A week ago a mate of mine told me I needed to check out that weeks XLA release called, The Maw. Even though I only saw a short clip about it in the the Dashboard (which I don’t think did the game any justice), I brought it without bothering with the demo (which I almost always do bother with. I tend to wait for the demo to tell me I could have unlocked an achievement, before I cave in).

In The Maw, you play as an alien character named Frank. Frank has a pet named The Maw which can attach to a plasma leash when Frank wants to control him. The Maw basically eats anything and everything in it’s way. As this little gluttonous blob continues eating, it grows in size. He does have numerous options to pertain some abilities from the animals or items he consumes.


The gameplay and cut-scenes are all in 3D. It was nice to be able to explore each stage in an innovative new way after the Maw evolves with some new trait.  The colour scheme was vibrant. Your tasks are straight forward and simple. You never die in the game, similar to the Lego games. The transformation reminded me a lot of Kameo.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, I strongly suggest you at least try the demo. It’s probably one of the best XLA games I’ve played in a long time. Make sure you let The Maw burn his mouth in the first stage and leave your controller idle for a few moments so he can give you evils.

The huge, and I mean HUGE downfall of this game is that the game is extremely short. I managed to finish it after playing for about 4 hours. When it was all over, I wanted MORE!!! I wasn’t bothered that it was a single player game, due to the length. On the plus side, we’ll soon have some new DLC that will cost 100 MS points per level.