xbox live indie game reviews

I was a huge fan of the original Fusion Frenzy. It came out while I was an undergrad, and whenever a crowd gathered in a dorm room, Fusion Frenzy was the game that came out. Ladybird Galaxy answers the question: "What would happen if you took a single minigame, polished it up a ton, and made it cute as all hell?" While that may sound like damning the game with faint praise, I think this game has tons of potential as a party favorite.

The single player is okay as a time killer. It basically plays like Asteroids, only with no guns. And the asteroids have been replaced by retarded lady bugs. Maybe a better analogy would be Pac-Man without the maze (only with retarded ghosts). The fact that the lady bugs aren't so bright isn't really a knock on the game--they're there to serve as obstacles to run in to, not so much as an adversarial threat. There are little stars sprinkled amongst the point-carrying orbs that activate your thruster for a few seconds. For each booster you manage to pick up while on the same boost, your points multiplier increases. It's a really simple mechanic, but it works great. Every so often, falling stars will make it on screen. Grabbing one of these is akin to grabbing a star in Mario--instead of causing death, you can now collide with the ladybugs and take them out.

The only thing I don't care for in the single player are the lasers. Every so often, a mostly-horizontal or mostly-vertical laser will sweep across the screen in one of the cardinal directions. If you're mid-boost, it's no problem to sweep across the screen and pop out on the other side (to safety). If you've just come out of a boost, though, and there are no stars nearby... well, basically, you're screwed. It may just be that I suck at the game, but the pre-populated high scores seem impossibly high to me. I haven't made more than 10k or 15k in a single game yet, but I do find myself getting slightly better as I get more experienced.

Luckily, the thing that turns me off to the single player can be turned off completely in the multiplayer mode. Along with laser frequency, you can also activate how often the falling stars appear. By toggling this value, then, it's possible to conver the multiplayer from a simple "who can collect more points" to something more adversarial. Wiping out an opponent while in falling-star-mode is worth the effort of catching the falling stars, as it will knock out a significant chunk of the points they've collected on that life. This can lead to quite a bit of tension if you've been running around grabbing points for awhile and the other players suddenly feel the need to take you out.

I've only tested the mulitplayer with 2 people and 3 people so far. Two was way more fun than one, and three was way more fun than two. Extrapolating, I think this is a great little four-player game. The controls are trivial to master and the graphics are cute, which ups the appeal for girlfriends and children (or, at least, my girlfriend and kids I know--your stereotypes may vary). For only 200 points, this is the first must-own game I've played in the community arcade section.