Earth Defense Force 2017

This Xbox 360 game is a pretty danged good game.  Most people haven't heard of it, but it's definitely worth a look. 

It's basically a fairly generic 3rd person shooter, but it's the over-the-top nature of the weapons and enemies that makes it great.  The enemies are giant bugs, space ships, robots, and Godzilla-like monsters.  The monsters are huge, and come in large numbers. 

There are 100's of weapons, including assault rifles, sniper rifles, rockets, missiles, flame throwers, grenades, etc.  These aren't normal guns though.  There are rocket launchers that shoot homing missiles as fast as a machine gun, or 20 at a time, etc. 

All the buildings are destructible and the game is overall really hectic.

You can upgrade your total health by picking up armor drops.  Every time you pick up one armor, you get one more hit point, and you'll need every single one for the later difficulty levels, which get pretty insane.

This game also features 2-player split screen co-op which makes those harder difficulties more doable.

This game is an over-the-top budget game that should be played. I highly recommend it.

Original Xbox Live games

Last night at midnight, online support for the original Xbox games was supposed to end, yet, this morning they could still connect.  I played a round of Halo 2 for kicks, and it worked.  I also tried to play some Phantom Dust, but nobody was on... not surprised. 

So, people, you might have another day. Get those free maps before they're taken away forever.

Astrosmash

If you own an Intellivision, but don't know which games to get, another great game is Astrosmash.  The game is very simple, but very addicting.  You are on the bottom of the screen shooting at things that fall down at you.  There are larger rocks that split up into smaller ones, UFOs, homing... things, and I guess asteroids.  It's fun and fast paced, and you can probably find it for fairly cheap. 

I recently found a copy for $0.99. 

The game is also available on the new Xbox Live Game Room for $3, where you can play on the Xbox 360 with leaderboards. 

It's a fun game, and I recommend that if you enjoy old school arcade action, you should check it out.

New Scrabble Rules

I know this isn't exactly a video game, but a new Scrabble game called Scrabble Trickster is coming out which, among other changes, allows the players to use proper nouns... now that's intense...

http://kotaku.com/5510610/scrabble-rules-change-permits-proper-nouns-horrifies-purists-%5Bupdate-2-old-rules-preserved%5D

Shark! Shark!

Shark! Shark! for the Mattel Intellivision is an amazing game.  It's simple and fun, and keeps you coming back for more. 

The game is basically the modern game Feeding Frenzy, but it came out in the early 1980's.  You eat small fish to become bigger, and occasionally a shark comes to eat you.  If you bite the shark's tail enough, it will die, and you get another life.

You can also play 2 players simultaneously and it's a lot of fun. 

It's pretty simple, so there's not much to say, but it's a great game.

Rocket Knight Adventures

 Ah, now Rocket Knight Adventures is a fun game.  It was one of the few games I had for my Sega Genesis, and I used to play it all the time.  Since it's on a 16-bit system, it's a sidescroller, like most good games from those days were (Sonic, Mario, etc.).  With those bigger name games, however, great games like Rocket Knight Adventures got looked over. 

You star as Sparkster, an opossum with a jetpack and a sword.  At the beginning, the princess gets kidnapped, and you have to fight though the army of evil pig monsters to get her back.

For a game of that time, there is a lot of variety in this game.  The base gameplay is your basic sidescroller, where you go from left to right and fight everything in your way.  There are lots of bosses and unique enemies, keeping the game exciting.

There are sections that vary, such as sidescrolling shooter type levels (including one that's just like R-Type), and a giant Mech battle versus your evil nemesis, the dark knight. 

The graphics are bright and colorful, the characters are likable, and there's a cartoony / comedic / fun feel to the entire game. 

With all the piles of sidescrollers on the Genesis, this one is worth checking out.  You can find it for pretty cheap at your local old game shop.  I still have mine from when I was a kid, but I've seen it for under $10. 

If you see it, you should definitely check it out.

Twinkle Star Sprites

Alright, today's review is going to be the game Twinkle Star Sprites.  This is an arcade game from the mid 90's, but I've only played the Dreamcast port, so that's what I'm going to be talking about. 

This is a competitive game that mixes top down shooter and puzzle games.  Each player (the game is either you vs. the computer, or 2 player versus), gets half of the screen while various patterns of enemies come down the screen.  When you kill an enemy, it explodes, and any nearby enemies get hurt and can explode creating a combo attack.  The higher the combo, the stronger the attack you send towards your enemy.  The basic attack is a small fireball, but with bigger combos, you can send your character's unique attack, or even launch a devastating boss attack. 

The small fireballs can be shot at, sending them back at the enemy.  Each character also gets a charge attack, and a couple bombs.  The more combos you get, the more a meter at the bottom of the screen charges up.  At the first level it's just the basic charge attack.  At the second level, it depletes the bar, but sends several of the character's unique medium attacks at the other player, and if charged all the way, you can release a boss attack.

The game has 3 basic modes: story mode, vs. computer, and player vs. player.  The gameplay is all basically the same.  In story mode you play as the main character Load Ran, while in the other modes you can chose your character.

It's a very simple game, but very fun and addicting when played with some friends.  If you have a Dreamcast, I'd highly recommend finding a copy.  I don't think it's very common, and might be hard to find, but if you own a Dreamcast, I'm sure you know ways around that.  ;)