Hitting the cyber-shelves of Xbox Live Arcade this week was Arkadian Warriors and GripShift: A dungeon-crawling Diablo wannabe and a PSP port of a piss-poor Mario Kart clone respectively, neither game astounded us; it’s kind of tough to recommend either of them, despite the minimal amounts of enjoyment we squeezed out of stabbing evil pigs with swords. Both of the games look totally awesome, but disappoint in almost every way. Neither of these titles accomplishes anything worth the 800 Microsoft Points unless you’re super-duper hardcore.
Isometric dungeon-crawling hack-and-slash gameplay with an adjustable camera? Sounds good. Customizable armor, consistent leveling, various baddies, different classes and the ability to turn in to a majestic creature at the press of a button? Even better. Sadly, Arkadian Warriors’ effort is lost in the boring pacing of its too-familiar RPG mechanics, repetitiously annoying audio and one-button attack system. It’s a simplified version of the well revered Diablo for PC, so if you’re looking for something like that, this is almost the same. It’s just… you know… crippled, boring, and looks like a PlayStation One title. We can’t really expect much from this, but it’s exactly what it aims to be: A cutesy RPG that’s fun only in its ease of entry. We wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to buy it, but the 10 dollar price tag isn’t justified, even if the character’s first magic attack is a hilarious running-headbutt. It’s not terrible, but if you’re not a hardcore RPG fan, it’s not a bad idea to keep your distance.
Try Before You Buy
Arcade racing on floating race-tracks consisting of rad jumps and loop-de-loops sounds entertaining, but when you’re driving a car that’s apparently fueled by helium in a world where physics don’t really exist, you’ll find yourself crashing headlong in to railings or plummeting off the magically floating, made-of-rubber-race-track in no time. Adding weapons to races, time trials and lame challenges (collect all the stars? Really?) add nothing new to racing, and only hamper your driving “experience”, which was already frustrating. Vehicles move slowly which only speaks poorly of an already boring driving game, and the addition of nitrous speeds things up a minuscule amount. Sadly, this only allows you to access the aforementioned boredom quicker than before. Drive away from this one, stat. Use nitrous to do so.
AVOID AT ALL COSTS
December 13th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Ugh. Gripshift was lame when it hit the PSP 2 YEARS ago, why of why would they think that releasing it again would be a good idea. Oh yeah, a big pile of money.