Goatmoose

It’s time to begin what’s important: reviewing games, films, and other bits of media goodness. This is of utmost importance, and procrastination on the subject ends here. It stops like the buck, Woodrow.

Please understand I am an Xbox360 person. Please understand this is simply because it is a great system. Prior to the 360′s release I would have considered myself a borderline Sony fanboy, prepared to defend the Playstation in all its glory against the ridiculously craptastic legless coffee table with football-sized controllers that was the original Xbox. But things have changed since then, and quite simply, the PS3 has never given me any reason to prefer it over the 360 aside from 2-3 games and the Blu Ray player – and dammit, that’s not enough. DIsappointing prices, disappointing online content (by comparison), disappointing PS3-only game count (by comparison) and for the fact it’s the console with superior hardware, disappointing side-by-side performance on many games have all backed me up on this.

But you PS3 people will still argue with that, so that’s all we’ll say about it.

And thus, we arrive at the first XBLA review: Puzzle Arcade!

What better way to begin game reviews than with a downloadable game that 9 or so people will enjoy?

I decided to shell out my Microsoft points for this title for a few reasons:

I like puzzles. A damn good reason, I think.

I don’t have room in my tiny apartment to do real puzzles.

My lady likes puzzles, I’ll do anything to get her gaming and I thought she might play this. (She hasn’t)

The other fantastic fact about doing this game as a first review is this: there’s hardly anything to review. You put puzzles together for Christ’s sake! What does one expect beyond that? It gives you a bunch of pieces, you put them together, and you form a picture. Shocker.

There are a few game modes, though, that make things interesting. You’ve got your normal puzzles, which are entertaining. You’ve got layered puzzles that are a pain, because you keep putting together layer after layer of weird-shaped things that look like paint smudges. There’s even 3d puzzles! You’ve got the puzzle of the week, a puzzle board that changes every week and downloads itself for free from XBL (a nice touch, really). You’ve got the ability to make every puzzle anywhere from 12 to thousands of pieces, making each one as difficult or easy as you want. Adding another degree of difficulty is possible, too, as you can have all the mixed-up pieces spawn on the screen facing the direction they are inserted into the puzzle, or tossed about sloppy style all over the place, forcing you to rotate and really hunt down their spots.

You can even put puzzles together online. With other puzzle people. My goodness.

The puzzle pictures themselves are quite a variety, which I find to be a good thing. Some may enjoy the pictures of weird M.C. Escher-esque oddities and some may prefer golden retriever puppies. Whatever your poison, it’ll be represented – and more packs can always be downloaded on the cheap.

The controls are simple and not overbearing. The game lets you know when you snap puzzles in correctly and keeps track of how many you have left to match, and your overall completion percentage. The music… I honestly have no memory of. Thus, it must not be that fantastic.

Overall, Goatmoose gives it: 8/10
You should know what you’re getting into when you download this title. Reviewing it for what it is, a jigsaw puzzle game, it excels at what it’s supposed to be. If you’re real into puzzles, it’s worth a look. If you’re not, you didn’t even read this, so go hump a deer.