http://www.xblaratings.com/ 5508-5878 http://www.xblaratings.com/component/content/article/66-shooter/5508-cuddle-bear Murdering animals is fun!!!!!! ]]> Tue, 08 May 2012 21:16:44 -0500 4900-5877 http://www.xblaratings.com/component/content/article/54-action-a-adventure/4900-castleminer-z im not sure if i broke the game or something but i made it to 149.5645 distance and now whenever i start the map it has a black screen error. this has been happening ever since i got the 1.4.4 update ]]> Mon, 07 May 2012 05:42:34 -0500 5393-5876 http://www.xblaratings.com/component/content/article/68-strategy-a-simulation/5393-red-invasion-tower-defense This new XBLIG from the minds at MilkStone Studios is a departure from what they usually put out (Avatar based games anyone??) This is a fast paced, quick thinking tower defense game where strategy and quick thinking puts you on the edge of your seat until the last wave. Within each level, your tasked with a primary objective and two Bonus secondary objectives. You can almost always complete the main objective and pass the levels with skill, but it helps to complete the secondary objectives as they are usually essential to winning the round successfully. Red Invasion: TD fortunately features quick but effective tutorial, that teaches you the basics of each unit and the effects that the units have. You are able to collect cash during each game to upgrade and build your turrets and defenses via your energy pillars. Once you place your energy pillars, you have to quickly harvest your money from them in order to keep building and upgrading your towers. The energy pillar has a blue meter that fills as it gains income by collecting the enemies energy as they die within a predetermined circle. Its essential to strategically place your pillars where-ever you think the enemy is going to die, so it collects its energy. The enemy units move very slowly, giving you time to place your units where you want, but lucky for us MilkStone gave us a "Fast Forward" button via the Left trigger that speeds up the game drastically, so you don't have to wait for your pillars to fill, or for a slow moving enemy to get closer to you. Which in turn, gives you a tactical advantage over your enemy (In some cases). As time goes by during each mission, your weapons towers and energy pillars upgrade through levels and gain experience, giving you the opportunity to spend money to upgrade them to higher levels. The higher the level of a turret means it'll have more of an impact in destroying the offense. The controls are very mouse like, with a inventory wheel that you use to choose your units. I think there should have been bigger cosmetic differences between upgraded placements then just the stars system that shows up when you hover your cursor over the units. the buildings unfortunately don't change when you upgrade them, causing confusion of its power/defense during a fast paced wave of enemies. I thought the graphics were extremely lackluster, almost Nintendo 64'ish at times. The music and voice overs were exceptional, but the sound effects were something to be desired. I found Red Invasion: Tower Defense to be a great challenge at 80MSP, but not worth most peoples time. The graphics and sound were not up to par and the tutorial could have been more in-depth. There could have been a wider variety of enemies and personal units as well. Try the Trial first, otherwise Pass. ]]> Mon, 07 May 2012 02:38:10 -0500 5491-5873 http://www.xblaratings.com/component/content/article/66-shooter/5491-city-zombified Way back when (a whole year ago), I’d have sampled anything with zombies in it… yeah, I didn’t know any better. But now that I’ve played the worst and the best the market has to offer, seen what can happen when creativity gets the floor on Open Mic night, my bar sits higher than it did once upon a time in XBLIG Past. I’ve raised my standards. Developers can’t stand in place and still jump over that bar, but, with a running start and decent timing, it can be cleared. City Zombified not only hits its head on that metaphorical bar repeatedly, it doesn’t even bother to jump. It just sits there, timid, dully refusing to make eye contact or start a conversation, yet inexplicably counting on my sympathy (and my dollar). City Zombified is a brand of terrible on par with The $1 Zombie Game, but still not bad enough to take the title from Zombies, Zombies Everywhere. That atrocity was a reverse-Kickstarter that required a set amount of people to purchase the released product before the developers lazily added features to make it a complete game. At the very least, CZ doesn’t go that route, though the two modes it does offer don’t add up to anything worthy of your time. Sentinel is the game’s ‘Story’ mode (those quotes are meant to frame that word loosely), which has objectives that need to be met in each level, like citizen protection or exposing zombies hidden in exploding snowmen (seriously, can’t make this stuff up), and Survival is your standard, ‘fight through endless waves’ mode that lacks any kind of balance whatsoever. Much like $1 Zombie, the combat is so bland, and the game so set on throwing money at you to upgrade and restock between rounds, you’re pretty much guaranteed to go on fighting forever until you make the conscious decision to just lay down and get eaten. It’s impossible to imagine where the blueprints of the town (Serene City, oh how very ironic) originated from; dark, wide-open spaces, houses dotting the landscape, but lampposts sprinkled liberally in-between. What are they meant to illuminate? No streets, no sidewalks, not much of anything. The city planners should have all been shot. The survivors you’re asked to rescue (pretty much everyone, as no one evacuated; the zombie apocalypse must’ve been an improvement at first) are characters seemingly ripped from a failed Tarantino casting for Reservoir Dogs (Mr. Unrest, Mr. Lastman, Ms. Nosy, Mr. Lifeboat, etc.) They’ll all sound like women when attacked, too, as the developer couldn’t be bothered to add a male voice track. After each wave / objective list is completed, you can restock to pick up more ammo for your pistol (the default) or buy an automatic. There’s also firebombs and batteries, and lampposts (ah, that explains the unusually high number; finally, something that makes sense here!). Then you’ll shuffle on to the next objective, rinse and repeat, and… ugh. There’s zero reason to go on. The whole game feels like a chore. Everything is lacking. I mean, c’mon, the zombies appear to be roller-skating. You can’t even quit out of the game after you die. CZ actually believes you’ll be that fascinated by its charms that you’ll only ever want to continue. Ready for more? it asks. No, not now, buddy, and not ever. Games like City Zombified give the indie channel a bad name. It’s insipid at best and playable only in the cheapest form of the word. Avoid crossing paths with it. Full Review Here: http://gear-fish.com/?reviews=city-zombified ]]> Sun, 06 May 2012 02:17:49 -0500 4900-5857 http://www.xblaratings.com/component/content/article/54-action-a-adventure/4900-castleminer-z the game needs 2 local players and needs to have more people in 1 game to combat the zombie horde ]]> Sat, 28 Apr 2012 19:17:05 -0500 5308-5856 http://www.xblaratings.com/component/content/article/62-platformer/5308-craftimals-build-to-the-sun Craftimals Build To The Sun is a game that you can just sit down, relax, and build blocks...to the sun. It is a game that you could sit down with a friend and spend some time making cool pictures or doing the main adventure without any competition. I would recommend this game to anybody that likes to spend time with family/friends on a family friendly game! ]]> Fri, 27 Apr 2012 22:50:27 -0500 5348-5851 http://www.xblaratings.com/component/content/article/68-strategy-a-simulation/5348-spoids Spoids is a perfectly fine indie game that comes with a single issue. It's boring. Now that may sound like a silly thing to effect a review, there's no reason to lower a score over something that's such a non issue you might think. yet Its boring across all aspects of its construction. Spoids is basically a simple tower defense game. You are tasked with defending exit points from spoid attack and you do so by putting down towers with different abilities. All the towers are here as are all the enemy types. Simple lasers, missiles, rockets, electric attacks for groups and towers that slow enemies down. Its all perfectly functioning but Nothing that's not been done before against a more interesting backdrop. Lets quickly talk about the backdrop too. The developer has put some effort in to crafting what is as close to a complete universe as they can. There's no dropping in the games theme. The game world is so bland though that is utterly uninspired. Not bad, just not much to write home about. Voice acting is of a good audio quality, but the voice acting is mediocre at best. Annoying at worst. Its not like it can even be taken as so bad its great because its not really bad, just bland. Audio levels seem to be full of issues too, with voices and sound levels dropping too. Stages also suffer from an issue of luck over skill. A lot of tower defense games do, but spoids more so then most. It's filled with so many place to put towers that its just a case of pot luck how well you do. there's certainly no challenge to be found in advancing. All these things can be forgiven if only the game were stronger in other areas. Despite being of good production quality the game is just bland. Your looking at the info screen on a battle taking place and not the actual battle. Its all too clinical and without heart. ]]> Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:33:09 -0500 4900-5847 http://www.xblaratings.com/component/content/article/54-action-a-adventure/4900-castleminer-z i love this game but i think it needs cars,planes,rivers,oceans,boats,that we can build and customize them but give us the stuff that powers it in are in the inventory. ]]> Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:57:01 -0500 3923-5846 http://www.xblaratings.com/component/content/article/63-puzzle-a-trivia/3923-aardbloxx This is an awesome clone of Blockout, an old arcade title!!!! Blockout/AardBloxX is basically 3D Tetris. You can rotate the pieces along any of the 3 axes (X, Y, and Z). Which is a cool idea but it was very difficult to actually play in Blockout because Blockout only had 3 buttons and in the heat of battle, it was a struggle to figure out how to turn the block the way you wanted. But with AardBloxX, the controls are so much better because there are far more buttons to use and they're mapped out much more logically. The bumpers allow you to rotate the object in the flat plane of your screen, either clockwise or counterclockwise depending on which bumper is used. The A and Y buttons rotate it forward and backward, just the way it's mapped on the controller. The X and B buttons rotate it left and right, just the way it's mapped. So now it's much easier to rotate the pieces than in Blockout. The only problem I had with AardBloxX is that when your piece is up against the side wall, you cannot rotate it. You have to move your piece toward the center of the screen in order to rotate it. This is definitely an annoying problem that other Tetris-style games, including Blockout, didn't have. But that doesn't distract from the fact that this is a fun game. Definitely worth $1 (80 MS points)!!!! ]]> Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:50:31 -0500 5460-5843 http://www.xblaratings.com/component/content/article/66-shooter/5460-firing-range-2 No offense to the Milkstone Studios guys, but I didn’t even bother with the original Firing Range. I’m sure it played more than fine and was received well without my coveted endorsement (thus, Firing Range 2), but my brain finds the idea of being sold on the need for an FPS trainer (apparently a sub-genre now) to be offensive. I’ve been shooting shit in the first person since I opened my eyes; my aim is just fine, thank you very much. You don’t own and maintain a lethal 1.04 K/D ratio by being a slouch in the accuracy category. Still, it can’t hurt to sharpen your skills, right? Which means I must be harboring some other dark secret that prevents me from enjoying target practice games. So, truth? You’re reading a review from a guy who bought that useless Wii Zapper accessory Nintendo pawned off on us to sell Link’s Crossbow Training. Yeah, I might have humored that thing for all of twenty minutes, and didn’t even bother to drag it back out to play the RE Chronicles games months later. Twenty bucks and five years on, it’s still lurking in a closet somewhere as I type this, laughing at the money I burned. The point I’m making in all this is, I’ve learned my lesson from the Link’s Crossbow Training debacle, and that lesson is plain: If I’m going to purchase a game consisting entirely of an extended target practice / FPS tutorial mission, even minus the plastic and for a measly dollar, it’d better do something to trigger (rimshot!) a response. Milkstone’s sequel takes the shooting outdoors to a bright desert setting. There’s also a night version as well, which seems unnecessary and purely for visual variety. Movement is again limited strictly to aiming. It’s not much, weapons and targets, but it’s still a good-looking game for an indie. More importantly, it addresses the complaints from the first entry. Lack of guns? Boom, 12 this time, three apiece in pistols, SMGs, assault, and sniper rifles, with varying stats to account for style. Mixing up the gameplay? Sure. Outside of pistol-specific rounds, you’ll always be carrying a sidearm, required for random targets and helpful instead of reloading a primary, and a knife for melee encounters. Multiplayer component? You got it. How does a 1 vs. 1 score attack sound to you? Single Player has now been separated into two modes of play, Close Range (pistols, SMGs) and Long Range (assault, sniper). Both have a dedicated leaderboard that even goes so far as to chart your progress in-game as your score increases. Alternating between the chosen pair of weapons, each stage pushes the points requirement farther up the line. Knowing how to chain your shots and when it’s best to reload are valued assets. Besides the obvious target-smashing staples of ‘hey, hit this moving one’ or ‘fine, then hit this tiny one’, the game tracks your level of ‘heat’, which is based on your speed and ability to hit targets. Higher levels of heat mean a bigger score bonus, integral to success in the later rounds. Monetary rewards work to combat the banality of breaking targets. Each one you destroy earns you a coin. This tallies up in your digital piggy bank, which you can then use in the shop to buy better versions of the default gun classes and dress them up in various skins a la Gears of War, except Epic’s not in charge of this one, so you won’t have to pay legitimate currency to own every one (rimshot!). The camouflage is strictly cosmetic, but it’s the thought of customization that counts. All in all you won’t lament your purchase, as Firing Range 2 will test and subsequently improve your reflexes. The multiplayer is fun for bragging and the leaderboards motivate you to keep gunning (rimshot!) for the next spot on the list. It’s hardly innovative or content-heavy, but the extras and fake achievements do disguise the otherwise repetitive nature of the game. Any way you fire it, any way you skin your gun, you’re just shooting targets over and over. That may be enough for some. It was for me. The lack of Accessory Shame afterward was a bonus. Full Review Here: http://gear-fish.com/?reviews=firing-range-2 ]]> Sun, 22 Apr 2012 15:59:18 -0500