The 10th Hour 07.31.09: Top Retail Games of the First Half

Posted by Adam Larck on 07.31.2009

From UFC to Punch-Out to Red Faction, check out Adam Larck’s top games from the first half of this year inside.

Welcome back to another week of the 10th Hour. I'll do a quick update on what I've been playing before jumping into some comments.

- Well, even though I thought there would be nothing good coming out for a while, I did not consider downloadable games. I picked up Splosion Man last week, and have been playing it every day since. The levels are challenging, and the multiplayer is actually completely different from single player, and requires teamwork. Of course, if you're playing with someone who doesn't play games too much, fights start to break out pretty quickly about who's launching who where.

This week I'm on Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I've been looking forward to this game ever since it was a rumor. Hit me up if you want a match. I'm definitely not the best fighter out there, but I still have a lot of fun playing this game.

Reader Feedback

Last week, the 10th Hour was all about Xbox Live Arcade games. I knew I would miss some games, seeing as there are a substantial amount of Arcade games. Let's see what people thought I missed and what their top Arcade games are.

I want to do a three-pack of comments first off from Guest#0546, dogpound7382 and JordanTheOgre, in order.

"wheres uno?"

"no love for monkey island?"

"I sense a severe lack of Peggle here."

I knew that there would be some games I would forget during the list. Uno was fun on Arcade, but it became one of those games where I would play a game every once in a great while, then forget about for months at a time.

For Monkey Island, it still seems odd for me to play a Monkey Island that's not on PCs. I liked the re-release they just put out, but did not buy the game. With the other big name Arcade games coming out in the next few weeks, I don't see me picking it up anytime soon either.

As far as Peggle goes, I never have downloaded the 360 version. I have the DS version and that's just enough Peggle for me. I'm not sure what the 360 version really adds to the game, so I may have to check it out one day.

Next up, we have comments from Todd Vote and Guest#0794 about a game that has become a hit for me.

"SPLOSION MAN!!! It's like crack... but the good kind."

"'Splosion Man is pretty awesome"

I know that 411 gave it an E3 award, but I still did not expect the game to be as fun as it is. I'm having a blast with both the single player game and the multiplayer. The game requires you to use teamwork in multiplayer, which is great in my opinion. However, it causes arguments from time to time with me and my friend because timing is a must with the teamwork.

The final comment I want to touch on is by RavenTazECW, about a few choices I left off and a few games he plans on picking up in the next few weeks.

"Have you given Pac-Man Championship Edition a go? The reason I bought Space Invaders Extreme was because the Pac-Man remake was so awesome that I trusted the new Space Invaders to be the same (and it largely was, I love the color coded space ship system). The streamlined gameplay of the Championship Edition is great, with the ghosts getting tougher by how you are doing, not by getting to higher levels like the original games. The only knock I have on Pac-Man C.E. is that it's sometimes hard to control with the 360 controller, especially when you're going at high speeds trying to maneuver around very difficult ghosts.

Peggle also rules. It's been very addicting for me. I've been trying to 100% complete every level in the game for a few months now, stuck on the last few levels of the game for the final achievement. The randomness of your shots and the placement of the orange pegs makes me want to keep trying over and over until I get lucky and realize I've gained enough extra shots during the stage to afford missing the free ball bucket if necessary. And then the ball takes a bad bounce, takes out the remaining couple orange pegs before I finish off the blue ones, I get pissed off since I knew I could fully complete it right then and there... and I just try again like a mad man, hahaha.

I have a good number of arcade games on my 360, but not enough to try and form my own top 10 since I don't have some of the most popular ones. I will be going after the re-releases of MvC2 and Turtles in Time the next two weeks, though."

You know, Pac-Man CE had slipped my mind. It was one of those games I had tried the trial of and then forgot about it, but the new level designs were quite nice to try out. I think the thing that really deterred me from getting the game was the price. I felt like it was too high for what the game was offering when compared to the original Pac-Man price and being able to play Pac-Man free online.

I touched on Peggle a bit up top so I'm going to skip over that part, except to say that I always like to hear reasons why people like certain games. As far as picking up MvC2, I picked it up on the first day myself. I'm still torn on Turtles in Time, and may wait on picking that up until I see if I like Shadow Complex when it releases or not.

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The 10th Hour – Top games of the first half

With August a day away, I wanted to take a look back at the big games of the first half of this year. The list will only include full retail games, so any type of DLC will be excluded from here.

As a quick sidenote, Sacred 2, the game I've spent so much time with, won't be on this list because it came out on PC late 2008, and just hit consoles in 2009. Otherwise, it would be near the top of my list. With that said, let's get started.

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10. Ghostbusters : The Video Game - The game may not be the best out there, but the homage to the original Ghostbuster movies and the thrill of actually being a Ghostbuster cannot be ignored.

I had a lot of fun beaming and capturing ghosts, and seeing a lot of the areas from the movies were fun as well. The multiplayer was decent, but got repetitive for me after a while. As far as games based off of movies go, this is one of the better ones that I've played in a while. As far as compared to other games, there was still more I was left desiring once the game was done.

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9. UFC 2009 Undisputed - I need to pick this game up. The only play time I've had with this have has been from the demo and at a friend's place, but I really like the detail that has been put into the game.

The gameplay is actually deep and seemed to offer a lot of different styles to try out with fighters. It took me a few days to realize what the grapple actually was, so most of my first fights were just spent punching and kicking. However, I still haven't forgotten the first time I knocked someone into the grey screen, then knocked him out with an overhead punch. It was cool to see that one hit could change the whole match. I'm not a big fan of sports games, but I do like the way that UFC was done.

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8. Resident Evil 5 - I'll be honest; the demo for this game turned me off of RE 5 for a month or two. I hated the demo. I thought the controls were bad, worse than the other RE games, and that the AI partner was bad as well.

I eventually bought the game, and had fun playing it. The controls are still tank-like, but having a human partner actually made the game fun. I never have beaten the game yet, as my partner got sidetracked and other games came out. Eventually, I'd like to get back to this game and beat it, I'm just not sure when.

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7. Halo Wars - I like RTS games. I may never actually beat the games, but I do get in the mood to play these games for a week at a time before switching to something else.

However, Halo Wars was the first RTS I ever fully beat (albeit on someone else's system). I thought the controls were well done for a console RTS game, something that developers had been trying to get right for a while. There were some things I wanted done differently, such as being able to build up a big base and had some single player missions as the Covenant. However, playing an RTS game in the Halo universe was fun for the short while it lasted.

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6. MadWorld - This is such an underappreciated game for the Wii, which is disappointing. The graphic style and over-the-top violent nature of the game is such a good combination.

I really like the black and white style of graphics in the game. They're very reminiscent of Sin City. The gameplay was also fun, if a bit extreme at times. Shoving a road sign in a guy's head before throwing him into a spiked wall is a bit much, but entertaining to see the first few times it happens just to see how you can kill enemies. The novelty of killing a person in such extreme ways unfortunately wore out for me, and it just seemed like I was going through the motions of beating levels after a while and not fully enjoying the game. Maybe that will change the next time I pick up the game.

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5. Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure - This was a surprising DS game for me. It combined an action-platformer with a puzzle game on the touch screen. What surprised me the most was that it actually worked great.

I played it on the way to Vegas earlier this year, and you control this old explorer as he gets pieces of a suit. When you destroy an enemy, they drop below to a Tetris Attack! type of board, where you have to match three block colors together to fill a special meter that your top screen character can use. It sounds confusing, but works out great for the game. The game does get quite challenging the farther it gets, and I still haven't beaten it yet because I got sidetracked by some other games. I'll get back to finishing this game eventually, though.

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4. Punch-Out!! - I haven't gotten much playing time with this game. I had rented it for a bit to check it out, but had a fun time playing it while I had it.

I thought the controls while fighting were great. While you could use the controller like a classic NES controller, I like actually being able to throw the punches the most. Being able to feel like you were the one actually hitting Glass Joe was a reward by itself. I got to King Hippo before I ended up having to take it back, but the belt defense mode looks like it offers a good challenge later on.

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3. Prototype - I love open world games. From Crackdown to Grand Theft Auto, just roaming around explore can bring me days of entertainment. Well, Prototype held my attention solid for over two weeks before I finally beat it.

The story in the game was decent, but my fun was had with finding all of the targets to consume and running over buildings. Alex's powers were fun to mess with in the game. The blade and armor powerups were all I ever needed, though, if I wanted to decimate entire city blocks at a time. Otherwise, it was just me under a guise of camouflage jumping and floating around the city. Was there ever a particular reason? Not normally, I just liked to explore and see how far I could fling my character. That was fun enough for me.

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2. Street Fighter IV - This fighter almost skipped my mind. That's what happens when a game releases so early in the year, I guess. However, I'm still having fun playing this game every once in a while.

I'm not the best fighting game player. I don't take the huge amount of time other people do to memorize combos and the exact second to launch them. I like playing just to play, which normally ends with me getting my ass kicked. However, finally unlocking my favorite character, Akuma, and Gouken really gave me a sense of achievement considering how much of a pain it was to do.

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1. Red Faction: Guerrilla - I had heard a lot about this game before it was even released. I'm from around the area where it was designed, so word of mouth was huge here. Still, I didn't think I would have had near as much fun with this game as I have so far.

Destroying buildings can entertain me for hours by itself. But, you add to that a good story and an addictive multiplayer? This game has had me hooked. I'll try to do storyline missions, but the gameplay for me normally just goes back to seeing what ways I can destroy buildings and how it looks. I know there is so much more to the game, and I enjoy the whole game. But the destruction aspect alone can always keep me entertained.

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Well, that's all I have for this week. Like or hate what I said? Shoot me an email at [e-mail] or leave a comment below. Any feedback is appreciated.

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