Ever wonder what it’s like to be miniaturized and injected into the body of a rabbit? Well neither did Lt. Tuck Pendleton as he mistakenly gets injected into hypochondriac Jack Putter! I mean whoa, flashback to the 80’s! Where was I? Oh yeah, miniaturization. My next XBLCG review is for a game called Biology Battle by Novaleaf Game Studios. In it you play a nanobot? What? You can’t play a nanobot, that’s not really a character? Well be that as it may you are a teeny, tiny, teensy, weensy, little nanobot. So small in fact you can fit into a cell! And that’s just what you do too. You go into a cell to do some battle! Some BIOLOGY BATTLE!
Now before I continue I’d like to take a small detour. I was informed that some people would prefer to know what I think about the games I review early on in the review. I can understand that, I tend to ramble, and do goofy things like invent words and try to be funny. So I’m going to try out putting my “Final Analysis” toward the beginning of the review instead of the end. Only it’s not going to be called “Final Analysis” because even though that is what it is, it won’t seem that way, since it will be at the top of the review, make sense? Doesn’t to me either ;-) So without further ado.
Biology Battle is a fun game, with a slick presentation in the vein of Geometry Wars. I guess you could say it also owes that likeness to Robotron 2084. For a mere 800 MSP (About $10.00), you can have a battlin’ good time fightin’ against viruses. I would recommend it. More about why next…
Basically you’re a nanobot tasked with fighting viruses. Use the left thumb stick to move, and the right to fire in any direction. Pretty handy. There are extras like lightening that totally sweeps the area for a short period of time. A black hole (when you get it), a dash move, and a blast or repelling action. There are several pickups or powerups if you will. Shields, Lightening blasts (as mentioned above), Plasma, fast shot, blast wave (the repeller mentioned above), and black hole vortex, (which when activated sucks everything into it. There are also viruses and bacteria aplenty. Little blue round thingys, glowing red round guys, dark red hexagonal creatures. There’s giant glowing jelly-fish like things. A blue glowing blob that seems to grow that you have to keep shooting until it’s dead. There’s all kinds of funky things in this game. Does keep it pretty interesting.
There are several game modes. Global Challenge, which is supposed to be the toughest, where if you have an XBOX Live
gold membership you can submit to a global leader board, Versus modes, with single match and tournament games. With tournament you have to wait for other players. In Single Match, there are basically several mini-games you can compete in. Then there’s local and co-op. It’s essentially a single player game, however with more people you can all play in the same game via co-op.
Allright, so how about graphics, sound, and music. Well all of it is pretty top notch. This seems like a game that could go on XBOX Live Arcade. The music is rockin’, the sounds are well done, there’s even a “computer” voice (done by a female, or at least I think it was) that sounds really nice. The graphics of course have that lovely glowing effect we all love (or at least I do). Would I dare call it AAA, well I can’t really do that because it’s not huge, and doesn’t have multiple 80 hour story lines, and it’s not 3D, but I would at least call it an A. Certainly the top-of-the-line when it comes to XBOX Live Community Games.
Final Analysis: Fun to play, and I would say worth the money for all the replay value it has. Okay so I did a Final Analysis anyways. I guess I will still try to say what I think of the game near the top of my future reviews, but still have this at the bottom.
Name: Biology Battle
Developer: Novaleaf Game Studios
Price: 800 MSP/ $10.00
Where you can get it: XBOX Live Community Games on the XBOX 360
Tags: addicting, fun, game, games, independent, Indie, Novaleaf, Shooter, xbla, xblig, xbox, xbox live, xbox live community games
Biology Battle is definitely one of the better, more polished community games. I briefly considered applying for a job with Novaleaf when they were hiring, but decided moving to Thailand was probably a step too far.
Edit: This is Uhfgood, apparently clarvalon.com was timing out, so I changed the url to the blogspot address.
This one has been cut down to 400pts and then again to 240pts! I bought it at 800. One of the best shmups on XBLIG.