Meteos Wars

I'm a big fan of the Nintendo DS version of Meteos.  Once I first heard about an Xbox Live Arcade version coming out I was stoked about it.  After waiting for a few months the game finally released on Dec. 10th, 2008.  I had big expactations for this game.  Once I first got to the main menu, I was suprised how dull the menus were.  The DS menus were colorfull and moveable by using the DS Stylus. The music in the DS version was epic and quirky, which the XBLA game is a little dissapionting in the music department.  For the Single Player modes you get: VS. Com Mode, Mission Mode which only has 6 stages on all three diffculty levels, and Attack Mode which consists of 1-Minute Time Attack, 100-Meteo Attack, and Challenge Attack.  For Multiplayer Modes you get Local VS. Mode and Matchmaking VS. Mode which consists of Player and Ranked matches. For Online matches you can choose which area you want to play against. Area A is Greenland and Europe, Area B is Asia and Russia, C is Japan and so on.  I find this to be pretty cool.  One thing that is a bummer is that this is only a 2-player game which the DS game had 4-player multiplayer.  This would have been a great 4-player online puzzle game.  For collectables in the game all you can collect are the Planets and these Accessories which I find to be dumb and useless.  I loved it in the DS version where you can collect the blocks that you launch and use them to creat new Planets, Items, Rare Metals, and Sounds.  For gameplay nothing has changed except for the "Planet Impact" which is a little attack you can use on the planet you are playing against.  You do have to get used to useing the analog stick but once you play with it for about 30-min then you should be used to it.  Overall I think this is a solid game in the series and I hope to see the series to expand.  If the game had more unlockables, a better single player, and better online then I would recommend this over the DS version.