Nukezilla Review: 360 Mega Pack HD Remix (Xbox Live Indie Games)

360 Mega Pack HD Remix is the kind of game that should have 7,000 different iterations on Xbox Live, but it’s the only one of its kind I’ve seen. Rather than give you one game for a measly 80 MS points, you get eleven games. Ok, not all of them are games, but still that’s a hell of a deal. Here’s a mini-review for each included title (with their respective box art) and a final overview of the entire title:

Gravity Dash

Absolutely worth the price of admission. If you’ve played The Impossible Game before, you’ll know what you’re up against here. Consisting of 25 stages (plus any levels you make; it comes with a full level editor), you control a block as it’s dragged through each level. You jump on/dodge white blocks while avoiding touching any red ones.

What sets this apart from other simple platformers is the gravity switching: By pressing X you can hop from the bottom of the screen to the top. There are a few areas where you can decide whether gravity switching or plain jumping is best, as both could be correct. The difficulty curve is perfect, with each level tougher than the last. If you can get through the final level in less than 125 tries, you’re more of a man than I. This game could be sold alone for double the price of the entire Mega Pack, so here it’s a steal.

Rumble Lounge

Put your controller up against your unmentionables and cycle through five different types of massages. Or have you and three of your closest friends control all the action. Does not come with controller wipes unfortunately.

TwinStick Shooter

A generic — wait for it — twin-stick shooter. You control a red bloc and defend yourself from other colored blocks. Each wave gives you a weapon upgrade which can change how fast you shoot, how big your bullet spread is or how powerful each bullet is. As fun as every other twin-stick shooter out there, but not as pretentious.

Fortuitous Fortune Cookie

A fortune cookie simulator. Press A to hear realistic cracking noises and read realistic Asian hokum about your future and shit.

Super Button Mashing Bros.
Press A as fast as you can while an 8-bit sword awkwardly destroys an 8-bit rock. I got to level eight before my thumb snapped in half.

Fantastic Flashlight

It’s just a flashlight. You can change the colors on your screen or alter the frequency the light flashes at to fuck with your friends who have epilepsy. That’s always fun.

Arrow Panic

A multiplayer-only affair for up to four players. Each player gets control of a colored block and a similarly-colored corner of the screen. Money and radioactive symbols fly in and out and it’s your job to grab the money and return it to your “base” corner. You then use the money to place arrows, which direct the nuclear symbols into your opponents’ base or direct the money into your base. Each base has an HP, and once it’s depleted that player gets kicked out. Last man standing wins.

The arrow-dropping mechanic takes some getting used to, but damn if a buddy of mine and I didn’t have a hell of a lot of fun drunkenly playing a few rounds of this.

Ultra Clock

It’s just a clock. Display can be changed from digital to analog and back. Yeah.

Masters of Memory

You’ve played Simon before, right? Then you’ve played Masters of Memory. There are pretty colors…I guess.

Omega Calculator

Alright, all together: It’s just a calculator. It’s good at telling you that 589 * 3 – 65 + 4107 = 5809. So there’s that.

Ping

Pong (haha, get it?!?) with a twist: It’s got a single player mode as well, but in that mode you’re just bouncing the block up against a wall. About as awesome as that sad kid who spent recess throwing a tennis ball against a wall for no reason.

Overall

As something to spruce up each application, you get a selection of songs made for the game. The ten included songs are actually pretty cool and range from jazz and chiptune to classical and trance.  If you like music in any capacity, you’ll find a song to fall in love with here. They’re perfect background tracks for anything you might be doing. Hell, I spent most of my afternoon cleaning my room with the Clock on, just listening to the tunes. The music really adds to the apps that don’t do anything: played correctly with the Flashlight on, you could have a mini-rave on your hands.

I’d buy the goddamn soundtrack if there was one. I’m sure you would too.

This collection of games is damned impressive, especially since each is only 7.2 MS points (thanks Omega Calculator!). I love how this is a (perhaps non-intentional) slap in the face of all the stupid people who flood the Indie Games section with clocks, calculators, and fortune-telling games; rather than buy their crap for 160 MS points, buy this and ten other things for 80 points.  The games included are damn fun and I’m actually proud (if a little creeped out) to finally own one of those massage simulators.

While the games aren’t amazing (save for Gravity Dash) I appreciate all of them. 360 Mega Pack HD Remix deserves your points, more so than any other Indie Game I’ve reviewed. At the very least, it’ll replace that shitty tiki clock you keep hanging in your living room.

Disclaimer: Nukezilla received a review copy of the game from Low Brow Games.