Latest Reviews
Review Azkend 2: The World Beneath
Not a love match.
Azkend 2: The World Beneath is the latest assault on the Xbox market from the prolific guys over at 10tons Ltd and unsurprisingly, its another match-3 (or more) puzzle game. Much like their last two attempts to crack the puzzle fanbase, Sparkle Unleashed and Sparkle 2, this is a relatively simple puzzler that is unlikely to stretch...
Review Dead Island: Definitive Collection
There and back again
While fans of the Dead Island franchise try to work out exactly what is happening with Dead Island 2 – a game that's doing a great impression of being a feline owned by Erwin Schrödinger – Deep Silver and Techland have decided to hold back the hordes of rabid fans by releasing this remastered collection of the first two...
Review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan
The wait for a great TMNT game continues...
We've reviewed three Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games in Pure Xbox's lifetime, and the highest any of those games scored was a 3/10. That's pretty dire, huh? Not since TMNT: Turtles in Time landed on the Super Nintendo back in 1992 have fans received a genuinely great game based on this timeless...
Hurt me plenty
Making a game that's due to be a part of one of gaming's most cherished franchises must be an absolute nightmare for developers. Remastering something that came out a few years ago so that it has shinier graphics and tweaks but still retains the feel of the original must be difficult enough, but to take a game that's so well thought...
Review Not a Hero: Super Snazzy Edition
Get snazzy, ya clown!
Not A Hero is a side-scrolling 2D cover-based shooter where you're employed by a pink rabbit who wants to be the mayor but who needs to show his ability to clean up the town so that people will vote for him. To do this, he's hired you, playing as one of several anti-heros, to pretty much go in and blow away bad guys in order to...
Skate or Die
It took over a year for OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood to make its way onto Xbox One, but now it's here and is packed with bonus content. The delay isn't surprising, as the original OlliOlli didn't come to Microsoft's home console until after the sequel had released elsewhere, but it was disappointing nonetheless. Was the wait worth it...
Not Today, Geoff...
Battleborn is - as you probably already know and as the box art trumpets - is from Gearbox, the same people who made Borderlands. The question is, can this new game make the same kind of splash that Borderlands did? Mixing seemingly disparate elements from the world of FPS, RPG and MOBA, does it blend into a delicious smoothie,...
Burnt rubber
They say that you can't judge a book by its cover. The same could be said of videogames and trailers. In the case of Super Night Riders though, you can throw all the sayings out of the window. We had our reservations about the retro motorcycle racer when we first clapped eyes on the announcement trailer but – as we have to - gave it...
Review Grand Prix Rock 'n Racing
The Pits
Fast forward seven months from EnjoyUp's first Xbox One release – the dire Rock 'N Racing Off Road DX - and the developer is back again with a slightly more ambitious title. Grand Prix Rock 'N Racing is another almost-top-down racer, but this time we're looking at F1-style cars racing around much larger tracks with a helicopter-based...
Review Blues and Bullets - Episode 2
Eight months later...
What's most difficult about investing in an episodic adventure series is the agonizing long wait between episodes. Having launched its debut episode on Xbox One nearly eight months ago, Blues and Bullets may just be the worst offender for this. It's disappointing, nonetheless, that Episode 2 doesn't land all of its punches. It...
Review Hitman: Episode 2 - Sapienza
Time to kill...
The second episode of the Hitman (Xbox One) content sees the titular assassin leaving the bright lights of Paris and heading to the idyllic Amalfi coast in Italy. The peaceful town of Sapienza hides a dark secret, as a troubled genius has set up home in a mansion in the town, and is busily creating a devastating bio weapon in the en...
Over the hill
It's been a while since we were in the era of a new licenced kart racer turning up every week. On the back of Super Mario Kart's success, pretty much every publisher decided that games of that type were easy to make and ship, most of them overlooking the things that made Nintendo's evergreen champion just as good as it was and still...
You are not in control.
When SUPERHOT made its debut on the E3 stage back in 2015, the trailer raised more questions than it answered. Originally created as part of a game jam event, the developer – also called SUPERHOT – managed to raise over $250,000 through crowdfunding to bring the strange FPS to life. Fast forward to the present day and the...
Despite being fans, we fight for the users
If there was ever a movie franchise that should lend itself to a whole host of entertaining videogames, it's TRON. The two films are set in a digital world where everything crackles neon, feature intense disc battles and of course, contain fantastic sequences on light cycles. The latest (and probably...
Light my fire
What do you expect of a sequel? Do you expect it to reinvent itself and alter its DNA in substantial ways, or do you prefer that it refines its formula and tastefully enhances its best qualities? If the latter is your preference, you'll be delighted with Dark Souls III. Developer FromSoftware has taken the foundation from past Souls...
Enter an (episodic) world of assassination
Back in the day, the Hitman series brought a complex mix of costumes, stealth and planning to the murky world of the gun-for-hire assassin. As the the titular Hitman - Agent 47 - you were given a target, a selection of weaponry and left to your own devices to make the hit a reality. We still fondly remember...
Get dirty
When you first fire up Codemaster's latest racer, you're warned that DiRT Rally is a simulation that shouldn't be taken lightly. You'll wonder if that message was even necessary approximately two minutes later, when your car has flown over a sandy bank at an angle in the Greek hills and the sky and the ground have swapped places. Make no...
I Lie! I Cheat! I Steal!
There's been some disappointing first-person shooters as of late. Major releases such as Call of Duty: Black Ops III and Star Wars: Battlefront have either lacked inspired gameplay, freshness, or content, so it's been great to see things pick up on the independent scene. We've already seen the speedrun focused Lovely Planet...
The future is bright
Quantum Break is one of the most sophisticated cinematic experiences on Xbox One, with lavish production values, convincing performances, and a riveting science-fiction plot enveloping its time-bending mechanics. The developer Remedy Entertainment – known for Max Payne and Alan Wake – has crafted a third-person...
Red card
Back in the day, pretty much every game publisher had at least one football title on their books. That was certainly the case on the 16-bit systems and earlier, with every other big-name football star having a game featuring their name on the cover. Whether it was side-on (John Barnes European Football), isometric (Manchester United: The...
"I Give Up, This Whole Thing's Very Russian!"
Any game that will allow us to use a line of dialogue from the Schwarzenegger classic Red Heat as a tagline is already a long way to winning a place in our gaming hearts. The fact that the line fits the whole style of the game is just the icing on the cake. Coming from Rain Games, Teslagrad is a...
Review Casey Powell Lacrosse 16
High cheese
When it comes to a ranking of the most niche sports that have been turned into videogames, lacrosse is probably toward the top of the list. Following on from the relatively successful XBLIG release of College Lacrosse 12 for Xbox 360, Crosse Studio have been working on the next iteration. For Casey Powell Lacrosse 16 though, they've...
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, that's a stranger!
The Xbox 360 made a hard push at tapping into the Japanese market with the likes of Blue Dragon and The Last Remnant. Stranger of Sword City - a dungeon role playing game - was a lesser-known title that also came to the platform. The Xbox One has seen nowhere near the same level of support in terms...
Mania is right
If there's one game that's been flying under the radar since it was announced, it's Trackmania Turbo. Everyone was aware that the series – which had a sizeable fanbase on PC - would be challenging to take across to consoles, mainly due to the fact that even though it ships with a healthy supply of tracks, Trackmania is known as...
Racing back in time
Back in 2001, Cel Damage was released for the original Xbox. Offering a cartoony, cel shaded take on the then popular vehicular combat genre, it was an immediate hit and many people still have a soft spot for it today. Fast forward to 2016, and Frontline Games have produced an HD remake of the game, but has time been kind, or...
Blast 'em into the sun
When it comes to game concepts, the one supplied by Blast 'Em Bunnies couldn't be much simpler. You play a bunny, manning (bunnying?) a rotating gun turret. Other rabbits of various types – grenadiers, paratroopers, burrowers, walkers, etc. - are trying to get to you so that they can knock you out and take your stuff. You...
Review Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition
A little goes a long way
Ori and the Blind Forest released back in March of last year, and by now, you're likely well aware of the indisputable fact that it's a phenomenal game. We awarded it a 9 out of 10 in our review and called it "one of the best games available for the Xbox One," a statement we stand by 100%. With the Definitive Edition...
Review Tom Clancy's The Division
Ubi squad lootin'
The Division doesn't make the best first impression. When the game begins, you're dropped into a section of New York City that's devoid of substance. There are few missions that show up on the map, and running through the lifeless streets from A to B is a chore. There are no unscripted moments, no random events to engage in, and...
Take That, Jeremy, You Bounder!
Ironcast is an odd beast. After a successful Kickstarter campaign by its developers Dreadbit, the game was released on PC back in May 2015. The conversion to console is now here, and we can see what all the fuss has been about. At its heart, Ironcast is a simple colour-matching puzzle game, but the strategy and...
Henk, not Hank
Action Henk is a massive star that can do anything he turns his hand to. Well, you'd believe that to be the case if you took a look around the room in which he lives. He was kickflipping in Action Henk's Pro Skater 2, replaced Bruce Willis in Die Henk, and seemingly was a part of every other franchise that folks of a certain age will...
