Over the course of the past thirteen months or so, we have seen quite a variety of games on Xbox Live Arcade. We started off with 400 point remakes of 25 year old arcade games and then slowly moved to PC games that migrated to Xbox Live like Marble Blast. Finally we have games created just for XBLA and that can only mean even better things are on the way for gamers.

This time around, we have a game called RoboBlitz. My first thought on a game on Blitz with the title was football – maybe a sort of Speedball game, but that’s not the case. Instead we have a puzzle action game.

You are playing the role of Blitz who is a robot with no legs – instead of legs, Blitz has a ball. This ball lets you roll around the environments on the ship that you are on – the ship that you have to fix. There are a total of 19 levels in the game. Although it sounds like a lot you’ll probably be able to finish the game pretty quickly.

In the beginning of the game you’ll get a quick tutorial about what Blitz can do. Basically Blitz can roll around, jump, and use his arms to grab and manipulate things. Make sure when playing the game you stop controlling Blitz and he falls asleep. It’s pretty funny. Anyway, Blitz also has a spin attack which can thwart enemies that try to stop him.

The entire object of the game is to put together a super weapon that can eliminate the bad guys once and for all. In order to do this, you’ll have to go around and fix some rather silly things. Get the power-up and adjusting rotating platforms and so forth. Of course it isn’t easy as it sounds – platforms break and you’ll have to figure out a way to fix it manually. Thankfully the game does give you some tips as to how to go about solving the problems in the early levels.

Gameplay is decent – Xbox’s official website for the game focuses on the life like physics – of course, I suppose you could also say that Super Monkey Ball has great physics as well. The game makes use of the “ball legs” because sometimes you feel like you are a pinball bouncing all over the place as it can be difficult to get control of Blitz. There’s always a camera problem in these types of games and there is nothing more frustrating than not even being able to find yourself in a room because the camera has gone from first to third person for no apparent reason.

This game is unique because it’s more than just a puzzle game. While you’re trying to fix stuff, you’ll also be required to attack the bad guys. Throughout the levels you’ll be storing power which you can then use to build more powerful weapons. This is a neat idea and at the beginning you can use some strategy – do you go with the weak weapon you have now and save your power for a bolder weapon or do you just upgrade with what you can afford? Finding power isn’t difficult if you know where to look. It’s not really hidden, but you just have to find a way to get it (hint: use the jump button).

In game graphics are stellar. As one of the first actual games to show off the Unreal 3 graphics engine, visual expectations were high and they were definitely met. Just the quality of Blitz’ “ball” is impressive. Everything has incredibly detailed textures, although the ‘voice’ acting isn’t perfect. Audio isn’t bad, but not really anything to write home about.