A game where you bounce on all the platforms and reach the finish with the most points possible. Sound like something that came out 27 years ago? Well, it's very damn similar. Artoon is like a revised version of Q*Bert, with slight twists. You are small bouncing ball and you must change the color of most of the platforms to finish.

Let's start out with the features that make this game different. There are a multitude of different levels with 5 different types of worlds the player can be in. Every world has a different feature or art style that makes them unique, such as; everything is neon in one world, if you looks towards one side of the world there is a large screen effect which makes it harder(not really, it's annoying, though) for you to progress, etc. Every level is pretty easy but it will take a little bit of work to get an A+ rank on all of them.

The bad things of the game are as follows, the style function is almost useless. If you can get every single platform in a row(which doesn't take a much of a while to figure out), then you already get the A+. That's another thing, this game is not very challenging. The levels with the screen effects are easy because you barely have to turn the camera around anywhere to beat a level. You could beat the whole game looking backwards if you have to.

All in all, I don't think it's worth $5. Something a little more worth your money would be Groov, which is $2.50. If you would like to try the game yourself, click here to download it to your 360.

The Xbox Live community games seems to be a very largely ignored part of the new Xbox dashboard update. This game seems to show how creative these games could possibly be. Groov is a new addition to the Xbox Community Games that has a very interesting concept. As quoted from the description of the game given, "Every action in Groov has a musical interaction", this game integrates the omni-directional shooter features very similar to games like in the Geometry Wars series with music makes for a very worthwhile play.

The gameplay is very simple and very similar. Left thumbstick controls moving, Right thumbstick points and fires your weapons, with the right thumbstick featuring the special weapon. Sounds similar, right?

The concept is very interesting, though. Every time you fire your weapon, it makes a different sound that syncs with the music in the background. Every time a bullet hits an enemy, the enemy lights up and explodes also making a unique sounds which also syncs with the background music. You are almost creating music while playing a very Geometry Wars-like game.

The music will basically decide whether or not you like the game. If you like the sound of an intergalactic jazz orchestra or something similar to the Geometry Wars soundtrack(I bring it up a lot because it's very similar!), you will like it. Every enemy mocks the sound of a different instrument. For example, every time you hit the "guitar" enemy, it will make a deep guitar strum.

These are the list of the things that make this game, overall, great.

*Every playthrough is guaranteed to be unique.
*Gameplay is very simple.
*It's $2.50. How can you complain?

But there are some downsides:

*There are only three gameplay modes, one of which I am unable to play because the challenge level seems to be a little too high for me to beat the second mode.
*Although every playthrough will be unique, a little over a straight hour of playing, they will seem to become very similar. This is not a long playthrough game. This is a play-in-short-spurts game.
*No options. There is an in-game how to play guide but there is no way to adjust the volume settings or change some of the controls.


All in all, this game is worth your $3. And once you play this game, you just can't help but to smile at the creativity of this game. You can go to the Xbox Live Marketplace and download a free trial of this game, or just click on this link and the next time you start up your 360, it will start downloading!