| Author | Review |
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t4nd4r
1,153
Posted on 25 February 09 at 03:52
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This review has 47 positive votes and 2 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
This is my first review, hope someone finds it helpful!
If you are looking for a game to just sit back and have some fun, then "The Maw" should be your next purchase. Sitting at 800 MS points it is definitely worth it. They are even beginning to release new levels with more achievements and they are only 100 MS points each!
The Maw takes you on a journey on some distant planet where you (an alien) control a pink/purple blob that goes around and eats everything it can. Think of it as Beautiful Katamari only instead of rolling stuff up, you eat it! The more you eat the more you grow, thus allowing you to eat some larger enemies down the road.
The game introduces you to new enemies along the way, and does a fairly good job of hinting at what you are supposed to do in order to eat them. When you do eat one of the different kinds of enemies, you gain a specific ability which will be used in order to pass the level.
It has a good story with plenty of humor and cuteness. Although it will only take you a couple of hours to finish, but hey, it IS an arcade game.
Recently updated to include a new achievement for the new level, it sits at a fairly easy 215 GamerScore point total to be gained. Eat 100% on all levels, destroy X amount of things using certain ability are some examples of these.
I only had a couple gripes about the game... and that was the controls would sometime be inaccurate. I would walk around trying to get Maw to eat something and he would end up circling him over and over and over.... until I finally just backed up and tried again. The other is that the game is really short (you can complete it in 2 hours, even less if you don't go for achievements). But thankfully they started releasing new levels that only cost a $1.25, which is well worth it.
Overall you should definitely pick this game up, or at LEAST try the demo...
Until next time,
-t4nd4r- |
JungleWookiee
96,769
TA Score for this game: 340
Posted on 10 May 11 at 17:44, Edited on 11 May 11 at 06:45 |
This review has 15 positive votes and 3 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
The Maw. Puzzlish adventure platformer game of sort for the XBLA, short and really easy. I get it for free by subscribing to a Gold Membership for the first time and I guess I won't be alone so, let's review it : what is this game worth ?
Story :
You are Franck, a cute little alien with Puppy Dog Eyes and no ability beside walking and jumping. You have been captured by some kind of evil military aliens with space suits and guns (but fear not, the guns will not harm you in any way, more on that later) but the ship suddently and conveniently crash on a cute and colorfull planet. There, you meet Maw, a purple blob alien with a very large... Maw. And you also find a device that lets you keep him on a leash (and finally give your incompetent hero some abilities, like pulling blocks and pick off item from the ground). And here we go...
Gameplay :
The basic gameplay revolves around making Maw eat stuff. Some alien animals he'll eat will give him New Powers, letting you progress through the 6 stages in the game. Maw will also grow in size twice or more a stage, letting him eat bigger animals as the game progress. Also, you cannot possibly die in this game, so there is no real challenge beside keeping yourself interested enough to get to the end. Walk around, eat animals, destroy stuffs with new powers, don't miss hidden paths and that's it.
7/10
Audio & Graphics :
Nothing special here, some really short looping ambiant tracks and colorful but repetitve graphics as every regular stages looks like each others. All in all, not bad but nothing memorable.
5/10
Achievement :
Not really creative. Eating everything you encounter while completing the game will earn you most of them, even the "X uses of power Y" as you have to use them anyway. Same for the DLC. So classic it gets boring. There is also one really stupid achievement that asks you to mess around with your Xbox internal clock and load the game 6 times in a row because nobody will never ever get it in the intended way.
6.5/10
Not a really good game, but not a complete waste of time either. The game is fun and the concept is interesting. It is cute and really easy, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. If you happen to need a refreshing short and easy game, you lose nothing in trying it. An improved sequel would be much appreciated.
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Paul Wesley 91
172,024
TA Score for this game: 202
Posted on 06 June 12 at 03:52 |
This review has 6 positive votes and 2 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Twisted Pixel. You probably know them by now as the makers of Splosion Man, Gunstringer, and Comic Jumper (and the recently announced Lococycle at e3 2012). Twisted Pixel is the one of the newest big name developers for Microsoft, being officially acquired in late 2011.
But enough about the developers. This is The Maw, Twisted Pixel's first game released in 2009. The premise surrounds around an alien who finds himself with another strange, small, purple alien with a voracious appetite. To progress through the game, you lead your new friend around the level and eat as many things as you can. One of the things I really liked about this game is that at the end of each level, the Maw doesn't shrink back down, but instead it retains its size and continues to enlarge throughout the game, so it's very fun to see just how big this monster is going to get (I won't spoil it for you, but he gets pretty darn big)
In each level you will also find new creatures the Maw can eat that will transform him and give him new powers. This ends up becoming the main difficulty of the game, as you spend the majority of your time looking for that creature that will transform your Maw and the rest of your time is spent, you guessed it, eating everything in sight. You do not retain these abilities so you will have to find new ones in each level.
The achievements in this game are pretty straightforward. The only difficult one might be the one for 100%ing the game, i.e., eating everything, which isn't too hard. One very interesting achievement requires you to play the game at 6 different "meal times". It's a neat idea, but tedious in getting unlocked, although you can cheat by changing your system clock or your timezone. In addition to the achievements, there's also 2 gamerpics and 1 theme to unlock. I love it when games give you extra goodies like this.
The only major flaw with the Maw is it's just too short. I was able to beat this game in one 5 hour sitting. In addition, your characters move extremely slowly, and I get to thinking that Twisted Pixel did this on purpose to make the game last longer.
Overall, this game is short but very good. I especially recommend it to any fans of puzzle platforming games such as myself. There's also 3 DLC levels available for just $1.25 apiece. I haven't played them, but I am sure any fan of this game would enjoy them.
That does it for this review. See ya next time.
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