Bliss Island is now here and provides us with yet another mini game compilation for the Xbox Live, but is this one any good? The simple answer is No.
In an ideal world this is about all I would need to say about this title, but I should really explain why.
Bliss Island hosts 7 single player games and 2 online games to play through. You can either choose to play the Adventure Game, where you are taken through some poorly drawn screens describing what is going on and then take on each level in turn. Or you can try the Challenge game, where you can choose any of the 7 levels and try harder difficulty settings of Bronze, Silver or Gold.
During the game you control a Zwooph called Noshi, Zwoophs are weird looking creatures that blow air out of their mouths and to be honest they look like cheap toys you can win at fun fairs around the country. Each level is associated with the air blowing powers of this lame creature. One of the mini-games included is Fruit Slam dunking, which involves you shooting fruit into a Jigoka monsters mouth. At first I though I was missing something but no, just line up the arrow with the mouth and shoot. The rest of the games really don’t get any better than that. You have Cave Adventures where you must guide Noshi by buffering him on air and get to the end of a cave system, Boulder Billiards, where you air blast coloured balls so that they hit the same colour and disappear, Brick Invaders, again you air blast a ball to hit matching coloured bricks before they hit the bottom of the screen, in Forest Frenzy you propel Noshi to the top of a level by using stationary and moving platforms, then there is Racer Bee, which has you air blast a bee around a race course and Sky Walker, where you air blast to different platforms to get the end of the level. Now you may think they sound similar, well they are. You are using the same simple mechanic of the air to move your character or a ball around the screen. The air physics are impressive for all of about 1 minute, and then you see through this and realise these are just really lousy put together games.
As previously mentioned the look of the game is appalling and cheap, I feel sorry for saying this as someone has taken time to drawn these awful creatures. The game is very colourful but this then just makes everything else look even worse.
The main problem with this title is that there is nothing new here, and to be honest, if you are online downloading this, you can find similar and better games on Flash players all over the internet just register and look at the arcade games available on our very own www.wonderwallwebforums.com (shameless plug).
This title is just not worth any of your well earned MS Points, so please take our advice and use them for something else.
