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friday top five

Friday Top Five: Worst XBLA movie-licensed games
10 years ago

Friday Top Five: Worst XBLA movie-licensed games

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Most movie-licensed games are a special kind of terrible, but every once in a while you’ll find a gem that salvages the crummy image they’ve cultivated for themselves. That’s not the case here. At best, these are thinly veiled advertisements for summer blockbusters; at worst, they’re gaming’s equivalent of Happy Meal toys – cheaply assembled from hunks of material lying around to capitalize on the fervor of whatever the target demographic is smitten with at the moment. And like those little plastic tchotchkes, if you want the thrill of playing with a relic of your new favorite license, you’re going to have to eat some junk.

It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve finally whittled down a surprisingly robust list of big-screen bombs. We’re counting down the top five worst Xbox Live Arcade movie tie-ins (in no particular order).

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Friday Top Five: Top five XBLA games that require a sequel
11 years ago

Friday Top Five: Top five XBLA games that require a sequel

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Whoever coined the phrase, “Too much of a good thing,” likely never played a video game. Sure, mostly because the saying dates back to well before Pong ever pinged a virtual paddle, but in some small part because anyone that’s ever really connected to a great game knows the bittersweet sorrow of wrapping it up. Xbox Live Arcade is no stranger to great games — however you choose to define the word: fun, dense, deep, powerful – there’s something for everyone in our little digital corner of video games proper.

With that in mind, we take a look back at the heavy hitters, the ones that make you set down the controller upon completion and want to know more. XBLAFans’ Friday Top Five is back, bringing you the top five Xbox Live Arcade games (in no particular order) that require a sequel.

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Weekly Roundup: December 8 – Middle-earth, Minecraft and modifications
11 years ago

Weekly Roundup: December 8 – Middle-earth, Minecraft and modifications

Weekly Roundup compiles all the biggest news stories, reviews and features from the week into one handy post on the weekends.

A solid week for Xbox Live Arcade. We’ve got some big releases and DLC to pour over, a lot of great games on the horizon and a few impressive milestones for XBLA favorites. What did you pick up this week? Are you battling for Middle-earth? Hitting monster combos in Tony Hawk, or pitting historic figures against each other in fantasy duels to the death?

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Friday Top Five: Top 5 Cartoon Network shows that need XBLA games
12 years ago

Friday Top Five: Top 5 Cartoon Network shows that need XBLA games

Anyone who has grown up in the last decade or so most likely has an affection for Cartoon Network. We’ve seen some rad old shows show up on their programming line-up from Batman to Bugs Bunny, but they’ve also had a great share of original programming. Things like Ben 10 or Johnny Bravo proved that modern animation could still be as good as the olden days. Here at XBLA Fans we thought some of that original programming could use an XBLA game or two. So here’s our top five shows that need XBLA games:
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Friday Top Five: Top five XBLA trailers
12 years ago

Friday Top Five: Top five XBLA trailers

There’s nothing more enticing than that tease, that pinch, that itch you get from a fantastic trailer. With retail games, so many of them get these bloated budgets and the trailers get absolutely insane, but XBLA has to rely on their creativity! Their imagination! Their sense of wonder!… And yes, money also. However, not every trailer is amazing, but the best ones combine with some great games and catchy trailer ideas to really entice you. This week’s Friday Top Five will be about these beautiful, and often evil, displays of awesome, wallet-attacking footage. We were looking for that marriage of gameplay, story, presentation and shameless plugging, and we’ve found the best examples of it.

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Friday Top Five: Top five most wanted Dreamcast HD remakes
12 years ago

Friday Top Five: Top five most wanted Dreamcast HD remakes

Sega seems to be doing a lot of porting these days don’t they? From re-releases of Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure to even franchises on the Sega Saturn with Guardian Heroes and Radiant Silvergun. With the HD Jet Set Radio finally on the way, we thought we’d take a look at five games that should be re-made in HD for our digital platform. Some of them could be huge online hits and some are just bizarre games that would work great under a 1200 or less MSP price-point. So let’s worry about Y2K again before worrying about the apocalypse in this list.
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XBLA Fans Monthly Roundup (February 2012)
12 years ago

XBLA Fans Monthly Roundup (February 2012)

We totally missed January, but the Monthly Recap is back for February! Yaaay. There’s an immense amount of news this month because for some reason February is XBLA month. There’s roughly a million game announcements and DLC as well. I suggest hitting CTRL + F and searching for the copious news about your favorite game. Or games. Or just read all the news, because that’s a good idea.

Beyond the “things that happened”, there’s also several Friday Top Fives and Most Wanted’s this month as we continue to beef up our feature repertoire. Our chief feature, A Year In Review (2011) is definitely worth checking out for some insight into the fluctuations in XBLA cost versus review scores. Lastly, amongst the five podcasts is our Music Special which showcases some of the best XBLA soundtrack tunes since its inception.

Without further ado, welcome to February all over again! Read More

Friday Top Five: Top five XBLA racing games
12 years ago

Friday Top Five: Top five XBLA racing games

Racing games are an interesting sort. Like shooters, they’re at times so oversaturated with decent-yet-forgettable titles that it’s hard to pick the quality ones out from a sea of titles. Luckily XBLA is limited to 20-ish titles that revolve around the genre. Even still we have our favorites that we feel best represent what Xbox Live Arcade racing games should offer. While 20 participants enter the ring, only five make our list.

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Friday Top Five: Valentine’s Day Special
12 years ago

Friday Top Five: Valentine’s Day Special

Love is in the air or so it would seem with Valentine’s Day just around the corner. At XBLA Fans we thought we’d take a moment to celebrate our love affair with games by taking a look at some of the top romantic relationships that can found on XBLA. Whether you’re wining and dining your sweetheart or hiding under the covers till this whole commercial scam of a holiday blows over, set aside some time for a romantic evening of XBLA. Keen matchmakers that we are, we’ve created a list of possible partners so read on to find out our Top Five XBLA Romances. Oh XBLA, you had us at “Deal of the Week”.

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Friday Top Five: Games for Parties
12 years ago

Friday Top Five: Games for Parties

Parties are one of the oldest institutions of humankind, from the time fire was discovered to the latest significant party somebody everyone cares about attended. Perhaps something involving Tony Stark. Whether pre-historic or in fantasy land, parties always need something fun going on. Gaming, as it so happens, is pretty darn fun. However, recently the retail video game industry has decided partying with people within smelling distance means no gaming, and we here at XBLA Fans think that’s mighty stinky of them. In light of that, we’ve made this week’s Friday Top Five about XBLA games that dominate parties in one way or another.

5. Fruit Ninja Kinect 

Not every party has a Kinect, and not every party needs one, but those parties which have one should definitely be slicing fruit with as little regard for fruit-kind or remorse for the millenniums of fruitocide which they have suffered through as possible. FNK is the absolute funkay (get it?) fun time when it comes to arm flailing, personal space invading, or reputation undermining (sometimes all at once)! While this game isn’t four player inclusive like the other games on this list, it’s very fun to play and is a great ice breaker. Since Fruit Ninja Kinect takes advantage of abilities most people acquired and mastered at age three or four (the waving of the arms) there’s really nobody that can’t play this game.

There’s not a lot of depth to Fruit Ninja Kinect unfortunately, and when the party gets over the gameplay, there’s not much chance they’ll get back to it. However, one person can play or two people can play competitively and there will be enough for players to rotate and get their dose of being silly and enthusiastic before everyone’s guilt for the countless fruit deaths starts to take its toll.

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