PREVIEW: Schizoid (XBLA)

[xepherys]

For those of you poor bastards who were in my shoes until about an hour ago and have not heard of Schizoid, a Spring 2008 release XBLA game designed on the XNA platform, then I am here to rescue you.

Schizoid is a "cooperative ship melee game"... yeah, right? Basically it is designed as a two-player (local, Live! and possibly System Link) game where one player is an orange ship and one a blue ship. There are then orange baddies and blue baddies. You kill the baddies by running your ship into those of the same color, and die by crashing into those of unlike color. Apparently there is a lot of teamwork as the game progresses. The links below have reviews, screens and videos of the gameplay.

Frankly, it looks like a fun-as-hell arcade game and will almost certainly be in my download queue when it becomes available. There are 100 levels, unlocked in groups of 7, in the main game (though I can only imagine more will follow as microexpansions). There appear to be quite a variety of enemies, some of which will evolve or even become invincible if left alone too long. Some appear to have a protective shield (a smaller baddy circling around ala R-Type) of the opposite color, making for some interesting tag-teaming opportunities.

There is a single-player mode where the console AI-controls one of the ships (meh!) and then there is the Uberschizoid mode, which allows you to control both ships, moving one each with each of the analog controls. W-T-F?!

At any rate, check out the links below, and let me know who's down for some of this deliciousness when it's out!


XBLArcade.com
IGN
Gamespot