. Basically, it has above-average gameplay and a really good presentation. This is seriously all developers have to do to make a good game. But what did this game have that made me buy it that Aces of the Galaxy didn’t? The answer is easy: the Street Fighter II Super Duper Turbo Awesome Special Buster HD Remix Go-Go! Beta. And while I suck at (street) fighters and the game has recently come under scrutiny by (countless) pixel counters for its art style and animation, I still think it looks very good and is one of the most promising XBLA titles. Anyway, I’d be glad I bought it even if it didn’t come with the beta.

Frogger 2 is the terrible game. Now with the success of games like Pac-Man: Championship Edition, one would think that remaking a classic franchise and putting a unique spin on it would result in a brilliant game. And that probably holds true, because Frogger 2 is anything but unique. First of all, it’s the third Frogger 2. And let’s talk about that for a second. It’s fairly common for developers to not put much effort into naming their games, as is evident by the ridiculously long-windedly titled game I mentioned above. But this is just inexcusable. Frogger 2 actually has more iterations of itself than the name implies the entire series should have. And on top of it all, the name isn’t even that good. Not that this Frogger 2 shouldn’t be considered a true sequel to Frogger, since it plays much the same. In fact, that’s the problem, and the name doesn’t describe the similarity well enough. So a better name would be Frogger: Stuck in 1981 Edition. The original Frogger is an arcade classic, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that the controls have aged terribly. Frogger 2 is perfectly content with using this awkward, 1.5 dimensional movement, which begs the question “what does this do different from Frogger?” No surprise that the answer is “not much.” It expands the game environment to span just one screen, and adds collectible items. Yay. Frogger is still Frogger no matter how big you make it, and collectibles just don’t add anything worthwhile. The music is annoying, and the graphics look like someone coated it in hard candy and then wrapped it in plastic. Pass on this one, folks.

You know, sometimes when I absolutely trash a game, I imagine how a developer of said game would react to reading it. My fantasy usually starts with the developer trying to hold back tears as he thinks of his wife and two kids sitting in their one bedroom apartment, dreaming about having something to burn to keep themselves warm. But then I stop being melodramatic and realize that the guy probably doesn’t have time to read any reviews, since he’s too busy laughing at the fact that he got this shitty game published. Then he goes back to work on some other piece of crap game that will probably in part be funded by the ample amount of sales Frogger 2 will garner due to people being fucking stupid and buying shit games sometimes.

Aces is Aces
The first time I heard of Aces of the Galaxy was mid-May of this year. I say this not to point out my obliviousness. I closely follow every game that gets announced for the Arcade, whether it causes the two year long wait of Ikaruga or the completely false, dream-killing, WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME rumor of Audiosurf hitting the service. Anyway, I’m fairly confident Aces was first announced in mid-May, and it came with a trailer that looked very good, but when the release date was announced as June 4th, I started to worry. To be released on XBLA less than a year later is usually a bad sign. It’s happened with games like Rocketmen: Axis of Evil, Buku Soduku, and Battlestar Galactica; all of which are at de-listing potential as of this writing.

Of course, patterns are broken all the time. Aces is an absolute blast, semi-pun intended. I would call it a blend between Starfox 64 and Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. It has your traditional 3-D shoot-em-up elements, combined with a crazy, hectic, somewhat psychedelic environment and art-style. The amount of objects on-screen is impressive, and makes for a very challenging experience. But while I would buy SF64 and GeoWars in a heartbeat, I didn’t purchase this one. I’d like to think that this is because of my increasing hesitation to purchase games. Those MS points can be better spent on some Rock Band DLC (but they won’t be this week) or saved for something remarkable.

And I guess that’s the main point. I believe Aces succeeds in everything it’s trying to achieve, and has no fundamental flaws aside from some wonky controls and occasional confusion from on screen activity. I was particularly impressed by the presentation/story, thinking that it was even better than Starfox’s, but it just didn’t blow me away. And for that reason, I can’t bring myself to spend $10 on it - especially when games like Castle Crashers are coming later in the summer. I guess it’s also a problem with releasing a demo of every arcade game, but those are issues I would like to talk about in more detail, and will save them for later posts. Regardless, I’m very happy that Aces is on the service, especially after last week’s atrocious offering. Not only is it another quality game that can be added to the pile, but it gives me confidence that developers are trying hard to bring good games to the service, theoretically making any game a gem; whether it was announced two years or two weeks before its release. And the possibility of me buying it somewhere down the line still exists. If I eventually do, I’d be glad to write an official review.

Roogoo is a weird name
Unlike Aces, I had actually never heard of Roogoo before its release this week. When I first heard the name, I thought it would either be some really colorful children’s game or some weird puzzle game involving slime. I guess if you combine the two, I was sort of right. It’s a colorful game that’s definitely not for children, and a puzzle game without anything resembling goo. I say it’s not for children because it’s fucking frustrating. Rotating circles around in time to get the right shape through the right hole is a simple concept, which I like. It’s why I love Tetris and appreciate Lumines.

But Roogoo doesn’t seem satisfied with just that base idea. Sure, the first five or so levels offer puzzles that five year olds can do, but after that, it’s a straight up mindfuck. There are aliens sitting on circles that you have to kick off by pressing a certain button, you’ll eventually have like 20 pieces of shit going through something, and there are enough circles you have to move the pieces through to make you nauseous. I guess the developers had to do this in order to keep the difficulty challenging. Anything else wouldn’t have made the game much harder than the first five levels. But in my opinion, if the base concept in a puzzle game requires you to make complex situations to increase difficulty, then the concept is flawed.

So why is this game still decent? I’m going to respond with this ridiculous answer: other people say so! The game currently holds a fairly high average on Metacritic at 85, which is higher than Aces of the Galaxy. The game is also getting praise from many users on forums across the web, and since they’ve all played the full game instead of just the demo, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt. Though I personally will be passing on this one, it’s always nice to see games perform well, critically or commercially, on the service.

But I guess Microsoft loves to be ironic. Just a few days after I decided on my column, Microsoft decided to make the service I hold so very dearly in my metaphorical arms slightly better, by making it slightly worse (once again with the irony!). Yes, I’m referring to their policy of de-listing XBLA titles. Microsoft announced that it would be de-listing any game that fits the following arbitrary criteria: it’s been out longer than 6 months, it has less than a 65% average on Metacritic, and has less than a 6% conversion purchase rate from people who downloaded the demo. As a person who prides himself on objectivity and balanced arguments, I will first try to point out the positives of this decision before I get into the negatives, the flaws, and the fact that it’s a terrible fucking idea. Trust me; the first part will be short.

So what would make those crazy dudes at Microsoft come up with such a plan? Well the problem is organization. The list of Arcade titles is a huge pain to navigate through, unless you specifically know what you want. Hell, I have trouble navigating through my own library of arcade games. So I guess I can give them some credit for at least recognizing what’s wrong with their system. And although I do like the service a lot, I have to admit that there are a lot of games that are pretty terrible, and only serve to take up space.

But not all of them are: let’s discuss these requirements for de-listing.

1. It has to be 6 months old. OK, I guess this is reasonable. I don’t know where they got the exact figure of 6 months from, but I assume it’s arbitrary just like the entire requirement list, and everything within it. Anyway, it gives players a reasonable amount of time to pick up the title. If it’s getting mediocre reviews, players will have plenty of time to decide if they want to purchase the title. But this is unfair. People shouldn’t have to be pressured into buying something. This is a lot like the bullshit Disney does with their DVDs, where they’re only available for a short time before they go into the “Disney Vault.” Other than that, it’s fine. I would even be in favor of it if the rest of the requirements made sense.

2. Above 65% on Metacritic. Yet another arbitrary figure. I don’t know what the ratio is of XBLA titles that are over 65% to the ones that are under, but I assume it’s pretty low. In fact, it’s probably close to a 50-50 split between the two. This is not a statement about the overall quality of the games on the service, but the general reception reviewers have towards the arcade titles. TMNT 1989, probably my favorite game on the service, is just hanging on with a 66 average on Metacritic.

This brings me to my next point. I’m all for objectivity and finding absolute truth, but I realize that Metacritic is not even close to reaching that point. How can incredibly subjective reviewers be held responsible for the fucking existence of a game? For example, I consider myself a reviewer with integrity, who is not afraid of giving a game a bad score. But to know that I could potentially be responsible for making the game unavailable to someone else definitely changes my approach to reviewing arcade titles. It’s known on virtually every internet forum that reviews are guidelines of what to expect, not the Ten Commandments of gaming. Surely Microsoft has some literate viral marketers with internet access, no?

3. Has to have above a 6% purchase rate from people who downloaded the demo. …yeah, arbitrary. I don’t know what this ratio is either, but I do know that I haven’t purchased a little more than half of the stuff I downloaded the demo for. Plus, I’ll always be downloading the demos in order to do this column, so that ratio will be negatively affected for nearly all titles in the coming weeks. I guess this is the most interesting requirement, since it’s probably the greediest. How much money does it cost to keep a game on the server vs. how much money does the game generate? Unlike the first one that gives a chance to late adopters, or the second one which tries to improve overall quality of the service, this requirement is only there for the sole purpose of making Microsoft money. This makes the entire venture of de-listing seem like a selfish act rather than a vigorous effort to keep the service at top quality. I guess it also lights a match in the whole “Do sales = quality?” debate, but that’s far too long and annoying to get into.

Three requirements each with the letter 6 in them. Hmm, maybe it wasn’t arbitrary. I mean, this policy is pretty evil, and this company is Microsoft.

Now that I’ve refuted the three requirements, I guess I’ll spend some time discussing the actual flaws. The first one is just that it’s entirely unnecessary. If you want to organize something, you don’t get rid of half of it. You don’t destroy the content that has made your service so great. The advantage of downloadable games is that there is infinite shelf space. Titles don’t need to be removed to make room for newer titles like they do in retail stores. It eliminates the hassle of buying games in limited print for ridiculously inflated prices on eBay. If Microsoft really wanted to clean up the service, all they needed to do was make the interface smoother, so the menus are easier to navigate. If they didn’t want bad titles clogging up the lists, all they needed to do was make a separate place for them. Taking them off the server does more harm than good.

Another problem is with the developers. So far, Microsoft has had great relationships with developers with regard to both retail and downloadable games. But I don’t see this new policy as a friendly gesture. Sure, after hearing about these requirements, a developer might want to put in more effort to make their game as good as possible, in order to prevent it from getting de-listed. Alternatively, a developer can decide that he doesn’t want video game “journalists” to determine whether his piece of work is valuable, and move to another service like WiiWare or PSN, where his content is more appreciated. I see the latter happening a lot more.

But by far the worst thing about this announcement is that it was followed up the announcement of Buku Sudoku and Warlords as the XBLA games of the week. Let me just say that these games probably won’t be around long after their 6 month anniversary. Although impressions of the Arcade games are going to be the primary feature on this column, I won’t spend too much time on them, because I’ve already talked a lot about the new policy. And really, all you need to know is that they’re both pretty bad.

Buku Sudoku is… Sudoku, except it has generic music and backgrounds that attempt to make it more Japanese than it already is. You can play online for free while also having access to an infinite amount of puzzles, rather than paying $10 for a limited amount. Personally, I would buy a $5 book which also contains more puzzles. Doing it with pencil and paper is much more challenging and fun than doing it with a 360 controller anyway.

Warlords is kind of like a multiplayer version of Breakout. Apparently, it was an old Atari game that I had never heard of. Now I know why (surprise, it’s terrible). It has flash game quality written all over it, and while the $5 price tag may be tempting, I’d use that $5 to buy a better game on the service (there sure are a lot of them). The only cool thing in this game is the Turbo Speed mode, which basically makes the game impossible to play. It’s pretty funny though.

Two bad games follow an announcement that does not tolerate bad games. Microsoft cannot stop with the irony. But I guess the most ironic thing is that the titles that eventually get removed are still technically not de-listed. The “tell a friend” feature can be used by a person who has downloaded a game that’s de-listed to allow their friend to also download the game. So instead of buying that copy of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for $250, you’ll now have to ask some random guy on a message board to “tell” you about that Battlestar Gallactica game. This is a minor inconvenience, which totally invalidates the entire purpose of the new policy and makes it even more unnecessary.

Fix this shit up, MS.

On a more positive note, the Rock Band DLC for the week is:

“Indestructible” – Disturbed
“Inside the Fire” – Disturbed
“Perfect Insanity” – Disturbed
“Cheeseburger in Paradise” – Jimmy Buffet
“Margaritaville” – Jimmy Buffet
“Volcano” – Jimmy Buffet

Oh wait, that’s not positive at all.