Someone To Drive You Home

XBLA titles are generally quite throwaway. I say this as someone who originally was quite keen on Arcade stuff at the start of this generation. If they’re not twin stick shooters then it’s a puzzle game or a really shit platformer (which is a genre which needs to go away). Anyway originality are not XBLAs strong suit. Iron Brigade however has originality in spades.

Blending tower defence and mech gameplay with some great manly humour means that the time I spent with it I really enjoyed. In a alternative take on world war one two soldiers get zapped with a alien broadcast one goes on to invent evil tv robots and the other invents the mobile trench. So that’s a trench on legs with guns strapped to the side it’s a wacky premise but double fine commit to the ridiculous of it so hard they pull it off. It’s the antithesis of something like armoured core which takes itself totally seriously. I’ve got room for both in my Xbox but I appreciate the fun double fine have injected into affairs.

The gameplay is wave based tower defence with you planting turrets and collecting tv tubes from fallen monovisions using the giant magnet built into your walker. While turrets help you’ll do most of the heavy lifting with your guns of which the game gives you quite a few to choose from shotguns , machine guns , sniper rifles to artillery cannons that look so big as to be completely impractical. Your encouraged to switch it up as the game as mini challenges for using the different weapon types and rewards you with new weapons and options for customising your marine. It’s a nice touch and gives you a reason to dive into co op as solo play using only artillery would be pretty rough but as part of a team it makes a nice addition.

Customising your mech is a big part of this game with options for the chassis , weapons , turrets and legs. There isn’t much scope for change in terms of chassis you can either have lots of guns and a few turrets or a few guns and lots of turret options but when it comes to guns your spoilt for choice. Machine guns , shotguns , sniper cannons , artillery pieces all sorts of stuff they are also distributed through the games loot mechanic.

Iron Brigade is a great downloadible game it plays to the strengths of the platform. If it was a retail release I’d say that it was a little light on content but the campaign and playing in co op is great fun even with randoms. Give the trial the shot it’s good honest.