Official Xbox Live Arcade Thread

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Eggo said:
I'm probably going to buy Solitaire if the demo is any good. I'm all about Freecell. That card editor and Vision support are very tempting, but the 800 pt cost of admission is tough to swallow.
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Got any Freecell tips?

I've only ever really played Klondike and the "tutorials" in-game are awful. I just get confused by all the solitaire lingo and the extremely sparse descriptions and have no idea what I'm doing in most of these games. I did understand Freecell but I'm not very good at it.
 
aku:jiki said:
Got any Freecell tips?

I've only ever really played Klondike and the "tutorials" in-game are awful. I just get confused by all the solitaire lingo and the extremely sparse descriptions and have no idea what I'm doing in most of these games. I did understand Freecell but I'm not very good at it.
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The basic strategy is to clear one column as quickly as possible while setting up your Aces so you can start putting away suits. Once you have a column free and at least one suit you can start stacking up, it just becomes manipulation between your free cards and that empty column. Then you free up a second column, and you should be close to finishing. If you're looking for more advanced tips, you'll have to wait till I sit down and play it more heavily. It's been a while. :)
 
Yet another preview of Carcassonne via the IGN XBOX 360.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/789/789023p1.html

There are only 72 tiles in a deck, so you're working against the clock (er, deck) to build as many structures as you can before the tiles are gone. The game supports up to five players, and you'll burn through the deck pretty quickly if all five are present. A two-player game typically lasts 15-20 minutes, while five people will finish in under 10. Vision camera support is included, so you can see your buddies' ugly mugs while you dominate the city.
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The XBLA version of Carcassonne includes the River I & II expansions that were released for the board game. When the expansions are turned on, your starting tile will be a spring of water instead of the castle/road segment that usually starts a game. Players will then begin drawing river tiles instead of land. The river must be extended with alternating left and right bends until the piece displaying the river's end is played, after which the game continues normally. Some of the river pieces have road segments extending from the water, which can be built into bridges. The river cannot be claimed with followers as other pieces can. This addition forces you to play along a determined path and adds another layer of strategy to consider.
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Other expansions that have been released for the board game include Inns & Cathedrals and The Tower. Sierra says it is planning on releasing more of these add-ons through Xbox Live.
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IGN Videos of Carcassonne

http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/850/850005/vids_1.html
 
Hey anyone playing Solitaire, do you know how to split piles? I want to move one card instead of a group of two, but I can't figure out how to select just the one without getting both. This is infuriating, and the directions apparently don't tell you how to do that. What a dealbreaker if the game doesn't have that option. I was going to buy this game too...

Edit: I figured it out. When you have a pile selected, move down and you can split the pile. Wish they had mentioned that in the directions. I broke down and bought this game. It looks surprisingly meaty. I like the voyage mode where you go around unlocking backgrounds. I hate to say it, but I think Soltrio > Aegis Wing because of the music.
 
Yeah I enjoyed the PC version of the Solitaire game (from the same maker IIRC) so I spent the 800 points and bought it. Wish controls were more intuitive and I have no idea how to play some of the other games. The Achievements can be challenging too...Klondike in one minute with that wonky-ass control? Good lord :lol
 
I think the key to the controls is using the red button to quick play. Start using that and you'll notice things go a lot faster.
 
Yeah, I was just about to post the B-button strategy. In certain gamemodes, it's so "intuitive" that you can just use it to beat the game without thinking very much. :lol

But Klondike under a minute...isn't that some royal straight flush type shit? Sounds to me like you'd need insane amounts of luck, and that isn't fun. Why do devs keep doing stuff like that? I want achievable goals, please. :(
 
There is a pretty interesting writeup on Gamasutra today regarding Worms XBLA success.

- Cost $140,000 to develop.
- It broke even on launch day (20,000+ downloads day one)
- Because it was self-published by Team 17 they have a 70% royalty (MS takes 30%)
- $1.26 million in profit

- In two months the Worms trial has been downloaded 600,000 times
- It's been purchased by 200,000 people.
- "A third of players who tried the game demo have gone on to buy the game; a far cry from the typical sub 1 percent conversion rate experienced by casual PC portals."

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13983
 
XBLA prints money. It's got to be the most profitable outlet for small/casual original content at this point.

I'm sure Worms would have cost more (though still be quite profitable) if they hadn't been able to reuse PSP game logic and assets. I think the backgrounds are actually the same (low poly models obscured by depth of field). Foreground graphics are higher res but may be sourced from old vectorized images. Sounds reused, etc.
 
beermonkey@tehbias said:
XBLA prints money. It's got to be the most profitable outlet for small/casual original content at this point.

I'm sure Worms would have cost more (though still be quite profitable) if they hadn't been able to reuse PSP game logic and assets. I think the backgrounds are actually the same (low poly models obscured by depth of field). Foreground graphics are higher res but may be sourced from old vectorized images. Sounds reused, etc.
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Speaking of Worms, seems there is going to be some update to the game.

http://www.xblarcade.com/node/607
 
beermonkey@tehbias said:
XBLA prints money. It's got to be the most profitable outlet for small/casual original content at this point.

I'm sure Worms would have cost more (though still be quite profitable) if they hadn't been able to reuse PSP game logic and assets. I think the backgrounds are actually the same (low poly models obscured by depth of field). Foreground graphics are higher res but may be sourced from old vectorized images. Sounds reused, etc.
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Worms XBLA is essentially PSP worms with less background, MUCH less and less voices, but with the [necessary] edition of online play, which makes it all better.
 
aku:jiki said:
Yeah, I was just about to post the B-button strategy. In certain gamemodes, it's so "intuitive" that you can just use it to beat the game without thinking very much. :lol
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Ah yes, the B-button. Finally got that down last night :)

It helps you understand the rules of the games by trial & error so it's very useful for me. I learned to play Grandfather's Clock that way, I actually like that version of Solitaire. I'm going to try out the rest over the weekend.

I've been waiting for Solitaire in a long time since the same makers put out the other 2 card games on XBLA, so I am really happy it's finally out there. Sooooo goood....
 
The top arcade titles seem very stable at the moment:

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions)
1 1 Double Dragon
2 2 Catan
3 3 Pinball FX
4 4 3D Ultra™ Minigolf Adventures
5 5 TMNT 1989 Arcade
6 - Soltrio Solitaire
7 7 Worms
8 8 UNO
9 9 Castlevania: SOTN
10 6 Centipede & Millipede

XBLA Titles on the Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (UU’s)
7 Double Dragon
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DD also seems to be much more popular than I expected.
 
How is Double Dragon so popular? I mean, I'm too young to have ever played it and don't have the nostalgia factor, but I've also heard several people say it didn't age well, and I think it's pretty bad myself. How is it selling so well?
 
Brakara said:
The top arcade titles seem very stable at the moment:
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Who would have thought Soltrio Solitaire would be in the top 10? Here at NeoGAF it seems almost nobody wants it (only sold 6 copies so far). It really shows that NeoGAF is a minority in terms of taste for games...
 
Eh, I like Solitaire and Double Dragon. Both games have issues, but I got my $10 and $5 of enjoyment out of them and they have replay value.
 
joaomgcd said:
Who would have thought Soltrio Solitaire would be in the top 10? Here at NeoGAF it seems almost nobody wants it (only sold 6 copies so far). It really shows that NeoGAF is a minority in terms of taste for games...
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Joa, come on man. You wrote that sales thing, you know the first release week of a game its almost always number one. Even Catan at 23000ish sales in the first week was number one. that means Solitare got destroyed, not that it was even close to popular.
 
joaomgcd said:
Who would have thought Soltrio Solitaire would be in the top 10? Here at NeoGAF it seems almost nobody wants it (only sold 6 copies so far). It really shows that NeoGAF is a minority in terms of taste for games...
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Actually, it isn't hard to believe if one looks at the big picture. Yea, Soltrio Solitaire has at best a scant interest shown from this particular collective. Though when one considers "the big picture" a game like Soltrio Solitaire is something I like to call "casual crack" as it is a game whose primary demographic is the type who would by Bejeweled or UNO on the spot but wouldn't give games like SoTN or Worms a second glance. The only real surprising thing is just how low Soltrio charted. The real question is what happened to Aegis Wing? Did the territory restriction effect it that much?
 
Sherveen said:
How is Double Dragon so popular? I mean, I'm too young to have ever played it and don't have the nostalgia factor, but I've also heard several people say it didn't age well, and I think it's pretty bad myself. How is it selling so well?
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People like me who DID play it in the arcade as kids, who turned on XBLA, saw it, and downloaded without really thinking about it.
 
Wow, Carcassone looks fantastic. What is the River II expansion? In my board game, it says it comes with the River expansion, which is like 8 River tiles. Is that River I and II? What is II?
 
FlyinJ said:
Wow, Carcassone looks fantastic. What is the River II expansion? In my board game, it says it comes with the River expansion, which is like 8 River tiles. Is that River I and II? What is II?
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From the Wikipedia:

Carcassonne: The River (2001)
Originally a free expansion distributed by Rio Grande Games through hobby shops in the United States and Canada. Instead of starting with a single fixed tile, a river is formed before the regular tiles can be used. Newer releases of Carcassonne include this expansion, and those that do state as such on the box.
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Carcassonne: The River II (November 2005)
The River II is another river expansion, which may be played along with the first expansion. These new tiles include a fork in the river, as well as elements from previous expansions.
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Shard said:
The real question is what happened to Aegis Wing? Did the territory restriction effect it that much?
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I don't think it's being counted, considering that the leaderboard has 211213 entries (more than Catan and Pinball FX combined, I think).
 
Rlan said:
Worms XBLA is essentially PSP worms with less background, MUCH less and less voices, but with the [necessary] edition of online play, which makes it all better.
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I have no complaints, I think it's awesome. From a pure gameplay perspective, if I were hosting a 'pro' Worms tournament, I would use the PSP or XBLA version as I'm 100% convinced that it is the best test of skill.
 
so is the xbla "flood" of games due to less restrictions, or is it because of the new xbla chief's revised release list?
 
Joe said:
so is the xbla "flood" of games due to less restrictions, or is it because of the new xbla chief's revised release list?
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Nobody is quite sure if it is the first reason, the second reason, or a third reason, that being that the various devs have finally cobbled enough games together to have a steady release stream, or some combo of the three.
 
Regarding the Gamasutra article...

I recently interviewed at a company that makes their own casual games portal. They line up games like Bejeweled etc., and let people play it for free, or ad-supported. You hear about the 5% conversion rates and that, but this is what I found truly interesting.

Over 60% of their client installs FAIL. The user will download the installer, and somewhere along the line, 60% of people give up before it's fully installed. After having a look at the software, it's not something you'd expect.

I think that's where XBLA has made the biggest improvement on everything out there. When the console starts hitting mainstream, XBLA will take off big time, and ease of use is why.
 
Yeah I'm sure that all these games were ready to ship and that as soon as the guy left then they could release them all...

The fact is that we really don't know enough about what his job really entangled to make an objective conclusion and we probably never will. Not that it really matters anyway. XBLA has gotten really good and who cares who's running it.
 
Shard said:
Nobody is quite sure if it is the first reason, the second reason, or a third reason, that being that the various devs have finally cobbled enough games together to have a steady release stream, or some combo of the three.
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Maybe because the group of people buying the releases on a constant basis is big enough to support the larger amounts of games now, too. You've got to figure that for every 150,000 people that buy the console in a given month something like 2,000 are going to be arcade buffs so it increases the amount of people working on titles.

Ghal, I hadn't seen Catan at 3. Sorry.
 
supermackem said:
Anyone have any rumor on whats out next week.
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It could be Mad Tracks since that game has actually passed certification, and there are some other near-releases floating around.
 
Does anyone think microsoft will actually advertise XBLA on it's own once the 360 becomes cheaper? It really could be the 'mom and sister' style entry for 360 and I think all of us know that.

It just seems MS is alright with keeping quiet on it's big weapons aside halo.
 
neonglow said:
What about Band of Bugs? Wasn't it on the list for the next ten titles released?
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Yea, Band of Bugs has been a favorite for sometime now, ditto Street Trace: NYC.

On the classic front Konami looks to be the releasing Yie Air King Fu and Rush N' Attack sometime soon.
 
Sean said:
Here's a blog posting from the guy who is running Xbox Live Arcade... from what it looks like, the service is in great hands now :)


Check it out: http://www.edery.org/2007/05/what-xbla-fans-want/
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Glad he knows about our desire for platformers. An original co-op platformer would be tops. Especially since I hated cloning clyde(too stiff). Make it play exactly like SMB3 with HD graphics and plenty of different gimmicks.
 
Yeah I agree. It's good that they're listening to the fans. One interesting comment that the guy mentioned is that someone said that people have a hard time finding XBLA content because it's hidden under two layers of menus. I wonder if XBLA will have its own blade in the future. That would ruin the whole idea of the "themes" that they want you to buy but it would be more convenient for users and in the long run make more money for MS.
 
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