summer-of-arcade-2011
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Crimson Alliance review: Born-again gauntlet
In gastronomical terms, Crimson Alliance is Nutella on toast to fans of the abandoned top-down action genre. It's inspiring in its toast-like simplicity. It shares Nutella's life-affirming sweetness and palatable smoothness. It's a decent mix -- but then, somebody puts a heaping helping of peanut butter on the toast. Okay, it still sounds good, if not a little messy, except -- is that marshmallow fluff? Yikes, alright, I guess we're making s'mores toast now. Wait, are you adding raspberry jam? That doesn't even make sense! This is Crimson Alliance: A peanut butter and s'mores sandwich with raspberry jam. %Gallery-129401%
Crimson Alliance's strange pricing structure isn't so strange, after all
Crimson Alliance is going to cost $15 for the full game when it launches September 7 on XBLA, which isn't very weird. The game features three classes -- mercenary, wizard and assassin -- and people who only want to play one class will be able to buy a separate version of the game, with just the one class, for $10. That is weird in an "all games should be sold like this" way. We were suspicious of Crimson Alliance's pricing model back in July, and we're glad to be pleasantly surprised now. Producer Tom Potter (he must hate J.K. Rowling) explains the pricing structure as a way for players to have "more options when buying Crimson Alliance." We see it as a way to save $5 just for knowing what we like, and that's not a bad deal.
Summer of Arcade games top XBLA sales
In the first half of the year, whenever you ask an XBLA developer when their game is coming out, you'll almost always get the same answer: "We're shooting for summer." It's not just that downloadable games look great with a base tan. Their creators are hoping to get on board with Microsoft's Summer of Arcade promotion and all the promotion that goes with it. As the XBLA activity readings (based on purchased versions) for last week demonstrate, it's a profitable plan. The top three titles between August 1st and 8th were the current Summer of Arcade offerings: From Dust, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet and Bastion. We don't have specific numbers, but when you see a high-profile, high-quality July release like Ms. Splosion Man (which wasn't part of the promotion) way down there at #15, it's hard to deny the Summer of Arcade bump.
Fruit Ninja Kinect review: The joy of chopping
It is good to chop fruit with your hands. That's likely to be my very dumbest thesis for the remainder of my games-reviewing career, but let's face it: Fruit Ninja Kinect is an astonishingly dumb game. Its unswerving singlemindedness sets a new standard for simplicity: The game oscillates between binary states of chopping fruit and waiting to chop more fruit, with little extraneous cruft to pad the two. There is fruit, and then you chop it, and then the fruit -- in a burst of citrus and points -- is gone! Such a single-faceted premise would be a mark of death for any game, even a budget-priced downloadable title. Luckily for Halfbrick, it is good to chop fruit with your hands.%Gallery-125745%
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet preview: UFO catcher
I went into Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet with very little background information. I had seen a few trailers -- and it looks just as great in person -- but other than that I started playing knowing virtually nothing about the overall bent of its gameplay. Much to my delight, I was greeted by an expansive world (think Metroid) to explore and some inventive, well-polished mechanics. %Gallery-125537%
