Care in the Community: Week 3

Greetings, Welcome to Care in the Community Week 3, my weekly round up of the great, and not so great, Xbox Live Community Games that I have played this past week.
I still haven’t sent off my Xbox 360 to Microsoft for repair yet, so this weeks games were brought to you by my collection of dish cloths and hand towels. The games under scrutiny this week are: Bomb Disposal Expert, StrikeForce-Psi, Mithra – Episode 1, Chapter 1, DrumKit and Pocoro.
Again, I am very pleased with the response to this feature, thanks to you all for checking out and leaving comments, I just hope I can keep this up!
Right, Lets get cracking:

Pocoro

Pocoro is a simple puzzle game made by rayteller, which is feels instantly familiar, but fresh at the same time.  The gameplay consists of moving a small sphere around a grid of numbered tiles.  The number on the tiles represents the number of times that you can/should land on that square on your journey to the goal.  It is simple to pickup, and its relaxing audio and clean visuals make the experience enticing and addictive.

The game features plenty of levels to keep you occupied, and the low price point of 200 points makes this a great purchase as you should get plenty of playtime out of it in the quest to get 100% on every level in order to unlock the promised bonus (I am yet to find out what that is exactly, but I look forward to it).

4/5

Mithra – Episode One, Chapter One

Mithra – Episode One, Chapter One is the first part of a planned series of Action/Adventure games developed by KamiSama, and it immediately stands out as have the best graphics I have seen in a Community Game and even rivals some full retail releases that have seen store shelves this generation.  The story follows a purple skinned protagonist/alien called Tag on the planet Gi, where he starts off the chapter trapped in jail without his memory, a fairly standard scenario for an adventure game.

The gameplay is similar to classic adventure games, like the Monkey Island series, you must find object and use them to interact with other objects to solve puzzles that progress the story.  As previously mentioned, the graphics are amazing as is the sound design (apart from some annoying character voices), the only downside is the length,which clocks in at just less than 2 hours.  At 400 points, the price is a little more than the ideal 200 point price point, but you get a quality that isn’t present elsewhere on the service.

4/5

StrikeForce-Psi

StrikeForce-Psi is a Platform Shooter developed by Starlit Sky Games,  and in a similar style to Contra, you take on an large number of hostiles with your one man army on multiple levels.  The gameplay will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played Contra, Bionic Commando or any of the number of similar 8-bit and 16-bits games that were released during the 90’s.

I found a number of problems with game, mainly that it was really easy to kill enemies without them being on screen.  Shooting off screen would result in you walking of downed soldiers further along the level, and this seems like a small detail that should have been ironed out a long time ago as it breaks the game slightly.  Apart from that, the game doesn’t really have any identity or lasting appeal, and doesn’t seem like it was worth purchasing, even for the 200 points asking price, as you don’t get much that you can’t experience during the 8 min trial.   Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this, but If you are in doubt, check the trial version to see if it is your cup of tea.

2/5

DrumKit

Drumkit shouldn’t really be classed as a community game, it would be more accurate to call it a community App(lication).  It is a virtual drum kit, developed by Big Daddio, and turns your Rock Band drum kit into an electronic drumkit.  The game allows you to assign different sounds to each pad and the pedal, enabling you to choose from an impressive range of drum heads/sounds, and play along with songs that you have stored on your hard-drive, essentially making it the freestyle mode from Rock Band 2 but with alot more options.   There isn’t much else to say beyond that description.  If you have a Rock Band drumkit and a longing to play along with your favorite songs then definitely check this out, otherwise I wouldn’t bother (drumming with the controller just isn’t the same).

3/5

Bomb Disposal Expert

Bomb Disposal Expert is a game borrows heavily from popular 80’s electronic toy “Simon”.  In the game you must copy inputs displayed on screen in increasingly complex patterns in order to disfuse bombs and make the city safe again.  The gameplay is very shallow, and is exactly the same as Simon, watch/listen to patterns and repeat, and as a result it gets very dull, very fast.  The is some narrative, but it isn’t compelling in the slightist, and barely serves as disguse for the simple gameplay.

I would only recommend this game to you if you are fan of monotony, even at the 200 point price tag.

1/5

~ by rusted3572 on May 5, 2009.