Creed Arena

First review of 2010 is going to an Indie Game, one that was released just today and barely makes the new year. Deciding to take the safe approach for their core gameplay, Safari Studios has fashioned a tried-and-true dual stick shooter, (a la Geometry Wars) but have given it a few unique and significant twists.

Upon first starting the game, I was greeted by an entertainingly old skool-style demo reel of the game being played. Moving past this screen, I find that the user interface is acceptably minimalist, looking well thought out and presenting everything it needs to without looking busy. Thanks to this, I was easily able to jump right into a tutorial level.

Creed Arena is a minimalist game to its core, and the controls are exceedingly simple. RT fires, LT is jump, left stick controls your aiming and right stick your movement. Melee is also on your right trigger, and triggers automatically if you are within melee range. The only surprising thing that the tutorial introduces you to is mapped to the right bumper, and it brings your camera down behind your gladiator into a traditional 3rd person shooter perspective. Turning speed in this mode is severely limited, and there's no speed adjustment in the options, so this mode is strictly for long range attacks, which give a nice bonus and lets me segue smoothly to the next paragraph.

Creed Arena's big selling point is that your actions affect the crowd, and the crowd affects you. This occurs through fans, which you gain for doing any number of moves. Killing is the most basic method of acquiring fans, but melee hits, heavy hits, narrowly avoiding death, gettig rapid kills, and killing from long range all gain more fans. Getting fans not only increases your rank in the arena standings (think Rock Band's fan leaderboard,) but it also increases your crowd rage meter. When this bar fills, you enter Crowd Rage for a limited time, increasing your health, speed, jump height, and melee damage.

Supporting multiple modes, including one that is a race to get the most fans, the game has plenty of variety, especially considering its considerable library of arenas to play in. It supports split screen, 8-player online matches, and guests for online play.

While the animations are a little stiff, the game is a pretty little thing, easily one of the best looking Indie Games on XBL. The gameplay holds up once you get used to its little quirks, and the trial saves your progress, so ou might as well go and try it. At 400 MSP ($5.00 USD) it might not be the cheepest Indie Game, but the cost was obviously chosen based on the time put into this game.

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Bottom Line:
Worth a look. Creed Arena is a little rough around the edges, but is a solid - and very playable - game nonetheless.