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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 Rayman Legends (Xbox 360)
Not just a Teensie bit brilliant.
The story of Rayman Legends is a well-known one. Originally slated to be a Wii U exclusive, Ubisoft reviewed the sales figures for another one of their Wii U-only titles – ZombiiU – and decided to delay the game and make it multiplatform. Thank heavens that they did. You see, Rayman Legends is something of a...
Throw it into the flames.
Arcade racing games are tough to get right. For many years, they’ve been viewed as being something of a safe bet. Put some crazy characters in some even crazier vehicles, throw in some sort of apparently unique selling point, and the job is done. Or so you’d think, given the amount of titles that fit that description...
Review Fast and Furious: Showdown (Xbox 360)
Furious is right.
Movie tie-ins have had a long and storied history when it comes to the video game world. A few are superb. More are half-decent. Most are average. But when it comes down to it, an awful lot of them are appallingly rushed titles that tick some of the fanservice boxes and then go easy on the gameplay. Fast and Furious: Showdown is...
Review Crash Time 5: Undercover (Xbox 360)
Nasty.
The Crash Time series of games has been quietly bubbling under the radar around the world for the last few years. Generally, if you’ve bought one of the games, you know not to buy another one, as without exception, they’ve all been pretty dire affairs. The series is based on the German cop show Alarm für Cobra 11, which has been much...
News Microsoft Defends Lack of Bundled Headset with Xbox One
You don't need that! You've got Kinect!
Microsoft has thrown out some sandbags and jumped into the trenches to defend its decision to not include a headset with the Xbox One console. A headset will be available at launch, but will be sold separately (price unconfirmed as yet), and this has given people cause to complain due to the fact that the...
News Microsoft Removes DRM and Internet Check-Ins from Xbox One - CONFIRMED
Xbox One is now REGION FREE, too!
Following on from our previous story, Microsoft have confirmed via press release that they will be removing DRM, internet requirements, and region checking from the Xbox One. The release, from Don Mattrick, states that the company has listened to user feedback, and has taken the following decisions:- 1) After a...
News Microsoft to REVERSE DRM policies, make Xbox One region free?
Looks likely.
UPDATE: Now confirmed...click for full story. We're waiting on official confirmation, but Patrick Klepek over at the always-excellent Giant Bomb is reporting that "multiple sources" have informed him that the company is about to pull a complete reversal of their DRM policies with the Xbox One. Of course, the policies are the main...
News Yes, You Can Plug Your Xbox 360 Into Your Xbox One
Well we guess that makes it SORT OF backwards compatible, right? No? Ok.
In an interview with Reddit Games, Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb has confirmed that the Xbox One's HDMI input will allow you to plug all sorts of devices into it. Including the Xbox 360. In the interview, it was mentioned that you could plug a Windows PC in too, and as the port is...
E3 2013 Xbox Live FREE For 12 Months With Xbox One Preorders? No!
Packaging shown off, too!
If you preorder an Xbox One console, you'll get hold of an Xbox One Day One bundle, rather than the standard edition. The Day One bundle includes limited edition packaging, as well a specially marked controller, a limited Xbox One Day One achievement and most interestingly of all, what appears to be a free 12-month Xbox...
All the games and more!
We've had the reveal event. We've had the policy confirmation. We've heard the buildup and debunked the rumours. Now, it's time to find out exactly what Microsoft are bringing us in terms of games on Xbox One. The company is due to show off at least 20 titles during their press conference at E3 2013, which will kick off at...
The wait is over...
When Codemasters first unleashed Race Driver: Grid on an unsuspecting world back in 2008, they can’t possibly have expected it to be so well received. The almost arcade-style handling that allowed you to drive somewhat wrecklessly but that also rewarded skilful driving was the highlight, and the multitudes of race types,...
News Amazon Prices FIFA 14 for Xbox One at £90. People Believe It.
The price is wrong.
We're as surprised as you about this one, but one of the current "trending" topics in the UK on Twitter is "FIFA for £90." Our spidey-sense was tingling, so we looked into it further to find that Amazon UK has put a placeholder price on FIFA 14 for Xbox One of a rather unbelievable £89.99. This comes after the news that the...
Friday Five Five Things Microsoft Got Right With the Xbox One Reveal
Contrary to apparent popular belief
How can we put this? The Xbox One Reveal was not to everyone’s tastes. OK. It wasn’t to the majority of people’s tastes. Despite the chortling at the name, the look of the console, the fact that Kinect needs to be connected at all times, and that playing a preowned game will cost you more than it used to,...
Live The Next Generation of Xbox Revealed
Welcome to the next generation.
The long wait is NEARLY over. We've heard the whispers and the rumours. We've debunked some, and let our mouths drop at others. Microsoft will be taking to the stage at 6pm BST/10am PDT to unveil the next generation of Xbox, and we'll bring you the full skinny - LIVE - from Microsoft's Redmond HQ. Full list of...
Friday Five Five Reveals That Would Bring The House Down on May 21st
We're excited. Can you tell?
The next generation of Xbox is coming, and when Microsoft step to the stage on May 21st to finally confirm what the Xbox 720/Infinity/Durango/Next (or whatever they finally call it) will consist of, there will be bombs aplenty dropping all over the show. We know that the company has promised to leave the gaming focus to...
Friday Five Five PS3 Exclusives We Wish Weren't PS3 Exclusives
If wishes were fishes...
With the announcement this week that Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection isn’t coming to the Xbox 360, we started thinking about titles that we wished had made the jump to Microsoft’s platform. We came up with a list as long as your arm, that spanned several consoles but in the end, the Xbox 360’s natural closest...
Review Telltale Games' Poker Night 2 (Xbox 360)
Hold 'em or fold 'em?
If you’re making a game about poker, you should really focus on the getting the features of the actual cardplaying right – or at least up to speed with your competition – before throwing in characters from a bunch of franchises, and a witty script. That doesn’t seem to be what’s gone here, though. Poker Night 2...
By the beard of Zeus!
Sometimes, it can be good to settle in with a game that attempts to do away with the hours of cutscenes and hundreds of pages of story scripts that most modern titles come bundled with, and just get down to the core of things. That’s what God Mode attempts to do, throwing the player directly into a third-person shooting fest...
Review Sacred Citadel (Xbox 360)
Old-school meets new-school.
Back when the excellent Castle Crashers released in 2008, the gameplay contained within the adorably-designed package was something of a revelation. You could have a number of characters on the go at a time, playing through the game as each of them in turn as you tried to get them all levelled up to the point of being...
Review Motocross Madness (Xbox 360)
Back once again...
Back in the day, Motocross Madness was a technically impressive, addictive PC game that did away with the narrow borders of conventional racing games, providing a relatively open world for the player to barrel through. The last entry in the series – Motocross Madness 3 for the original Xbox – was a bit of a stinker when...
Review Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 (Xbox 360)
A Fair Way To Go
It’s that time of year again. The smell of freshly-cut grass is in the air, the birds are singing, the sun is in the…well, it’s mostly rainy and windy here in the UK, but there you go. Whatever the weather, its Tiger Woods PGA Tour time. This year, EA have provided a mostly iterative update to the series, with a couple of big...
Review BattleBlock Theater (Xbox 360)
The Behemoth Is Back
BattleBlock Theater is an Xbox Live Arcade platform puzzle game from The Behemoth, who are the developers of the excellent Castle Crashers and slightly-less-excellent Alien Hominid HD. The graphics are cartoonish, it features a good deal of laughs and some tricky puzzles that will test your dexterity later on. Also, it allows...
Review Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 (Xbox 360)
Hit and miss.
In the FPS market, the idea of stealth is very much overlooked. That sounds like a crazy thing to say given that every other game that involves gunplay also involves at least one mission where you have to navigate behind obvious cover points to avoid detection, taking out clueless enemies one by one. What we mean is that while hiding...
News Telltale's "The Wolf Among Us" Coming This Summer
Episodic title based on Fables comic series.
Telltale Games has confirmed that they'll be bringing their game based on the Fables comic book series - The Wolf Among Us to Xbox Live Arcade this summer. The game revolves around the life of Bigby Wolf - a fairy tale character - and is set in New York City. Bigby's role is to keep other fairy tale...
