Microsoft's annual Summer of Arcade officially started today with the release of it's first title, Limbo.
Limbo is an artistic platformer with a simple story..Uncertain of your sister's fate, a boy enters a world between life and death. The boy has a very limited arsenal of moves; he can jump or grab a hold of certain objects.
The visuals and animation are top notch, but the audio is mostly static white noise and the gameplay is very based very much on trial and error. Limbo does a great job of creating a unique world, it just wasn't all that enjoyable of a game. After the demo I wasn't convinced this was a must have title but could see people liking it for it's art style alone.
Also, alongside the start of Summer of Arcade 2010 was the release of Microsoft's new XBLA browser, Destination Arcade.
After you start the program, your greeted by your avatar running towards you like a man's best friend, excited at the possibility of buying a new game. New Arrivals take center stage on the opening menu with gameplay pictures displayed in a frame of sand that dissipates when you scroll to the next title. The other main menu displays all XBLA games and even the current Deal of the Week specials.
Providing better organization for the ever-growing libary of XBLA games, Destination Arcade allows users to search and sort titles by name, how much Microsoft points they cost, community rating, ESRB rating and whether or not they support multiplayer. This feature alone is very handy and makes it easy to find games if you only want to spend a certain amount of MS points or only want four star quality titles.
Also, you can find similar games to the one your browsing with a single button press. It then brings up other titles that you might enjoy.
I find Destination Arcade a welcome upgrade to the way you search and browse the XBLA library of games. I would rather have it include everything game related like Indie Games, Game Add-ons and Games on Demand instead of just Arcade titles because it does feel like it needs more. I'm curious to see if it will have Kinect support once the sensor bar launches later in November.
