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Master web developer by trade, Ken guided Pure Xbox through its first incarnation around the time of the Xbox One. Nowadays, you'll find him selling a wealth of retro goodness via SuperChallenge.
Review Divekick Addition Edition + (Xbox One)
Paper champion
Divekick is going to be a game that splits opinions, that much is sure. The hardcore fighting game fans will love the action/reaction playing style, but a large proportion of people will be left cold. A good portion of that first group will already own it on another format, too. That doesn't set things up all that well for the Xbox...
In for repairs
“Welcome to Brazil, where the Autódromo José Carlos Pace in Interlagos is currently being hammered by torrential rain. The track is absolutely soaked and there was talk of calling the race off, but we’re here and ready to go. The cars are on the grid, facing down 71 laps of the circuit, with Lewis Hamilton in the Pure...
News Confirmed: Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare Added to EA Access Vault
Could be...
UPDATE (15/10/14): The game has now been added to the EA Access Vault, so you can download it and play right now if you're an EA Access subcriber. Original article follows. Yesterday, Microsoft sent out their regular Xbox Insider email to users across the UK. That's not surprising. They do it every now and again. What most people won't...
Competition Scare Yourself Silly and Win Alien Isolation for Xbox One
Game over man! Game over!
The weekend is looming large, and what better way to celebrate than to get your hands on a copy of Alien Isolation for Xbox One, huh? The game is currently under review here at Pure Xbox so we'll have our opinion running next week, but we thought we'd brighten up the end of the week by giving everyone the chance to snag a...
Review Forza Horizon 2 (Xbox One)
Bring us the horizon
Every so often, a game comes along that you imagine that you’ll be reminiscing about as a ninety-year-old while sipping a cup of weak tea in an old people’s home with your friends. Of course, the games of your youth will come up first. The arcade game that you beat with a single credit when you were on holiday with your...
News Constructor HD Due to Build a New Home on Xbox One
Lock it in
A remake of the 1997 mission-based strategy title Constructor is well underway and due to be released on Xbox One next month, if UK retailer GAME is to be believed. They've got the title listed as hitting on November 28th in the UK, for £29.99. Usually we'd fire this up as a rumour, but the retailer has boxart complete with a PEGI age...
The keeper fluffs it.
Here we are once again. It’s that time of year that - if you’re in the UK at least - the releases of EA’s annual Madden and NHL franchises are nothing but a precursor to. It’s FIFA time once again, and no matter what we say about the game here, it’ll undoubtedly be a massive success and sit at the top of the sales...
News Did Microsoft Surreptitiously Drop the Xbox One Price in the UK?
We reckon they did. Sort of.
For a while now, there's been debate over further Xbox One hardware price drops in the UK, and it looks like Microsoft are gearing up to present some deals ahead of an official announcement. At the console's launch, the system was available with Kinect for £429.99. Then, in February 2014, it was trimmed to £399.99...
Review KickBeat - Special Edition (Xbox One)
Bass dropped.
If you haven’t heard of Kickbeat before and are looking at the screenshots, you’ll probably get the idea that it’s a fighting game that has something to do with music. On the surface of it, that’s true, but the fighting itself is mere decoration for what is a relatively standard rhythm action title. The game is set around...
News Spencer: Microsoft's Buyout of Mojang Won't Affect YouTubers
Build 'em high!
Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer has laid to rest concerns that Microsoft's acquisition of Minecraft developer Mojang will affect people who publish YouTube videos of the game for fun or profit. The concerns quickly came to light once the deal announcement was made, with prominent YouTubers making it clear that they were concerned that...
News EA to Crack down on Ultimate Team Cheaters in FIFA 15
They think it's all over. It is now.
Electronic Arts has confirmed that it'll be weilding a hefty-looking hammer to crack down on cheaters and phishers in FIFA 15's Ultimate Team mode when the game launches at the end of the month. First off, they're disabling the ability to put Trade Offers into place. These used to allow players to get around the...
News Amazon US Removes Kinect-free Xbox One From Sale Due to Hardware Issues
Uh-oh.
Well, after that headline, it wasn't going to be great news, was it? In the USA, Amazon have temporarily removed the Kinect-free Xbox One console from sale, due to a wave of customers reporting to Amazon that there is either "something wrong with our inventory of the item, the way we are shipping it, or the way it's described." We're...
Skating backwards going forwards.
NHL 15 was supposed to be a celebration of hockey. A true coming of age that would have us flying banners and cheering EA’s name as they masterfully took the step up to the new generation and showed us their skills on previously untouched ice. When the puck dropped, it would provide the graphical and gameplay...
News Destiny Sells $500 Million, Has Most Successful New IP Launch of All Time
Big numbers
Activision has released a few details about the first-day sales performance of Destiny, and there are some big, big numbers being bandied around. According to the publisher, more than $500 million worth of the game was "sold into retail stores" on day one. We're assuming that would count as "shipped" rather than "sold" but you've got to...
Review Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate (Xbox One)
Hit, hit, hit, hit, hit...and miss.
If you’ve not played any of the seemingly hundreds of titles that have been released as part of KOEI Tecmo’s Warriors series, then you’ll probably not be aware that whether you’re playing the Samurai, Dynasty, or Orochi flavours, you’re playing much the same game. Hacking, slashing, and the deaths of...
Nice move
Activision has decided to offer a sweet deal for those who purchase Destiny on Xbox 360 via digital means this week. It'll be attractive to those who are thinking about upgrading to an Xbox One, but who haven't done so just yet. If you buy Destiny on Xbox 360 via the Xbox Games Store before January 15th, 2015, you'll be entitled to a free...
News Xbox Live Gold Members Can Play Forza Motorsport 5 FREE This Weekend
Vrrrooom!
We're guessing this is an extension of the "free play day" rumour that was going around last month, but Microsoft has confirmed that all Xbox Live Gold members can play Forza Motorsport 5 for FREE this weekend. Between 12:01am PDT on Thursday, September 4th, and 11:59pm on Sunday, September 7th, you can download and play the game until...
(Re)mastered Blaster
When it comes to re-releasing older titles on a new platform, there are a number of ways a publisher and developer can go about it. They can just put the game out as it was and drop the price. Alternatively, they can bundle in a load of DLC and call it a “definitive” version. Failing that, they can tweak the graphics and...
News If Dance Central Spotlight Crashes For You, Here's How To Fix It
Stumbling on the dancefloor
Dance Central Spotlight is out today for download via the Xbox Games Store, and a number of people have reported issues with the game crashing back to the Xbox One home screen when started, but there is a fix. It appears that there was an issue with regards to how gamer profiles were saved on the earlier versions of the...
News Xbox One September Dashboard Update Goes Live...In August
Zero to a million
We've gone from being confused about when Xbox One dashboard updates were due to be launched, to having so many of them launched that we can't keep track. It appears that the September Xbox One dashboard update is now live for all users. Yes, on August 28th. Here's what to expect from the update (which you can get by hitting the...
News September's Xbox Games with Gold Confirmed
A mixed bag of fun
September's Xbox Games With Gold have been confirmed by Microsoft today. If you're not already aware, each month,a number of free games are provided to Xbox Live Gold subscribers as a bonus on top of the other benefits of their Gold subscription. Both Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners are included in the fun. In September, Xbox One...
News Assassin's Creed Unity Delayed Until November
Shuffled back
Ubisoft has confirmed that Assassin's Creed Unity has been delayed on all platforms, until November. The game was scheduled to release on October 28th, but has been pushed back until November 11th in the US, and November 13th in Europe and other territories. Vincent Pontbriand, senior producer at Ubisoft, said: "As we got close to...
News Need For Speed Rivals: Game of The Year Edition Incoming
Hardly surprising
It looked like 2014 was going to be the first year where we didn't see the release of a Need For Speed title of some sort. Truthfully though, we all knew that EA weren't going to let us off that easy. Need For Speed: Rivals will be released in a "Game of The Year" edition on October 23rd according to Amazon Germany. The package...
Review The Golf Club (Xbox One)
Taking a new approach
Golf games haven’t grown up in the last 25 years. No matter how you look at it, the same systems that we used to control the likes of World Class Leaderboard on the 8-bit machines in the 80s are the same ones that we use today to control the latest EA Sports licence-fest. Everything has changed around the core systems of the...
