Official Xbox Live Arcade Thread

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Shard said:
You are looking at it from the wrong angle, I mean seeing an increase in the amount of licensed titles, yea, they may be god for sales, but they usually end up being shit. Speaking of which, how bad is Shrek-N-Roll?
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So what if they're shit? More shitty games doesn't mean fewer good games. In fact, if anything, licensed shovelware is a sign of a healthy console. Look how much licensed crap came out on the PS2. (and conversely, how little of it is coming out on PS3) If publishers are seeing XBLA as a place to pimp their licensed games, the service must be doing well.
 
Screwjumper is complete and utter shite IMHO (EDIT: and only 87 on the leaderboard making me think that only 87 people (out of 8m XBL members) have actually bought the thing since this morning). Still downloading Shrek-n-Roll to give it a go, but wtf is with the 147mb!? The first 'family-oriented game' which was co-announced with the Xbox 360 Arcade, and it's so big that you'd really need an HD for it as it would eat up most of your 256mb memory card. In fact I think it's the biggest XBLA game to date.
 
Rlan said:
OFLC Update:
LODE RUNNER (By Tozai Inc)
THE BULLWINKLE SHOW (By PinballFX's Zen Studios)

Dun dun dun!
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Wow, I'm looking forward to see what else Zen can do. I was really impresed with Pinball FX and Flipper Critters.
 
Downloaded the Shrek game... I had no idea from the pictures what the game was going to play like...

Basically, a pumpkin is on a board and you select 2 characters... one on each side of board... both sticks are used... ALA Robotron except only up and down...

Move one side up and the pumpkin rolls toward the other character... move other character up and the pumpkin rolls other way...

It is a see-saw game... and you move the pumpkin toward the Shrek babies and avoid rolling the pumpkin into a window...

Very, very, very repetitive voice samples and the are not really Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy and blonde chick Diaz...
 
Why is the shrek n roll game so big Im sure I heard the same sample bout 5 times. Anyway its shit and so maybe it needs the license to carry it. At first I was impressed at it being different but from the demo different =! fun.

As for Screwjumper it feels lie a fuzion frenzy 1 mini game, a little fun to be had but nah its shit too, bad time for XBLA games to come out that aren't immediately simple fun, online and board games with depth.
 
Rlan said:
My hands hurt just watching that video. :(
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the insane thing is 1) he didn't lose a single life, 2) he has insane reflexes, to the point where he avoids ghosts in a split second, at top speed. insane. When I get to top speed after eating a bunch of ghosts, my extra lives disappear as quickly as I got them.
 
duckroll said:
I doubt so. Rez HD is already ready to go it looks like. After all it has an official page of its own on the JP Xbox360 site.
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Yeah, but Ikaruga is "supposedly" coming out in Japan first, so the international ratings won't matter for now. It should be out this year, Rez next.
 
God damn I can't wait for Rez on XBLA...I never played the original and I'm psyched to play it on XBLA. There's still no date on it right?

We need to campaign for Vectorman on XBLA.
 
Jonnyram said:
Yeah, but Ikaruga is "supposedly" coming out in Japan first, so the international ratings won't matter for now. It should be out this year, Rez next.
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Unless for some reason Treasure can't get the netcode perfected in time, and Rez HD comes out first. :(
 
Alphahawk said:
Really I quite enjoy it, why don't you like it may I ask?
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It's ugly, the controls are sluggish, the very gameplay conceit while original isn't in any way fun. Also all of the levels I played in the demo were exactly the same.

Terrible.
 
Schafer said:
It's ugly, the controls are sluggish, the very gameplay conceit while original isn't in any way fun. Also all of the levels I played in the demo were exactly the same.

Terrible.
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I didn't have any real problems with the control, throwing dynamite is problematic but that's more due to desisgn decision then it is due to any fault of the control. Also the three levels in the demo were all from the same "world" and although they all looked the same their were noticeable differences in how each level played. As for the gameplay concept I guess we'll have to agree to dissagree about that...
 
A Lode Runner game is welcome - I fell in love with a C64 version and have played a few versions since then. If they put some effort into some HD graphics (nicely textured bricks and sparkly acid drops) I'm so there. A straight port of something old I won't touch.
 
so I was in the doctor's office today, and one of TV's was showing some Crossword Puzzle Game show. And during the commercial break they announced a game based on it was coming to XBLA.

so uh, there ya go. More hot word puzzle action coming to a 360 near you
 
PRESS RELEASE: Reflexive's XBLA title Axiom Overdrive, Orbital Thrust Frame specifications released
Press release supplied by Games Press 09:48 (GMT) 16/11/2007

Reflexive Entertainment and the Axiom Corporation have revealed specifications for its Orbital Thrust Frame. Players are already eagerly anticipating piloting the vehicle through the unique physical environment within our deep space mining colony AF128.

“The OTF is a powerful, resilient, and uniquely versatile vehicle,” said Dr. D.C. Looper, Lead Engineer in charge of developing the vehicles’ on board control systems. “We know our job is done when pilots can’t even tell that there is a system helping interpret their control inputs. Many test subjects have reported that the OTF responds as though it is an extension of their own thought process,” he later added.

The built in grapple is a powerful graviton beam, which is used to pick up and manipulate objects within AF128. Pilots develop an innate feel for the momentum and mass within every object they push, crash, smash, carry, and sling through the mine facility.

In preparation for the next wave of hiring on the mining colony AF128, and in response to the flood of applications already received, the Axiom Corporation is honing in on the first wave of exceptional applicants who will be chosen to pilot the limited number of OTFs available.

For further information about the Axiom Corporation’s OTF design, and up-coming opportunities for OTF pilots, please read the documentation available on www.axiomoverdrive.com.
 
From the Purple Sensi fansite:
OK, so you've heard it all before. But this time it's true, and you heard it here first. SWOS for Xbox live arcade is finished, certified and ready to roll.

It's now just a matter of waiting for Microsoft to slot SWOS into it's release schedule, based around what is already planned for release, and, probably allowing Codemasters some time to ramp up their marketing pre-release.

Certainly codemasters latest claim of "By christmas" seems to be well within reach. It could well be with us by the end of November or early December.
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\o/
 
Shard said:
It could be next week.
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I wonder if Microsoft would put it up against Undertow?

Not saying that it's sales would be hurt in anyway by Undertow, but rather the opposite. I think that Undertow is a big step for Microsoft in it's attempt to up the production values of XBLA titles. Undertow is the second UE3 powered title to hit the service, the first being the forgetable Roboblitz.

if it does well, I would imagine that you'll start to see more and more games using UE3, and with it getting the graphics and multiplayer functionality built in. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is yet to be seen
 
Have we had any impressions of the job they did on SWOS yet? I thought there was an OXM review a long time ago when we first thought it was going to come out. I'm pretty busy with PES at the moment, but if they did a bang-up job with the upgrade I may pick it up.
 
AstroLad said:
Have we had any impressions of the job they did on SWOS yet? I thought there was an OXM review a long time ago when we first thought it was going to come out. I'm pretty busy with PES at the moment, but if they did a bang-up job with the upgrade I may pick it up.
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There were some previews some months ago, but nothing recent.

Anyway, Microsoft could very well put it up against Undertow, there is little rhyme or reason to the release slate, other candidates for release next week are Spongebob Squarepants: Underpants Battle, Omega Five and Rocketmen: Axis of Evil.
 
Shard said:
There were some previews some months ago, but nothing recent.

Anyway, Microsoft could very well put it up against Undertow, there is little rhyme or reason to the release slate, other candidates for release next week are Spongebob Squarepants: Underpants Battle, Omega Five and Rocketmen: Axis of Evil.
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The good thing about releasing it right now is that it's a pretty dry period for sports games in the US. All the big games have been out a while. Little bit less so in Europe with the release of PES last month, but if they market it as "kiddie/cutesy/retro soccer" I think they can do fairly well with the casual crowd here.
 
XBLA games have been ESRB'd:

Cosmic Osmo's Hex Isle (Cyan Worlds Inc.)

Cosmic Osmo is back. However, Osmo has been banished to the Hex Isles and needs your help to make his escape and find his space ship again. The goal of Hex Isle is simple: guide Osmo over hexagonal shaped tiles (hexes) to touch six targets, thus completing the level and helping him escape.

Hex Isle brings back the classic computer game character from 1989 in a brand new way. Elegant game-play (easy to learn - hard to master) is accompanied with whimsical yet stunning real-time 3D levels and a plethora of game variables that give goal-oriented players over ten hours of game-play (36 levels). A scoring system involving three different styles of gaming (strategy vs. speed vs. score) adds a high degree of replayability.
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cosmic-osmos-hex-isle-20071108040136239.jpg


Boogie Bunnies (Vivendi Games) - The Craptastic looking puzzle game.

Lost Cities (Vivendi Games)

Lost Cities is a two-player card game by Kosmos. The object is to mount profitable expeditions to one or more of the five different lost cities. Card play is quite straightforward, with a few agonizing moments sprinkled through what is mostly a fast-moving game. If you start a given expedition, you'd better make some progress in it, or it'll score you negative points. If you can make a lot of progress, you'll score quite well. After three rounds, the highest total score takes the day.

Rules are included for a four-player team game that requires two copies to play.
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And Aces of the Galaxy
 
Shard said:
There were some previews some months ago, but nothing recent.

Anyway, Microsoft could very well put it up against Undertow, there is little rhyme or reason to the release slate, other candidates for release next week are Spongebob Squarepants: Underpants Battle, Omega Five and Rocketmen: Axis of Evil.
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Undertow and Omega Five in the same week would be mindblowing.
 
Cyanide confirms Blood Bowl for Xbox 360, PSP, DS

By Jason Dobson Nov 14th 2007 4:27PM
Filed under: Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sports
Having opened a new studio in Montreal earlier this year and released the Diablo-clone Loki, French developer Cyanide has what we call 'a lot of irons in the fire.' The studio also announced today that it has waded waist-deep into the murky waters of middleware development, creating its own "dynamic 3D animation engine," which Cyanide interestingly describes as a tool that "integrates physical and biomechanical laws under the control of a powerful artificial intelligence system." Skynet, can you hear us?

While the company hopes to license the engine to other "small and medium sized" game developers, Cyanide is not above eating its own dog food, and will utilize the technology in its own projects, the first of which will be a title based on Games Workshop's fantasy tabletop game Blood Bowl. First announced briefly last year, the real news here is that the game, which is an unofficial follow up to the unlicensed PC title Chaos League, has been confirmed as in development for the Xbox 360, PSP, and Nintendo DS, as well as the PC. Few details are known at present beyond that the studio calls the project a "faithful representation" of the tabletop game, and adds that Blood Bowl should be released sometime in late 2008. In the absence of a new Mutant League Football, we will take what we can get.
 
Latest XBLA list from Major Nelson:

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions)
1 6 Switchball
2 5 Word Puzzle
3 - Sonic The Hedgehog 2
4 - UNO
5 - Screwjumper!
6 - TMNT 1989 Arcade
7 - Shrek-n-Roll
8 8 Bomberman LIVE
9 - Worms
10 - Tetris Splash
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Wow, top 4 from last week is out of the top 10 this week.

Also, apparantly the XBLA list will be compiled on Mondays/Tuesdays in the future:

To better capture data for mid-week releases (like Arcade titles) I will be posting this list on the Monday or Tuesday of the following week from this point forward.
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xbhaskarx said:
The same people who bought Word Puzzle and Shrek-n-Roll?
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The thing is... you know who will be playing Word Puzzle or Shrek. The Shrek game is targeted at kids, and Word Puzzle is obviously for someone who likes word puzzles. Two games targeting very specific crowds, so even if they are bad they are catering to such specific audiences that those people may be able to look past their short comings because of the genre appeal. Screwjumper on the other hand, is almost surprisingly bad. I got the same feeling playing that game that I did when I played that free Yaris game (how?/why?/bad).

It worries me to see a lot more XBLA games released by major publishers, because there have been some pretty bad offerings brought by them lately. There was a point in the XBLA cycle where I was buying one game per week, because most of the stuff was good quality for $5 - $10. Now it's getting to the point where I am hardly trying most games.

Have we gone from the point of the early developers who were excited to develop for XBLA making cool games to the point of major publishers jumping on board with "me too" titles? Some of these games just stink of big publishers wanting to get in on the XBLA cash cow and thinking anything will sell.

Part of me thinks... this should be viewed no differently from the rest of the game industry where some games will be good and some will be bad. But then the other part of me thinks of how strict MS is with the games they allow on XBLA. Would MS have given Screwjumper the ok if it didn't have the THQ name attached to it?
 
PhlivoSong said:
The thing is... you know who will be playing Word Puzzle or Shrek. The Shrek game is targeted at kids, and Word Puzzle is obviously for someone who likes word puzzles. Two games targeting very specific crowds, so even if they are bad they are catering to such specific audiences that those people may be able to look past their short comings because of the genre appeal. Screwjumper on the other hand, is almost surprisingly bad. I got the same feeling playing that game that I did when I played that free Yaris game (how?/why?/bad).

It worries me to see a lot more XBLA games released by major publishers, because there have been some pretty bad offerings brought by them lately. There was a point in the XBLA cycle where I was buying one game per week, because most of the stuff was good quality for $5 - $10. Now it's getting to the point where I am hardly trying most games.

Have we gone from the point of the early developers who were excited to develop for XBLA making cool games to the point of major publishers jumping on board with "me too" titles? Some of these games just stink of big publishers wanting to get in on the XBLA cash cow and thinking anything will sell.

Part of me thinks... this should be viewed no differently from the rest of the game industry where some games will be good and some will be bad. But then the other part of me thinks of how strict MS is with the games they allow on XBLA. Would MS have given Screwjumper the ok if it didn't have the THQ name attached to it?
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Allow me to illuminate on you ruminations and concerns. First, on the matter of Screwjumper, I can answer this question using a recent interview done by Xboxic.com with the creators of Screwjumper, Frozen Codebase.

http://www.xboxic.com/news/3881

Xboxic: So how did you all come together with this idea then?

NR: We had planned on a different game for our first project, however, after showing the idea to a bunch of industry veterans, they all assured us that we were “on crack”. It was a bit “out there,” shall we say. In any event, we called an emergency meeting for alternate game concepts, and everyone gravitated towards Screwjumper!, and away we went.

JL: Generally, when it’s time to pick out a new project, we draft a bunch of ideas and choose the one that smacks least of crack.

NR: Which is unfortunate, because I’m very much pro- “what the hell are you guys smoking?” types of ideas; I am the token company freak. However, i also want to have a roof over my head and not be working as a greeter at Wal-Mart in six months, so I tend to listen to reason when i have to.

JL: The best candidates get some more detailed write-ups and/or prototypes, and we take it from there.

NR: We started off with Screwjumper!, and originally tried to get it on XBLA by ourselves, but it appeared the “Wild Wild West” era of XBLA was drawing to a close.

Xboxic: So you needed a publisher?

NR: Well… it was “strongly suggested”. We went out to Seattle to pitch Screwjumper! to Microsoft, and they liked it, but we failed to get ‘greenlit’ on our first attempt; they only let you fail greenlighting twice before they boot you out forever. So, had we failed greenlighting a second time, we would have been pretty much screwed. Basically the greenlighting process is much more stringent if you don’t have a publisher. Microsoft said, famously, that the original version of the game was “too Nintendo”, and they wanted something “more XBox 360″, which is an interesting concept. But, I mean, I see what they meant, I think. Microsoft had a lot of feedback for how this could be a better XBox 360 game.

Xboxic: What changed then?

JL: Everything. We did the only thing we could: we overhauled the game’s look as well as the game mechanic.
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This bit of information I think provides some insight on the current XBLA pitching process and the question is answered in that case.

As for who is buying Screwjumper, right now I would wager it is the same group of people who buy the latest release regardless of quality.

As for the overall state of the XBLA, we are just hit a bit of a quality slump yes, but we are also coming off one of the best months XBLA has as well. At any rate, the problem is not so much big companies jumping on the XBLA as it is original IPs on the service tend to be very hit or miss.
 
Have I missed out on getting Carcossane (sp?) free? I just tryed a couple of hours ago and it was showing up as 800 points? I thought it was to last for 48 hours, i.e. till saturday night? I'm in the UK btw.
 
brain_stew said:
Have I missed out on getting Carcossane (sp?) free? I just tryed a couple of hours ago and it was showing up as 800 points? I thought it was to last for 48 hours, i.e. till saturday night? I'm in the UK btw.
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48 hours would be two days, and it went up Wednesday. That doesn't add up to Saturday no matter how you do the math.
 
Brakara said:
At least no Gaffers bought it.
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Alphahawk seemed to like it, dunno if he bought it though.

And I wish Frozen Codebase went with their "crazy idea everyone said they were crazy for coming up with". I know it'd be taking a risk but its better then releasing an uninspired POS.
 
PhlivoSong said:
lots of stuff
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I echo the same with some of the more recent XBLA games.

I have no problem on picking them up, I have nearly 60 now but some of the more recent 800 point titles have been not of my taste or very questionable (WordPuzzle at 800 is a joke).

I dunno if its XBLA just really covering all the bases at the moment with the casual experiences I am looking for, maybe its just there is too many good games out at the moment and thats made the quality seem to dip.

I'm really now looking for different offerings from XBLA, more board games, simple sports stuff (SWOS) & platformers etc (castle crashers being the biggy for me).

I think its now fully saturated with Puzzle games and will be hard for any to break through tho I do see a gap for PopCaps Bookworm Adventures & Peggle.

As for the action games & shooters coming up, as long as its not more formulaic duel stick shooters or top down space sims I'm all for it & the more multiplayer & co-op the better.
 
Segata Sanshiro said:
48 hours would be two days, and it went up Wednesday. That doesn't add up to Saturday no matter how you do the math.
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I thought it went up Thursday. I downloaded it free last night. Thursday + Friday = 48 hours

Doesnt matter though since either way it ends before Saturday
 
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