Assault Heroes Impressions (and thoughts on game size)

Squeaky came home early last night, so I stepped aside and let her have the 360 (on Halo 2) for the rest of the night. We actually had to call Microsoft (again) in order to transfer her account to the 360. Unfortunately, someone had stolen her credit card so we didn't know the info to do the migration ourselves. This conversation was much more pleasant than Cixel's experience with hardware support.

This morning, I couldn't resist the temptation of the unplayed Assault Heroes demo, and went for it. I didn't regret it.

The demo allows you to run through the first level of the game, bursting around leveling any enemy in your bath. The game is set up like Commando with an emphasis on vehicles. Surprisingly, the better graphics and better controller seem to revive this classic genre. There's something about mowing tanks down with a flame thrower that's just...satisfying.

I bought the game, but had to leave for work. Team Xbox gives the game praise at a 8.5 average score.

If XBLA keeps supplying these new games instead of constant rehashes of tired franchises, I think those with functioning Xbox 360's are in for a delightful future.

Side Note: Compression is really showing wonders. My personal abilities can't fathom cramming games like RoboBlitz, Small Arms (originally 1GB), and Assault Heroes in 50MB. For non-arcade games, some are saying 25GB of game could now be squeezed into 9GB. While the obvious stab may be, "Blu-ray isn't necessary," the real point is that this type of compression will help propel digital distribution in the future. One reason I love XBLA is because games download very quickly, and that's because of the 50MB size cap.