Download Games Roundup Review

Editor's note: As you may have noticed, internet gaming is inconveniently big and untidy, with new digital distribution channels springing up all the time. Where it was once just Steam and Xbox Live Arcade, we now have to worry about the App Store, PSN, WiiWare, Xbox Indie Games channel, DSiWare... These days, all the cool kids have their own digital distribution racket. Good content is harder to find, and from the perspective of a website like Eurogamer, it's now more resource-intensive to cover a smaller cross-section of games as a result. Whoops!

That's no excuse for not doing it, of course, so we've decided to embrace the fact it's not practical to write big individual reviews of absolutely everything, and that it's also not useful to you if we wait around for ages and then round up a bunch of old games. To this end we're going to experiment with multiformat digital download roundups, and former Eurogamer.net editor and downloadophile Kristan Reed is going to write them. To kick off, er, here's a roundup of a bunch of old stuff. Look out for more soon.

Shoot 1UP

• Developer: Mommy's Best Games
• Format: Xbox Live Indie Games
• Price: 80 Microsoft Points (£0.64)

One of the more impressively polished efforts to hit the Xbox Live Indie scene, Shoot 1UP is an enjoyable twist on the classic top-down shmup for a mere 80 Microsoft Points, which is less money than you probably spend on a can of Coke (unless you're like Tom and drink 14 a day).

Damn those mechanical-tentacle hybrid forces to hell.

Notable for being yet another videogame to sport a female boss with disturbing projectile-emitting gazongas, it manages to entertain for the requisite 15 minutes thanks to the novelty of allowing players to utilise their entire fleet of ships on the screen at once.

Rather than rely on standard power-ups, you tread a risk-reward tightrope as you elect to either spread your fleet's firepower across the screen with the right trigger, or contract them into a narrow column and minimise your exposure to enemy firepower.

Destroying enemy waves periodically grants you extra lives, but rather than going into storage they instantly join in the fight. Avoid enemy fire for long enough and up to 30 ships will be available to you, granting you a vast column of devastation. Its technically impressive, too, with a chaotic early-nineties SWIV vibe without a hint of slowdown.

Unlike most Xevious-inspired shooters, the presence of four difficulty levels ensures that it's instantly accessible right from the off, though the kind of players who go to bed dreaming of exploding sprites are also well catered for.

With a two-player co-op mode and branching paths across all five stages, it'd almost be rude for shooter aficionados not to destroy the mechanical-tentacle hybrid forces responsible for your pain.

8/10

Bit.Trip Void

• Developer: Gaijin Games
• Format: WiiWare
• Price: 600 Wii Points (£4.20 / €6)

Almost five months after its release overseas, the third Bit.Trip title finally joined the European WiiWare ranks last week, and is another deeply unhinged voyage into the realms of chiptune rhythm-action.

Psychedelia smith.

Presented with its trademark nod to late-seventies retro simplicity, the idea this time is to control a single pixelated black 'void' with the nunchuk stick and negotiate the environment as waves of blocks sweep onto the screen from all angles.

There's one simple rule to progression: swallow up as many of the incoming black blocks as you can while avoiding the white ones. Every black block you collect increases the size of the void, making it easier to collect subsequent blocks while also making it tougher to avoid the white ones.

The trick is knowing when best to stab the A button and contract your void, and when to let yourself get fat and hoover everything up before it whizzes out of reach and scuppers your combo multiplier. Hit too many white blocks and you'll wind up inhabiting a soundless black-and-white otherworld until you redeem yourself by collecting enough black blocks.

With three increasingly taxing stages to barrel through, it quickly becomes as much a brutal test of pattern recognition as adaptive reaction speed and sheer rhythmic instinct. And just like the other two Bit.Trip titles, the difficulty curve will bloody the noses of anyone not blessed with the requisite insect powers of twitch reaction time and knack for committing patterns to memory.

With typically insane bosses to face, it's fortunate that checkpoints allow you to make a modicum of progress - but even then you'll likely be in for a rough ride. Up to three friends can also help out and control a void of their own, but this doesn't make it easier, it just twists the game into something else altogether.

The inability to upload high-scores is a minor disappointment, but otherwise Bit.Trip Void is an unqualified success, and for 600 Points from the Wii Shop it's well worth investigating.

8/10

Mega Man 10

• Developer: Capcom/Inti Creates
• Platforms: PSN, WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade (coming soon)
• Price: 1000 Wii Points (£7 / €10)

Following on from the success of 2008's NES-styled Mega Man 9, it's no great surprise to see a quick-fire sequel continue to hold the torch for 8-bit brutality.

Inti Creates essentially picks up from where it left off, with no attempt to deviate from the ruthlessly hardcore mechanics which characterise this side-scrolling platform action series.

And the excuse for all this relentless evil? Robonenza. This particularly vicious form of flu has caused the world's robots to not only malfunction, but turn violent and begin attacking their human masters. With Dr Wily's medicine machine required to find a cure, you have to traverse the game world and defeat eight bosses along the way.

The Mega Man hardcore know the drill. It's the usual brand of exacting gaming, where the slightest mis-step can result in insta-death, and the patrolling enemies care little for your sanity. Progress brings the reward of new weapons and a slightly easier ride, but getting there takes the kind of commitment to repetition and failure that will be an alien concept to many.

Thou shalt not live.

As before, the chunky sprites will either provide the warm glow of retro delight, or baffled confusion as to why a 'new' game has been designed to look and feel like an old one. Personally, I adore the aesthetic and the chiptune audio, but in terms of it's playability it's unquestionably an acquired taste.

Mercifully, the presence of an easy mode allows you to get a feel for the levels, with certain spike pits covered over, while the game's 88-level challenge mode helps familiarise you with the nuances of individual game mechanics in a quick-fire setting. But even then, the resolve required to get good enough is beyond compare in a modern context.

Mega Man 10 doesn't quite perhaps have the sparkling feel of reinvention that its predecessor enjoyed, but if you were one of the many who considered MM9 a welcome return to form, then this is another must-buy. Everyone else is perfectly entitled to look confused.

6/10

Alien Zombie Death

• Developer: PomPom
• Format: PSP Minis
• Price: £2.50

Emerging confidently from the PSP Minis detritus like a lost Ultimate Play The Game Spectrum title from 1983, Alien Zombie Death proves there's life in the old dog yet.

With the gameplay a collision of Jumping Jack, Jet Pac and Tapper, developer PomPom dispenses with the usual conceit, cheerfully admitting that "you play as a lone spaceman, doing something or other on a mining platform, floating around on a random planet". There are alien zombies there, "intent on the destruction of all Spacemen doing stuff...in space".

And that's pretty much all you need to know. It's set in a side-on arena constructed of horizontal platforms, and you find yourself under attack by an unending array of determined creatures. The aim is to fend them off for as long as you can.

There he goes, doing something or other again.

Blessed with a charming array of enemies and alluring sound effects, you find yourself nimbly traversing between platforms taking out enemies to the left or right of you. With regular weapon power-ups and score bonuses there for the taking, the constant priority juggle between clearing enemies and meeting medal targets ensures that you spend much of your time on each of the 14 levels locked in a knife-edge struggle.

It's been designed with quick-fire replayability in mind, and you'll happily revisit levels repeatedly to eke out a few more medals. With numerous targets to aim for, including despatching a set number of aliens, coin collection or meeting score targets, the lure to return kicks in almost immediately. It won't be long before you've romped through every level multiple times, but repetition is never a chore.

With its knowing sense of the absurd and finely honed frantic playability, Alien Zombie Death provides the PSP Minis scene a welcome shot in the arm.

8/10