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 evening if you dare let it.  Evidently the great guys at Zen Studios thought the exact same thing, and have attempted to put that magic fuel into their own immortal classic: Pinball FX2.  Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to say: Mission Successful.  Plants Vs Zombies is full-tilt fun, following the surreal-arcadey feel of recent titles such as Epic Quest to make something not-quite-possible-but-oh-so-worth-it.

Plants Vs Zombies is a relatively high-scoring table that is all about keeping the action going and flowing, with great lane placement, tons of minigames and missions to active, multiple interactives (from the watermelon catapult near the launcher to the zombies that shamble towards you to the fog that rolls in), and countless references to the original game.  The table is incredibly well designed, and the first half-dozen games will be full of countless surprises as the intricacies of such a chock-full table get peeled back.

The general theme of Plants Vs Zombies seems a little busy at times for a Pinball table, and if you’re a fan of simpler, more “classic” tables, then this new one won’t find much love in your eyes.  Indeed, this table certainly follows the newer trend to make action-y and animated tables, pushing that thin envelope of what a real life table could actually achieve well past its limit.  Still, if “fun” is more important to you than “reality,” this table is jammed full of everything that makes pinball fun and everything that made Plants Vs Zombies so endearing.  Well, maybe not everything – I must admit, I was sort of looking forward to a Zen Garden, but I guess that minigame couldn’t make the cut.  For only 240 MSPoints, this title is a great addition to your pinball collection.

Game Score: 10/10.

Download the Plants Vs Zombies table here.

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 within simplicity. Every shump game is basically the same – Kill bad guys, dodge bullets. With those things seeming so obvious and simple, why is it that most people can’t go 2 minutes in an average shump? Why does the later levels of some of these games just look insane to our untrained eyes? The answer is obvious and is the same one many people will give when asked the same about Paradox games – because the games are hard. This is a mistake, the games are not hard. You just don’t know how to play them.

Add this to the fact that Shumps evolve, quickly, like a pathogen and you’ll see why I might be a tad annoyed at Super Killer Hornet, a massively low-effort affair from the boys at Flump Studios.

Let’s go over it first. It’s a shump that seems to want to be a throwback to classic Japanese style shumps. It has a gimmick where you collect falling numbers that make up a math question. Answer the question correctly and you get some more points. Keep shooting stuff.

That’s the entirety of the game, besides the writing which is either hilariously racist Engrish style gibberish or just poor writing. Even the earliest games had some more advancement than this to them, some really incredible minds that made ‘Scroll up/To The Right’ fun and unique time and time again. This entire game is literally just scroll up, shoot things, answer an inane math question once every 30 seconds. No powerups, no extra weapons, no interesting bullet patterns (unless you consider a literal grid of shots slowly flying toward you interesting), no fun enemies besides the same few foes that fly at you covered in white jaggy borders and explore in some kind of stock Explosion.gif that clashes with the background.

What we have here is an example of a game that proves the crew can program, but don’t know how to make a game. I suspect all this stripped down nature isn’t really an attempt at a throwback, but just a way to mask the inability to come up with interesting mechanics. The game even ruins its own mechanics. When you hold down the fire button, you fire a special laser beam style attack. Problem here is that you also stop moving very quickly. One of the other buttons does a rapid fire attack but the laser beam is literally useless. Speed is everything in these games, it doesn’t take much to realize that.

Don’t buy this game. Get something better. Boot up some of the classic SNES, Arcade or Genesis shoot-em-ups and see that the roots of this genre are filled with more innovation in a single megabyte than this game pulls off in all 70-odd megabytes of its wasted potential.

Game Score: 1/10.

Download a free demo of the game here.

“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 don’t exactly fit by design. I became angry when I solved a puzzle in Puzzle Cubicle and the pieces did not even remotely looked like they would have been pieced together.

Try to make sense of this. I dare you.

I’m an artsy kind of guy. I like my pictures to make sense. The game became artificially harder because of this oversight. How much more work would it have been to create tile sets that make sense when you put them together? I swear if they paid as much attention to the art assets as they did the music, this game would have been baller. Oh yea. The music is probably the only thing that kept me playing as long as I did. It’s that good.

It's a damn shame showing you a picture of this hot mess won't let you experience the game's music.

I’ll be the first to tell you how much I love puzzle games. Every great puzzle game, indie to AAA has these things that make them a joy to play. A good tutorial or a great learning curve where it introduces the game mechanics little by little. This game’s tutorial is a joke. It gives you the least amount of information as possible and then dumps you into the game. It took me longer figuring out what to do than completing the first puzzle.

Another thing is getting the player to become “in the zone”. To do that, your game needs to look simple on the outside yet deep and complex in the meaty bits. I’ve already harped on this. This game looks as complex as the tangled cables behind your computer and it makes your brain hurt trying to figure it out. One other thing high on my list is quality music and artwork. Well, ½ out of 3 ain’t bad.

Game Score: 4/10.

Download a free demo of the game here.

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 power.

_

Which isn’t to say this is a bad game. Spoids is a tower defense that plays very much like how every Tower Defense (TD) game in the history of the genre plays. Put down your towers, make them shoot a never-ending supply of abstract beasties until you’re told you’re done. Spoids does make some efforts to mix up the samey gameplay by using objectives; every level has 3 objectives. Each objective is basically ‘Survive a few more minutes’ but it adds a little tension to the game and builds up that all-important replayablity. Add in the fact that the game has some passable voice-over work and if you’re a fan of the genre you could certainly do worse that here.

The problem lies in the fact that everything Spoids does, with the exception of the above gameplay mechanic (and I’m not much of a tower defense player, so that could even be cribbed from somewhere), has been done better elsewhere. The graphics are a mishmash of geometric neon shapes that spell the word ‘Geometry Wars’ as they spin at you, blinking. The plot of being a member of a team of ass kicking tower builders holding off an alien invasion reminds me of many TD titles’ attempts at “story”. I understand in this genre it’s hard to do anything really stand out and cool, so I’ll hold back my usual poorly actualized venom on this one, it was just disappointing to see a waste of such high production values on a game with barely anything I can’t get free elsewhere.

The game does have some neat stuff in there that isn’t really diminished by the lack of spirit. Some of the weapons feel fairly new and interesting in the world of TD, it is hard as all hell which I know appeals to a certain audience of sadomasochistic sociopaths (me) and the stilted way various upgrades to your arsenal of towers arrive manages to make not every level feel the same. In fact, that is probably Spoids greatest gameplay mechanic. It introduces new enemies along with the best weapon to combat them at roughly the same time. I know, it’s nothing ground breaking, but in plenty of these games you’re given every weapon as soon as you can afford it. Spoids handles it in a different way, and I appreciate how well it works.

And, ultimately, it is a very well made game. Voice acting, polished graphics and the UI are perfect. For the style alone I recommend this game. It may not be anything with a soul, or artistic or intelligent or thought provoking, but it is, at least, shiny.

Game Score: 5/10.

Download a free demo of the game here.

“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 girls.” I throw my controller on the coffee table and point accusingly at the game playing on the television. “This… this irredeemable pile of sloth filth straight up offends all of my higher senses and I think I may be falling into a depression.”

Behold! The ultimate downer.

WDesm nods his head sagely. “So what you’re telling me is that this game is the greatest game you’ve ever played?”
A sharp pain erupts behind my eye, deep in my temple. “I think you just gave me an aneurism.” I say. “It’s definitely an aneurism. I feel my will to live fading.”
“I think aneurisms are more violent than that.” He says, scrutinizing my face. “All I see is your eye twitching. Oh, look at that you just died to that… thing.”
I will WDesm’s head to explode like a balloon but only succeed in making my headache worse. I snatch up the controller and return my attention to the crap on the TV. “To be completely honest with you, I think that’s a mummy or a zombie. A mumbie.”
“Zommy.” He adds quickly.

I don't know man. This costs 240 ms points. I've seen better free flash games than this.

“On second thought, I think that’s a failed cast member from the Jersey Shore.” I say.
“That’s oddly specific.” WDesm says giving me a sideways glance.
“No really, check it.” I say. “I want to take something heavy and swat the cast members of Jersey Shore across the mouth and I ALSO want to take a heavy object and swat myself across the mouth because it would be preferable than playing this crap.”
“So you love Manic Miner?” He says.
“Like a bullet to the temple. 1/10.”

Download a free demo of the game here.

“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 little details that most people look in racing games these days (lets not forget file size as well). There’s no soundtrack while racing; which to me is a sin. I had to bust out my Jet Moto (remember that?!) soundtrack and have that play while racing. There’s no cockpit view. The hood camera works, but dammit my immersion!. The sound of driving on dirt sounds second rate. And your car doesn’t fall apart when you slam into stuff. Alright. You still reading? Cause that’s all the bad stuff I have to say about this game.

Yeeehaw! We're going for a ride!

For those who like their racers in the arcade flavor, the controls are spot on. Tighter than my fist when it’s grabbing on to a 20$ dollar bill I found at a Wal-Mart parking lot. It simply feels right as you careen down a narrow twisting ravine at full throttle, because you feel in control of your whip. They even let you change the pitch of your car mid air so you can attempt to land on all four tires. And drifting. Oh man the drifting. Pull on that handbrake and look out to your side; I think I caught myself readjusting in my seat as I drifted around a corner.

What I'm trying to say is, “Cool”.

The multiplayer sadly is a ghost town. Tried catching a few games online and only got the party filled up to 6 out of 8. It was fun times, I just wish more people played it. * cough * itsonly800mspoints *cough * If you don’t speak coughanese, the game is 800 ms points, you should totally pick it up. It has its flaws, but it’s a solid arcade racer nonetheless.

Game Score: 7.5/10.

Download a free demo of the game here.

“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 do a couple of levels and boom you kinda get the gist of the game. For this game, it kind of ends up differently. It took me awhile to learn how to set blocks (although to be honest, I’m still not sure I learned it completely) because sometimes when I press the button nothing happens.

You can also shoot enemies, but unless he uses invisible bullets, then I don't know whats up.

Nevermind the frustrating and/or buggy block placements, the name of this game is to guide the water down into the funnel. You do that by placing blocks that are fussy, opening gates and sometimes using yourself like a dam. If the water falls out of the funnel, the pressure in the room goes up. I don’t know why the pressure would rise nor I do know what the pressure is rising in. I’m thinking inside his pants. Oh snap son!

Oooh. Burn.

One thing really irks me about this title though. There’s no in game music. Just janky sound effects. If you’re gonna go for the nostalgic presentation, man, at least hire some dude from a college music course to throw together an 8-bit chiptune or something. This screams lazy to me. There’s actual effort in the game, don’t get me wrong; but it doesn’t grab me at all. After a few levels I lost complete interest and had to force myself to play on. It goes with what I said earlier. Aqualibrium blew their load like a nervous teenager. Early and probably in their pants.

This is getting disgusting. Topic change!

You should definitely try it though. Maybe something will click with you that just went over my head. Maybe you love the fact that you’re an astronaut (?) with a jetpack flying around guiding water into a funnel. Seems good on paper maybe, but this is not the game for me.

Game Score: 6/10.

Download a free demo of the game here.

“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 with brand new gimmicks, Bang Bang Racing tried for a “beauty in simplicity” approach that works rather marvelously.  In fact, the only thing beyond “acceleration” and “brake” that the controls offer is a simple Nitro feature that works great for boosting around fellow racers and simplistically adding a little depth to tactics.

Eight Racers! Hairpin turns! Exploding Barrels!

I’m not the first person to do this, and I certainly won’t be the last, but there’s certainly a parallel to be made to the old classic Micro Machines titles on the NES.  Tight-knit courses zig and zag, and with only the barest of course interactives (pylons and barrels realistically placed around dangerous turns) and zero power-ups or superpowers, skill is the real deciding factor in a race.

If Micro Machines had Places Kids Play, Bang Bang Racing has Climatology 101

Bang Bang Racing has a rather ingenious system of unlocks – within your first five races, you have unlocked each of the primary vehicles, each focusing on a boost of handling, acceleration, etc.  Each vehicle has a series of skins that can be unlocked, some by doing straight-forward targets (ie: Come in the top three on Stage five), while some are rather exotic (ie: Come in the top three on Stage four after hitting at running into at least four barrels).  Course-wise, content is unlocked in the more traditional sense, with each of the four cups being unlocked by placing well in previous events and stages.

There are two camera modes - following and fixed. Following is fairly enjoyable for a "dynamic" feeling, but fixed probably gives you better perspective.

Bang Bang Racing is probably best described as a “safe bet”.  Despite championship cups, a collection of interesting unlocks, local 1-4 player splitscreen multiplayer, and customizable course choices for one-off races, the game focuses on solidly delivering a few simple basics and not straying from the formula.  The end result is a game that is a fair bit of fun, a blast with a few others on the same couch, and a good nostalgia dose for those that want more of a Micro Machines-vibe from the 1990s.

Pylons! Barrels! Blue Flames!

Game Score: 6.5/10.

Download a free demo of the game here.

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 dynamic and story-based titles Fear Itself, World War Hulk, The Infinity Gauntlet, while the fourth title, The Avengers, is based upon the recent blockbuster movie.  The tables are high on interactivity, storytelling, and dynamic visuals, and for those that have enjoyed the more recent tables for Pinball FX2, this is going to be a another great treat.

The Avengers, based loosely on the movie, is a table with minimal distractions in its design and lots of features.  With only a few ramps, the table is all about precision ball control….and, six different Avengers.  Each Avenger (Captain America, Hawkeye, Thor, Iron Man, The Hulk, and Black Widow) each have their own colour ball and possible powerups, which adds a little bit of variability to the table.

Two tables, World War Hulk and Fear Itself, are probably most comparable to the previous Marvel tables.  Multiple potential minigames and quests can be unlocked with a variety of lanes and bumper combinations.  The most impressive feature of Fear Itself is the animation of the heavy mech on the right side of the frame, which jumps to life, stomping around the table and bouncing the ball in a highly unpredictable and challenging pattern.

The last table, The Infinity Gauntlet, is the most radical departure for the four tables.  Including full mini-tables, animation cutscenes, and an inverted table mode (where the camera flips), a bona fide story is told about Thanos and his six Infinity Gems (which must be reclaimed from him).  The table is flashy, lively, and full-on-engaging, and includes a huge amount of voice-over work and dynamic questlines.

I’ve long loved Pinball FX2, and I still do in this DLC pack, but everything in this DLC pack is markedly different than usual – for almost all previous Pinball FX2 tables, I can squint just a little, and half-admit that “yeah, they probably could make that as a Pinball/animatronic/mechanical table if they reallllllly tried.”  Some tables are more plausible than others, but most facets could be argued as nostalgically acceptable.  While the latest tables do, if you’ll pardon the pun, bring a whole lot to the table (and indeed, a whole lot under the hood, including the option to turn off dynamic animation cameras and the ability to increase or decrease the table inclination [which has an effect on ball speed]), this is the first batch of tables that no amount of suspension of disbelief will allow me to accept as “real”.   Don’t get me wrong – I loved these four tables, and I would instantly recommend them as fun, engaging, and dynamic, but if you’re a pinball purist, forged on nostalgia and grimy quarters in dingy games rooms….well, this might not be what you want.

Game Score: 9/10.

Download the DLC table-four-pack for 800MSPoints here.

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 that isn’t cribbing off NES and SNES games.

HoH is a side scrolling adventure game that combines elements of puzzle and platforming. For the core gameplay, there isn’t really much else to be said with getting into deep analysis about it. You run, you jump, you use various powers granted to you through special hats and you try to make it to the end of the level in one frog-shaped piece. The elements of the game, however, all combine in a way that, as I mentioned, reminds me of old PS1 side-scrollers of similar ilk, such as Pandemonium. A lot of that comes down to the fairly basic 3D graphics, level backgrounds and sound design. Frankly, while I do love that this isn’t yet another pixely/gimmicky game, the color choices were a mistake. Everything in the early stages is ugly browns and greens and while it does get slightly better in the later stages, everything still looks like dull blobs of colour. The sounds are significantly better. The music is functionally upbeat and the effects fit the games style and theme in a really solid way. That’s a little weak, but sound design is one of those things that you can’t really appreciate without hearing.

The main problem with HoH is a break between its theme and its gameplay. Plenty of games have breaks like this, where two elements of the game clash against each other and conflict. Here, it’s the difficulty and the theme. To look at HoH, you’d expect a fairly simplistic platformer with maybe a boss or two. Maybe even something for the kids to play. However, and this may just be me being terrible at the game, this is a brutally difficult game. Unfortunately it’s not even the “fun” kind of difficulty you see in something like Ninja Gaiden or Dark Souls, the difficulty stems from what feels like design oversights. Bombs explosion radii are huge and the damage you receive from them is unforgiving; you will fall to your death over and over while you work out the Arrow-Hats special power – That sort of thing. I’m not saying the difficulty strips the fun out of the game, far from it. It’s just that, when a game looks like it’d be an easy fun time, and you end up frothing at the mouth like a rabies victim, there may be something wrong with the design of the game.

Finally, aside from being graphically a change of pace, the game itself is fairly generic. The titular Hats gameplay gimmick boils down to a collection of powers and powerups that you use through most of the game. The level design is uninspired and nothing really screams uniqueness throughout. It’s best feature, the co-op, can work against it in many ways, making the screen busy, confusing and sometimes makes the jumping puzzles a huge pain to struggle through.

In conclusion, this is a totally and utterly functional platformer game. Nothing too impressive, but at the same time it’s not going to make you throw up all over yourself like plenty other indie titles might. There’s a nice lot of work gone into this, I feel, and it’s probably worth the money.

Game Score: 4/10.

Download a free demo of the game here.