Extreme Gamer takes a look at the Xbox Live Community Game Biology Battle that has come to life with the New Xbox Experience (NXE). What is a community game? Well they are small independent games that anyone can make and test out over the Xbox Live network. It’s the step before Xbox Live Arcade and it’s also a gathering of interesting game ideas which can flourish, or perish without restriction. Only the strong survive, and we have one of the strongest with Biology Battle.

Biology Battle from Novaleaf Software is another arcade “shulmp” if you will, another thumbstick driven shooter that resembled other Xbox Live Arcade hits like Geometry Wars, and Mutant Storm. Biology War’s isn’t just a clone, it has some fresh ideas surrounded by its familiar surround ideology. Like the other two games mentioned, Biology Battle follows their lead keeping up the speed and diversity of combat while being constricted in a playing field. In Biology Battle the area you’re playing in is constantly shifting and changing shape bringing a surprisingly element of unpredictability to the gunplay. Not only will you have to keep your eyes peeled to the screen for the baddies that are putting on pressure, you will need to keep a watchful eye on the state of the level you are in. This can be a disadvantage, and by the same right an advantage. It’s all in how you play the game.

The action in Biology Battles feels meaningful when trying to achieve personal high scores, or the Xbox Live Leaderboards which Biology Battle is the only XNA title to support the online leaderboards. This support is only for gold member because Silver members can not use the networking features on Live. Along with competition for high scores you can look to snag some of the in-game achievements.

Biology Battle breaks through the stagnant feeling that other shooters exhibit with a rewarding gameplay structure, even though you are basically playing a simple shooter. As I mentioned the idea of achievements have already been tackled by providing a number of in-game achievements to strive for. This gives the game a little extra incentive to play the game along with making it more diverse. If Biology Battle goes down the Xbox Live Arcade route, the ground work has already been laid for those highly sought after points. Biology Battle also incorporates has detailed scoring mechanism with multipliers, power-ups which include a deadly armageddon explosion.

Local co-op is also available with asynchronous multiplayer support. What asynchronous means is that each person can play on their own skill level with the A.I. balancing out the differences between gamers on their own level, Biology Battle supports easy, medium, and hard. Novaleaf doesn’t stop the multiplayer fun there they even tossed in 11 versus modes and a tournament mode. The tournament is a best out of five deal that should settle up any disputes between friendly competition, and if the rivalry turns into a grudge match, toss it out in the versus modes which are creatively contrived including Froghop survivals, turret warfare, getting next to worms and more. 

Interesting enough this project looks supremely polished. Biology Battle feels like a fleshed out Xbox Live Arcade title with a high level of production. There are few minor nitpicks like the some of the text being displayed overtop of the action, however aside from a few minor text pop-ups, Biology Battle looks great. It simple, colourful and to the point and it doesn’t have to be anything more. The look is more convoluting with the storyline which puts the player behind a medical nano-bot who is on a mission cell fighting off the units internal natural defences. Sure, Biology Battle doesn’t really need a story, but hey, it is a little better because of it.

A few tweaks could be made like the size of the text boxes along with the respwan rate of the enemies. Sometimes they can pop in way to early and end up sabotaging the player. It’s all part of the challenge, but in one respect they can pop up so quickly that it feels cheap. If you have the skill you can do really well in Biology Battle, for this shooter fan I found the gameplay to be more forgiving then the popular Geometry Wars. I have heard the opposite from a few Biology gamers, so you’ll have to rack it up to personal choice. Biology Battle doesn’t have to be played in a frenzy whipping around the screen. You can take you time and methodically take out your enemies, or get more psychopathic and jump onto the crazy train with full out bananas.

All Biology Battle needs is some minor tweaking and I couldn’t see any reason why the Battle shouldn’t be added to Xbox Live.  Novaleaf has created a wonderful game that can competitive with any of the games currently on Live. Past the call of duty they have also included their own built in achievements along with a plethora of multiplayer modes to battle it out with friends. Throw in Leaderboard support for Xbox Live Gold members and you have an extremely fun shooter. It’s great to see a solid game like Biology Battle hit the XNA community servers and hopefully Biology Battle can grab some positive attention for up-and-coming independent games and its adept developer Novaleaf.

Final Score: 7.8

Reviewed by Downtown Jimmy | 12.23.08

	Fun shooter with innovative ideas Rewarding gameplay Built-in achievements and leaderboards Co-op support with A.I. Balancing Extremely polished for an independent game
	Respawn rate needs to be adjusted Other small tweaks could be made Might be too frantic for novice players