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  • Weve seen it before, and well see it again: Masses of XBLA content, pressed onto

  • a disc so as to claim some delicious, delicious retail shelf space. It’s a good way to get

  • caught up on a wide swath of the downloadable gaming scene... and, depending on when and

  • how you obtain the disc, can save you a healthy bit of coin. It might be a three-pack, like

  • Qubed; it might be closer to a half-dozen, like Microsoft’s own XBLA compilations.

  • But Capcom looks to up the ante by jamming together eight - countem, eight - titles

  • onto one scrawny piece of plastic. That’s a piece of plastic full of hopes, dreams,

  • gems, airplanes, bullets, extendy-arm-thingies, garbage can burgers, sheep, bad acting, and

  • T.Hawk. Youve been warned.

  • Youve got your iconic heavy-hitters: the HD remakes of Super Street Fighter II Turbo

  • and Super Puzzle Fighter II, pretty much the epitome of two-player combat (and/or puzzlery).

  • Up near those is the beautiful 1942: Joint Strike, a slap in the face to the emergent

  • bullet-hell sensibility and a hearkening back to whenarcademeant a place with weird

  • smells and a change machine. Youve got Wolf of the Battlefield AKA Commando 3, a

  • rebuild of the classic walk-and-gun shooter and, to this day, the closest weve got

  • to a true sequel to Gun.Smoke. I’m sorry, Gun(period)Smoke. And, if youre like me,

  • just mentioning that game has the music playing in your head. Also on the higher end of the

  • disc is the epithetically-named Flock!, a delightful little number about scaring the

  • bejeezus out of livestock before abducting them on your gumdrop-shaped flagship named,

  • of course, the Motherflocker.

  • But not every segment of this polymer round is a winner. Though I know plenty of folks

  • love Final Fight, I can’t help but feel that the HD remake is little more than busywork.

  • Microachievements within microachievements, and no attempt to address the balance issues

  • of the original... This one’s turkeys all the way down. I’m also not much a fan of

  • Bionic Commando Rearmed, much as I appreciate the attempts to carry through some of the

  • jankier aspects of the original, like the weird pistol-holding. Unfortunately, one of

  • those janky aspects carried through as the uncomfortable platforming, made even more

  • obnoxious now by having various foreground/background layers and not always being sure what platforms

  • are real. But the real low-light is Rocketmen, a mediocre two-stick shooter based on WizKids

  • thankfully short-lived strategy collectable moneymaking... thing. Details on the original

  • property are sparse, but I can tell you that the end result is utterly forgettable... or

  • it would be if not for downright awful comic-book-esque cutscenes with poor vocal timing. Not even

  • quoting Emerson will get you out of this one, you GLaDOS-wannabe. Still, youre under

  • no obligation to play it. And the unassailably-awesome 62.5% of the disc more than makes up for the

  • quarter that might be considered a misstep, as well as this madness.

Weve seen it before, and well see it again: Masses of XBLA content, pressed onto

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