In today's gaming market, most of the games you hear about are super graphic intensive and beautiful. They require powerful systems to run and tend to focus more on how things look than how they play. I am quite glad that there are still games coming out that are more meant to be purely fun, like Awesomenauts.

Having said that, I don't want you to think that the game isn't pretty. The graphics are quite well done and look great for what they are. The characters are animated rather than being realistic. It looks like a throwback to the original platformers of the late 90's and early 2000. One team is red and the other is blue. For the most part, this makes it pretty easy to see who is on your team and who isn't. Luckily, since friendly fire won't hurt you, it is a lot easier to deal with the large groups. You don't have to keep up with who is on your team; you can just shoot.

I love the background music and the voicework; pretty much everything you can hear is amazingly well done. I think the music is my favorite. It sounds like current popular songs more than I've heard in any game lately. Of course, you'll find that you don't listen to it as much when you're listening to the combatants and all the funny stuff they say on their attacks.

The year is 3587 and the universe is completely different. The "Awesomenauts" are a band of elite mercenaries who will fight for whoever pays them, even the robot armies. Sheriff Lonestar, Voltar, Leon, and a whole bunch of others make up your crew. Your mission is to destroy the enemy base station before they can destroy yours. To get to the bases, you have to get past the turrets, which are very dangerous. They know when a member of the opposite team is within range and continually shoot very powerful bullets. It only takes a few bullets from the turrets to kill your characters (without extra health), so you have to be careful with them. Not only do you have to watch out for the turrets, but also there are members of the opposing teams shooting at you.

As you kill opponents and bots, you will earn coins that can be used to upgrade your character's health and to buy upgrades on weapons and skills. As you level up, you will unlock new characters, worlds and abilities. Even if you are defeated in the match, you will still get experience towards leveling, just not as much as if you had won!

Awesomenauts is meant to be played online with and against real people. The Main Menu has Xbox LIVE Battle which is a match against people online. You can have local players on your team as well, which makes things a lot easier for me! Quick Match is the same thing except it skips the match setup and just throws you into one more quickly. If you aren't playing with someone locally, then you might as well just do Quick Match. Private Match lets you lock the match so that only you and your friends can join. This is quite handy if you want to keep out very bad players or very good players or just because you want to. Practice is where you can play by yourself locally to work on getting better and unlock more characters before you go online. You can also use Practice to just play with local players against the bots. The Leaderboards will let you see the players' online rankings, just in case you want to see how you compare to the rest of the world. It shows players' win percentage, how many games they have played, their favorite character, and their rating.

Let me start this by telling you that I am horrible at Awesomenauts, so I am not sure my gauge of difficulty is the best. Of course, that doesn't stop me from enjoying it greatly! There are no difficulty levels available in the game. Even though you level up during a match, your character will be reset at the beginning of each match, so there is no concept of power leveling just to go online and kill others. The only difference in being higher levels is that you have unlocked more characters and equipment. Given all of that, whether you win or lose all comes down to how well you learn the characters and how much you can adjust to the strategies needed with each one. Of course, since you're playing against real people, it will also depend on how good your opponents are. You will have to learn how your enemies fight so that you will be able to figure out the best ways to win.

For example, the easiest way to deal with the turrets is to wait on the bots that your base is producing. The turrets will target the bots first, so you can hide behind them and shoot. Unfortunately, the bots aren't very tough so you're not going to get many shots in at once, even if the opposing team leaves you alone, and you can bet that they are not going to leave you alone for long! Always try to get the kill shot as the coins will automatically be yours and you won't have to pick them up.

Awesomenauts is an easy game to learn to control, but it can be hard to master. The stick will move your character around. This is a 2D world, so you will only be able to go forward, backward, and jump up and down off of platforms. To get down off of one, press down and press (A). To jump up, you just have to press (A). (X) is your main weapon that you will use. (Y) and (B) are optional weapons that you can buy when you have enough coins. When you die, you will have to wait a matter of seconds to come back. The longer you've been playing that match, the longer that you will have to wait, so I recommend that you avoid dying. You can teleport back to base to restore health. Teleporting takes time and yes, you can be killed while you are teleporting. You can pick up the green (+) items to get health. You can also kill the little brown creatures and they will drop health. There is a giant brown one that will drop a lot of health, but he can kill you easily, so be careful of him. You will get an achievement if you kill him in an online match, though. Just make sure your teammates know that you are trying to do that because they will be upset that you aren't helping attack and defend! After you level up some, you can customize what items will appear in the shop. Each character has different skills and weapons, but you'll probably find your favorite quick enough. You will unlock new characters as well when you level.

I am not sure I have ever been this bad at a game and yet I still have so much fun playing! I am just not going online again until I can figure out how to get better because I feel bad for anyone else on my team. I am getting better quickly though, so look out for me online again soon. If you're looking for an old-school deathmatch type game, check out Awesomenauts. At only 800 Xbox Live credits, it is a real bargain that will keep you entertained for a while!