XBLA Catch-Much: Farewell to XBLA

I'm pretty psyched for Bastion, but I was hoping to get it on PC. Does Summer of Arcade have that time exclusivity thing?

Shadow Planet and From Dust look interesting too, but they might wait.

I regret buying Daggerdale, I should have held out for Bastion. Shadow Planet seems right up my alley and from Dust looks interesting as well, but I'm going to wait on that until I get some hands on reviews from some reviewers I align with.

What I do know is the kinect game in the mix pretty much ruins the promotion for me. Not that I'd buy them all anyway, and 1200 points for each title isn't very affordable.

Subsribing now that I have an Xbox.

Bastion has been a must own from me since the first trailer, and Toy Soldiers a close-to-sure purchase. I'm very interested in ITSP, but reviews will have to sell me on that. Like Clockwork, the PR for From Dust has been pretty bad/scarce, not showing me much more than a tech demo. I'm in the process of selling the Kinect I got with the 360, so Fruit Ninja will escape me.

If anyone happens to get 4 out of the 5, minus Fruit Ninja, and wants Crimson Alliance free, it'll be slightly cheaper to just pick up Fruit Ninja and get Crimson Alliance free.

Since this seems to be the premiere Xbox thread, a question:

I've noticed in the deals thread that Live Gold cards go on sale around every 2-3 months, and only last a few minutes at that. Anyone remember the last time they were on sale? On that topic, when it happens again, would someone be so kind as to pick one up for me? I'll reimburse you; I have street cred. ;P

cyrax wrote:

I've noticed in the deals thread that Live Gold cards go on sale around every 2-3 months, and only last a few minutes at that. Anyone remember the last time they were on sale? On that topic, when it happens again, would someone be so kind as to pick one up for me? I'll reimburse you; I have street cred. ;P

You just have to watch the deals thread. They are on sale much more frequently than that. They got so often there for awhile that I didn't always even post some of the deals I was seeing.

MannishBoy wrote:
cyrax wrote:

I've noticed in the deals thread that Live Gold cards go on sale around every 2-3 months, and only last a few minutes at that. Anyone remember the last time they were on sale? On that topic, when it happens again, would someone be so kind as to pick one up for me? I'll reimburse you; I have street cred. ;P

You just have to watch the deals thread. They are on sale much more frequently than that. They got so often there for awhile that I didn't always even post some of the deals I was seeing.

Your source?

cyrax wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
cyrax wrote:

I've noticed in the deals thread that Live Gold cards go on sale around every 2-3 months, and only last a few minutes at that. Anyone remember the last time they were on sale? On that topic, when it happens again, would someone be so kind as to pick one up for me? I'll reimburse you; I have street cred. ;P

You just have to watch the deals thread. They are on sale much more frequently than that. They got so often there for awhile that I didn't always even post some of the deals I was seeing.

Your source?

I follow three tech deals sites in Google Reader:

http://dealspl.us/
http://slickdeals.net/
http://www.techbargains.com/

Techbargains is the busiest.

Turtles in Time Re-Shelled is going to be delisted from the US Marketplace on the 30th, so if you want it, now is the time to get it.

clever id wrote:

I regret buying Daggerdale, I should have held out for Bastion. Shadow Planet seems right up my alley and from Dust looks interesting as well, but I'm going to wait on that until I get some hands on reviews from some reviewers I align with.

What I do know is the kinect game in the mix pretty much ruins the promotion for me. Not that I'd buy them all anyway, and 1200 points for each title isn't very affordable.

If you buy all five games, that's six games (including the free one) for $70. That's really not a bad deal, especially when considering some of the crap that publishers put in a box and sell for $60.

I don't have a Kinect, but I'll probably get Fruit Ninja because eventually I'll end up with one.

cyrax wrote:

If anyone happens to get 4 out of the 5, minus Fruit Ninja, and wants Crimson Alliance free, it'll be slightly cheaper to just pick up Fruit Ninja and get Crimson Alliance free.

This is exactly where I am and the conclusion I came to. Fruit Ninja might be good for 200 useless points and my kids may enjoy it, so might as well pick it up and consider it as the free game.

Galaga Legions XD is pretty good. Thankfully they put you in control of the satellites, so now it's taken the twin-stick shooter route. It works really well, along with the PacMan CE:DX countdown to death, so you get as far as you can before the level ends. Nice!

Pinball FX 2 with a surprise table, Ms. 'Splosion Man!

IMAGE(http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd327/gamerwithjob/675671310022761278.png)

Your link is to the OP of this thread.

Edit: Never mind, its to the OP of the FX thread but on last page I saw the goods.

This is random, but color me surprised that these are the top twelve best-selling XBLA games to date:

  • Castle Crashers
  • Family Game Night
  • UNO
  • Pinball FX2
  • Battlefield 1943
  • Trials HD
  • Worms
  • Toy Soldiers
  • LIMBO
  • Aegis Wing
  • Bankshot Billiards 2
  • Deadliest Warrior

I'm honestly surprised that Castle Crashers takes the top spot and that revered XBLA titles like Shadow Complex and Braid are nowhere to be found.

Family Game Night is a surprise. And I wonder about how they put Pinball FX2 in there, when I think the base game is free. 10-12 are surprises when there is no Geometry Wars Retro Evolved up there.

Family Game Night is free, isn't it? It works like Pinball FX2 where it's basically a shell launcher for DLC-purchased board games.

Aegis Wing is also free. And quite a bit of fun in co-op.

Ms Splosion Man is a freakin' riot. Holy crap is this game good.

Aaron D., I'm really interested in it but never picked up the first game (not even when it was on that ridiculous sale *kicking myself*). Since xbox.com tells me they're the same price, would you recommend going straight for the l'il lady or should I pick up the original.

Sky-high platforming difficulty doesn't scare me off.

Aaron D. wrote:

Ms Splosion Man is a freakin' riot. Holy crap is this game good.

I loved the demo, but I can't bring myself to part with the space-bucks for it, given that I'm still planning on dipping back into the original Splosion Man to get cake-collecting, and Super Meat Boy is still sitting on my hard drive half-completed. I feel like my bases are covered for balls-hard platforming.

But I'm definitely conflicted - I'll probably pick it up at a later date, and if there's a sale on it, it's a guaranteed purchase.

This month's Xbox Live Rewards promotion is 200 MP back if you buy two games at 800 MP or more. Obviously, that's meant to grab a lot of the Summer of Arcade people, but I'm only interested in one of the two Summer of Arcade releases coming out in July. I'm thinking about getting another game for the promotion, anyway. Outland and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes are my top contenders right now. Any overlooked gems I should look at?

Super thumbs up on Outland. Try Galaga DX, maybe?

Galaga DX is a good one, the control is much better now that they've down two styles of twin-stick firing: all in one direction or mirrored fire.

Mister Magnus wrote:

would you recommend going straight for the l'il lady or should I pick up the original.

Definitely go for Ms. Splosion. It's bigger, better and more bad-ass.

One of the faults of the original is that it was incredibly one note, down to the repetitive lab-environment setting.

I saw more variety in the first two levels of Ms. than the whole original, both esthetically and game-design wise. Plus there's a sick amount of unlocks in the new game (zany movies, art, avitar awards, music, etc.). You pay for it with the in-game coins you earn at level-out tallies. It got me into replaying and speed-running levels.

Oh, and besides the environment variety in Ms. it also looks WAAAY better. The depth of field effect is awesome and there's a lot of cinematic camera angles that bring the game to life and makes it feel far grander than the 2.5D structure.

Music is better too.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Outland and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes are my top contenders right now. Any overlooked gems I should look at?

Clash of Heroes is really superb.

Hard Corps: Uprising is good, but only if you like punishingly hard re-imaginings of Contra.

Magic 2012 is good, but not if you don't like Magic.

I tried Hard Corps and while it was good, it didn't really catch me.

Magic 2012 is a good pick, but I should probably finish up Magic 2009 first.

Jonman wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Outland and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes are my top contenders right now. Any overlooked gems I should look at?

Clash of Heroes is really superb.

Hard Corps: Uprising is good, but only if you like punishingly hard re-imaginings of Contra.

Magic 2012 is good, but not if you don't like Magic.

FTFY

ClockworkHouse wrote:

This month's Xbox Live Rewards promotion is 200 MP back if you buy two games at 800 MP or more. Obviously, that's meant to grab a lot of the Summer of Arcade people, but I'm only interested in one of the two Summer of Arcade releases coming out in July. I'm thinking about getting another game for the promotion, anyway. Outland and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes are my top contenders right now. Any overlooked gems I should look at?

I'm going way back here, but I'd recommend picking up the XBLA ports of Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and Catan, if you don't have them already. All three are very efficient renderings of the physical board games, with smooth online play and nice presentation values. (Ticket to Ride, in particular, has incredibly catchy sound design and music.)

Other classic XBLA games worth considering that meet the 800pt threshold: Rez HD, Pac Man Championship Edition (the original, not DX), and Bionic Commando: Rearmed.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

I'm going way back here, but I'd recommend picking up the XBLA ports of Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and Catan, if you don't have them already. All three are very efficient renderings of the physical board games, with smooth online play and nice presentation values. (Ticket to Ride, in particular, has incredibly catchy sound design and music.)

Do any of these have local play? Maybe local plus AI?

Carcassonne has local play but Catan doesn't due to the hand cards. Been a while since I played the TTR boardgame, but I seem to recall it had cards too, meaning no local play.

I don't think Catan has a local play mode, but Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride definitely allow it. Ticket to Ride, however, is a hotseat game (due to the hidden information in the card/hand mechanics), so keep that in mind.