Number 7.

Shoot1Up (XBLA Indie Games)

Every once in a while , you come across something that is a very pleasant surprise. One of the nicest surprises of A Game A Day so far has been Shoot1Up, which cost me all of 80 Microsoft Points (60-odd pence) when I first bought and played it at the end of February 2010.

Shoot1Up is probably the simplest game in my top 10, so there's maybe not much I can say about it that I didn't say three months ago. It's a terrific piece of arcade fun, and although it's not tremendously difficult, the real fun lies in getting a high score. And that, my friends, is the essence of arcade gaming, and something I still love to play for after 30 years.


That's the stuff. Massive laser death all round.

I've played it a bit more lately, and I seem to have missed a couple of things in my initial euphoria. The first thing I missed was the Score Trek mode. This, as you might suspect, is a score attack mode, but you only get one ship to make it through as much of the game as usual. It's quite a clever way to incorporate a score attack mode into the game.


That fat purple thing is an end-level boss. It's huuuuuuuge!

Something else I missed, or at least I think I missed, concerns the scoring system. When you shoot anything, the score you receive appears in a box in big numbers on the screen. Naturally, I presumed these scores were just added to your total. But it appears, I think, that you have to collect them to add them to your score. That's pretty novel for a shooter, and adds another element of risk/reward to the game.

Shoot1Up seems to be doing very nicely on XBLA's Indie Games store. It's certainly planted itself in the Top Rated games section, and rightly so. It's a game that I expect to be playing for a long time yet, even if it's just to pick up and play for fifteen minutes. It's easily one of my ten most enjoyed games from the blog.

Shoot1Up (XBox 360 Indie Games)

80 points.

80 Microsoft points.

How much is that, anyway? If you buy points from XBox.com, that's 68 pence. Let's make it 70. Now let's convert it into the currency of the arcades... seven tens.

If Shoot1Up had been in the arcades when they were in their heyday, and if you could have got past the iffy name, you would have easily spent seven tens on it, and probably a fair bit more.



Shoot1Up is like a cross between TacScan, Terra Cresta and... oh, I don't know. Something else beginning with 'T'.  Truxton. That'll do. Something with a lot of bullets. You start the game with a fleet, nay, a phalanx of fighter planes. As you'd expect, alien hordes are in need of dispatching, and your boys are the ones given the task.

Here's the game mechanic. You start with a small fleet of ships. Holding the A button fires a stream of bullets. The trigger buttons will expand or contract your fleet of ships. If you contract, the ships fly "on top" of each other, so they only take up as much room as one ship. As a result, you only unleash a small stream of bullets. It also makes it easier to dodge enemy bullets and ships... but as a consequence, your scoring is reduced.



If, however, you expand the formation, then your ships' firepower links up to produce an awesome blast of laser death, far more destructive than when they're contracted. And as this is a riskier tactic and you're more prone to losing ships, you score more heavily.

You can't just stay expanded, though... at times it will be necessary to narrow your field just to stay alive. If you lose all your ships, it's game over. Luckily, though, you can obtain additional ships quite regularly, and they're instantly added to your fleet on the screen. Nothing is kept in reserve... it's all out, all of the time. The most ships I've had at a time is 18, but I think the maximum available is 30. Occasionally you can also pick up a Ghost, which puts a mirror of your fleet on screen for a limited time, for twice as much damage potential.



With only six levels, it's not hard to get to the end, although those six levels are bolstered by a choice of routes as you go. And although the graphics look charmingly old-school, the backgrounds repeat a bit too much, which is a wee bit of a shame but nowhere near a problem. I also hear talk of a problem where using the shield attack gives you an unbalanced multiplier, resulting in massively over-inflated scores. I wouldn't know, I've never used shield attack!

Even with those "issues", there's no way you can say this isn't worth the money, if you're an old-school arcade shmup fan. In fact, I'd happily pay more. I've played it a few times now, giving myself the good old claw hand from playing it a bit too intensely. And I certainly intend to go back to improve my score. Shoot1Up may not be as subtle as the likes of Leave Home, but it's a hell of a good time for your seven tens.

Midnight Club Los Angeles (XBox 360)

I like a good racer, and although I wasn't that enamoured with Midnight Club on the PS2, this one has had some very good, consistent reviews, so when I saw the Complete Edition for just a tenner, I bit.

I haven't played it much yet, but I'm kind of wishing I didn't bite after all.

Midnight Club LA, to me, seems almost like a complete copy of Need for Speed Underground 2. And as that is one of my least favourite entries in the NfS series, that's quite a disappointment.


Ooh, that looks nice. Maybe I'll give it a bit longer, after all...

I know an hour isn't always enough time to judge, but sometimes that's all I've got to play before I write, and you can usually get a decent feel for something in that time. I'm not exactly reviewing the games I play for AGAD, after all, just passing an opinion based on what I have been able to play.

In this case, I can't see anything new here at all. You're a rookie driver coming into the city, and you have to impress the right people so that you can take part in more prestigious races and earn better performing cars and more money. Yep, done all that, in NfSU2.


No, I haven't got a bike yet, either...

You can take races either by driving to designated areas on the map, or by flashing your lights at other street racers, who will then race you to a pre-designated point on the map. Yep, done all that, in NfSU2.

When racing, you can keep to the course by driving past coloured plumes of smoke, unless it's a race against a driver you've flashed, in which case you keep an eye on the map and crash at every other junction. Yep, done all that... you see where I'm going here.

I'll give this one more of a try later... after all, I do enjoy my racing games. But when this one successfully apes one I wasn't keen on, it makes it difficult to want to pop the disc back in the tray. The open world city just serves to make things far less interesting as far as I'm concerned, and the cars (at least in the early stages) don't handle well. I have to say, my son pinched the disc to play this and is enjoying it, but at this moment in time, it's not for me.

Unsung Classics. Number 2: Sega Rally (XBox 360)

"Hold on a minute!", I hear you cry. "Sega Rally isn't an unsung classic!". And, it's fair to say, the original game is a classic that's loved by many, many people. The modern reboot, on the other hand, although critically praised seems to have come and gone in the blink of an eye, with few people giving it the time of day.

What a shame that is. The new Sega Rally is an absolutely brilliant arcade racer, full of all the classic Sega touches that you'd expect. Wildlife wandering around on the safari courses. Flying vehicles on different courses... planes, helicopters, microlites and hot air balloons make appearances here. But there's far more to this game than little cutesy cameos.


The way it used to be...

Sega Rally is brutal. As racing games go, this is one of the hardest I've played. But it's also very fair and very true. In many of today's racers, you can just plough your way to the front and stay there, battering meek opponents out of your way and then cruising along as they drop back out of harm's way. That ain't happening in this game.

No, this game will challenge and fight you, every step of the way. You have to earn everything in this game... and I don't just mean race wins. You'll find yourself locked in a struggle to keep fifth place, and in a race of six drivers, that's saying something. Sega has set this game up so that every point counts for something, and it can actually feel really satisfying to finish in the top three.


Ooh, fourth place is within reach! Grab it!

The AI is nasty. Opponents aren't afraid to give you a good whack if it means retaking their place from you. And when you bear in mind how difficult it can be just to drive each course in a reasonable time, you'll find yourself cursing them any time you do that.

The environment also plays a part in your driving. Muddy courses will become rutted as they're driven on, and hitting these ruts on your next lap will slow you down or throw you off course. Pools of water will really slow you down. Sliding from gravel onto tarmac, you'll really feel the tyres bite. Sandy courses feel... "smushy". You'll feel bogged down in deep snow. Everything affects your car as you'd expect it to.

Any little mistake you make can, and usually will be punished. You have to really learn how to drive your car. It's very much about finesse. You have to know when to brake and how hard. You have to know when it's better to just ease off or let go of the accelerator, and when you can gun it. Different corners require different tactics, from a gentle nudge to a hard-braking powerslide, and if you get it wrong you're likely to be watching opposing racers zoom off into the distance. It can be heartbreaking to have battled your way into a good position, just to lose it when you screw up a hairpin or difficult double-bend. But you'll come back for more punishment...


Looks like the switch to Road tyres was a mistake...

Sega Rally is possibly the most difficult racer of the modern generation. But it's also the most gripping, to my mind. It's a game that you have to play in a room by yourself, because you get so into it. You'll find yourself regularly in that ridiculous position of trying to coax extra performance out of your car with your own body... leaning forward at times, or with your hands thrown way out to the side as you try and clip just a little off that tricky corner. It's absolutely intense, and there's not a lot of that around in today's games.

I bought this a couple of years ago, for about a tenner, and I'm still coming back to it. It's no more expensive than that now, and if you find yourself yearning for the good old days where games would give you a good kicking but lure you back for more, you really owe it to yourself to buy Sega Rally.

Mirror's Edge (XBox 360)

I missed the first half of the Arsenal vs Man Utd match for this... not something I'd do lightly, given that I love my footy.

Just as well it was, on balance, worth it.

Mirror's Edge, it appears, is a very polarising game. That's probably what comes of being so strikingly original. It looks very different... very clean, sharp and bright. And it plays differently to almost anything else. It's a first-person platform game.


Right a bit... right a bit... woooooaaahh! Eeeeasyyyyyy!

That's a concept that takes a while to get to grips with. It's a bit frustrating at first... actually, it's very frustrating at first... as you mis-judge jumps and timing, and crash to the rooftop, or worse, all the way to the ground. It's quite unnerving to see Faith scrabbling for a handhold on the way to a sickening crash...

And then there's the combat, or rather, non-combat. This is not a game where you're supposed to beat up all that stand in your way. Instead, Mirror's Edge encourages you to avoid or disarm. You're a Runner... so run! It's difficult, and does put you off initially, but again, the fact that it's different means it's worth persevering and it feels a little more rewarding when you start to get the hang of it.


They shouldn't encourage you to play in a construction yard... it'll only lead to trouble.

I like the way the game helps you out in the beginning... progress depends on finding your way quickly across the rooftops, which is really hard. So all objects of use are coloured red, so that you know at a glance where you need to go. It's a gentle piece of handholding... knowing where you have to go doesn't make it any easier to pull off the moves required to get there. Quite clever.

I'm not saying I'm particularly good at Mirror's Edge... not yet. But I'm sufficiently intrigued by the concept to want to carry on. It's rare to find a game these days that's different enough to grab your attention from the off... kudos to Mirror's Edge for managing that.