Xbox Live Arcade is a bit hit and miss: a lot of the titles on there are a bit what’s the word? Rubbish. But then occasionally along come some real gems. Braid. Penny Arcade. You can now add to that list The Maw.
Playing as a small alien creature called Frank, you crash land on an alien planet and quickly buddy up with another alien called The Maw. The Maw starts off tiny, and as you drag he around on your ‘plasma leash’ he quickly gets bigger and bigger, until you’re towing around this huge creature around behind you.
The Maw isn’t your usual XBLA side-scrolling shooter. In a 3D environment The Maw plays like a platformer of old – dosen’t look the greatest, but great fun. Speaking of fun, you won’t get more than a couple of hours out of The Maw as there are only eight levels to play through, with little replay value unless you fancy going for all of the Achievements. However, the eight levels there are aren’t just the same thing over and over again: each level, whilst being fundamentally the same, changes something so you’ll never be bored.
The Maw would be great for younger gamers, as there are no time limits, health bars or anything like that: you can take as long as you like, exploring The Maw’s world. The very easy difficulty level is a double-edged sword – whilst it means anyone can play it, The Maw isn’t really much of a challenge.
There isn’t really much more to say about The Maw – its a great little platformer that at 800 Microsoft Points or roughly seven pounds or ten dollars is a real bargain. Add that to the free gamer pictures and theme you unlock as you play through the game, there really is no excuse not to download The Maw. Now!
Nometet.com says: 
UPDATE – We spoke to Michael Wilford, CEO of Twisted Pixel, who made The Maw. He said to us this:
we wanted a time challenge mode originally but had to cut it due to time and budget constraints. If players want their time challenge fix they can try to beat my score (gamertag: Mananan) on the leaderboards. It theoretically could make an appearance as DLC, but right now we’re focused on making the new levels bigger and better.
