Hope everyone had a great Xmas and got lots of lovely MS points to spend on more arcade games! I recieved a couple of 1600 point cards and I’m looking forward to splashing out on some of the new releases (Note: Don’t forget to check out the Xbox originals store as right now there is 50% off Halo!).

So looking back over 2008 I think we can say that there have been some pretty good titles released. Here is a rundown of some of my favourites:

Castle Crashers

I loved this game and still find it tremendous fun to play. The game really makes me laugh, there’s some great power-ups and abilities and there’s plenty of violence and gore all wrapped up in cartoon graphics. Did I mention you can play with 4 friends too?

Braid

Initially I was put off by the high price of this game but it has really grown on me and I am still going back to it every other week just to enjoy the fantastic graphics and artistic design of the game. I love the time-beding aspect of the game which breathes live into a genre that is pretty dead these days. The gameplay can be fast and intense along with some mind bending puzzles. 

Super Street Fighter II HD Remix

For me this is probably the best Arcade game of the year, or maybe Braid, ok pick either one. Capcom took a game that was over 15 years old, kept the fantastic gameplay and sprinkled HD magic dust all over it to give us a classic beat ‘em up game (that is still the king of fighting games for me) but with a 2008 look. A must buy for all Live Arcade fans.

So what were your favs for 2008? Let us know!

My first introduction to Rare was back in the mid 90’s with the Donkey Kong Country games that I had for my SNES along with Killer Instinct in the arcades and they quickly became one of my favourite developers. Then in 1997 they brought out what I still to this day hold as the best game I have ever played; Goldeneye on the N64. I loved Goldeneye but after playing it I realized that I was starting to grow up from ‘cutesy’ games, I still enjoyed playing Super Mario 64 but I had forever been turned into an FPS junkie. So when Banjo Kazooie came out I never bothered to pick it up, I remember watching a few demos in my local games shop and not being interested at all. So here I am 10 years on reviewing it for Live Arcade so I must admit this is the first time I have ever played it, and I am not impressed at all.

I recently dug out my old N64 and had a quick go on Super Mario 64 and found the game to still be very enjoyable and it has aged well but I cannot say the same for Banjo Kazooie. The game has many similarities to Mario 64, just nowhere near as good though. The controls are rather limited and Banjo feels sluggish when he jumps and swims, the camera controls are sticky and not particularly easy to rotate around, getting a good view of your surroundings can be annoying. The textures in the game world seem dull and lifeless  too, I know this may all seem a bit harsh for a game that was made 10 years ago and I’m sure Rare did the best they could with the tools they had at the time but at the end of the day this game just feels like 2 steps back from the awesome Mario 64. The later levels have some very frustrating game play elements and this is all for a hefty price tag of 1,200 points. Those of you looking for a trip down an N64 memory lane will be sorely disappointed with this title. 

I’d say there’s quite a lot of competition out there for block based puzzle games, I enjoy playing Bejeweled and I still love Super Puzzle Fighter.  So here we have a new entrant into the market with Meteos Wars , it doesn’t really bring anything new to the genre but it’s addictive, there are plenty of game modes to keep you entertained and the online multiplayer is pretty fun too.

The main objective is to match three colours in a row, either  horizontally or vertically and then blast them off the top of the screen. There is a cool sci fi twist to the game also the blocks are supposed to be the alien invaders or ‘Meteos’ and you are blasting them off your planet as they land. It’s a very basic story but so what this is a block puzzle game.

As usual with these types of puzzle games the gameplay is fast and addictive but what I really liked best was the gravity effect that is in the game. Each level represents a planet and each planet has different strengths of gravity, so some of them will have zero gravity making it very easy to launch the blocks off into space but later on there will be much stronger gravity on the planets and thus the blocks get heavier which results in them being launched upwards a lot slower. This can make for some really frantic levels later on and you need to be pretty fast to get through.  There are also special blocks to destroy for certain missions along with some interesting power-ups.

When I first downloaded this game I was very skeptical with the amount of similar games there are already on the market but I am pleased to say that Meteos Wars is both unique and enjoyable and I highly recommend it as one of the best Arcade releases in a while.