There is a period I knew was coming when I started this. Last week was something of a precursor to it but when I went for my first download session on Tuesday I realised we’d hit that point. The University year is wrapping up and game development students are publishing their XNA projects onto Community Games. This means a jump in quality, as these games have been in development for some time and have the effort of a decent team behind them. However it also means that there’s a hell of a lot more for me to do so my time becomes stretched and I stop being the forgiving reviewer I once was. You have been warned.

A brief rundown of the fortunes of last week’s games. Ezmuze grabs itself a spot on the most popular page but remarkably so does the excellent Clover. I thought good games didn’t sell? RC-Air Sim continues to rock out in the top spot though.

Trino
Shooter – 400 Points

PopCap. Hire this man. Trino is similar in basic idea to Qix, a line drawing territory game from some considerable time ago. You need to trap enemies inside territory to destroy them and harvest the energy they leave behind. It differs from Qix as that territory remains part of the play area for enemies to continue roaming. It fits the perfect casual game format in that it starts out easy to get you used to the concept then gradually introduces new enemies, increases scoring complexity and changes the size and shape of the play area to keep things interesting. It’s not visually spectacular, but it has the feel of something made by the masters.

Buy It!

Chalked
Action – 400 Points

Chalked has many things in common with full price retail games. It looks a lot better in screenshots than it does in motion and the basic concept doesn’t play nearly as well as it should. The premise is that you can either save the city by catching the guys trying to destroy it or destroy the city by setting bombs and levelling buildings. Unfortunately due to some dodgy AI and dull gameplay neither side is really fun to play. It looks pretty and sounds like a good time, but like so many big budget games the execution just isn’t there.

Leave to Die

Pellmell
Shooter – 400 Points

Shooters are extremely common on Community Games, it’s not hard to see why. They’re easy to code and require little if any AI coding. For that alone Pellmell deserved props for being interesting. It functions like a cross between side-scrolling shooter and 2D platformer in that as well as blasting everything in your path you can also jump over obstacles such as blade pits and ground based enemies. For the time I was playing it I was having a decent amount of fun, however much like Retro One from a few weeks ago Pellmell suffers from me being a jaded shooter expert. I never really felt challenged, while there were loads of enemies around a very forgiving health bar and copious power-ups kept me storming through. Not one for the shooter veteran, but novices may well find enjoyment here.

Try It

Jonny Crush
First Person Shooter – 800 Points

What? An FPS on Community Games? What witchcraft is this? Yes it’s a visually promising FPS based around slaughtering hundreds of giant bugs, not an unworkable premise as WiiWare game Onslaught has showed me. Unfortunately Onslaught is a professionally made game with a good mission structure, decent graphics and waggle. Jonny Crush is a boxy, imprecise FPS that not only fails to register enemy hits alarmingly often but has some of the worst enemy AI I’ve seen. If I turn around to see an enemy in my face I at least expect it to be attacking, not just buzzing there. That this costs not only more than Onslaught but more than the original DOOM is hilarious. File under ‘tech demo’.

Leave to Die

Iris
Music – 200 Points

If you go into your 360′s dashboard under the My Xbox tab there’s a bit that takes you to your Music Library where you can listen to music stored on your harddrive, portable device or a CD. That’s what Iris does. It’s a media player on a console that already has a media player. The business equivalent of selling condoms to the Pope I think.

Leave to Die

Jammer
Music – 400 Points

What the game maker took 25 words to say I can say in 2. It’s Amplitude. Or it’s Frequency depending on which you prefer. Basically you move left and right to play bits of song before moving over to another bit. Unfortunately this game has 2 major problems compared to Harmonix’s masterpiece. Firstly there’s no feedback, the music keeps playing no matter what. It sounds minor but this is the critical point to pretty much every modern music game, if you screw up so does the music. Not having that is a problem once you realise it. Secondly there’s no measure of progress, simply put there’s no scoring. After finishing a song you just get a pass or fail. Not having that score raises one critical question. What’s the point?

Leave to Die

Reflex Turbo 3
Minigame – 400 Points

Where are Reflex Turbo 1+2? Anyway it’s a set of minigames where you either hold A, press A or hammer A. The presentation is poor, the games are extremely un-fun and you’re charging £4 for this? Not a hope in hell.

Leave to Die

The Mystic Orb
Toy – 200 Points

This was made by someone who has named their company “Half-Ass Games”. Given that it’s an electronic Magic 8-ball I’d give him points for honesty.

Leave to Die

Ultra Dual X Racer
Racing – 400 Points

Ultimate Generic Title! It’s yet another drive up the screen avoiding obstacles game, these are extremely dull at the best of times. UDXR is probably one of the better examples but like all the rest of these games it suffers from showing off all the game in the trial. When a game does that it’s never going to convert to a sale, because what’s the point?

Try It

Game of the week award goes without any doubt to Trino, I’d call it one of the best games on the service without any hesitation. Worst game though goes to Reflex Turbo 3, a shining example of what some people think will sell on Cgames. I’ll give you devs some fair warning now, I’m on holiday for the next few weeks. This means I won’t be writing this column. Filling in for me will be Mr Negative himself, Wardrox. God help you.

Prove to me that Cgames are excellent. Go to XNA Creator’s Club to see how you can make Cgames yourself.