Doritos is sponsoring a Unlock Xbox contest where some new XLBA games are being judged. There is also $50 000 price money to be won. Not sure where the moneys is going, but I assume it is for the best game. The Unlock Xbox site is very ambigous around this. Anyway what this means that we all got two free games and we can vote which of these is better game.

Idea is great to push new developers to XBLA. Shame that is so poorly marketed though. Hadn't been the the word free this would have probably not even picked up. And also this kind of ridicules the concept of XBLA indie games.

Cheevos!

The two final games are throw-away 5 minute games. Both games have 200/200 achievements which is almost the only reason to download these.

Quick impression of the lesser game in my opinion. Doritos Crash Course is a game-show like platform game. Ala Wipeout or Takeshi's Castle. Not too different from the Wii game that got a QL from Ryan and Vinny. Looks decent enough and was fun for couple of minutes.  

I am one of those suckers who have put money to avatar outfit. Which makes this game slightly more enjoyable. Especially when my avatar is Stormtrooper. There is something terrible wrong seeing it dash around.

Getting a S-rank on this game is bit more time consuming since you need to finish all the 15 levels with gold-level time which requires some memorization of the levels and almost perfect runs.

The second game Harm's Way is a strange combination of Motorstorm and the Tusken Raider part of Star Wars Episode 1 podracer scene. The most interesting thing about the game is the fact that player can choose to either play as a driver which makes the game as any offroad racer game. OK, any bad offroad racer game. Terrible mechanism, collision detection and AI. If player chooses the shooter part you will get something completely different. Player is placed in a static turret and goal is to shoot at enemy cars. Tracks is filled with such turrets and these can be jumped in/out with single trigger click. The track environment has good share of objects that can be shot down on top of cars. Not too different from Blur where huge objects can dropped to the track. The shooter and driver are placed in a team where driver can pick up turret upgrades for his turret guy. As well as turret downgrades for the opponents shooter. Interesting mechanism which makes the co-op action very fun.

Getting a S-rank here is much easier since only one race is required to be won. Most of the achievos come from the shooter anyway. Only difficult part could be the multiplayer one. This is unlocked when player joins a game, which can be tricky. Even on release day (yesterday) it was really difficult to get a quick match.

And the conclusion:

Seeing my Stormtrooper running in a crazy obstacle track was fun, for 2 minutes. The Tusken raider aspect of Harms Way is really interesting and I hope they would use that in more polished game. This wasn't fun enough for time it lasted me to get a S-rank. Wont be ever touching these game again.