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Best Of The Indies - 21st December 2010

Features

Our pick of the best and worst new games on the indie XBox Live community.

Posted 21st December 2010, 10:00am in Games / By Michael J Fax
Here at DIY, it'd be a crime if we didn't look into independent developers and so we're committed to trawling through the good and the bad on Xbox Live's Indie Community so you don't have to.

Here's our pick of the latest bunch of indie software you can download now!

Shooting Models - 240 Points




Play as a nosy, sexist paparazzi in what should really be called 'Stalker!'. Stare through your camera's LCD screen at pre-recorded footage of girls trying to avoid you as you choose the correct moments to snap a good pic. Your photos are then analysed and evaluated to see whether you're passable or garbage. Despite the fairly questionable and pervy subject matter, it's an annoying amount of fun like those moments in Dead Rising where you stop to snap the undead. Only this time it's with pencil thin models, and it's probably vaguely degrading. Perfect for voyeurs and a good laugh for the rest of you...err...
Download it!

Rainbow Ball Into Adventure - 80 Points




Genuinely cutesy Katamari-style (maybe we'd even go so far as to say clone!) game in which you roll a ball over various Crayola scrawled children's drawings to increase the size of your ball in order to collect bigger items. Just like in Katamari. Despite often feeling like you're being subjected to a proud neighbour's collection of their children's scribbles, it's hard to ignore how well the game actually plays and looks, with some awesome water effects on some levels – fantastic stuff.
Download it!

radiangames Crossfire 2 - 80 Points




As people who hoist the radiangames flag as often as possible, Crossfire 2 comes as no surprise that it makes the list. A Space Invaders-esque setup has your craft flip between the top and bottom of the screen to blast waves of enemies in the anus, upgrading your ship between levels. Plays and handles like a neon dream, as with all radiangames releases.
Download it!

INDIE GAME TOP PICK - Soulcaster II - 240 Points




Ingenious top-down RPG style game in which you guide your wizardy fellow around various maps and puzzles summoning help from allies with their own unique attributes. Glorious and heaps of fun, this is a breath of fresh air.
Download it!

WTF WAS THAT AWARD - Avatour - 240 Points




From the Geocities circa 1996 chic of Archor Games comes, what some may herald as, the most pointless game of all time. We disagree. Avatour is revolutionary. Set in a vast badly rendered Google Maps-esque sprawling city (with edges), you guide your avatar around the streets for no apparent reason. You can zoom in and out of the city and pan from the sky like in the title sequence for Eastenders, or you can enlarge your avatar like a Japanese villain and have it storm its way through the buildings. Better yet, you can instantly jump into a plane, or a boat, or a car and cruise around meeting nobody and doing absolutely nothing. Beat that! With a distinct lack of in-game physics you can walk through buildings and fly through the air in a boat (it tries to pull it off as a special mode, but there's a feeling that someone just couldn't be bothered writing that into the programming). Yes, it truly is as good as it sounds. It's genuinely hilariously charming. We have no idea why we love it, but we gladly handed over the steep amount of points for it. Bring us more, Archor, we love you!
Download it!

AVOID LIKE RABIES - Finish 2: Colors - 80 Points




Get your dot to other dots without hitting the stark black lines and causing a god awful boing noise. This time round in the Finish franchise, you can control several coloured dots at once to reach corresponding coloured dots. Let's be honest, in all its bleakness, it's an addictive little game, but it's so blandly designed that the frustration of having to hear that effing BOING one more time is enough to boing your controller off the TV. Please, please, please remake this with some graphics and better sounds, because, apart from this oversight, it's pretty great. Boing.
Download it!

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