The Riskening Begins! Video Games, DVDs, etc…the Riskening Begins! Are you ready?

You’ve probably atleast heard about Game Room which hit XBLA and Games for Windows Live today, or atleast you do now. It’s a pretty neat idea : being able to share your own personalized arcade with retro titles along with your friends or even compete in challenges in said games while all along seeing your avatar at the helm of the arcade cabinet. The initial download is free and you pay MS points to unlock full versions of each game (Konami, Atari, and Intellivision being game types at the moment, more game packs to come in the weeks ahead) or play timed demo versions using in-game coins (you’ll get 20 coins at the start and can earn more by visiting friend’s arcades). Besides unlocking games for unlimited play there is also the option of spending 40 MS points (50 cents) for a single play. Like some insanely easy achievements? There’s also about 7 achievements you can get before even buying a single game just by placing props, themes, and what not (for the gamerscore fiends out there). All those things said I like the concept but I have a couple little annoyances with the current state of the game…

• First, and probably one of the biggest breaking points for most people, let’s talk about prices. Right now it’s about $3 worth of points PER game. It may not be that much of a big deal at first, but if you add up all the current games it’ll be about $80 of MS points. So unless you’re a hardcore retro Atari/Konami/Intellivision fan you’re probably not going to be shelling out anywhere near that much dough. So you’ll probably pick and choose maybe a couple here and there and that’s fine, but I think it might have been better suited to offer some bundles at a discounted price. It’s an all around same price for each game too which I feel that not all are quite deserving of the same level, given the simplicity of some of the titles.
• Second, which is connected to the first, is the separate price to play on both XBL and Games for Windows Live. You have 2 options when buying a game : buy it for whatever you happen to be playing it on at the time or pay $5 and get it for both. Sure, it’s only an extra $2, but like many other things this could also add up to quite a bit of extra cash. I feel it a bit hosing to have to pay those extra points just to be able to play it on both. I’m guilty of trying this out on my first game that I bought and to be quite honest I kinda preferred the controls on the 360 anyways. C’mon MS, do you really have to drain this extra cash from us?
• I’ll finish up with a couple short ones, some areas lacking. I mentioned the avatars earlier but having a lack of free movement is a bummer though. Think about how cool walking around in the arcade with your friends in avatar mode and interacting with props and what not could have been. There’s also a lack of online multiplayer, only local 2 player multiplayer for select games. This would have been a pretty good incentive to pick up some of these (and future) classic titles…

Overall it’s a cool concept albeit a bit poorly implemented. If you don’t mind the prices I’d say go for it. There’s some pretty solid retro titles to be played. Here’s to hoping for some lower prices and even better retro titles in the weeks to come.

EDIT (3/30/10) – This post right HERE on the xbox.com forums pretty much covers some great improvements, many of which I touched on above. I also learned recently that they won’t be doing the weekly game releases until late April. Bummer…but hopefully they’ll iron out some issues in the meantime (we can hope).

– DGM-payne