Reviews written by jigsawhc

Fun game to use my drum controller with. The strategy elements keep it from getting too repetitive.

I like the combination of the simple mechanics with buying more powerful weapons. Plus the graphics are amazing. With the continue option I'll be coming back to play for 15 or 20 minutes between other stuff all the time.

These guys keep putting out great work on XBLIG. Well done platformer with lots of polish and style.

I tried it after reading Emuholic's review and he's right. This game is really fun and nicely made. The Claymation style is really well done and the controls are smooth. Doesn't get better than that in a shooter.

I like the idea of having different attacks that are better for different enemies, but I found it hard to tell in this which ones were actually more effective. I think this is because everything on the screen is so small.

Also, when you destroy enemies they release power up in classic vertical scrolling shooter style, but they disappear so quickly I almost never get any of them. It would be nice if they stay around longer or even just float towards you.

Maybe I should not have played when I was tired but I found it very confusing what you were suppose to do. Even how to get started. I did not find any instructions or info as to what the goal of the game is. I gave up after the demo expired and never went back.

Even though I stink at platformers I still love this one. It improves on the original Johnny Platform without changing too much. Very well made.

Ok graphics, but otherwise I did not really think it was anything special. Worth trying if you like this kind of shooter.

Interesting shooter here. Not bad.

I found the game interesting at first but quickly got bored. I like the simple controls and my son will probably dig the game.

Really nice graphic style and I like the progression of abilities as you get higher and higher kill counts. The only thing I can think to really make it better would be Global High Score leaderboards.

Fun little game to take out tons of enemies. Great time waster.

Simple controls wiht really sweet graphics. It is kind of short, but worth checking out because it adjusts to how you play.

Graphically it is ok, but there are no instructions on how to play. Plus no options for controlling the speed of the questions, the number of questions per game, or the volume of the repeating music. Plus the demo is 5 questions per game. Could have been good if they took time to give it some professional setup instead of giving the gamer no control over the setup.

It is interesting o play a "shooter" where you don't have to actually do the shooting. You pick which gun and power-up and the game shoots at the enemy who is in range based on that. You just use one thumb stick to move and the the buttons to pick your special. Overall it is a pretty fun game but after a while there is so much blood and guts on the screen that you can't tell what is going on. Still, I would recommend giving it a try because it is fun and the 4 power-ups are each unique and different.

This is sort of a mix of a bouncy tetris and match 3 play. It is pretty nice, but I found it took no skill. I just let the screen get mostly full and then activated the unfreeze option. This would give me a big combo and refill the Unfreeze bar. Repeat.

harrosandra either created this or is a fried of the person who did because it is terrible.

The controls are way to sensitive, the graphics are not very good, and the sounds are awful. Also, you have to go through 2 credit screens to get to the menu or to exit, and there whole screen shakes each time you move through the menu.

The concept of a rotating tetris style play is cool but this is very poorly executed.

For $1 this game has tremendous replay value. With multiple difficulty settings and co-op support it is a ton of fun to try and beat your high scores and play through perfectly.

Great game play and art design.

Maybe I suck but the game play is way to fast for me. When I can keep up with the opponents it is pretty fun, and graphically it looks like a nice update.

Pretty decent game with a nice rhythm twist, but the visuals were really annoying to me.

I found this game nicely polished and a pretty fun and unique, at least to me, concept. But, I can only play it in short increments before it became just me going through the motions of move, rotate, repeat. If you like action puzzle games though it is worth trying out. Plus online leaderboards are a welcome addition.

The only thing this does is give you a couple letters and then use the controller as a vibrating timer. The game would work just fine with any timer from a board game and a little imagination.

Sweet art style here. The hand drawn art is really fun and the background music is nice but very repetitive.

For a simple little game it is really quire fun and well done. If it has online leaderboards I'd probably give it a 9 since I could see how I rate against other people.

If you are looking for a Simon style game this one is pretty good but it gets hard very quickly. Especially since you have to use the whole controller.

For kids this game is great, but for anyone else it gets very easy and repetitive.

The trial is way to short for each song so you can't really a feel for how it will pan out in the full game.

However, in a lot of cases it works very nicely. The songs stream off my pc and I can sort of tell the enemies are based on the music. However, the visualizations got too distracting at points when I was trying to kill a lot of enemies and things got intense.

I love the graphical style and the simple controls, but I'm finding it really hard to time the slides correctly so that I don't wind up dead. That might have more to do with me sucking at platformers than the game but since it just throws you in with no training I can't tell.

This is a nicely done two stick shooter. The variety of game modes is really nice. The game has a nice look and feel to it. They try to offset not having achievements with in game awards which is a nice touch.

The single player is sweet but for me the game really shines in co-op and verses modes.

I'm not going to copy and paste my full review from my blog because the formatting keeps messing up. You can see it here

The graphics are ok but I found the game play boring after about 2 songs.

Not worth buying. There are plenty of drinking games that don't require your 360 be turned on.

... still well worth playing. The game has a great atmosphere and while the jumping can be a bit finicky the overall game is really well done.

Arkedo has made another great game. Where JUMP was a take in the classic platformer this is a take on a match 4 game.

Things start off slow and get faster while you progress. At the same time adding bonus coins and more colors.

It has a single player, arcade, and challenge modes. Very well done!

Nice graphics but I found it very hard to actually hit the ball back over the net. 2 on 2 over Live could be really fun but I'd have to figure out how to control it first. Maybe a tutorial would help with that.

... this game was boring. With all the great 2 stick shooters there is no reason to get this one. Nothing really that special to set it apart.

In addition to needing a tutorial really badly the font used for the game is really generic and doesn't fit the art style that well. Also, the load times are really long.

The screenshot looks pretty cool but the actual game is not that great. The font seems out of place and the font colors are grating at times. The game is easy enough to play but it seems like it could have used more polish in pretty much every area. The power meter seems like it goes way to high mini golf. The music seems like a poor choice as it is annoying very quickly.

This game is pretty fun and for me quite difficult to not keep running into enemies and dying.

The one big thing I think they could have done to make it a better would be to have a background that was not so dark. A little more color would be nice.

The clunky menus should have been a sign for me that they did not put the level of polish into this version of Bust-a-Move that I was hoping for.

If you like Bust-a-Move this does have a lot of levels (and 2 more DLC packs coming) but it could be a lot more smoothly made.

The controls are touchy and it is hard to move just a little bit.

Not bad really but a little disappointing they did not spend a little more time to really make it worth the $10 price. As it is it should be a $5 game - or even less.

Really sweet 8-bit graphics and solid mechanics. Well worth playing. Just be sure to save as many hearts as you can because once you die and have 0 lives you have to restart at the beginning.

Since this style of puzzle game has been done many times it is hard to judge it on the actual puzzles since they are ones you've probably seen before it you like this type of game.

However, the graphics leave a lot to be desired.

If I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 was made into an Arcade game this is pretty close to what I though it would be, but it is jus tnot that good. Very repetitive and nothing really spectacular. 4 player co-op is a nice touch, but I'd recommend just spending the $1 on I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 instead.

Priced at just $1 it is games like this that Xbox Live Indie Games was made for. With great graphics, simple controls, and a relaxed playing style there is nothing I can think of that they could add to make Fishing Girl any better.

It would be nice if there were instructions or a tutorial. Or even a controller layout picture.

Also, the graphics are terrible.

This is a game concept that has been done many times and this version is well made with nice graphics, but we're still talking about a pretty simple game.

The challenges and co-op are a nice touch, but this seems like a nice $1 game to me and not the $3 it is currently priced.

The concept here is pretty fun but the execution is lacking. The graphics are very simple and basic and the font used really bad.

Nothing really wrong with Bust a Wall, but there is nothing to really set it apart. The level design is pretty generic but the controls work well.

Just a week ago Defense Grid: The Awakening released on Xbox Live Arcade and I’ve been loving it. I finally completed the main campaign but I still need to do the four expansion levels. This is in addition to the 60 challenge levels I still have to work through. If you remember my initial demo impressions I was expecting to enjoy Defense Grid. Frankly, I’m loving it even more than I thought I would from the demo. As tower defense games go this one is not super hard like Crystal Defenders but it is still quite challenging. Getting all the way through the 20 levels takes a good 8 hour; assuming you can get through them all on the first try. Completing the levels is generally possible in a few tries, but getting a Gold (or even Silver) Medal on them is an entirely different story. Getting a Gold Medal requires completing the level without loosing a single life as well as conserving as much money as possible. You have to build and upgrade towers at the last possible second to allow your gold to earn more interest. So, it is a constant battle of knowing when to upgrade so that no enemies escape but you don’t build the tower to early. In addition on the later levels you have to also figure out the best placement for your towers so that they are most effective.

Graphically the game looks great and the sound is nicely done too. I mentioned the camera in the demo impressions so I’ll not go into it a lot again, but I will say it looks great in HD. I’ve unlocked a good chunk of the achievements but I still need to get all gold/silver medals on the campaign missions and at least 20 of the challenges.

The demo only had a few of the towers available which is too bad because the other towers in the full game are really sweet. There is an artillery style, Meteor tower that does massive damage over very long distances but shoots slowly. The Cannon tower is sort of like part way between the gun and meteor towers. It does more damage than the gun tower but slower. The really important towers for solid strategies are the Command and Temporal towers. Neither actually shoots but they have interesting area effects. The Command tower shows cloaked enemies and gives great gold for killed enemies in its range. The Temporal tower slows the movement speed of the enemies in its range. By putting these together and surrounding them with fully leveled turrets essentially is a make your own choke point. If you can get a couple of those back to back it can be really devastating to the enemy troops.

Overall I really love Defense Grid: The Awakening. If you like tower defense games this one is really great. It is challenging and has a ton of levels and replayability. If you have never really tried tower defense games this is a good one to start with because it has a forgiving learning curve. Plus the achievement have a nice range of effort required to unlock them with a few being very simple and others quite time consuming. For $10 eight hours of game play without doing any challenges is pretty good, but with all of the challenges I know I’ll be playing for weeks and maybe even months.

I like Ninja Guardian it looks good and is simple to play, but challenging as you progress. The one thing I find frustrating is that you only play on 1/3 of the screen.