If you ever played a tilting maze game as a kid you should be familiar with the concept behind Lazy Raiders. If not, try and picture a box that contains a wooden maze in the center of it. You would drop a metal ball into the center and must tilt it until the ball can escape through the bottom hole. Lazy Raiders is modeled after this having you turn the maze and slide Dr. Diggabone or your Xbox Live Avatar around to collect jewels and treasure. What stands impressive is the game doesn't cause the gamer to have motion sickness from all the turning and flipping that occurs in game.
While the classic wooden box toy has you leave the maze, Lazy Raiders turns the mazes into much more. Exits are not always at the bottom and tend to be everywhere, and usually behind locked doors you'll have to unlock by sliding into the keys scattered through the games 80 levels. The game works in the simply pattern of finding one colored key that unlocks the next key and eventually unlocking the door blocking the exit.
In addition to unblocking an exit to activate one you must collect enough treasure in the form of jewels and the keys themselves to unlock the golden treasure idols. Before starting a stage if you don't start moving right away the levels timer will not start ticking and you can not only see the layout but where the treasure idols will appear and how much money is required to make them appear. While speed is only a factor if you are attempting to medal a stage, precision is key.
Death in Lazy Raiders does not mean the end of a stage but it does mean the likely end of you grabbing treasure idols. Whether you are impaled, crushed or beaten to death you lose $25,000 worth of collectibles which in later stages can be crippling. The game's traps aren't particularly cruel but sometimes the game will crush you when you shouldn't be taking damage from a boulder. You do get a damage hit before dying so you don't fall into Contra syndrome of instant death.
To help you in the levels, especially in later ice based levels is the ability to flip the world. Doing so changes the background color from red to green to help the player identify how the world is currently flipped. Only red backgrounds will have the fire traps spew fire, and in some later levels blocks will fade in and out depending on how the world is flipped. The only frustrating aspect is having to master flipping the world when Dr. Diggabone has a lot of motion to his slide which can cause you to die or comically slide on the ceiling via your head.
The audio in this title is good but its also a complaint with little variation in the games three tunes it plays. Sound effects are key to knowing if treasures popped up and are great uses of audio cues. Graphically the game is fine and polished, though if it looks too distant the RT and LT triggers zoom in and out respectively.
Lazy Raiders clocks in at $10 (800 Microsoft Points) with 80 levels and about ten hours of play to get all the collectibles. While not groundbreaking it doesn't need to be as the game is fun, well made and challenging. Providing enough game content (including avatar awards for starting the game and completing it) Lazy Raiders has the makings of a sleeper hit and the quality to back it up.
Graphics | Audio | Gameplay | Replay | Genre | Final |
