Scheduled for later this summer, Summer of Arcade 2010 will once again present gamers with a collection of five highly-anticipated Xbox LIVE Arcade titles over a period of five weeks. Summer of Arcade promotions of the past have brought us titles such as Castle Crashers, Geometry Wars 2, Braid, and Shadow Complex. What does Microsoft have in store for us this summer? Here’s the list:

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light showcases a new isometric cooperative adventure that aims to deliver instant, intense action and bite-sized puzzles which will fit perfectly into the coveted Summer of Arcade lineup.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane

Featuring all-new, over-the-top themed environments, rocket-powered speedboats, gorgeous visuals, and amazing dynamic water physics, Hydro Thunder Hurricane is the adrenaline dripping sequel fans have been waiting for.

Monday Night Combat

Monday Night Combat for Xbox LIVE Arcade is a class-based, third-person shooter, and the most popular lethal sport of the future! It blends intense combat, finishing moves, and gameshow-like challenges and rewards to produce an action experience unlike any other.

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair

In the vein of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and the brilliantly-crafted Nintendo DS Castlevania titles, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair is a 2D, side-scrolling, multiplayer action-adventure for Xbox LIVE Arcade. Featuring a cast of characters from previous Castlevania titles, players can choose their favourite heroes and co-operate to defeat the forces of darkness.

LIMBO

An innovative and stylish side-scrolling adventure from independent developer PlayDead, LIMBO challenges gamers to explore and experiment in order to overcome the dangers of a mysterious and perilous environment. Gamers will be lost in the dark visuals and enchanting atmosphere of LIMBO.

Check out the Summer of Arcade 2010 trailer below.

Click here to watch the video

Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter is a re-textured, remodeled remake of the PC original, now pushing nine years old.  This is a silly, silly game.  But that’s always been part of the appeal of it.  It plays like every other FPS on the planet, with all sorts of running around and shooting enemies with deadly weapons.  It hails from the Doom era of FPS design: huge rooms full of tons of dudes.  Pick up a certain item or cross a certain invisible line and more enemies spawn.  Shoot those enemies and continue onto the next room or area until all fifteen levels are completed.

The gameplay is about as straightforward as an FPS can get.  Serious Sam has no sneaking segments, it has AI that’s as dumb as rocks, and most of the rooms are just huge open environments on a flat plane.  It makes up for this by filling the areas with tons of things to shoot at.  Strange, weird little things, like kamikaze bombers, hairy ape-beasts with faces in their chests and massive scorpions with miniguns.  The game features no regenerating health bar, either.  This is old-school stuff, with health packs, ammo pickups and armour that needs to be managed.  Thankfully, the quicksave option has been brought over (mapped to Y).

Graphically, it’s all better than I remember it, with lots of shadows on the levels, better textures and models.  Nothing all that amazing, but Serious Sam is easily above the bar when it comes to Arcade titles.  Even in the huge, open areas, with dozens of stupid little kamikaze guys running towards me, it ran solid with no pop-in.  Croteam locks the title at 30 frames per second, which feels good, but it would have been nice to bump it up to 60 for the extra silkiness.  Enemies leave behind appropriate bloody messes on the walls and floors, as well as plenty of gibs.  Not quite ludicrous gibs, but just about!

The game sports single player and co-op, but no deathmatch.  Just as well, since I never remember anyone playing that last mode for more than a few seconds.  Co-op only supports online play, with no split-screen.  But it has support for four players on all the levels, on any customized difficulty setting, and this is truly the way this madness was meant to be enjoyed.  The major focus of the game is still score attack, with harder difficulties rewarding more points, and an emphasis being put on exploring to find all the enemy spawn points and hidden secret areas.

I’m glad to see Croteam didn’t just dump the original title onto Xbox LIVE and be done with it.  They really put in the effort to improve the looks of the game, bringing it more or less on par with what I’d expect of a current-gen title.  The gameplay is still a major throwback to the mindless shooters of yore, but really, which of those did it better than Serious Sam?  The asking price of 1200 MSP is fair, given the amount of effort that went into updating the title.

The trial download deserves special mention, as it’s the level from the original Serious Sam demo.  It isn’t part of the single player story and takes a half hour or so to play through, giving a good taste of what the game has to offer.  Everyone should at least play this demo, just to find out how much fun being Serious really is.

Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond is a semi-sequel to Matt’s previous work, Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard.  It was a third-person shooter with cover mechanics, based around a humourous plot that took Matt Hazard into various different sorts of games, to make fun of them.  This follow-up continues with the humour, forcing Matt on an adventure he doesn’t understand, but at least he gets to murder like a million dudes on the way.

Gameplay involves running to the left or right, pressing A to shoot and grabbing powerups, Contra-style.  Other buttons are used for jumping, aiming at dudes in the background, free aiming, throwing a grenade, activating Maximum Hazard mode and so on.  I found it a little cumbersome, but it did work.  Everything looks good enough, with levels being a parody of some sort.  Animations seemed a little stiff and when the screen got really busy with stuff I had a hard time picking out bullets that needed to be dodged.

The challenge seems to be there, at least in the form of cheap deaths.  I played on the easiest difficulty (because I wanted to see as much as I could), but I still ended up dying on the first level over ten times, and having to continue at the boss.  I always felt I was sort of wrestling with the controls, and especially with jumping, which never really felt solid.  The game wears its M-rating with pride, splatting the screen with gore and using bad words.

The game is good fun.  It’s cheap thrills and tons of shootin’, even if some of the screens feel identical to others.  The story is amusing and silly enough, although it falls into the same trap as the previous boxed release.  It makes fun of cookie-cutter games and over-testosteroned lead characters by…putting the player in a cookie-cutter game with an over-testosteroned lead character.  The game offers local co-op support, which is at least something.

I’m finding it hard to recommend, simply because someone jonesing for some side-scroller action has so many other options.  The same 1200 MSP could go towards the stellar Shadow Complex.  Or 800 MSP could get Alien Hominid, Splosion Man, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Mega Man 9 or Prince of Persia.  Classics such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Metal Slug 3 are available too.

The trial is worth a download for those who are Matt-curious or are already the masters of everything scrolling on Xbox LIVE Arcade, but this one is easily skippable for everyone else.  I know I’m going back to give it another shot, even if just to finish the second level, which seems to be about pirate strippers or something.

Polar Panic, at first blush, seems an awful lot like Pengo.  Then it seems an awful lot like Sokoban.  The game has 50 puzzle levels, 50 story levels and five survival stages that can be played by up to four players (local multiplayer only, sadly).

I found the cartoon art for the menus and help screens a little more compelling than the 3D in-game stuff, but it isn’t too hard to tell stuff apart.  The game involves pushing around various kinds of blocks and using them to smush bad guys and solve puzzles.  It plays from an overhead perspective, but at a bit of an angle, which tends to make it hard to judge distances on the upper parts of the levels.  I’ve died or failed a number of times because I couldn’t tell how far away things were.  An example of a time when a simple, 2D approach would have probably served the goals of the game better.

Polar Panic is still a good deal of fun.  The controls aren’t quite as sharp as I’d like, but they’re simple enough.  The game packs in a good amount of content with three difficulty levels for most of it, leaderboards and letter grades based on time, combos and efficiency.  Someone who gets bit by the Polar bug will get good value for their 800 MSP.  However, there is no level editor, which seems like an oversight.

Fans of Pengo and other associated knock-offs might want to give the trial a download.  The holiday season might be too crowded with other high-profile titles for Polar Panic to get much notice, but it’s a good entry for the action-puzzler crowd.

0 day Attack on Earth is a GULTI title, brought to us by Square Enix.  GULTI was responsible for the Raiden Fighters Aces port as well as whatever on earth this is.  But hey, I’m a big fan of shooters, so what’re they bringing us this time?  0 day is a 3D, dual-stick shooter.  We fight off enemies that are invading various cities while collecting fighter upgrades and gaining ranks.  Sounds a lot like the Dreamcast game Armada, which I was a huge fan of.

Sadly, someone somewhere seems to have missed a memo.  The game doesn’t look all that great, the framerate is super raw, and everything just feels really weak.  It’s not unplayable, but more of a did-I-pay-1200-MSP-for-this bad.

I played the single player game.  It starts in New York, on day 1 of some sort of alien invasion.  Play involves choosing a ship (out of four) and flying around a big open space with my AI buddies, looking for orange blips on my radar to blow up.  I killed all of them and moved onto day 2, where I got to do the exact same thing, for six more days, until day 7.  Day 7 came with a boss fight that wasn’t fantastic, but was at least something different.  After the boss, the game moved me to Tokyo, day 1.  I saved and quit.

The game throws a lot of stuff at you and feels really cheap.  Enemies are sometimes hard to see and come from bad angles, while the screen rotates painfully slow, to the point of being useless.  The main boss monsters (at least in New York) for each day have tentacle attacks that would kill me in two hits.  I died a lot, but the game just let me continue and keep playing that day.  Fighting the same enemies for six days feels really artificial, like the developers didn’t have enough content to give the game sufficient length, so just repeated what they had until the duration of the game felt reasonable.

There’s no local multiplayer, but there is online support, both for co-op and two competitive modes: Capture the flag and control point.  It might be more fun to play with friends, as some strategy and organization might alleviate some of the cheap deaths I suffered.  The main menu offers a Customize option that seems to indicate 36 other unlockable ships being in the game but provides no clue as to how those are actually unlocked.  Maybe they’re ranked-based?

As rough as the game is, it’s a bit of dumb fun.  Not as dumb nor as fun as Earth Defense Force 2017, but what can you do.  I’d say 1200 MSP is way too much to be asking for this.

Normally I don’t bother with DLC stuff, but the Trials HD Big Pack hit today (400 MSP), and it absolutely rocks.  For anyone who’s a fan of the base game, this is more or less a no-brainer:  12 medium levels, nine hard levels, two extreme levels, five new tournaments, a new skill game in each category and a handful of new achievements.  On top of that, the in-game editor’s got a bunch of new objects, including support for new physical elements.

Puzzlegeddon is a surprise title this week from Pieces Interactive, fresh from ripping up the charts on PC and iPhone.  The game is a battle-puzzler for 2-6 players, playable single player and over Xbox LIVE.

The game involves 2-6 little islands on a comically small planet who are trying to nuke the junk out of each other.  They do this by matching little blocks on a square playfield, accumulating resources that can be used to attack, defend, boost or play dirty tricks.  More resources equals better versions of those abilities.  To top this off, each of the seven island nations has a unique ability of its own.

All of this is nice and colourful with a jumpy little soundtrack and a cartoony presentation that sanitizes the horrors of nuclear armageddon.  But is it fun?  Sort of, from what I’ve played of it.  The game presents an absolute ton of options to configure individual games (although there seems to be no teamplay option), but the bulk of the game is always spent staring at a tiny little 6×6 puzzle in the middle of the screen.  There’s no way to interact or even see an opponent’s puzzle.

Which, really, seems kind of odd.  There’s a huge amount of screen real estate that’s just being wasted here.  The graphics are nice, and there’s no ugly black borders or repeating textures, but everything happens in a very small portion of the screen.  Why not show me little pictures of what my opponents are doing?  Even though the title is essentially multiplayer only (single player with bots), it feels very lonely.

UI issues aside, it is a lot of fun.  I like the puzzle, which seems simple enough to make the game approachable for a ton of people, while providing enough depth for some good combos.  Big games get pretty crazy, as temporary alliances form and break.  The lack of any local multiplayer is a shame.

Is it worth 800 MSP?  Yeah, I think so.  Not everyone will dig what’s going on here, but the title is polished and plays pretty well.  A download of the trial will provide an answer to anyone who’s on the fence about it.

Alien Breed Evolution (Episode 1) is brought to us by Team17, the developer responsible for the Worms titles.  It seems to be a remake of an old Amiga game.  I’d never played the original, but I’m quite impressed with Evolution so far.

The game presents itself as a story-based, action horror shooter.  The gameplay involves running around a busted-up space station, collecting items, shooting aliens with dual sticks, activating points of interest and that sort of thing.  It all looks really nice and detailed.  Team17 put the Unreal Engine to good use, and things like the flashlight really help the visuals pop.  Cutscenes are done in a two-tone graphic novel style with voiceovers.

The whole thing feels an awful lot like Dead Space.  I know Alien Breed is a much older title and probably did a lot of this stuff before, but the comparison is there.  The game maintains a lot of a classic feel to it.  Simple and straightforward for the most part, my experience through the first level has amounted to a series of objective hunts punctuated by alien ambushes.

But it’s all good fun.  The first level took me a half hour, so I’m guessing the whole single player game (five levels in episode 1) hangs somewhere around the two or three hour mark.  Short, but there’s at least three difficulty levels and leaderboards.

I didn’t get a chance to try it, but the game offers co-op, both local and over Xbox LIVE.  It takes away the camera control from the players and forces them to stay on the same screen.  The co-op mode seems to use a different set of levels, probably shortened or edited in some way.  But it’s another way to enjoy the content, and local co-op is always appreciated in things like this.

Microsoft’s asking price for all of this is a tiny bit iffy.  This is the first of a trilogy, so those who get sucked in by the story will end up paying 800 MSP twice more to see it through to the end, which seems like a lot.  On top of that, who knows if a package deal will be offered at some point for those who wait?  The trial is very easily worth a download, as the experience is solid, even if most of it feels a bit throw-back-y.

The xbox.com page doesn’t seem to have any screenshots for the game up at the time of writing, so I’m including a few.

Qix++ continues Taito’s streak of bringing back old arcade games with a bit of remake flavour.  The original game put the player in control of a little diamond marker on the edge of a void, with a screensaver hanging out in the middle.  The player can venture out into the void, leaving a line.  If this line connects with an edge, it turns into a box.  When enough of these boxes cover a certain percentage of the level, the player moves to the next.  Hitting anything else will cost a life.

This stuff is mostly all back.  The game has a new and very plain look.  No one’s going to be impressed by it.  There’s a techno-ish track that plays during every level.  The game offers one single player mode and two level choices.  Each group of levels features four different enemies that repeat twice.  It’s nice to have different screensavers to battle, but there’s only ever one on the screen at a time.

Multiplayer offers Xbox LIVE and local play for up to four players.  There’s one mode with a couple of configurable options, but it ends up being a race to see who can fill in the most of the playfield before a limit is hit.  It’s quite underwhelming and rather irritating to play, since the little pauses that happen whenever a box is formed affect everyone.

It gets worse.  The leaderboards for single player have spots for two more levels that don’t seem to be in the game.  The How To Play section mentions two more single player modes that also don’t seem to be in the game.  I’m assuming these modes and levels have been stripped out, to be offered later as DLC?  Sorry, but that is absolutely unacceptable.

Qix++, pure and simple, is not worth the 800 MSP.  Qix fans can get their fix, but it feels really half-assed, with score attack and dull multiplayer being the only draw.  The gameplay is simpler than the original, it’s too easy, and I saw all the levels in barely half an hour.  I like the direction they took the game with the upgrade system but it came at the cost of anything truly worthwhile and long-term.

The trial download will kill a few minutes, but until the question of where all this stripped-out content has gone and how much we’re getting dinged to make the game full again: Do not purchase.

Call of Duty Classic is a six year old PC game, brought to consoles for the first time. It runs in HD, but that’s pretty much it. All the original models, textures and levels are here. It’s not a super-impressive experience, and doesn’t even compare all that well to Call of Duty 2 (an Xbox 360 launch title), but it’s still very cool to have more Call of Duty in one place.

Like Call of Duty 2 (and Call of Duty 3, and World at War), Call of Duty Classic is a World War II shooter. There’s a single player game, spanning British, American and Russian campaigns, with a game style and over-the-top touches similar to the more modern versions of the game. The console versions suffer because of the PC roots, with weapon switching ending up a little awkward and significantly less hand-holding in the accuracy department.

Still, this is pretty fun stuff. I never played the first game, so it’s all new to me. Graphics, AI and some general design choices reflect that generation – dated. Taking the experience as a whole, it’s amazing how little the series has changed. The single player is exciting, iron sights are still great, although the lack of an off-hand grenade button is a bit of a drag. What can you do, though?

On the multiplayer end of things, the game supports lobby-based games of up to eight players, across more than a dozen maps and a handful of gametypes. Most of these are team-based, and there’s even a survival-style one named Behind Enemy Lines that pits unbalanced teams of Axis and Allies against each other. There’s none of the persistent character stuff from modern Call of Duty titles, so everyone’s on an even playing field.

It’s nice of them to offer multiplayer support, albeit for only eight players with no support for local split-screen or even LAN. That’s a little weak. Still, there’s a good amount of content packed into these modes, for those who enjoy the smaller games.

The asking price for all of this seems a bit on the steep side of things, given how limited the appeal is going to be. Looking back at classic titles is usually best reserved for those who have some sort of emotional interest in the game to begin with. As far as features and content goes, Call of Duty Classic seems pretty decent. So it’s just a matter of giving the trial a download and testing out the presentation.

And hey, at least there’s no jerks wielding akimbo shotguns or running around at the speed of sound knifing dudes in the back.

Madden NFL Arcade should not be confused with, say, NFL Blitz.  I was a huge Blitz fan back in the day of Nintendo 64 and came into this whole experience expecting something along those lines.  NFL Arcade is 5-on-5 American football, with licensed teams and stadiums.  It runs nice and smooth and looks pretty good, with exaggerated player models and a clean interface.  The game is a super-simplified take on football: 60 yard field, no clock, no penalties, and no first downs.  Every game is a race to 30 points.  No special teams means no field goals, punt plays, or even a kick-off.

Plays are quite minimal.  Each team has the exact same playbook. The four face buttons give a run play, and three pass plays.  Defenders get a blitz and three zone defenses to counter this.  Teams are randomly assigned Game Changers at the start of plays.  These can be activated with a button press, and do suitably over-the-top things like freeze a player in place, swap the scores, force a fumble, or keep a dropped ball ‘live’.  The game has 13 Game Changers in total.

I don’t really understand who NFL Arcade is being aimed at.  People who appreciate the depth and subtleties of the full-fledged Madden release will probably be unhappy with how much of a crap-shoot NFL Arcade can be, not to mention how dumbed-down it can feel.  Yes, the game only takes 10 minutes or so to play, but how much fun is being up 26-8 and getting scores swapped?

Unfortunately, a casual audience might not fare any better.  It’s still pretty tough to play.  I had a lot of trouble doing well (I admittedly suck at pretty much every game ever), and I had a bit of football knowledge to draw on.  Someone who isn’t familiar with football will face quite an uphill battle.

There’s multiplayer support for up to four players locally and online play as well.  The game has high production values and the trial is easily worth a download to see if it clicks.  It might be good as a party title.  I think the asking price is a little high for how much fun I had with it, but I do think there’s a decent game in here somewhere.  I’d love to hear what others think about it.

Diner Dash has seen a number of computer, console and mobile releases.  It’s the Xbox 360’s turn now.  I’ve never played any of them.  The game offers two single player modes: a play-as-long-as-you-can endless one, and a career mode that offers a steadily more complex series of tasks to be juggled.  On the multiplayer front, local players can get their co-op on, as well as some sort of head-to-head mode.  Similar features are offered on Xbox LIVE, with an additional mode for team play.

The game itself is based around the idea of running a restaurant, although this is no simulation of finances.  It all boils down to trying to juggle a series of tasks, doing them efficiently and quickly so that none of the customers get ticked off and write bad service on their tables in ketchup.  The game provides a good tutorial on how to do this, and continues introducing elements to make the experience more complex.  It’s more fun than it sounds.

I didn’t think it was too bad, really.  The game sports a cel-shaded look and generally simple appearance.  No one’s going to say it looks amazing, but stuff’s easy to tell apart.  I don’t know if it’s really worth 800 MSP in the long run, especially since the market is pretty saturated with these sorts of games.  Diner Dash is the first of its kind on the Xbox 360, so the trial might be worth a download for those who’re looking for something a little more laid back.

Gyromancer brings together Japanese RPG juggernaut Square Enix and North American casual game experts PopCap to provide another take on the Puzzle Quest formula.  Yes, PopCap and Square Enix teamed up to make a puzzle / RPG hybrid.  A match seemingly made in heaven?

I haven’t played through an awful lot of the game so far, but I did give it a decent shot.  The main puzzle of the game is based around Bejeweled Twist.  It’s still a match-three game, but instead of doing swaps, gems can only be rotated in 2×2 blocks, and only clockwise.  There’s no direct competition with the opponent.  In the Puzzle Quest games, the player would trade off turns with the AI.  In Gyromancer, the gem board is manipulated only by the player.  When enough matches or moves have been made, ability gems will appear on the board.  It isn’t a terrible system, and it works fine, but it failed to immediately pull me in like Puzzle Quest did.

The story takes place in some sort of forest that isn’t very nice, and also everyone’s fighting monsters in.  The main dude doesn’t actually fight and instead sends these monsters to battle.  Gameplay is split up into various levels and involves a map that needs to be navigated.  On each level, the ally monsters don’t regenerate health, so bringing the right dudes into fights and being efficient makes the levels doable.  I rather like this strategic aspect of having discrete stages with different goals.  The look of the game is very straightforward with single-frame, hand-painted art for characters and monsters, and colourful sprites for gems.  It looks very similar to Puzzle Quest, honestly.

There is one element that I have to call shenanigans on, though.  During the tutorial stages, the game encouraged me to use an item called Remedy to heal up one of my dudes.  What the game didn’t tell me was that items like Remedy are actually fairly rare.  They can’t be bought from stores, so I should save them for important fights.  The next time I needed one, I had zero, and was instead greeted with a prompt, asking me whether or not I wanted to go on the Xbox Live Marketplace.  As it turns out, there’s a 40 MSP Gyromancer Item Pack that can be purchased.  Thanks for keeping things classy, Square Enix and PopCap.

Apart from that, Gyromancer certainly seems decent.  It didn’t immediately grab me like Puzzle Quest did, and in some ways seems to be a step backwards.  The title only offers single player, which makes that 1200 MSP price point seem even steeper.  I’m looking forward to putting some more time into it and hopefully it’ll prove me wrong.  The trial is easily worth a download for fans of gem-matchers and Puzzle Quest in particular, although remember to save those Remedies (or invest in lots of MSP).

NBA Unrivaled is brought to us by TECMO, and is pretty clearly a throwback to older stuff like the NBA Jam series.  It all starts with five on five play and features licensed NBA players and teams, big, flashy plays and some sort of power-up system called Momentum.  There’s support for playing multiplayer over Xbox LIVE against another player, local two player multiplayer, as well as some sort of light career mode (Challenge Game).  Controls are about what would be expected:  pass / steal, shoot / block, a turbo trigger and something for alley-oops.

The game has this weird, muted cartoony look to it.  Players have kind of an angular, stylized look to them.  It all controls acceptably, although all the animations seem kind of stiff and canned.  Perhaps that’s in keeping with the “new classic” feel of the game.  My only real complaint with the visual look is that I absolutely couldn’t figure out what was going on.  The presentation is very busy, it’s hard to tell where the ball is, who’s open and what options are available at any moment.  There’s some Dragon Ball Z style shooting-lines effects for tip-offs and dunks that are kind of cool, but I had trouble triggering the sweet spot for dunks more than once or twice.

It doesn’t seem like a terrible game, and I only played a single match, but for a whopping 1200 MSP, it failed to impress.  I might go back to it and give it another shot, but more than anything else, it just made me want to dig out my copy of NBA Street Homecourt.  Someone who’s more into basketball than I am might want to give the trial a download.  There might be some hidden depth to the game’s system that I just can’t grasp.

Encleverment Experiment is essentially a brain training game that can be played as a four player party game, both online and off.  It even has support for Microsoft’s Big Button Controller, for those of us who have them.  Apart from the multiplayer, there’s a number of single player modes that can be used to track training progress, focus on individual brain areas, and do marathons of all mini-games.

This looks like a Flash game, plain and simple.  Professor Ivor Question has lots of voice-overs, and there’s some adorable little animal mascots to unlock and purchase, but no one’s going to be impressed with the way this game looks.  There’s a decent number of ways to enjoy the mini-games that are part of the package, even a number of AI opponents that get progressively harder.  It all comes down to how good these mini-games are.  There’s 16 of them, and they can be played on a number of difficulties, from Easy to Enclevered (which isn’t even a word).  Different games focus on different regions of the brain.  The games all boil down to presenting the players with four options, mapped to the four face buttons.

Despite how simple it looks and plays, I rather enjoyed Encleverment Experiment.  It could be fun with a group, especially since it’s one of those games that can be played by non-gamers.  Although, there’s only 16 mini-games here, so there’s a limited amount of value.  The 800 MSP asking price might be a little steep for some, especially given that this is a niche title.  But the trial is amusing and cute, and certainly worth a download.

O-D Beat Drop is a mingling of puzzle and music games.  It plays a bit like Puzzle Fighter or Puyo Puyo, but takes a page from games like Groovin’ Blocks and adds a bit of a musical twist.  The core gameplay is based around matching different coloured icons.  Send enough pieces over to your opponent’s side by making matches to fully clog it up, and win the game.  The twist is that icons will not match unless dropped to the beat of the music playing in the background, using a special Beat Drop button (X by default).

The game’s visual style reminds me of Every Extend Extra Extreme.  The graphics are vector-based with brightly colourful, simple shapes against a black background.  It’s kind of overwhelming at first, but I got used to it quite quickly.  The gameplay is extremely solid, and I found it to be very addictive.  There’s a good tutorial that explains all the depth of what’s going on, how the chaining system works, and how to recover from attacks when playing versus modes.  There’s a ton of single player modes, including 1v1 against the computer, full-out survival against three AIs, time attack and an interesting task mode.  Players can play the mixture of co-op, versus and team versus, on one system and on Xbox LIVE.  The game comes with eight built-in music tracks but supports the importing of any music from an attached device (hard drive, USB stick or sharable PC).

The amount of content in this game is insane.  The supplied music is high-speed and betrays the game’s Japanese roots but it fits the look of the game.  The import process for custom soundtracks is a little lengthy, but works absolutely wonderfully.  Once a track’s recognized by the game, it can be used in any single player mode by bringing up the Guide and starting the track.  At 800 MSP, O-D Beat Drop includes stuff that would normally be saved for DLC.  Easily worth a purchase for all puzzle game fans, and at least a trial download for those who’re on the fence.  Probably one of the best values we’ve seen in an Xbox LIVE Arcade title in a good while.

With a name like Inferno Pool, I was expecting something truly Dante-esque from this title.  Instead, I got four player split-screen pool on surprisingly dirty tables, with a couple of new rules.  There’s nine ball and eight ball, but the big selling point of the game is the four player, split screen, simultaneous-play Inferno Pool.  This has some extra features, mostly involving sending balls to other tables, making all of it a race to see who can clear their table first, or have the fewest balls after a certain amount of time passes.  The controls are decent, with coarse and fine aiming control, support for spin and even tricks to make the cue ball jump.  All of this can be yours, both for local multiplay, online multiplay, single play against the AI, or just single play against the clock.

It’s not terrible, but the content here is pretty thin.  I mean, 800 MSP is what Bankshot Billiards 2 is going for now, and that comes with nine ball, eight ball, and a slew of other modes, including trick shots and golf.  So really, the big question is:  how good is this multiplayer Inferno mode?  There doesn’t seem to be a lot of people playing it online, so I fired up a game against AI.  There’s no tutorial or any sort of guidance.  I ended up getting completely and totally creamed, with no idea why I lost, or what I could do to win.  All the while there’s this vaguely demonic voice saying things like INFERNO and SMOKIN’.  That’s just great.  Local friends might improve it an awful lot, especially since it lets everyone play pool at the same time.  Give the trial a download and share your thoughts.

Moving on, Taito continues its streak of converting every single Bubble Bobble title in some way.  This week, they’ve delivered Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure! a game that’s just excited to be here.  It stars Bub and Bob (renamed to Bubby and Bobby), the heroes of original title, only no longer in cute dinosaur form.  And instead of attacking with bubbles, they attack with RAINBOWs that double as platforms.  Their goal is to race to the top of some tower and find some meteor and make a wish to save their girlfriends, I think?  There’s some old man who attacks them with huge robots, too.  This game is absolutely insane.

There’s a decent amount of content for the 800 MSP, including original story mode, time attack and even Xbox LIVE support.  Gameplay involves jumping and RAINBOWing up a tower, trying to get as high up until the timer runs out.  Then it’s a matter of trying to escape from or defeat a robot that gives chase.  I’m pretty terrible at the game and never even made it to the top of the first tower.  It all looks nice and colourful, with 2D backgrounds and 3D characters running around.  I had some trouble with the game not really fitting on my screen and there being no resize options.  The gameplay isn’t as exciting as Bubble Bobble Neo! or Bust-A-Move Live!, but it still manages to be classic in its own way.  It’s pretty hard to forget games that force you to fire off hundreds of RAINBOWs at robots and bugs, after all.  The trial is certainly worth a download, especially for old sorts who remember the original.

Panzer General: Allied Assault is a combination board and collectible card game (CCG), focused on two player Germany vs America World War II action.   Yes, I was expecting some sort of hex-based war game as well, but as things turn out, the game’s actually a modular board game with considerable CCG elements.  Other versions of the game will be made available at some point.  I’ve only put a little time into the title so far, but it comes across as surprisingly dense and complex.  The computer player in the Tutorial kicked my ass and really showed me what war’s about.  The How to Play section of the game seems like a good place to start instead.  The game sports a Campaign mode, a Skirmish mode with 30+ maps (although they’re just the same tiles reorganized different ways) and Xbox LIVE multiplayer support.  Curiously, there is no map editor.

The game looks way better than a board game should.  There’s a realistic-looking battlefield that’s representative of a number of terrain tiles all lined up, with little units trucking about.  No plastic or pewter little static dudes here.  Players assemble decks of cards from their collection and rumble Germany versus America style.  The game seems similar to a lot of other war games I’ve played, with units getting played, moving around, capturing towns and doing battle with adjacent units.  Cards in hand can do stuff during battle, bring units into play, summon bombing runs and so on.

I’m going to have to put some more time into it to figure the game out, but what I’ve seen so far has me intrigued.  Looks like Magic: the Gathering and Culdcept Saga have some CCG competition!  Board game fans might want to give the trial a download and see what they think.

Tower Bloxx Deluxe is the Xbox LIVE Arcade port of Digital Chocolate’s life-ruining mobile title.  On mobile devices, it was an addictive, pick-up-and-play title noted for its simple controls:  one button.  The main activity in the game is building towers.  A crane dangles a cube-shaped section of building over a swaying section of already placed building.  Press that one button and stack ‘em up!  See how high you can go!  And that’s pretty much it, as far as gameplay goes.  Better timing places the blocks better, making the building sway less, and rewarding more population (more score).

The Xbox LIVE Arcade version keeps all that gameplay intact.  There’s a Quick Play mode and a Time Attack mode, but the bulk of the single player experience is found in the Build a City mode.  Progress through larger and larger cities, build increasingly taller towers, and try to reach population goals.  Certain buildings can only be placed besides other buildings, so there’s a minor strategy element to all of it.  Simple fun, to be certain, but pretty decent all the same.  There’s a few multiplayer modes, but they’re all focused on local only – no Xbox LIVE multiplayer support at all.  I haven’t tried out any of them yet, but they’re Time Attack, Battle and Co-op.  Co-op is two player, but all the other ones support up to four.

This is a pretty easy one to recommend.  Just download the trial and make a tower.  Now, imagine doing that probably a thousand times more.  Sound fun?  The game has a nice, colourful look to it, and a tiny bit of Avatar integration.  I’ll probably be playing a bunch of it because sometimes I just love to press ‘A’.

Axel & Pixel reminds me of these weird old Flash movies from a few years back of ships floating through space and bumping into odd little planets with point-and-click puzzles hidden on them.  There’s really no other details about the game beyond a few screenshots and a trailer.  The gameplay looks pretty varied, with a bit of point-and-click puzzling, some action sequences, and some standard piece-based puzzles.  It won’t be everyone’s idea of fun times, but the price seems reasonable.

Sam & Max Season 2 is a continuation of the six-episode adventure that started with Sam & Max Save the World.  I haven’t made it all of the way through that one, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the world was not completely saved (spoilers).  There doesn’t even seem to be a details page for the new one yet, making all of this a little questionable.  Hopefully it won’t be a repeat of the Wallace & Gromit #2 experience from a few weeks back, as it was never released.  The price point is pretty staggering, but at least those who took the plunge on the first one will have a good idea whether or not to take the plunge.  Me, I’ll probably just play Sam & Max Hit the Road again.

Shadow Complex plays like a 2D side-scroller, but is rendered in full 3D.  Powered by Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 (Gears of War, Unreal Tournament III) and featuring old-school level design, gameplay is centered on exploration and fast-paced combat.  Collect power-ups, overcome obstacles, thwart legions of enemies, and win the game!  The story’s based around a novel written by Orson Scott Card.  He wrote the insults in The Secret of Monkey Island, so we’ll see if this game can top that.

Chair was responsible for Undertow, another UE3 title, which was more multiplayer-biased but had an amazing style and impressive graphics, especially given the limitations XBLA titles had at the time.  With the blinders off, Shadow Complex looks like it’s trying to be the benchmark for Arcade releases on Xbox LIVE.

I have an impression I’m going to have a hard time putting this one down.  From what I’ve seen of the achievements, it looks like there are a few reasons to go back and give it another play-through.  Who else plans on joining Shadow Complex Club?

Trials HD is a game of riding motorcycles through indoor obstacle courses.  The game promises over 50 tracks split between Race mode and Skill mode, plus a level editor for creating and sharing.  There are various unlockable motorcycles and customization options for the rider.  Something that sounds borrowed from Geometry Wars 2 (and a feature I rather enjoyed) is an in-game Friend scoreboard for the various courses.

There’s really not all that much information available, so I did a little digging and found this footage of the editor in action:

Click here to watch the video

Wow.  So this one might have a lot of potential.  Apparently Xbox Live Silver is all that’s required in order to take advantage of creating / sharing levels with this editor, so this should be good value for everyone.

As far as the rest of the game is concerned, it’s all done in 3D with various lighting effects and a very fancy physics engine, but the gameplay is pure 2D.  The controls involve accelerating and braking with the triggers and leaning left and right with the analog stick in order to keep the motorcycle rider upright.  Or to just make him do flips, tricks and other insanity, such as smashing him through sixteen plate glass windows – in a row.

This one really wasn’t on my radar (I’d never played the PC versions), but it’s very quickly moved into must-have territory.

Source: Major Nelson

Much to our surprise, the Avatar Marketplace saw the addition of some previously unannounced content this morning to coincide with the launch of the update. Star Wars and BioShock 2 clothing and accessories are now available, making it possible to give your Avatar a lightsaber or a Big Daddy helmet in addition to COG Armour and pirate regalia. Good times!

Check out our hands-on impressions of the update here.

Turtles in Time Re-Shelled is a 3D remake of Konami’s second TMNT arcade title, Turtles in Time, from 1991.  Like Double Dragon and Streets of Rage, it’s a side-scrolling beat-’em-up.  Dudes show up, punches and kicks get traded, and the good guys hopefully continue on through the rest of level, classic quarter-muncher style.  The remake features the same levels, but with everything rendered in 3D.  There’s even four player local and online co-op.

Apart from the 2D, hand-drawn cut-scenes, the game has been completely redone with the new 3D look.  Unfortunately, it seems that the original 2D sprites have been lost to the ages.  Thankfully, there’s still plenty of beating up dudes and walking to the right.  Controls have seen some slight tweaking, with an additional third button being used for each character’s special attack, saving players the trouble of trying to press jump and normal attack simultaneously.

I’ve played it through to the end and it’s certainly decent enough for a classic title, if not painfully short.  It strikes me as a good local co-op experience for those who’re willing to make the plunge into what is possibly the cheapest game I’ve ever played (in the sense of unavoidable damage and being ganged up on by six dudes while I’m on the ground).

Cowabunga?

Click here to watch the video

I understand that Microsoft is eager to promote this year’s Summer of Arcade offering, as it pales in comparison the last year’s promotion in the eyes of many gamers, but why make such an incentive to purchase the games exclusive only to Americans? Does Microsoft not realize that this may actually deter international sales of the very same titles? Now that the cat is out of the bag, could you really fault any Canadian or international gamers (hello, Australia, we know you’re reading!) for holding onto their hard-earned Microsoft Points a little longer, hoping that a similar deal may come their way? I won’t.

The solution is simple, Microsoft, especially if you’re concern is with Canadian and international give away laws: when the last Summer of Arcade title is made available, give every region the opportunity to buy a Summer of Arcade Pack, which would include all five games, for 4800 Microsoft Points – the sum of all five titles minus the 800 Microsoft Points we would have been given if we were American. But if you can arrange to give us the same 800 Microsoft Point gift that our neighbours to the south will be getting, we’ll take that too.

Marvel vs Capcom 2, dubbed one of the most popular fighting games of all time, features a 56-character roster, with characters brought in from multiple Marvel and Capcom franchises.  A bit of a graphical update keeps it all running in widescreen HD, with optional visual filters to keep everything smooth and nice.  Online play is supported, and Quarter Match mode (support for games bigger than 1v1 by making losers watch) returns from Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.  There’s even something about a more approachable four button control mode.

Seems like we’re getting a lot of 2D fighters all of a sudden!  We had back-to-back SNK releases with Garou: Mark of the Wolves and King of Fighers ‘98 Ultimate Match.  There’s been the new-style releases BlazBlue and King of Fighters XII as well.  My poor fighting stick!

Personally, I can’t wait to relive my failed attempts to do any single move while getting all three of my characters juggled by Cable and Iron Man, and the buttons jamming from my tears.  Anyone else looking forward to the madness?

Note to Dual Shock purists:  PSN version hits second week in August.

So what is a Splosion Man?  Created deep underground in Big Science Labs, he’s granted the ability to ’splode himself at will.  Who on earth thought that would be a good idea?  “And all who saw him were ’sploded, for he was the fire and they were but meat.”

We’ll be getting a single-player adventure spanning 50 levels, split into three environments.  The goal?  Escape Big Science Labs.  Clearly, there’s going to be an awful lot of exploding.  There’s also a co-op mode, supporting up to four players, both local and online.  The co-op adventure takes place on 50 different levels, so that’s quite a good chunk of content.

It looks like it’ll be a platformer, at least in part.  But there’s no jumping, only ’sploding!  With well-timed explosions, platforms can be navigated, gaps passed, walls scaled.  And of course, there’ll be meat to blow up.  It’s a bit on the cartoony side, but still all nice and colourful, and there are satisifying explosions at every turn.  I’m looking forward to giving it a shot.

Local co-op is increasingly rare these days, so this might be a good couch-sharer, as well.  We’ll find out this Wednesday!

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is an updated version of the LucasArts cult favourite (certainly my favourite point-and-clicker) The Secret of Monkey Island, a classic adventure game from 1990.  The Special Edition features new hand-drawn art at a whopping 1080p, along with the original voice overs and re-mastered music score using actual real instruments.  I’ll miss the PC bleeper soundtrack, to be honest.  But most importantly, the game supports a scene-for-scene hot swap with the original, Classic presentation.  Huge honking pixels here we come!  All this can be yours for 800 MSP, starting this Wednesday.  No word on whether or not the content from the underproduced disk #114 will be included, so players will be able to experience the catacombs under the stump.

Madballs in… Babo: Invasion is a creatively named title from Canadian company Playbrains.  I had to look up what these Madballs are.  Turns out, they’re a toy from the mid 80s I had completely managed to repress from my memory.  At least my geek cred is intact.  So what’re we getting?  Details are sketchy at this point, but it’s an Avatar game supporting up to four player online co-op and 16 player versus.  Seems like an arena-battling game where you get to be gross little slimy and squishy guys.  It has something called Invasion Mode, where each team gets to construct their half of a map before pitting their eyeballs against each other.  Which is a really cool idea.  There’s the standard Deathmatch and Capture the Flag modes for those who aren’t feeling so creative, though.  And a single player (which also doubles as co-op) campaign, spanning a number of levels described as ‘epic’ and ‘ten’.  Got a spare 1200 MSP kicking around?  You too will be able to find out what a Babo: Invasion involves, this Wednesday.

Source: Major Nelson

July 22 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled – A three-dimensional remake of what many consider to be the best of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beat-’em-up arcade games. 1200 Microsoft Points.

July 29 – Marvel vs. Capcom 2 – A re-release of one of the most popular two-dimensional fighting games ever released. The original roster will remain intact, and all 56 Marvel Comics and Capcom characters will be available immediately. 1200 Microsoft Points.

August 5 – Splosion Man – A quirky platforming game with an old-school feel and an exploding hero for a new age. Splosion Man overcomes every obstacle he encounters with a bang! 800 Microsoft Points.

August 12 – Trials HD – A physics-based motorcycle racer that will let players create and share tracks and obstacle courses over Xbox LIVE. The physics in Trials HD make failing a course half the fun! 1200 Microsoft Points.

August 19 – Shadow Complex – A two-dimensional shooter set in the world of Orson Scott Card’s novel Empire, created by Epic Games and Chair Entertainment. Using Unreal Engine 3, Shadow Complex will blow you away with fantastic visuals and revolutionary shooter gameplay. 1200 Microsoft Points.

For trailers to these games and more, check out the Summer of Arcade preview trailer.

As per the games original rules, if you’re chosen as The One, you will earn Microsoft Points for every member of the The Mob that you eliminate – up to ten-thousand Microsoft Points! If you’re a member of The Mob and The One chokes, you and all remaining members of The Mob will share the bounty of Microsoft Points instead. And lastly, if you’re relegated to the Crowd, the top three scoring members of the Crowd in each round will win an Xbox LIVE Arcade game.

Additionally, Microsoft is still holding their sweepstakes in which every question you answer will earn you another entry in the draw. Winners will be chosen at the end of the Beta and could win a Microsoft Zune or an HDTV home theatre system!

Get your buzzers ready kids, this game show just got a lot more real!

DICE has announced they’re adding new servers, with an estimated completion time of 17:30 GMT.  Which is really quite an excellent delaying tactic, as it caused mass confusion while we all tried to remember what our relationship to GMT is (protip:  EDT is GMT-4, so 1:30pm).

Looks like I’m going back to playing the tutorial again.  And really, unexpected popularity with an online-only title?  Hopefully DICE will manage to get things sorted out for the PS3 release tomorrow.

Source: @OfficialBF1943