My review of NHL 12 is online at the Mothership. I was waffling between B+ and A- but in the end went with the latter. Despite not being a huge upgrade, this remains a brilliant sports game.
The really interesting review is by Master Barnes as he jumps feet first into the new XBLA airplane kart racer SkyDrift, which he also tagged with the A- Editor’s Choice label.
I’m gonna buy this today.
Yes, Barnes is costing me more money.
Oh, before I forget — new contest this Thursday!
Get your ninja suits ready.
Yeah, Skydrift is a big surprise. Bill sent me a review code for it last week and I had barely even heard of it. I saw the title on the Xbox Live menu bar and figured it was some kind of lame PilotWings kind of thing based on the title.
It’s not. It’s like a cross between Crimson Skies and a Kart racer with DNA strands that run back to the great 1990s arcade racers with a smidgeon of Wipeout. Oh, but it’s airplanes.
It’s a really high quality title and the gameplay is ace. It has some cool mechanics, great tracks, and it _moves_. I like it far better than Motorstorm: Apocalypse or Blur, which it shares a certain design space with.
I was waffly with the review score, feeling like it was a B+ (whatever that means) due to some minor issues and a rather generic atmosphere and visual style, but I had so much fun playing it that I realized I was splitting hairs. It deserves a 90-class score (whatever that means) and our Editor’s Choice. It also deserves your attention, because it’s the kind of game that could go easily unnoticed and underappreciated.
Multiplayer rocks, but there’s rarely enough folks to make a full race, it seems.
So that’s two underrated plane games on XBLA- the other was that Snoopy game from last year that was also really good.
Holy crap, it looks like Extreme-G with planes. I will be trying out the demo at the very least; sometimes I feel like the last time I played a decent arcade racer was on the N64.
Yes! SD!
I bought this at launch hoping it would be exactly what it is.
Totally cool game.