Here on the fifth day of Christmas we reach the fifth instalment in this year’s edition of Electronic Theatre’s annual ‘The Twelve Games of Christmas’ series. Looking at the best videogame releases of the year month-by-month, today we turn our attentions to those titles which arrived on retail store shelves in May.
May was an interesting month in 2011. The eventually release of two long awaited videogames proved to be two polar extremes. L.A. Noire presented an action videogame that was also a relaxing experience in equal
measure, Brink offered a refinement of the online multiplayer orientated first-person shooter (FPS) that promised so much, and delivered on so few of those claims. What’s more, THQ offered a new experiment to the world in the form of MX vs. ATV Alive, a thoroughly enjoyable and well stocked racing title that was offered at a low price tag, with the intention of bulking the videogame out with numerous downloadable content (DLC) offerings at a later date. Sadly, so few gamers took the opportunity to jump into the well produced off-road racer that THQ pulled the plug on the entire franchise: not only we will never get to see how that experiment would have panned out in the long run, but there’s surely a huge amount of content that will go unseen.
May 2011 also saw the eventual release of Fable III on PC and the continuation of the Nintendo 3DS console’s launch window line-up with the critically acclaimed Dead or Alive Dimensions, the latter of which would be considered the best title on its host system for quite some time. Below follows Electronic Theatre’s picks for the best retail releases in May 2011, and make sure you come back tomorrow for a look at June.
Honourable Mentions:
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Runner Up:
DiRT 3
Codemasters’ DiRT franchise is going from strength-to-strength. After the success of DiRT 3 in 2011 we can now expect to tangents from the franchise: DiRT Showdown will showcase the eccentric side of the series’
personality, while DiRT 4 will concentrate on the core aspect that made it so appealing in the first place: racing. While DiRT 3 was technically superior in every way, it did loose some of the attractive character that made DiRT 2 so unique. Hopes are high that this will be fixed in time for DiRT’s dual personality launches.
Best of May 2011:
L.A. Noire
L.A. Noire was praised near-unanimously by the critics, but seemingly confused the videogames playing audience. Perhaps it was that Rockstar Games logo on the box and the premise of being free-roaming, but 
plenty of gamers where clearly expecting a Grand Theft Auto answer to the success of Mafia II; what they got was an altogether different experience.
Yes, there is driving and shooting in L.A. Noire, but these aspects of the videogame are secondary to the explorative component. At times, it feels as though the moments of adrenaline-rush action where included simple to satiate those who bought the videogame expecting such sequences. Instead, it’s the investigation and interrogation that makes L.A. Noire the unique experience that we were all promised. If you’re looking for a relaxing videogame that can still provide moments of tension, L.A. Noire comes second to only Heavy Rain so far this generation.
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