With 2010 in full swing I finally found a little time to put together a list of the best Xbox Live Arcade games of 2009.

You can check it out here.

As a kid I use to love playing  with Legos. As an adult I’ve enjoyed playing through the various Lego games that they have released (Batman, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Rock Band). So, when I saw there was this trailer for Lego Universe that got released at CES I figured if would be more of the same.  However, after watching the trailer I’m really looking forward to playing it once it release. I have no other real details about the game other than it is an MMO but the video makes it look awesome! Generally I’m not really an MMO player but being able to build stuff and play in an all Lego world has the potential to be really fun.

Dark Void had a demo hit Xbox Live Marketplace yesterday so I took some time to check it out.  The think that sets Dark Void apart from other third person shooter is that you have a jet pack. The demo starts with a cut scene of how you get your jet pack. The graphics in the cut scene were remarkably nice looking.  Not the best ever or anything but I was impressed with how nice it looked.  After the cut scene ends you have your jet pack and you start off with a brief tutorial of how to fly around.  Switching from standing to flying the jet pack is a little disorienting at first, but by the end of the demo I had it figured out.  It just is odd at first how you go from a standing perspective to have the camera swivel around to a flying one. Combine this with the controls switched from normal to inverted when flying (which is how planes controls generally are) and the first time I about crashed strait into the ground.

After going through the basics of controlling the jet pack it then has you learn to use its weapons first on some static targets and then with some ships. The ships took me a little while to get shot down because they move quite quickly, but once I figured out their flight pattern it was pretty quick to actually down them.

From there you learn to hover and land.  Once you are back on foot you fight through a small building to destroy a control console and then fight back out to escape.  You start with a generic machine gun and then can pick up a few other weapons throughout the level.  The first one was a machine gun style shot but with plasma/energy bullets.  The second one I found shot slowly but had large plasma/energy balls that it fired.  That one was pretty fun to use. There is also a melee button that seemed to be context sensitive when enemies got close.  Sometimes if enemies were low to the ground it would kick and then other times it would hit with my gun.

After escaping the building there was another quick cut scene showing a very large boss like robotic enemy that I’m assuming you will have to take out in the full game.  The total demo length was not more than 15 minutes, but it did give a pretty good feel for the game.  It lets you see how you can combine flying and the use of cover which is a big part of Dark Void.  I’m planning to play Dark Void for sure now.  The demo was really nice looking graphically and the story seemed fairly unique.  Plus, I like how the cover system, flying, and vertical elements of the game combined. I doubt it will be game of the year or anything, but it does seem like a fun, polished shooter.

I don’t know what made me decide to try out 0 Day Attack on Earth, but I wish I had not. It is one of the worst Xbox Live Arcade games I’ve played in a long time.  I’ve got a full review up here if you want to read why it is so bad.

Having spent the last two weeks playing Torchlight exclusively I figured I should finally put a full review together. I covered a lot of the basics of the game in my initial impressions so I’m not going to go over all that again.  For my first playthrough I went as an Alchemist mostly focused on the Lore skill tree. That gives me a lot of minions who I can spawn to attack for me as well as strengthens my pet dog.  Here is a breakdown of my skills currently. The great thing about my Nether Imps and Golems is that they stay alive unless an enemy actually kills them. Unlike spells that summon Archers, Zombies, or Skeletons which will disappear after a time. In addition to my minions my primary attack was my Ember Bolt skill. I very seldom used my my staff or wands. I enjoyed playing through like this because I was on my laptop with a generic USB mouse.  So, I did not have to be as precise with my clicking since my minions find their own enemies and the Ember Bolt seeks enemies.  When I play through as a Destroyer I’ll be doing it on my PC with a larger monitor and better mouse.   I already started playing through a second time on my laptop as a Vanquisher and I’m glad to be back home to move over t the PC to finish up playing through as her because I need more accuracy for  her ranged attacks. My Alchemist is up to level 54 now because after completing the story I worked through about 12 levels of the Shadow Vault and a few add-on mod dungeons…more on those shortly.

I really enjoyed the main campaign o Torchlight and the story that keeps the loot grinding going. Torchlight is a loot lovers dream.  There is a ton of stuff being dropped all the time and you can add rings and amulets that add additional 2 or 4% bonus chance of getting better loot. The majority of the enemies are not to tough to deal with but there are lots of them.  Then you’ll run into a boss who takes a considerable more damage to take down.  They are always fun because you mind your health and manna while trying keep spells going and minions attacking.  All while getting in as many attacks as you can while dodging.  The final boss of the main story was the biggest example of this. No spoilers on who it is, but they have a ton of health. It was probably a 5 minute long battle. At one point I spent like 30 seconds just running in wide circles around the boss casting spells that call people to attack for me and then running more to keep from getting surrounded.  It was an epic fight.

After completing the main story I like that the game does not end but you unlock the Shadow Dungeon.  It is a never ending dungeon that just keeps going deep.  Each level is different and you can work through them to level up your character, complete more quests, and find more loot. Plus if you get tired of grinding you can always stop to fish for a while. The actual fishing mechanic is quite simple, wait until the rings overlap and click.  When you do you catch a fish that temporarily either turns your pet into another creature or gives it a bonus modifier. Fishing is a nice little distraction if you ever feel things getting repetitive.  After about 5 minutes you’ll have a ton of new fish to try out. It is really fun to turn your pet into other creatures of an hour and see how they respond.

Another great feature of Torchlight is that they developers openly support modding and released tools for their community to create mods for Torchlight.  They have not been out a long time but already there are a lot of really great mods.  I would highly recommend using Torchleech to find and apply the mods to your Torchlight install.  It is a mod manager that allows you to install mods directly with links back the the original posts and a compatibility check tool to make sure that there are no issues between the mods you install. Here are the mods I’m running (that I can remember off the top of me head). I found most of these by sorting TorchLeech to show the highest rated mods.

Aegis Maps – Volume 2
Aegis Maps – Volume 1
Forgotten Fortress of Rukom
Heron’s Sword Pack
Mine Booster Pack
Potions Stacksize Mod
Respec Mod
Starch the Monster Hunter
The Mysterious Man

The other nice bonus is that since I went with the Steam version of Torchlight I have 66 achievements to try and unlock. Since I was already mostly through the game when they added achievements I’ll have to play through it again to get most of them, but I have no issue with that.  Some of them I’ll probably never get, and Steam achievements don’t quite have the same satisfaction as their Xbox Live counterparts, but it is still a nice bonus.

With the number of hours I’ve already put into Torchlight I already feel like I got my moneys worth, and I’m only just scratching the surface of how much I could play. I’ve got two more playthroughs at least so I can try each of the other characters more thoroughly. Plus, a lot of additional mods are being created that I’m sure will be worth playing.  The additional stand alone dungeons like the Aegis Maps and Starch the Monster Hunter are really a lot of fun.  If you still have not tried Torchlight you really owe it to yourself to try the demo at least.  It is possibly the best $20 I’ve spent on a game.

I’ve been away from my Xbox 360 for a couple weeks so I spent today playing catch up with the Xbox Live Indie Game Channel.  As usual there were a lot of games that had potential, but needed more work. However, I did come across four really well made titles that I’m really enjoying.

Twin Blades is a side scrolling shooter/beat-em-up. It has this really nicely done manga-stylized graphics. The actual game play is simple, slash or shoot zombies as you progress through the levels. As you do you save their hearts to trade in for increasing your weapons and health. It is a nicely polished game and one I’ll be coming back to repeatedly to continue the quest to rid the world of zombies.

PIXEL is the third indie game from Arkedo and like their first two, JUMP and SWAP, it is really fun. It is a platformer with well done retro style pixel graphics. The controls are simple but with a few options to keep things interesting. I’m just getting started in PIXEL, but I can already tell it is well made like their other titles and going to be a lot of fun to complete.

Platypus this side scrolling shooter is 100% clamation based and it looks great. The power ups have a nice balance and mix to them.  Each one has its uses, and the controls are smoothly done. If you like R-Type style shooters this one is well made and very unique graphically.  I never get tired of seeing the little clay ships burst into clay explosions.

Battle Beat caught my attention because in addition to using the normal controller it supports drum and guitar controllers as well. You use them to control your army’s attacks. You have to time the attacks to the beat of the music. It starts out simple but adds strategic elements as you get unlock different troop types to use.

Hope everyone is getting things wrapped up and ready for the holidays. Personally, I’m going to be scare the next couple weeks.  I did finally purchase Torchlight so watch for a full review of that after the new year (possibly before). I’m also trying to teach myself PHP so if you have and good tips or tutorials let me know.

I started and finished Overlord 2 last week. It was roughly 10 hours long with me taking the time to grind out as many of the achievements as possible with one playthrough. If you played the first Overlord you pretty much know what to expect.  It is an action-adventure title where you play as an Evil Overlord trying to take control of the known world. There is a lot of funny dialog and story lines throughout the game.

You start off Overlord II as the “Overlad”. You are a boy learning to control his powers and terrorizing local villagers. After getting run out of town you escape the Roman Empire’s armies with the help of your minions. You minions are small gremlin type animals who will fight and loot places for you. In doing so though you get frozen in a block of ice.  By the time your minions rescue you from the ice years have passed and the Roman Empire controls most of the lands. You then proceed to take back portions of it piece by piece while upgrading your magical abilities and your control over your minions.

After freeing the first town you get your first mistress who helps upgrade your Tower and your minions.  She is the only person who helped you out as a kid.  As the game progresses you get a couple more mistresses which leads to a lot of funny moments in the Tower as the argue with each other of who is #1.

As the story plays out you end up having a couple more towns to take over as well as the Elven Sanctuary.  In each location you have the option to enslave all the towns fold so the mine for you, making you a lot of money, or just kill them off and destroy the town. One annoying thing about this process is that to complete the quest related to each town you either have to enslave or kill all 100 of the town’s villagers. However, since there are exactly 100 villagers if you accidentally kill even one villager you can’t then enslave them because you need all 100 for that achievement.  Fortunately there is an achievement for enslaving and anther for destroying so either way you’ll get an achievement.  I just found it frustrating to enslave 97 villagers only to find out that I had accidentally killed 3 at some point. So, I had to then go back and kill off all of my hard works who were making me a lot of gold to get the achievement.

Overall the game was fun enough to play through once because off all the humor and the fun of playing as dark ruler who gets to go around killing gnomes and unicorns for fun.  The game does have one thing I found really annoying and that is the lack of a save option.  The game only saves when you are in your Tower and exit or if you complete a main potion of a mission it will auto-save.  However, since some of the missions are very lengthy it can be over an hour or two between saves if you’re working through the main game. As long as you play a little carefully you really don’t die too much but if you did you could have an hours worth of stuff to redo.  Plus, when I play there is always a chance I’ll need to stop suddenly so not having an option to save anywhere is just lame. Especially when much larger and more complex games like Assassins Creed II and Fallout 3 give you that option. Still, even with the saving and achievement annoyances Overlord II was fun for the most part. If you’re looking for something short to play solo it worth a rent.

After some discussion on whether or not I should play Assassin’s Creed before playing Assassin’s Creed II I decided to just go ahead and play the sequel and skip the first one.  I’ve finished the game and have 48 out of 50 of the achievements now. My save game is right at 30 hours. Since I never played the original I can’t compare the two, but I did really enjoy the game. There are a few cases where the controls and camera are not quite perfect, but they were never so frustrating I thought about not finishing.

You can check out my full review here.

I joined the Adult Gaming Enthusiasts podcast this week and we discussed the slow Xbox Live Arcade releases recently, Assassin’s Creed 2, Borderlands DLC, CoD MW Reflex Edition, Super Mario Bros Wii, and the  Tropico 3 Demo.

Download here (right-click to save).  Or listen now:

It is kind of funny that we were complaining about the lack of decent Arcade titles recently because just this week there has been a lot of news about upcoming titles that look great. I’ve been posting about them over on XBLA & XBLIG Ratings.