Mini Reviews
As a lazy videogame journalist might say: “Christmas has come early for Xbox 360 owners as there’s two free arcade games currently availableâ€. I’m not lazy though, so I’d never say anything like that. Nope.
The two in question are Doritos Crash Course and Harms Way, both of which are finalists of the Unlock Xbox contest. After playing them you’re supposed to head over to here and vote for the one you enjoyed the most.
The pleasingly advert-free Doritos Crash Course is a vastly superior effort than the last free Doritos game (the dinosaur-starring Dash of Destruction). In fact, you could even say that it’s pretty good. Playing as your avatar, it’s a case of jumping, sprinting and sliding your way through a Total Wipeout/Takeshi’s Castle-style obstacle course. It’s a simple game but it’s nicely done requiring some very precisely timed button presses. The difficulty curve is spot-on; the final few levels really test your eye-to-hand coordination. And a competitive element (your friend’s lap times are shown on the top of screen) adds extra incentive to replay levels you’ve already played.
Harms Way is a totally different experience and an interesting one as that. It’s a desert-based racer featuring rusty old vehicles kitted out with guns. Now here’s the curious part – around the track are turrets either controlled by humans (if you play online) or bots. When in control of a turret you can shoot down barriers to open shortcuts to help anybody on the same racing team as yourself and also fire at the opposition to slow them down. By shooting power-ups (the same that the drivers have to pick up) missiles and mines can be gained. One nice feature of the driving aspect is the ability to barrel roll and twist while in the air to gain extra shield. For a freebie the visuals are quite nice and it hands out achievements like penny sweets.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I really fancy a bag of Wotsits for some reason.
