Latest Reviews
Review Tembo the Badass Elephant
Here comes the boom
Tembo the Badass Elephant is a 2.5D side-scrolling action game with a hand-drawn comic book art style that somewhat resembles Regular Show and other Cartoon Network cartoons. When the evil Phantom Commander and his loyal army take over Shell City, the military calls on the aid of Tembo the elephant, drawing him out of retirement...
Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat.
When it comes to retro racers on Xbox One, there's something of a shortage. Sure, there are a few arcade racers kicking about, but nothing that could really be described as harking back to days of old. Spectra: 8-bit Racing promised to fill that gap, providing a chiptune-powered and neon-cloaked experience...
Burnt out
Finally, it's time for a little Formula One action in the current generation. If you put aside the cameo appearances of F1-style cars in other titles, we've yet to get our F1 fix on Xbox One. That was due to Codemasters deciding that they were going to release F1 2014 for last-gen machines back in September, whilst creating a "new...
The sincerest form of flattery
Back in the very early days of the Xbox 360, one of the first titles to help shape the idea of what Microsoft's then-innovative Xbox Live Arcade service could be was PopCap's Zuma. The game was a rightfully popular puzzler which tasked players with firing coloured marbles into a rapidly-advancing line of similar...
Review Payday 2: Crimewave Edition
A Complete Bust
Last year, several notable releases found themselves under scrutiny for releasing in a broken state. Sadly, this trend has continued into 2015 as yet another broken game is available for purchase. This time around it is publisher 505 Games who have put a horrendous version of Overkill Software's popular cooperative shooter Payday 2...
Review Quantum Rush: Champions
A bit too rushed
There are a lot of people out there clamouring for F-Zero and Wipeout to make a proper return on current hardware. Unfortunately, neither of these classic series have plans to stage a comeback any time soon (not that we know of, at least). It's not all bad news, though, because games like FAST Racing NEO and Quantum Rush Champions...
Bad romance
It isn't every day that a Japanese-made title is released worldwide for either of the currently-available Xbox platforms. Shooting Love 200X came out of absolutely nowhere when it was released back in April for Xbox 360 and was very much a surprise release, especially when you consider that it was first published in Japan back in...
Tanks for the memories
When it was announced that the Batmobile would be making its début in Arkham Knight, there was much skepticism amongst fans of the Arkham series. While the promise of commanding such a capable vehicle and battling an army of tanks sounded like a blast on its own, the concern resided with how this method of transportation...
Pedal pusher
As a rule, the phrase "fans of the series/sport/show will love it" is one that reviewers should try to avoid. The reason is simply because the statement is pretty much redundant. If you're a fan of watching paint dry, then you'll probably be far more forgiving about the shortcomings of Paint Drying Simulator 2015 than you would be about...
Review Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition
From Nero to hero!
If anyone has spent time browsing comment sections on news articles or internet forum threads, they have surely noticed that people like to complain about remakes and remasters – specifically Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games that were already in high definition. But this backlash hasn't stopped Capcom from remastering both...
Dig and You Might Strike Oil
Swedish developer Image & Form has been bringing SteamWorld Dig to every available system. This means that one system is going to receive the game last and in this case it's Microsoft's home console. If you're counting, the Xbox One version of SteamWorld Dig is the sixth time players have had a chance to purchase...
Lacking engine-uity
Ever since the legendary Super Mario Kart made its first appearance on the SNES back in 1992, it really does feel as if every publisher has tried to emulate its success. Shrek, Looney Tunes, Sonic, Bomberman, Digimon, LittleBigPlanet, Crazy Frog, Crash Bandicoot, Madagascar, The Muppets, South Park and more have been cynically...
Review BADLAND: Game of the Year Edition
Flight of the clones
It feels wrong to mention Flappy Bird and BADLAND: Game of the Year Edition in the same sentence, but there's no way around it: BADLAND plays a lot like Flappy Bird. Pressing the A-button to ascend, and simply releasing to let gravity do its job, this physics-based sidescroller is all about avoiding a gamut of hazards and...
Changing Colour
Stealth has been a long-standing staple in video games since the early '80s, when games like Castle Wolfenstein popularized the genre. Since then, stealth games have evolved into very complicated, system-heavy genre in their current form. It can be quite daunting for new players to jump in, which is why Unfinished Pixel's Spy...
Review The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Absolutely magical
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an intimidating game. It's one of the largest open world games we've ever played, with a plethora of endless side content and explorative tasks. It can often feel very overwhelming, and for those of you that like to clear every icon on your map, well, you're going to have your work cut out for you. The...
Who Knows?
In 1885, German biologist Hans Driesch demonstrated that you could produce two sea urchins from a single embryo cell. Ever since then, society has been intrigued by cloning and the controversial practice has continued to this day. It's a tricky subject to discuss due to the many moral issues surrounding cloning. Should man play God? How...
Review Schrödinger’s Cat and the Raiders of the Lost Quark
Dead and Alive
Even for the most open-minded gamers, it is easy to roll your eyes at the thought of playing through yet another puzzle-platform game. It seems like a new one releases every week that promises a unique hook that will turn the genre on its head. This is rarely the case though, as not every game can be as brilliant as Braid or Fez. The...
The amber waves of groan
It almost goes without saying that Farming Simulator 15 will be a divisive game. On a platform filled to the brim with shooters, racers and sports simulations, the simple fact is that a very large portion of the market will just simply not understand the attraction of planting crops and harvesting them for money. On the...
Money.
Couch-based multiplayer has been falling away in recent years but, with the rise of indie developers who are keen to see it make a comeback, more and more titles seem to be remembering that pretty much every console ever made supports more than one controller being in use at a time. This resurgence is most definitely occurring on the Xbox One...
All in the family
Procedural generation is a term that is being thrown around quite often lately, and it's one that has a decent amount of stigma going against it. When environmental characteristics and enemy arrangements are decided by an algorithm or line of code, changing the surroundings with every replay, it can make a game feel cheap, and the...
Review Slice Zombies for Kinect
Quick chop
From Slice Zombies for Kinect's very title, you can pretty much predict what it's going to consist of. If you guessed "Fruit Ninja Kinect with zombies instead of fruit" then you're pretty much on the money. That isn't to belittle developer MADE's work though, rather it's the easiest way to inform readers of what the game is all about...
So NERO, so far(o)
When NERO first made its appearance back at E3 2014, pretty much everybody with eyes on the screen was intrigued. Beautiful settings, a fantastic soundtrack, and stacks of luminescence were the order of the day. That first trailer didn't particularly shed any light on the gameplay though. As it turns out, Storm in a Teacup's...
Review Lifeless Planet: Premier Edition
What is life?
As gaming continues to evolve, more and more games are becoming a melting pot of genres. In fact, it is rare to see a game that strictly falls into a single genre anymore. When pulled off correctly, this makes for a great game that is unique and manages to find the strengths of several genres and forego their inherent weaknesses. When...
And not a light cycle in sight...
When it comes to twin-stick shooters, the Xbox One now has a fair few titles from which to choose. The excellent Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions is at the top of the pile, whilst less high-profile releases such as We Are Doomed and Sixty Second Shooter Prime bring up the rear. Puppy Games' Ultratron – the follow up...
Spin Spin Sugar
It's 8am on a drizzly Spanish morning. Despite the light smattering of rain, the early morning sunlight floods through the trees dotted around the Catalunya circuit, reflecting in the standing water on the wet tarmac and bringing the whole track to life. The sand to the edges of the raceway looks as bright and soft as the most...
Review Pinball FX2 - Star Wars Rebels
Strong with this one, the Force is
Earlier this week we reviewed Avengers: Age of Ultron for Pinball FX2, and we regret to say that we were disappointed with it. Because it felt familiar and uninspired, we were a little bit worried that the developer, Zen Studios, might be losing some of that magic it's been injecting into its pinball tables for the...
Rooted to the flaw
Triangle's Shooting Love 200X managed to find a Western release on Xbox 360 recently and that would suggest that while the numbers have certainly dwindled, there are still enough fans of old-school top-down shooters to be found out there. Many developers have tried – with varying levels of success – to breathe life into a...
Review Pinball FX2 - Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron
Sequelitis
By now we should all be aware that the people at Zen Studios typically do stellar licensed work. Even when they don't entirely get it right – e.g. the chaos found in South Park Pinball – the fundamentals of pinball are handled well enough to offset the missteps, and it's hard to criticize them on that level. But recently a very steady...
Dig your way to retro heaven
Shovel Knight is one of the finest video game success stories of modern times. When a few employees left WayForward to start their very own indie studio, they took to Kickstarter to pitch their first project to the masses and round up the proper funding. That project, of course, was Shovel Knight. The campaign was a...
Review State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition
New and unimproved
When it comes to writing a review, sometimes the words are easy to put together, while the score causes problems and doubt. Sometimes, the opposite occurs and while you've got the score locked in your head, the words just don't flow. With Undead Labs' remaster of the cult Xbox 360 hit State of Decay, we seem to have run into...
