Game for free on your little 360.

Okay, it’s not exactly free when you have to pay for Xbox Live, but lately the service has been giving people their money worth with a plethora of free content. I’m not talking just about Xbox Live Arcade, though last week it saw probably one of it’s best releases in some time. Aces of the Galaxy is a sweet on rails shooter with amazing graphics and intense action that’s sure to give your right thumb a workout. You also have Rogoo, a falling block style puzzle game with a cute premise and split second timing. Either one is worth your point bank, but there’s more to play without paying.

You can ignore the Crash Time demo. It’s pretty much awful in every sense of the word as a car chasing game with graphics worse than the accents. Also, you probably shouldn’t bother with the single player portion of the Battlefield: Bad Company demo. If you’ve played Call of Duty 4, you’re bound to be bored with this stripped down imitation. Where the game really shines is in multiplayer, where you can assume a variety of kickass classes like demolitions and blow the hell out of the enemy team, while either attacking or defending your gold supply.

Ninja Gaiden II is a must play. The action is vicious and visceral with four fully maxed weapons to reduce the enemy to bloody chunks. Yep, the camera is pretty bad and the occasional platforming is annoying, but there’s simply no other action game that does decapitation better. Another surprising must play is Civilization Revolution, ironically not coming to the Wii (so far). This is the turn-based empire building strategy game completely redone from the ground up for consoles, and it’s intensely addictive. Build and establish cities, raise armies, ignore the advice of your cheeky advisers, gain new technology, and prove yourself to be the greatest leader the world has ever known. This can be played both offline alone and online against a random opponent, though of course the full game will let you choose to confront your friends. Let’s hope they stay that way.

There’s also a demo of Quake Wars that just popped up, but I haven’t had the chance to try it yet. With this many demos, who needs full games?