May 23-29, 2010
Oh, fiddlesticks, I didn’t write anything for a lead in.
May 16-22, 2010
The recent deluge of Indie Games continues! Aren’t you glad we’re here for you?
Oh, and I see you’ve brought friends. Hello, new readers! Feel free to leave comments, and enjoy your stay!
Continuing our series of “xnPlay Essentials“, next off the starting block comes our selection of the very best platform games on the Xbox Indie Games service.
As usual, we’ll be updating the essential lists as we go along so that you’ll always have a nice stop off point for browsing and downloading the very bestiest of the bestiest XBLIG games.
Read our selection here.
Xbox Live Indie Games has reached an impressive milestone today: there are now 1004 games available on the platform [*]. If Microsoft’s “new games” ordering is to be believed, Knock Balls – Spin to Win was actually the game which broke through the 3-digit barrier.
The service has come a long way since it was launched as Community Games, 18 months ago – and it’s changed somewhat along the way: newer releases have tended to be more polished and more ambitious, while still offering a good mix of innovation and experimentation. Admittedly, some other trends haven’t been quite as welcome, such as the way Avatars are popping up in everything from alarm clocks to hangman, but yer pays yer money and yer takes yer chances…
In any case: 1000 games for the XBLIG community to enjoy. It’ll be interesting to see where we are when the 2000 mark is hit!
[*] If you include deleted games, the total’s around 1050, but hey: who’s counting?
The first in our series of “essential” pages is now go, go, go. Starting with everyone’s beloved genre, the humble shooter. We’ll be updating the page as and when new stuff worth adding to it comes along so keep a close eye out for more.
In the meantime, here comes batch:the first. The very best of Shooty games on the Xbox Indies service.
You’ll find the rest of the xnPlay Essential Collection on its own special page here. Click on through to see what’s coming up next.
My lordy, three recommended titles in one week? Where will this madness end.
This is definitely one of those games where I’m really, really glad I looked past the description and the screenshots and took a chance on it all the same. The description is, well, it’s vague. It’s uninspiring and aside from telling you what you have to do, it doesn’t really tell you what the game is.
So allow me to remedy that, dear readers. Bit Crunch is Berzerk. Oh, it’s not just Berzerk. It’s Berzerk with locked doors and an Adventure style pick up mechanism for the keys and a cavalcade of different enemies.
Or in short, it’s not too far off from my idea of perfect retro heaven because, yes dear readers, I bloody love Berzerk. Whilst there might be no Evil Otto or scary “get the intruder” speech, it more than makes up for that in the “well, isn’t that fun” department.
It’s not perfect. The lack of reset on the rooms when you leave can come back to bite you on the backside a tad if you peg out without clearing a room of enemy robots and I’m not entirely convinced the dual stick set up as is could be classed as ideal but hey, it’s Berzerk. With Adventure bits. And an orb. I was sold within seconds.
Icing on the cake stuff? Randomly generated avatar based on your name, 4 players and a handy mini-map to track your location in the game world.
Today, I go to sleep a happy bunny.
So once again, no big words, no deep profound analysis, just a smile, a recommendation and a link for you to grab it and enjoy for yourselves.
Loot, Steal & Destroy is simply a slightly renamed re-launch of the pulled game Loot, Steal ‘n Destroy under a different Creators’ Club account, so I’ll simply link you to AnonymousTipster’s review of that game.
Sometimes I’m more tempted to talk about how someone could possibly come up with such a really rubbish and uninspired game name than I am to review the game.
Retrofit Overload certainly falls into that category. A name that’s not really inspiring and certainly not Ronseal enough to do wot it sez on the tin. However, that’s not quite what I’m here to do, dear readers.
The very best of the best sorted by category. Want to know what the best shooter is? The best platform game?
Look no further.
The games that various staffers have loved, hugged and enjoyed on the service since its inception.
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