Review: Xbox Live Game Room
Filed under Toys & Hobbies by niuhaibiao on 30-03-2010
Tags : glorified, Marketplace, memories, proper arcade, purchased
Arcades, ahhhhh, some of us have some very fond memories of these places, don’t we? “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy,” I can hear a voice saying.
Actually, that’s not entirely true, but there was the odd arcade here and there around the world that had a bad reputation. Much like mothers warned their daughters about bad boys, we were warned about arcades, but of course that just made us more intrigued.
Much of the ’80s and early ’90s enjoyed weekly releases of the latest titles, and the thrill of discovering that new game was always something to look forward to. Of course games have come a long way in the last 30 odd years and nothing is as comfortable as playing at home nowadays.
So this brings us to Game Room. Developed by Krome Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios, this is their attempt at recreating a virtual arcade with multiple themed rooms and arcade games of your choosing. So how does this work? Well funny you should ask. The client is free on both Xbox 360 (Live account required) and Games for Windows.
Once the client is loaded the application will tell you that you need ‘Game Packs’. These game packs are free, every week, and within these game packs are, funnily enough, games. On top of that there are themes and items which you can use to decorate your arcade with.
You have twelve rooms in your arcade, and each one can be custom designed from a selection of options. Some of these options are locked and require you to ‘Level up’ in order to access them, but more on that later.
Inside each of these rooms can be housed up to eight arcade machines. Remember, these are virtual, but the games are the real deal. All games currently available, of which there are around twenty eight so far, are faithfully recreated with many options.
Now, unlike Xbox Live Arcade, you can’t just go to the Marketplace, download a trial and play that trial over and over again. Game Room works differently. Basically you select a game from the list, choose Trial and get access to the full arcade game for ten minutes, no more, no less. Well actually, not 100% true.
If you decide to quit and go back to the main menu, then that’s it. No more trial for you. You are only allowed to trial a game once, and once that is over then you can either buy the game or spend virtual coins.
Ad Feedback These virtual coins are separate from Marketplace Points, and are earned by playing arcade games for a certain amount of time, completing challenges and medals. These challenges can be sent to you via a friend on your list.
Unfortunately, at the time of playing, no one on my list had bought any games, neither had I due to the current selection. Each time you earn a certain amount of coins you go up a level and the more you level up, the more customisation features become available to you.
One very cool feature in these games is the ability to rewind time on the fly by pressing the left trigger on your controller. Even in the trials you can do this. Of course it won’t make your ‘trial time’ infinite, that is still ticking down but it allows you to retry any part that may be causing you grief.
The games can be purchased for one platform for 240 points, or to be used on Xbox 360 and Games for Windows for 400 points, so the type of DRM you want to purchase is up to you .
As mentioned above, there are around twenty eight games spread between proper arcade releases, Atari 2600 games and games from the Intellivision console. These current games are a mixed bag, but that’s understandable in its infancy.
Adventure on the 2600 can be completed within the trial time limit of 10 minutes and some of the sports games on the Atari 2600 and Intellivision you will almost certainly quit before the time is up. On top of that, games such as Millipede, Centipede and Crystal Castles are not as fun to play due to the lack of a trackball which the original cabinets had.
Also, one has to wonder why Centipede is the proper arcade version while Millipede is the Atari 2600 version. Microsoft are promising over one thousand games with seven new games arriving every week in a Game Pack, again, free to download, but games must be purchased.
Essentially the Game Room is just a glorified front end. You can’t actually use your avatar to freely roam the arcades and check out the machines, but you can go to another friends arcade and your avatar will walk around on its own while you navigate the GUI.
Also – and this is impressive – you can select a game and look at the high scores then choose to watch a replay without having to download or own the game. You can track these replays forward and back, free as you like, to see how someone has done a certain part of the game.
So as an arcade veteran, what do I think of this? Well, the Game Room is free, which is nothing to turn your nose up at, but at the moment, quality games are lacking.
Of the current selection only a few are worthy of playing and even then, those are for the older gamers who have fond memories. However, once the Game Room has been out for a while (another few months at least) then we should see some very good arcade games that we would happily come back to time and time again.
Until then, don’t get your hopes up – the Shower Room is just a glorified front end emulator, but you should definitely check it out.
