It’s hard to tell exactly what the heck is going on in 2081, but apparently some supernatural schmuck has left most of Europe a smoldering ruin. Four neon-hued heroes rise from the rubble to leap, dash, slide, and slash their insanely monotonous side-scrolling way through legions of evil machines.

Gangs of dull enemies crowd around like they’re selling cell-phone contracts, so you’ll often need to either retreat and regroup or charge like a possessed bull if you want to stay alive. Some of the bigger bosses are fun to take down, and the grim backgrounds are often quite pretty, but robotically pounding or charging the X button for hours on end will wear down the willpower of even the most stalwart gamers. Experience earns you customization points to spend on health, magic power, and attack strength, but the pace of stat improvement is so glacially slow, and the moment-to-moment combat so mind-numbing, that the excitement of each new plateau rapidly dissipates.

And Moon Diver doesn’t just support four-person co-op play — it demands it. Bringing along three friends picks up the pace, raises the chaos quotient, and makes the formidable difficulty more manageable. However, co-op MoonSault Combination attacks are available only if everyone involved hunts down and equips the same abilities, and there’s just not enough reason to go to all that trouble.

On Xbox Live Arcade

+ Online co-op; some cool bosses; fairly slick visuals; dozens of collectible abilities.

- Unnecessarily long stages filled with dim drones; occasional insta-deaths.

- Solo play is a hopeless grind; customization points take forever to make a difference.

? Why do stages unlock separately for each character?

4.5