Three games on XBLA today News

Another Wednesday, another patter of tiny, probably-overpriced feet in the halls of Xbox Live Arcade, where Shred Nebula, Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball and Gin Rummy are all available to download.

Shred Nebula is another shoot-'em-up, which is fine because we like those, in which players navigate 20-plus fairly open levels on the edges of the cosmos, shooting stuff and trying to track down the people who went before. The multiplayer video on EGTV actually puts us in mind of Aquaria, oddly.

Anyway, it's also got eight-player online deathmatch, as well as a split-screen mode for people who bloody well live with someone or some other rubbish. Get a life. Full game costs 800 Microsoft Points (GBP 6.80 / EUR 9.60).

Next up is Pirates vs. Ninja Dodgeball, which Eurogamer's XBLA adventurer Dan Whitehead has been looking forward to because it might erase the memory of Double D Dodgeball.

The trailer explains very logically why the pirates and ninjas want to smash each other's knees off with rubber balls, in case you were wondering, and there's the promise of eight-player online tournaments to help justify your 800 MSP (GBP 6.80 / EUR 9.60).

Also on XBLA today is Gin Rummy, which costs half as much as the others (400 MSP - GBP 3.40 / EUR 4.80) and includes a number of variations on the 100-year-old card game: Classic Gin Rummy, Speed Gin Rummy, Oklahoma Gin, Hollywood Gin and Three-Hand Gin. There's also four-player online matches.

We'd remind you of the rules of gin rummy, but we can't remember them, and if we ring up our Gran to ask she'll make us promise to come round for dinner.

And finally, fans of Poker Smash can spend 100 MSP (0.68 / EUR 0.96) on an add-on pack that introduces two new environments, each with its own theme music.