Charlie Murder (XBLA Summer of Arcade)

[illdog]

Just me again? This is a good one.

Its a side scrolling beat em up, looks like The Dishwasher as it's Ska Studios but plays very much like Scott Pilgrim. Very much like it. Lots of different weapons you can pick up and slash away with, then throw them at your enemies when your done with then. It has a fuck ton of equipable items in the form of clothing that all have different abilities attached to them like rapid punch, enemy knockdowns, that sort of thing. They can also carry elemental damage like you find in Dead Island.

So, it brings fuck all new to the genre but it is bloody good fun. The story is good too, the enemy of the game is a former band mate that you betrayed and fucked over very royally, i'll leave it there but I'm enjoying the cut scenes telling the story.

Had a session on live with some randoms after hitting a wall with a boss, creamed over his ass when there were another three players on screen but the energy the enemies have greatly increases. I liked the fact you can resuscitate you fallen comrades using CPR, you have to input commands on the sticks and then click the sticks in like you were pumping on their chest, very cool. It gets very manic in multiplayer sadly, pretty hard to see where you are and what the fucks going on but its still good fun.

Its big as well, pumped a couple of hours in to it and it seems I still have a bit to go.

[illdog]

This is getting hard. The old 'hold off and let them come to you' tactic is in full effect, jumping in and punching then buggering off quick, throwing items from afar the picking them back up and repeating the tactic - all the dirty tricks and these are just on some regular enemies. You also have special moves that once used need time to recharge, one of the better ones picks up all the usable weapons on the screen and spins them round in a cyclone, it gets a good damage toll going.

If you manage to get a 20 hit combo you can hold both the triggers in and call in a bandmate for a special co-op move, Time for a patented illdog pro tip: follow up one of your special moves with a few cheap punches whilst a boss or enemy is either being beaten by that special move or whilst he's been knocked down from it, your combo should be pretty near to twenty so do what you can to get it there then co-op move his as as well for massive damage. You can have four special moves assigned (you hold the R trigger and a special move can be mapped to the A,X,Y and B buttons), so you can use one, co-op move, use another, co-op move etc. Makes life a little easier.

These a comedy piss take from recent overrun horror series that made me lol, look out for that. Its pretty black in places too, tries to make you jump here and there. And its moody too, its silent in places apart from passing wind.

Also, it mixes up the gameplay from time to time, i've done a couple of simple guitar hero like sections, a flying shmup section, driving, skateboard. They are all very simplified but they are fairly well done, action packed and not too long. They wont blow you away but you don't get that feeling they were just tacked on for the sake of it.