Microsoft’s “Game Room” gets off to shaky start

Today saw the release of Microsoft’s new release for the Xbox 360 and PC – called Game Room. It’s basically an arcade for your avatars to visit, and you can play classic arcade, Atari and Intellivision games. Here’s the kicker though – after a 10 minute demo you either have to pay to play (like an arcade – surprise!) or pay Microsoft points for the cabinet to play infinitely in your own arcade. Sadly though this morning, immediately after release it was not possible to actually load the arcade, the loading bar got to about 25% before stopping with the only way out to go back to dashboard.

But thankfully Microsoft have since fixed the fault and all the fun of the fair… uh… Game Room is available to us all. I’ve had a quick play through each game and even purchased two – Tempest and Shao-Lin Road – so thought I would share my impressions.

I do think it’s a nice idea, with the ability to customise your own arcade with room themes, decorations and “mascots”. The mascots are to be purchased, but the rest is all unlockable by progressing up in level, I assume through lots of ranked play. Oh yes, that’s another thing – once you’ve purchased a game you can play “classic” mode which is just the plain old arcade game with local high scores and adjustable dip switches. “Ranked” mode is free play with the default game settings but with an online leader-board and medals to be won by getting beating certain scores, surviving a length of time and for just playing the game for a while. The medals don’t seem to add up to anything though and it’s not clear if they go towards your overall level.

One of my favourite features is the ability to visit a friend’s arcade where your purchasable tokens can be used in their machines to play. What makes this even sweeter is that when people spend tokens at your arcade, you get tokens to spend yourself elsewhere. You can also send challenges to friends to beat, providing you both own the game in question – beat the score or survive the longest. You can pick the number of attempts you get for the challenge, when the challenge expires and so on. All in the name of good clean fun of course, and not at all about sending messages saying “HAHA! IN YOURE FACE LOOSER!!!” No, not at all.

So all good in the Game Room? Well, not quite… I do have a problem with two points – firstly the starting selection of games is poor. There’s a couple of decent titles like Asteroids Deluxe and Tempest but it’s mostly a disappointment. Atari 2600 and Intellivision titles have not aged well and don’t really sit in with the arcade theme, in fact if you buy one they’re displayed as a cabinet with an Atari or Intellivision bolted to the front. Maybe I would be more forgiving if they were cheaper, which brings me to my second point:

To buy a game you’re looking at 240 Microsoft points (£2.06, €2.88) or 400 MS points (£3.43, €4.80) if you want the game on 360 AND PC. Now to me at least this is above my compulsive buy level, at least for such basic games. A quick look into the 360′s Indie Games channel will reveal a number of excellent games for a mere 80 points which may be a better buy depending on how strong nostalgia’s hold is on you.

Really this service is going to live or die on those two points though. On paper Game Room is a great idea and I would love to support it as a consumer, but without some more high profile, later, more complex releases at the same price point I can’t see it being as popular as Microsoft would like. It would be a shame to see the golden age of the arcade die all over again.

So here’s the full first day release list:

Adventure
Armor Battle
Asteroids Deluxe
Astrosmash
Centipede
Battlantis
Crystal Castles
Gravitar
Lunar Lander
Red Baron
Combat
Finalizer
Football
Tempest
Jungler
Millipede
Outlaw
Road Fighter
Realsports Tennis
Sea Battle
Scramble
Skiing, Mountain Madness/Super Pro
Space Armada
Space Hawk
Shao-lin’s Road (Kicker)
Star Raiders
Super Cobra
Sub Hunt
Tutankham
Yar’s Revenge

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