Centipede/Millipede Mini Review

I downloaded Centipede/Millipede for Xbox Live Arcade this morning and had a chance to play it for a while on my lunch break. When I saw this was coming out I was actually looking forward to it because I played a lot of Centipede as a kid. I'm not into most retro Arcade games on the Xbox 360, but after all the quarter I put into Centipede 400 points is not really that much to play it as often as I want. The fact they put both games together for $5 is nice. Sure, they are essentially the same game, but it is still a nice touch. Both games offer the original and enhanced graphics as well as the original and a hard difficulty setting. The enhanced graphics are a nice (but becoming expected) touch. The controls are simple enough. The left thumb stick moves you and the A button shoots. It would have been nice to see the D-Pad also be able to move you and to be able to shoot with the triggers, but that is not really that big of a deal. The controls were fine with the thumb stick and since I tend to hold the button down to shoot the A button worked ok. It is not the same as using a trackball like I remember using in the arcades, but it works fairly well. As one would expect most of the achievements are for reaching certain point totals, but there are a couple unique ones thrown in like "Destroy all mushrooms on the screen Centipede - Default difficulty." Still, most of them don't seem to difficult to pick up.

Overall this is a pretty good value if you're into the retro games. Two games (even if one is a clone), each with enhanced graphics, for 400 points is pretty decent.