Yay!

Urban Space Squirrels - 80 MS points. If that title alone didn't at least catch your eye, then allow me to elaborate as to why it should have. You play as a squirrel, which in and of itself is awesome since squirrels are like adorable little lawn ninjas. However, this one is a space squirrel, which apparently means it is red and black for some reason, but that's not what's important. What's important is that you guide this squirrel as it runs, jumps, climbs, glides, and bomb jumps its way through 20 levels of puzzle platforming challenges. And yes, I said bomb jumping. One of the key puzzle elements of the game is placing bombs and detonating them at the right time to either activate switches or give your little space squirrel some extra jumping height with a blast. All of this is brought together with smooth animations and a slick art style akin to Mirror's Edge, making Urban Space Squirrels an easy game to recommend. And you might want to think of downloading it sooner rather than later, since the developers seem to be saying that the current $1 price is a limited time deal.

Aah Little Atlantis - 80 MS points. Legend has it that long ago the lost city of Atlantis sank into the sea. In Aah Little Atlantis, you play as the malevolent deity that sent it there. But you aren't a completely uncaring god, because the goal of the game is to sink the land masses while allowing the people to escape. It plays out as a turn-based strategy game, with each turn allowing you to flood a square of land and drop a meteor. Meteors act as safe spaces where villagers will survive the flood if placed on a mountain, or as walls to herd the villagers if placed anywhere else. There are also palm trees, which can be flooded to create rescue rafts to save villagers. All of this strategy comes along with an 8-bit art style (which you can toggle between pixilated and a smoothed look to simulate how it would look on a standard definition TV) and a delightfully malicious sense of humor. Aah Little Atlantis is easily one of the most fun strategy games I've played on the Xbox in a while, and I highly recommend it for those that like to plan ahead and don't want another tower defense clone.

Prismatic Solid - 80 MS points. There are already a handful of excellent bullet hell shooters on the Xbox 360, but if you're a fan of the genre then make some room on your hard drive for Prismatic Solid. Prismatic Solid takes the term "bullet hell" very seriously, at times completely filling the screen so that it would be impossible to make it through unscathed. I don't mean impossible for the average gamer but experienced shmup fans can find a path, I mean that there is actually no space between the bullets to fit your ship through. Or, it would be impossible, if not for the three satellites that surround your ship and block enemy fire. These satellites - blue, yellow, and red - can be positioned around your ship in six different formations. The formations also correspond to different weapons for your ship, so you'll need to have not only the right formation of shields but also the right weapon for each situation. The protective area of each satellite can be expanded by collecting colored gems dropped by some enemies, or you can press the corresponding face button of a satellite to unleash a powerful screen-clearing attack that also reduces the satellite's size. Prismatic Solid is all about balancing risk and reward, and the payoff is exceptional. This is all to say nothing of the visuals, which are bright and colorful in the most psychedelic of ways. Bullet hell fans, enjoy.

Ay?

Blast - 80 MS points. Do you remember those levels in Donkey Kong Country where you shot from barrel to barrel? Well Xbox indie game Blast is an entire game of that. Personally, I love it, and I was tempted to put this game in the Yay category this week. But alas, I know plenty of people who loathed those levels on the SNES, so this barrel blasting game my not be for everyone.

I Suck At: Word Games - 80 MS points. Despite the title, this is actually a fairly good word game. It's your standard Boggle-type, with a grid of letters to construct words from by connecting adjacent letters. In what I'm assuming is a nod to the "I suck at" title, there is no word requirement that you need to reach in order to continue to the next level, which eliminates the frustration typically found in this type of game when there is that one word left that eludes you. Even those that don't suck at word games will enjoy this one.

Ice Crush 10,000 B.C. - 240 MS points. In this puzzle game you must help a caveman clear colored blocks from his cave. He does so by throwing curling stones, with the stone's color corresponding to the button pressed, at an ever-increasing stack of blocks. When a curling stone hits a block of the same color, it vanishes. New blocks also will fall from the ceiling, often blocking your throw path so that they must be cleared first. There are also power-ups that can be earned as you play, but in my experience the puzzles were never difficult enough to require them. It's a decent puzzle game, if perhaps a bit on the easy side.

Chaos Node - 80 MS points. Chaos Node is a very difficult game to describe. I suppose it can be classified as a puzzle game, where your goal is to create chain reactions by exploding shapes of the same color. It's best played with four friends, as each player is aiming to cause chain reactions in different colors, and the turn order is constantly changing to keep everyone on their toes. If you have some friends handy and are looking for a hectic puzzle game, then give Chaos Node a try.

Fifteen - 80 MS points. Honestly, I've always hated these types of fifteen puzzles. It's the classic sliding puzzle where a board of 15 jumbled blocks need to be moved into their proper order. But despite my feelings for it, the puzzle has been around for a long time, and must have fans to have persisted so long, so I'm trying to be objective when looking at it. And when looked at objectively, Fifteen is easily the best of this type of game to hit the Xbox. It has a nice 3D presentation, and sliding 23 picture puzzles in addition to the standard number puzzle. But it also has limitless potential, with the ability to import any of your friends' gamerpics as a puzzle, or create your own in the game's paint mode. It's a nice feature set that should certainly please fans of sliding block puzzles, I just happen to not be one of them.

Quickball - 240 MS points. Quickball is an invented sport that seems to be a cross between Soccer and Football. Each team carries and passes the ball, trying to throw the ball into the other team's goal. There is also an area behind each goal where you can score a touchdown if you successfully pass to another player there. The controls and player animations are a bit stiff, but if you have someone else to play it with it can actually be a lot of fun.

SFG Beach Volleyball - 400 MS points. Take one part Volleyball and sprinkle in a little bit of RPG character progression, and you've got SFG Beach Volleyball. This is one of the few cases where using your Xbox Avatar really ads to the experience, since you're essentially making your own Avatar a better Volleyball player as you keep laying. It goes a long way toward personalizing the experience. That being said, the AI you play against and with is pretty hit or miss. As in, the opponents always hit and your AI partner almost always misses. It dragged the game down enough that I would say play with a friend, or don't play at all.

The Brain of Bob - 80 MS points. The Brain of Bob is a puzzle/platformer taking place inside the delusional mind of the titular character, Bob. It has some interesting puzzles revolving around item usage to get past obstacles, such as a hoverboard to float over spikes. Unfortunately, the controls aren't exactly spot on, often causing missed jumps and running into enemies that you shouldn't have, which drags on the experience. And though I normally don't like to talk about graphics, the art in The Brain of Bob is pretty unappealing, if not just plain ugly. And yet I can't help but like the game. Maybe this is just a case of liking the concept more than the execution, but if you can get past the graphics and some control quirks, there's a good game hidden under there.

GochaSuraDash - 240 MS points. GochaSuraDash is almost an excellent puzzle game. It's a match-4 puzzle game in the vein of Puzzle League or Tetris Attack where you swap the placement of blocks to make your matches. The problem comes in from what happens when you clear blocks. Clearing blocks causes the stack to move upward, with clearing more blocks and combos causing it to move faster. This is a problem because, though attractive when still, the pixilated art style becomes painful on the eyes when scrolling by quickly. I had to stop playing after a few minutes because it started giving me a headache, which has never happened before. I sense that the game could be fun if my eyes could actually follow the action, hence the game avoiding a Nay, but I can't fully recommend a game that causes physical pain.

Blood Tempest - 80 MS points. This game is identical to the same developer's last game, Modern Pirate Hunter: EP 1. Ok, so the boats are a different color, and you now have the option to change the what the sky looks like, but other than that it is the exact same thing. When I checked my hard drive the name of the save file was even the same as Modern Pirate Hunter, which just shows how much of a copy/paste job this game was for the developer. They had even named the first game "episode 1," so it is baffling to me why they did not at least call this game "episode 2." That all being said, the game is actually pretty fun to play, just like the first version, and this one is cheaper, making it probably the more desirable download if you're looking to buy it. But I would almost encourage people to buy the more expensive original if only to allow the developers to have a budget to make an actual second game instead of releasing the same game twice.

Nay :(

Light Bikes 360 - 80 MS points. So, this game is clearly based on the light cycles from Tron, with your "bike" (though it looks more like a space ship) leaving a trail that will destroy your opponent if they touch it. To use Tron terminology, Light Bikes 360 allows you to go "off the grid" since you have a full 360 degree range of movement. However, the bikes just move too slow to make it much of a challenge, and there are already better games of this style on the Xbox indie channel.

Nice Try - 80 MS points. Nice Try puts you in control of a snake that is perpetually moving forward on a path scattered with four leaf clovers and mushrooms. Clovers get you points, and mushrooms hurt you. There are a few scattered power-ups and enemies, but that's about it. Though passable, it's not likely that Nice Try will hold your interest through the trial version's time limit.

Video Poker - 80 MS points. Yup, that's video poker alright. Looks like it was made in MS paint too. Next.

Avatar Penalty Shootout - 80 MS points. There was a game just like this last week, and though this one is easily the better of the two (you can actually move your avatar around inside the goal) I still wouldn't recommend it.

Avatar Takedown - 80 MS points. What do you do when you want to use Avatars in a sniper game, but Microsoft doesn't allow you to perpetuate violence toward Avatars? You say that it's a "tagging" dart instead of a sniper rifle. This game has you looking through binoculars at a group of Avatars and trying to find the right one in the crowd. The Xbox indie game Headshot did it first, and did it better.

Good Sir, A Balloon Race! - 80 MS points. It's a hot air balloon race where you can't control the speed, yippie! Pressing the A button makes you float up, and letting go makes your balloon drop. I suppose you can control the speed to a degree, since there is an airstream that makes you go faster if you float your balloon in it, but the controls are so imprecise that it might as well not be there.

That Seagull Stole My Chips - 80 MS points. Imagine the NES classic Duck Hunt only instead of ducks you shoot seagulls and giant bouncing soccer balls. Then remember that the Xbox 360 doesn't have a light gun to use, and the game looses most of its fun.

Try Not To Fart - 80 MS points. Watch as two vapid heteronormative stereotypes go on various dates. They talk constantly, but never in ways that sync up to have the conversations make any sense. All the while you'll be given button press commands that, if done correctly, prevent the guy from farting and "ruining" the already terrible dates. Congratulations Silver Dollar Games, you have successfully defended your title as the king of shovelware developers.

Updated Games

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