Latest Reviews
Review Guns, Gore and Cannoli (Xbox One)
Disorganized crime
In Guns, Gore & Cannoli, players fill the shoes of Vinnie Cannoli, an enforcer for the mob in the 1920s. When Vinnie is sent into Thugtown to locate a person of interest for his employer, he soon finds that circumstances are dire. Zombies and rival gang members are everywhere, and the city is in disarray. With an arsenal of...
Review Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart (Xbox One)
Walking the plank.
Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart comes to Xbox One during an extremely odd phase in digital game publishing on the platform. Developers looking to make a quick buck can now seemingly easily publish their quickly-ported games on the Xbox Store and see them get front page coverage upon release. This doesn't always work all...
Review The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 (Xbox One)
Pen to paper
It's no secret that there has been a resurgence in the popularity of point-and-click adventure games in recent years, with titles such as Life is Strange receiving both critical and player acclaim and Telltale Games gaining similar plaudits for the likes of The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. The genre is ripe for the plucking and...
Pitching in
When the generally super-positive reviews of Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 started hitting the net, it was hard to see – given the relatively limited list of improvements that EA were touting – quite how FIFA 16 had any real chance of defeating Konami's franchise this time around. Despite impressing in some areas though, PES contained...
Review Rugby World Cup 2015 (Xbox One)
No try. In more ways than one.
When it was announced that HB Studios, the development team behind the diabolically bad Rugby 15, were developing the official game based on the 2015 Rugby World Cup and that it was due to be released just nine months after their first effort, alarm bells started to ring all over the show. Would the developer take on...
Psycho Circus
Penarium is a 2D arcade-style game about survival. When a boy named Willy is tricked into joining the circus, he quickly finds out it's not what he expected. The man running things, referred to as the Director, imprisons Willy and forces him to endure one of the most inhumane big-top shows of all time. With simple pick-up-and-play...
Review Blues and Bullets - Episode 1 (Xbox One)
Seeing red
It's a wonderful time to be a fan of the adventure game genre. Whether you prefer traditional point-and-click puzzle solving (King's Quest, Broken Age) or more recently, the flurry of choice-based narrative stories (Life is Strange and anything from Telltale), it's becoming increasingly clear that this once-ignored genre is most...
Review Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 (Xbox One)
A game of two halves
It isn't our policy to look at reviews from other publications before playing a game that we know we'll be reviewing here at PureXbox but this time around, we weren't sure whether or not we'd be reviewing Pro Evolution Soccer 2016, so we indulged in a little light reading. It appears that the game is universally loved and is –...
Pump it louder
In this world of games that are filled with tutorials, guides that hold your hand through half of the product, rewards for every little thing you do and achievements that rain down from the skies for going into an options menu, it's rare to see a title that bucks that trend. Pumped BMX+ is one such game and heavens, it's a refreshing...
Review Toy Soldiers: War Chest (Xbox One)
The sum of its parts
Toy Soldiers: War Chest comes to Xbox One on the back of two successful iterations in the form of Toy Soldiers and Toy Soldiers: Cold War for Xbox 360. This, coupled with the addition of popular toy licenses makes this new entry an exciting proposition. Excitement for the game, however, may be short lived upon noticing how War...
Review Forza Motorsport 6 (Xbox One)
Start your engines...
We reckon that we can do away with the preamble with this review, given that if you aren't aware of what the Forza series is by now, you probably never will be. With this sixth iteration (if you forget the Horizon interludes) being a pretty important title for Xbox One as a platform as it heads into the holiday season, let's...
Review Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (Xbox One)
Saving the world with love
When it comes to gaming, the word "innovative" is bandied about an awful lot, especially since the dawn of the indie game. The gun that you had in that Game X? Well in Derivative Game Y, it can fire grenades too! Innovative. Remember how difficult it was to tackle the striker in that soccer title? Well in this season's...
Review Leo's Fortune (Xbox One)
Great Balls of Fluff
Leo's Fortune started out life as a mobile platformer, released on the Apple Store and for Android in 2014. Even back then it was clear that 1337 & Senri LLC had a little gem on their hands and fans immediately begged for it to be brought to their next-gen console, so that they could spend more time with protagonist Leo...
Maximum carnage
With the critical and commercial success of Mad Max: Fury Road, it's no wonder that the video game adaptation of the Mad Max universe has been so highly anticipated. Then, when you consider the fact that publisher WB Interactive has also had a rockin' year of releases – Batman: Arkham Knight, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Mortal...
Review Disney Infinity 3.0 Edition (Xbox One)
To Infinity...and beyond?
Everyone in the world has heard of Disney Infinity by now. Well, at least those of us with children certainly have! The Disney take on the formula started by the Skylanders has always had a different slant, with much more emphasis being placed on community-created content. The Toy Box mode allows whole games and worlds to...
Review Super Toy Cars (Xbox One)
Micro amounts of fun
When it comes to arcade racing, few can argue that the likes of the classic Micro Machines titles from the 90s or even the likes of Mashed from the 00s are right up there in the list of brilliantly fun experiences, especially when it comes to gathering a couple of players around the console for a few rounds. Super Toy Cars is...
Review Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse (Xbox One)
A Tale of Two Snakes
Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse comes to the Xbox One with a pedigree built up over its many years as a premium point-and-click adventure series. It had a slightly different development trajectory along the way when compared to other titles in the series and as a result, it seems a little confused at times as to what it...
Review Magnetic: Cage Closed (Xbox One)
Push and Pull
Magnetic: Cage Closed is a first-person physics-based puzzle game set within a grimy prison that harbours a dark and sinister secret in the basement. The player takes on the role of Rachel Randall (better known throughout proceedings as Prisoner XE-47623), an inmate on death row, as she is escorted on a gurney into the lower levels of...
Review Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (Xbox One)
Changed like a remix and raised like a Fenix
Back in 2006, the original Gears of War was one of the first games to really showcase what the Xbox 360 was capable of, both in terms of technical prowess and cinematic delivery. With an engrossing campaign – which could be played locally with a friend – and a thrilling online multiplayer offering,...
Review Bridge Constructor (Xbox One)
A bridge too far
There's a bit of a lack of truly perplexing puzzle and strategy games on Xbox One and that's just one of the reasons we were excited to give Clockstone's Bridge Constructor a spin. Crossing the chasm from mobile devices and PC, the game comes complete with the SlopeMania expansion and given the decent reviews the whole package...
Review No Time To Explain (Xbox One)
Not worth the time
Originally released in 2011 as a browser game on Newgrounds, No Time To Explain on Xbox One doesn't really add a whole lot of "new" aside from a smoother visual presentation and soundtrack. The cold hard truth though is that No Time To Explain wasn't a great game back then, and all of the problems associated with it are still...
Review Mega Man Legacy Collection (Xbox One)
Cheap Man
When Capcom first announced that they'd be bringing a collection of Mega Man games to modern consoles, everyone was a little bit light-headed at the prospect of the sheer number of titles that the package would contain. Given that the core series debuted with the original Mega Man on the NES in 1987 and saw its last release in 2010 with...
Review Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (Xbox One)
Seeing double
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a journey. One that explores mature themes of family and loss while retaining it's ability to be utterly endearing. If you are one of the many people who experienced and thoroughly adored the story when it was released on Xbox 360 in 2013, you may well understand how excited we were to be able to play...
Review Adventures of Pip (Xbox One)
Hip to be square
Another day, another retro-styled platformer hits the Xbox One via the ID@Xbox program. That's not necessarily a bad thing when the idea behind the game is as compelling as the one that features in Adventures of Pip, though. The evil Queen DeRezzia has kidnapped the Pixel Kingdom's princess and is hell bent on destroying the entire...
Review Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings (Xbox One)
LittleBigLeague
It feels like ages since an Xbox console has received a great baseball game. The MLB 2K series was mediocre for years before retiring its number, and the mobile-quality R.B.I. Baseball games aren't exactly doing anything to impress on home consoles that are capable of much more. If you think back to The Bigs 2 on Xbox 360 and EA's...
Scratching the glitch
When it was confirmed a while ago that the sequel to 2012's Wii U exclusive ZombiU had been canned, most thought that the series was a goner. That would be a shame, given that the survival-horror title brought with it more innovation than people give it credit for. It wasn't just a straight-up gorefest that required you to scan...
Review Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians (Xbox One)
Get down
In a period of time where pretty much any relatively average indie game ports are practically falling from the skies and on into the Xbox Store, it's nice to see that some of the more ingenious titles of the last few years haven't been neglected. Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians is very much one of those ingenious romps, blending puzzles...
Review Q.U.B.E: Director’s Cut (Xbox One)
Much more than your average puzzler
On the surface, Q.U.B.E - or Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion, if you want to get technical - is a physics-based 3D puzzler. The player, with the aid of a rather nifty pair of high-tech gloves, manipulates a variety of coloured blocks in order to solve puzzles and escape from the mysterious, sterile white...
From Rare with love
To celebrate its 30th year as a developer, Rare has crammed 30 of its games into a single package for just $30. Not only does that make for a brilliantly-coordinated promotion, it also makes for a value almost unheard of for a new release. Instead of breaking down each individual game in this collection, which would push us well...
A case of perspective
Here at Pure Xbox we pretty much always write articles from the third person perspective. It allows us to present a more professional tone, we feel. From time to time, the Editor (hey there!) will pen an Editor's Opinion piece from his own point of view but other than that, the third person perspective is the order of the day...
