It's amazing that this flash game somehow escaped the internet to arrive on the Xbox Live Arcade...

Dash of Destruction is a ten minute diversion from whatever else you were doing designed to make you think about Doritos for a second. Did you think about Doritos? Good. Alright. Nice work. You should go play something else now!

All non-jokes aside, it may be fun to play with friends one or two times but otherwise we all know we sought this out for the gamerscore and nobody has to feel guilty about it unless they REALLY want to.

It's mega short and really good practice for other games with high emphasis on directional combat priority like Metal Slug or Contra. Fall of the Foot Clan is a quick 2D side-scroller where nearly all enemies die in one hit, boss patterns are extremely basic, and graphics that do a lot with VERY little. It's not going to blow your mind, but if you like the genre it'll make you smile! If you really loved it? Check out the GB Castlevania titles next for a similar structure with slightly elevated difficulty.

Fine light-gun game, mediocre Silent Hill entry, Silent Hill: The Arcade is an interesting time if only in small moments. From the way certain enemies move, to rare, but deliberate horror film inspired framing and enemy placement, it's clear that the makers of this title understand what small touches give Silent Hill its charm, but actively choose to ignore them in the larger scheme of design?

It's a short and breezy arcade title with very little substance and little to no impact on the legacy or intent of the series and that's...fine. I keep saying "fine" specifically, because that's what it is. It is just fine.

If anything the elephant in the room here is the liberal use of creatures from individual manifestations of the town of Silent Hill. Pyramid Head is James' demon specifically. Robbie so heavily tied to Heather that it's weird to see him in so many other titles. I definitely feel like games like Silent Hill: The Arcade, and other SH titles released around this time (Homecoming, Downpour, etc.) became so focused on "mapping" and defining the concept of Silent Hill that they all lost their mystery and allure. I'm really hopeful that the upcoming titles have learned from these missteps, but if you play Silent Hill: The Arcade, know that it is easily the biggest offender of the bunch in this regard. It's a clip show of things you like about Silent Hill, in a shell that adds nothing and subtracts plenty.

I've gotta say, I was not expecting how much this entry in the Goat Simulator series fine-tuned and improved the initial concept. What was once a series of fully random, sandbox style goofing around is now a fun environment with not just OMG randomness, but intelligent reward and objective systems to encourage player direction, a loose story with fun pokes at development as a whole, and the ability to be more than a cute little game you break out to make friends laugh.

Having set objectives with different unlockables and point rewards, along with a robust unlockable item catalog, makes this a nearly perfected version of the initial Goat Sim concept. And the variety of tools, mechanics, and quick diversions means the player doesn't have to sit still between them, ensuring that you can have a good 3-5 hours of fun before even a little slow-down starts to kick in.

My only complaint is that some of the quest design, while intended to seemingly mock similar tasks in other games, is repetitive and unrewarding, having players do a LOT of dragging item A to point B. The worst offender in the bunch is absolutely the quest for getting 5,000 points of spending currency from ATMs, which requires the player to, well, just kind of stand there and headbutt ATMs that many times. If you end up doing this quest near the end, like I did, it really slows down the game's otherwise fun pacing, making the end game stretch feel like a bit of a slog.

But overall I recommend this one. Especially if you were a fan of the first, but even more so if you're a fan of heavy mechanical variance.

It's so silly and I mean that as a really high praise. It may not have aged amazingly, and the controls may be a little wonky, but I had fun, genuine fun, the whole way through. I haven't been able to say that about many modern FPS titles and I definitely hope that the trend towards "boomer-shooters" and micro FPS titles brings us back to explore what we had here, at the boundary before every shooter became a Hollywood action movie and the cover-based shooter took over.

Also a big fan of a time-travel narrative that doesn't care if it makes sense, but still loops and touches back in ways that don't over-complicate. Add in the small mechanical variances and the campy genre-tribute travel destinations and this was a really nice romp that I'm glad I finally took the time to try out.

A perfect little mechanic stretched a bit too thin over a playtime that can't support it, Exo One's momentum based flight maneuvers are something to behold. They feel instantly fresh and satisfying, offering gameplay few other games even dabble in, but eventually the thrill wears off and the beautiful planets and haunting score give way to smacking against cliffsides, splashing aimlessly, and desperately arcing to grab a power boost that seemingly does little to nothing to actually impact your glide time like it claims.

I have to recommend playing it. It's unique, stunning, and a must see experience. But in a rare outcome, I can only kind of recommend finishing it. I hope you enjoy it if you do, and there are some truly amazing visuals as a reward, but I think your excitement for the game may last longer if you just play the first few planets and then dip out, cherishing the memory you made in that short time.

Better than you'd think, but not as good as you'd hope. High on Life is a shooter that feels good to play and mimics some of the best titles in the genre in search of movement-focused shooter quality (which it hits in portions, but overall the title falls into feeling incredibly repetitive due to low enemy variety and lack of threats to use new tools against properly). But for every joke that makes you laugh, or narrative hook that makes you want more, there'll be another, of each, that you groan over. It can't hold it's own against comedy heavy hitters in the industry, but knows it, packing its content into a perfectly sized, short, playtime, with the only exception to this being that the ending felt incredibly rushed and disatisfying. However one deserved praise is that even in that short playtime, players are encouraged to take diversions and waste time how they want, with the game's world actually being full of things to do, unlike titles with similar gameplay ethic.

There's also negative things to be said about the use of AI in both art and voice creative work that critically can't be ignored, as the game becoming the biggest success on Xbox Gamepass in its lifetime means that industry practices here may have an impact on the industry at scale in the decade to come. But these applications, creatively, aren't enough to damage the game's aesthetic cohesion and emphasis on foreign feelings. But with the scale of these applications only being discussed in incredibly vague terms with the public, it's impossible to fully form comments on whether or not they're a detractor or a benefit to the work as a whole.

Surprisingly enough, if you're a fan of early 2000s platformer-shooters like Ratchet & Clank or Jak & Daxter, you'll find a lot to love taken from those titles and mixed into the formula. If you're a fan of Squanch's other titles, or of the creative team's individual works, you'll get more of what you like. But if those works already grate on you, this title is gonna crank that headache high enough you'll need a pill for it. It's going to have big status among those who loved it, but I have a feeling that, among the studio's other current and future works, this game won't be the one that stays on people's minds for years to come.

A game that's been around in one form or another for so long it feels like a family friend, the true triumph of Plague Inc: Evolved lies far away from its original inception as a plague sim. The star of this edition of the title is, instead, far and away its seemingly infinite other scenarios contained within. You can be a nation-hopping vampire menace, you can work to cure a world that doesn't want to be cured, or you can even design a worldwide smash hit boardgame. What was once exclusively a medical sim is now a dispersion sim, a game about the way an interconnected world relates and traverses.

While it can grow stale fast and the original premises feels trite by today's standards, I still firmly believe that Plague Inc: Evolved is a near household staple, having survived the leap from flash game to modern hit with ease. And considering the game's added social stigmas in light of COVID-19, that's no small feat.

Does amazingly much with astonishingly little, Off-Peak is a short 30 minute to 1 hour experience that resembles an art gallery more than a "game", but uses that visage and theming to challenge not only what games are, but what they move in us.

The train station of Off Peak offers food, booze, board games, mysteries, music...the things that move the soul, in abundance, and works to show not only how these things can be leveraged for liberation, but also how labor and ownership can shape them into weapons against the very satisfaction they bring.

Highly recommend for both brevity, uniqueness, and the title's important place as an altar to B-Games and as an evolution of the indie "walking sim" genre many unfairly rallied against during its formation.

Did I mention...it's free?

A completely average Half-Life episode that shines when trusting the player with quick combat ramping, but falls short by clogging the end of the experience with escort segments, fetch quests, and otherwise menial actions.

There's interesting critique in the way that Barney Calhoun is treated as both a janitor and a nuisance by his peers, but those themes are better addressed in games with less avoidant labor politics (see Dead Space). It's a fine way to spend 2-3 hours, but it was the weakest of the Half-Life 1 entries in my book.

Perfectly weird and disjointed. Bad Day on the Midway is more experience than game, with the player swapping between off-kilter characters in a messed up amusement park to uncover their secrets, explore attractions, and die at the hands of either bad footing or an unabashed serial killer.

I highly recommend giving this one an hour or two of your time, but don't feel pressured to see everything if you don't want to. After all, it's seemingly best enjoyed when you're a little disoriented and come bearing a desire to see something unlike the other things you've played of late. Also check out the amazingly assembled info site if you want a little more information after you poke around!

It's a near perfect experiment that well reflects what I hope the future of games looks like overall. A smaller, cheaper experience that doesn't sit too long, allowing concepts to stay simple and exciting even in spite of mechanics and design being FPS fixtures that have existed so long a lot of players have them memorized to the core.

Much like another tight, bite-sized shooter experience I loved playing this year (Post Void) Chop Goblins rewards score chasing, optimization, and the nature of social competition by delivering a gory, fast, and at times adorable faux-retro FPS that I played through three times I had so much fun. You'll especially love it as a moment to breathe between modern titles with longer runtimes and commitments. Hope you like it if you try it! More short but sweet games like this please! :3

Finished all 50 levels of this one today as part of the Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium collection and it's really unique!! Breakout meets pinball to make some weird stages with exciting Capcom sound design and somewhat middling difficulty variance that all in all makes for a fun time that feels inventive until the difficulty spike dissolves what made it strong.

It plays like traditional breakout but with more difficult shots (especially in the game's last ten stages) and less useful powerups, making it obvious design was heavily quarter focused more so than fun focused, but if played at a free play arcade or as part of this bundle it's a nice time with interesting music, sound, and visual flare! It's just definitely not gonna make any believers out of folks who don't like this genre already.