You never know what you are going to find with Xbox Live Arcade. Sometimes the games that you don’t think are going to be very good (Uno) turn out to be mind numbingly addictive. Other times you pay for arcade classics (Frogger, Galaga) that really aren’t as good as you remember. Finally, you are presented with some games you’ve never seen or heard of before, bring some originality to the table and are well priced.

The gist of the game is cute: you are Clyde and you decided to take part in a scientific experiment. Of course, as with all scientific experiments, there was a problem and Clyde was cloned over and over again. For security reasons (apparently), all of these Clydes have been held captive and now as the ‘real’ Clyde you are going to rescue them. To do that you must eliminate the “evil robot security machines.”

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? While not difficult, there are plenty of challenges on each level to make the game worth playing. This is basically an old school side scrolling game. You see there are lots of levers, walls, water, and rockets that you’ll need in order to get through a level. If only there were some way you could be at two places at once so you could keep the button pressed while you went over the wall…oh wait, you can clone yourself!

See, it’s not that difficult and during the early stages of the game, other Clydes have left you helpful notes to tell you how to complete the levels (maybe you need to drop the rock on this button, pull the lever and jump on the rocket, etc)…so again, it’s not that difficult.

What is difficult is meeting the time challenges and trying to get all the “Clydes” rescued through some sort of tunnel. You need to rescue the Clydes if you want the bonus points and the all important Gamerscore!

The gameplay itself can be described as cute. I doubt this would be an insanely hard game for anyone, but there are enough challenges to make you say “hmmm.”

Controls are easy to use and pretty intuitive. There’s a jump button, an attack button, a button to change the Clyde you are controlling, a stick for the camera, an ‘action’ button which helps you pull levers, and a super attack button.

To use the super attack you have to collect DNA strands. The super attack isn’t anything to write home about but it lets you kill a security robot in one button press rather than the multiple button presses for a standard attack.

The graphics are above what I would expect for a Live Arcade game. They are very well-animated and look 3-D. This isn’t a ‘show off your 360’ game, but we’ve all seen a lot worse on the 360.

The sound is decent – the “yes sensei” comment that Clyde makes every time he does an attack gets annoying fast, but doesn’t detract from the gameplay.