Latest Reviews
Review Le Tour De France 2015 (Xbox One)
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 (Xbox One)
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...
Review SteamWorld Dig (Xbox One)
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...
Review Beach Buggy Racing (Xbox One)
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 (Xbox One)
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...
Review Spy Chameleon (Xbox One)
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 (Xbox One)
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 (Xbox One)
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...
Review Farming Simulator 15 (Xbox One)
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...
Review Mega Coin Squad (Xbox One)
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...
Review Rogue Legacy (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 (Xbox One)
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 (Xbox One)
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...
Review Project CARS (Xbox One)
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 (Xbox One)
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...
Review Project Root (Xbox One)
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 (Xbox One)
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...
Review Shovel Knight (Xbox One)
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 (Xbox One)
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...
Review Mortal Kombat X (Xbox One)
Taking it to the X level
Back in 2011, Mortal Kombat was reinvented for home consoles with its ninth entry, which amounted to what many consider to be the definitive game in the series. Introducing a story mode unlike anything ever included in a fighting game before it, as well as remixing characters, locations, and plot events from its...
Review Infinity Runner (Xbox One)
Travelling without moving
One type of game that until now has yet to make the jump to Xbox One – some would say thankfully – is the endless runner. Made popular by the likes of Temple Run and a billion other pretenders on mobile devices, the genre has yet to really get a foothold on any home console platform. This is more than likely due to the...
Review Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China (Xbox One)
Changing perspectives
The concept of taking the Assassin's Creed franchise into a 2.5D game world is certainly an interesting proposition. Many were wondering how Ubisoft and Climax Studios would go about getting the free-running elements of the main franchise into a side-scroller whilst keeping an element of freedom about the proceedings. The good...
Review The Evil Within: The Assignment (Xbox One)
Extra marks for excellence
If you're expecting The Evil Within's first story-based DLC, The Assignment, to play anything like the main game, you may want to sit down and read this first. While the original gave players a chance to fight back the horrors with plenty of weapons and gadgets, The Assignment throws all of that away for a more methodical,...
Review Goat Simulator (Xbox One)
Bleat It
If you have logged into Steam recently, you have undoubtedly noticed that there are simulators for just about every single type of activity. Farming? Check. Warehouse and Logistics? Of course! This trend is obviously ripe for parody, so it made sense that the April 1st release of Goat Simulator on Steam last year became a hit. Now over a...
Review We Are Doomed (Xbox One)
Gone too soon
When it comes to twin-stick shooters, Geometry Wars changed the game when it reared its head back in 2003. Plenty of pretenders to the throne have come and gone and the release of Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions (and the subsequent free content-doubling DLC pack) has raised the bar once again. Out twin-sticking the wireframe champion is...
Review Borderlands: The Handsome Collection (Xbox One)
It's what's on the inside that counts
When Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel released back in October for last-generation consoles only, pretty much anyone and everyone with any understanding of this industry suspected it wouldn't be long before it found its way onto Xbox One. Sure enough, about 5 months later, it's shown up where we expected it to and...
Burnt out
When it comes to simulations of motorcycle racing, there's really only one name left in the business. When you buy a game based on MotoGP, Motocross, Superbikes, or anything else that runs on two wheels and has an engine, Italian developer Milestone is likely who will be behind it. With so many titles under their belt, we were expecting...
