·:[ Smiling Politely ]:·
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When I first acquired my 360, I quickly hopped onto the Xbox Live Arcade train and snapped up a handful of titles, all of which have treated me well more or less. I probably would have traded Puzzle Quest for something different as it wore out its welcome after some time, but the killer duo of Pac-man CE and Space Giraffe has had serious staying power, and Castlevania: SOTN is a classic I wouldn’t be playing if it weren’t for XBLA.

In recent months, however, I’d mostly been kind of curtailing the XBLA spending despite a few notable temptations like Rez HD and Ikaruga. This summer though, I think I’m going to have a hard time because there appears to be a ton of good stuff on the way.

Of course, the one game I absolutely must get as soon as it is released is Braid. I’ve mentioned my excitement for this game before, and it has been kind of a long time coming. I suspect this game, being a puzzle game on a non-portable system, is going to tank. This prediction would have been a no-brainer a year ago, but the surprising success of Portal makes it a bit less of a forgone conclusion these.

My charitable, polite explanation as to why I think Braid will fail where Portal succeeded is: “I dunno, just a gut feeling.” My less charitable, contrarian explanation relates to my beliefs that Portal is an overrated game. I think Portal succeeded despite being a puzzle game because: a) people were all buying Orange Box anyway, b) it was an easy puzzle game, c) it was funny, and d) it had a ton of good press because it fit into a very pleasant media narrative that was repeated on every gaming site in existance and probably took up 25% of every single review text out there. (The narrative being: college kids make cool school project, get bought by Valve, steal the Orange Box show.)

Now I’m not quite sure yet if Braid is going to be easy or not, but it doesn’t look to be particularly funny, seems to be trying to appeal to the games-as-art crowd rather than the “hurr hurr the cake is a lie!” internet meme crowd, and the developer basically alienates every game designer and journalist out there every time he gives a talk. If the game does turn out to be challenging at all, it’s gonna get a bunch of middling reviews with the executive summary “innovative, but too challenging for all but the most hardcore players, 7/10.”

Oh well, it’s coming out and I’ll be buying it so what do I care how well it does? It does have a pile of competition this summer though. Castle Crashers looks pretty fun, Geometry Wars 2 is tempting (less so since learning the co-op mode is local only), the Bionic Commando remake I didn’t initially care about has been gathering good buzz. Oh, and Galaga Legions I would normally not be overly excited about, only it’s by the Pac-man: CE team apparently, and as I mentioned above that game is definitely one of the best ones I’ve seen on the service. Oh oh, and Mega Man 9, of course.

And on top of all of that, soon the fruits of the XNA community are going to start appearing! Man, I should get in on that. Who wants to help me develop my sidescrolling Metroidvania roguelike?

I should have bought Space Giraffe a long time ago. I had somewhat enjoyed the demo. I am enjoying the full game much more.

(Specifically, I want to take back the “crybaby” part of my previous post, because it seems to me that when people talk about how “nobody” bought Space Giraffe, I think they really mean nobody. I am not even halfway through the game (taking advantage of the unique score-continuing system) yet from what I can tell I currently sit poised to crack the top 100 on the XBLA leaderboards. Whereas on say, Pac-man CE I sit somewhere around 50,000. Maybe this has something to do with my “gamer zone” or whatever?)

I recently read an article by one Ste Pickford, who Space Giraffe as a case study for what he feels is a trend for games to rely more and more on having an easily accessible and attention grabbing demo. In the end, I think he is a little too blasé about the issue. (I feel that if games “need to to be ‘instant’, and communicate everything the player needs to know quickly and unconsciously via audio visual cues rather than through clumsy tutorial modes and manual pages,” then there will be many games that will no longer come to be.  Games that would be perfectly good games, or even great games, that merely require a bit of an initial investment on behalf of the player.) I must admit, however, that my original “Meh, seems OK” reaction to the game did indeed result from the demo not really reaching out and grabbing me.

I could be misremembering, but I believe the demo for Space Giraffe consisted of simply the tutorial. It was good that this is there, as without playing the tutorial at least once I’m pretty sure the game would make zero sense whatsoever. However, the tutorial keeps things pretty simple, and keeps things on a flat, boring web without much distortion.

Later levels really twist this around. The web is crooked, curved, loops back onto itself. The camera is placed above, below, to the side. The length of the web is distorted, so that “straight” lines become twisted curves. For one thing, these sorts of things add to the difficulty of the game. But I realized I kind of loved this game when I noticed that I’d just played the entirety of a level with my head cocked at a 45 degree angle, apparently with the thought that it would help me see over the lip of the web a bit better. I also enjoy the feeling I get when Ms. M. growls in frustration that the screen is filled with gibberish and how can I see anything and I say “Well I can’t see everything, but I hear most of it,” and she just tells me I’m crazy.

All of this could just be the cognitive dissonance speaking, of course, but I’m really glad I finally got around to picking it up. Should have come sooner.

OK, so I never really mentioned it but I got a little stupid a while back and picked up an Xbox 360. As a rite of passage, I dropped some money down on some Magic Microsoft Bucks or whatever the official name is for the points that you use to purchase Xbox Live Arcade games. I picked up Pac-man CE, since the demo made me realize why Pac-man was actually fun, something the original never did, and Symphony of the Night, because it’s one of many “classics” I have missed over the years, and Puzzle Quest just because.

I’ve enjoyed some other demos, including the one for the polarizing and, really, somewhat alienating Space Giraffe. I held off on buying it mainly because I had enough on my plate, but I see via TIGSource that its creator is getting a little embittered over the sales figures for it, compared to say, Frogger.

Fine, fine. I have points left over because, as anyone who uses XBLA knows, you ALWAYS have to buy a little bit more than you actually need for whatever it is you originally wanted. Here you go, Mr. Minter. Although I suggest that the reason your game isn’t selling well isn’t because people are afraid of new things, but instead are afraid of epilepsy and nightmares of J. Allard.