This Week in Indie: Avatar Avalanche

This Week in Indie is an in-depth weekly feature covering the best, worst and newest games to hit the Xbox Live Indie Games service. Each week we advise you on whether to buy, try or avoid specific titles in the huge catalogue of games.

Title: Avatar Drop
Developer: RodYan
Price: 80 MS points
Players: 1-4 local

Avatar Drop is simple, cheap fun. At 80 Microsoft points, Avatar Drop falls into the impulsive buy category. Combine this with its pick-up and play nature and it’s well worth at least a look at. The gameplay is simple; your avatar is dropped from a height, as you fall you will pass large rings, medium size rings and small. By successfully falling through the rings you earn points, the smaller the ring, the more points you earn towards the overall total.

The controls are simple, to move you avatar right and left you use the left stick, to spin you avatar you use the right stick and to move the camera you use the bumper buttons.

Verdict: Buy

Title: Color Break
Developer: Dgamer
Price 80 MS points
Players: 1

The concept of this game is simple, if you have ever played or seen Pong you will understand what to do in this game. The only added difficulty you will find is the concept of color. Whilst this game is simple, if you are colorblind you will not be able to play it. You must stop balls from passing a slider that you control, you are guarding one side of a rectangle, the balls bounce of the other sides of the rectangle and you must keep them in play. There are four different types of balls, blue, yellow, red and green. You must press A, B, Y and X to change the color of the slide to correspond with the colour of the ball. At first you may think this is easy but one more balls and more colors come into play, changing the color of slider as well as keeping the ball in play.

Even though the game is 80 Microsoft points I’m struggling to justify the purchase, the game does have three modes, sequence, hardcore sequence and survival, but two of those are practically the same.

Verdict: Try

Title: Avatar Golf
Developer: Barkers Crest
Price 400 MS points
Players: 1-4 local, co-op 2-4, system link 2-8, online 2-8.

The third game in this avatar themed week is Avatar Golf. The obvious perk to playing this golf game is the ability to play as your avatar. Although this game is the same price as some arcade games, there is true depth and replay ability to this Indie title. Features such as the deep course creator function as well as the capacity to share your created course amongst friends and anyone on Xbox Live add to the value of this game. The actual gameplay is solid too, play shots is simply accomplished by one button, A. You press A to start the swing and A to hit the ball. Other customisable features such as weather settings increase the depth of the game, you can choose from mundane weather like sunny day, rain clouds and snow clouds to far out conditions such as outer space and city lights.

All in all not only is a fun golfing experience online and off, it also has great depth to the game that will keep you coming back for more. You will never tire of playing a round of golf with the 6 different themed 18 hole courses and watching your avatars emotion when he/she discovers they scored a bogey.

Verdict: Buy

Title: Halfbrick Rocket Racing
Developer: Halfbrick
Price 240 MS points
Players: 1-4 local

At the reasonable price tag of 240 Microsoft points, Halfbrick Rocket Racing is immediately appealing. With four co-op and over 40 different maps to race around the price tag seems to become more and more attractive. The premise of the game is simple but the controls take a little time to adapt to. Usually when pressing the right trigger in a racing title you would expect to go forward and left trigger the opposite. Not so in this game, by pressing the left trigger you begin using the left rocket and the right trigger the right rocket. This makes turning tricky at first, as you have to balance the two triggers to turn in a specific direction and then hit both to go forward. Once you have the controls down the blasting through the maps is… well, a blast.

With the added incentive of leaderboards to improve your score and gain a higher medal the replay ability is reasonable. Overall Halfbrick Rocket Racing is a full titles that is usually best played in small bursts, none the less worth 240 Microsoft points.

Verdict: Buy.