Every Wednesday, a few new Live Arcade games pop up on the Xbox Live Marketplace for you to try and MAYBE buy. I always download at least the trials and give them a blast. Some of my favourite 360 games are from the Live Arcade so Wednesday's have become very exciting for me!
The latest Arcade Wednesday featured Hexic 2 and Ecco the Dolphin.
Hexic 2 is the sequel to a game that came ready installed on your 360 hard-drive (if you bought a Premium pack). The important thing to remember about the original Hexic is that it was FREE. It just happened to be BRILLIANT and that was emphasised even more by the fact that I didn't have to pay for it.
Hexic TWO is a bit shit. It's kinda the same as Hexic, but with horrible graphics (whereas the original was clean looking and sharp), some awful 'attack' system and various multiplayer modes. Oh, and it's 800 Microsoft points. That's about eight quid for the inferior sequel to a free game. Fuck off.
Ecco the Dolphin is a port of Sega's classic aquatic platform adventure. I hold a bit of a soft spot for Ecco. I remember when the Megadrive version came out, and it's sequel and remember loving the tranquil underwater experience they created. I even loved Defender of the Future on the Dreamcast, especially the bit with the Great White Shark. It was SHIT SCARY. But the first Ecco adventure doesn't seemed to have aged too well. It's still a joy to play around in the water, but Ecco's screams of pain will hurt you after a few minutes and it's still INCREDIBLY difficult. The new smoothing graphics thing also doesn't work quite so well here. It looked lovely on Sonic the Hedgehog and Double Dragon, but makes Ecco look quite horrible.
So not such a good week for the Xbox Live Arcade. Hmmm... :-(
