XBLA Review

Dollar Dash was developed by Candygun Games and published by Kalypso Media. It was released on March 6, 2013 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

Every once in a while, a game comes along with a concept so brilliant you can’t believe no one’s thought of it before. Taking the idea of competitive thievery and applying a fun, cartoonish art style, Dollar Dash from Candygun Games and Kalypso Media seeks to offer a fresh twist on classic arcade gameplay.

Dollar Dash is a top-down action game pitting four thieves against each other in three different game modes with one simple goal: steal everything in sight. You’ll accomplish this task by running, shooting, laying traps, and creating all kinds of general mayhem to grab as much cash as possible and prevent your opponents from doing the same. Built primarily as a multiplayer game, Dollar Dash has no traditional single-player component, but offers four-player competitive modes both locally and over Xbox Live.

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Guardians of Middle Earth was developed by Monolith Productions and published by WB Games. It was released December 5, 2012  for 1200 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes. 

The Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, or MOBA for short, is not a genre typically associated with the Xbox 360. Sure there have been a few good attempts to bring this style of game to XBLA, titles such as Awesomenauts or Monday Night Combat, but no company has found a runaway success, a game so good, and so well loved by the fans, that it could sit up there with the big PC titles like League of Legends and DotA. The people over at Monolith have taken it upon themselves to finally break the mold, and bring a deep MOBA experience to console. Guardians of Middle Earth does exactly that, bringing one of the best MOBA experiences you can find to XBLA, showing that a console can be home to this genre just as well as any PC.

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Zombie Driver HD was developed by EXOR Studios and published by Cyberfront Corporation. It was released on October 17, 2012 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

Have you ever watched a zombie movie and silently pondered the cathartic value of a vehicle? Zombies are scary up close, but get inside an armored sports car and suddenly survival doesn’t seem so impossible. Then, imagine what you could do with automatic weapons strapped to the side, a flamethrower at the front, and rocket thrusters in the back. This is the prospect behind Zombie Driver HD–pick your vehicle, load it with heavy weapons, and blaze a bloody trail of carnage through the forest of undead. It’s the zombie apocalypse, and you are the only person daring enough to take on the horde in whatever vehicles you can find.

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Happy Wars was developed by Toylogic and published by Microsoft Studios. It was released on October 12, 2012, free of charge. A copy was provided for review purposes.

There was a time when free-to-play games were regarded as the second-class citizens of the industry, relegated to social networking sites and mobile phones. While those days are over, free-to-play gaming never quite made it to Microsoft’s console until now, raising questions as to whether the model could even survive in a market that thrives on the bigger and better. Happy Wars’ delightful online action is the first to provide an answer to that question – and it’s a good one.

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The Micro Machines series has long been the standard for top-down arcade racing games.  Keen Games seeks to dethrone the series from its thrown with TNT Racers.  Released on February 9 for 800MSP it packs quite a punch for the price.  But is it better than a Micro Machines title, or just a dime a dozen clone?
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Raskulls was developed and published by Halfbrick Studios for XBLA on December 29, 2010, and retails for 800 Microsoft Points. The publisher provided us with a copy of the game for reviewing purposes.

Raskulls is a unique blend of action-platforming, objective racing and puzzle solving, and is something you won’t really find anywhere else on the XBLA. It is also the type of game to that starts off at almost mind-numbing levels of simplicity before it really begins to grow on you as you spend more time with it.

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