November2014
Review Assassin's Creed Rogue (Xbox 360)
A cold, hard, cash grab?
Given most of Ubisoft's marketing budget went on Assassin's Creed Unity this year, you'd be forgiven if you thought Assassin's Creed Rogue was a cash grab or an afterthought when it was announced in early August. Though the latter may feel slightly true given some of the games presentation decisions, Rogue is able to bring a...
October2014
Review Watch_Dogs: Bad Blood (Xbox One)
Teaching an old dog new tricks
It should come as no surprise, but Watch Dogs’ first piece of single player DLC is essentially more Watch Dogs. That means if you enjoyed cruising around the beautiful virtual Chicago hacking every little thing in sight, then you’ll know exactly what to expect out of Bad Blood. There are times when it treads that...
June2014
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...
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...
April2014
Review Child of Light (Xbox One)
What rhymes with magnificent?
Child of Light is gorgeous – you know it, we know it, everyone that has seen it knows it. Running on the UbiArt Framework – the engine created to power recent Rayman games – it’s no surprise that Ubisoft Montreal has been able to craft visuals so stunning that still-frame images look like genuine paintings...
Review Trials Fusion (Xbox One)
Man. Machine. The future?
We know that topping Trials Evolution would be no easy feat. As the second game in the Trials series, Evolution hit Xbox Live Arcade back in April of 2012 and was in such high demand that it shattered digital sales records right out of the gate. Not only did this sequel to Trials HD feature tighter gameplay and more varied...
March2014
Review South Park: The Stick of Truth (Xbox 360)
Great or just m'kay?
Reviewing South Park: The Stick of Truth on a family-friendly site was always going to be a tough proposition. We may have to break a long-standing site rule or two here in order to describe the content and get our point across. After all, it doesn’t matter how much of an accomplished wordsmith you are, you can’t describe...
December2013
Review Fighter Within (Xbox One)
Fighter Without.
In a world where Kinect for Xbox One is seen as nothing but a gimmick designed to ensure that you pay more for a console than you otherwise would, it was imperative that the first Kinect-only experience was compelling. A Wii Sports for the Xbox One, if you will. So who better to leave in charge of such a thing than Ubisoft, the...
October2013
Review Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (Xbox 360)
Sing hearty!
To say that there’s a world of difference between Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and the original game in the series, would be the understatement of the year. We only raise the point in fact, as there seems to be a somewhat vocal group of folks who have decided that the series hasn’t progressed at all. It still features that...
August2013
Review Cloudberry Kingdom (Xbox 360)
Painfully Pleasing
Cloudberry Kingdom is platforming insanity, and it fully exposes itself for what it is before even allowing you to reach the main menu. Upon booting the game you’re welcomed to a video that shows the main character, Bob, traversing the most densely packed environments you’ll likely ever see in a side-scrolling platformer...
Review Rayman Legends (Xbox 360)
Not just a Teensie bit brilliant.
The story of Rayman Legends is a well-known one. Originally slated to be a Wii U exclusive, Ubisoft reviewed the sales figures for another one of their Wii U-only titles – ZombiiU – and decided to delay the game and make it multiplatform. Thank heavens that they did. You see, Rayman Legends is something of a...
August2012
Review Babel Rising (Xbox 360)
Break the walls down.
After Halfbrick successfully turned the mobile hit Fruit Ninja into the outstanding Fruit Ninja Kinect, the expectations were high for a wave of smart smartphone-to-Kinect crossovers. Doodle Jump Kinect is on the way (apparently), but that and this new edition Babel Rising seem to be the long and the short of the rush. Some...
March2012
Review The Price is Right Decades (Xbox 360)
Come on down!
The Price is Right Decades celebrates over 40 years of one of the most beloved game shows of all time. As a tribute to the source material it’s a resounding success; as an actual piece of entertainment software it has a few problems that unfortunately hinder the rest of the experience. The one-player mode of Decades breaks the...
Review Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (Xbox 360)
C, Decent, Final Answer
It’s very hard to capture the tension and drama of a game show in a video game when said game show focuses on one contestant rather than a competition. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’s single-player mode captures very little essence of what made the show such a runaway hit, and the shoehorned multiplayer would make Regis...
February2012
Review My Self Defence Coach (Xbox 360)
Poor in defence
Why dance yourself fit when you can fight yourself fit instead? Ubisoft's My Self Defence Coach offers just that, with a workout regime that's also designed to teach you how to fend off any would-be assailants, too. After creating a profile to help chart your productivity and progress in cardio, reflex, defence process and balance,...
November2011
Review Just Dance Kids 2 (Xbox 360)
You know, for kids
With enough dancing games on Kinect to last a lifetime, Ubisoft has spotted a gap in the market, aiming Just Dance Kids at the young ones. With the juggernaut Just Dance name attached, it's sure to get parents interested. There's a lot here to recommend, with a 40-strong tracklist that provides something for the very young up to...
Review Raving Rabbids: Alive and Kicking (Xbox 360)
One for the committed
Ubisoft's crazy Rabbids hit the Wii five years ago, but what many don't realise is that the original Rayman Raving Rabbids was ported to Xbox 360 with support for the doomed Xbox Live Vision camera. Surely with that experience — and the vastly superior Kinect — to bring to bear on Raving Rabbids: Alive and Kicking, Ubisoft...
Review The Black Eyed Peas Experience (Xbox 360)
Rock that body
Some would say we've already had too many dancing games on Kinect, and certainly with Dance Central 2 and Just Dance 3 now on the sensor there's not much of a gap left for another title to make an impression unless it's of a competitively high quality, and that's where The Black Eyed Peas Experience comes in. Developed by iNiS — the...
Review MotionSports Adrenaline (Xbox 360)
Adrenaline junk
Last year's MotionSports was deeply average, but then it was never going to compare favourably to Rare's Kinect Sports. Ubisoft hasn't surrendered the sporting crown easily though, returning with MotionSports Adrenaline's all-new range of extreme sports. Far from the familiar motion-gaming sports that made up most of last year's...
October2011
Review The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn (Xbox 360)
Bored quiff?
You know the drill by now: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is a film tie-in. It also uses Kinect. It can't be any good, right? Well, the drill has changed slightly this time around. Unlike THQ's efforts such as Kung Fu Panda 2, Tintin is a standard controller-led platformer, with Kinect's functions tucked away in the...
Review Just Dance 3 (Xbox 360)
Hands in the air like you just don’t care
With a whopping ten dance titles shuffling towards store shelves in time for the holidays, you’d be forgiven for writing off every single one as being just another dancing game. Whilst that’s arguably the case, the Just Dance series hasn’t earned its millions by just being another dancing game...
Review PowerUp Heroes (Xbox 360)
Here to save the world?
After last year's disastrous Fighters Uncaged we thought we'd never want to touch a Ubisoft fighting game for Kinect again, but then along came PowerUp Heroes to change our mind. It's easy to see the big difference here: whereas Uncaged was set in the dirty world of street-fighting, PowerUp transports you to a world of...
July2011
Review Let's Dance with Mel B (Xbox 360)
Zig-a-zig arrggh
Every Kinect sold comes with a demo of Dance Central tucked away on the Kinect Adventures disc, meaning everyone has a chance to play the sensor's best dancing game by far. Now you have the chance to play one of its worst, Let's Dance with Mel B. We've always had a nagging feeling that developer Lightning Fish Studio overachieved...
June2011
Review Child of Eden (Xbox 360)
A real trip
It's been far too easy to overlook Kinect as a valuable, or even viable, addition to traditional gaming in its first year of commercial life. Far too little of its catalogue so far has amounted to anything more than bite-sized experiences that only go to show that, why yes, you can kick an air football in your living room, without...
April2011
Review Michael Jackson: The Experience (Xbox 360)
Thriller?
Michael Jackson's videos and stage shows were extravagant affairs — his Dangerous live show ended with him flying off in a jetpack — so the idea of letting gamers enter that fantasy world is a proposition too enticing to resist for Jackson fans. That's exactly where Ubisoft's Michael Jackson: The Experience wants to put you: centre...
