Since there are no more Wednesdays in April I thought today would be a good day to take a look at how Xbox Live Arcade fared this last ointh. If it were not for the fact I’m at work I would be playing some more Eets: Chowdown, but I don’t think my boss would be very happy with me playing my Xbox 360 at my desk. My Top Thee Problems with Xbox Live Arcade are the lack of games coming out, the pricing, and the number of retro games. Like last month, I’ll grade Xbox Live Arcade in each area.

Slow Game Releases
Last month there was a game released every week. In April, Xbox Live Arcade stepped it up and released 6 games in 4 weeks. The first two Wednesdays in April each got a single game, but for the last two weeks there were two games released each week. The games released in April were Luxor 2, Boom Boom Rocket, 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures, Gyruss, Eets: Chowdown, and Pinball FX. Xbox Live Arcade gets extra credit with a 6 out of 4 this month in the releases category.

Pricing
Five of the six games release this month cost $10. Only Gyruss came out at $5. However, give the amount of time I’ve put into just a single game of Luxor 2 and Eets: Chowdown I would say they are both worth the higher cost. No matter how many hours you put into Pinball FX I still thing over $3 a level is too expensive. Boom Boom Rocket and 3D Ultra Minigolf both have their followings, but they just don’t have the same replay value to justify the cost in my opinion. However, I know a lot of people are putting a lot of hours into these Arcade releases, and I’m feeling generous, so I’m giving XBLA a 4 out of 6 in the pricing category.

Retro Games
There was only one actual retro game this month, Gyruss. Luxor 2 is a port of a PC game, and Eets: Showdown is a remake of a PC title. Still, both are great games and fit Xbox Live Arcade perfectly. The other half of the games released in April were made specifically for Xbox Live Arcade. So, I’m giving a 5 out of 6 in this category.

Overall
That bring the overall score to a 15/16. Xbox Live Arcade has come a long way in a month going from a “C” to a sold “A”. If they continue to release multiple games each week and keep the number of retro game to a minimum they should have no trouble keeping their grades up.

When I originally saw the screen shots and videos for Eets: Chowdown I was not that impressed because the graphics are not a style I’m normally fond of. Also, I don’t generally like PC games that are converted (this is an upgrade to Eets: Hunger) for Xbox Live Arcade. In spite of this I decided to give Eets: Chowdown a try and I’m glad I did because it is really fun. For those of you old enough to remember playing Lemmings this has some of the same flavors. The main game mode has 120 levels where you try to get Eets to a missing puzzle piece. Instead of controlling Eets directly you control items in the environment around him and use these items to direct Eets’ movements. There is a great level of strategy to this goofy game. Sure there are lots of crazy and funny characters in the game, but at its core it is about the strategy of getting Eets safely to the missing puzzle pieces.

In addition to the main game mode there is a Marsho Madness game mode that is a lot of fun. In Marsho Madness you have to keep the attacking marshmallows from getting to the center of the screen and killing you. I really like this game mode because the better you play, and the more combos you get, the better your weapon shoots. It is a great time waster that is going to piss my wife off this weekend when I tell her I only want to play one level and then I play a game of Marsho Madness for the next hour.

With 120 levels and an extra game mode Eets: Chowdown is well worth the $10 price. It has hours of playing just going through the levels once, but each level offers multiple ways to get Eets to safety. I realize this review is short, but I’d rather go play some more Marsho Madness than take the time to add more details to this review. Sorry. Maybe I’ll post an update later when I can’t see strait from staring at the TV screen to long.

When I saw Pinball FX was coming out for Xbox Live Arcade I was pretty excited because both my wife and I are big fans of pinball. After playing Pinball FX for a while I’m a little disappointed. The game itself plays great. It responds really well to the controls and the physics of the ball seem very accurate. However, there are only three machines and they all have similar layouts. The bumpers and ramps are different but all three of them have the extra flipper on the left side. For $10, 800 points, I’d like to see 5 or 6 different machines at least. With only three machines I think they should only have charged $5, 400 points, for Pinball FX.

Ignoring the lack of levels for this price tag the game is actually quite fun. In addition to the normal single player you’d expect you can also play against up to three other players of Xbox Live. The multiplayer is actually a little better than playing against your friends in real life. Instead of waiting for your turn, all of the players in the game play at the same time, racing to get to a certain high score. The high score is set by whoever sets up the game. This adds a nice twist to the usual pinball gameplay because it is not a matter of simply keeping the ball in play as long as possible, but also getting the ball to areas that will give you more points.

The controls are simple enough. Use the left and right trigger to control the flippers. The A button shoots the ball, and the X button changes the camera angle. Also, the left thumb stick is used to bump the table, but use this sparingly because it is really sensitive. If you don’t feel like playing with a controller you can also use hand gestures with the Vision Camerato control the game. Sure, you’re probably only going to try this once or twice, but it is nice to see developers integrating the Vision Camera into games. The camera also supports live chatting in the game which also a nice addition for this game.

Overall, I’m torn because the game plays well and there are a lot of cool little additions that make Pinball FX fun. On the other hand will I really play it long enough to be worth $10? I guess time will tell. Right now I’m enjoying Pinball FX, but if I play it for only a couple more hours and then get tired of it I’m going to be annoyed with the price.

I played Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2’s multiplayer for a while last night. What GRAW2 lacks in a single player campaign it makes up for in multiplayer and co-op options. There are 9 different verses game modes and 3 co-op modes. Under each of these modes there are multiple game types which can be further customized. There are also 19 different maps to play on. All of this combines to have one of the most extensive multiplayer offerings for a first person shooter on the Xbox 360. The multiplayer gameplay takes some getting use to. It is much slower and more tactical than any other shooter I’ve played, even Rainbow Six: Vegas. Unlike most first person shooters it does not take a lot of bullets to kill your opponents (or your teammates if you are not careful). Most of the time a single bullet or two will do the trick. The key is to be accurate with your shots because once you shoot a few bullets you give away your position. So, if you do not kill your opponent, they will have found your hiding spot and can take you out with just a bullet or two. After spawning in a match there is a quick rush to get to cover, but after that there is very little movement occurring in most game modes. A lot of the matches come down to which team can get a tactical advantage by flanking the other without exposing themselves to fire in the process. I started off getting slaughtered the first round, but I quickly learned to switch my weapon to single shot mode to make it more accurate and to methodically move around the maps. Once I did this I as getting my share of kills.

In addition to playing some normal verses multiplayer last night I played a few rounds of the co-op missions. The co-op missions in GRAW2 allow for up to 16 people to play the same mission against computer controlled opponents. It is a nice break to work with the whole room of players. It helps build teamwork and is a lot of fun. The addition of clan support in GRAW2 makes it one of the few games on the Xbox 360 to allow for true clan vs clan matches.

One of th things I really like about GRAW2’s multiplayer is that the achievements don’t require me to play ranked matches. Unlike Gears of War, I can get the achievements playing with my friends. Additionally, Ubisoft recognized the some of the achievements would take some time and would be hard to keep track of manually. For example, the achievement for 100 sniper kills would be hard to keep track of because you’re not going to stop each time you get a sniper kill and keep track of it. To assist those of us who are Achievement Whores they have added a section to see how close you are to each of the multiplayer based achievements. It is a great addition for a game like this and one I hope to see copied on many games in the future.

I’m still not a big fan of the loss of a cover system in such a tactical game, but since the cover system in the single player is not that great I can live without it in the multiplayer. Overall GRAW2 is a great multiplayer game. Don’t go into it expecting to be able to play it likes Halo 2 or Gears of War and you will find that Ubisoft has made a great first person shooter.

I took some time away from GRAW2 this weekend to check out the Command and Conquer 3 demo. I’ve never played any of the previous Command and Conquer games, but I spent many hours playing StarCraft back in college so I’m familiar with playing real-time strategy (RTS) games. I also played some Battle for Middle-Earth II when it came out for the Xbox 360. I still prefer playing RTS on a PC because using a keyboard and mouse are much better for RTS games. However, I enjoy gaming from my couch a lot more than gaming at my computer desk. That is why I originally tried Battle for Middle-Earth II. They did a decent job on getting the control system to where it worked for a controller in Battle for Middle-Earth II, but it still had some quicks that a die hard RTS fan would probably not stand for. However, since EA made Battle for Middle-Earth II for the Xbox 360 and they are making Command and Conquer 3 I figured they would improve the controls based on their knowledge of how fans liked Battle for Middle-Earth II. With that in mind I started playing.

After playing through the tutorial and both single player missions I found that I like the control scheme in Command and Conquer 3 better than the one in Battle for Middle-Earth II. The controls are very similar, but they have made a few improvements. There are options to access just about everything you would want to do from the control menu. So you can do things like build more troops or structures without first having to click on the building that makes them. This allows for the screen to stay focused on the battles going on while still managing everything back at your base. This is one of the best additions to a RTS game. It helps make the game be about the fights and not about micro-managing your build order.

The game itself looks great. The graphics look like what I expect from a game on the Xbox 360 and the cut-scenes with actors I recognize are a nice bonus. Sure, RTS games are about the multiplayer, but since they have a single player mode it is nice to see they put some real effort into making it have a decent story to play through.

The multiplayer in the demo only lets you play against a random person and not against your friends as far as I can tell. If there is a way to play against your friends someone let me know how to do that. Also, I read a while back that the game will support the vision camera for multiplayer, but if the demo supports it I did not see how to set it up. Even against random players the multiplayer played great. I got schooled, but then I think if I play a few more times I will figure out a good build order and be able to get off to a better start.

For anyone who likes to play RTS games, but just doesn’t think playing with a controller will be as fun as playing on a keyboard/mouse give Command and Conquer 3 a try. You don’t have quite the level of control you can have with a keyboard for things like hot keys, but for anyone but the most serious RTS player the controls are good enough to have fun. I really enjoyed the demo. I’m not sure if I’ll rent or buy Command and Conquer 3, but I’ll definitely be playing it. I just have to see how many of the guys on my friends list get it to see if it will be worth buying or not.

I started playing Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2’s single player campaign on Friday afternoon. Sunday I finished the campaign on the “guarded Risk” difficulty setting. That was fast. I checked LiveEye and it said I had played for 12 hours, but 2 hours of that was me downloading the exclusive multiplayer map. So, that means I beat the single player campaign in 10 hours. I had fun playing it but I was not expecting it to be so short. I’m glad that I only rented it. I’m going to check out the multiplayer tonight and hopefully I’ll get a change to check out the co-op options later this week, but if they are minimal as the single player I’m going to be pretty disappointed .

Like I mentioned after playing the demo, the game is like a slightly enhanced version of GRAW. The enhancements are nice, but nothing that makes the game really stand out. The new cross-com option to be able to see through your team mates cameras full screen and issue controls from that screen is nice. However, I found myself only using it when I could not get them into the position I wanted any other way. The graphics do look better in GRAW2, but there is just not enough new single player content. The story picks up right where GRAW left off and takes place mostly in Mexico again. So, while the graphics do look better you’re still mostly looking at desert and rundown Mexican cities. Other than the length of the game the only other issue I had with it was that it is hard to tell exactly when a mission starts/ends sometimes. I do like that the game flows from one mission to the next, but when I needed to take a break I never knew if I was going to have to redo part of the game I had just played or not. I never did figure it out, but since it was so short it did not really matter that much. If it had been a longer game it would have been a bigger annoyance. I think GRAW2 would have been much better as an expansion to GRAW than as a stand alone game. If you are not going to play any GRAW2 multiplayer then this one is a rental for sure.

After some delays, the Player’s Pack Red Edition for Rainbow Six: Vegas was released Wednesday. The pack contains 5 new maps and 2 new game modes. At 800 points,$10, I think this is a must buy for any who plays Rainbow Six: Vegas regularly. Give that Halo 2 charged $2 a map recently, with no additional game modes, I think this is a pretty good value for your money.

Game Modes
The two new game modes are Assassination and Total Conquest. Both are team based and require that teams work well together to win. In Assassination one team is charged with protecting a VIP and the other team is charged with killing this official. What makes it interesting is that the the VIP is one of the players on the defending team, and he only gets a pistol with no armor. The objective is simple enough for the attacking team; kill the VIP. For the team defending the VIP the goal is to him to a set checkpoint alive. I really enjoyed playing Assassination. With only one life it sometimes turns onto Team Survival with the VIP hiding in a corner somewhere, but when teams work together it can be quite an intense game. I played on both the attacking and defending team and on most maps the attacking team can setup a couple choke points and wait for the defenders to approach. It takes patience, but pretty much ensures a victory if your team can play that way.

Total Conquest is essentially a King of the Hill Style game where there are three hills. What makes this mode really interesting is that the more of the areas you hold the faster you get points. So, when you hold one hill you get 5 points a second, if you hold two you get 15, but if you hold all three you get 25 points. Personally, I really enjoyed this mode. The exponential scoring made the games really close and allows for a loosing team to mount a fast comeback with an organized effort. Like any other game mode some maps are better for Total Conquest than other, but I enjoyed it on all the maps I played it on.

Maps
There are three brand new maps and two maps that are recreations of existing ones. Roof, Doscala Restaurant, and Marshalling Yard are brand new and then there are remakes of Killhouse and Border Town.

Roof is a very interesting map. The whole map is basically a three story building with a section of street on two sides of it. When I started playing it seemed like the Alpha spawn point (which is on the roof) has a distinct advantage, but since there are about 8 ways to get up to the roof it is not as bad as it first seams. The fighting inside the building can get quite crazy because there are three floors of hallways and rooms to get lost in. When playing Total Conquest on Roof it took me 3 minutes to find one of the satellite locations. It was on the first floor in the corner, but I first had to get down to the lower floor and then find my way there. It is a good map. On Team Survival and Team Sharpshooter if you start at the Bravo Spawn point don’t go out into the street. Instead spread your team throughout the building and wait for the Alpha team to come down to you. A well timed push for taking control of the roof by the bravo team can work, but if the Alpha team is intent on holding the roof they should be able to.

Doscala Restaurant is quickly growing into one of my favorite maps. It has a great split between wide open areas outdoor and confined close quarters inside. As expected there is a restaurant to fight in, but there is also the street out back and an adjacent parking garage. I played a few rounds of Team Sharpshooter and at first it seemed like the Bravo spawn point has a much better start location because they can get tot he second floor of the parking garage much quicker. However, once I got the hang of the map I found that the alpha spawn provides some great routes to use for flanking. Overall this map is well balanced between open street areas and confined indoor areas.

Marshalling Yard is also a mix of open areas and indoor corridor, but unlike Doscala Restaurant is seems like most of the fighting takes place outside so be sure to have a long range weapon and to take it slow walking through the level. Nothing worse than rounding a corner and getting sniped. This maps takes some getting use to for me because I prefer a close to mid-range battle, but once I started using more accurate weapons I had a much better time. The setting is an old train yard so there are some train cars to help provide cover while crossing the wide open spaces. Around the edges there are plenty of building to hide in while you try and snipe the players crazy (or stupid) enough to attempt to cross the open areas.

Killhouse Redux is a remake of the current Killhouse map. The essentially took Killhouse and opened it up. Each building not haw a back door on the first floor and the center dividing wall is now a hallway. Also, the spawn points have been moved from behind the buildings to the second floor inside the buildings. These changes mean you can get from your spawn to the other teams a lot faster. I’ve never been a big fan of Killhouse because I tend not to do that well on it, but I found some of the strategies I like to use still work pretty well. Just keep in mind that the opposing team can get behind you a lot faster now.

Border Town Redux takes the original Border Town map and moves the church to the center. The roads back behind the house are gone now. The map is much smaller without these areas. The area behind the church has been opened up a little and is the Bravo team’s spawn point. The house now only lets you get into the first floor from the church side of the building. Most games really become a battle to hold the church, especially since from it’s roof you can get a nice vantage of the opposing teams spawn. This really sucks for the Alpha team because their spawn is just a short section of the road on the side opposite from the house. The Bravo team at least has some rooms to hide in in their spawn area. If the Bravo Team can take the church it is quite easy to keep the Alpha team pinned into their spawn area. I’d not recommend this map for Team Sharpshooter. For other Team Survival it would probably be ok since you’ll not be in your spawn area except as the game starts. Also, objective based games would probably work ok as well.

Auto Update
In addition to the new game modes and maps there was another Auto Update released. This one has less changes, but they still decided to change the guns again. All of the other tweaks seem ok, but I still don’t see why they are changing weapons at this point.

> A bug in Ranked Matches unintentionally allowed players to play multiple rounds back to back worth large amounts of experience points. Ranked Matches now properly disconnect everyone at the end of the match.
> Non-dedicated hosts can no longer automatically launch matches without being present. On a non-dedicated host, the game will start when either everyone presses Ready, or the host presses Launch.
> Added mechanisms to detect the use of rubber bands on your gamepad to level up. Anyone doing this will receive a “player idle penalty”, which means zero experience points at the end of the match.
> Fixed a bug introduced in the last patch that unintentionally increased auto-aim when using long range scopes.
> Modified the efficiency of certain Sub-Machine Guns and, to a lesser extent, Assault Rifles. Noticeable changes can be found on the MP7A1, MP9 and MTAR21.
> The Take Cover camera has been improved to fix a specific situation that allowed someone taking cover to aim-fire at a target without being seen.
> Fixed the fact that Grenades could be thrown through certain walls.
> The sound effects of explosions are now working as intended on dedicated hosts.
> Reloading your checkpoint / saved game in Single player will no longer revert your difficulty level. This should help make the Rainbow Six Legend achievement more attainable.

Overall this is a great addition to an already fun game. Although $10 may seem a bit expensive with everything you get it is well worth it. The new game modes and maps add even more options to the well rounded multiplayer and the Auto Update cleans up the few annoying glitches that people were complaining about.

I decided to check out 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures despite the fact the last golf game I played, Tiger Woods 07, had me swearing like a sailor (no offense to any sailors reading this). Fortunately, they kept the controls nice and simple. All you have to control is the angle of the hit and the power. There are three different controls schemes to choose from. Each with a different method for control. First, you can control it Tiger Woods style with the right stick. Pull it back to set the power and push forward to swing. The other two methods both use the A button. With the “Three Hits” method you hit the A button to start the power level going up. Hit it again to choose the power level, and then hit the A button a final time to adjust the shot angle. The final control scheme is the “Hold” method. You hold the A button until the power level is where you want it. Then just release it to hit. All three methods use the left thumb stick to choose the angle of the shot. I found the Hold method to be easiest to use, but I did not have too much trouble with the Tiger Woods method. The Three Hits method was a bit harder to use because you have to be accurate with your clicking to hit it strait.

The game offers both single player and multiplayer games. Playing the single player matches feels a lot like practice for playing in the multiplayer mode because you never see any other players. However, it will take quite a bit of practice to be able to get par on any of the three courses so that is not necessarily a bad thing. One of the better aspects of multiplayer, besides the opportunities trash talking, is the powerups. You can use them to knock your opponents balls of the course giving yourself an advantage. Just watch out for their revenge attacks.

In addition to playing the 36 included holes you can make your own with the included hole designer. The created holes can be played locally or over Xbox Live. There are a lot of options for what you can put into the custom holes making for some interesting shots.

3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures has four separate characters you can play with, but there is no benefit to using any of them. They all play exactly the same. This would have been a perfect game for using the vision camera to face map. Given the online play, it would have been really cool to see your friends faces as you play them online instead of always seeing the same 4 pre-made characters.

The Achievements for 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures are going to take some practice. A couple of them you get just for playing the game’s course, but most of them are for getting certain scores. Getting 4 or 5 under par is probably doable after a few rounds, but 12 under par is going to be brutally difficult to get. If you’re looking for some quick points this is not the game to try.

While the game is pretty fun it does have a couple issues. First, the Power Meter is very touchy. Hitting the ball with the power level near the top of the green portion hits the ball like 2 feet, but just barely in yellow portion of the power meter and you hit the ball around 10 feet. Don’t even bother hitting the ball with the power meter in the red section because it will go out of bounds. After a few rounds you get use to it, but it makes it hard to get actuate distance shots. My other complaint is that there is no way to move around and see the entire hole before you hit the ball. I know I’m spoiled from playing Tiger Woods with all the options it provides, but you can only zoom in and out and tilt the angle of the camera. The camera always stays behind/above your golfer. This makes it difficult to score well without playing through each course a few times to memorize the holes.

I like to judge the value of an Xbox Live Arcade game by how long I will play it verse the price. At 800 points, $10, 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures is worth the money if you expect to be playing it online with your friends. After a few rounds the single player gets a tad boring playing alone, but with the option to make your own holes you always have the ability to try new things. Overall a decent addition to Xbox Live Arcade.

I decided to set aside my anti-retro bias and give Gyruss a try today. Gyruss is essentially a Galaga clone. The only real difference is that instead of moving along the bottom you move in a circle around the edge facing the middle of the screen. Like Galaga waves of enemies come on screen and you have to shoot them to save Earth. Even at 400 points, $5, I’m still disappointed with Gyruss. I’m a big fan of Galaga style games, but when I play them I expect them to have decent graphics. Gyruss has both the original and enhanced graphics for all 23 levels, but I don’t really see a big difference with the enhanced graphics. The games controls are really simple. You move with the left thumb stick or D-pad and shoot with the A button. I wish they had made it so I could also use the right trigger to shoot because after a couple levels repeatedly hitting the A button tires out the thumb. The addition of 2 player co-op and verses over Xbox Live is a nice addition, but at this point in XBLA games it is to be expected. Nothing to special here, but like most of the other retro titles if you’re a big fan of games from the 80’s this is right up your alley.

Generally I’m not a big fan of Flash based web games. I prefer to play games with a controller sitting on my couch, but when I heard the guys from DL.tv mention how much fun Desktop Tower Defense (DTD) was I thought I’d give it a try. Now that I’ve been playing it for a week I wish I had never heard of DTD because I can’t get anything done on the computer now. This game is so fun and addicting. This review took three days because I kept stopping to play DTD. It falls into one of may favorite categories…easy to play but hard to master.

The site gives this description ” Desktop TD is a flash based TD game, that pays homage to a few Warcraft 3 tower defense maps. You have to stop your enemies, or ‘creeps’, from traveling all the way across the screen. Tower pieces can be purchased and placed on the map to kill the creeps before they make it across.” Sounds simple enough, but it is quite challenging. After a few tries you’ll probably figure out a strategy that works for you. I prefer to setup my towers so they overlap and force a bottleneck in the middle of the map. This gives me more changes to attack the creeps.

The replayability of this game is through the roof. In addition to being able to play the game on Easy, Normal, or Hard there are 9 challenge modes and 4 fun modes. Personally, I play on normal most of the time because I can’t make it anywhere on Hard. My top score so far is 5640. Post your top score in the comments if you can beat me. If you’re a fan of tower defense or strategy games give Desktop Tower Defense a try.