Best Xbox Live Arcade Games - The Top 10 Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) Games

If you know what you are looking for you can find some fantastic games on Xbox Live Arcade. It provides a space for developers and publishers for smaller, shorter and weirder games and therefore has provided many brilliant gems, all of them at a cheap price and many of them are better than full retail games. This is a list of the top 10 Xbox Live Arcade Games (sometimes known as Xbox Live games) around and any self respecting Xbox 360 owner must own all of them!

If you are more interested in the top xbox 360 exclusives you may like the link.

This is a list of old and new Xbox Live Arcade games and is a list of must have, must download arcade games for the Xbox 360. The list is in no particular order and all of these games are fantastic!

Trials HD - An awesome game. Addictive, fun and challenging. Three words that sum up Trials HD perfectly. You will be frustrated for long periods of time but don't let that stop you from playing a brilliant game. There are some incredible track designs for you to play qith on your motorbike. Trials HD is like a much better version of those motorbike games on the computer.

The level designer is also great fun and allows you to make your own cool tracks and download other peoples. You can make tracks that are really impressive and even change things like the colour of the lighting, whether physics is on or off on a specific object, rotating objects and much more! Below is a trailer for this top Xbox Live Arcade Game

Toy Soldiers - A fun game which is a mix between a RTS and shooter. You are in charge of protecting your toy box from the enemy and must try to get enough troops into theirs. You can take part in some classic fights and also play multiplayer which is also fun. As well as building defences and big guns and sorting out raids, you also get to play yourself. You actually get to control the guns and do the shooting yourself, either if you are bored or just want to for whatever reason.

Toy Soldiers is a brilliant game and one I would really recommend to you!

Splosion Man is a brilliant platformer that hooks you in.  I had great fun playing this game and it is really good.  It is full of charm and has lots of humour.  While you will die hundreds of times and get stuck lots, it is actually not that frustrating and normally a couple of minutes later you are moving on. 

There is a separate singe player and multiplayer campaigns which is good and means the game has quite a lot of replay value.  There is a 100 total levels, free gamerpics, themes, avatar awards and achievements as well as a brilliant game it would be a shame if you miss out especially as it only costs 800 Microsoft Points!

Peggle is a brilliant game and has the same quality as nearly every other game on this list of the best xbox live arcade games has - it is addictive. Peggle is also the perfect difficulty and is simple but difficult to master. The online community is still impressive and this is a classic game which I would recommend to all xbox 360 owners. Peggle also only costs 800 Microsoft Points as well!

Peggle is a once in a generation puzzle game like Tetris and is one of Xbox Live Arcade's best offerings.

Experience the ball-bouncing, peg-busting phenomenon sweeping the globe, now on Xbox LIVE Arcade. Do you have what it takes to become a Peggle master? Conquer dozens of levels with 10 different characters, each with a unique special power to help you. Face off against two to four friends in multiplayer play over Xbox LIVE, and test your skills with the Grand Master Challenges. Take your best shot.

Perfect Dark HD is an update to the fantastic original Perfect Dark game on the Nintendo 64.  With many game modes, improved HD graphics, a faster frame rate and the ability to play over Xbox Live and with achievements and new crowns.  I would highly recommend adding Perfect Dark HD to your Xbox Live Arcade games.

Shadow Complex sets a new higher level of quality for XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) games.  It is a side scrolling action game in the style of Metroid and Castlevania.  You will find hidden rooms and power-ups along the way. 

The visuals are amazing and is presented in 2.5D! The game is a perfect mix and feeling of new and old.

The basic campaign does only take between 5 - 10 hours to complete but it does depend on how much you explore. It does cost 1200 Microsoft points but is well worth it and it in my opinion either the best or second best XBLA game!

Braid is the highest rated Xbox Live Arcade Game.  Braid is an excellent game.  Braid is one of the best games ever made.  Braid is different.  Braid is intellectual.  Braid is a masterpiece.

Braid is a must have game!

Braid is a puzzle-platformer, drawn in a painterly style, where the player manipulates the flow of time in strange and unusual ways. From a house in the city, journey to a series of worlds and solve puzzles to rescue an abducted princess. In each world, you have a different power to affect the way time behaves, and it is time's strangeness that creates the puzzles. The time behaviors include: the ability to rewind, objects that are immune to being rewound, time that is tied to space, parallel realities, time dilation, and perhaps more. Braid treats your time and attention as precious; there is no filler in this game. Every puzzle shows you something new and interesting about the game world. Braid is a 2-D platform game where you can never die and never lose. Despite this, Braid is challenging but the challenge is about solving puzzles, rather than forcing you to replay tricky jumps. Travel through a series of worlds searching for puzzle pieces, then solving puzzles by manipulating time: rewinding, creating parallel universes, setting up pockets of dilated time. The gameplay feels fresh and new; the puzzles are meant to inspire new ways of thinking. (Microsoft)

For $5 or 400 Microsoft Points you can play UNO with your friends over Xbox Live! Add the Xbox Live Vision Cam for a fully interactive mutliplayer experience.  

There are many different game modes to play and if you like UNO at all this is a great game to buy!

If you love UNO and own an Xbox 360 UNO is one of the best XBLA games and also one of the best games to play over Xbox Live!

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 is a brilliant game that is suitable for anyone.  There is no campaign and the aim is normally to get the high score!

The graphics are amazing and are very vibrant and bright.  Explosions and other visual flourishes look wonderful.  The soundtrack tends to be a pulsing techno style. 

There are 6 different modes all of which are suitable for: single player, co-op and multiplayer competition.  The modes are all quite different and vary a lot to keep it interesting. In one mode you have 3 minutes and an infinitive number of lives and you just have to try to get the highest score, in another Pacifism you cannot shoot at all and you have to lure enemies to their death by skilful piloting!

The game works really well with Xbox Live and there is excellent leaderboard support and there is also an excellent local multiplayer.  

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 is a special game that deserves special praise.

Castle Crashers is one of the best xbox live arcade games. It offers some really fun game play and is best played with friends. Everyone can enjoy this game as you hack, slash and smash your way to victory. The art style is also fantastic and cut here like most of these games.

Play with up to 3 friends locally or over Xbox Live and discover the brilliant magic and mystery in your world. Also the problems on Xbox Live have been fixed now! Save the princess, defend some castles and destroy some! Play with more than 20 unlockable characters and an armoury of weapons and spells.

So there you have it, ten awesome XBLA games that you must-have. Varying from motorbikes, to side scrolling adventures, platformers, classic games, time manipulation and more it shows how good XBLA is as a platform and how good these games are.

You can vote for your favourite on the right!

If you want to buy these games (which you should!) then you can either buy the game codes or get some microsoft points!

Cheap Microsoft Points

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