The arrival of this hack and slash RPG is timely. With the Xbox One almost upon us, it illustrates just how far XBLA games have come. For the first year or two the download service saw nothing but simple single-screen shooters, retro re-releases and such exciting pursuits as Hardwood Backgammon. With the humble Xbox 360 …
Originality isn’t exactly a highpoint in ZootFly’s latest XBLA title. It’s a third-person hack and slasher in which the titular Marlow Briggs swings an assortment of super-sized bladed weapons around in a very similar manner to God of War’s Kratos. Puzzles are mostly of the block shoving variety while during the first level alone there …
Some games force self-discovery onto the player and end up feeling like richer experiences as a result. Dark Souls is a good example, rarely holding your hand and encouraging the player to work things out for themselves. Farming Simulator is another with a steep learning curve, but rather than improve the experience it worsens it, …
It took just 72 hours for Grand Theft Auto V to make more than $1 billion, recouping its massive development cost many times over and making it the fastest selling console game ever. You’re probably already playing it, enjoying the expansive world and occasional hooker killing. Which makes a review somewhat irrelevant, but let’s proceed …
It would seem that publishers and developers alike aren’t as hasty as they once were to bring their PC-exclusives to consoles. This isn’t exactly a bad thing – RTS games, for one, have never felt natural to play with a joypad. Indeed, even the lure of Halo’s rich sci-fi styling couldn’t help to generate strong …
When Rare originally designed the Xbox Live Avatars we don’t think they realised just how diverse they would become. Our first game of poker online wasn’t just against some lads and lasses in suits and fancy hats but also the gingerbread man from Shrek and Batman’s nemesis Bane. Let it be known to all that …
When a game has been stuck in development there are usually some rather blatant signs to indicate things haven’t gone smoothly. We’re talking dated visuals, shoddily implemented ideas and various inconsistencies that suggest content has been hastily removed. Remarkably, The Bureau – which was initially conceived back in 2010 as an FPS known simply as …
We hope that there’s nobody out there shallow enough to judge Payday 2 by its rough appearance alone. Then again, it wouldn’t entirely be a bad thing – the fewer idiots playing this co-op shooter online the better. Those rough looks hark back to its download-only predecessor, but now backed with a slightly bigger budget …
We’ll probably never know precisely how much money Disney has invested into their assault on Activision’s Skylanders franchise, but rumour has it that the figure is approaching $100m. Even in this day and age of big budget videogames that’s an astonishing amount. With such a colossal outlay we wouldn’t be surprised to learn that a …
It was only a couple of months ago that Activision announced that they have another Ninja Turtles game on the way. The major difference between the two – other than this being a download and the second game being destined for retail – is that the retail iteration remains truer to the cartoon series, whereas …
Usually we can live with any technical or graphical shortcomings a budget game may have as long as the fundamentals are present and correct. Even then though we struggle to recommend many on the grounds that there are usually better, albeit older, games available for around the same price. DARK is a fine example of …
Mining for riches has to be one of the humblest professions known to man. Humble, yet dangerous. Chances of cave-ins, gas leaks, landslides and choking on lumps of gristle in mass-produced Cornish pasties are stacked incredibly high. Logic dictates that any job with a degree of danger has to be ideal for a videogame, although …
Whereas most RPGs take a few hours to get going, Dream Team Bros. draws you in within mere minutes. As superficial as it may sound, the way it looks is perhaps initially the biggest draw. Releasing a sprite-heavy Mario game after the delightful Super Mario 3D Land may seem like a step backwards, but that …
We hope that in years to come somebody gets the scoop on how Ride to Hell came to be. No developer intentionally sets out to make a bad game, after all. It was first announced in 2008 as an open-world affair, with the first trailer reporting a 2009 release. That proposed release date came and …
Although Mario Sunshine will always be the undisputed king of all things sun-drenched, Pikmin 3 has more of a summery feel to it than anticipated. It has cool and inviting pools of water, a new tropical region to explore packed full of exotic fruits to find, and plenty of pesky flying insects to swat. Rarely …