PowerUp Forever

What do Geometry Wars, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Rez and Spore all have in common? Aside from being awesome games, traces of each can be found in PowerUp Forever, the latest top-down shooter on the Xbox Live Arcade.

The gameplay is simple enough - you control a ship, or insect, or microbe, or something (not sure what it's supposed to be) with the left stick, and shoot in any direction with the right. Enemies of all shapes and sizes accost you from every angle, and you've got to destroy as many as possible and survive long enough to complete your objectives.

Said objectives involve destroying, "parasites" in order to "enrage" the "guardian". Once the "guardian" has been "enraged", he shows up to do battle with you. Once the "guardian" is dead, you advance to the next level. Rinse and repeat.

The game is fast paced and addictive in the Geometry Wars fashion, and controls identically. Your weapons are similar, with the inclusion of the rapid fire primary cannon and the doomsday shockwave smart bomb. There are also other weapons you unlock throughout the game, such as a laser guided missile salvo and a bazooka-like single shot cannon. You are also equipped with an elliptical shield, which after being upgraded, can actually redirect enemy fire.

The ship you control has an abstract, starfighter sort of feel to it. As you progress from level to level it morphs and changes, growing larger and sprouting more wings and fins. In my eyes it physically resembles the dragon from Panzer Dragoon Orta.
The music is aquatic, echoic, ethereal, and relaxing, but will also accelerate to an adrenaline inducing techno beat at times when the action because frantic. This, along with the art style used to portray your ship and the enemy Guardians, reminds me of Rez.
The environment seems to be some sort of ocean, or primordial ooze. The creatures you encounter are reminiscent of shrimp, plankton, and assorted crustaceans. As you advance from level to level you seem to be advancing through an evolutionary process. Your ship also increases in size - enemies which dwarfed you three levels prior will be small enough to run over without taking any damage.

Additional game modes are unlocked when certain prerequisites are met within Arcade mode. Guardian Rush pits you against ten Guardians in a row, each stronger than the one before it. Overkill mode starts you in the first level and plays just like the standard game mode, but from the get go you're equipped with all weapon upgrades, making you an unstoppable powerhouse. There are two others, but I haven't played them yet.

The art style is rich and vibrant. The color of the enemies and the environment changes from level to level, and and the explosion and particle effects are gorgeous.

Over all PowerUp Forever is a great addition to any gamer's library. The game is 800 MS Points (That's 10 American Dollars) and a free demo is available on the Xbox Live Arcade. For a top-down shooter, PowerUp forever has a lot of depth, and a lot to offer anyone looking for a rich and simple game to chill out to.



Purchased on 12/25/2008. Spent approx. three hours playing

Doritos: Dash of Destruction

"My grandpa said to me once, 'son, it doesn't matter if the horse is blind. Just hook him to the wagon anyway.' I really don't know what he meant by that."

Doritos: Dash of Destruction is a downloadable psuedo-homebrew game, now available on the Xbox Live Arcade. As the title might suggest, the game's apparent purpose is to advertise Doritos.

The game was conceived by medical software programmer Mike Borland in his spare time. Borland appears throughout the game, popping up in between missions to offer a tidbit of irrelevant wisdom (see above) or to upgrade your T Rex or Doritos Truck respectively. The Live Arcade version of the game was developed by the studio NinjaBee. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Advertisement games have been tried on the Live Arcade before, and have never been anything to get excited about. Toyota's Yaris, one of the worst games I've ever played, ever, in my entire life, for all eternity, was released on the Live Arcade for free, and tasked players with driving the titular compact around on roller-coaster highways, shooting robots and small animals with a scorpion tail-like appendage attached to the back of the car. I'm serious. The controls were horrendous and the graphics optically painful.

Dash of Destruction's premise is no more logical. The game is divided into two parts; a Truck Campaign and a T Rex campaign. The T Rex campaign puts you in control of, well, a T Rex, and your objectives include running around (and destroying) cities and eating Doritos delivery trucks ("Because T Rexs like to eat Doritos. Seriously"). Later levels up the challenge by introducing a rival dinosaur for you to compete against.

The truck levels play out the same way, but place you in the role of the delivery driver as opposed to the rampaging dinosaur. You score points by making "deliveries", which basically involves driving into a giant, holographic Dorito before you get eaten too many times.

I played the game for all of twenty minutes, and beat not only both campaigns, but had also earned 190 of the 200 available gamerscore. most of the achievements are awarded for completing campaign objectives, with the only exception being 10GS for winning a multiplayer game.

As I mentioned before, Borland pops up between levels and upgrades your T Rex with cybernetic enhancements, like robotic legs and a nose-blade for cutting through buildings. He also upgrades your Doritos truck with things like nitros tanks and a snow-plow looking deal. By the time I finished the last level my truck looked like a cross between Christopher Nolan's Batmobile and a steam locomotive. The T Rex looked like some horrible experiment gone wrong ("It's not as nature intended, it's better!").

The gameplay is fun, frantic, and ridiculous. The environments are fully destructible, which makes playing as the T Rex a lot of fun. The truck levels aren't as interesting, but are more challenging.

Overall Doritos: Dash of Destruction is a fun, albeit short game, which will more than likely leave you satisfied. You also can't beat the price - it's free. And in the time it took you to read this review, you could have earned about 50GS.