Xbox Live Arcade is a strange quasi-realm, populated by a small band of delicious A star games being hunted down by the armies of mediocrity. Or something.
There are lots of bad games and frankly a few good ones. Which makes one wonder, while Serious Sam is a fun game – if you’re going to remake a nine-year old game… gain, why not some other, older gems? So. Here are my finely tuned suggestions.
If you read them all, there will be cake.
Magic Carpet 2
A 4 way fight over the rare and precious Mana Worm. Hilarity ensues.
Whenever you mention Magic Carpet, people sneer at the thought of yet another 3D action game with no substance. What these people don’t understand is that Magic Carpet is the predecessor of games like Sacrifice or Brutal Legend. It’s more of an RTS than anything, and a finely tuned one at that.
If you haven’t tried it, if you’ve dismissed it out of hand, don’t. Give it a try. Get a few levels in. You may be pleasantly surprised.
Why put it on XBLA? Because I want to play the bitching multiplayer without first having to find even one person who owns the game and without having to fiddle with IPX.
Hell, putting this up would be free money. Shame EA owns it, really.
Dark Forces
Wow. That Stormtrooper is FUCKED.
Why the hell not? If you can put Doom and Wolfenstein 3D up, why not a frankly far superior 2.5D shooter?
Destroyed Rebel Bases, Sewers, Hidden Imperial weapons development bases, dusty Mines, Detention Centers, Ice Stations, Nar Shaddaa, Jabba the Hutt’s ship, The GODDAMN IMPERIAL CITY, Fuel stations and Imperial Battleships – Kyle Katarn kicks the shit out of all of them. And Boba Fett. And he steals the Death Star plans in the first fucking level. This was BEFORE he was a Jedi. There’s a reason why the internet tells Kyle Katarn facts.
Besides, it’s the only game where you can walk around using a mining tool on Stormtroopers. And punch Kell Dragons to death. Kyle Katarn is hardcore.
So yeah, put it on XBLA. So I can take down a Rebel Base destroying super droid with a Bryar pistol. (I’m not kidding, really.)
D/Generation
Unlike Mario, those pipes don't need stupid fucking plant enemies inside them to kill you.
To quote wikipedia:
“A French company called Genoq has developed a series of new genetically engineered bioweapons, which have run out of control and taken over Genoq’s Singapore lab. The main character is a courier delivering a package to one of Genoq’s top researchers, Jean-Paul Derrida, and who is happily oblivious of the carnage until the lab’s doors lock behind him. His customer is ten floors away, all of them crawling with bioweapons.”
Aside from the horrifying bioweapons (some of them disguise themselves as people needing help!) there’s also an assortment of security defenses that are out of control. Apparently in the future, all intruders must be killed, not arrested.
I think D/Generation was the first isometric game I ever played, and it was certainly one of the most difficult. But it was a good difficult. And there was something about the art style of the game I’m still very attached to.
Anyway, it’s an isometric puzzle game where you shoot monsters. Sounds like a perfect fit for XBLA to me.
Abe’s Oddysee + Exoddus
If there's more than one, you'd better run!
I’d love Flashback and Another World as well, but I’d settle for Abe.
I don’t think I really need to recap much about this 2D platform puzzle adventure. They are still some of my favourite games ever, and frankly the more who play them the better.
I’ve actually heard these get accused of being derivative, which makes no sense to me. If Abe’s Oddysee isn’t original, then what the fuck is?
Besides, they’ve been released on Steam, Good Old Games and practically everywhere fucking else, so why not XBLA?
There will be more soon. No cake until then. In the meantime, what games would you like to see on the Xbox Arcade? Let me know.
