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I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1
With Ska Studios, the one-man development team, James Silva, is proving that a little charm can go a long way. Dishwasher: Dead Samurai rose to Xbox Live Arcade fame with a hyperactive, 2D shout-out to character action games like Ninja Gaiden and God of War. Meanwhile, he has kept busy, releasing a handful of XBLI titles that have been pretty good themselves. Now he’s back with I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1, wherein you happily give him a dollar to wear a giant smile on your face for 15 minutes. There’s not really more to it than that – you play a local, 4-player twin-stick shooter, battling zombies and more as the game progresses. The magic comes in after a minute or so, when the soundtrack’s chorus kicks in and the visuals go wild to match it. This is XBLI’s equivalent to Splosion Man’s Donut Song, or the Ode to Joy segment in Peggle – it’s sheer, simple brilliance.
(80pts)

Golden TangramGolden Tangram
Golden Tangram is an abstract twist on the typical jigsaw puzzle. Here you’re given a handful of basic polygons and tasked with making a picture out of them. It’s pretty tricky, even from the start. Thankfully, the controls and visuals are decent enough that they don’t interfere. If you’re into some tricky, methodical puzzle solving, give this one a shot.
(80pts)

Power HourPower Hour
This game insists it does not condone excessive drinking and yet that’s the whole idea. Your goal is to take a drink every minute for an hour and outlast your competition. Anyone dumb enough to play this would probably also finish their session, black out, and wake up in an alley with their pants around their ankles. It also doesn’t let you play unless you get your own music playing, which was mostly just really inconvenient for me, because I had to get up and plug in an MP3 player. The things I go through for you, my dear readers!
(80pts)

The Drinking GameThe Drinking Game
Developer North Squard is sending mixed signals by releasing Wacky Water Fun and The Drinking Game within a few days of each other – they even share the same basic interface and title screen. Actually, I could have sworn I’ve seen this interface before. Yep, Reef Rave…and look at that, Johnny’s Minefield is another one of their games that’s coming out in 3…2…1…there it is! How does one developer put out so many games in such a short time? Well, if The Drinking Game is anything to go by, they simply don’t make much of a game. This slot machine drinking game will likely leave drunkards fumbling with their controllers in frustration.
(80pts)

Johnny's MinefieldJohnny’s Minefield
While North Squard’s games are painfully simple, some, like Johnny’s Minefield, maintain a good balance between ridiculous simplicity and actual fun. The goal is to traverse a minefield with only a brief preview of where the mines are located. The arrangements are random but grow in complexity as you go along. For a dollar, it’s certainly the best of North Squard’s offers thus far.
(80pts)

GogsGogs
Gogs is a physics-based matching game with some of the most broken-ass ball physics I’ve seen since my Comp Sci days. The balls collide awkwardly, and sometimes not at all. DEVELOPER PROTIP: Try checking for collisions more often, or accounting for overlapping balls. Also: get your degree first and then make a game. Then make a few more games, THEN put one out on XBLI, you’ll do us all a favor.
(80pts)

Zens 360Zens 360
Zens 360 is a daily proverb app that barely deserves this single sentence description I’ve provided. The only art assets are the cover art, the backdrop in the game, and an awful font. Here’s one: “He who does not buy this game sleeps soundly.”
(80pts)

Horse Race Stater????????????Horse Race Stater
Let’s paint a scene: It’s 1977 and your family is the only one on the block with a brand new Atari 2600. You’ve only got one game but you’re all so excited to try it. The game is Horse Race Stater. You ignore the odd misspelling and incomprehensible Japanese text and dive straight into the game. “Press A,” the game suggests. You press it and watch in excitement as a horse race begins. It looks so amazing, and you can’t wait to play the actual game. The race ends. “Press A,” the game suggests once more. Excitement turns to cautious optimism. “Press A.” Yet another race begins, and a dark cloud descends upon the living room as you realize that’s the whole game. This is the kind of crap that could have ended this industry three decades ago, why would it be fun for anyone now?
(80pts)

LIVELAYER PROTOTYPELIVELAYER PROTOTYPE
While calling LIVELAYER an enjoyable dungeon crawler is fair, it would be doing all of your eyes a great disservice. While the gameplay itself is fun, and the little sound effects copped from games like Zelda are cute, the game is simply too microscopic to truly enjoy. I played for as long as I could tolerate it, and eventually had to quit before the trial time was even over. Remember trying to read the text in Dead Rising on an SDTV? Yeah, it’s like that, even in HD.
(80pts)

360 Mega App Pack HD360 Mega App Pack HD
UPDATE: I got 360 Mega App Pack working, apparently it was an isolated incident. Still, there are few surprises here. You get your massage app, your calculator, clock, memory game, and more, all in one package. I have to give credit where credit is due though, the package has some really nice presentation. It’s still doing little more than consolidating a lot of what’s wrong with XBLI, but considering it’s only a dollar, the package isn’t such a bad thing. (80pts)