Arcade Reviews
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“If you aren’t familiar with the game itself, the battles that you will encounter will take place in both a 2D side-scrolling fashion, as well as a top-down view. It affects the gameplay quite a bit. For example, in the 2D areas, you can jump and crouch, whereas you’re left to run around and fire like a madman in the top-down levels. Both of these viewpoints offer an immense amount of challenge, with fire coming from all over, as well as soldiers charging right at you while you are dodging bullets. (They touch, you die)”
“On first impression, this isn’t a million miles away from Stardust games back on the good old Amiga. It was famous back then for its ground breaking visuals and fast-action gameplay. The series has always been built around a re-imagining of asteroids, but it is only now that we see the introduction of the twin sticks. The left analogue stick is used for directional control, whilst the other analogue stick is used to shoot in any direction. Add to this a warp and smart bomb and you have the basics of the control scheme.”
“Spyglass Board Games is about as basic as the title suggests. For 400 Microsoft Points, you will be getting four different classic board games: chess, checkers, mancala, and reversi. The first two games are probably going to be the main attraction of the game, seeing as everyone has heard of and knows how to play chess and checkers. The other two games are not as well known, but as just as fun to play once you learn the rules and the strategies.”
“Marathon Durandal is the second in a series of games that were originally released for the Macintosh computer by, the one and only, Bungie. This series of games has many similarities with the stories from another well known Bungie franchise, Halo. Durandal is one of the 3 AIs aboard Marathon and brings the player and a group of other soliders to the home world of the S’pht, Lh’owon. ”
“Hexic 2 is the sequel to the critically acclaimed Live Arcade title, Hexic HD, which came free with the Premium console. Hexic 2 contains a few new features, some good and some that aren’t all that exciting. One of the better new features is Battle mode, in which you go head to head against either the computer or on Xbox Live, and try to wipe out all the Hexics first. Creating clusters, disarming bombs, making stars etc increase your energy and also your power well, which can unleash some distractions to slow the opponent down, such as locking their pieces.”
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