If you read this blog, every Wednesday, on a regular basis (and that's a big if), you might recall that I was supposed to do a follow up for my look at time travel board games. Well, I did write the article, but there's one small hitch: I had to do it in the future -- next week, to be precise. Don't ask me why, it's extremely convoluted. Just know that I couldn't go back (or forward?) to change it. Everyone without a time machine will just have to wait another week. (Okay, the truth is that I tried to get my friends to play this game with me, but everyone was too busy with their own things. It kept getting postponed -- lame. Since I can't, in good conscience, review a game that I've never played, I didn't write it.)
Instead, we're gonna dive back into that morass of XBOX Live indie games. As you may know, many XBOX Live indie games are nothing short of garbage. There's a ton of them that look like some badly drawn flash game from 2001 (would you pay money to play any kind of flash game? No!). Then there's those special titles that have about as much gameplay as a block of wood. Hell, most indie games have both of those problems.
That's where I come in. I'm here to show you some great indie games you can find. Best of all, they're cheap as hell. How cheap? Well, I've got three games for you to peruse, each of them only costs $1, so "I don't have an XBOX 360" is the only excuse I want to hear for not picking these up.
First off, there's Zombie Estate, which was released last year. With all the dual-stick shooters available for the indie games service, this one stands out with its retro graphics and gameplay. The sprites for the characters and zombies is very retro and the game has the feel of classic games such as Robotron 2084 and Smash TV (deja vu). You're constantly evading hordes of undead: zombies, skeletons, ghosts... all while blasting your enemies back to the grave and collecting cash, ammo, and health pickups. Between each wave, you go to the store to buy new weapons to obliterate more zombies. There's plenty of four-player action, wacky characters to choose from, and scores of corpses to shoot. For only a buck, you can subject yourself to some 8-bit Zombie Armageddon.
Next up is Retrofit: Overload, another indie game that came out a year ago. This one clones the legendary arcade game Galaga, but unlike some of the lazy arcade rip-offs, actually adds some exciting features without compromising the classic gameplay (Galaga is one of my favorite arcade games). This game features power-ups (such as shields and extra firepower), frenetic alien blasting action, and colorful graphics and sound. There really isn't much else to say about this game other than you really should be playing it.
Speaking of reinventing old school video games, the recently released Retrocade: Datastream Y2K600 is an interesting twist on the old school game Frogger. You patrol your computer network, traveling between rows of data streams, avoiding flowing blocks of data, to clear out corrupted segments. There's some story about the government and rebel hackers attacking each others' computer systems, but that's not really necessary to play the game. While the game is very simplistic, both in gameplay and graphics, it's extremely challenging and fun. I was really surprised by all the different game modes which add to the replay value. There's even a mode that replicates the original highway hopping, log jumping game. It's hard to describe how simple, yet fun this game really is. Download the demo if you want to know what the big deal is, then throw down a dollar and pick it up.
There are plenty more great XBOX Live indie games out there. You just need to do some digging through all the cheesy avatar games and massage controller apps (eww!). When you're tired of playing all the AAA titles that cost $60, come down to the cheap side of gaming and you may find a game you should know about...
Next week, I'll get back to part two of Time Travel Board Games... maybe.
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