Casual Monday -- Never-Ending Love Affair Edition

Oh Monday morning, you're always such a malevolent bastard. If it weren't for the wonderful folks at ICanHasCheezburger, we'd be up a cranky creek without a paddle. Waking up to Jonathan Coulton's seminal, "Still Alive" helps to shake off the early Monday boogie-woogies and got us here at QPHQ ready for some old school Portal action. That's right folks -- Narbacular Drop -- the DigiPen title that launched Portal from a student project directly into our hearts.

And now it's here, for you, from us. You're welcome. Ok, we didn't make it. Our bad. But anyways, enjoy the precursor to what's quickly becoming our primary obsession. And in case you were thinking about doing it this week, seriously, don't play Little Gamers on XNA. It is the definition of suffering.

QP Review: XNA Creators Club Demos

Let's sit down and talk, QP'ers. Let's talk about poor design. Let's talk about the XNA Creators Club Game Launcher. This is a great example of how a really good idea can get rushed, ruined and, erm, (w)recked. The picture below serves as proof:

(Note the Y-button command in the lower left -- 'cause no one would notice it otherwise.)

You may be wondering to yourself, "But that's just a normal download screen on XBLA, QP. WTFOMG4EVZ!" Relax, relax. It's so much more complicated than that. You see, much like you, when we first downloaded the XNA Creators Club Launcher, we were perplexed as to how to download the actual games. Though our collective years only equal a single elderly person, we here at QP would like to think of ourselves as at least somewhat technically savvy (I installed a 32X at one point in my life.)

Regardless, after looking on MajorNelson's helpful site, we were able to download the newly released XNA demos -- and boy are our brains tired. Though the navigation to download the games on XLBA is pretty bonked, the games themselves downloaded quickly. That's where the disappointment ended.

There were seven games released as demos through this XNA Creators Club program on XBLA:
1 - The Dishwasher (by James Silva, U.S.A.)
2 - Little Gamers (by Loic Dansart, Belgium)
3 - Jelly Car (by "Walaber," U.S.A.)
4 - Rocketball (Fuel 'N Spark Games, U.S.A.)
5 - ProximityHD (Brian Cable, U.S.A.)
6 - TriLinea (Edison Prata, Brazil)
7 - Culture (Hidden Path Entertainment, U.S.A.)

You were only supposed to be able to download these titles through Sunday, February 24th, but this press release went out today, extending the ability until tonight, February 26th, at midnight PST. But stop! Don't rush over to your 360 and excitedly start downloading these free demos. Why wouldn't you, you ask? Oh, cause they're godawful. The Dishwasher stands out among them as the only one that felt like a game -- otherwise you're better off sticking to the QP Casual Monday roundup.

Seriously though, I played every one of them. They're not good. For free. Think about that.