But anyhow, where is what it's all about.
Destination Arcade works as an app. You select it from your game library like you would your XBLA titles and demos and boot it up from there. Rumor has it that Destination Arcade will be in the new Dashboard for 360 replacing the current Arcade and I really hope that is the case. But, for now, it's a nice showcase to how this should be set up.
When you first open it up, it brings your Avatar running up on screen showcasing the new releases right away. An instant plus to anyone's Wednesday morning. Upon a hit of your right trigger is where Destination Arcade really shines though. This is your main menu pretty much.
Starting from left you have your Friend Recommendations. This will show you the top 4 games that your friends have recommended as a collective and then hitting A will show you all of them. When this first came out, that was about all it was, however now it will show you how many friends recommended each one. The only complaint I have personally is that it doesn't show which friends have recommended what. The only reason that is a negative to me is I have friends that have very similar tastes and others who might think what I have recommended to be nothing that interests them; so it would be nice to have that, but its definitely not a deal breaker.
Second, we have the Deals of the Week. That in itself is a no brainer so I don't feel like we need to go much more into detail about that.
After that is our Recently Released and then the All Games search. This is where I think that Destination Arcade has really proved itself. Searching for any game is broken down into so many different categories. At first it sets you in alphabetical order and groups them into 4 sections. Clicking on any one of the sections breaks it down even further making it even easier to search. But let's say that your not looking for a specific game, but rather trying to find something that suites your needs or interests. At any point in time in your search, you can use your left and right bumpers to change your sorting options; Name, Microsoft Points, Community Rating, Multiplayer, and ESRB Rating. Perfect for any gamer and even better for the un-educated XBLA shopper.
The last major point is the fact that you can take any game and try to find something similar to it as well. For instance, if you just picked up your copy of Limbo (which you should have done already) and loved it so much you wanted something of the same flavor, you could hit Y on the game and find a similar game; say like Braid. The only concern I have run into is that this doesn't work as consistently as it should. This could be from being somewhat of a Beta, but it's there so I thought I should point it out. Given the same situation, lets say that you were looking for a similar game as Limbo - You are given 4 options that are pretty close; Braid, Winterbottom, Lucidity, and Exit2. However, if you hit Y again on Limbo, you might get something like Puzzle Fighter HD or Ancients of Ooga. So at it's start, it was a little rough, but i'm sure that is something that will be worked out as time comes.
The whole Destination Arcade is presented very well which a clean visual style. When selecting titles you get the basic info as to how many Microsoft Points it costs, the number of players, and the screenshots cycle on the bottom of the info so you don't have to flip through so many windows like before. I hope this app stays and replaces the current set-up for I feel it fills a desperate need for the XBLA and will open up the now huge library of games to a lot of people.
-Eddie
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