


Graphics & Design: Old school Atari look with some new age pazazz. What the devil can you get for a dollar nowadays anyway? With inspiration drawn from classic titles like Space Invaders and Galaga (especially Space Invaders) does this one-dollar game pack enough fire power or would you rather spend the extra change on I don’t know.

At a cost of 80 Microsoft points, Decimation X brings classic Shumps action to Xbox Live Arcade. The second game on the docket isn’t actually free, although it is very close to it. It can be good for killing a bit of time but it can get boring pretty quickly and with the threat of viruses and possible legal issues, I would say you would probably be better off skipping it. I would also stay clear of copyrighted material, you know just to be on the safe side. I would also recommend downloading song packs since I can’t seem to get single song files to install. Have a good anti-virus program on your computer because there are some Stepmania files out there, which have viruses on them, that is why I would say to stick with the Stepmania home page.

However, I would like to give you a fair warning. If you like rhythm-based games and have decent amount of space on your hard drive, than you might want to check it out it. I didn’t download too many so I got bored rather quickly. Replay Value: Depends on the amount of songs you have downloaded and how high of a score you are looking for. Another neat aspect of this feature is the ability to post your work on the main Stepmania site and make it available for other users. However, the game can get boring eventually depending on the amount of songs you decide to download.Įxtra Features: There is the option of creating your course with a chosen MP3 file but I’m not quite sure how to do that and of course I would be careful when using copyrighted material. So I have to say that I rather enjoy the challenge the game presents and can’t help but feel accomplished when scoring well on certain songs. Some songs can even present a hearty challenge when playing on the Beginner difficulty. The response of the controls is flawless and the game's difficulty can range from easy to epically difficult. The arrows scroll up and down the screen to match the beat of the music you know the drill. Gameplay: It follows the same basic structure of any rhythm-based game. Other than that, there isn’t really anything else to say other than the intro music is ok. Sound: The sound quality for each song (at least for the songs I have played through) is really quite great and is of or at least close to MP3 quality. Most of the photos are of a good quality and the arrows are really colorful. Graphic and Design: Stepmania doesn’t offer much in terms of graphics considering it is just arrows moving across a background photo but it does give a good visual presentation for what it is.
