For anyone that’s wondering, the name's Justin, and I’m here to take over for David Rudden who has moved on to greener pastures. I even thought about changing the name of this feature to W-cade, but that sounds much worse than R-cade and Rudden would have my head. So because I have nothing better to do, I thought I would treat myself to some Microsoft points. With 800 Microsoft points you can do a lot these days. You could download some gamer pictures to spice up your gamercard, or get two or three new themes for you Xbox 360 dashboard. Better yet you could pick up Pop Cap Games latest addition to the Xbox Live Arcade, Astropop.

The game isn’t a Tetris clone as you might first think by looking at screenshots, but rather an advancement on the classic arcade game Bust-a-Move. Bust-a-Move and Astropop differ in mechanics because Bust-a-Move is angled whereas Astropop is organized in neat rows and columns. Bricks are destroyed by matching four or more bricks of the same color, but the main thing that sets Astropop apart from Bust-a-Move is that with a press of the A button (or the R trigger) you can suck bricks from the top of the screen down to your ship. These can be built up on your ship provided the bricks are the same color and you aren’t holding more than six blocks at any one time. The R and L bumpers are used for moving quickly from one side of the screen to the next when you’re pressed for time, and the Y button is for using your SUPA weapon.

Astropop features two modes of play, Classic, and Survival. While this may not look like a lot, Classic mode is essentially Story mode, and features four characters each with 32 levels to play through. When you first start the game you will only have access to two of the four characters, Vector and Sprocket. The other two, Vixx and Turbot are unlocked by beating Vector and Sprockets stories. The stories are nothing grand, but they do serve their purpose. By playing through each characters story you will upgrade your SUPA weapon every 4 levels which can be used in Survival mode as well. At first you may think to yourself 32 levels of just blocks popping, but by the time you reach level 8 you’ll realize that the game is a lot more difficult than you think. Special Brick Pieces are thrown in occasionally and add to the difficulty. At first you are given special brick pieces that help you to destroy more blocks, but by the time you hit level 8 you’ll be introduced to the stone, steel and toxic bricks. Below is an explanation for each special brick piece.

Super-Charger: makes one brick color explosive. It may appear if you make super combos

Hyper Brick: will charge your Brick-O-Meter if you grab it in time. Move quickly

Radial Bomb: pops all adjacent bricks

Stone Brick: *obstacle* breaks down by popping a brick next to it

Row Nuke: clears an entire row of bricks

Steel Brick: *obstacle* twice as strong as the stone brick

Freeze Bomb: stops time

Toxic Brick: *obstacle* poisons other bricks, destroy it to prevent it from spreading

Color Bomb: vaporizes all the same-colored bricks on the screen
Column Nuke: blasts an entire column of bricks

All of these special bricks serve to spice up the game play. When your screen is almost filled to the danger zone (which I’ll discuss in a second) a color bomb can be a god-send. And that’s only half the fun. Watching the bubbles pop and chain react is a treat in itself. Astropop is just as colorful as Geometry Wars, and that may even motivate you to aim to create combos. As I said earlier the game gets challenging once you hit the double digits. You’ll quickly learn that popping four bubbles at a time just won’t cut it if you want to kill your Brick-o-Meter and prevent the bricks from reaching the bottom of the screen. The bottom of the screen is what I like to call the danger zone. Once bricks begin to get close to this area, it becomes harder to suck bricks towards your ship, because you may be blocked by the other bricks. The game also manages to panic you by playing alarm noises, which either motivates your to work faster or hinder your progress.

Astropop does what most arcade games fail to do, and that is provide a challenge that is also fun, and have lasting appeal. When you lose in a level you aren’t forced to start from scratch. Instead of starting from level one you redo the previous level. Losing over and over results in you being pushed back down a level and having a big chunk taken away from your total score. This isn’t a big deal because once you get on a roll again you can make the points back. Astropop is definitely worth the 800 Microsoft Points.