Australian developer Safari Studios released Creed Arena earlier this month, and I was pretty excited to play it. I always like twin-stick shooters at first, and then I get bored pretty quickly. But in Creed Arena, you can switch between the top-down view typical of twin stick shooters and a first-person view at will. That seemed like a pretty clever idea, and I hoped that would give the game a little more staying power.

When I started Creed Arena, it became pretty clear that the brothers behind Safari Studios worked hardest on the twin-stick portion of the game. The first-person shooter element is there, but it’s not as polished, and it’s not as useful when the enemies are within arm’s reach, which is where you want them to be.

Gameplay

Creed Arena rewards close, constant combat, because that’s what the fans want. And earning fans is the whole point of the game. You’re one of many contestants in a tournament, all vying to be the most popular combatant. The goal of the game, at least in single player and co-op mode, is to win enough fans to overthrow the ruling class. You can play cooperatively with a friend on the couch or play with strangers online, something not enough Xbox Live Indie Games let you do. (Although I couldn’t find anyone to play with on multiple tries. I don’t know if that’s the game’s fault, or my fault for playing at 1 p.m. EST when Australians are asleep and Americans are at work.)

You earn fans by killing opponents, scoring big hits and surviving near-death experiences. You get more points for melee kills, and for killing things quickly. Score enough fans in a short enough span and your character goes into Crowd Rage, meaning he gets bigger and stronger, and he can jump higher. Elevation plays an important role in most stages, giving either cover or a better view of the action. Your character is pretty good about aiming up and down to different elevations when in twin-stick mode, but occasionally I’d have to switch views to track my target.

The tournament is separated into various challenges. Sometimes you simply have to survive a set number of enemies, while other times you have to play capture the flag with kegs. I just wish there were a mode where you face an unending wave of creatures and the goal is to outlive your opponent.

There’s little to complain about for the twin-stick mode, because it feels pretty polished. There aren’t too many weapons to choose from, and the ones you can get aren’t exactly unique, but each one serves a specific purpose. The shotgun is for close combat, the plasma cannon is for long distance, the lighting gun is for clumped groups, and the rocket launcher makes big explosions. You start with the basic machine gun most of the time, and the other weapons occasionally spawn at random points in the level, usually in some high, hard to reach place.

The biggest problem with the first-person perspective is a lack of feedback. I don’t need buckets of blood to spray everywhere when I score a hit, but I need more than the flecks that fly off when I train my machine gun on somebody. The only time you know you’ve hit someone is when you hit someone with a rocket launcher or score a “big hit.” This isn’t really an issue when in twin-stick mode because you have the laser sight, but it’s a little frustrating in first-person mode.

Another issue I had with the game was difficulty. I like twin-stick shooters, but I’m not very good at them, and I’m flat-out bad at first-person shooters on consoles. But I only lost one challenge on my way to becoming Mr. Popular, and the stage I lost had nothing to do with my shooting skills.

Style

The arena looks pretty good, at least when viewed from above. But animations that look smooth from above are a little off when viewed from the front or side. The crowd cheers your success and boos your failure, but a particularly nice touch is that they count down to the start of the challenge. But god forbid you look out into the crowd. For a game where the one and only goal is to earn fans, you never get to see them. The crowd is just this blob of color, without any visual definition.

Story

The story really only serves to bookend the tournament. Apparently the ruling class of this city, state or planet became the rulers by winning the tournament, and they’re bad people. So you decide to enter the tournament to wrest control away from these bad guys. The idea is that by winning enough fans, you have the force of the people behind you and thus have the numbers to change things. But because you never challenge the rulers in the tournament, it’s a little bit of a reach to assume that your fans will start a revolution just because you’re popular.

Everything Else

In one of the challenges, it was me and a computer-controlled teammate against four waves of enemies. We started in the same staging area, because in this stage we weren’t enemies. But we weren’t allies either; anything he killed would earn him fans I could have been earning. So I turned around and shot him as the crowd counted us in. Then the crowd booed and I felt like a terrible person.

My moral failings aside, I liked the combination of twin-stick and first-person shooter. Creed Arena doesn’t excel at either style, but the option to switch between them kept me interested.

You can purchase Creed Arena on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 400 Microsoft Points.

[The developer provided DIYgamer with a copy of the title for review purposes, this in no way affected the outcome of the review]