Swagman

Six weeks, huh?

Looking more like a co-publishing deal with Microsoft, kind of thing. Which means, that more likely than not, Breach is headed right for this year's Summer of Arcade promotional week.

So far, the possibilities for Summer of Arcade is looking phenomenal this year. Breach, HydroThunder Hurricane, Hydrophobia, Monday Night Combat, Monkey Island 2, Lead & Gold are all likely suspects. At least three of those are confirmed 360 exclusives.

One thing for certain, looking at downloadable releases slated for this summer (short list below), summer of 2010 is not going to be your typical slow summer for gaming.

Hydrophobia
HydroThunder Hurricane
Breach
Shank
Monday Night Combat
Gold & Lead: Gangs of the Wild West
Bonk: Brink of Extinction
Comic Jumper
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
Risk Factions
Torchlight
Sonic the Hedgehog 4
Earthworm Jim HD
Naughty Bear
H2Overdrive
Dead Rising: Case Zero

Yep, it's going to be a very busy summer . . .

Glad to see these guys are making good on the Indie Games channel. Unfortunately, far too many other indie devs are barely breaking even on the service, which is a shame, because there are so many great games on the service that deserve to sell just as well as ZOMB1ES, but know one seem to know about. Matter of fact, there are so many quality indie titles on the service, last year I

Whatever Ska Games have done to promote themselves and get the message out that ZOMB1ES is a worthy title, I hope they pass along to other indie devs, because there are plenty more indie devs who deserve this level of success on the Indie Games service.

In the spirit of helping promote other indie games of quality currently on the Xbox 360's Indie Games channel, I thought that as a public service I'd compile a quick list of some of the better titles on Indie Games. Think of it, if you will, as a starter guide. There are over 800 games on the service, and sifting through them, can sometimes be a bitch. Pretty much every game on this list I own; many of them I have beaten . . . some of them, I've beaten more than once.

There is a lot of great stuff in here. A lot of innovation. A lot of retro, with new twists. And a surprising amount of spit and polish and attention to detail. Most of all, every last one of these games has heart.

The list is in no particular order, however, as a rule, I do try to keep the ones I have the fondest memories of, towards the top.

Hopefully, this list will convince more people to give Indie Games a shot. And for those of you who do browse the service from time to time, yet are overwhelmed by the selection, with luck this list will distill some of the better titles, making it easier to have fun with what is there.

One final note, this list by all means are not all of the good titles on the service. With over 800 games, I am sure there are plenty that even I have not had the chance to play that are worthy titles. This list is only of the games that I did play, and came away impressed for one reason or another by the quality of the game. With that in mind, enjoy and please help support indie game developers.

Weapon of Choice
Shoot 1Up
Ninja Bros.
Soulcaster
Platypus
Streets of Fury
I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!!1
Miner Dig Deep
Biology Battle
Beat Hazard
Arkedo Series - 01 JUMP!
Arkedo Series - 02 SWAP!
Arkedo Series - 03 PIXEL
Square Off
MotorHEAT
Creed Arena
Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp
Johnny Platform Saves Xmas!
Along Came a Spider
Veks and Silence
Groov
Inside LaCrosse's: College LaCrosse 2010
Light's End
NextWar: The Quest for Earth
Dungeon Adventure
Your Doodles Are Bugged!
Decimation X
Gerbil Physics
SFG Soccer
Fishing Girl
Sol Survivor
ZP2K9
The Impossible Game
Supercow
Solar
CarneyVale Showtime
Kaleidoscope
Yet Another Zombie Defense
Rotor'scope
Colosseum
Avatar Golf
Easy Golf
Twin Blades
Slingstar
Tobe's Vertical Adventure
Mithra - Episode 1
Galax-e-mail
Headshot 2
Amniotic
Hoyle Texas Hold'em
Leave Home
Space Milkman
Trino
Colosseum: Hammerball
Writer's Block
City Rain
In the Pit
Megopolis
TWP Spine of the World

You are both right.

For those who love this type of game, more power to you and hope you enjoy this one too. As has been pointed out, no one getting hurt, because some people enjoy something that others do not.

For everyone else however, if you play the demo in these types of games, then that is pretty much all there is to the whole experience . . . In this case caveat being that Koei-Tecmo left the 4-player mode out of the demo, so that is a bit of the experience you'll miss.

If you are fence sitter in this equation, play the demo, and if you like it, buy the game or at least give it a rental, as you may like the demo, but not like doing the same thing over and over again for ten hours. It's kind of like the situation with Assassin's Creed 1. I personally loved the game from start to finish. But most other people loved it for the first three or four hours, and then got bored with it for the remaining seven or eight hours, once they realized there was little else to the experience beyond a certain point. Of course all that was fixed in Assassin's Creed 2, which is a far more balanced and varied (not to mention, fun) game than the original.

And maybe that is why this particular genre of games (Kessen, Dynasty Warriors, Kingdom Under Fire, Ninty-Nine Nights, etc.) catches so much flak. Many of the games in this genre have gone through near countless sequels dating all the way back to the original Playstation, and after 15 years, they all still play relatively the same with few significant changes across the series to help add variety and "newness" to the genre.

On the one hand, there are going to be a certain number of people who are going to appreciate the fact the games in the genre never change over the ages - that they are consistent. At the same time, I think many gamers (probably most gamers were I got hazard a guess), are not. In a way, that makes these games kind of special, as they are an acquired taste. Fans of them know who they are, and love the taste these games leave on their palettes; everyone else, these games are simply not for.

Which brings us back to where I started, both parties are correct in their assessment. It just all depends on which POV they approach a game like this from.

WTF?! It's been six days, and I still have to prove that I'm the naughties of them all?!

Okay, easy enough. I cheated. That's right, I cheated. This entire contest has been rigged to pick me as the winner, since the day after the contest was announced. Me and a buddy took it upon ourselves to hack into the Blogsmith servers, where we spent half a day eating Cheetos, drinking cheap, imported Guarana, rewriting the software that supposed to randomly pick a winner for this contest, to pick us instead (all that, in between matches of Halo 3, of course - a guys gotta have priorities, you know).

Don't believe me? Well you are reading this now aren't you? I'm a winner aren't I? There you go. Like James T. Kirk, I'm naughty. So where's my prize.

GOTCHA!!!!

Had you going there didn't I. You're sitting there reading this comment after your computer randomly chose me as one of the winners, and for a second there, I actually made you think that I did. And that my good sir (or madam . . . or person of dubious sexuality), is so naughty, that I may have to go behind the shed and spank myself . . . severe corporal punishment, that is.

WTF?! It's been six days, and I still have to prove that I'm the naughties of them all?!

Okay, easy enough. I cheated. That's right, I cheated. This entire contest has been rigged to pick me as the winner, since the day after the contest was announced. Me and a buddy took it upon ourselves to hack into the Blogsmith servers, where we spent half a day eating Cheetos, drinking cheap, imported Guarana, rewriting the software that supposed to randomly pick a winner for this contest, to pick us instead (all that, in between matches of Halo 3, of course - a guys gotta have priorities, you know).

Don't believe me? Well you are reading this now aren't you? I'm a winner aren't I? There you go. Like James T. Kirk, I'm naughty. So where's my prize.

GOTCHA!!!!

Had you going there didn't I. You're sitting there reading this comment after your computer randomly chose me as one of the winners, and for a second there, I actually made you think that I did. And that my good sir (or madam . . . or person of dubious sexuality), is so naughty, that I may have to go behind the shed and spank myself . . . severe corporal punishment, that is.

WTF?! It's been six days, and I still have to prove that I'm the naughties of them all?!

Okay, easy enough. I cheated. That's right, I cheated. This entire contest has been rigged to pick me as the winner, since the day after the contest was announced. Me and a buddy took it upon ourselves to hack into the Blogsmith servers, where we spent half a day eating Cheetos, drinking cheap, imported Guarana, rewriting the software that supposed to randomly pick a winner for this contest, to pick us instead (all that, in between matches of Halo 3, of course - a guys gotta have priorities, you know).

Don't believe me? Well you are reading this now aren't you? I'm a winner aren't I? There you go. Like James T. Kirk, I'm naughty. So where's my prize.

GOTCHA!!!!

Had you going there didn't I. You're sitting there reading this comment after your computer randomly chose me as one of the winners, and for a second there, I actually made you think that I did. And that my good sir (or madam . . . or person of dubious sexuality), is so naughty, that I may have to go behind the shed and spank myself . . . severe corporal punishment, that is.

WTF?! It's been six days, and I still have to prove that I'm the naughties of them all?!

Okay, easy enough. I cheated. That's right, I cheated. This entire contest has been rigged to pick me as the winner, since the day after the contest was announced. Me and a buddy took it upon ourselves to hack into the Blogsmith servers, where we spent half a day eating Cheetos, drinking cheap, imported Guarana, rewriting the software that supposed to randomly pick a winner for this contest, to pick us instead (all that, in between matches of Halo 3, of course - a guys gotta have priorities, you know).

Don't believe me? Well you are reading this now aren't you? I'm a winner aren't I? There you go. Like James T. Kirk, I'm naughty. So where's my prize.

GOTCHA!!!!

Had you going there didn't I. You're sitting there reading this comment after your computer randomly chose me as one of the winners, and for a second there, I actually made you think that I did. And that my good sir (or madam . . . or person of dubious sexuality), is so naughty, that I may have to go behind the shed and spank myself . . . severe corporal punishment, that is.

WTF?! It's been six days, and I still have to prove that I'm the naughties of them all?!

Okay, easy enough. I cheated. That's right, I cheated. This entire contest has been rigged to pick me as the winner, since the day after the contest was announced. Me and a buddy took it upon ourselves to hack into the Blogsmith servers, where we spent half a day eating Cheetos, drinking cheap, imported Guarana, rewriting the software that supposed to randomly pick a winner for this contest, to pick us instead (all that, in between matches of Halo 3, of course - a guys gotta have priorities, you know).

Don't believe me? Well you are reading this now aren't you? I'm a winner aren't I? There you go. Like James T. Kirk, I'm naughty. So where's my prize.

GOTCHA!!!!

Had you going there didn't I. You're sitting there reading this comment after your computer randomly chose me as one of the winners, and for a second there, I actually made you think that I did. And that my good sir (or madam . . . or person of dubious sexuality), is so naughty, that I may have to go behind the shed and spank myself . . . severe corporal punishment, that is.

I was naughty today.

I was nice today.