Games that I've managed to S-Rank in 2011.
Showing 1-10 of 35 items
I'd discovered this delightful gem thanks to the Giant Bomb forums, and managed to download the game several weeks ahead of it's planned release in 2011. It's great to start off my S-Rank list with a worthy entry for once, as opposed to it being some obscure rental that I'm just hammering away at for points. I wasn't sure what to expect from ilomilo, but after mere seconds of play I was heading back to the main menu and shelling out my 800 points for the full game. It's great to see the stories play out as you progress through the game - there's the cutesy journey of Ilo and Milo that you see between the levels, but then there's the snippets of other stories you get from both Sebastian and the pieces of paper you collect as you go through the levels filling up your meter that add a sinister tone to the whole game. Excellent stuff, and glad I've got it to go through on Windows Phone 7 too!
Well, I couldn't add ilomilo a second time, hence Ilo appearing instead. The Windows Phone 7 version of the game became my 2nd S-Rank of 2011 within a few days of the XBLA version. It was a shorter game, and the levels tend to be much smaller, and miss some of the more advanced concepts of it's big brother, but it's still good fun nonetheless. Once you've reached the train in this version, levels then inherit eggs - unlike the 360 version, the eggs are now collectable, and doing so will unlock three bonus levels available at the end of the game. Here's hoping we see more from Ilo and Milo.
Yeah, I know, it didn't take me too long to get down to the questionable and dubious. This is my first rental finished for 2011, as it arrived in the middle of December. Haven't touched it as I got flu all over Christmas, so figured it was time to make some progress on it. What is there to say? It's a platformer, it's frustrating when it comes to jumping across floating crates, but otherwise it's an easy 1000 points in just three hours, which is always welcome. It reminds me of the likes of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, that kind of 3D platformer.
I never did get around to so much as touching or seeing Kingdom in action when it was released, and all it took with World was a Giant Bomb quick look for me to sit up and take notice. Straight away it looked like my kind of game, and I went to grab it shortly afterwards. Inside a few days I've polished it off, but it was good fun, it kept me sat at my 360 when I'd previously planned to head to bed a good while earlier, so it's just as well that it's over and done with already! I'll probably go back to it's predecessor, see how it compares after this. Good fun!
Despite the dubious GBA cover shot, this is actually the version released for Windows Phone 7, complete with delicious achievements, most of which weren't too bad to nab, some of which were a little tricky, and one was a pain in the arse (rolling three doubles in a row, anyone?). For an early release on WP7, I think this is a pretty good implementation of the classic board game. It's fancy and stylish enough to stop it being just a tedious top-down view of the board, and you can play different levels of AI and tweak the rules to mix things up as much as you'd like. I was pleasantly surprised with how this looked and played.
I've churned through all of the CSI games on the 360 to date, and this just seems to have taken a few steps backwards compared to it's predecessors. It still looks like a PS2 game, but the thing that really stood out for me was some janky frame rate issues when it was clear that the game wasn't exactly pushing the hardware it was running on. Other than that, it's very similar to the previous games. Achievements follow in the footsteps of it's immediate predecessor, rewarding you for thoroughness and such throughout the cases. Overall? Glad it's over to be honest...
It'a a shame that games like this aren't released in territories that simple aren't used to American Football. The game plays like a dumbed down version of Madden, with a limited selection of plays to choose between, and some cutesy styling and power ups included. Despite blatantly playing it for points, I thought it was a pretty good little game!
There's something about Double Fine games that I kinda like, and I was curious to see how a game where the characters are all matryoshka dolls would play out. It works really well actually. The graphical style is excellent, and I love the way the background blurs and concentrates on the foreground. The dolls are designed really well too. The whole story in the game is presented like a silent movie, with cutscenes complete with film spools on either side, and appropriate melodic piano music to go along with it. Definitely worth a look at the very least - go grab the demo!
Where would us gamerscore whores be without the early sports games that arrived on the 360 in it's younger days? It's been a while since I've played one of them, and we never get to see college games in the UK, so now that I have a US console this was one on my import list. It's actually a decent little game of basketball, but the menu system really lets it down - I much prefer the EA front end of recent years. A single game earned me all 5 of the achievements. Nice...
I was wondering how this would differ to Rookie Rush which I finished recently, as they're both essentially Backyard Football games. This seems to be a step back - graphically it seems a little inferior. The playbook is decidedly more advanced than Rookie Rush, but that doesn't make it a better game. Again, just a single game (well, more like a single quarter) in order to nab all of the achievements on this one.