Lord knows how much longer the 360 has There's a good chance the swoth of greatness that is XBOX Live Arcade could vanish forever at least until Every 360 on earth is hacked to hell. Last week with nothing better to do I went and installed the 360 disc games I still had about 12 of them and started going through my list of XBLA games. Dust, Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds, Guardian Heroes, the classic Geometry wars the list keeps going. It's not as amazing now that I have a Japanese PSN and access to basically every awesome import PS1 game ever but still I had some funtimes on XBLA. With the 360 likely being phased out by the end of the year and XBL support for 360 being phased out in about 2 years I think we have a good moment here to reflect on the greatness of XBLA.
Trials HD Rez HD (the ultimate version of Rez!) Radiant Silvergun (a real shame this isn't on disc... would make a great bundle if they released RSG+Ikaruga as a low budget compilation) Limbo
I still need to check out trials HD. I may grab a few more XBLA games since there are a few more shmups I need. Rez HD is awesome Ikaruga is a mixed bag they changed a few things.
Despite not being able to put human heads on alien bodies in the combat simulator, the XBLA version of Perfect Dark was pretty great. I still have it on my 360, but I wish it had gotten a physical disc release.
Daytona USA After Burner Climax Limbo All of those games are available on other platforms, but at least in the case of After Burner Climax the 360 version is better - because it has anti-aliasing, unlike any other version (even the arcade). Virtua Fighter 2 is also a pretty good port of the Model 2 game. It's not really much different from playing it on an emulator on a PC, but if you want an easy way to play the game on a big screen, it's not a bad option.
Virtual On OT, except for the missing local multiplayer. Hori even released a twin stick controller on 360.
I think The Maw is on XBLA too. I've only ever played the PC version. It's a pretty fun game, if you like 3D platformers.
Shadow Complex was One of my Favorites. Felt like Super Metroid for the Xbox. Limbo and Outlands were pretty good games. Also spent a lot of time with KOF 98 Ultimate and 2002 ultimate.
Yeah, but what can we do The ranking will always remain DC > GC > XBLA. The GC-version is technically impossible to no-miss-clear on hard mode because of missing slowdowns in section 5-4.
Minecraft, Peggle, REZ, Catan, Plants vs. Zombies, Renegade Ops, Lara Croft and the Guardian of the Light, SEGA Rally Online Arcade are some of my favorites.
yeah I was just playing Sega Rally online arcade the other day first game I played on my 360 in months.
Vigilante 8 Arcade, Perfect Dark, Pac-Man Championship DX, Bloodrayne Betrayal, Daytona USA, Fighting Vipers, Lara Croft and the Guardian of the Light and Wrecked Revisited.. Those are mine so far.
Oh yeah, Toy Soldiers: Cold War is a fun tower defense/third person action game hybrid, pretty sure it's still exclusive to XBLA too.
Perfect Dark! Of course, I would say that, since Perfect Dark is my favourite ever game (even after thirteen years I still play it every so often, both single player and multiplayer against bots mostly as most of my friends won't play such an old game...), so of course I'd recommend the XBLA version, but to be honest I do prefer the N64 original. The XBLA has much better graphics, a better frame-rate, and online play, but to me the N64 version is superior as some of the XBLA version's updated graphics are out of character with the feel of the original game, and some of the few changes they made to the gameplay actually strike me as inferior to the N64 version, though admittedly that is a wholly subjective opinion. What is sadly objectively true is that it's rare to get a good online match with the XBLA game, as 4J Studios (who did the port) managed to put most players off the game by releasing it in a very bugged, poorly controllable state (how??? It was a port, surely you'd not expect it to have serious bugs that weren't in the original version of the game?), so that few people stayed around for the update patch. A real shame. But anyway, I'd say Perfect Dark is the best XBLA game ever. Just stay away from Perfect Dark Zero, the *massively* inferior follow up game on the XBox 360, which so staggeringly managed to leave out so much of what made PD so fantastic.
I was wondering about Perfect Dark: I've read that the Expansion Pak is needed to access certain parts of the game, but others are accessible without it. I've only ever played it with my Expansion Pak inserted. Which parts are unplayable without it?
Apparently pretty much the whole game. I haven't played it without the expansion pak in, but it looks like, a lot. For XBLA, Daytona USA, DuckTales Remastered, and for the price, the Doritos Crash Course games are pretty good. At the moment I've been stocking up on physical releases of XBLA games, so I'll always have them. And it doesn't count as XBLA, but if you can, pick up Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. You can get it for less than $20 and it has like 40 games.
