Latest Reviews
Review XDefiant (Xbox) - Classic COD In A Current-Gen Frock
Getting back to basics
Xbox 360 era Call of Duty was a special time for Activision's long-running FPS franchise. Call of Duty 4 burst onto the scene with unprecedented popularity back in 2007 — pairing smooth, fast-paced gunplay with a deep, addictive progression system — and most of the series' Xbox 360 follow ups built on the formula fairly...
Review Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 (Xbox): An Incredible Spectacle That Lacks An Essential Hook
Diminishing Returns
If we cast our minds all the way back to 2019's The Game Awards, all the way back to that very first reveal for Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, it's a strange thing that, amidst all of the next-gen hype and excitement of that specific time, we still clearly remember considering a sequel to Ninja Theory's 2017 tour-de-force a weird,...
Review System Shock Remake (Xbox) - Nightdive Does It Again With Another Superbly Studied Remake
Nice jump...insect
System Shock is just one of those games innit. It's one of those "classic" computer games that the old folk tell you about. You know those old folks, the ancient gamers (not me, obviously), just constantly yammering on at bus stops about System Shock and "oh, you shoulda seen SHODAN" and you're like "I did see SHODAN" and then...
Review Braid, Anniversary Edition (Xbox) - XBLA And Indie History Remastered
Wind back the clock
Braid is not only an important part of Xbox Live Arcade's history, but it’s arguably up there as one of the most significant indie game releases of all time – illustrating on debut the appetite for more niche and artistic experiences in a market that was at the time booming with blockbuster franchises. With this in mind,...
Review Little Kitty, Big City (Xbox) - A Purrfect Addition to Xbox Game Pass
Cats are cute, Humans should have faces.
Little Kitty, Big City is the inaugural release for indie developer Double Dagger Studio. It’s a fun and silly venture centering around a mischievous little kitty trying to find their way back home. We were interested to understand where the makers of such wholesome content had been, and let us tell you, we...
Review Sand Land (Xbox) - A Classic Manga From Dragon Ball Creator Akira Toriyama Revived
Tank beats everything!
The resurgence of Sand Land is very much a bittersweet moment for fans of the legendary manga artist and character designer Akira Toriyama, after he passed away at the age of 68 in early March 2024. While he was best known as the creator of Dragon Ball around the world, he also cont
Bay'ek, it's good
Abubakar Salim, yes the coolest Assassin's Creed protagonist from the best AC game, created quite the stir at The Game Awards back in 2021 when he announced his directorial debut with Tales of Kenzera: ZAU. Here was a Metroidvania with a very personal premise to back up it's action, action that takes place within a vivid and vital...
Review TopSpin 2K25 (Xbox) - A Worthy Sequel To A Legendary Tennis Game
13 years later, it's finally returned!
When it comes to tennis games on Xbox, it's been a pretty rough decade on the whole. The likes of AO Tennis 2 and Matchpoint: Tennis Championships have tried to fill in the void left by Top Spin and Virtua Tennis back in the Xbox 360 era, but the reality is that none of them have managed to replicate the...
Murayama-san's final game makes for a fine farewell
As you boot up Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes for the first time, it briefly displays a simple message of appreciation "to all JRPG fans". It's nothing out of the ordinary, just a nice touch, indicative of the warm and welcoming RPG adventure you're about to embark on, but it's also got us...
Review Harold Halibut (Xbox) - A Heartfelt & Handcrafted Narrative Adventure
For the love of bluglglgl
German developer Slow Bros has certainly lived up to their name: it’s been fourteen years since they gathered for dinner and serendipitously decided to make a game! Despite lacking the technical knowledge to actually make one, they set out to create a cinematic narrative adventure. Well, where most saw barriers, Slow Bros...
Review LEGO 2K Drive (Xbox) - An Open World Racer Where Side Missions Shine
It's the taking part that counts
Update (Wed 3rd Apr, 2024): LEGO 2K Drive is now officially part of Xbox Game Pass, so we thought we'd re-share this review from last year so you know what to expect. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments below! <related ids="164277"> Original review (Wed 17th May, 2023): When 2K first...
A surprisingly ineffective road trip
Open Roads has been described as "an interactive movie mystery thriller", one that plays out in the form of a deeply personal roadtrip. Of course, this particular roadtrip happens to be the creation of the devs behind the fantastic Gone Home, so it feels as though a good old mystery filled with plenty of thrills...
Review Dragon's Dogma 2 (Xbox) - Capcom's Cult Classic Makes A Triumphant Return
Hardcore Pawn
Twas during a routine outing to gather Wakestone shards in the Echoing Depths north of Bakbattahl that we first realised just how "down bad" we are for everything Dragon's Dogma 2 has been chucking in our general direction over the past week or so. This particular routine outing, you see, ended in Cas - our strongest fighter-class...
Review Alone In The Dark (Xbox) - Classic Horror Reboot Misses The Mark
Better left alone?
We've been rather excited to get our hands on Alone in the Dark since THQ Nordic announced the series' revival back in late 2022, and after a few delays it's finally coming to Xbox this week. The team at Pieces Interactive has re-imagined the IP, taking elements of the first three games in the franchise and combining them with a...
This is where the fun begins...?
Star Wars has had plenty of notable video games over the years, and two titles that continue to hold a special place in fans' hearts to this day are the Battlefront games. They first debuted on Xbox and multiple other platforms in 2004 and 2005 and were praised at the time for allowing Force-sensitive individuals to...
Review Easy Red 2 (Xbox) - This Micro-Budget WW2 Shooter Is Remarkably Solid
Just £7.95 / $8.99 on the Xbox Store!
Of all the settings that have waxed and waned in popularity within the FPS genre over the years, it's unsurprising that we repeatedly find ourselves returning to the really big fight that was World War 2. It's an endlessly fascinating period of history, you see, rich in famous battles and figures to hang your...
Review Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator (Xbox) - A Rough Ride That's Still Surprisingly Fun
It's time to make some craazzyy money
It feels like the Xbox Series X and Series S generation has marked a resurgence for simulation games, with the likes of Police Simulator: Patrol Officers, PowerWash Simulator, Lawn Mowing Simulator and the incredible Microsoft Flight Simulator all proving extremely popular on the Xbox Store in recent ye
Review The Outlast Trials (Xbox) - A Bland Horror Spin-Off That Works Better With A Few Friends
Saw you coming
Red Barrels has somehow been making Outlast games for a full ten years now and, although some of us at PX aren't huge fans of this franchise in general, we do appreciate the things that it does just a little differently than others. Of course we're talking about the fact that these games give players heightened senses of perception,...
Review WWE 2K24 (Xbox) - Just Like WrestleMania, This Series Continues To Get Bigger And Better
The bottom line, 'cause we said so
WrestleMania season is officially upon us, and 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of WWE's grandest event. Last year's show ended up being a memorable two-nighter in front of a combined attendance of over 134,000 people, and we're expecting WrestleMania 40 to eclipse that spectacle once again. That's pretty much what...
Review Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun (Xbox) - Slick Space Marine Shooting Stomps Onto Game Pass
Peace is not in my vocabulary
We're not huge fans of the term "boomer shooter", mostly because it feels like someone is attacking us for being very old, but there's no doubt this most violent of genres has been hitting out with some absolute belters over the past couple of years. If you're an aficionado of all things retro-FPS who's been revelling...
Bring da Truckus
Saber Interactive has hit a surprisingly rich vein of offroad driving fun with its excellent MudRunner series, itself a spin-off from the glory days of Oovee Studio's Spintires. The dev's latest effort, Expeditions: A MudRunner Game, feels like an attempt to capitalise on this somewhat niche franchise's unexpected popularity by...
Review Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster (Xbox) - Solid '90s Shooter Shines In Slick Nightdive Revamp
May the force...etc etc
Nightdive Studios has rapidly fostered a reputation as something of a master within the realms of the retro remake lately. It's not hard to see why, with its fantastic revamps of System Shock and Quake 2 having recently received a ton of praise (including a big fat 10/10 from us for Quake 2). However, Star Wars: Dark Forces...
Big bro, little bro
Just over a decade ago, Swedish game director Josef Fares made his explosive video game debut with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - a short platformer that delivered big on creative two-person puzzling and subtle, heartfelt storytelling. Well, 10 years on this classic has returned in the form of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake,...
Life to the living
How much of what you believe in are you willing to sacrifice for the person you love? It's a question we very foolishly weren't expecting to be slapped in the face with during our time with the latest action RPG from DON'T NOD, but it's one that Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden presents as a constant throughout it's captivating and...
Review Dead Island 2 (Xbox) - Long-In-Development Sequel Embraces The Absurd
Infected on set
Update (Thu 22nd Feb, 2024): Dead Island 2 is now available on Xbox Game Pass, so we thought we'd republish this review to give you an idea of what it's all about. We've also covered the XGP news separately on Pure Xbox: <related ids="162559"> Original review (Tue 18th Apr, 2023): Emerging from the flames of development hell...
Review Balatro (Xbox) - LocalThunk's Deck-Building Roguelike Is A P-P-P-Poker Ace
Love that Joker
The only experience this particular writer has ever had with poker is reluctantly standing beside a nicotine-addled schoolfriend in a smoky 90s arcade while they mindlessly pumped all their pennies into what was surely the most boring game ever invented on planet earth. The end. It stands to reason, then, that we fully expected to...
Review Skull & Bones (Xbox) - Solid Combat Saves The Day In Ubisoft's Middling Pirate Playground
Sea of Peeves
It's taken its sweet time making landfall, but Ubisoft's oft-delayed AAAA slice o' pirate life, Skull & Bones, is finally with us. We've already been hearing chatter from some of those indulging in the game's early access that it's all a bit boring, slow and bland. Me hearties, all of these things are absolutely true! However,...
Review Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered (Xbox) - Updated '90s Classics Finally Arrive On Xbox
Lara discovers the big green machine
Tomb Raider made its grand debut way back in 1996, and since then we've seen loads of releases across a ton of different platforms - including a few movie entries to boot. However, in the almost-three decades since its debut we've never seen the original trilogy on Xbox - until now in the form of Tomb Raider 1-3...
Mission Un-failed
Rocksteady's Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League has been debated, discussed and deemed a surefire disaster ever since it was first properly revealed back in the early stages of 2023. There was, according to what we experienced of the general consensus at least, no way in hell that this most distinguished of devs could...
Guys, you gotta SEES this
When we reviewed the Xbox Series X version of Persona 3 Portable last year we slapped an enthusiastic 8/10 scoreline on it, calling the game "a turning point for Atlus' franchise", one that redirected the tone away from the dark and dingy aesthetic of the first two entries towards the more confident, cool atmosphere that's...
