Encleverment Experiments and The Return

Encleverment Experiment

This has been a slow week for Xbox. Games which made its way to Xbox Live Arcade are cozy little puzzle games that I will ignore for now. On the positive side, the guild episodes are getting better as we move through the season.

0D Beat Drop and Encleverment

0D Beat DropIt seems like a puzzle fest for XBLA this week. Players will be downloading two very different types of games – the oddly named 0D Beat Drop and the one with the even odder title, Encleverment Experiment.

One of the games venturing into XBLA today is called 0D Beat Drop. Admittedly, I'm not too too eager to check out this game. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, it might be fun for Tetris fans out there. So you know the drill, you get multi-colored blocks of varying shapes that you must fit together. And match the colors and what not. Except in this case you must drop the blocks in time to the beat. Wait, what? It certainly adds to the pressure of the game, especially if you are tone deaf.

It is an innovative idea but I don't know how they make it work. Seems like you can also play the game according to one of your own preferred songs. Yea that's what I want, working like a maniac to complete the game with 'Through Fire and Flames' playing in the background.

Well, check it out. It is available for 800 MS points.

Another game that will saunter into XBLA is Encleverment Experiment. Somehow I was expecting one of those aliens games, you know one where the little guy escapes from an experimental lab and wreaks havoc with his gun and chainsaw. This is probably because I misread the words 'encleverment' as 'encleaverment'. No, no, this game is a cutesy puzzle solver. I am not sure if I will check this out either. I mean I am all for cuddly creatures in games but there is something Teletubbish about those creatures. And incidentally, who is the target age group of this game? I mean, what's with the primary school puzzles?

There you go, you can lose your street cred and nab this game for 800 MS points.

No Twittering for you, son!

Parental Control? Check!

Speaking of games and applications catering to young ones, did you hear the news about Xbox parental controls? Alright, so you know how Xbox Live is getting Twitter, Facebook and last.fm access, right? Turns out, the powers that be at Microsoft are antsy about underage folks using these applications via the Xbox console. Hence, according to Play.tm, any Gold member under 18 will be denied access to these applications. From what I gather, MS will do this until they release an update that lets parents tweak family settings so that they can set what the kids can access.

There is also a wtf moment for this week. Activision went out and trademarked the name Drum Hero. Play.tm reckons that it just might be a move to safeguard their GH franchise. I just hope they are not cooking up some weird drum series.

The Return

And … the new guild episode is out. It's called The Return and I agree with the general fan view that this is one of the best episodes of the third season. It's really funny and now it's getting hard to pinpoint my favorite bits. Well, here's one. The scene where Vork dashes off after giving a speech to Codex is top notch. And the game effects when these two confront Zaboo was a creative touch as well.