Happy Wars (XBLA Free release) review review

[S3M]

Not that I've seen much mention to this game else were on the internet but Microsoft have released a free XBLA game to download for gold members, complete with achievements too.

What is a surprise is that this is a surprising good, Fat Princess clone on Xbox and from what I've played it's a enjoyable capture castle hack and slash.

On the downside however it does have a slight pay to play system that lets you buy better equipment from the outset, if you don't want to pay you can find it in game, but it just takes longer. Matchmaking also takes ages with the game supporting up to 30 players.

Might be an idea to get a bordersdown team together and have a go, but so far it's quite a nice title with a surprising high level of polish for a free game.

Here's a video of the trailer below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FATdV69JKA (Edit: can't get the Youtube video tag to work at the moment.)

Edit: it appears the auto tiopic naming feature isn't working correctly as it's put review in the topic title twice.

[nonny]

Yeah I played it for a few hours yesterday and found it very enjoyable. It's simple enough but the more you play with each character class the more you begin to realise there is some depth in there although its hardly mind-blowing.

What I do like is that it seems to have a lot of charm. Graphically its basic but very attractive without being OTT.

Only negative so far is the matchmaking. I got kicked from several pre-match lobbies due to errors trying to resolve each player when I know I am on open NAT myself (I even checked to make sure) and so getting into an actual match is a trial and error thing. Once in however its pretty rock solid.

I've found you can just ignore the in-game purchases and grind it a little to work your way up. You can spend accumulated points for new weapons but I found I got just as good items from the wheel of fortune spinner thing you can bet on. I did that and got a new weapon for each class and they were decent.

Not a bad little title. I'm interested to give the co-op a whirl with some mates as I think that it where it will excel. Playing with randoms and no communication makes it a lot harder to work as a team.

[Kaosu]

Despite the random disconnects on a final round which is really aggravating when going for the bonus item at the end, it seems to run flawlessly. I've never noticed any lag from the many games I've played. There were a few frame drops at the end of a game, but only then so it's not that much of a problem.

You don't need to buy anything, you can get some really good items from the Story progression, however for those with not enough time, you most likely will not be able to finish it as reaching Level 26 (required for the final mission) can easily take over 15 hours. Save the stars for upgrades only, don't bother with the Happy Spin as you'll probably get something useless compared to a weapon upgrade.