Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Tower Bloxx Deluxe

My son bought this Xbox Live Arcade game with some points that Santa brought him for Christmas. Gameplay is ridiculously simple — you build residential towers by dropping blocks from a crane. Your only control is the 'A' button to drop a block (although you do need the stick and other buttons for selecting where in the city you are building your tower). The crane swings the block from side to side, and depending on how accurately you stack your blocks, your tower will sway as well. The more perfectly you stack your blocks, and the higher you build your towers, the more people will move into them. Higher populations unlock taller possible towers and special bonus blocks.

Beyond the very simple core gameplay, there's a bit of thinking and strategy in planning out your cities, as there are rules for where each tower can be placed. Your entry-level blue towers can go anywhere, but the next-sized-up red tower can only go next to an existing blue tower, the next-sized green tower can only go in an empty space touching both a red and a blue tower, and so on.

Still, there's not much to the game. Doesn't really seem worth the $10 in Points. Plus, it's more than a little frustrating, in that "completing" the game really requires dropping blocks with pinpoint accuracy, and it won't count if you're off by just a couple pixels (which is incredibly difficult to even see on a CRT display).

I probably would've discouraged my son from getting it, since there are better games for the money, but it was, after all, his money.

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