Posted by WDesm on 07 28th, 2012

Posted by WDesm on Sep 6, 2012 “Amazing Pinball that truly captures that magical Popcap feeling.” An XboxHornet review by WDesm. Popcap games have long been synonymous with a glorious mix of addictive fun, engaging minigames, and adorable personality.  Games like Peggle, Bejeweled, or Plants Vs Zombies are little more than pure, refined crack cocaine when it comes to how completely it can absorb an...

Posted by WDesm on Aug 8, 2012 “Avoid this Wasted Potential.” An XboxHornet review by Liam Jugler. Shumps are one of the most difficult of the gaming worlds to enter. They share many similarities with the historic simulation games, and shumps, while much simpler, can sometimes feel like that first time you opened a paradox game and just started crying, endlessly. They are the height of complexity...

Posted by WDesm on Jul 28, 2012 “Frustratingly Opaque.” An XboxHornet review by Xavier “Mercedes” Marchena. Son of a b*tch, this game is difficult; in a really frustrating way at that. Your goal is to rearrange all the tiles like a jig-saw puzzle. What makes it frustrating is this: Imagine doing a jig-saw puzzle with an abstract picture of just lines and with pieces that...

Posted by WDesm on Jul 20, 2012 “Incredibly Polished and Professionally Sculpted, but Void of Personality.” An XboxHornet review by Liam Jugler. Its kind of funny that the biggest complaint I usually have about Indie games is their lack of polish and general spitshine, but Spoids has the exact opposite problem, being a title that is full of polish, very flashy, but lacking in any real staying...

Posted by WDesm on Jul 10, 2012 “I’ve seen better Flash games.” An XboxHornet review by Xavier “Mercedes” Marchena. “Hey Merc, I never knew you still had an Atari.” WDesm says. I could feel the derisive smirk creep over his fat ugly face as he stands behind me. “This isn’t an Atari game, numbnuts.” I say. “You forced me to review this cup of feces without the...

Posted by WDesm on Jul 2, 2012 “For only 800 MSPoints, you get a really solid Offroad racer.” An XboxHornet review by Xavier “Mercedes” Marchena. I’ll say this right now just to get it out of the way. Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad is a poor man’s Colin McRae Dirt 2. I don’t mean it in a terrible way at all though. The budget most likely is not there to give the...

Posted by WDesm on Jun 29, 2012 “A Little Bit Frustrating and a Little Bit Confusing.” An XboxHornet review by Xavier “Mercedes” Marchena. Aqualibrium falls into a trap that many indie puzzle games also fall into. They front-load all of the game’s features in a severely compacted tutorial that leaves you scratching your head in confusion. What actually happens is you simply...

Posted by WDesm on Jun 23, 2012 “A Great Little Racer!” An XboxHornet review by WDesm. Certainly, the racing genre is well established.  All sorts of gimmicks have been done – from powerups to bullet-time, from cartoon themes to boss fights, from PvE to PvP full-out combat, and countless other permutations.  Instead of carbon-copying another overused gimmick, or worse, reinventing the wheel...

Posted by WDesm on Jun 20, 2012 “A Bold New Look For Zen Studios…And I Love It.” An XboxHornet review by WDesm. Zen Studios long ago demonstrated their Xbox / Pinball superiority, and further cemented it with many examples of amazing DLC.  The latest pack is another Marvel-themed four pack, and it is just as amazing as the rest of their lineup.  The table line-up this time includes three...

Posted by WDesm on Jun 16, 2012 “Something a Little Different (And Refreshing) For XBLIG.” An XboxHornet review by Liam Jugler. Heroes of Hat reminds me of the long gone PS1 era, not just in graphics but in that sort of early 3D adventure game style. There’s a lot of elements here where you can see the influence of those first tentative steps into 3D and, frankly, it’s refreshing to play something...

Posted by WDesm on Jun 10, 2012 “A Beautiful Allegory for The Value of Education.” An XboxHornet Preview by Liam Jugler. [While Brain Jump 1+2 were reviewed on XboxHornet here, with the release of the latest installment, another of our intrepid reviewers has tackled the series again, intent on giving it a fresh perspective...] The Brain Jump series is an allegory for the perceived value of human...

Posted by WDesm on Jun 5, 2012 “Leaps Ahead of The Bulk of The Indie Marketplace.” <Coming June 22nd to XBLIG and Windows PC by Smudged Cat Games> An XboxHornet Preview by Liam Jugler.. Your first instinct of Gateway will be, inevitably, to call it a Portal ripoff. In some ways, this is true. Much of the game is built around portals and Portal-esque puzzles. To pretend that the game is wholly...

Posted by WDesm on Jun 3, 2012 “EVERYTHING You Need To Feel Like A DJ.” An XboxHornet review by Xavier “Mercedes” Marchena. Zivix, the peeps behind JAM Live Music Arcade have balls the size of elephants. You need that kind of testicular fortitude to put forth a game like this. Years after the Guitar Hero franchise drowned their own market with a ton of music games, JAM uppercuts out...

Posted by WDesm on May 30, 2012 “A Lot of Content, Indie Rock, and Polish for $3!” An XboxHornet review by Traslin. Music rhythm games were all the rage a year or two ago. How many iterations of Guitar Hero were released within the two year period leading up to its demise? Five? Six? I’m not sure, but I didn’t buy any of them and neither did anyone else apparently. Is A-band able to bring some...

Posted by WDesm on May 26, 2012 “A Great Couch Co-Op Game With A Lot of Ugly Quirks.” An XboxHornet review by WDesm. I have a long-standing relationship with the dev company Andreil Game : I absolutely hate to love their games, and I absolutely love to hate their games.  Andreil Game is a familiar face around XBLIG; with a stocked library such as Pioneer, Dark Seal, Easy Racing, Dungeon Tales,...

Posted by WDesm on May 22, 2012 “A Retro Inspiration Worth Looking At.” An XboxHornet Review By Liam Jugler. Diamond caves is a retro throwback to the old C64 game Boulder dash and the classic Emerald Caves for the Amiga. In a world of retro remakes, retro-sperations and Retro-neo-Renaissance Works, you need something to stand out from the crowd. Diamond Cave doesn’t have much of that, but it is...