Thank you for your interest in Xbox Rewards. Due to technical issues, you may have experienced difficulties while trying to register for Xbox Rewards. Please accept our sincere apologies. To help make up for any inconvenience this may have caused you, we are providing you with two Xbox LIVE® Arcade games*.

Yes. Yesssssssssss. Thanks, Microsoft. I don't really remember having difficulties, but what are you gonna do? You're going to accept the flippin' free games and keep your mouth shut, is what you're gonna do. I wonder what they are!

Joust (ESRB Rating: E)
Robotron (ESRB Rating: E)

...heyyyyy, that isn't fair! Those both cost 400 MS points! And I already HAVE Robotron!

Well, I guess Joust could be fun. It's a classic, right? And it's not like I have high Xbox Live Arcade standards, anyway--I bought that fish game, after all.

For those of you not familiar with Joust, let me begin with a story. Long long ago, in the Nineteen-Eighties, there was a thing called The Arcade. Wait, never mind, this intro is horrible.

A while back, video games used to be original. I know, I know, it sounds crazy, right? But back then, we didn't have games like Madden 07 or Call of Duty 3 or John Madden Presents: Call of Duty: World War II Shooter 07. We had games like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. Yes, Moonwalker technically came out in 1990, but it belongs in the 80s. And it can take Robo-Jackson and Evil Joe Pesci with it!

While ideas were being thrown around, apparently somebody got the insane idea to make a game about riding ostriches into battle. Maybe I'm just unaware of the big ostrich craze that took place in the 80s. (Did you know that Mario was originally an ostrich? And that Luigi was a taller ostrich?) Aside from the ostrich obssession, they also decided to throw in some pterodactyls. You know, those kinds of pterodactyls? The ones that fly around in the sky, and also happen to be dinosaurs? Yeah. Those.

Eighties(Ostrich + Battle + Pterodactyls) = Joust. That's algebra.

Joust is one of the earlier entries to the Xbox Live Arcade. The presentation is pretty much exactly like that of Robotron, which is to say, not very exciting. I mean, it's a game about battling people while riding an ostrich, right? Shouldn't that be accompanied by a wicked awesome intro screen? It should.

By the way, Wikipedia claims that the ostriches are really "rocs" which are supposedly mythical creatures. Of course, it is Wikipedia. Go on and edit it and say that they are really elephants. Elephants who are tripling their population. Go on, do it. Joust reality has become a commodity!

So, graphics. I won't really say much about graphics. Joust is now presented in High Definition. This is truly a great achievement in the game industry.



Let's make this absolutely clear: either Joust is extremely difficult, or I am just naturally horrible at it. Let me clarify this further: either the controls for Joust were horrible this entire time, or the controls for Joust on Xbox 360 are in themselves horrible. Fortunately, I don't have a Joust arcade cabinet in my house, because it would just be a massive waste of space since I really hate Joust.

So let me explain the controls to Joust. Thumbstick: moves you around. A button: flap your sad little ostrich wings. The controls are simple, but that's not the problem. The problem is the fact that you have very little control while you are in the air. Imagine, if you will, ostriches flying around in the air (can't happen) and then running into each other head on (uh okay) and then bouncing off each other (can't happen) and then trying to turn around in mid-air (can't happen) and it happens to take half an hour because the acceleration is messed up. The point I'm trying to make is that the acceleration is MESSED UP.

Your ostrich basically only has two speeds: "Sitting Duck" speed (slow) and "CLEVER SPACEBALLS REFERENCE" speed (fast). I don't have a name for the speed you're going for the 80% of the game you spend accidentally flying backwards, but I'm sure you'll come up with your own! (May I suggest "I want my 400 points back"?)

The game's sound is accompanied by the standard 80's bloops and bleeps. The thing is, they went through such trouble to try to reproduce an authentic "wing flapping" sound, and it has the comical "woah hit the brakes!" skidding sound, but it beeps when you hit a rock. I know that always happens to me! Also, remember the familiar old Joust theme song? Hint: there wasn't one!

As far as Achievements go, the game has such creative entries as "Get to Wave 5" and "Get to wave 10" and "Get to wave 30" and "Get to Wave 100". Anybody who plays Joust up until Wave 100 deserves way more than 40 Gamerscore for their efforts. They deserve a better game.

There are some other achievements, that have to do with earnestly playing the game, and the like. These ranked Versus ones seem to be the hardest to get, since I defy you to actually find anybody playing this game on Xbox Live. LOL!

To sum this all up, if you don't remember ABSOLUTELY LOVING the arcade version of Joust...don't bother. There are better things to spend your points on, like Geometry Wars, or THE BEST GAME EVER MADE, Galaga.

However, if you happen to receive the same e-mail that I did, with the free download code, go for it.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Labels: Reviews, Xbox 360