There are two lessons to be taken from this experience. First and foremost is to make sure when you buy a game it’s what you want. When I picked this disc up at a local Gamestop several years ago, I was hunting for the collection that Super Contra was on. The game had been removed from XBL so that would be the only way to get the only home version this close to arcade-perfect. Needless to say, I picked the wrong disc.
The second lesson comes in the price of the game. While it now sells for about $5 on the Gamestop website, I picked it up for a mere $.99! Not sure if the game I wanted, I was more then willing to take the chance. Lesson number 2: you get what you pay for.
Now, since this is another collection disc that I had planned to use with my (then fully working) Xbox 360, I had decided to treat this collection as one big review. Each game is listed and linked separately below:
Story: The story of Feeding Frenzy is basically a messed up version of the food chain. You will play as a handful of fish as you make your way deeper and deeper into the ocean until you are the biggest baddest fish who can literally devour everything else out there. That really is about all the game has for plot, which makes sense considering the game was meant to be a small downloadable casual game, leaving the big experiences to be the disc-based games you would buy for your 360. It’s not much, but it is enough to make sense in it’s little world.
6/10
Graphics: This is not a complex looking game by any means. You will have a play-area that’s about two screens tall and one wide which will be populated at any time by anywhere from 2 to 4 different fish-types as well as extra obstacles such as jelly fish, something monstrous that can fling itself across the screen devouring everything in it’s path, or even bombs. Everything is generally bright and colorful to look at however, so while the game doesn’t do a lot for variety at any given moment, it still looks very pleasant, even at it’s messiest.
7/10
Sound: This is going to be one of the weaker points of this game, as there is very little in the way of sound work at all. Basically, you will hear mines explode and crunching sounds when you or another fish get eaten, and that’s about it. I don’t even think there is music outside of bonus stages and if you perfect a level. Do not expect to be enthralled here.
5/10
Gameplay: Like everything else about this game, the gameplay is very simple. In fact, if you ever went to one of those flash-game websites that used to be all over the internet, you have probably played a version of this game somewhere. Each level starts you as a small fish on the map and other fish swim around. You have to dodge the bigger fish while eating smaller ones until you get big enough to eat those as well. When you get to the maximum size, everyone gets the hell out and you win the map.
Now that is not to say there isn’t some variety in this. After all, they had to make this spread out for about 30 levels. And they do this by changing locations, the fish you play as, and adding obstacles/powerups. There are a few bonus levels scattered through. But for all that, the core game does not change and is exceptionally easy. Which makes it’s short play-time (about 2 hours) a blessing, since the game does not overstay it’s welcome.
But that is not to say the game is great. It’s ok at best as the game has a very repetitive nature as well as two major flaws. Unfortunately the screen, while bigger then yours and scrolling, does so while you are way too close to the edge, resulting in you either forgetting there is more up or down then where you are now, or VERY easily running into something that will eat you because you had no chance of seeing it before you were there. Add to this a severe case of RNG for where everything is/swims to, and you can expect a few VERY cheap deaths along the way.
5/10
Story: There is no story to this game… at all.
Graphics: Boom Boom rocket is a very pretty title, if one that is exceptionally limited in it’s visuals. The game takes place over a 3D rendered city at night which looks pretty good as the cameral floats and pans around it. However, you will not spend a lot of your attention on this as the only other things you will see are your score, an energy meter, and the fireworks you are going to blow up. This is as bright and vibrant as it should be, but outside of the explosions themselves, that is literally all you will see… at all.
7/10
Sound: This is a game that is literally all about it’s music. Yes the exploding fire-works can sound nice and meaty, but they are very much second fiddle to the music you are supposed to play the game to… but this is also a weak point as the game only has 10 songs available to play with in the base game and a signle DLC with 5 extra songs, you are going to run out of things to listen to real fast. Add to this none of these have lyrics but are all techno-remixes of other well known songs, and you can imagine how much of a disappointment this is, especially for a music-based game.
6/10
Gameplay: As the camera starts floating around the city, rockets will begin to fire from the bottom of the screen to the upper, each with an arrow and color on representing one of the four face-buttons on your controller, the four arrows on your dance pad, or the 4 buttons on your guitar hero guitar. You will press these buttons in tune to the music you are listening to, your health/bonus points meter increasing and decreasing depending on how you do. If you do badly enough to run out, the game is over. But do well enough to fill it, and you will go from 1x to 4x score. Fill it completely and you can enter a turbo mode which will slowly drain the meter while giving you 16x bonus while it lasts, and returning you to half-full when it’s over.
The end result is a challenging came for those who are more musically inclined, but not a flawless one. For starters, this game is exceedingly small. When you first install it, you will only have 10 tracks to play with and 3 skill levels for each, and nothing else. You can buy more in the form of a single DLC pack, but this only adds 5 more tracks, all of which use the same background city, all but eliminating any real variety the gamer might experience.
This is perhaps exemplified by the multiple game types, all of which use these same tracks and even rocket sequences. But perhaps the “endurance” mode personifies this issue the most, as it just loops the same track and sequence, gradually increasing the speed until the user simply can not keep up and loses. It offers NO variety what-so-ever.
5/10
Story: Despite the main mode of the game being an “Adventure Mode,” there is literally no story to this game.
Graphics: Luxor 2 is far from an eyesore. Every background is well detailed as they understood you would probably spend a good length of time looking at each one. But there is also very little besides them to look at, as pretty much the entire game is made up of your paddle (which is very well stylized to the Egyptian motif) and bugs that will march around the screen pushing lines of colorful balls around. It looks nice, but you will become accustomed to it very quickly, and it will never wow you.
6/10
Sound: Much like the graphics of this game, the sound is decent, but very limited. The music basically consists of maybe 2 or 3 tracks at best, but it will quickly fall in the background. It never gets grating, but it’s clearly only there cause it’s expected to be there and little else.
Sound effects are similar in vein to the music in that it doesn't sound bad, but it is very standard fair. If anything it sounds like the game wants to be an arcade cabinet of old where everything has exactly one sound to make sure you know it’s happening, but with more modern quality, including a voiced “Go back” when you get a reverse item. But in the end, all they manage to do is acknowledge something occurred and little else.
6/10
Gameplay: If you can imagine what it would look like if you blended Bust-A-Move (or Puzzle Bobble as it was also known) with Breakout, you have a good idea of what Luxor 2 plays like. As the screen opens up, you will see a very nice looking background with your paddle at the bottom of the screen, and before long, a trail of balls will begin rolling in from one of the edges, following a path which you may or may not be able to see in the background itself. At this time a ball will appear embedded in your paddle which will match the color of some of the ones rolling through the screen. Shoot your ball to match 3 or more in the trail to make them disappear. Clear the sequence and the bug pushing them along will explode into a few gems you can collect for points! Do this enough and you win the round. However, if they ever reach the opening at the end of their path, you lose.
To give the game variety, each of these backdrops contains a different track the bugs will push balls through, requiring the player to keep in mind things like where they hide behind objects on the map, cross over and get in the way of each other, or even in some maps, multiple paths that have to be managed at once. But that variety is only impressive until it starts to repeat. And this is more of an issue then it should be due to the main mode of the game being the “Adventure mode.”
When you play this mode, you will be presented with a map with a trail that will be marked with each round as you reach it. It looks to be a reasonable length, but doesn’t take long till it has to scroll to reveal more of this map to you, showing that you are in for a long battle with the ball bugs. Perhaps too long as you will see no sign of the end of the game before maps don’t just repeat, but repeat in the same order more then once! And by the third time, the only addition I really noticed was a new 5th color for the balls. This seems to me like artificial padding and like the game devs decided they could make a longer game easier by just reusing levels. The paths don’t even change, for god’s sake!
Nor are the power-ups going to leave you with much to alleviate this either. They are varied, but by the time you get through your second pass of maps, you will have seen everything. It also doesn’t help that nothing seems like it has much in the way of long-lasting effects. From the slow/stop/reverse powers that effect the speed the balls move on the map, to the scorpion that whips along the other way destroying EVERYTHING in it’s path before it dies, it’s all arcadey tricks that can offer help in a pinch, but does nothing in the long term.
4/10
Story: Like most games in this collection, there is no story here. At it’s core, this game is a mutation of Pac-Man.
Graphics: Pac-Man Championship Edition can basically be described as vivid to use a single word. It’s bright, fluid, and incredibly pleasing to the eye as the maze morphs and changes around Pac-man while you play. There is little I can say about it outside of simply saying it looks good.
8/10
Sound: Being a 5 minute-long version of Pac-man, this is not going to have a lot of variety in the sound perspective. You get all the classic pac-man sound effects every gamer has embedded in their brain and a nice track of techno-music, but this music is subdued as the game is designed around updating a nostalgic feel. This, like the graphics, was done very well.
7/10
Gameplay: If you have played Pac-man before, you already have a good idea of what to expect. You will play as the title character as you move him around the maze on your screen in your goal to eat all the pellets while avoiding the ghosts you share this environments with. However, unlike before clearing the map will not stop the game and bring you to a new level. Instead, when you clear both sides of the map, the one you are not on, will morph into a new rendition with new paths filled with pellets to conquer. Clear this and now the other half changes, keeping the game going in one fluid session. This is a welcome update, but only one of the major two changes to the game. The other is a time limit.
In the original pac-man, you played your game as long as you could until you ran out of lives at the hands of those pesky ghost. In this game, those lives can only extend your game for so long, as depending on the game mode you choose, you will be given 5-10 minutes to play before the game halts and you get to look at the stats of how you did. This makes the game more of a “time attack” type game more then something you can try to push as long as you can like before. Depending on your tastes, this could be a good or bad thing.
7/10
Uno: This pack apparently also includes Uno on the disc, but if you play this on the Xbox One, this game does NOT install, so you can not play it. And since while trying to start this disc originally I found the disc drive of my actual 360 is dead, that leaves this game in a state I imagine most today would find it… broken and unplayable.
0/10
Total collection:
Bugs: While I can not speak for the menu system that runs the disc for obvious reasons, I did find several bugs in the different games that need to be reported as well:
Feeding Frenzy:
- Black Borders: This game ran very well, but it did not run flawless. Basically the only bug I could find was sometimes an explosion would shake the screen… and not always put the background back, leaving a black borders along a border on the background for a short while. When the screen moved again, it would correct itself, but it was kinda funny to see.
Boom Boom Rocket:
- Missing buttons: I don’t know if it’s a bug or a limitation of playing this game with a controller, but the game seemed incapable of truly handling the full button play when things get hot. As a result, it felt like the rules of what button presses worked and what ones do not was very inconsistent. It also doesn’t help that the game tends to use “combo arrows” (or for those of you not familiar with Dance Dance Revolution, two arrows at the same time) when you are using just one thumb on the face-buttons on the right-hand side of your controller.
Luxor 2:
- Game Refused to start: No joke, I tried to start the game, the loading screen came up… and stayed there until the Xbox One told me it was taking too long to load. The second attempt worked, but I have NEVER had a game on a console straight up refuse to run at all until now.
- Hard Crash: I have complained before about the stability of
the Xbox One. In fact, I did so while talking about the bugs for Halo: Master Chief Collection. But most of the
issues with the system itself seem to have been resolved by now, including the
individual parts ceasing to work and controllers crashing independently of the
machine. However, this game manages to crash the 360 emulator built into the
system’s OS at it’s current version. It did so badly in fact, that I couldn’t
restart the game until I restarted the hardware. I may have had to pull the
batteries and reset them to fix a controller crash in the system’s early life,
but this is a whole new level I haven’t seen since the early 90s.
Overall: I can not recommend this disc. Flat out, every game on it outside of their rendition of Pac-Man is mediocre at best, if not outright unplayable on the current consoles. And even Pac-Man is a version with a time-limit, making it best suited for a party game. If you want to play with the original golden globe arcade mascot, you can always play the original or another better variant then this.
Score:
5/10
Source: Gamestop
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