Xbox Live Arcade Roundup

Samurai Shodown II

• Developer: SNK
• Publisher: SNK
• Microsoft Points: 800

Arriving on Live Arcade only a few weeks after the unadorned NeoGeo ROM landed on the Wii's Virtual Console, the addition of online play and leaderboards should make this version of SNK's sword wielding battler the obvious choice - even if the price is double what we were led to believe.

Those additions certainly make this 800-Point purchase more appealing, but it still suffers from the same technical snags - namely some noticeable slowdown and ugly borders - and is held back by the 360's notoriously slippery d-pad. Pulling off the special moves is a real trial, and attempting to do so can often leave you open to fatal attacks.

The online play offers all the basic settings you'd expect, but the frame-rate suffers even more obviously and will certainly annoy the people most likely to play online the most - the hardcore fighting fans who want to test themselves against everyone else. It's certainly not enough to make it score higher than the VC version. You also get the option to enhance the graphics, but this depends on whether you find pixels off-putting. The enhanced sprites look smoother, but are clearly less detailed and have a smudgy crayon look to them. I prefer the original look, but then I'm a wizened old fart.

Grading these sort of retro games is always tricky. Do you rate the game itself, the modern experience or compare it to every similar fighting game available? Samurai Shodown II is a really good fighting game, no question. It's tough but fair, and boasts a nicely balanced selection of fighters and a robust yet accessible combat system that makes it easy for all players to use measured attacks and blocks rather than random button-mashing. But it's also an imperfect conversion that only offers a second-best experience for those familiar with the original.

In the end it only seems fair to rate it the same as the Virtual Console version - as a solid fighting game in its own right - and leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide if the online play and minor technical compromises improve or tarnish an enjoyable core experience.

8/10

Shotest Shogi

• Developer: AI Factory Ltd. and Rubicon Mobile Ltd
• Publisher: Microsoft
• Microsoft Points: 800

Shogi is the Japanese variation of chess, taking an already deep game of strategy and concentration and making it even more complicated. It takes this Live Arcade version several hours of bone-dry tutorials to explain the nuances and differences between Shogi and the chess we're used to, so clearly there's not going to be room to explain it all here.

Suffice to say, there are some different pieces alongside the familiar knights, rooks and pawns, and some very different rules. Captured pieces are not removed from play, for instance. Any pieces you take can be dropped back onto the board in pretty much any position you need. Also, pieces that reach the top three rows of the board can be promoted, giving them increased areas of movement and attack.

It's a dense and complex game, and one that isn't particularly well explained by this version - hardly surprising, given that it was developed for Japanese players. Oh, there are the aforementioned tutorials, but somewhere around halfway through the intermediate lessons - essentially a series of captions and tests that drag on and on - my brain fogged over and I lost interest. Sorry. Unprofessional, yes, but at least I'm honest.

You can get stuck in with what you learn in the Basic Tutorial, however, and it reveals itself to be functional but mostly enjoyable as a brain-stretching distraction. Much like the conceptually similar Gin Rummy, the presentation is scrappy, the options minimal and the overall impression is of a game that will satisfy the demands of dedicated Shogi players but has little to offer anyone else. Difference is, Shotest Shogi costs twice as much.

7/10