A Five-Game Collection That Only Has One Game Worth Experiencing
There’s something about game compendiums that makes me so happy. Release the games individually and I wouldn’t pay them any mind. But stick them in a big box, be vague about the contents, and I am all over them. There’s something about rummaging through the contents, like a gaming jumble sale, that tickles me.
It also lets me do the whole ‘review within a review’ thing, scoring each game independently, which is never less than enjoyable. So, here we go: each game within the 5 in 1 Arcade Vault, in the order that they’re presented on the main menu.
Bubble Fish – 1.5/5
Oh dear. You’d think that 5 in 1 Arcade Vault would throw open the saloon doors, fire its gun into the air, and start with the best game that it’s got in its holster. We can safely say that no, that is not the case with Bubble Fish.
Bubble Fish is your run-of-the-mill horizontal shmup, just with a fish replacing the spaceship and bullets swapped out for bubbles. Horizontal shmups are a genre that’s hard to get wrong, but – alas – Bubble Fish finds a way.
Bubble Fish is stripped back to the point of silliness, for a start. There’s one backdrop and two enemies: jellyfish and pufferfish. The pufferfish at least have a spine-attack to distinguish them, I suppose. So, you autofire at them all, hoping to keep them all at bay for long enough that you achieve a decent score and some achievements.
There are a few weapon and power pick-ups, but they introduce the second big problem: Bubble Fish is not balanced at all. We found some homing bubbles, ranked up to power level 4, and we could sit in the middle of the screen, massacring all enemies before they even got onto the screen. The biggest challenge was dodging the power-ups that would have changed us away from our godly homing-bubbles.
Garden Catcher – 3/5
Garden Catcher was immediately familiar. I’m not sure if the genre has a name, but it’s the one where objects fall from the sky and you have to catch them in a bucket of some kind at the bottom of the screen. They tend to have two varieties: #1 lets you catch whatever you want, while #2 asks you to switch the bucket to match the object you’re about to collect.
Garden Catcher is that second variety. You have a basket, and it can be switched to become a yellow, orange, red or purple basket. You need the right one to be in hand if you want to collect the associated yellow pear, orange orange, red apple and purple plum. Garden Catcher consequently becomes a game of reflexes – catching the fruit in time – as well as a game of memory, as you have to remember the button – A, B, X or Y – that turns your basket the wanted colour.
It’s oh so familiar and entirely serviceable. There’s a slight hiccup at the start, as the colour-key is small and hard to read, but once you’ve internalised the button prompts it doesn’t matter. The biggest issue is boredom: it all gets old rather quickly.
Holly’s Hunt – 2.5/5
The skills learned in Garden Catcher become even more pertinent in Holly’s Hunt. It’s another game where you have to react with memorised button presses, and – for that reason – it feels like a bit of a retread.
Hammer Horror monsters appear on the game screen. There are vampires, demons, werewolves, ghosts and zombies. Each is defeated by a particular button-press: vampires need garlic (the Y button), demons need crosses (X), werewolves need dog collars (A), ghosts need holy water (B) and – finally – zombies need a shotgun (RT).
None of these are immediately obvious because a) some of the items are unrecognisable (I thought the garlic cloves were clouds and the dog collar a rosary) and b) the items are incredibly debatable. Shouldn’t a vampire be scuppered by crosses and holy waters as well as garlic? It takes a little time to unwind what Holly’s Hunt wants from you.
And when you become aware of what Holly’s Hunt wants from you, it also becomes bizarrely hard to lose. I entered a state of flow where I could tap the weapons at speed (I’m never going to stop associating vampires with the Y button, and so on), which meant that I never lost a life. I just kept going forever. Rumour is that I am still playing it now.
Tom4to – 1.5/5
Andy Warhol would have appreciated Tom4to. It takes his famed Campbell’s Tomato Soup and makes it the central character in a Hotline Miami-style shooter. Best of all, the enemies are can-openers. He would have liked that, I think.
Unfortunately, these are the best things you can say about Tom4to, which is otherwise a clunky, throwaway shooter. It’s not something you would want to play for more than a couple of minutes.
The tomato can is controlled in a twin-stick fashion, but with bullets fired with the A button. Except you can’t hold the A button to autofire, so you’re inviting some carpal tunnel by constantly pressing it. And the enemies spawn at some very limited spawn-points, all of which you can camp.
If you let the can openers spawn in without camping them, they get stuck in corridors because a couple of corners seemingly aren’t big enough for them to pass through. So, they cluster up, creating killing-fields for your Tom4to to take advantage of.
There’s one level, one attack, and one enemy. That level is exploitable and it’s virtually impossible to die (tomato pick-ups will refresh your health), so Tom4to quickly gets consigned to the green bin.
Circle Defense – 3.5/5
Yay! A good one! Circle Defense made me chuckle as it could easily have fallen off the One Button Games lorry. As the name suggests, you have a circle in the middle of the screen and you need to defend it from incoming enemies, tower-defense stylee. But rather than place towers, you take control of your own square, and you ram the opponents as they appear. Colliding with them kills them, so you’re careening about like a wrecking ball.
Where things get interesting is that you start accruing a currency as you play. Gold enemies even give you more cash. And this lets you trigger special-attacks and improvements that make the going easier, all by tapping the face buttons.
You will want to start with speed improvements. It’s not made clear by Circle Defense, but these are permanent: you have multiple ranks to move through, and you will want to unlock the top-rank as soon as you can. But the other power-ups are temporary. You can fire lasers in cardinal directions; apply a shield around the circle; apply a shield around you; and replenish a chunk or two of the circle’s health.
Circle Defense is a little on the disposable side – there seems to be a very clear point in the game where the enemies become impossible to hold back, no matter what power-up you choose – but it’s intuitive, high on dopamine, and reasonably clever.
Failing To Clear The Bar
Ah, if only every game in the 5 in 1 Arcade Vault cleared that bar. Circle Defense is the only real reason to purchase this collection, and – even then – it’s hard to imagine playing it much after its achievements are unlocked.
We’re on a run of reviewing every game in the One Button Game series and, with access to only one button on your game controller, they manage to make games that are superior to almost all of 5 in 1 Arcade Vault. It’s a damning indictment of a compendium that barely fails to make any sort of impression.
Important Links
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/5-in-1-arcade-vault/9p36mr9xv509
