When the game was first released it was available for around half a day for 800ms points until it was realised a mistake had been made and the price was increased. This was met with a massive amount of disgust and complaints towards Microsoft with a large amount of potential buyers boycotting the game.

 

Whilst I agree that this kind of well publicised mistake is not acceptable I would also like to point out that it would be unfair to the developers to boycott the game and anyone in two minds about whether to download the game will be missing out on a surprisingly good game which is far better than the majority of other 1200ms point XBLA offerings.

 

Admittedly the current pricing structure of XBLA games is very inconsistent I personally feel that Lode Runner offers plenty of gameplay to justify the 1200ms point price however it’s presentation leaves me kind of feeling that an 800ms point cost would have been far more suitable and more people would not have hesitated downloading the game.

 

 

Admittedly when I first downloaded "Lode Runner" I was kind of sceptical about whether re-inventing a 25 year old game would work and especially at a pretty high cost. On first impressions I was thinking that it was going to be somewhat of a let down however once I started playing the minutes flew by as I got more sucked in to it’s unique and intelligent gameplay.

 

Whilst the 1200ms point cost may seem a little high the game offers a surprising amount of content and an awful lot of replayability. Whilst it may not have the charm of other puzzle games such as Braid it must be said that Lode Runner is a very welcome addition to the current library of XBLA games.

 

 

 

 

+ Massive amount of content
+ Lots of replayability
+ Clever and taxing puzzles
+ Multiplayer and level designer are good inclusions