For a lot of you out there, the Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) offerings are either too expensive or not appealing enough to warrant inclusion in your game collection.  Personally, I look at the XBLA games as a great supplement to any gamer’s repertoire, as well as an opportunity to boost one’s gamerscore by up to 200 points per game.  I own about 18 arcade games, and a lot of them were bought cheaper than you’d expect, at discount (Xbox has a weekly special and a “discount” bin of arcade games).

The point of this, my inaugural article on Resumeplay, is to raise awareness of some of the gems in the world of XBLA, as well as to spur conversation about some of your personal favorites in this category.  Obviously, I can’t include every one of my personal favorites in a top five list, and there’s also a couple that I haven’t played that won’t be included, not because they aren’t worthy, but simply because I can’t always afford to buy a new arcade game.

Number 5)

The bottom entry in this list is a personal favorite, Peggle.  Peggle’s premise is essentially a Price is Right, Plinko style game, where you shoot a ball at a bunch of colored pegs.  The ball bounces erratically between the pegs, clearing anything it touches.  The pegs are sorted as blue and orange, the goal simply being to clear all the orange pegs in a level.  If you clear all the pegs in a level (blue and orange), you get a bonus.  Making the game more interesting are a variety of animated characters with special powers that you can use to clear the levels creatively.  It’s a great game for families, and to get people who don’t enjoy playing video games to pick up the sticks!

Number 4)

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved and Retro Evolved 2 represent the most agonizing and time-consuming of my XBLA collection.  These games are now popular across many platforms (including the DS and Wii), and have garnered quite a following.  The principle, again, is simple: in the case of the 360, you use both of the analog sticks to navigate a rectangular level that never changes size or shape.  The left stick controls ship movement, and the right stick controls a 360 degree weapon firing range.  Essentially, it allows you to fly in one direction, and shoot in a completely different one.  The space you fly in fills with a mixture of geometric shapes (hence, Geometry Wars) that come in varying sizes, shapes, speeds, and degrees of difficulty.  No one enemy is completely difficult in and of itself, but this game’s biggest obstacle is the sheer volume of enemies that can fill the screen.  You’ll often find yourself surprised by how efficiently, and luckily, you will be able to navigate through so many enemies at once.  Retro Evolved 2 is a slightly different take on the original, with a variety of game types that will challenge your skills at flying through a deadly math class.

Number 3)

This arcade offering from Dice (Mirror’s Edge) and EA Games is one of the most massive multiplayer opportunities on XBLA.  Like its Battlefield predecessors, 1943 allows the player to choose a class and compete with up to 24 players on maps that represent battles from the Pacific Theater of World War 2.  There are four maps available for play: Iwo Jima, Wake Island, Guadalcanal, and Coral Island.  The available classes are infantryman, rifleman, and scout.  Each class, as with most class-based games, offers various advantages and hindrances to the player.  Graphically, Battlefield is impressive, rendering both the embattled atmospheres, and its subtleties, in crisp, bright focus (in HD).  The game also features vehicles – tanks, jeeps, and even airplanes are all available for player control.

Number 2)

One of the most popular XBLA titles of all time, Castle Crashers has gained a cult following unlike many games in its genre.  The game features a simple side-scrolling design, with various elements most often found in a  classic RPG (player level system, ability upgrades, weapon choices) blended in.  It is best described as a member of the button-mashing, magic-using, side-scrolling beat-em-up genre.  The level cap is 99, and there are many playable characters, making replay value one of the game’s best qualities.  Crashers features both local and LIVE co-op, with up to four players available in the LIVE version.  Locally, up to two players can play at any time. Castle Crashers is one of the most addictive XBLA games ever created, and as of June 2009, over 1,000,000 people had downloaded this instant arcade classic.

Number 1)

Either you’ve heard of Braid and you have it, or you’ve never heard its name and you haven’t fathomed purchasing it.  This game is still a hidden gem in the XBLA world, despite its phenomenal ratings throughout the gaming community.  Braid’s ingenuity comes not from its genre (puzzle/platformer) but from its original take on story-telling and artwork.  The game’s primary mechanic is the ability to control time in a variety of ways to retrieve puzzle pieces from within puzzle worlds.  In all honesty, this is one of the most difficult puzzle games I’ve played – I died more times than I care to remember while trying to figure out the game’s secrets (of which there are many).  One of Braid’s biggest downfalls was its 1200 Microsoft Point price tag, which, although steep, should not be the final deterrent to the exploration of, by far, the best story and design of any XBLA title currently on the market.

Well, that’s it, folks.  As with any list, this is a subjective view of XBLA games from my perspective.  Feel free to use the comments to point out entries that I may have intentionally or inadvertently left out.  Until next time, happy arcading!