Dust: An Elysian Tail (XBLA)

Hit it or Quit it?

Year: 2012 -- Developer: HumbleHearts -- Publisher: Microsoft Studios

First impression:
You can definitely tell this is an Arcade Game versus Indie Game.  Like Double Dragon, the production value is already way higher.  Since I've been playing so many indie games, I still find this to be a little bit of culture shock.  There's no demo screen, unfortunately, but the music is nice and pretty on the title screen.  The logo is looking like a fox.. in a hood.. with a sword?  I'm guessing Action...RPG, perhaps?

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Fooled around for:  ~30 minutes (Demo ended after the second "boss")
It was a side-scrolling action RPG!  With crazy combos, a fair amount of loot drops, and an overall sense of "beating the crap out of everything".   The combo meter often ended up in the 100+ range using a few special techniques.  The fighting felt solid and like you had awesome skills and were really tearing it into everyone.  There is leveling, and upgrades, and equipment and everything!

The graphics are really nice, hand-drawn everything, great animations.  Sounds are as fulfilling at the visuals are, and the music really adds a good atmophere.

The only weird thing is the story.  You're just some fox thing with a Raiden hat.. and a talking, floating sword comes up to you and says you awakened him.  Then a flying squirrel thing comes up and ends up helping you out.  The splash screens say you are trying to find your purpose, blah blah.  In the meantime, it's weird.  And the voice acting is humorous.  It seems to be tongue-in-cheek cheesy, but sometimes it's just cheesy. It has a fair amount of clever little bits already.  Like destroying a secret wall releases a "Wall Chicken" that you can eat for a bunch of health.  And the characters make fun of each other and such.

Even just adding this picture to the post makes me want to play again!

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Hit it or Quit it?  (1200 MSP)
Two awesome, buy-it-now games in a row.  If these Arcade Games keep this up, it could be disastrous for my wallet.  I don't think I would jump on this -quite- as fast, just because the price is a little steeper.  The game is probably worth it's price, I just don't have too much money to just go around spending $15 on a game out of nowhere.

Aside from not dropping that cash now, it's definitely going on my To-Buy list, to be able to Hit It hard someday.  I might even just play the demo a few more times here and there just to scratch that itch.

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Side Note:  Turns out I don't really have any other XBLA demos downloaded already, so I will be finding some random ones for the rest of the week, so we still may see some garbage!  XBLA has a higher standard than Indie Games though, so they likely won't be pure garbage.  Maybe just games I don't happen to like.  Guess we will see how it goes!