XBLA is Actually Kind of Fun

XBLI is a lot like playing a slot machine.

Most of the time you're just performing a meaningless chore and throwing your life away, but you keep doing it because there's a tiny, tiny chance that you'll hit the jackpot and get to play something good.

But, for reasons I haven't really bothered to look into, XBLI's one-crap-game-uploaded-every-ten-minutes standard seems to have slipped and I haven't been able to download any garbage onto my 360's hard drive for almost a week.

I've been forced to start digging into the XBLA library.

REZ

Has anyone ever told you, "Hey, this game is really amazing."?

And then you look at the game and without playing it you think, "No. That's not really my thing."

And a billion years go by and you finally play it because XBLI has dried up and then, three minutes into the experience, you're in the fucking zone so deep that a bear could be attacking you but as long as it doesn't get in front of the TV you could care less.

REZ is that game. It's PanzerDragoon-Starfox-Rhythm-Trance-Psycho-shit that feels really, really good to play on a deep, animal level.

Mega Man 9

I felt like I was playing an 8-bit Demon's Souls.

Instead of a hideous thirty-foot tall monster murdering me, it was a goofy robot elephant with a vacuum-powered trunk and a large ball for a weapon.

I got to the first pit that you have to jump over, and right when I was about halfway over it, some asshole shot out and knocked me right in.

And then I ran out of lives and the game told me to fuck off.

Mega Man 2 had training wheels compared to this game.

Puzzle Fighter

Somewhere in the multiverse there is a alternate Justin who is a total, die-hard Capcom fanboy, or at least that's how I feel things could've turned out in this universe if I had just the slightest bit different taste in genre.

Mean Bean Machine/Kirby's Avalanche/PuyoPuyo have always been my puzzlers of choice, but my god, Puzzle Fighter is so good. I secretly love you, Capcom. Maybe things could've been different if you'd made a better first impression.