Explosionade Xbox 360 Review

For gamers on a budget, things have never been so good. It seems that with the advent of digital distribution, just about any gamer can find hundreds of hour’s worth of gaming brilliance for the price of a morning newspaper. It’s no great secret that there are simply thousands of superb titles just waiting to be discovered that can be grabbed in exchange for that quid you found down the back of the sofa. And one of the most well known names of this world of bargain gaming, Mommy’s Best Games, are back with yet another slice of superb action.

Explosionade is essentially a score based platformer. With the player controlling a hefty mech, you’re faced with a series of single screen levels to take on, blasting enemies, collecting gold, and reaching the end point as swiftly as possible. The better you do, the higher your score. The higher your score, well, the more you can show off. It’s that good old arcade mindset at its very best.

Armed with a handy jump and boost, a time sensitive energy shield, a machine gun, and two types of bombs, there’s plenty to utilise as you take on the hordes populating each level. The early levels do an excellent job of introducing each mechanic in turn, allowing you to get to grips with the plus points of each before the action truly starts to gear up.

As a straight up platformer, Explosionade isn’t the trickiest game in the world, and you can blast through the levels on offer within an hour. But the attraction of consistently upping your score takes a firm grip almost as soon as you blast that first enemy. With score boosts offered for destroying all enemies, picking up all the gold scattered throughout each level, and – wonderfully – managing to complete the entire level within a 30 second time period, there’s a definite hint of strategy chucked in for good measure. Learning the best route to achieve that perfect score becomes something that you simply can’t give up on until you feel like you’ve pushed yourself as far as you can go. And then you try and go even further when you discover someone else has obliterated your total.

It even manages to look pretty damn attractive, especially for an Xbox Live Indie title. And when you consider that it’ll set you back an incredibly small 80 Microsoft points, can you really pass up on this when you’d struggle to find a chocolate bar costing any less?

If there’s any sort of minus point you could truly level towards Explosionade, it’s that it’s probably a touch too ‘hardcore’ for quite a few gamers. Those of you who happily set your games to ‘easy’ in order to bag all those Achievements as quickly as possibly probably should look elsewhere. But for those who fancy some cracking 2D platforming score based addictive fun, you’d be hard pressed for doing any better than splashing out the tiny price for Explosionade.