No one really gets too old to appreciate Disneyland and what it represents.  In lieu of actual hobnobbing with your favorite Disney characters and riding the marvelous rides in the park, you can try the next best thing to Disneyland – the Kinect Disneyland Adventures.  It can temporarily fill in the void of not being able to go to the park while enabling you to enjoy with your family for the price of the game.  Now that should count a lot considering the cost of a single admission ticket.

The secret to truly enjoying the game is the same as when you physically enter the park.  You set aside your adult inhibitions for a while (at least during the game) to be the child you were once upon a time in your life.  It goes without saying of course that this game is best played with children who can best appreciate the simple joys of having fun.  It is ideal for the whole family since it contains games that will be too easy and boring for adults as well as games that can be a bit challenging for younger players.  Everyone will have the chance to participate depending on the level of difficulty.

Even if it is unabashedly promoted as a kid’s game which it is, this is no reason for adults to retreat and just watch their children play.  Meeting the Disney characters is always a treat and it is no different in the game.  With a little imagination, players can actually see the magic that can only come from Disney.

A month ago, I talked about the release of the robot badminton game Blazing Birds. Now that it’s been released how does the game fare?

On paper, Blazing Birds does sound exciting. The thought of robots playing badminton sounds like a cute and quirky idea. But unfortunately, the reality is far from impressive. First of all, graphics wise it pales in comparison with other games released on XBox Live. The reason is that Blazing Birds was developed using XNA tools. It just doesn’t cut the mustard when compared with games like Braid. The badminton based gameplay is also quite shallow so don’t expect a lot of replayability here. On the upside, Blazing Birds is just $5, which will certainly attract gamers with a tight budget.

I think Eidos had a really hard task here of taking traditional jigsaw puzzles and trying to implement them into an exciting and colorful Xbox game, I suppose there’s only so much they can do with that kind of scope and the end product is rather lacking.

There are plenty of features available from changing the shape of the pieces to having thousands of pieces in a single puzzle (if you have the patience for that, I certainly don’t).  Luckily though you can save your puzzles if you are half way through and finish them off later. There are options such as turbo mode that automatically flips over the pieces for you and challenges where another player keeps moving the pieces around or flipping them back over making it a tad more difficult.

The puzzle designs and graphics that come with the game are pretty dull but one option that I thought was pretty neat was that you can snap a picture with your Xbox camera and then set that as the puzzle’s image, ok not that amazing but and interesting idea and it’s not often you see the camera integrated into games.

For those of you thinking about purchasing this game I strongly recommend that you try the demo first because not matter who hard Eidos have tried to jazz this up it’s still jigsaw puzzles.

A great free game!

The first thing I need to say here is that a LOT of Live Arcade developers and advertisers need to sit up and take notice of this game. Here is a game that did not cost me a single penny, is very easy to pick up and play, has reasonable graphics and fun gamplay and also it wipes the floor with a lot of other arcade games out there that would cost you 800 points or more!

Before I played this game I was expecting it to be just some opportunity for Doritos to splatter their brand name all over a game that had been thrown together in a few weeks by a team of low level programmers and designers, I have been pleasantly surprised. Firstly there is very little mention of the product in the game and you hardly ever see the logo or it’s images anywhere. Secondly it’s actually not a bad game to play, there are 2 modes to choose from, each with 6 levels and there’s also local multiplayer. You can either choose to be a huge T-Rex and your task is simply to charge around the map chomping up the little delivery vans that are scooting around trying to deliver the Doritos. You can smash through buildings and vehicles and people run screaming in all directions when you do, it’s great fun. I personally prefer the second mode where you are the delivery truck and you are frantically trying to escape the stampeding T-Rex. In comparison to the pursuing Dinosaur your vehicle is tiny, but what I liked was the way it moved very fast and you can skid around the map, it all reminded me of the Micro-Machines games back on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive and was a hoot tom play.

This is  GREAT little game to play, ok the life span might not be that long but it’s FREE. As I said at the start of this review, devlopers need to take note here of what can be done for free and I would love to see other advertisers creating more free arcade games.

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.

Try saying that 3 times fast!!

As we wait with much anticipation for the return of the best and most well known beat-em-up series of Street Fighter in its fourth installment of the series Capcom has made the wait a bit easier by blessing us with a graphically vamped edition of the classic Street Fighter II Turbo. This is a game that was the sole result of the controllers for my SNES getting worn down to nothing during my teenage years. It was one of those games that you could even pull out at parties and everyone would want to have a go. The game overall is still very straightforward and still holds true to the original gameplay. In fact I found the gameplay so sold after all these years that it made me wonder why the majority of modern fighting games still can’t replicate it.

HD Remix has fantastic visuals that are bright and sharp, all the characters look like they have been taken straight from one of the Street Fighter anime movies, which is exactly how they should look. The sound has also been remixed by OC Remix and they have done a fine job. I found the controls to be very tight which is quite rare for games that utilize the D-pad on the 360 controller. You can of course plug in an arcade stick but I am someone who grew up mainly playing Street Fighter games from home so the D-pad is what I know best.

I haven’t tried online play due to the fact that my connection isn’t so good. Slow down in fighting games can ruin the experience so if your connection is slow like mine then stick to local games. I always found it better to be sat next to your rival when you take him down with super ‘Ha –do-ken’ anyway

Super Street Fighter II HD Remix is aimed squarely at hardcore Street Fighter fans, it can of course be enjoyed by casual gamers and first timers just don’t expect any bells and whistles though. The gameplay is probably stronger than any other XBLA action/fighting game out there though and I can guarantee that you’ll be playing this for months to come.

Kingdom for Keflings initially sounded like a teeny bopper game that I usually wouldn’t touch with a 10 yard pool but thankfully has turned out to be a real gem and a nice original title to add to XBLA and it’s heavily addictive.

The basic concept of the game is something much similar to the Civilization series but a lot simpler. This is the first game that utilizes your avatar from the new dashboard update. Your avatar acts as a giant that can interact with the Kefling people and help them out with duties such as chopping down trees, carrying them around etc, it’s quite like the giant pets you have in ‘Black and White’ and works very well. Due to using my personal avatar I felt much more attached and involved than using a pet.

So the basics of this game are resource gathering and building your town up. You can assign tasks to different Keflings by picking them up and then dropping them off say at the forest and then they will chop and gather wood. You can upgrade your resource gathering by building a lumbermill that turns logs into boards and then later a woodcarver who can make carve the planks to make more intricate designs for your buildings. Once your town is built and populated you become the mayor and then need to complete quests to improve your giant and enable him or her to move faster, build quicker etc.

Overall I found this game pretty good, I am quite into complex strategy games but I still managed to enjoy this and highly recommend it.

I remember this coming out on the Playstation back in the late 90’s, if I can recall it was pretty good at the time but also there seemed to be quite a few other ‘death race’ style games around then and this one didn’t exactly stand out from the crowd. Initially I was excited to play this but I realized that 10 years on the gameplay hadn’t aged that well, for most of the battles I was either driving straight into enemies and blazing away with my weapons or I was reversing back from them whilst trying to keep them at bay with my rockets.

For single player there is a quest mode where you can choose from eight vehicles and then play through three different arenas and for each arena the number of enemy vehicles increases. Downed enemies drop salvage which can be collected to increase your damage points and weapon combos.

Single player mode gets pretty dull once the nostalgia has worn off but luckily the multi player mode is pretty solid. For online play you can have a total of eight buddies playing and there are five arenas, there’s also a split screen mode. It’s also worth mentioning that you can have 4-way split screen which is pretty rare these days. From the little amount of time I spent playing this online I didn’t incur any lag and found it quite enjoyable but I am not sure how long the online community will stick with V8.

Overall Activision have done justice with V8 and if the online community sticks with it then it should be in the top ten for a while.