Live arcade: Worms and Alien Hominid.

I’ve had these two Live Arcade titles at my disposal for a while now and I have to say, the bar for Live Arcade has been raised considerably.

Alien Hominid HD – This is, potentially, the best value title you can find on Live Arcade at the moment. I purchased the original game on the Xbox over a year ago for £15, and to find out that this version managed to cram all the content from that version (plus more comprehensive leaderboards) into an 800 point game (around £7) found me very impressed. The game plays just as well as it did in previous console versions, and while the omission of live multiplayer is irritating the experience is still a brilliant old school run and gun shooter. The achievements are good and encourage you to play various modes, however it is shocking to learn that the game has been released with a glitch preventing players from obtaining all the hats (and with them an achievement). But be warned, the ‘perform 50 head chomps without touching the ground’ achievement will drive you insane. All in all, a good purchas, but you may be advised to keep your ear to the ground about a patch…

Worms – What can I say apart from the fact that it is Worms. To me it appears to be acomfortable middle ground between Worms one and two. Featuring the visual style and humour of Worms 2 with a more subtle weapon set more aligned to Worms 1, the game never seems unfair (unless played with the full wormage weapon set). The twenty challenges give a little meat for a single player to chew on, but the true triumph of this version is the live play. Worms will be able to sit alongside Uno as a Live Arcade keeper, the ability to jump into a laid back, but very strategic, game of worms with anybody (you get tired of the computers precision grenades after a while) keeps the game fresh, and playing with friends is fantastic. The achievements are made so that they are unlocked primerily through continued play, which is no bad thing. Worms is easy to recommend and it is one of Live Arcade’s finest.