Matching colored items - will it ever get old? We used to think so, but Xbox Live Arcade games like Hexic, Astropop and Zuma Deluxe have convinced us otherwise. And even if you already own the other two, Zuma's worth your precious Microsoft Points too.
If you're a Bust-A-Move fan (or if you played the old PlayStation game Ballistic), you'll recognize Zuma 's basic setup. Your pivoting gun (in this case, a frog idol) fires colored stones into an ongoing chain, with the goal of eliminating
There's a pinwheel on your ass. You try to run away but you're suddenly bombarded by two dozen pulsing blue diamonds. Quick, cut left - but don't get sucked in by the black hole that's inexplicably bright red. After a narrow escape to a relatively empty corner of the undulating, pinpoint-laden blue grid, you're abruptly annihilated by an explosion of what can only be described as electric sperm. If you think you're stuck in a nightmare, you're right - but when that nightmare is Geometry Wars:
As with just about every Xbox Live Arcade game available (except maybe Wik: Fable of Souls), Feeding Frenzy is an exercise in basic game design. Stripped down to core elements, Feeding Frenzy challenges you to do two things: eat fish smaller than you and avoid getting eaten by bigger fish. While you're chomping and evading other chompers, you can pick up all kinds of little under-sea doodads, like score-boosting starfish or extra lives and the
If you've already mastered mayoring Sim City and you've long since established your dominance as a rollercoaster tycoon, it's time to take your skills to new heights - like into orbit. In Outpost Kaloki X, you'll micromanage space stations to nurture nature, build businesses and establish espionage, all while attempting to rescue a ditsy princess from the evils of the
Poker may be getting all the good press lately, but there's another game with its own semi-secret support society, a game of deceit, power, cunning and blatant tricks. You wouldn't know it to look at it, but the candy-colored Hardwood Hearts is a strategy monster.
A favorite for years, Hearts is a trump card game, meaning that all four players are racing to collect certain cards while avoiding others - namely, hearts. If you feel like a daredevil, you can intentionally try to take all the
Go get a chessboard. Then grab your collection of sapphires, pearls, rubies and other precious stones and put one gem on each square. Now, kinda move them around a bit; try swapping their places. If any of them start disappearing - or better still, exploding - when they line up with two other jewels of the same type, congratulations! You've invented a real-world version of Bejeweled 2. Let us know how you managed it. It didn't work when we tried
Imagine Robotron or Geometry Wars with crystal collecting and a massive variety of enemies, and you've got Crystal Quest. This game is awfully derivative, but still somehow manages to be totally engrossing due to its surprisingly intense difficulty. Crystal Quest doesn't hit you with a serious challenge right out of the gate, though. It has a gradual learning curve that keeps the early levels easy, but eventually ramps up to the kind of arcade chaos that will fuel a personal
We're sure a good amount of you Xbox 360 owners don't remember the days of wallet-murdering arcade games. The claustrophobic dungeon crawler Gauntlet was the worst kind - one quarter wouldn't cut it. As you ran through overhead, labyrinthine passageways packed with monsters, you were constantly losing health. To keep it up, you had to find scarce items like food, or keep pumping Washington's skull into the arcade
You may not know Astropop by name, but you might recognize its gameplay, since it looks and plays very much like the Neo-Geo game Magical Drop II. Instead of bricks falling loosely from the sky, you've got to pull them down from a jumbled wall, rearrange four or more bricks of the same color so they match, then throw them back into the wall and make them disappear. Fail, and the whole thing crushes you to death. Astropop adds a sci-fi setup, some unlockable characters and the novelty of Supa
Prepare to die. A lot. Smash TV is back on the air, and if you hope to claim this game show's cash and prizes, youll have to grind your way through exhausting, seemingly endless swarms of robots, monsters and bald men with clubs. And thats just in the first
