by:	April 05, 2006

When it was announced that Xbox Live Arcade would be in full effect on the Xbox 360 it seemed nice enough at first, and it seemed as if though we would end up getting lots of cool old gems from the past, and some new ones now. In the beginning we actually did, of them Geometry Wars blew past many of them. Well now we are not even six months into the life of Xbox 360 and already we are getting repeats of the same concept. It was nice to get Geometry Wars, a old style shooter with a fantastically next-generation coating. When Robotron 2084 came to the 360, it was good to see the original back, but this is probably the fourth title like this, and not only that I literally began to doze off while playing it.

In Crystal Quest the objective is to get all the crystals on the board, and not run out of lives. When you complete the task at hand, a gate on the bottom of the screen opens and you enter it, thus, going on to the next level. You of course use the left trigger to move, and the right to shoot. The right trigger is your bombs. To the credit of the game, there are some obstacles in your way, but there still aren’t enough to give you any sort of challenge. The game picks up gradually, but if not only by minuet parts. When looking through the options I found that you can crank the difficulty up, and in this setting things get a bit more challenging, but all in all you don’t have much challenge going on overall. The default challenge level is however perfect for kids, or people who don’t like the challenge of games like Geometry Wars, or if you simply want to get some Achievements. In this way the game gives more to the player, allowing it to be more accessible to multiple users in a household.

A classic mode lets you steer the game with just one stick, giving a bit more challenge, but for some it might actually be easier. Like the game’s dull gameplay, the visuals themselves are pretty dull as well. You don’t feel like you are moving stuff around as much as you feel like you are scooting stuff around. All you really see are shapes like triangles and circles just sitting about, in an extremely boring and lifeless plane. The sound is equally as dull, with limited sound effects and limited music. Strangely, there is apparently going to be more content coming for the game, but I can’t see to many people actually wanting to continue the experience.

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All in all, Crystal Quest is like a boring, lazy summer time day, where all you do is sit around and drink lemonade but there is no lemonade with Crystal Quest. None at all! At five bucks, or 400 points it isn’t asking for much, but with so many other better games at their to buy at the store, and on Live Arcade alike, you might as well just leave this one as it is.

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