Fast - Racing League
| Developer: | Shin'en |
| Publisher: | Autumn Games/Konami |
| Platforms: | WiiWare |
| Price: | 1000 Nintendo Points (£7.00) |
| Demo available: | Yes |
What is it?
One look at this futuristic racing game and you could be forgiven for thinking it was a WipeOut sequel, but if you watch the game being played for a few minutes you'll see it also shares something in common with Treasure's sublime shmup, Ikaruga. Basically your racing ships can switch polarity between white and black. The only way to make use of the power ups on the track is to match its polarity. These power ups include speed boosts and jump pads and if you don't hit them you risk not only falling behind but also falling off the track. It's an interesting twist to what would otherwise be an unremarkable game.Graphically, this is one of the best looking Wii games I've seen full stop, let alone Wiiware game and the music is as brilliant as Shin'en's past releases, such as shoot 'em up series Iridion and Nanostray. Playing this, I can't help thinking if this was in an arcade with a hydraulic cabinet, it would be major crowd puller.
10,000,000
| Developer: | Eighty Eight Games |
| Publisher: | Apple AppStore |
| Platforms: | iOS |
| Price: | £2.99 |
| Demo available: | No |
What is it?
Just as the commercial games market is drowning in first person shooters, the indie scene is similarly drowning in match three puzzle games. Of course one of the most famous arcade puzzle games of all time, Puzzle Bobble (AKA Bust-a-Move) was a match three puzzle, so when a clever and different example of the genre comes along, I can't help but check it out. 10,000,000 is one such game. The game takes typical match three puzzles and mixes in a dash of RPG and infinity running to create something surprisingly fresh. Your character runs along the top of the screen and constantly faces various enemies and obstacles. Below is a grid of objects, which you must match in order to conquer threat preventing you from progressing. This adds both a sense of urgency and the need to plan that will quickly draw you in. As the title of this thread says, it's well worth a look.Rock Band Blitz
| Developer: | Harmonix |
| Publisher: | EA |
| Platforms: | Xbox Live Arcade, PS3 (via PlayStation Network) |
| Price: | 1200MSP/£12.99 |
| Demo available: | XBLA only |
What is it?
A few years ago rhythm games were all the rage, with developer Harmonix first creating Guitar Hero for Activsion, then switching publishers to EA and creating Rock Band. For the next few years, Guitar Hero (under the stewardship of Neversoft) and Rock Band battled it out for a piece of the market, with each new installment upping the ante. Guitar Hero even made it into the arcade, with industrial grade guitars that weighed more than Karl Palmer's stainless steel drum kit. Quite frankly, it all got a bit ridiculous in the end, with Activision releasing four or five Hero-branded games in the space of a year. So just when it seemed the fad was over, Harmonix, the people who kicked started the whole trend, come back with a game that may have the Rock Band name, but more closely follows the gameplay of their earlier games, Frequency and Amplitude.For any fan of arcade games and the pursuit of high scores, Rock Band Blitz is the perfect score attack fix. There are no fail states in this game, no difficulty settings, instead you play it to the best of you ability and you will be able to play every song in the game, plus any in your own Rock Band library, but if you want to top the leaderboards you have to learn to juggle each track (drums, bass, guitar, vocals and keyboards) to maximise the multiplier for each. The further you push the multiplier across all of the tracks before you reach each tracks check point and the further you can push the next multiplier. The result is you enforce the difficulty on yourself, purely by trying to do better. It's a fantastic system and possible the purest form of score attack I've ever seen.
That does it for this month. Check the Worth a Look tag in the coming months for more tasty, arcade-inspired treats.
MTW
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