Now that the ultra secret, exclusive nerd board is busting at the seams i decided i would post some of the stuff people are writing wether they like it or not. “Myspace” Tom wrote a shitload of reviews of the XNA games that were announced at the GDC last week and put up for download on Xbox Live. If you don’t know what any of the above means you probably don’t need to read these reviews. If so read on and enjoy. Reviews and gameplay videos after the jump.

The Dishwasher
Description:2D side-scrolling fighter. Comic book look and feel.
Pros: Looks great. Really fun to play and loads of levels.
Cons: I don’t understand the comic book cut scenes that explain the game, combos don’t seem to work right, the title font reminds me of a Converge record cover.
Verdict: Definite winner. A must-buy at 800 points, a possible buy at 1200.

TriLinea
Description:Yet another puzzle game where you align similar pieces to clear them from the board. You play against the computer or another player and there are magic spells and shapes that you can make in addition to clearing three pieces of the same color.
Pros: Uhhhh none that I can tell? It looks OK?
Cons: I literally had no idea what I was doing. None. You have to choose your spells before the game, and if you don’t pick right you’ll lose too much ‘Mana’ and who cares this game is useless.
Verdict: I love Tetris-derived games and I’m pretty intelligent, but this game made me feel like a failure. I played it once, just mashing buttons. I lost of course, and I deleted it right away.

Rocketball
Description:2-on-2 playground dodge ball. You can pick up a rocket to throw the ball faster.
Pros: It looks nice, fast gameplay, Magali liked the music on the second level.
Cons: The gameplay is sometimes too fast. I kept confusing my character with my teammate. Whenever you die, you have to enter a button combo to come back to life, but it’s always the same combo, so that seems really dumb. The other team always seemed to end up with all the balls on their side, even though they weren’t using them, so all you can do is just wait to get hit and try to dive out of the way.
Verdict: Do you really want to play dodgeball on XBL? I did, but now I don’t.

Culture
Description:”Culture includes 3 distinct mini-games set in beautiful, floral environments.” What? In the first game, you roll around a tiny globe (think the menu planet from the first Katamari, and you leave a trail of flowers in your wake. You need to surround weeds with flowers to kill them and protect you garden. In the second game, you “paint with flowers.” There’s a numbered grid, and a palette. You pick the color based on the grid number and it fills in with flowers. That’s it. No skill, no time limit, no strategy and it doesn’t even look nice. The last game is something about planting flowers and I didn’t understand it.
Pros: It’s unique? The main menu is really innovative, at least to me. You flip through pages in a field book, because I guess you’re like a botanist or something. The first game is fun for a few minutes in a quasi-Katamari way.
Cons: See above question about dodge ball. Replace dodge ball with gardening.
Verdict: I live in a condo and I’m annoyed that I can’t have a garden. This doesn’t make up for it.

JellyCar
Description: “JellyCar is a game about driving a squishy car through squishy worlds, trying to reach the exit.” Wow. This is a glorified Flash game. You drive a “car” over these hand-drawn looking levels, with a shitty graph paper background and blocky shapes. The car deforms as it drives and you can like make it bigger and flip it around to get it through/over/around/under obstacles. There’s a particular flash game that I’m thinking of, but I can’t remember which one.
Pros: Your car appears to have pizzas for wheels
Cons: This is just dumb.
Verdict: Flash games are abundant on the internet, and they should stay there.

Little Gamers
Description: This is based on some “famous” web comic. I don’t know anything about web comics except like Penny Arcade. OK I guess it’s another 2D fighter.
Pros: Difficulty options are ‘n00b,’ ‘gamer’ and ‘l33t.’ Main character seems to be anti-hippie. This scores major bonus points with me because I forgot to say “hippie bullshit” when talking about Culture. Lots of weapons. Character seems to enjoy both beer and coffee.
Cons: None, really? Maybe an over-reliance on l33tsp33k (w00t!). It’s just another variation on a theme, and I guess it’s even closer to Alien Hominid than The Dishwasher is. Can’t play as Roast Beef or Ray. Oh yeah, that’s a different webcomic. Why is there no Achewood game, and what would an Achewood game even be? It shouldn’t count as a con for Little Gamers, but I think I need to reach, because this game seems pretty enjoyable.
Verdict: Maybe worth 800. I’d buy it for 400. By far the second best game from this batch, so far, with one more to go.

ProximityHD
Description: Did you know that in Xbox 360 games called like blahblahblahHD, ‘HD’ stands for hard drive and not high def? You probably knew because you’re not a n00b and you’ve owned a 360 for more than 3 months, unlike me. So before playing, my guess is this is going to be like Risk. OK I’m way off. You have hexagonal pieces and you alternate placing them on a board with your opponents. Each piece is numbered and the number of the piece you play affects the adjacent pieces. Whoever has the most points when the map is complete wins.
Pros: It’s a puzzle game and it’s better than TriLinea.
Cons: I think it made my Xbox crash and I’m not really sure how much I’d play this.
Verdict: Ehhhh. Do you really need yet another puzzle game? Especially one that already exists as a free flash game.

Rankings:

1. The Dishwasher
2. Little Gamers
3. ProximityHD
4. Rocketball (tie)
4. JellyCar (tie)
4. Culture (tie)
7. TriLinea

Editor’s note: Btw, you have until midnight tonight, Tuesday February 26th to get onto XBL and download these games. Then you have till the 9th of March to play them. So get cracking if you haven’t already.

PS: If you want to join the nerd board you’ll have to let us know if you can land the plane on the aircraft carrier in Top Gun, and have references to your nerdiness. send your answers to contribute (at) funvampires.com.