Today I bring you horrible news, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader has now been released for the Xbox Live Arcade at the price of $15. How the mighty fun of XBLA has fallen because of this ‘price uprising’ to ‘crap quality’ ratio…. or has it?

As I write this I feel torn about pricing of these games. I can’t say I am happy with the current trend of games that has taken over the arcade carrying the larger price tag, but I say that and find myself guilty of working with the enemy having bought games like Braid and Portal: Still Alive. However, it has to come to a stop when something like “5th Grader” gets released at the same price as these gems. Though it is not my cup of tea, I can even defend an overblown flash game like Castle Crashers because of originality and fun factor.

I gave 5th Grader a spin to see what bells and whistles this 97mb game could hold to make it worth such a price. I know none of the fifteen bucks could have went toward the Jeff Foxworthy sims looking character model, but when I hear Foxworthy’s voice, it starts making slightly more sense. He might be a redneck, but I’ll be damned if there is no other reason why this game costs so much other than to pay him off.

All graphics (sims looking), animations (the background audience models have a very noticeable overuse of about three animations), and especially music are sub par (and dear lord they should pay me to listen to the kids singing over and over again “are you smarter than a fifth graaader”). I wouldn’t expect this game to be at the $5 price mark that arcade games once started at, but anything over $10 makes no sense.

How many other games can we look forward to in this new price range? I of course hope not many, as the owner of exactly 20 arcade games, I really do enjoy the service. I believe though, with the advent of the Xbox LIVE Community Games (XNA) becoming a reality November 19th, and already having a taste of some of the games. I can see the lower pricing structure of those games with the high quality that they bring, will result in some much needed competition as far as the ‘price to value’ department of these larger publisher games. For now though, I guess I will continue to be that whiny old man not completely keen on these new fangled prices and finding a game like 5th grader released at $15 an insult to all of us consumers.

/rant.

“Anyone else think the test of ‘Are you smarter than a 5th grader?’ is whether or not you bought it instead of Penny Arcade?” – XanderSan, just a commenter on MajorNelson’s blog

Popularity: unranked [?]