Consolation Prize

Sudoku was a bit of a craze a few years ago. At one stage it seemed like I couldn’t even turn on the TV without some minor celebrity promoting their Sudoku book or harping on about how good it was. Thankfully the celebs have been and gone (and probably made a pretty penny or two out of it in the process) and the craze has subsided. Buku Sudoku, for the Xbox 360, is a little bit late to the party but it does a decent job of wrapping up the logic based number puzzler into an interesting package with great presentation and configurable difficulty levels that should appeal to fans old and new alike.

For those not in the know Sudoku is pretty straight forward to play once you’ve learned the fundamentals. The player is presented with a grid, most typically 9 x 9, which is partially filled with numbers from 1 to 9. The aim is to ensure that each column and row contains the digits 1 to 9, in addition the grid is split into regions (nine 3 x 3 regions in this example) which must also contain the digits 1 to 9. However the numerics in each row, column and region must be unique i.e. appear just the once in that row, column or region. It’s a simple principle but guaranteed to give your brain cells a bit of a workout.

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Battlezone, the vector graphics arcade game of tank warfare from 1980 is the latest classic game to be ported to Xbox Live Arcade by
Stainless Games. As with all previous ports handled by this development studio it comes packaged with both Classic and Evolved game modes as-well as normal and the fantastically named Throttle Monkey difficulty levels.

For those not in the know, Battlezone was a bit of a rarity in its time using 3D vector graphics and presenting the player with a first person perspective of the game world. Nowadays of course the classic game looks quite dated but the developers have done a decent job with the look of the evolved version, retaining the vector based imagery of the original whilst sprucing up the graphics with some well placed visual effects. My only criticism of the evolved graphics however would be that I found it easier to identify which way an enemy tank was facing from a distance using the original graphics rather than the evolved visual update.

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Ikaruga, from those artisans at
Treasure, is a top-down vertically scrolling shoot-em-up. It was originally developed for the arcades and subsequently ported to the Sega Dreamcast (2002) and Nintendo Gamecube (2003), but now there’s no excuse not to play this gem of a shooter as it’s available from Xbox Live Arcade for 800 Microsoft points.

Generally in most “shoot ‘em ups” the aim is to avoid any incoming enemy fire. However, Ikaruga employs a simple but clever mechanic that revolves around switching the polarity of your ship between two colours, “black” and “white”, allowing shots of the same colour to be absorbed.

The polarity of the ship can be changed at will by the player and this not only changes the ships colour but also that of the weapon it fires. Because enemies also come in one of the two polarities switching to the opposite colour ensures that you will deliver more damage, but balancing this effect is the knowledge that you are going to be vulnerable to attack.

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Since the success of Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training on the Nintendo DS there has been a noticeable increase both in the number of games dedicated to training the grey matter and the publishers / developers jumping on the proverbial bandwagon in an effort to cash in on its success.

This effort comes courtesy of
GameLoft and according to the game blurb should:

Boost brain activity, help you develop stress management skills and develop your own creativity

This all sounds good in principle and the full game features 20 mini-games based around one of five different categories designed to enhance that squishy stuff inside your noggin (logic, math, memory, visual and focus).

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PomPom what have you done? I really enjoyed Mutant Storm Reloaded but I’m afraid I can’t really give Bliss Island too much love on the evidence of the trial game.

Lounging around on an island all day, creatures known as Zwoophs have nothing better to do with their time then blow into the air, making clouds. Surprisingly the lead character Hoshi has got bored of the task but luckily his peers have taken pity on him and decided to give him Fridays off so he can play around.

This is an excuse for lots of mini-games but in the trial you’re given the chance to try out just three. Fruit Smoothie has you blasting falling fruit into the waiting mouth of a hungry Jogoka whilst avoiding static or moving obstacles. Gem Grotto finds you controlling a flying character, via directed bursts of air, through a side scrolling course collecting gems and air replenishment whilst keeping ahead of a flaming rotating roller hot on your heals. And finally Bronze Table, which is like a game of pool but you’ve only got three shots to knock together two matching coloured balls before losing a life.

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Due to the amount of time required to set-up Consolation Prize over the last few days I’ve not had a lot of free time to play games. I have however managed to check out some of last months Xbox Live Arcade releases starting with TiQal, an Aztec themed puzzle game available for 800 points.

The aim of the game is to create square groups of at least four blocks of the same colour, using the preset shapes (made of blocks) that appear. Once a square group has been created it will start glowing and eventually be removed by an explosion after a short period of time. Rows of blocks are frequently added to the bottom of the pile and the player will lose if any blocks reach the top of the screen.

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Rocketmen: Axis of Evil , available from Xbox Live Marketplace for 800 points, is a game that tries to play homage to the early comic book style of science fiction with finned rockets, Venusians and dastardly Martians.

The trial of this top-down action “dungeon crawler” style game starts off quite well allowing you to customise your characters traits such as the gender, race, class and clothing colour. Presentation wise it all looks quite good. Comic book style cut scenes with voiceovers are used to further the tongue-in-cheek storyline and the art design suits the retro Sci-Fi style of the game and could have been taken from a 1930’s episode of Flash Gordon.

The game is simple enough to play. Wade through the level shooting anything that moves while picking up the occasional time limited weapon upgrade such as a shotgun or laser cannon, with the aim of completing the primary mission objective.

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It looks like it’s been a quiet few weeks for demo’s and arcade games for the Xbox 360 while I’ve been away but I noticed there were a few new titles to try out.

Originally released in the Japanese arcades a couple of years ago (2006) Triggerheart Exelica, now on Xbox Live Arcade for 800 points, is a traditional top down vertical shoot ‘em up with the usual formulaic mix of hordes of enemies, end of stage boss encounters and an obscene amount of enemy weapon fire to dodge.

The trial game allows you to play the first stage of five, choosing from one of two humanoid weapon systems known as “Triggerhearts”. There isn’t too much difference between the two apart from the onscreen representation of these cute anime inspired mecha girls and the different fire patterns employed. Exelica uses a wide fire pattern while Crueltear has concentrated straight forward fire only.

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