Latest Reviews
Pulling dead weight or reinventing the wheel?
We play good games all the time. Heck, it’s safe to say that we play great games on a fairly regular basis. What’s surprising, though, is how few of those great games genuinely feel fresh or inspired. Take the platforming genre for instance. For every Rayman Legends — a superb game that introduced...
Review Titanfall - IMC Rising (Xbox One)
The final DLC pack
The third and final DLC pack for Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall was released this week, but is it worth your time and money? Well, IMC Rising is consistent with previous expansions, bringing us three new maps each with their own theme that help to further our understanding of events unfolding after the conclusion of the...
Review Slender: The Arrival (Xbox 360)
Oh, the Slender Man... the Slender Man can.
Back in 2012, a two-man development team at Parsec Productions created a PC game called Slender: The Eight Pages as an experiment. The Eight Pages was based on the tale of The Slender Man, a tall and faceless paranormal figure who would stalk, traumatize, and abduct anyone who may come across him,...
Review D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die (Xbox One)
Look for D
Remember Deadly Premonition? It’s one of the most divisive games ever to be released upon the world. Poor production values, bizarreness to the extreme, and campy…well, everything else, meant it was one of those wonderfully weird games that either clicked with you, or it didn't at all. Now, four years after the release of Deadly...
The keeper fluffs it.
Here we are once again. It’s that time of year that - if you’re in the UK at least - the releases of EA’s annual Madden and NHL franchises are nothing but a precursor to. It’s FIFA time once again, and no matter what we say about the game here, it’ll undoubtedly be a massive success and sit at the top of the sales...
"I'm your density. I mean, your destiny."
It goes without saying that we all expect big things from the creators of the Halo series. And it’s not just because they bestowed upon us one of the best science-fiction gaming franchises of all time, it’s also due to the epic promise that their new IP will be an intergalactic journey so grand that...
Review KickBeat - Special Edition (Xbox One)
Bass dropped.
If you haven’t heard of Kickbeat before and are looking at the screenshots, you’ll probably get the idea that it’s a fighting game that has something to do with music. On the surface of it, that’s true, but the fighting itself is mere decoration for what is a relatively standard rhythm action title. The game is set around...
Those ninjas came from the past!
It was way back in the year 2000 that Digital Extremes announced a new game entitled Dark Sector was in the works. This game was initially envisioned as a space-faring third person shooter where players would don a mechanical suit providing them with powers beyond that of the average soldier. As the development cycle...
Breaking baa-d.
Did you ever play Lemmings? The classic A to B puzzle game were you were supposed to guide a crowd of small, green chaps through levels and past obstacles? The goal was to get as many of them out safely, sometimes leaving a few brave lemmings behind for the greater good. Team 17's new game Flockers is very much like that ... only a...
Skating backwards going forwards.
NHL 15 was supposed to be a celebration of hockey. A true coming of age that would have us flying banners and cheering EA’s name as they masterfully took the step up to the new generation and showed us their skills on previously untouched ice. When the puck dropped, it would provide the graphical and gameplay...
Review Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate (Xbox One)
Hit, hit, hit, hit, hit...and miss.
If you’ve not played any of the seemingly hundreds of titles that have been released as part of KOEI Tecmo’s Warriors series, then you’ll probably not be aware that whether you’re playing the Samurai, Dynasty, or Orochi flavours, you’re playing much the same game. Hacking, slashing, and the deaths of...
Review Stick it To The Man (Xbox One)
Where the sun don't shine
You know you have a great game on your hands when you start a new game immediately after the end credits have rolled. That’s exactly what happened after experiencing the weirdness and strangeness of Stick it To The Man, the latest from Swedish developer Zoink! Games. The weird and the strange is what makes Stick it To The...
Review Pinball FX2 - The Walking Dead (Xbox One)
Get bit.
The critically acclaimed first season of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead (hence forth referenced as Season One) invades the best version of digital pinball currently on the market, Pinball FX2, and the results are quite impressive. This closely-coordinated effort between Telltale and FX2 developer, Zen Studios, comes hot on the heels of...
(Re)mastered Blaster
When it comes to re-releasing older titles on a new platform, there are a number of ways a publisher and developer can go about it. They can just put the game out as it was and drop the price. Alternatively, they can bundle in a load of DLC and call it a “definitive” version. Failing that, they can tweak the graphics and...
Review Pinball FX2 - Guardians of the Galaxy (Xbox One)
Chart topper or flipper flopper?
It’s been a big summer for the Guardians of the Galaxy, has it not? Thanks to the critical and commercial success of the motion picture, this ragtag team of superheroes has risen from utter obscurity to a common household name in what seems like the blink of an eye. That means comic books, action figures and other...
Review The Golf Club (Xbox One)
Taking a new approach
Golf games haven’t grown up in the last 25 years. No matter how you look at it, the same systems that we used to control the likes of World Class Leaderboard on the 8-bit machines in the 80s are the same ones that we use today to control the latest EA Sports licence-fest. Everything has changed around the core systems of the...
Ruining the gauntlet.
When a game series throws out fistfuls of features that were part of the very reason that fans of the series became fans of the series, people aren’t usually all that happy about it. There’s a desire for improvement and growth of course, but there’s also that desire for more of the same. Fans of the first two Sacred...
Review Abyss Odyssey (Xbox 360)
A rogue-like by any other name...
The term "rogue-like" has undoubtedly been slow to grow in popularity, but in recent years it seems that it's finally starting to catch on. It's a phrase that comes from a sub-genre of RPGs that abide by a set of game design choices, including procedurally-generated worlds and permanent death — which titles like...
Review Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition (Xbox One)
Nacho average luchador
Even if you haven’t played Guacamelee or seen it in action, chances are you’re at least aware of its existence. Released as a timed exclusive for PlayStation consoles back in April of last year, this Metroidvania-style action platformer was met with a knockout of a reception, and since then has been heralded by many as one...
Review GRID Autosport (Xbox 360)
Crossing the line?
When Codemasters announced that they’d be reviving the Race Driver series with GRID 2 last year, many people were suitably excited. The original Race Driver GRID was a fantastic game which pitched itself somewhere between arcade racing and simulation, and that provided big, beefy cars battling it out over several disciplines...
Review Sniper Elite 3 (Xbox One)
Blood and broken bones
Ladies and gentlemen, Karl Fairbourne is back. The buff, very American super sniper makes his return in Sniper Elite 3, joining ranks with the allied countries during World War II to help them gather intel and scout areas of interest. Although, chronologically, this isn't a return as such. Sniper Elite 3 is set some-odd years...
Into the darkness
Outlast is a game you can brag to your friends about when finished. It’s also a survival horror adventure that probably shouldn’t be played by those with weak hearts. The tension scales so sporadically that even a half-hour session can leave you exhausted. But rather more importantly, Outlast is a finely crafted, well-paced...
Review Valiant Hearts: The Great War (Xbox One)
Masterpiece theater
Though a few videos have been published leading up to the release of Valiant Hearts: The Great War, not a lot of them did very much to explain what the game actually was. Clearly, we could see that it was being built on the UbiArt Framework and from what we read, we could clearly see that a lot of care and attention was being...
Review Sixty Second Shooter Prime (Xbox One)
A new ruler?
Sixty Second Shooter Prime isn’t officially related to Geometry Wars, but it may as well be. A twin stick blaster, the game sees your triangular ship trying to blast its way through enemy cubes, triangles, and coils. There’s no health bar, and no extra lives. Colliding with something means that your game is over. The goal is to rack...
Review Blood of The Werewolf (Xbox 360)
Murder, she wrote
Blood of the Werewolf is a tough-as-nails action platformer that marries core genre conventions with modern mechanics and ideas. If you took the "try, die, repeat" appeal of Super Meat Boy, the gothic themes of Castlevania, and combat elements similar to those in Final Exam, you’d have a reasonable idea of what to expect here...
Connected chaos
To be blunt, Watch Dogs’ lead anti-hero Aiden Pearce is a straight up smartphone addict. For most of the game, Aiden can barely take his eyes away from his device. And who can blame him really, especially with all the cool things one can do? No, he isn’t checking to see what’s trending on Twitter or playing a round of Candy...
Review Wolfenstein: The New Order (Xbox One)
Nazi-killin' machine
Can you believe that Wolfenstein has only seen four home console installments since Wolfenstein 3D was crammed onto an SNES cartridge back in the mid ‘90s? Being one of the oldest names in the book when it comes to first-person shooters, Wolfenstein has a legacy most brands can only dream of achieving, and it has somehow...
Nut all that fun
With platform holders making it easier and easier for indie developers to self-publish in these modern times, it’s inevitable that we’re going to see a lot of games ported from mobile devices to current home consoles. The first game of this nature to come to Xbox One (outside of Halo: Spartan Assault, which we wouldn’t...
Review Super Time Force (Xbox One)
Time is on your side, yes it is.
Super Time Force is the coolest game to hit the Xbox One and Xbox 360 so far this year. From the beautiful modern-retro pixel aesthetics to the unrelenting barrage of '80s/90s action movie inspirations and references, it’s an always-flashy, funny and frantic spectacle. It’s clear that the people over at Cabybara...
Review The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Xbox One)
Great power. Great disposability.
With another blockbuster film comes another video game tie-in — but is that always a bad thing? With games like Spider-Man 2, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and even Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay we'd have to say that expecting a lazy cash grab shouldn't always be a go-to reaction. Look back at 2012's...
