When gameplay gets rusty...
User Rating: 6 | Spikeout: Battle Street XBOX
At the time, I was not paying a monthly fee for Xbox Live and this game just didn't have enough long-time appeal. I invited two different sets of friends over on different days and played two times through the co-op mode all the way through, and almost felt guilty for having each group finish it. They all enjoyed it to begin with, but slowly it started decaying into statements about thumbs hurting or wanting to go out and do something different. But the big difference that stood out between the two experiences was that we actually unlocked a new character the first time, but got absolutely nothing the second time. There was no reward, no cutscene, nothing unlocked, just kicked back to the title screen. The second group wasn't too happy. Maybe it shouldn't have surprised me so much, but I hear there are tons of unlockables in the game, but many must be unlocked by playing in Live or completing the Single Player mode, and I just don't have the desire to play through the game by myself. I was hoping for a fun multiplayer "party" game we could continually come back to.
I am a fan of the beat-em up genre and this is the kind of game that I would rent if it were offered at a rental store. It was a lot of fun playing the game with a group of friends, but having done that already, I don't have a lot of desire to go and play any more. I found the difficulty a little on the hard side in Single Player anyway, continually dying and getting frustrated on the Normal level. I probably have only spent about 10 hours playing this game, but there is only so much button mashing a person can do before he or she begins to think of other things to do. 
