One of the games I saw on UltraJMan’s stream was an XBox 360 game called Raskulls. Having received a bunch of Microsoft Points for Christmas, this seemed like a reasonable purchase for 800 Points, or $10.
Raskulls plays most similarly to Mr. Driller (Although Silver noted a resemblance to Dig Dug; indeed, Mr. Driller was conceived as Dig Dug 3), in that you’re generally attempting to zap colored block out of your way to make larger formations of colored blocks to zap away to make progress. Raskulls doesn’t just move down, though–you can move in all four cardinal directions, and you even have a small jump. There are also some power ups that you can use to cut through massive swaths of block, hit blocks in a very precise line, etc.
The main single-player mode of Raskulls is the Mega Quest mode, where you try to earn medallions to progress. Although at its core, the game is most similar to Mr. Driller, things take a very different turn here. Some of your tasks include defusing bombs, and racing other Raskulls to the end of a course. Sometimes there are additional tasks involved–getting to the end of a course without getting crushed, for instance, or within a time limit. There’s a surprising variety of stuff to do within the “smash colored blocks” template.
There’s also a Grand Prix mode, which is just a series of races to the end. It’s a refreshing change, though, and you can pick from one of a multitude of characters which you unlock in the Mega Quest. You can also play this mode multiplayer, either locally or on XBox Live.
In all, it’s a worthy $10 purchase, even though the game isn’t particularly long–I had all the medallions in the Mega Quest after a week or so. The controls are responsive, the graphics and sound work well enough for the type of game it is, and “(Pirats) Till We Die” is the second-greatest ending credits song in history (Screw “Still Alive”, “I Am the Wind” is obviously number one for all time).