It's Wednesday again, which means more Xbox Live Arcade content to waste your Microsoft points on. Or not.This week sees the release of Spacegiraffe and Street Trace : NYC onto the Marketplace.
Spacegiraffe, from Llamasoft, will set you back 400 points (about £3.00) if you decide to buy the full game. But I wouldn't if I were you. The game is a typical arcade style shoot-em-up, in a kind of mix between Space Invaders and Geometry Wars. You can move your ship from left to right, but your shots aren't restricted to just shooting vertically. You can tilt your weapons using the right stick. The visuals of Spacegiraffe, unfortunately, go a long way to ruining it. It looks JUST like the 360 (and Windows Media Player) visualisations when you play some music. By that I mean it looks like vomit. In space. You can't see what's coming. You can't see where you are shooting. It's boring and ugly. That's about it, really. Don't bother.
Street Trace : NYC (pictured) reminds me a lot of TrickStyle for the Sega Dreamcast. Like TrickStyle, you ride a hoverboard in the future and trick off ramps and grind around a 'used future' environment. UNLIKE TrickStyle, the game revolves around a deathmatch tournament, in which you fire rockets and drop mines to take out either AI or human opponents.
The game has a fairly slick, clean, cell-shaded look to it, much the same as Crackdown. But whereas Crackdown is one of the best games ever, Street Trace is shit. It's plays okay, but is ultimately let down but rubbish weapons, crap maps and no feeling of accomplishment when you take down an opponent by randomly firing into the air. It costs 800 points (about £6.00) with which you COULD buy Castlevania, Bomberman, Doom, Geometry Wars or countless other Live Arcade games that blow this out of the virtual water. Leave it well alone, please.
So, another crap week for the Live Arcade! Luckily, next Wednesday brings Super Puzzle Fighter 2 HD and Sensible World of Soccer. FINALLY. I can't bloody wait. :-)
