Tuesday 29 January 2013
A Fond Farewell to XBLA
As the Xbox 360 enters the last year of its life I think it's fair to say that it (along with the PS3) will go down as a fantastic console. This generation there have been far more multi platform games released than ever before with very few 3rd party exclusives being released on either console. Sure, you had the Halos, the Gears of Wars, the Uncharteds, the Infamouseses's and a few driving games but the majority of the big hitters that will define this generation landed on Sony's big black box and Microsoft's smaller white (and then black) box at around the same time.
In years past choosing a console boiled down to what games you wanted to play and while that's still a factor this gen it became more about the other things - which controller you preferred, free online or not, what console your friends had, whether you wanted a Blu Ray player or not. For me though, one thing that has set the Xbox 360 above the PS3 is the Xbox Live Arcade (or XBLA, pronounced "ksbla"). What started off as a place for Geometry Wars and a load of crap, eventually blossomed into the place where Microsoft would nail down some of the best titles not available on a PS3. Wise move? Probably not, but it works for me.
OK, so technically it's still "games" but just go with it.
Some of the best memories I'll have of this generation have come from XBLA. I've played a lot of excellent retail games, but I've also played a lot that I've chugged through for 8-12 hours enjoying the gameplay and then pretty much forgotten the entire bland story. I enjoyed them, but they didn't really stick with me afterwards and I had no real desire to go back and play them again. On the other hand I've played through a number of 4-6 hour XBLA titles that really stuck with me and I've replayed numerous times - not to get some useless collectables, not to unlock some achievement points - just, you know, for fun.
I'm not dismissing games like Assassins Creed 2, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Halo Reach, Dead Space, Red Dead, Mirror's Edge - those games gave me great memories and created such a great atmosphere that they'll stick with me for a long time. But there are some XBLA games that matched or bettered the experience I had with those games, something I never expected when I first tried the Marble Blast Ultra demo and then got stuck with it in my Games Played list.
The sad thing is that I know plenty of Xbox owners that have never downloaded a single arcade game. You never see ads on TV for them or hear people talking about them or see them in a shop. So they go largely unnoticed, which is a real shame.
Over the next 12 months I'm going to run a retrospective of some of my favourite XBLA titles that I've played in the last few years (not just exclusives), so feel free to read them and hopefully I'll point you in the direction of an amazing game you barely even knew existed.
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It truly is a golden era for the smaller developers. there's so many smaller scale games seeing the light of day now thanks to the likes of xbla and psn and (moreso) steam. and as you say many of them are true gems. although most of the games I played on xbla did come to pc after a while (and there really isn't any excuse not to any more besides Microsoft being a dick because they're compiled in xna and can be ported right to pc so easy) some of them I played on xbla because I didn't want to wait for a pc version and some I waited for and played on pc.
ReplyDeletehere is a list of all the xbla available games I played this year divided by platform I actually did play them on:
pc
Deadlight
Renegade Ops
Trine 2
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Ghostbusters and the Sanctum of Slime
Shank
Shank 2
xbla
Virtual On-OT
Shadow Complex
The War of the Worlds
Fez
I am Alive
Toy Soldier: Cold War
Zombie Apocalypse: Never Die Alone
Alan Wake's American Nightmare
Best of the bunch? Probably I am Alive. Curious mix between Ico, Silent Hill and Snake Eater with a very unique and unforgettable atmosphere to it.
Also, Microsoft have said themselves that although the small downloadable games will not disappear from their platforms, the brand "XBLA" itself will slowly disappear as they move away from disc based games and more towards all downloadables so there will be less distinction between them and the bigger titles. Other than price. Haha
ReplyDeleteYeah to be fair a lot of them go to PC as well and even PS3 as well, I just think MS have pushed it harder. Will have to check out I Am Alive, haven't played it yet!
ReplyDeleteI think XBLA has been the 360's greatest strength. While at some point Microsoft all but gave up on delivering exclusive retail experiences, XBLA has been rocking it year after year.
ReplyDelete