First up is Braid, and when I say that Braid is one of the most beautiful games that you will play I mean it. The music is fantastic, and the levels and character design are all sublime. The magic of Braid comes from combining all this visual wonder with the interesting game mechanic of time manipulation. Depending on the level, you're slowing down, reversing, or even stopping time and giving every level a new dimension. This is a phenominal game that everyone deserves to play.
Next up is Castle Crashers. Where Braid is cerebral, haute, and almost snobby Castle Crasher is good ol' beat-em-up fun. Don't get me wrong, the animations of the characters are fluid and the music is surprising compelling, but the heart of this game is simple, mindless destruction of your enemies. The leveling up of your characters and improving their strength, magic, defense, and agility adds another layer to an already awesome game. To all those kids who played Final Fight and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the arcades and 7-11's, this game is for you. The game's biggest weakness is by far it's online multiplayer, which is buggy and prone to dropping games. Hopefully this will get fixed as some point. This doesn't take away from the gameplay in general nor the offline multiplayer. In fact, playing w/ 4 people in the same room is one of the games strongest points.
Finally, we have Portal: Still Alive. For starters, you must understand that this is mostly a port of the original Portal game in XBLA form. There are new, challenging achievements to be had, but aside from that and the 14 new maps, Portal: Still Alive has little else to offer. Depending on who you are, this may not be a bad thing. If you're a rabid Portal fan who owns an XBox and curses the PC crowd for having all of the extra mods and maps, this is for you. If you (for some moronic reason) haven't bought The Orange Box, this is also for you. If you have $15 with nothing better to do w/ it, this is for you. For the casual Portal fans, this isn't a good buy. I'm glad I picked this up, but I truly wish there were more maps. The price of the game is justified if you're not already an owner of the game, so the rest of us are somewhat hosed. Still, I bought it and am enjoying it all the same. The new achievements do add a new kind of challenge to the game, especially the Out of the Blue award.
In closing, Braid gets a 9 out of 10, as does Castle Crashers. These are two must-own games for your XBox Live experience. Portal gets an 6 out of 10 if you already own The Orange Box or a 10 out of 10 if you don't, mostly for being just Portal which is awesome on it's own.
1 comments:
I really wish they'd release something with just the extra maps and achievements for those of us who already own Portal. :-(
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