Latest Reviews
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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,...
Keep Rollin', Rollin', Rollin' On!
Sparkle 2 is a follow up to last year's Sparkle Unleashed, both developed by 10tons Games of course, and it's fair to say that they to have been working on a policy of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." This year's offering could be termed an evolution of the original game, rather than a revolution (pun definitely...
Review Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink
Short stories
If there's one type of game that's massively oversaturated on mobile, PC, and handheld, it's the "hidden object" game. The reason for this is simply that those types of games are incredibly easy to make and suitable for the absolute most casual of gamers. Artifex Mundi are leading the charge to console in the hidden object genre and...
Under arresting
When it comes to top-down twin-stick shooters, the Xbox One is not exactly running short of options. We've got the outstanding Geometry Wars 3 heading up the pack, with a host of alternatives in the shape of We Are Doomed, Polychromatic, Crimsonland, Ultratron, and Sixty Second Shooter Prime all available if you fancy a change. With
Review Level 22: Gary's Misadventures
Office head
It isn't often that a videogame features a plot about trying to save the main character's humdrum office job, but the premise of Level 22: Gary's Misadventures indeed revolves around that very goal. After a raucous birthday party the night before, hugely bespectacled Gary is late for work and given that this is far from his first...
Warping into the sunset
From the moment the game is launched it's easy to see that Rebel Galaxy pays homage to the likes of Elite and Freelancer on PC. You are placed in the shoes of the typical everyman who suddenly receives a message from an estranged aunt. Cryptically, she requests that you make every possible haste to travel to the edges of...
Not Another Space Shooter
Space shooters have been around since time began. Well, at least since video games began, at least. There are plenty of them still on the market, flooding consoles, PC and mobile devices with their simplistic styles and gameplay ranging from the easy to the super challenging. Indie Developers INFramez Technology's Hyper...
We'll avoid the obvious tagline
Oxenfree is an unsettling game. The word "unsettling" can be used to imply many things though, so we can't just leave the review there. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean that we'll come up with a more fitting descriptor by the time we reach the conclusion. In order to bolster our attempt though, we'd best provide an...
Juno it makes sense
When Stoic first pitched the concept of The Banner Saga to potential Kickstarter backers in 2012, it was clear that they had potentially struck gold from the get-go. With a $100,000 target, the company managed to raise over seven times that much to bring their tactical RPG to life. Now, just a day or two over two years since the...
A worthy resurrection
It's hard to talk about Resident Evil 0 without mentioning the Resident Evil remake that graced gamers back in 2002 on Gamecube and again in last year's excellent HD port. It's entirely possible for some to dismiss RE 0 as the inferior game when weighing pros and cons. For instance, the new playable characters aren't as...
Review Cubot - The Complexity of Simplicity
Simply complex...or something along those lines
Cubot - The Complexity of Simplicity is a game that makes a virtue of its simplicity. At its heart, it is very clearly a mobile game transplanted on to the Xbox One. It's fair to say it doesn't stretch the graphical abilities of the console but are the whistles and bells successfully replaced with old...
Review Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India
Rough before the smooth?
When the first of the Assassin's Creed Chronicles trilogy was released, there was genuine hope that it would evolve from the "decent-but-flawed" category and that by the third iteration, would have made it all the way up to the top deck. With (at least) two more games due, it was a safe assumption that the developer would...
Lovely, Not Friendly
It's always strange for a gamer to admit defeat. After all, many games are predicated on being the hero, and accomplishing a goal such as saving the world. Sometimes this just doesn't happen, though. There isn't always a happy ending, and in many cases there is no conclusion at all. Not due to a developer ending the game after...
To Boldly Go...
Starpoint Gemini 2 is a direct sequel to Starpoint Gemini, which was released for PC back in 2010, developed by Little Green Men Games. It's described as a "space trading and combat simulator" which takes place in the Gemini system, a large area of various interlinked regions. There are upwards of 70 individual ships to pilot, which...
Review Super Party Sports: Football
Off your head
Indie titles are coming across to the Xbox One thick and fast and while some publishers are trying to port any old mobile game to the platform, that approach isn't necessarily going to work as gamers are getting wary. Fortunately though, some titles work just as well on console as they do on mobile. Super Party Sports: Football is one...
Or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Post-Apocalypse
Let's make no bones about it, it's clear from the outset that with Fallout 4, Bethesda have created a wonderful thing. The preamble leading up to your entry into Vault-111 – complete with the much-ballyhooed character creation system - is nicely detailed and believable enough to draw...
A New Hope?
There's been an awakening. Have you felt it? From soup commercials to comic books, toys to movies, it's impossible to ignore the force that Star Wars has over the entertainment realm this holiday season. The hype even extends to the video game world, as the beloved Star Wars: Battlefront series is making a return after a 10-year snooze...
