Weapon of Choice

On November 19th, Microsoft launched "the New XBox Experience", which included a lot of big changes to the XBox 360 dashboard, including "avatars" (think "Miis"), Netflix movie streaming, and the ability to dump games from disc to your hard drive, making them run faster (but still requiring the disc to launch the game).

A feature of the New XBox Experience that flew under the radar of most game websites, however, is "XBox Live Community Games" -- a subset of XBox Live Arcade games created exclusively by hobbyists and tiny companies, using a free programming framework provided by Microsoft.

Hobbyist console game development was supported way back on the Playstation with the "Yaroze", but Yaroze required a special $750 Playstation, only allowed 4mb of RAM to work in, and you could only share your games with other Yaroze owners. XBox Live Community Games, however, lets you share (and even sell) your games to EVERYONE with an XBox 360 and an Internet connection, after a very short and simple peer review process that's primarily there to make sure that your game doesn't star Mario or Mickey Mouse, or otherwise blatantly violate copyright law.

The flagship game of Community Games is Weapon of Choice, which was one of the first games in playtesting when Community Games first started up, and won third place in the Dream, Build, Play competition. It's brimming with the good kind of indie cred, being developed primarily by Nathan Fouts, a former Insomniac Games employee who quit his perpetual-crunch-time, big-game-industry job to strike out on his own and make the kinds of games that he wanted to make. The result is an excellent fusion of a labor of love and the product of an experienced designer. At its core, Weapon of Choice is a familiar "run 'n' gun"; run from left to right (or maybe you should try running left...), firing nonstop at anything and everything in your way. Today's youngsters keep calling this game "Contra-like," but to my old eyes it looks more like Shadow of the Beast by way of Treasure; bizarre, dream-like settings and monsters, with branching paths and a very liberal sprinkling of creative bosses, most of which are several times larger than the screen. Over this familiar core, however, Fouts has layered some new and very fun mechanics; to begin with, each of your "lives" is a completely different character, with a different double-jump effect, and a different primary weapon, each of which have two different modes of fire, and range from a jet afterburner to a "plasma chainsaw" to a gun that shoots satellites that shoot lasers (yes, the gun shoots satellites, and then the satellites shoot lasers). A new game starts out with only three of the "operatives" available, and additional "M.I.A." operatives are gained by finding them wounded in the game, and carrying them to the end of the level. To balance the "every life is different" mechanic with the kind of difficulty one would expect from a Contra/Shadow of the Beast-style game, Weapon of Choice also introduces "Death-Brushing;" when a monster or projectile comes dangerously close to you, the background is replaced with a laughing Death's head, and the action slows to a crawl, giving you a chance to (hopefully) carefully maneuver out of harm's way. If Death-Brushing isn't enough to save you, then your next operative is literally launched into the level onboard a "vengeance missile," which you can aim to inflict as much damage as possible to whatever nasty monster downed your last operative. And just like the M.I.A. operatives, if you can carry your downed operative to the end of the level then (s)he'll be all patched up and ready to go for the next level. Each mission covers three levels and an end boss, but the levels are quite large, and there are three different missions, all branching off from the first level (and each guarded by a different level boss).

Weapon of Choice -- including a free, 4-minute trial version -- is available via the "Community Games" section of the Games Marketplace on XBox Live. You can also go here to add the game to your XBox's download queue via the web, and it will download automatically the next time you start up your XBox.

More information about Nathan Fouts and his company, "Mommy's Best Games", can be found at the company's official website.