Coint & Plick 2010 #44c: Solipskier
20 points, 3 votes
silby: Fits perfectly on a touch device. Part of the joyful trend of really simple games turned into great experiences with the careful application of graphic design and soundtrack (see Canabalt, Robot Unicorn Attack, Eliss). The in-game tips note: “Sometimes Solipskier goes so fast he loses his headphones. Don’t be alarmed, just listen to the wind and ride hard!
Coint & Plick 2010 #44b: Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
20 points, 3 votes
Salsa Shark: I think the balance of difficulty of puzzles has been a bit off in the last two prof Layton games; I found many of the ones in Diabolical Box quite challenging (and even somewhat repetitive, ie lots of slidey puzzles), but there weren’t too many puzzles in Unwound Future that I needed to shell out my hint coins for. I gave this 10 points because even despite the puzzles being less challenging than I may have liked and parts of the story seeming a bit familiar, I’m still a fan of the way the series never makes anyone purely evil, the cinematic cut scenes, and the minigames included in the main story (that ridiculous parrot minigame more than made up for many of the puzzles being on the easy side). I can always count on a Layton game to deliver 15-20h of good entertainment and my weekly wi-fi puzzle is an added bonus.
Craig G: This one might be getting a vote to make up the numbers as, although I enjoyed it, the series seems pretty tired now. It feels like I’m playing the same game with slightly different puzzles, only the puzzles, new as they are, are oddly familiar and therefore easy.
Coint & Plick 2010 #44a: Plants vs. Zombies
Official Game Site
jamescobo: If this isn’t my favorite iPad game, it’s damn close (and at the very least it’s almost certainly my favorite iPad game which isn’t really just a board game). The extra screen space makes the interface just sing compared to the iPhone (which, really, is perfectly fine, just not AS good), and the way everything is presented makes the experience the kind of thing you break out when bragging to other folks about how much fun you’re having with your fancy new iPad. Michael Jackson’s lawyers can eatadiccup though.
silby: First platform I played this on. It worked. Frequently experienced slowdowns on my 1G iPod touch due to zombie/projectile density, which felt almost quaint.
Autumn Almanac: I can see why games like this rule Facebook.
Coint & Plick 2008 #44e: Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble
15 points, 1 vote
Mordy : One sleeper pick for me is Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! It’s this really neat pack of minigames set in a 1920s boarding school. It’s very Dorothy Parker’esque.
Coint & Plick 2008 #44d: Barkley: Shut Up And Jam Gaiden – Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa
15 points, 1 vote
Official game site – Download Here
Nhex: Barkley: Shut Up and Jam Gaiden is a ridiculous farce that’s actually pretty fun (it uses the RPG Maker engine and basically plays like Super Mario RPG). Even though story-wise it’s an ironic fan-wank of Space Jam and Sir Charles, like Super Columbine RPG it uses the medium and its nostalgia to poke fun at the genre in really amusing ways specific to fans of SNES RPGs of the mid 90s.
Coint & Plick 2008 #44c: Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift
15 points, 1 vote
Dy: My reactions are becoming more positive the more I play but it’s quite slow and certainly no match for Tactics on the PS.
Webber: It’s better than FFTA1, but still somewhat infuriating. It’s a good choice if you’re looking for a game to sink a ridiculous amount of time into. I played through about twenty hours but since I didn’t like the way I was leveling (and because I am ridiculously anal), I restarted and put in _another_ twenty or so hours into it. I found and used a fourth thief dagger relatively early on this time so my team is well on their way to becoming dual-wielding killing machines.
Will M: Really enjoying it. This game is absurdly slow but it makes my terrible commute relatively fast by comparison so I don’t mind. Apparently I’ve played forty hours now? I think I’m technically 2/3 through the game but I am really fucking dicking around a LOT; I feel sure I could have easily beaten it by now.
Coint & Plick 2008 #44b: Crash Commando
15 points, 1 vote
Jeff LeVine: Basically a competitive multiplayer shooter take on a Contra / Metal Slug / Bionic Commando game with maybe a dash of N+. The online component seems to work fine (no lag in the few games I had time for) and uses really good AI bots to fill up extra slots. As frantic and fun as Call of Duty deathmatch but in awesome 2-D! Seems easily worth the ten bucks they are asking.
Jamescobo: I knew it was love the first time I banked a grenade perfectly. This game needs open-mic chatter badly; this push-to-talk nonsense is preventing people who kill me from having their sexual orientation loudly impugned in hilarious fashion.
Coint & Plick 2008 #44a: SingStar
(5-way tie for #44)
15 points, 1 vote
Daniel RF : Singstar must be the best party game ever. Sadly, my friends and I have yet to get it together to actually HAVE a party so instead I’ve been playing on my own, which I realize makes me a very major saddo… but it’s fun! It’s funny that the game doesn’t care about lyrics, so you can stutter your way through a song and if you’re in tune it doesn’t really matter. Also the attempts at judging rapping are some bullshit; I let the Eric B and Rakim track play while I chatted with a friend and it really didn’t matter, as long as there were audible sounds (even laughter) the rap-o-meter thought I was doing okay!
Noodle Vague : What I didn’t give Sony credit for are the Eye-Toy and SingStar games, which must give the PS3 a hell of a lot more mass-market appeal than 360. I guess Sony themselves don’t make a big deal of those titles to hardcore gamers, but they sure do seem to make a big difference in console sales.
Coint & Plick 2009 #44b: Prototype
20 points, 2 votes
Cozwn: It’s a fancy sandbox button basher with combat not as deep as something like Ninja Gaiden 2 but it’s certainly better than Crackdown. It can be hard to get a bead on who is attacking you at some points but thankfully your powers seem ‘intelligent’ and only attack ‘baddies’ and your lock-on seems quite smart too (i.e. you can’t lock-on civilians). You have a lot of health so bullets don’t do much damage but as bazookas and the brutes can mess you up, you can’t just be mindless.
Telephone Thing: I’m having so much more fun with Prototype than I was with Infamous it’s not even funny. Infamous just seems so mannered and restrained in comparison; even playing as a bad guy, there’s not really much potential to Fuck Shit Up beyond three or four gas stations that all go up in the same, minimally destructive explosion and cars that detonate in the feeblest way imaginable. Meanwhile, Prototype lets me destroy a Blackhawk by throwing a goddamn tank at it. And the Whipfist! Oh my god, the Whipfist alone is more fun than any of the powers in Infamous by an order of magnitude.
Polyphonic: This game might be straight-up garbage in some ways, but the core experience is flying around, swooping into crowds and murdering people in the most absurd and satisfying ways. Then, run up the side of a building and glide away on your squirrel wings.
EZ Snappin: One of my favorite last-gen games was Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. This is Hulk with more people, more powers, and better graphics. It’s a mayhem simulator without equal, despite the creepy emo hero.
Coint & Plick 2009 #44a: Pro Evolution Soccer 2010
(2-way tie for #44)
20 points, 2 votes
Ste: Is it me or is the ref a bit ‘handy’ with the cards? The game seems a bit twitchy in changing the controlling player at times, kind of annoying. Pressing start to skip replays is hugely frustrating; what was wrong with just pressing X? Do the player graphics not get muddy after a while? Seems visually rather boring. In summary, yeah FIFA was slightly better.
EZ Snappin: Took the revolutionary control of the debut and tweaked it in all the right ways.
trdn89
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