Latest Reviews
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...
Let us count the ways
In the bowels of an abandoned looking mansion, in deepest Blutenstein, Professor Ernst Splattunfuder has worked long and hard on his manual of unique and horrific ways to kill and maim when, alas, his assistant blows up the fruits of his labour in a terrible lab 'accident'. Distraught, the professor calls the minion agency and...
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...
Review Tiny Troopers: Joint Ops
Cannon Plodder
Tiny Troopers: Joint Ops is the result of two mobile games being combined into one Xbox One release and although it's good fun, it doesn't make enough of a departure from the casual style gameplay that one would expect on a phone to allow it to make any real impact in the console space. The story takes place across two sets of...
Review Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
Dangerzone!
With the gaming landscape rife with shooters, be they sci-fi based or super realistic, it can be a little daunting for those who fancy a little more whimsy on their battlefield. When Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare hit the scene two years ago, it wasn't even clear if there was a market for something as colourful and ridiculous as a...
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...
The girl Scout's guide to survival
The Great Outdoors isn't just the name of a classic movie starring the late John Candy and Dan Aykroyd. Believe it or not, it's an actual place that exists beyond our TV screens and our many other technological distractions. Beyond the prefab homes and fast-food joints cluttering our field of view lies a...
Booty or Bilge?
Fancy captaining a crew of villainous pirates and sailing the seven seas on a quest for booty? Feel like storming other ships and plundering their supplies or commandeering their vessel? How about taking the remains of their ships to custom build your very own scourge of the seas? If the answer to any of these questions is "Yes" then...
Review Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders
The clues are there...
If you know your crime novels, you are probably familiar with super detective Hercule Poirot – one of British crime queen Agatha Christie's main protagonists and best-known private eyes. During her lifetime, Christie published no less than 66 novels starring the dapper Belgian. Despite Christie repeatedly claiming that she...
Blast off
When it comes to surprise success stories, there are none more surprising in recent memory than Psyonix's Rocket League. 2008's downloadable PlayStation 3 title Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars which, while decent fun, was generally forgotten about or passed over by most, was hardly the most likely title to spawn a game that...
Bike Meh-em
Less open minded gamers will groan at the sight of mobile ports, but they absolutely have a place on consoles. Games such as Pumped BMX+ have shown that the best mobile games can shine on Xbox One, as long as they're brought over with care. Sadly, not every developer ports their games with the care that Curve Digital does, and that leads...
Jetpack couriers need a trade union...
D/Generation HD is a reworking of a fondly remembered action/adventure/puzzle game that was first released back in 1991, on PC, Amiga and ST. According to developers West Coast Software Ltd, the game has been recreated from the original source code and still contains all the original features, but has had a...
Review Dying Light: The Following
Parks and Recreation and Zombies
Dying Light: The Following is a strange proposition that's available in a whole bunch of ways. It's an expansion pack that also alters the main game in a few areas, which can be purchased standalone if you own the original Dying Light without the season pass, will be delivered free if you DO own the season pass, and...
In space, it takes two to tandem
From Portal to Q.U.B.E, when physics-based puzzle games are done well, they stay in your memory and earn a valued spot in your games collection. TACs Games Factotum 90 is a likely contender to this club, taking a unique premise and making you feel like a genius while keeping the gameplay simple and engaging. Set...
Hold on to your butts!
Labelling a game as being aimed at hardcore players always brings with it implications of exclusion or inaccessibility. Suffice to say then, that Electronic Super Joy is very challenging and may cause bouts of swearing, controller throwing rage and irrational outbursts in both skilled players and novice platforming...
Review This War of Mine: The Little Ones
War is hell
Inspired by the 1992 – 1996 Seige of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, This War of Mine is a bleak and desolate game. The entire thing is rendered pretty much entirely in a monochrome pencil drawing style, with only the minimum level of highlighting in place to show off things that you can select. It sounds bland, but that's far from...
Review Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: Russia
A Hard Day's Nyet
When Ubisoft debuted their alternative take on the Assassin's Creed world with Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China back in 2015, announcing that it was the first of a three-part trilogy, there was hope in our hearts. Hope that starting from the promising base that the first title provided, the development team would listen to...
Assemble Avengers!
Traveller's Tales have been ambitious with this, the latest in the chain of LEGO games which stretch back into the mists of time. Promising as it does to include content from Avengers Assemble, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Iron Man 3 and Thor:The Dark World,...
Pretty Dicey
There was genuine excitement when The Living Dungeon dropped into our review queue. Fans of tabletop games will agree that this genre is currently not well served on the Xbox One and even the Xbox 360's back catalogue is a little lacking, offering only a few that really break the mould alongside a whole host of more mainstream titles...
Busting out all over
That Amazing Princess Sarah is quite entertaining, is proof positive that you can't judge a book by its cover. The key art featuring the painfully-proportioned Sarah gazing out of the screen suggests that the game will be nothing but a teenage boy's fantasy presented in videogame form. In fact, some will pass over it altogether...
Mars Attacks!
Console platforms have always suffered from a lacklustre showing in both strategy and tower defence-style games, with these genres usually sticking to PCs where the inputs allow a little more flexibility than that offered by a gamepad. When implemented well, these types of titles can be a real pleasure on consoles however, and this...
Jesus Still Rocks
Few games are as baffling upfront as Soma Games' G Prime Into The Rain. Before anything is explained to the player, they are staring at eight different contracts to sign, with zero context regarding what any of them do. There's text that can be read that gives some background on the situation, but since the game has clearly been...
Save money, save the world.
Gemini: Heroes Reborn comes at an odd time, Heroes Reborn is bringing the curtain down on its 13 episode run and is seemingly cancelled, as NBC move to make it clear it was only ever intended as an event series. It also arrives on the back of developers Phosphor's failed Kickstarter for a game called Awakening that showed...
Open the door
Dungeon of the Endless opens on a shot of a spacecraft crashing deep into the surface of an unknown planet and hopes that you will work out details like the plot and what on earth you're supposed to be doing, from there. Featuring procedurally-generated dungeon exploring, with hints of RPG and tower defence, this is a challenging...
Hug it out
When A Boy and His Blob landed on the Nintendo Wii back in 2009, it was met with great acclaim. Fans of the NES original, titled A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia, were overjoyed to receive a faithful reimagining of a cult classic, one that smoothed out and expanded upon the ideas of its predecessor while featuring a charming,...
