Hey I’m back (that was fast, sorry) and I’m hopefully less full of bullshit this time. I’m gonna try, honest.
This is what happened: I got a 360 to play Import Tuner Challenge (aka Shutokou Battle X aka the last Genki Racing Project game) and Shadow Assault -Tenchu- (aka Tehcnu meets Bomberman) and then I remembered that there was this big unknown. That huge blob of digital-only titles. It’s ridiculous. If wikipedia is to be believed, it’s well over 3000 indie and over 700 Live Arcade games. To put it into perspective, that’s about as much as the number of NES, SNES and GB games combined. And there’s still a slow but steady trickle of new releases. (Until later this year when Microsoft is shutting the development side of things down unfortunately. Fortunately it doesn’t seem to affect the ability to buy and play games.)
Mind-boggled. Anyway, that’s a challenge I can’t refuse so I browsed a lot. And looked at thousands of thumbnails. Downloaded hundreds of free trials. And bought about a dozen games at the end. Here’s what I got (caution: I only played the trial and not much of the full game most of the time but I’ll prolly gonna give some updates later after playing more):
#Explosionade (80 points)
Single-screenish (there’s some scrolling but you can zoom out) arcade-ish 2D mecha platformer with a neat shield mechanic that makes you bump around like a flipper. Bit too easy for my taste. I guess the point is to go for high scores instead of completion. Good fun nonetheless.
#Tekkou Houhei (80 points)
3rd-person mecha shooter where you are put in small levels having to shoot other mecha. No z-targeting in this one, gotta aim yourelf! I like it a lot. PS: Don’t quote me on this, but I think it has split-screen coop? I’m a lonely person and only have on controller so I can’t confirm.
#Prismatic Solid (80 points)
I started up the trial and that attract mode fucking sold me right away. I didn’t even need to play the game before I confirmed purchase. I am that shallow. So many flat-shaded prismatic solids! Could not miss such a lovely looking and sounding 2D shooting, I thought. And it plays fine too, maybe (I suck at shootie games and I don’t allow myself to have an opinion on them). It has some weird tentacle force power up system. I bought this over Revolver 360, cause it’s not “just” a high-score hunt, but has “more standard” level progression. Also, I think there’s a PS4 port out? Huh.
#Ogre’s Phantasm Sword Quest (240 points)
What a name. And what a game! This reminds me a lot of EDF is why I had to have it. Actually, I think it reminds me more of the forgotten EDF game, Zangeki no Reginleiv, with its fantasy setting and fighting giants with swords and such. So yeah, you’re thrown in an arena and there’s lots of orcs and you gotta pierce them with your sword and there’s health and money drops that you can spent on better swords. Some orcs have helmets (the big ones, usually) and you gotta jump on them pointing your sword downwards and bounce of their heads multiple times and it’s hilarious like the pogo stick move of Scrooge in the DuckTales game. It’s bit grindy like EDF and you gotta repeat levels to farm money, but there’s decent level variety and I don’t mind too much. Juggling sword-first on orc heads is fun!
#Adventures of Captain Becky (80 points)
Now this is where it gets a lil embarrassing. Scantily-clad over-sexualized woman navigating single-screenish platformy levels filled with spikes and monstas and shit. You can unlock other skimpy outfits and look at them in the creepy voyeur mode. So yeah, I don’t really know why I like this game so much. I guess I like boobs, I mean the simplicity, I mean I was a fan of Solomon’s Key on the GB is my excuse. I don’t know, okay. It plays well. There’s a clunkiness to the controls I like and the levels in the trial put up some challenge. It’s not just the cleavage! Don’t look at me like that!
#BioErosion (80 points)
Now this is some shit. 3rd-pseron shooter that looks (and plays?) like a Dreamcast launch game. Aiming is terrible. Walking around is slow. The level is just a square city-scape, kinda like EDF but even smaller and cheaper. And there’s some floating balls you gotta shoot them all and sometimes there’s some ugly monstas walking towards you and shooting stuff and oh boy. I basically got this because of the outlandish sound effects (startling synthesizer noises kinda reminiscent of old arcade games) and how surreal it all is. Oh yeah, and the distorted guitar music in the “how to play” menu. Anyway, level 2 is level 1 but adds some bottomless pits ad that is how far I played. Yeah I wouldn’t recommend buying this.
Here’s a youtube:
#Axeh (80 points)
Card game / board game / RPG? combo kinda like Culdcept but different. I just had to get this. It’s all Japanese but I plan on clicking my way through. Can’t say if it’s good or not.
#Ancient Trader (240 points)
This is kinda like a simplified board game version of Pirates I guess (I am somewhat ashamed that I haven’t played that classic). You are pirate ship and have to battle other ships and trade goods and stuff. It looks pretty cool! Like old illustrations and cartography stuff and I’m just a sucker for board games in general so yeah. I think this is also on IOS and got a sequel on PC.
#Yukkuri no Meikyuu (80 points)
Or how I like to call it: Smilie-Punch Dungeon Crawl. Because that’S what you do. Because you’re one of three selectable waifus and you gotta punch your way through a blocky Wizardry dungeon in 1st-person mode and you throw left and right punches with your L and R triggers at big smiliy faces and that’s stupid fun. Actually, those arems don’t look like waifu arms, I guess you’re a guy trying to rescue your waifu because after each level there’s a picture of her getting harassed by ghosts things which are driven away depending on your smilie-punch dungeon crawl performance. Oh, and you can level up your stats depending on what colored smilies you punch and I recommend to look for the yellow ones cause that gives you an automap. I really find this quite addictive, I don’t know.
#Maid San’s Caving Adventure (80 points)
In this 2D stealth game you are maid and have to sneak by orcs (which represent terrible customers I suppose, I don’t know if there’s a hidden message in here okay). There’s platforming too. The clunky kind. And I like it a lot. It looks super polished. Real nice sprite-work and animations. And the orcs throw out a Japanese line every time you sneak by, acting all confused, the stupids, and I find that funny. Don’t judge me.
#Irekae Maho-chan
Also called Swapping Mahoro-Chan? Now you may think this is just another 2D single-screen platformer with cute sprites but here’s the trick: you shoot a star that allows you to swap places with the enemy you hit. And that’s kinda cool and I had a lot of fun playing through the trial and even though 240 points is a lot I decided to go for the full version. Gonna report back if I did the wrong thing.
Now, there’s some more trials sitting on my HDD that I haven’t decided on buying yet:
#Revolver360 (80 points)
This looks and sounds maybe even better than Prismatic Solid! But it did’t have a cool attract mode. So I had to play it first. And that’s the problem. Cause I think I saw everything already? Like, there’s a quick and endless mode but both seem to offer not a whole lot in terms of progression. Like, there’s levels and bosses but everything switches so fast and loops maybe? There’s hidden options in the menu but I don’t know. Should I buy this? I’m not really into scoring-based shooting. There does seem to be a monochromatic sequel on Steam that fixes exactly that issue though. (My laptop is ancient technology otherwise I would’ve tried it out.)
#Qoccer (80 points)
Turn-based physics-based board game-ish soccer game that plays more like mini-golf with three clubs against an opponent (who also has three clubs). I like these abstract sports video games that play nothing like the real sport a lot (Is why I was kind of devastated that MLB Bobblehead Battle had been delisted, RIP Konami). But! You know? I think I’ve seen it all already within the trial time limit? Like I played a match and I won and I liked it and the AI is pretty easy. (Yeah, okay, maybe I do need a friend.) There’s an ice field and the option to play 3vs1 but I don’t know. Should I? Maybe if I have some money left at some point.
#Opposites (80 points)
Woah! This has to be the coolest Tetris clone idea! I just looked at a screenshot and was like: “Of course!” So simple. So fucking obvious. Why hasn’t it been done before? (Has it been done before?) This is fucking great and I love it. But again, I played some rounds and I lost and then I won and I think the full version only unlocks online play which I am not a big fan of for some stupid reason (I guess mainly because I’m shit at Tetris and would get my ass whopped) and I guess I can just wait for that hypothetical future IRL friend of mine and save myself 80 MS dollars (local vs seems unlocked?). Huh?
Oh yeah, here’s a screenshot:
#Ninja360 (80 points)
This is kinda like those Ninja games where you are Ninja and have to collect all dots navigating 2D platforms afap doing jumpy jumps and floaty floats and clinging and climbing walls. And I guess the gimmick is that you turn the level when you run around circular platforms. Or something. And you get a medal depending on your time. So yeah, 2D time trial platformer. I find it neat that you get a video of the gold performance as soon as you get a silver time. And that you can unlock levels by collecting either a bunch of bronze, silver or gold medals (you need less of the latter than the former), so that newbs like me can get somewhere too. I think this is by a Japanese developer as well? Has some nice menu artwork anyway (The levels look pretty plain, and for some reason you can choose the textures you want). So yeah, I dunno. It feels good and I wouldn’t mind unlocking some of the full version levels, but again, I’m not much into this kind of scoring-based platformer with generic looking levels, I prefer to go on adventures and progress through different environments and beat the boos monstas and have a bit of a story (waifu or perferably husbando to save) and I don’t know. I provably won’t shell out the 80 points.
#Undead Syndrome (80 points)
This is by the same developer than BioErosion. So yeah, it’s a bit trippy. Or very trippy, depending on your perception of reality. It’s kinda like Resident Evil. You shoot magic tho. Includes grotesque abominations to shoot, of course. Trial doesn’t allow saving, and I don’t know if I wanna do again. Is kinda scary if played with headphones after sunset. (I’m a wuss tho, you may not be scared or for other reasons.) There’s a sequel too, but it looked like really dumb SciFi and also might contain spoilers? Huh, anyway, I kinda wanna buy this because it’s probably better than BioErosion and I really dig the trashy aesthetic. I am stupid.
#T.A.R.A. (80 points)
1st-person shooter with robot enemies that look like the characters in Ballz (anyone remember that? No? Okay, well the limbs are made up of individual balls and they flail around, like the Space Harrier dragon, you know?). Uhh, it’s pretty terryfying actually, because if you shoot the robots, they make crazy noises and tumble over in messy ways but sometimes they aren’t dead and then they still move and get up again and oh my good I almost pissed my pants. Seems to be pretty standard Doom-ish find-a-switch-to-open door otherwise, but yeah I had fun. Wonder if it introduces new enemies later? Hmm.
#Arrow Diamond (80 points)
Aka what the fuck even is this? It’s weird! And very tricky to find, cause it uses symbols as it’s name. And that’s why it’s also easy to find in the dashboard. Just look for action & adventure and sort by name and it should be the first result. So yeah really though what is it? Well, you are green god hand (not quite) and you hover over small sprout things and you push them and I don’t wanna spoil the magic experience of figuring out this crazy trip of a “game”. You may have already watched a youtube of it I don’t know, it might’ve been a little infamous among XBLIGs and got some coverage, back when it came out. Anyway, I like it lots. I haven’t bought cause I dunno if there’s more to it than maxing out your score doing the same thing over and over though. Anyone know? I wouldn’t mind getting this just to see if it goes anywhere beyond what I could do in the trial.
#Bloom Block (80 points)
I am a big fan of certain types of what I call “pure” puzzle games. That is, turn-based no real-time action component. (Because all the Tetrises and PuyoPuyos and Columns are too much to handle for my stupid brain that is too slow and the somewhat sedate pace of Mario Picross about the upper limit of stress-thinking I can take). Yeah, I really like those gams that give me all the time I need, especially when they’re about geometric shapes or numbers. Like Tangram! (Is there a good Tangram video game?) Or … uh … I guess what is sometimes funnily called “puzzle mode” in many action puzzle games, where you get a set amount of steps to “solve” a problem without a timer ticking down. And yeah this game, it basically fits the bill! It’s kind of what I’d call ingenious actually! You have basic 3D shapes made of cubes, like numbers and Katakana? (it’s a Japanse game alright) and you gotta traverse them, like walk on each side/face, without stepping on one you already traversed. I bet there’s some games that did this concept in 2D already (blood potion reward for anyone who can name that game(s)) but I gotta say this is news to me in 3D. Such a neat concept! I bet the designer of the game looked at textures of basic 3D shapes and tried to wrap/unwrap them in his head or something. So why did I not buy this yet? It’s so gosh darn hard! And it doesn’t need to be quite as? Like, the camera is pretty zoomed in and uncooperative, and I just couldn’t make it zoom out to get a look at the whole shape to plan out my route better. And maybe that’s intentional? Like, you’re supposed to draw the whole route in your head and I couldn’t do it with 3. Yeah, that’s where my brain said: oh boy this is work and I stopped lol. I am not smart. Maybe I’ll get better at it, if I think about it some more. My takeaway is that I also don’t like the kind of puzzle games that rely heavily on sequencing. Like, I hate the Sokobans. And among the hated action puzzlers, I hate Tetris way less than the more combo-oriented stuff like Tetris Attack. It seems like I am more into combining things in not necessarily a particular order. Maybe. Oh boy, this is some theoretical game talk here, sorry I’ll stop. I think this game is pretty cool regardless of my weird personal preferences.
This is already too much text, so I’m just gonna rep it up by mentioning the sites that helped me find games. Because the Xbox dashboard and search is kinda hit and miss and the marketplace is offline for me all the time and some games have non-romanized (is that what you call it?) names and you can’t search for Katakana and stuff (I don’t think).
http://xblig.co/
This site has a handy overview of some good (and not so good imo) games and links to reviews.
https://thexblig.com/
This covers some of the more recent releases (last review was yesterday). Haven’t checked it out much.
http://www.xboxindies.com
This has been invaluable in looking through lots of games quickly, as it basically is just a copy of the original xbox marketplace website, but seems to be working better for me. You can even click on the developer and see what else they did. It has game links to the official site too (Very handy, in case you have a credit-card (I don’t), because then you can initiate trial downloads from your PC, which is a lot easier than searching for the game through the 360 dashboard.)
I used the gamefaqs names of the games btw. When they are in Japanese, they’re usually called something else on xboxindies. I found it helpful to just look for the developer’s name, in that case.
Soooooo … yeahhhh … not gonna proof-read all this sorry. And thanks if you somehow managed to read it all and also thanks if you only read parts of it. Pls feel free to give me some XBLIG recommendations, I kinda wanna see all the good things (and the good bad things?) there is among this impenetrably huge library. Let us cherish those indie gems!