XNA Community Games Roundup Comments by Dan Pearson

Some stuff looks passable there, what about Rocket fart or rumble massage?

10/10 for those, surely?

Hallo nice eurogamer people, a couple of things about your excellent twitter review service :

1) This one isn't up yet
2) Can you go back to putting the platform in the tweet ? That was very good but mysteriously stopped.

As you were :)

ALL better than Darkfall, then? :)

So, where's Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp? Best game on XNA ;)

Some extremely generous scoring there...

I'm loving this back to basics bedroom coding revival. Especially as (barring graphics obviously) some of this stuff is putting AAA houses to shame on the gameplay front.

Clover is a thing of beauty. Completed it this morning.

If you ever enjoyed Dizzy, this game is for you. The satisfaction of finally figuring out what an object does, the feeling of obviousness when something clicks for you, the ear to ear grin of moving further for the landscape, or the feeling that you're right and the game is broken!

clover intrigues me oddly enough, though i imagine it will be one of these DL that i get then brush under the mat to rot alongside Worms and Cloning Clyde.

I bought Clover (although I could've swore it was 800 msp, I can be wrong though), and I've played it for a short while, still I couldnīt find a save point!

Very very generous. The interface is fecking horrible as well. It's a biot like looking for a bargain at a car boot sale.

There are no save points in Dizzy!

Where is the 'paws' preview? that game looks awesome :D

"still I couldnīt find a save point!"

The game will autosave every time you've used an object.

I've started to mess about with XNA to do a 2D game. Not sure what it's going to be just yet but I've started on the engine and used Excel as a level editor... even got some funky retro style music for it from a friend of mine...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upG0IqpUX...

I like both XNA games and XBLA games. But i dont understand how some people tend to buy a lot of the XNA titles but almost never buy XBLA games. Their a little cheaper but you normally get more quality for your money with the XBLA games.
I mean Clover is a good game, but its no Braid.
.

Right, Johnny Crush is an absolutely terrible game. Well done for getting a FPS up there but seriously, 6/10 !?

"Giant wasps and an M16. what more could you ask for?" Sorry, you 10 years old? Good gameplay for a start. 6 honestly? So its nearly as good as Halo? Sort your XNA reviewing policy out.

Some really skewed reviews in this roundup, Johnny Crush is a horrible experience, admittedly its a shooter on XNA (quite a feat) , but as a game its abysmal. Especially when you have game like Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp and Carnivail Showtime available on there, two games which put most of the XBLA catalogue to shame

The 'look' of Clover seems really nice.

The picture of the character in Clover reminds me of 1001 subpar webcomics

I like the concept of XNA but they need some kind of review system so the people who download games can rate them and tag them. It would sort of self regulate itself and become much easier to find good games (I guess).

... or does it already do that (I can't remeber)?

Calo, sort your head out. You honestly think that they're reviewing XNA games on the same scale as full retail releases?

Dumb!

@Monkey_Puncher. I'm taking the piss mentioning halo, But that game is not worth 6/10 even on a relative scale for XNA titles, its shocking a proffessional reviewer can give that.

@onyxbox

At the moment I don't think there is any built-in system in place, but you can go to the Xbox Live Community Games Catalog, where users can rate the games they've played, which sort of does what you were suggesting.

Eurogamer, we have all seen the pretty low returns XNA developers have been getting on their titles compared to say Arcade. This is mostly down to the low number of people actually browsing & taking time to play titles from the Community Games.

Many people may be discouraged by the poor quality of most games on the service, even though absolute gems do exist here. With the above in mind, XNA is a really good thing and needs supporting correctly so it can grow out of a hobbyist area and flourish into a widely used service.

Microsoft is giving it great backing and now Eurogamer, you have started this review service, which is great for publicity but your scores are way too generous, especially with the vast fluctuation in quality between titles. This in turn may attract newcomers expecting to play decent quality games based of your reviews.

The likelihood here is their high expectations will be crushed on playing your 6/7/8 out of 10 reviewed titles and will in turn judge all other titles as similar quality and may be unlikely to return to the service again. I think it would be a lot more beneficial for the service as a whole to use a more accurate grading system.

@crooks - Amen, nuff said.

@Gnort

Yup that's the kind of thing... if they had that built into the XBox 360 dashboard (a bit like iTunes) XNA could go very big.

Steps for correcting the reviews.

1: Go play carnivale and Jonny Platformer to see what decent community games look like.
2: Remove 3pts off each review score except Karnn Age which isn't a bad bullet-hell game.

Job complete.

In all seriousness EG... how did you come to those numbers. Dartboard and blindfold?

Everyone read what crookz said above. Spot on.

@crooks

Well said.

Edit: Blimey... not bad for your first post :-)

For anyone of XNA intrest, this site :- http://xblcg.info/

It is a cool site to rate good or bad all XNA games & a good way of showing people decent games on the service.

Where is the love for Dig Miner Deep, its so simple and fun and for 200 points its worth a punt. I like the fact more are going for the 200 point price point although I've only bought two games. If more are 200 then a few more sales will be gotten out of me...usually while drunk.

Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp needs a review, one of the best titles on community. They should do a round up of the best titles soon as well as the latest offerings

@crookz - I totally agree with that

Suprised you (that is, EG) didn't put Blow in this review set. Stunningly impressive game IMHO.

Have to admit, pretty much agree with Crookz. Just because something is cheap (and the definition of that will vary depending on the purchaser), or had small production values, doesn't really mean they should be treated more generously.

Echo the comment on your sensible first post as well. It's usually somebody getting upset about console fanwars or waving their virtual willy to grab attention. Hopefully you'll stick around and post more often.

Yeah, there are some really great little games showing up on the service lately. The Community Games Catalog ( http://xblcg.info/ ) is a great place to look, as are the opinion / musings threads on EG / NeoGAF:

EG Forum - Community Games Thread
NeoGAF Forum - Community Games Thread
NeoGAF Forum - Community Games That Don't Suck Thread

@hello2u

that's a cracking site.

Clover deserves every one of those 8 marks out of 10. Apart from that, I agree that the marking's pretty generous.

"I like both XNA games and XBLA games. But i dont understand how some people tend to buy a lot of the XNA titles but almost never buy XBLA games. Their a little cheaper but you normally get more quality for your money with the XBLA games.
I mean Clover is a good game, but its no Braid. "

I think itīs called altruism.

Karnn Age looks mental!

I liked Solar a lot. Ended up playing it all night once.

I must have said this many times, but here it goes again: I love "Groov", and you guys should try it, it's a lovely "bite size" dual stick shooter with a Rez feeling. Go on... try it.

@onyxbox thanks I hope it is of some use http://xblcg.info/ , it is defiantly growing with more people reviewing the games (good or bad) :)

Also some of the games mentioned in the comments have allready been covered before by Eurogamer, in there roundup of community games #1 over at :-

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/xbox-l...

though they did not give scores out for that lot.

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If only us backwater countries could have access to these high tech XNA facilities. Sadly, still no word on when Australia will be getting the catalogue. We want to give you money MS, please take it.

6/10 for Jonny Crush is ludicrously generous, when you could pick up EDF2017 for a couple of quid more.