After a few years in the wilderness, the Ninja Turtles have come up trumps, giving gamers the chance to take in some seriously good gaming experiences. And now they are attempting to do so once more, taking an old classic and reworking things for the modern scene. Are you ready to embrace the Turtle Power of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants?
An old-school Turtles experience
Available right now on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants. This is an expanded version of the 2017 arcade classic, as you get the opportunity to join the Turtles once more, whether that be alone or with others via local cooperative play.
Also on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam, in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants the usual foursome get ready for another fight. It’s here where you’ll join Mikey, Leo, Raph and Donnie as they attempt to take on the Foot Clan and Shredder some more.
Expect to pay around £24.99 for a download of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants, less if you are quick and utilise the launch discount in place. But however much you pay, and wherever you play it, it’s the beat ’em up action that will provide the fun.
Key features
Re-experience the Classic Arcade Game: with 3 additional stages and 6 additional bosses never-before-seen in the classic 2017 arcade
Play as the 4 Turtles: From the 2012 cartoon featuring Leo, Mikey, Donnie, and Raph. Dominate the hordes with your favorite Turtle
Defeat Waves of Enemies: battle through 6 stages including Dimension X and Coney Island, 13 boss battles on your way to defeat your arch-nemesis Shredder in his own lair
Unleash Turtle Power: a special super attack unique to each Turtle that devastates waves of enemies; Summon mutant support to clear enemies by picking up a special collectible
Local Co-Op: Play with a friend in 4-player local co-op
Our review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants on Xbox is coming very soon.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants Description
Re-experience the 2017 arcade classic with 3 additional stages and 6 additional boss battles! Take control of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello or Raphael in this classic beat-em-up inspired by the cult favorite Turtles in Time. Play with your friends through local co-op and dominate the Foot Clan to foil the Shredder’s maniacal plan.
Hatsune Miku The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes releases on Xbox and PC
There have been a few Hatsune Miku games release on Xbox over the last couple of years, most notably in Logic Paint S and Jigsaw Puzzle form. Today, it’s more about the journey, with launch of Hatsune Miku – The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes.
A new Hatsune Miku journey
Available right now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC (either through the Microsoft Store or Steam) is Hatsune Miku – The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes. It’s priced at £19.99, with a little launch discount in place if you are quick.
Dive into Hatsune Miku – The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes and you’ll discover the opportunity to explore a planet – one full of wonders. It’s in the game title! Joining Miku and friends, Hatsune Miku – The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes is all about the minigames, the people you meet, the fun it brings. If you’re a fan of Miku, you should know what to expect.
Created by the CRYPTON FUTURE MEDIA team, it plays as an action puzzler, coming complete with no less than 17 of the finest tunes; each one crafted especially for the game.
Key features
Dive into 9 engaging mini-games, from exhilarating Button Mashing challenges to strategic Slide Puzzles.
Gather coins and compete for the top score!
As an added bonus, enjoy the mobile games Hatsune Miku Amiguru Jump and Hatsune Miku Amiguru Train.
Buy now!
You’ll find Hatsune Miku – The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes on the Xbox Store. From there you can play on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One or PC. Alternatively, hit up Steam.
Hatsune Miku – The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes Description
Explore a planet full of wonders with Miku and friends! Miku and friends crash land on a mysterious planet during their space journey… There they meet many unique characters! Play all kinds of games to grant everybody’s wishes!
We’ve been waiting years for a new TopSpin game, one to go right up against the very best tennis games currently on the market. And in TopSpin 2K25, it’s that which we are getting. Ready to take to the court and smash down some aces?
We won’t lie – we have been extremely hyped for the launch of TopSpin 2K25 on Xbox, PlayStation and PC ever since 2K revealed that the iconic tennis franchise would be making a return. And today the opportunity arises to grab for the racquet and start showing off our ball skills, with an early access launch, some three days ahead of the official street release.
Take to the court early
TopSpin 2K25 is due to launch – officially – on April 26th 2024, but today you can get your tennis career off to a decent start, picking up either the Deluxe Edition or Grand Slam Edition of the game. Alternatively, if you don’t want to spend the extra cash, hold tight for the Standard Edition as it arrives in a few days.
Whichever version you choose, you can be sure that TopSpin 2K25 will deliver. Playable on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S (optimised), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 or PC, this is a game that will provide everything you will ever need from a tennis title. Grand Slams are front and centre, tennis legends walk out onto court, rising stars competing against them.
All the iconic venues that you know and love are in place too, whilst John McEnroe himself will put you through your paces at the TopSpin Academy. With MyPLAYER letting you customise, TopSpin 2K25 should appeal to all tennis gaming fans.
And yes, we’ve been playing TopSpin 2K25 for a little while already, pushing out a review in the process. Spoiler alert: you’re looking at a 4/5 review score, with the following summing things up…
‘TopSpin 2K25 is a welcome return for the franchise and a solid reboot. The gameplay is strong, fast and fluid and exactly what you would expect from a tennis game.’
Key features
COMPETE AT ICONIC VENUES – Visit some of the most vibrant courts on the tennis circuit in TopSpin 2K25. From the four Grand Slam® tournaments to larger-than-life international arenas like Indian Wells, La Caja Mágica, Pala Alpitour, Foro Italico, and more.
TENNIS LEGENDS & RISING STARS – Play as tennis legends Roger Federer and Serena Williams, or serve up smashing highlights as Carlos Alcaraz, Iga Swiatek, Frances Tiafoe, Andre Agassi, and others. Choose from over 24 playable pros and unleash their explosive power and clever finesse against other players locally or online.
DOMINATE THE COURT ONLINE – Test your MyPLAYER’s mettle and showcase your tennis prowess on the World Tour or step into the 2K Tour as a playable pro challenging players around the world with cross-play support.
TRAIN WITH JOHN MCENROE – From power serves to gorgeous drop-shots, learn how to play like a legend with John McEnroe at the TopSpin Academy. Master advanced controls as you progress through a series of skill-sharpening drills and challenges to gain an edge on every surface.
PERSONALIZE YOUR MyPLAYER – Create a MyPLAYER tailored to your play style and define your look on the court! With a wide range of customization options, you can fine-tune your attributes and earn new Coaches, Fittings, and gear from adidas, HEAD, Lacoste, New Balance, Nike, Wilson, and more.
Which version of TopSpin 2K25 should you buy?
There are various options available from the digital storefronts of your favourite console or PC. For us Xbox folk, the Xbox Store holds the key to the Standard Cross-Gen Edition of TopSpin 2K25 from April 26th. Before that, the Deluxe Edition (£89.99), give 3-days early access as well as the £11.99 Rookie Rise Pack, bolstering your MyPLAYER career.
We think the TopSpin 2K25 Grand Slam Edition is the way to go though. Yes, there’s no getting away from the fact that this will set you back £104.99, but consider it includes everything in the Deluxe Edition, plus the £32.99 All Access Pass, a £8.99 Premium Centre Court Pass, the All Access Cosmetic Pack and more, and you’ve got one hell of a package.
Those different editions of TopSpin 2K25 should be available on PlayStation and PC too.
Let us know which edition you get. The comments are below.
TopSpin 2K25 Description
Travel the world as an up-and-coming pro, go toe-to-toe with the biggest names in tennis, and take Centre Court at Wimbledon, Roland-Garros, the US Open, and the Australian Open as you strive to become a Grand Slam® Champion in MyCAREER.
For many, the name Lunar Lander will usher up many memories. But what if you know nothing of the iconic video game? Well that’s where Lunar Lander Beyond comes in, as it releases on PC and console.
The latest from a resurgent Atari team who are on a bit of a charge, Lunar Lander Beyond touches down on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and PC. This retro reimagining is already one of our most hotly tipped games to release in April – and our full review is coming very soon.
But what is Lunar Lander Beyond?
From Atari and Dreams Uncorporated, Lunar Lander Beyond takes the arcade origins of the original game from decades gone by, and brings it right up to date. A new art style wows, a storyline brings the most rich of narrative and the world opens up, rich for exploration.
Lunar Lander Beyond should be able to honour the legacy of the original, taking a similar formula and ensuring it fits with gaming in 2024. It has you taking on the role of a ship captain, attempting to navigate their way across maze-like worlds, embarking on perilous missions.
If you played before, you should be up for this reimagining. If you didn’t, then there’s probably never been a better time to get onboard.
Key features
Cosmic Artistry: Immerse yourself in Dreams Uncorporated’s opulent sci-fi vistas, meticulously crafted in their signature hand-drawn style.
Celestial Quests: Embark on an interstellar odyssey, conquering 30 daring missions spanning five celestial bodies: Nueva Luna, Mars, Venus, Ganymede, and the enigmatic realm of Etimus.
Fully Personalized: Forge your own destiny with a myriad of pilot options, featuring procedurally generated characters and unique attributes. Choose from four one-of-a-kind ships, and customize them with a selection of a dozen enhancements.
Perilous Trials Await: Choose your destiny with four distinct difficulty tiers, where the highest, ‘Insane,’ pushes the boundaries with the risk of permadeath – only the boldest dare tread this treacherous path.
Alternatively, consider grabbing Lunar Lander Beyond from the digital storefronts for PlayStation, Nintendo Switch or PC.
Lunar Lander Beyond Description
As a newly appointed captain of the Pegasus corporation, you must guide a roster of colorful pilots, eclectic advisors and state-of-the-art landers through a taxing series of missions. Deliver cargo, retrieve resources, and rescue stranded pilots as you navigate a mysterious universe of moons and planets.
It’s a thankless job, replete with tension and danger, and it takes a psychological toll on your crew. But someone has to keep this unseen lifeblood of the interplanetary economy moving.
When a mysterious portal appears, leading to a strange, unexplored planet, you will find you are on a collision course with some sinister truths that lie unseen behind the universe. Poor flying and fatigue will stress your pilots, and can lead to sensory illusions … the bane of long-haul solo pilots. They may start to see things that may not be real – is that a mine or a fish? And what’s with those celestial pink elephants?!
With multiple pilots, four ships and a dozen upgrades to collect, you can get the job done if you can manage it all … if not, the stakes are high, and not just for your career.
There is something about the Early Access and Game Preview ideas that are perfect for the sim genre. It’s here where developers can test out their games, allowing players to consume hundreds of hours, discovering what is liked and disliked, all before going to full release. It’s a tried and tested method.
One of the latest to go down the Game Preview and Game Pass route is that of Lightyear Frontier, a game that takes farming sim elements but puts it into space and has you running around in a big mech cultivating plants and crafting homes in the outer worlds. But should you spend hours there?
An intergalactic tale
The story is simple – you are a person who is sick of the hustle and bustle of future city life. So like the pioneers of the Wild West, you head to a planet to start a new way of life. Here you have a giant mech suit to help you explore, craft, and plant.
I think the immediate draw of Lightyear Frontier, that which sees it stand out from the crowd, is the big mech suit that you will be marauding around in. You can cover good distances, jump and explore in it. But it also allows for even more fun and slammed on the arms are attachments; like a cutter for felling trees and plants for materials. A seed planter is placed on your mechanical arm to give you the satisfaction of laying down the crops, robot-style.
There is nothing that is going to kill you in Lightyear Frontier, so that brings with it an air of calm and relaxation. It’s a game that will let you simply go about building a better world for yourself – and if you want, your online co-op buddy. It’s a game where exploration is the key, complemented by the farming and building of a settlement. You can explore this alien world with ease, taking in a land that feels like it is brimming with life; ruins left in the distance. It’s so relaxing you don’t even have to worry about fuel in your mech suit running out. The game developers want you to have a fun, calming time. And there’s no doubt that in Lightyear Frontier they have achieved those aims.
Pretty flawless to use
Lightyear Frontier also feels flawless and intuitive to use, getting hands-on, or mech-on, with how you farm, reap, and sow. From the beginning, it feels like the gentle progress through the game by gaining new buildings, crops, and upgrades for your mech is rewarding, but ultimately there’s no rush in getting these items.
The world you end up calling home is a pleasant place to spend some time in and visually there aren’t any problems or glitches; something that you may normally associate with a Game Preview title, as the developers go ironing things out. And the world you land in is big, itching for you to venture out and see what’s on offer. I was impressed with the weather and the creatures moving about as I farmed.
Early signs are good for Lightyear Frontier. But that does mean that there will be questions as to what the future holds, particularly in terms of story, upgrades, and exploration. How does this survival farming sim put itself above the others in terms of ambition or playability? For now, it’s a great beginning and it will be interesting to see how the game progresses into its Xbox future.
Free on Game Pass
If you are curious as to what Lightyear Frontier offers, then head over to the Xbox Store, take in a download and head off on an adventure with a few mates. It’s on Game Pass, so you’ve nothing to lose. Lightyear Frontier is playable on Xbox Series X|S and PC.
In the famous William Golding book, Lord of the Flies, we see a group of school children who are left stranded on an island. They try to govern themselves with rules, punishments being the law of the jungle.
In The Mildrew Children, we find a world and village where children are the only inhabitants. But it’s also a place where folklore, magic, and pagan rituals are the ingredients to how the village is run. It’s a game where the story is the master, the gameplay the servant.
The Mildew Children – a mix of Visual Novel and adventure
The Mildew Children works as a mix of a visual novel and a 2.5D adventure game. The village that the game is first set in is a place that is run and controlled by the children in it. You play the part of Kryphel, a witch who is one of four in the location. The village itself is in decay and needs a ritual performed by Kryphel and her sisters. When one of the sisters dies during the ritual, Kryphel has to go and try to save the village, heading off on a mystical quest.
The storytelling and writing for this game are exceptional. There’s a great idea behind it, with a concept that is executed brilliantly. The characters that you encounter and the world-building is wonderful. The Mildew Children hooked me into its world and its narrative, avoiding cliche and normal game troupes. It’s like reading a top fantasy novel that paints a vivid world of characters, magic and lore perfectly. I particularly liked the way this narrative makes you think; at times it will feel ordinary, but then something strange will happen that turn your thoughts upside down.
It also needs credit for not holding your hand, throwing you straight in without warning.
Get ready for some reading…
There’s no doubt that you better like narrative-led games because otherwise you’re going to be a bit stuffed with The Mildew Children; the gameplay is very minimal. You control Kryphel in this 2.5D world, going left and right across the locations with a strange use of the left stick to go up or down to different areas. Exploration is very cool and once again I liked the lack of hand-holding in these sections, even though sometimes I found myself lost. But being lost in The Mildew Children is not a problem, as you discover things you might have missed along the way.
It’s all helped by the fact that you can change how much difficulty you want in the puzzle-solving elements, and the mini-game you might encounter that requires skill-based accuracy. If you just want to focus on the story then that’s not a problem for The Mildew Children. I think the little environmental puzzles and mini-games help break up the heavy narrative drive and the reading you have to do. And this means that – overall – the game provides a good mix of exploration, story, and gameplay.
In terms of the visuals, The Mildew Children makes the most of a very pleasing hand-drawn animated style, one that looks gorgeous nearly all the time. It’s so inventive and unique in the way the design unfolds throughout the game. Portraits of characters appear like thumbnails, slightly moving, but the detail is amazing. As is the world you explore around you, at times, hanging on the side of decay. Everything looks slightly broken and tired, but the way it’s designed with the lighting ensures it feels incredible in moments.
The sound design is immense too, with an eerie soundtrack complete with strange melodies.
A tale of intrigue
I am a big fan of storytelling in games and that is why The Mildew Children appeals. Others may be put off by the sheer amount of reading, or lack of actual gameplay. But exploring this world, as well as taking in the interesting and intriguing set-up allows it to excite. The Mildew Children is a longish game too, coming in somewhere around the 8-hour mark. For the price, it feels very good value.
Basically, if you are a fan of intrigue in your stories then The Mildew Children will be well up your street.
Tales of the Shire A Lord of the Rings Game keyart
A new The Lord of the Rings Game? I mean, the last one went sooooo well… But yes, that’s exactly what we have in Tales of the Shire, and it plans to come to Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and PC to deliver a cosy little Hobbit life sim. This one shouldn’t be anything like Gollum…
Set to release in the second half of 2024, Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game has today been announced. It’ll land on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC through Steam.
A new The Lord of the Rings game
From Private Division (the publishing label of Take-Two Interactive), and Wētā Workshop, previously having worked on the world of Middle-earth for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, comes Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game. This is a cosy Hobbit life sim set in the Middle-earth universe of J.R.R. Tolkien.
In Tales of the Shire, you’ll get to experience the storybook return to Middle-earth’s most inviting region by living life as a Hobbit in the idyllic town of Bywater. It’ll see you unwinding in the breathtaking pastures, visiting the townsfolks’ local shops, and enjoying a second breakfast. You’ll get to help bring the community together and achieve official village status by throwing the greatest Bywater Festival the Shire has ever seen!
“We’re excited to provide players with the opportunity to fulfil their fantasy of living their own humble Hobbit life in the Shire,” said Kelly Tyson, Head of Product at Wētā Workshop. “Tales of the Shirebrings a cosy new dimension to the way fans can experience Middle-earth, with plenty of wholesome, Hobbit-centric gameplay to win-over newcomers to the genre.”
A Hobbit life
Drop in later in 2024 and you’ll find the opportunity to create and personalise a Hobbit with an array of customisations to experience the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved Middle-earth universe your own way. You’ll get to settle in and decorate a cosy Hobbit home, choosing from an array of furniture and home décor to create your unique, humble abode. And from there comes the great outdoors, taking in cooking, fishing, foraging, gardening, and more relaxing activities in the Shire. Expect to be found tossing your lure to catch trout from the glistening waters of Bywater Pool, gathering wild mushrooms, and then making the most of the collected ingredients to bake a succulent pie to serve for luncheon.
And of course, in Tales of the Shire, you’ll get to explore the Shire and build relationships with the Bywater locals by helping them to build a garden, sharing one of the many daily Hobbit meals, and more.
“The team at Wētā Workshop is creating a brilliant representation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved works that gives players the agency to create their own Hobbit experience in Middle-earth,” said Michael Worosz, Chief Strategy Officer, Take-Two Interactive, and Head of Private Division. “Players have been clamoring for a warm and inviting The Lord of the Rings game for years now, and it’s exactly what we’re delivering with Tales of the Shire.”
When does Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game release
Middle-earth Enterprises have licensed the literary works of The Lord of the Rings series, providing Wētā Workshop Game Studio with the broadest creative license to interpret the underlying lore of the books.
Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game is coming later in 2024. It’ll release on Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam. Will you be heading off on this adventure?
It’s all about Fallout in Episode 198 of TheXboxHub Official Podcast
Episode 198 of TheXboxHub Official Podcast is up, live and ready for listening. But what is front and centre? Well, it’s all about Fallout. Isn’t it?
Join Gareth, Paul and Richard from TheXboxHub team as they chat for an hour or so, covering the latest from the world of Xbox and gaming as a whole. As you may expect, the smash hitting of Fallout is prime for coverage.
Fallout – front and centre
There’s more though. Expect to hear some thoughts covering the likes of Krimson, Cartel Tycoon and Terra Memoria. There’s also some hype about Harold Halibut as it lands on Game Pass, as well as the madness of TRAIL OUT.
Need more? You got it as the guys also spend a little bit of time talking over the latest news pieces that have rocked the gaming world. New Golf With Your Friends game modes, anyone?
TheXboxHub Official Podcast is a weekly podcast in which the team behind the written word sit down for an hour – or so – of chat. Focus is mostly on the games that they’ve been playing, but there’s also news segments, the odd quiz, developer interviews and more.
My favourite part of TRAIL OUT is a subtle touch. Despite this being a world in which vehicular combat with the intention of flinging your opponent (or yourself) out of the windshield is the norm, your opponents still take the time to beep their horn when you barge into them. It feels almost innocent that they still deem this worthy, as I line myself up for another shunt into them. And in this world devoid of any other form of innocence, it’s a cute touch that isn’t lost on me.
In TRAIL OUT, you are reliving the story of Mihalych, the newest driver in the TRAIL OUT festival. But it isn’t your traditional festival; eight drivers compete against each other across the world, pummelling each other with their cars. As Mihalych, it is your job to climb the ranks and defeat the other riders one-by-one.
But in order to do that, you need fans. Mihalych is starting off at the very bottom of the ladder, with very little money to his name. However, by completing races, he can start to earn a name for himself with fans, and unlock new vehicle chassis to customise new rides with.
TRAIL OUT – the tale of Mihalych
Events can take the form of a traditional circuit race, a point-to-point or even a time trial. The other key factor in them though is utter destruction. Whether that is by trading paint with a rival, or billowing through a shop front in the name of a shortcut, the action on-screen is relentless. At times it reminds me of Split/Second with scheduled explosions, or a helicopter armed with missiles chasing you. Other times it is reminiscent of FlatOut with some of the crazy minigames involving human skittles or human darts. Hint: you are the ball/dart in this equation.
This is all housed up in a package that feels like it has been ripped from the early 2000s, for better or worse. A punchy metalcore/emo soundtrack, some of the worst voice acting I’ve heard in a long time and plenty of swearing and other questionable content in an attempt to seem more edgy. Seriously, this is rated a 12 on the Xbox Store but has plenty of F bombs, MF bombs and in one cutscene a woman even spits in the face of Mihalych. Edgy, but not exactly 12 edgy.
Graphically, it isn’t much more advanced either. Credit where it is due, the dynamic destruction of the cars is pretty good. Character animations and movements however, are not. Their wooden and less-than-fluid animations do match up with the voice acting, though I suspect that was unintentional.
You can still tell when TRAIL OUT is riffing on another franchise however, and there are a lot of references to other forms of entertainment. Some are more subtle, like an achievement referencing the iconic canal chase in Terminator 2. Others are far more in your face: One of your opponents will be a large guy sporting green clothes and a pork pie hat. His name is Big Cheese and he likes to order “Two number nines…” And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more brazen about the reference, his boss level is essentially a recreation of the Grove Street cul-de-sac.
Rough, but super fun
There are other issues that I could go on about such as the terrible voice acting, unlocks not unlocking when they should, the grindy nature of progression in the career, the terrible voice acting, the slow texture loading, the rubberbanding… Did I mention the terrible voice acting?
But, and it’s a big but, when you are in the moment, in the races or the derbies, TRAIL OUT is a lot of fun too. Ultimately, that should be all that matters.
And it throws a lot of variation at you too. One race out of nowhere had eight of us driving in Batmobiles. Obviously not called that for copyright reasons, but it was immediately apparent what they were. And there was no build-up in-game to this, teasing what you will get to drive next. They just appeared in one race, and were gone again.
Sure, the cars either handle like they’re on ice at all times, with no middle ground between the understeer and oversteer, but there is almost something primal to knocking these cars into each other. None of your opponents are nice people, and it is thoroughly enjoyable taking them down a peg or two. It’s this excess of fun that allows you to forgive many of TRAIL OUTs other foibles.
DARTS!
Whether you are looking for a game that packs in more Grand Theft Auto references than even a GTA game, or just some mindless fun, TRAIL OUT is that game. It has plenty of issues, the majority of which are minor, but all is forgiven once you are out on the track and the fun shines through.
Much like many of the opponents you will face, TRAIL OUT is rough, but ready to put up a fight.
The last TopSpin game, TopSpin 4, released back in 2011. Doesn’t seem all that long ago, but 13 years can be a long time. I met my now wife that year, the iPhone was still in its fourth generation, and Taylor Swift was still predominantly a country musician. Perhaps more of interest though, we were all still playing on the Xbox 360.
TopSpin 4 was arguably the best in the series, but has only now spawned a sequel. Using the last game as a solid starting point, can 2K produce another successful tennis game?
TopSpin is back!
Don’t panic if you have never picked up a virtual racket though, TopSpin 2K25 is accessible for all skill levels. Your first port of call regardless should be the TopSpin Academy, where you will be coached by none other than John McEnroe.
“You cannot be serious?!” No really, I am.
And the training is really in-depth, going through some footage of the training point in question, before opening it up for you to try.
It’s a pretty simple set-up as well for playing. Each of the face buttons and the right trigger corresponds to a shot type, and you can either tap it, or hold it for a more powerful or controlled shot. TopSpin 2K25 is very pick-up and play, useful for if you fancy a local multiplayer match. In fact, you can work your way through most of the easier difficulties with only using one shot type; the unforced errors on Very Easy difficulty usually outscore your winners such is the frequency of them.
Unfortunately, online matched with friends will not be available at launch, unless you are lucky enough to be paired up in a lobby, but it is coming to TopSpin 2K25 via a free update in May.
It does start off with a pretty good roster to begin with. The likes of Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Andy Murray, Emma Raducanu, Naomi Osaka and Carlos Alcaraz are all in from the beginning. Legends in the game include Maria Sharapova, Andre Agassi and more.
TopSpin 2K25 follows the usual 2K structure
TopSpin 2K25 should be instantly recognisable as a 2K game, following their nomenclature to similar sports titles such as NBA 2K24, WWE 2K24 and PGA Tour 2K23. That does also mean that there are several versions from which to choose from at launch, with premium seasonal content also on the horizon. Upcoming tennis stars that will be added in post-launch will all be available for free, but as of yet, who they are is unknown. Trust me, I tried to find out.
It also follows a similar structure in terms of game modes. After checking out the training modules, you can create an avatar in MyPLAYER mode. There is a decent amount of parameters and sliders to make your characters unique enough when venturing online in World Tour. Here you can climb the rankings online by winning matches and tournaments.
If online isn’t your bag, MyCAREER mode has all the ups and downs, but just against AI opponents. Take your created player from the bottom of the rankings to the top.
Each month in your calendar you choose three options: a training module for XP, a special event where you can play less-standard modes and finally a tournament to participate in. The tournaments are pretty low-key during your earlier months but progress far enough and you will be able to participate in the Grand Slams.
In MyCAREER, maintaining your stamina is crucial. Playing longer in tournaments and travelling longer distances will reduce your overall stamina. If it drops between 35%, you become susceptible to injuries, both minor and major. Continue to play with a minor injury and it will become major, and then you’ll be forced into taking time out. Choosing to skip a month will not cause your ranking to slip, but being forced out through injury for multiple months can do.
The courts you know and love
Stamina is also important on the tennis court. As a response to previous criticism that rallies could last too long, players now have a short-term stamina bar underneath when playing. The longer a rally continues, the more this depletes and can have an impact during the next few points also. A lower bar also makes you more likely to shank a shot out, so it’s best to keep rallies short.
Progressing in MyCAREER isn’t tied to improving your rank or levelling up though. Instead, it is linked to a set of goals in the bottom right corner of the screen. These feel almost glossed over when describing what they are for, but are tied to your status as a player; only through increasing this can you access the better tournaments.
Some character models in TopSpin 2K25 can leave a lot to be desired – check out the Andy Murray one during the initial match to see what I mean – but the court design is superb. Even a passing tennis fan will be able to recognise the likes of Centre Court at Wimbledon or the Rod Laver Arena, but even some of the computer generated ones look fantastic. Well, that is a safe assumption on my part that they aren’t real-life tennis courts anyways. I am not sure that a tennis court has been built in a Japanese temple overlooked by Mt. Fuji, or what looks like an old gladiatorial arena in Cagliari. But they look great nonetheless.
Many courts and special game modes will need to be unlocked as well. This actually feels a bit old-school having to do so, but it’s a welcome change of pace than being given everything at once.
These game modes don’t exactly rewrite the rulebook, but are a much needed shot in the arm for a game that lacks content otherwise. These new formats can be where you only score when serving, similar to table tennis or volleyball, taking your highest points in a row total, or just messing about with the number of games needed to win a set. Between these and the varied arenas, there is something to work for, but it does still feel a bit light.
A welcome return for TopSpin
TopSpin 2K25 is a welcome return for the franchise and a solid reboot. The gameplay is strong, fast and fluid and exactly what you would expect from a tennis game. It is easy to pick-up and play but just about deep enough for those wanting to experiment. It is let down by some slightly off character models and is currently just a bit too light in terms of content, needing perhaps a few mini-games or even a doubles career mode to help flesh it out.
As it is though, we welcome TopSpin back with open arms.
With the ever-increasing price of travel in the last few years, and the cost of living crisis, it’s becoming ever harder to get out across the world and discover new cultures. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do it virtually. For instance, it’s been nice to explore bits of Japan in the Yakuza and Like A Dragon series, as well as San Francisco in Watch Dogs 2.
With Lunar Axe we head off to the city of São Luís in Brazil as the game allows us the chance to explore some Brazilian folklore. It’s a point-and-click adventure with strong Hidden Object game elements.
Lunar Axe is a fixed perspective game in which you click on the screen around you, hitting on objects and puzzles, getting involved in some hidden object mini-games. Think of the Artifex Mundi games and you will be on the right track. But Lunar Axe comes with a whole different look to those games, creating an atmosphere that has its own uniqueness.
Ready for the adventures of Lunar Axe?
The game starts in São Luís, a city in Brazil where a huge earthquake has taken place. You get trapped in an old manor house, left to try and escape. Soon the folklore comes to fruition, with rumours about a huge creature that lives under the city being the cause of the earthquakes. The only way to stop it is by using the famous Lunar Axe. The problem is, that’s in pieces, spread over different parts of the city. Off you trot…
I love the setup and story based on Brazilian folklore that is found in Lunar Axe. It also has a creepy and unusual atmosphere; one that evokes a historical era and mystical place. Things are helped by the rare cutscenes you encounter; these are nicely done and visually creepy.
But the main focus of the game is in the puzzle solving and hidden object finding. The point-and-click adventuring comes in the form of the usual collection of objects, using those with an appropriate device/object/keyhole. Sometimes you have to combine objects and, well, you know the drill.
Puzzling puzzles
The puzzles themselves are fun and varied throughout. You’ll find timed shape puzzles, up to repeating a sound combination and over to the old-fashioned block slider favourite. Some of these can be very tricky to solve. Expect to be found scratching your head and looking online a lot.
But then there are also the hidden object sections. It’s here where you may have a still image of objects, all jumbled together, needing to pick out certain aspects. This starts off quite well, but some may require the most eagle of eyes, or the requirement to ‘see the code’. I’ll admit, I spent far too long sitting quite close to my TV, examining every detail.
The biggest criticism I have of Lunar Axe though is in the controls. I feel like I’ve said this a fair bit recently, but using a controller is not the best and moving the cursor around the screen doesn’t ever feel as accurate as it would with a mouse. It’s hard for a game like this, especially when accuracy is so important.
Visually though, Lunar Axe comes with a nicely hand-drawn animated style. I enjoyed the mini cutscenes and the way they set up the world. Be warned though, it can feel quite dark at times – and I don’t mean in the sections when it was meant to be dark. Thankfully, there is a special quality to the design and look of all the locations you encounter, whilst the audio is pretty simple; atmospheric effects and a bit of soundtrack that is fairly effective.
You’ll also be finding objects…
There are some great puzzles on offer in Lunar Axe. It also has a good story whilst the opportunity to explore a new city in Brazil, as well as its folklore, is appreciated. Don’t expect a huge story with big characterisations, because this is all about solving puzzles and finding objects; whether or not that gets a bit weary will be to personal tests. Unfortunately though, the controls let Lunar Axe down, not helped by dark visuals.
That said, overall, if you like puzzle games and are looking for a cheap option, Lunar Axe is probably worth a piece of your time.
It didn’t take too long after getting stuck into Freedom Planet 2 for a pang of familiarity to wash over me. No, it’s not because this is a sequel (as I never played the first one), but instead it reminded me very much of a certain platformer that took the world by storm in the early ’90s.
The original began life as a love letter to Sonic The Hedgehog and even in Freedom Planet 2, that inspiration is clear to see. It’s a fast paced platformer that demands razor sharp reactions, but that is only part of what makes up this adventure. But before we delve into that, let’s recap the setup here.
Looks like Sonic. Plays like Sonic.
Three years have passed since the events of the first game, where our heroes defeated the evil Lord Brevon. As a result a precious article known as the Kingdom Stone was shattered, and this caused Merga (a ticked off Water Dragon) to awaken. She is out for revenge for historical atrocities carried out in the throes of war. The land of Avalice has a dark and complicated past it seems.
Freedom Planet 2 boasts a sizeable cast, who are all voice acted. Honestly it’s a little cheesy, and at times I lost track of what on earth was going on. However, there’s a light hearted, humorous vibe throughout and it all feels like a Saturday morning children’s cartoon. Personally, I just focused my attention on the platforming.
As I say, it’s all very Sonic The Hedgehog as you zip from left to right, often hitting breakneck speed. However, as with the adventures of the blue blur, the path forward is far from linear and there are all sorts of goodies hidden throughout. The environments are reminiscent too, not necessarily because of their style but more how they are structured. Springs, grinding rails, loop-de-loops and moving platforms all have an air of the familiar and fans of retro platformers (like myself) will immediately know how to tackle them.
At this point I should say that you can choose to play as one of four characters in Freedom Planet 2, and each has their own unique versions of common move sets. I opted to mostly play as Carol (a cat of course) who is classed as a brawler. Her slash attack and ranged jump disc are simple enough but do the job, even if things are a tad button bashy. Her guard ability is crucial however, as it offers a brief moment of invulnerability from the frankly infinite amount of hazards that will be heading your way.
Every single stage ends with a boss battle, and they vary wildly in terms of execution. Some are straightforward dodge and attack affairs, whilst others throw the kitchen sink at you. Towards the end of the campaign I was definitely suffering from a little boss battle fatigue, and it felt as if they had grown increasingly repetitive.
Ready for your Freedom Planet 2 adventure?
What differs here is that Freedom Planet 2 is more than just a string of back-to-back stages. You move around a world map during the adventure, often arriving at a hub area before moving on to the next stage. Each is filled with NPCs that more often than not, just have a little wisdom or some opinions to share. It’s here that most of the in-game cutscenes will kick in too.
However, the more interesting residents have an assortment of items for sale. You can build load outs before tackling each stage, consisting of items and potions. These will offer buffs such as stronger shields, increased health, more powerful attacks and much more. You can even choose to up the challenge with certain items which will do things such as turn item boxes into bombs or start you off with significantly decreased health.
There are also collectables to find in each stage, such as time capsules and vinyls. These music tracks can also be purchased and listened to in various hub areas if you’re digging the music.
In terms of visuals, you’d be forgiven for thinking Freedom Planet 2 had indeed been released in the mid ’90s. That style of inflated, pixelated environments and enemies that fill your screen with chaos fit the genre perfectly. The punchy soundtrack is a decent listen, and cements this vibe.
There’s a good six to eight hours of gameplay in a single playthrough of Freedom Planet 2, which then is multiplied if you wish to tackle it again with different characters. There is also a more slimmed down mode (which you unlock when you complete the game for the first time) that omits the story and cutscenes in between stages. A widely requested “Boss Rush” mode has also been added (and there are a lot of those) along with a variation of challenges to tackle at the infamous Battlesphere.
An enjoyable thrill ride
Given the fact that there are 24 stages, as much as I enjoyed Freedom Planet 2 I had very little appetite to immediately go back and play it through again, nevermind take on the bosses. As platformers go it’s a meaty adventure, but given that and despite all the extra modes which come with it, £20.99 still feels quite steep. It truly depends on how much you enjoy this type of game.
Freedom Planet 2 evokes so much of what makes a great platformer, but feels a little bloated in parts. Still, that doesn’t stop it being a thoroughly enjoyable thrill ride which is sure to delight fans of the genre.
Terra Memoria from La Moutarde and Dear Villagers is billed as “a little RPG with exploration, fighting, construction and puzzles”. Honestly, it doesn’t sound wildly different from every other RPG to have been created, but is there anything that allows it to stand out from the crowd? Well, come with me to a world of crystals and machines going haywire!
The story of an RPG is the most important part, at least to me. See, you need to have a narrative to follow to keep you plugging away through the game, and fortunately Terra Memoria comes up trumps in this regard.
A new adventure in Terra Memoria
We live in a world where crystals do everything – make trains run, power all machines and so on. So when the supply of crystals starts to run out, obviously people are very concerned. Coincidentally (or is it?), there are also reports of ancient machines called Carcasses starting to reactivate and attack people – we are tasked with finding out what is going on with both strands of the story, exploring the world, looking for new things to do too. All in all, the story of Terra Memoria is very nice indeed, as well as being fun to follow.
Presentation is a bit of an odd one though, mostly as Terra Memoria attempts to blend pixel art and 3D graphics in a way that I haven’t seen very often. The backgrounds are all fully 3D and appear to be hand-drawn, with a pleasing look to all the different biomes and landscapes we find. In front of these backdrops, our characters and all the NPCs we interact with are drawn in a pixel art style, but this only really becomes apparent when the game zooms in for whatever reason – other times the characters and monsters just look very good, and move nicely.
The design of the characters, enemies and backdrops are well worked, and you soon become attached to the characters in play. It helps that each have distinct personalities and you’ll soon develop your favourites – mine’s Syl, in case you were wondering) The game does look a little like a furries convention mind!
Now, the actual gameplay itself is made up of a few different facets – there is exploration to do, quests to fulfil, combat to engage in, and then a whole construction side of the game as well as a strange levelling up mechanic.
Get exploring…
We’ll kick off with the exploration side of the game, and this will naturally feed into the combat. It’s in here where the various locations we visit are usually quite large, and there are a lot of places to go and find. Each path forks multiple times, and there is always something to look for – be that a sacred tree for one character, a spirit world for another and so on and so forth. Hidden chests and various things to pick up abound, and time spent running around is never wasted.
Of course, as you do, you’ll inevitably come across enemies – these are depicted on the screen as little wisps that start to chase you around. You can avoid them, if you are quick enough, but like any good RPG, grinding and killing enemies is a good way to level up. You’ll want to fight as much as you can.
Combat takes place in teams of two characters – each of the main characters is supported by another character, up to a maximum of six. Those support characters can change the main character’s attacks in some way – by switching their elements, say, or turning healing spells into attack spells. This introduces a great deal of flexibility to the combat, which is just as well!
Every enemy we fight has a certain elemental weakness, and also has a number next to their name. Hitting an enemy, focusing on their elemental weakness will reduce said number by two, while a regular attack (i.e. one they aren’t weak to) will reduce it by one. Reducing this number to zero basically makes the enemy weak to every element, and moves it down the timeline a good long way, allowing you to pile on and attack as much as you can. Obviously, the enemies will attack as much as they are able, so making them weak will stand you in good stead. The combat sounds complicated but it is actually really intuitive when you get into it, and this is a big plus point.
Combat is good, but Terra Memoria gets a bit easy
Of course, fighting leads to EXP points, as you would expect, but here Terra Memoria goes its own way as well. In order to level up, you have to rest the team, either at an inn or at a campfire. When you do, the day’s EXP is awarded all in one go, letting you level up multiple times. While resting, you can also do some cooking, which is a great way to add extra HP to the party, and also do some forging, allowing you to craft pins that will increase the skills of the characters they are attached to. Syl, for instance, can have a pin that increases the efficacy of her wind magic; matching the pin to the character is quite involving.
The last main part of Terra Memoria that is worth worrying about is the construction mechanic, and while it can only happen in certain places (when you find a construction stone), later in the game it begins to play a much bigger part in proceedings. Building a town, rerouting a railway, rebuilding barricades – there are a few things to do with this part of the game. Making sure you have the right bits needed for each blueprint, or have the money to buy it, leads straight back to the exploration again, in a pleasingly circular way.
You should certainly enjoy your time with Terra Memoria. The combat is satisfying, but if I did have a complaint, it is that it is a little bit easy; quite often you will find yourself steamrolling the foes, which is a bit of a shame. Other than that, everything in the garden is rosy, and so if you want an RPG to get your teeth into, you could do a lot worse than pick this one up.
It’s incredible to think that the Xbox is nearing its quarter century anniversary – a milestone that it’s due to hit in 2026. It’s even more amazing that Sony have shifted 86 million units worldwide over those 23 years. But, amazing as the console might be, it’s the games that you can play on it that are the main event.
So each year the new titles due to be released generate huge excitement. You only have to look at the noise around the planned release of Grand Theft Auto 6 to see this in action. Due out in 2025 sometime, Rockstar are staying tight-lipped about what it might include. But the increasing popularity of the online casino around the world means that its own Diamond Casino and Resort is sure to make a reappearance. As for the other features of the game, we’re just going to have to wait and see.
However, there are plenty more games that are due to be released before then, and we already know quite a lot about them thanks to the pre-launch marketing and publicity, including these six titles.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. Release date: 21.5.24
For some time now the guys at Microsoft have been buying up development studios with the expressed aim of devising first-rate Xbox games. It seems like this will be the year when it all starts to come together for them – and this is the first title in the pipeline. It’s seven years since the Saga began and this is certain to build on the original. So expect extra blood-thirsty combat scenes and a more complete world in which our fragile hero has to make his way. It promises to be a Norse adventure of a lifetime.
Avowed. Release date: TBC
Obsidian Entertainment are past masters at creating RPG games with clout – and this looks to be no exception. The story takes place in the Pillars of Eternity universe – more precisely in a fantasy world that goes by the name of Eora. Their games often have a slightly light-hearted tone to them, but this is one that looks to be a little darker than usual. There’s going to be plenty of player-directed actions, the chance to use a variety of weapons on plague-ridden enemies as well as some truly terrifying monsters, hell-bent on your destruction.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Release date: 5.9.24
After many delays and a mounting wave of anticipation, GSC Game World is at last ready to thrust us back into the irradiated environs of the ruined nuclear plant. The intervening years have given time for a whole new generation of mutants to arise. They are just one of the perils you’ll face as you scavenge around the ravaged environment in a bid to survive. It’s a single player game which only helps to enhance the isolation you’ll feel in the hostile surroundings that get even less friendly the longer that you play.
Dune: Awakening. Release date: TBC
With interest in the original story devised by Frank Herbert now at its peak following the highly successful release of Dune 2, this is the perfect moment for the arrival of this game. Like Timothy Chalamet before you, you will find yourself at liberty of Arrakis with survival your only objective. As a multiplayer experience you can also be joined by others as you try to build shelter from the skin-searing sandstorms and keep out of the clutches of the sandworms on your quest to secure the all-important spice.
Star Wars Outlaws. Release date: August
In a galaxy, far, far away you’ll find yourself immersed in the time between The Empire Strikes back and Return of the Jedi. Your character is Kay Vess and by your side will be the trusty companion Nix. In a galaxy where criminal gangs call the shots you’ll need all your skill and guile to survive. Along the way you can look forward to dogfights, high-speed chases on space bikes and plenty of hand-to-hand combat. From early sightings of the game it certainly looks like series developer Massive Entertainment have come up with yet another winner.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Release date: TBC
Anyone hoping for a game that perfectly captures the essence of the Indiana Jones world that we were first introduced to by Steven Spielberg way back in 1981 will be delighted with this offering from MachineGames. There are archaeological puzzles to solve, Nazis to confront and all the other trappings of any adventure featuring our bullwhip-wielding hero. So, while Harrison Ford may be starting to show his age now, there are no signs of the franchise running out of steam.
If your most anticipated game isn’t in the list, apologies as there’s only space for these ones – but we’re sure you’ll find plenty to enjoy in them, all the same.
We are a little late to the Dreamland Solitaire party. So late, in fact, that two sequels have been rattled out in quick succession. Better late than never, though, as we buckle down for a Dreamland Solitaire marathon.
We didn’t realise just how much Solitaire we were committing to though. Not only were we signing up for three games on the trot, but each game came rammed with over 200 puzzles each. That’s a ridiculous number. An inhuman number. Whenever I visited my Nan, she was playing Solitaire, and I’m not convinced she got to 200 games.
It’s worth celebrating straight away: Dreamland Solitaire is a lot of solitaire for what is an extremely budget package. You’re paying less than a fiver for this. And we can say with confidence that it’s at least a week’s worth of play. That’s not insignificant, and immediately makes Dreamland Solitaire something you might want to consider.
It’s Solitaire – in Dreamland
But quantity isn’t quality. There are plenty of solitaire games on the Xbox, and they can be too dry (THE Table Game Deluxe Pack comes to mind) or better suited to other control schemes (the colourful but awkward Solitaire TriPeaks Flowers being a good example). It’s still easy to get a Solitaire game on Xbox wrong, even if you might consider them simple games at their heart.
Developers Alawar Entertainment make it look easy. Dreamland Solitaire is up there with the best, and we’d put it level with, or just beyond, our favourites: Solitaire TriPeaks Flowers and World of Solitaire. This is a more-ish, slick execution of the parlour classic. Suddenly, our self-imposed challenge to play all of the Dreamland Solitaire games looks like a wise one (ask us again after 600 puzzles), because – as a series – these are class.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t a compendium-like experience, such as World of Solitaire. If you want a wide variety of Solitaire games, moving from TriPeaks to Spider to FreeCell, then you should probably head elsewhere. This is more in the camp of the ‘arcade solitaire games’ you find on mobile: a single execution of TriPeaks-like solitaire, but with power-ups, progression tracks and other whistles dangling off it. This is no simulation. This is a sugary, over-the-top Solitaire confection. Set your expectations there.
The 200 levels are lined up like dominoes on a single map. One by one you topple them, generating a star ranking based on how many cards you cleared, and a big, purple dot if you managed to clear every card with a purple haze surrounding it. There’s cash too, generated from cards with a yellowish haze, but they all ultimately track the same thing: clear all the cards in a puzzle, and you will be duly rewarded.
Which is to say that the 200 puzzles can easily become more than that, if you’re eager to gain every collectible. Making that ever-so-slightly tempting is a wee construction that gets displayed after every level. Your purple potions, for some reason that we can’t quite figure, can be spent on adding balconies, fences, caves and lampposts to your dwelling, building it over time. It’s a little dislocated from all the cards and puzzle-playing, but it’s nice that your mad skills eventually lead to something constructive.
How many puzzles do you want?
Oh, and there’s an upgrade system too, as the cash can be frivolously spent in a shop. Some of these are cosmetic – a new shuffling animation anyone? – while others have a touch more utility. You can gain slots for wild cards to socket into (revealed from under the puzzles themselves), while you can purchase more uses of the Undo feature, get more cards in your starting deck, or unlock powers that accumulate over time. If there’s a criticism, some of the more costly upgrades verge on the unnecessary (do you really need five ‘Undo’s per level?), but mostly this is a generous, desirable set of wares.
But a solitaire game should live or die by its gameplay, and Dreamland Solitaire duly shines. The base controls are spot on: it adopts a cursor rather than snapping to individual cards, and the choice pays off. There’s no awkward highlighting of cards, and the cursor is smooth and responsive enough to never be a burden. Some elements on the HUD are a little fiddly to choose – picking individual wild cards when you’ve unlocked ALL of them is a tad imprecise – but generally this is smooth as they come.
As mentioned, Dreamland Solitaire is an arcade interpretation, and it’s quick to flaunt what it’s got. Within 50 levels you will have seen everything it has to offer: torch and fire cards that can be combined to shoo away spiders; locks that need keys; iced cards that need to be removed twice; and shields that require all four suits to have been collected once. They are varied and offer just enough differentiation from each other. You’ll need varied strategies if you want to overcome them.
Therein lies a flaw, though. Dreamland Solitaire is so quick to show its cards, that it has nothing remaining for the final 150 levels. There isn’t a single new addition to the roster of power-ups and blockers in the final three quarters of the game, and we’d suggest that’s unwise. The levels shuffle things about and make certain obstacles the focus, but there simply isn’t enough in Dreamland Solitaire’s toybox to warrant taking this approach. We can squint and imagine a version of Dreamland Solitaire that contained two or three more mechanics, spreading them out more evenly across its campaign. That would have added another half mark to the score, we’d suggest.
Not that it’s fatal to Dreamland Solitaire. Explore its cavernous depths over ten or so thirty-minute sessions and you have nothing to worry about. The fatigue only really kicks in if you’re doing a Dreamland Solitaire all-nighter. Because this is so laid-back and cherry-smooth that the repetition doesn’t quite catch up until the second hour of playing it.
King of the solitaire scene
And there’s always Dreamland Solitaire 2, right? We can’t wait to see if Dreamland Solitaire: Dragon’s Fury compounds the issue of slightly repetitive levels, or adds in more hazards and whistles to make things interesting. Because Dreamland Solitaire is an extremely strong foundation to work from.
Dreamland Solitaire slightly overplays its hand in terms of number of levels, but generally it did everything we wanted from it and more. This fine-tuned, arcadey take on solitaire hit the spot, and we’re eager to see if the sequels do the same.
Did you find Super Meat Boy a bit on the easy side, a bit too fluffy? Well, first off, congrats on being generally awesome, and second, I may have just found a game that will challenge even your godly reflexes.
The game I am referring to is called Krimson, and it features a trip through Hell. But further to that, the entire game is set to the rhythm of “an interactive industrial electronic techno dubstep metal album”; at least according to the blurb. So ready yourself, for it is time to delve into the depths of Hell and see what this game has to offer.
Best start headbanging now, just to be on the safe side…
Krimson – welcome to Hell!
We’ll start with the story of the game, and this will not be a long paragraph. We are an unknown spawn, resembling nothing more than a blob of some description. We are tasked with moving through a hellish world, all as the world itself shifts to the rhythm of the music. Can we match ourselves to the rhythm and make progress? Well, that’s down to you and your fingers. Not much of a narrative, is it!?
The way Krimson is presented is pretty interesting. First off, if you have even the slightest trace of epilepsy, this is not a game for you. The graphics are flashing, jarring, and the death effects in particular made me wince a few times.
Otherwise, what we have here is a side-on platformer, with the whole world rhythmically shifting to the loud music that accompanies every level. And while our character isn’t particularly attractive, being a blob that can roll or jump, the game as a whole does just work. The graphics suit the gameplay, as we work through four distinct zones; from a blood soaked, organic setting through to a fire and lava level. There is no shortage of things to see and this includes bosses, which in a game where a single wrong move means death, bring a whole meaning to the term “masochist”.
It must be said though, the sound is the real winner in Krimson, with “bangin choons” – as no one calls them any more – blasting out as you jump about. The way that the game makes you jump in time with the music is really well done. All in all, Krimson’s presentation is very good.
Thought Super Meat Boy was easy? Best play Krimson.
The basic gameplay on display is pretty easy – jump about, don’t fall to your death, don’t touch any of the myriad of things that will kill you, and make it from the start of the level to the exit. What could be easier? Well, in the early levels at least (I have to admit I’m really not cut out for this kind of game, my aging reflexes can no longer keep up) you also have to find and pick up a kind of fire power up that will allow you exit the level and move on to the next. After this, it all begins again with the next level.
Now, when I mentioned Super Meat Boy at the top of this review, that wasn’t merely lazy journalism. It is just the closest thing to Krimson that I have played before. However, this has another layer of complexity built into it, that of the effect of the rhythm. Once you tune in to the way that the level changes according to the beat (by moving areas, or skulls shifting into or out of position), matching your button inputs to the beat does help. Tuning in the speed and frequency of the change of the levels really adds to the complexity of the landscape that we are faced with, and they weren’t easy to begin with. However, it is this additional layer of gameplay that raises the game from something mediocre into something that, in my experience, is pretty unique. I’d go as far to say that Krimson demands to be played.
Death is ever present, and a slightly mistimed jump or button press will see you sent back to the last checkpoint that you passed. Luckily, these checkpoints are fairly regular, and while I won’t say that you can ever relax while playing Krimson, it does add a small portion of sanity in what is otherwise a pad bitingly hard game! There are achievements for completing each of the circles of hell, as the biomes are known, without dying, and if you manage to get one, I will take my hat off to you.
THE EYES! THE EYES!
All in all, Krimson is a punishingly hard, rhythm based platform game that is extremely interesting to play. Expect deaths, many of them, but somehow the wish to get better and keep going remains strong. It won’t be for everyone, and I don’t want to measure my blood pressure after playing it, but as a twist on the Super Meat Boy formula, Krimson works very well.
The Adventures of Panzer: Legacy Collection is ‘Retro’ with a capital R. While other games look vaguely like they were released in the 8-bit era, the two Panzer games actually did get released onto the NES, albeit only a couple of years ago. Developed in NES Maker, both Panzer titles were the subject of a Kickstarter to get them ported onto the grey slab of a cartridge. Pixelcraft Games’ dream of getting thousands of players to blow across the bottom of their game was eventually realised.
Fast-forward two years and we’re getting the two ‘The Adventures of Panzer’ games released on the Xbox. Helpfully packaged into one game (using the template that publisher Ratalaika Games often uses for retro re-releases, incorporating save game slots, cheats and rewinds), we now experience the joy of playing a couple of modern NES games. And it is a joy. While these two may not be important or particularly clever, they’re a chunk of fun.
Most definitely RETRO!
Reason number one for playing The Adventures of Panzer: Legacy Collection is its stupid, Dumb and Dumber humour. We’re not going to pretend that the writing is high-brow or even mid-brow, but we couldn’t help but hur-hur-hur like we were Beavis and Butthead. Because there’s a determination to expose the silliness of the fantasy genre by manufacturing some silliness of its own.
Panzer is a Zapp Brannigan-like douchebag. He’s determined to get his old crew back together, but they want nothing to do with him. We can see why: he’s an arrogant buffoon, and he has nothing good to say about anyone. But he’s annoyingly good at stabbing people with swords, so the group is coerced into regrouping through threats, lies or the promise of bounty. Panzer is like Conan played by Conan O’Brien at his goofiest, and he’s got a hilarious objective that only gets revealed at the end of The Adventures of Panzer. It’s a doozy.
The Adventures of Panzer II begins moments after the first game, and the plot will either seem audacious or a retread of the first game. We were bought in, and we loved how the bosses – lovingly presented in a Mega Man-style selection screen – are barely even bad people. They’re just people who have crossed Panzer in the past. And considering Panzer’s skew-whiff sense of right and wrong, it leads to fun match-ups.
In terms of how they play, the two games in this collection are extremely similar. They’re both action-platformers with the emphasis on action. Panzer has a single leap but a reasonably long sword (in comparison to his tiny sprite, anyway), so you’re jumping into the proximity of a bat or zombie and then leathering them with the attack button. For the first level of The Adventures of Panzer, it seems worrying: his arsenal is too limited to be fun. But then you see what it’s trying to do.
You’d do well to check out The Adventures of Panzer on Xbox
The Adventures of Panzer is a character-switching platformer. Over the course of levels, you gain characters like Grokk and Pugna, who can be switched to with a tap of the button. One character can turn waterfalls into floating platforms (as well as shatter enemies), while another has a looping bomb that can obliterate blue blocks in the environment. There are five in total, and they have enough separating their attacks that playing them feels different.
What’s fascinating is how the two games accommodate the character-switching – and neither feels quite right. In The Adventures of Panzer, you can switch between them at any time. They all have their method of attacking an enemy, and they can all circumvent certain obstacles. But The Adventures of Panzer gets nervous about asking you to switch too often. More often than not, you can stick with one throughout the entire level, and you don’t have to switch at all. Perhaps the devs worried that constantly rotating through the characters would get boring?
Meanwhile, The Adventures of Panzer II has you picking the character before you enter a level. Which will you need? Your guess is as good as ours! So, you lurch into a level, only to find that the looping bombs would have been perfect. You chose wrong. Why these two unsatisfying takes on character-switching were chosen, when ever-so-slight adaptations of would have been more enjoyable, we don’t know.
We’d also hesitate to call The Adventures of Panzer: Legacy Collection slick. There’s something wrong with the way projectiles are handled, because you can be mashing the fire button but they’ll take their merry time firing, and even longer reloading. For a precision platformer, as The Adventures of Panzer II often can be, it’s a pain. We found ourselves retreating and taking things slow, simply because we couldn’t rely on the tools that had been given to us.
A little scrappy, but a ton of fun
Adapt, though, and the difficulty of these games is perfectly pitched. They’re a single step into hard, pushing the limits of players who might breeze through a Mario or Ori game. But the levels are so short, and the checkpoints reasonably well spaced, that there’s a temptation to push beyond the sticking points. We found ourselves stretching ourselves more than we would in other indie platformers, and that’s testament to how The Adventures of Panzer: Legacy Collection is structured. And hey, if you want the easy-peasy story mode, then you have infinite health and lives as an optional cheat.
The Adventures of Panzer: Legacy Collection is a little scrappy on the gameplay front, which isn’t too dissimilar to the NES games that it’s emulating. But it’s also a hoot, slathered in juvenile jokes that had us spraying Doctor Pepper out of our nose.
We’d hesitate to call these two games great – they manage to be very similar while making very different mistakes – but they would have been worth a Blockbuster rental, back in the day.
Procedurally generated games have been steadfast for decades, pretty much since Beneath Apple Manor introduced such ideas to the world. Then came a genre spawner, Rogue, pushing forth roguelike and roguelite ideas.
Withering Rooms has some roguelite elements, some try, try, try mechanics as well as procedurally generated rooms in its world that are forever changing up the gameplay. It’s a strange game, where things are real and unreal and you’ll never know whether the whole thing is just created inside the hero’s head. Are you ready to follow the white rabbit?
Should you hide in the Withering Rooms?
Withering Rooms is a 2.5D horror adventure game that will test your nerve, skill and – at times – patience. After being in early access for a while, the game features a young woman called Nightingale who wakes up in a room that isn’t her own. She has been placed in a mansion, working as a mental asylum in Victorian times. But the place is a dreamlike world, with horrors walking the corridors and rooms that don’t make sense. There are witches, spells and strange prophecies playing out in this odd reality. Nightingale’s goal is to escape – but that is a hard task indeed.
The world-building is very strong, with a good horror narrative running through Withering Rooms. You don’t really hear the thoughts or care that much about the main character, and that is something of a shame, but I liked the journey she goes on, as well as the characters she meets.
Gameplay-wise, Withering Rooms plays like a roguelike, combined with a bit of a Souls game at times. You can walk around at first, exploring the 2.5D world, opening doors, entering rooms. Neatly you also have the option to peek in first, to get a bit of an insight into whether or not anything nasty is lurking inside. You are tasked with exploring all the things you can see and collecting trinkets, weapons, spells, and healing items to add to your inventory. These items will stay with you – unless you die.
Could do without the combat…
Dying is encouraged by some of the characters of Withering Rooms, and if you do succumb, you’ll end up back in the room you started with, just without the items you collected. Unless that is you have a special item that allows you to keep what you gained. The rooms in the place are procedurally generated, so it keeps the interest up when venturing out into the fray. Your guests stay put, and it is easy to keep track of them – even when coming back from the grave.
You have a choice at the start of Withering Rooms as to how to play; will you hide behind tables or inside cupboards so you can wait for the big bads to pass? As you progress you get access to different weapons, each with various attributes, letting you go about attacking the enemies. These combat sections can be quite slow, hard affairs with you needing to use your brain, timing your attacks perfectly. There are spells you can cast as well, so you soon start to develop a style or build, depending on your playstyle of choice.
Visually, Withering Rooms is interesting, especially in terms of what has been done with the characters and the world. The design of the enemies is great, and the rooms themselves are fascinating places to explore, even though at times it does get a bit samey. The sound effects are brilliant though, with the type of audio that should be in place in any and all good horrors; it makes you second guess what’s around every corner and location. The dread of the sound exceeds expectations and delivers wholeheartedly.
Withering Rooms has some good world building
I like the story and strange dream world of Withering Rooms, as well as the Souls-like RPG elements and location. It’s a bold move, but it works, pulled off well. Personally, I didn’t fully engage with the combat like others will do and I’d not have missed the procedurally generated rooms, but if you’re after a challenge and on the hunt for a new adventure horror, then Withering Rooms could be for you.
Coming from Evan Tor Games and JanduSoft is yet another entry into the retro styled Metroidvania genre. Rebel Transmute promises to be a “sprawling 2 D action-exploration epic”, much like all the others found in the genre. But can this do anything to lift itself above the sea of other similar titles, or is it swept away in the flood?
Well, there’s only one way to find out, so come with me to the future and a distant galaxy…
Good old retro gaming
Presentation of the game is straight out of the retro platformer playbook, as you might expect. In fact, when my son was watching me play, he commented that it looked a lot like an older Metroid game; that comparison is more than fair as about the only thing our hero can’t do that Samus can is curl into a ball!
The map is pretty open right from the beginning, and the levels themselves do have their own identity. This makes the inevitable time spent walking through the same old bits again and again, all as you attempt to get back to where you need to be, slightly less tedious than it sounds. However, Rebel Transmute is pretty tedious. The levels, enemies and bosses look okay, I guess, with nothing massively outstanding about them. It isn’t going to live on in your memory after playing, that’s for damn sure.
Sound wise, the game works, with the usual “pew pew” of the gun and the tunes tinkling away in the background not being too bad. Again, there is nothing particularly memorable, but it does a reasonable job at depicting what is happening.
There is a bit of a story though. We play as a girl named Moon Mikono, out looking for our mother, Wendy, who seems to have perished in some kind of disaster at the lab where she worked. Obviously, as soon as we can, we jump in a spaceship and go looking, but as luck would have it, we end up crashing in the same location that our mother vanished. What else is there to do but go and look for her, trusting our basic blaster and ability to jump? Well, that’s how we begin, anyway…
Play to make progress
But how does Rebel Transmute play? Well, there’s a mixture of the good, the bad and the merely indifferent. Starting with the good things, this is a classic Metroidvania game (that seems to also owe a debt to Hollow Knight). You know what that means by now – in our weedy state when we first start, we can’t even keep out of our own way, and the pistol we have has limited range. As long as the foes are about to bite your bunions you can shoot them, but anything further away will give you issues.
Being a Metroidvania, it’s all about progress and unlocking new abilities that will allow us to get to new places. That jump too far? Wait until you find the jetpack booster dash thing. For every obstacle, there is a way around it, but the issue with Rebel Transmute is remembering where you haven’t been yet. The map screen is largely useless, as while it does show the outline of the world, things like impassable doors, or obstacles that you need to get past are not shown. Instead you are left to wander the world for what seems like ages, This backtracking really does get tedious, sucking a lot of the pace and fun out of the game.
Another issue is the lack of instructions in regards the abilities you pick up – while I can see that a lack of handholding was a deliberate decision on the part of the developer, it does leave you floundering around, trying out various augments to see which one will allow you to make some progress. While you can find some cool moves doing this, if they were signposted a little I can’t help feel it would help.
The map screen – largely useless
There’s more though and another design feature I hate is the Dark Souls-like dropping of health cores that happens when you die. At the start of the game, you have so little health that losing a third of it on dying is almost guaranteed to result in death as you try to get it back – and while you can pay a fine to recover the lost cores, this again isn’t flagged up as an option. If you die before recovering said core then you lose half of your in-game currency anyway.
And so what we have in Rebel Transmute is a competent Metroidvania type game that is let down by some bad design decisions. The sheer amount of backtracking is really annoying, the death penalty sucks, and the map is largely useless – but apart from that, Rebel Transmute is okay.
The iGaming industry has witnessed the speedy emergence of a dynamic and fast-growing subsector, attracting millions of players worldwide. According to Statista, the global social casino gaming market was worth around $6.2 billion in 2020 and the surge in social casino operators in 2023 and beyond suggests this figure has risen significantly in the last three years.
The genuine appeal of a social casino is its priorities: social interaction, community engagement, and entertainment value. Unlike a conventional online casino, social casinos don’t offer real-money wagering, instead preferring to give their players virtual currencies to play industry-leading slots and table games.
Behind the rise of these social casino platforms lies a carefully curated blend of ingredients, designed to captivate players and foster long-term loyalty. Below, we’ll explore the core components that make a successful, thriving social casino platform.
Varied and engaging games
At the heart of every successful social casino lies a diverse portfolio of casino games. From classic slots and video poker to innovative twists on traditional casino favorites, a deep library of games keeps players engaged and entertained. The leading social casinos typically have hundreds of games to choose from. According to this Chumba Casino review, this site has a library of 150+ titles, available to play on desktop and mobile. This brand is also part of a major iGaming group, VGW, which specializes in social casino and poker games.
Social integration and community features
Unlike other gaming experiences online, social casinos thrive on the sense of community and camaraderie fostered among their players. Robust social features, such as chat functions, friend invitations, and multiplayer slot tournaments create opportunities for interaction and competition, enhancing the overall gaming experience. By tapping into the innate human desire for social connection, social casinos can keep players coming back for more.
To sustain the long-term interest and loyalty of players, social casinos have had to get clever with their rewards and incentives. Most offer generous bonuses, daily rewards, and even loyalty programs to keep users coming back for more. Moreover, by implementing a fair and transparent virtual currency system, players feel valued and empowered to make meaningful progress within their favorite games.
Compliant with industry standards
As with any form of online gaming, regulatory compliance and responsible gaming practices are paramount to maintaining player trust and brand credibility. Social casinos must adhere to the same laws and regulatory frameworks that govern real-money casinos. This includes age verification measures and responsible gaming tools like self-exclusion and spending limits.
In addition, most slot and table games supplied by social casinos are independently tested and verified for the fairness of their random number generators (RNGs) to give players peace of mind.
By prioritizing player safety and well-being, social casinos demonstrate a commitment to ethical business practices.
Ultimately, the long-term success of a social casino hinges on a delicate balance of delivering gameplay innovation, social engagement, and player-centric design. By cultivating a vibrant community of players and prioritizing player satisfaction, social casinos can forge lasting connections with players and carve out a thriving niche in the iGaming space.
One of my fondest childhood memories was going to the motorway services whenever we went to Scotland as a family. Bear with me, it does get a bit more exciting. Anyway, this one particular services had an Operation Wolf coin op machine, and so we always made time for a bit of gaming. In time it became a bit of a ritual, and to this day it brings back fond memories.
Well, as luck would have it, there is a game that evokes the feel of those early light guns and it goes by the name of Battle Stations Blockade. Coming from Mission Critical Studios and Eastasiasoft, it is an on-rails shooter in a 3D style that puts us in charge of a gunboat. I couldn’t wait to pull on the captain’s hat and dive straight in. All aboard!
If it moves, shoot it.
Let’s be honest – story is not usually a massive part of any shooting game, and so it proves here. We are given control of two turrets on the front of a ship, told there are no friendly targets, and invited to fill anything that moves full of lead. That is as complicated as it gets in terms of the narrative sitting behind Battle Stations Blockade.
The game is set from a behind-the-turrets view, as we sail through seas or rivers, and while the land that we can see does have a certain Minecrafty look to it, and the enemies that we have to shoot or all rendered in glorious pixel art, all in all, Battle Stations Blockade works well. The world is full, and I mean full, of things to shoot, from paratroopers jumping out of planes (jumping into the sea seems a little daft, but hey ho) through men with guns on jet skis, right up to massive mechanical crabs and airships. The sound is okay as well, with each of the weapons that you get access to having its own distinct sound. In fact, the game works really well from a presentation viewpoint.
But the main part of Battle Stations Blockade has to be the action on offer, and this doesn’t disappoint either. In the middle of the screen is an aiming reticle, and we can move this around with the left stick, aiming at the enemies on the screen. We fire with the right tiger, as usual, and the only other control is the left trigger, which opens up the weapon wheel, allowing the choice of which particular round we want our turret to fire. We start off small, as is traditional, with .50 cal machine guns, but we soon gain access to guided missiles, nukes and scatterguns to name but a few. Having something to shoot, in both senses of the term, is never a problem here.
Battle Stations Blockade comes with a range of weapons and enemies
The action is on-rails, meaning that there are no decisions to make about where to go – all we have to do is keep our turrets safe and sound. Obviously, shooting enemies before they can shoot you (or in the case of the floating mines, before they make contact with the ship) is the name of the game, but there is an added touch that makes things a tad easier. You see, shooting an enemy will restore a certain amount of HP to the turrets – a mine is 3HP, a jet ski soldier is 5HP, and so on. The bigger the target, the more HP it restores, but the longer it takes to kill. Are you better off killing a bunch of small fry or one big thing? The choice is yours, commander!
As we go through the various levels, we are given missions, which usually run along the lines of “Shoot X of a certain type of enemy”, or “Destroy whatever boss thing comes along”. Completing these missions gives extra points, and as we all know, points make prizes – except in Battle Stations Blockade where they are used to indicate your prowess at shooting stuff.
This is not only a solo game, however, and a couch co-op buddy can be roped in to assist. When a second player joins, you take control of one turret each, and so there can be a certain amount of split responsibilities. ”You shoot the ships”, my son would tell me, “and I’ll shoot the planes”. He is very much the boss when the gaming is involved! The multiplayer aspect works very well and adds a whole new dimension to the action on offer.
Keep an eye on that health
There’s no doubt you’ll have a good time with Battle Stations Blockade. With multiple difficulty levels to go at, it is easy to ensure the game is challenging enough, whilst the wide range of weapons makes taking on each level a decent test.
As a throwback to a simpler time, Battle Stations Blockade works.
No, this isn’t an episode of The Great British Bake Off, and I’m not Paul Hollywood. Maybe I could be though, with the help of the Bakery Simulator game. I’ve dabbled in the food industry before, thanks to the likes of Cook, Serve, Delicious! and Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator, but this appears to be a more laid back experience. So let’s get handling some buns and hope Bakery Simulator isn’t a soggy bottom of the gaming world.
Start with a blank slate in Bakery Simulator
A baker for hire. That’s essentially your role in Bakery Simulator as you look to supply local stores with your tasty baked goods. A short tutorial guides you through the basics of accepting orders and making a small batch of buns, before leaving you to it. While it’s enough to get through the early days, certain activities involving machines aren’t very intuitive and the Bakerypedia lacks the necessary detail to be of assistance when required.
Initially you can only attempt a single order per day, which doesn’t seem cost effective, but it does allow you to get into the rhythm of baking the average buns and loaves. Measuring out the ingredients into a bowl is easy to follow thanks to the ability to pin the recipe to one side of the screen. Using the mixer and the oven is incredibly straightforward, with only the forming of the bread shape to worry about. That’s where the mini-games of Bakery Simulator begin.
Cutting up the dough into equal amounts is done through a timing-based mini-game in which you must stop a moving indicator whilst it’s inside the green area of a bar. Another sees you rotating a ring to match the shapes up in the correct places and even though this is an easy task, the controls are irritating. Still, there’s nothing too taxing here, and the general feeling after finishing any of the mini-games is that of relief, mostly because they’re lacking in the fun department. Much like the game on the whole to be honest.
Unlike many other food-focused games, Bakery Simulator suffers from blandness in terms of what’s on the menu. The majority of goods are not aesthetically pleasing, nor very adventurous, with buns, muffins, baguettes, and such, doing nothing to increase the enjoyment levels. It’s all quite samey. Fulfilling the orders becomes repetitive too and, eventually, there’s a lot of automation that gives you even less to do.
Golden Bread???
The life of a baker is incredibly boring, but maybe there’s another side of the process that might up the ante. Step forward the delivery aspect. Indeed, to cut costs you have to go deliver the goods yourself by car, which sounds alright until you get behind the wheel. It’s horrible.
Transported to the city, you’ll see a generic car from a top-down perspective with a little map to show roughly where to go. The city itself is dark and dingy; it’s bereft of life other than the odd vehicle. And handling-wise, let’s just say oversteering is a regular occurrence and the twitchy nature isn’t ideal for navigating any tight gaps. For some reason certain streets are blocked off, often forcing you to take the long way round. That’s fine until it blocks off the only road across a river and you actually have to force your way through a blockade with a very narrow opening. At the end of the day, driving is something that Bakery Simulator could do without.
The progression system is pretty good though, with new rewards earned regularly via gaining XP and levelling up. Whether you get excited by them is up for debate, but there are recipes, ingredients, machinery, bowl upgrades, and more to unlock. Furthermore, there’s a decent loyalty scheme involving those local businesses you’re supplying to. After a set number of orders are completed for each store, perks are given that could increase the amount of XP garnered, let you deliver more items in a day, or provide a discount on ingredients.
Unfortunately, there is a dark cloud hanging over Bakery Simulator – bugs. One bug caused the loss of an entire day’s work as skipping to the next day was the only solution to overcome an inability to deliver an order. The worst however, came upon being able to transport more than a single order per day, which may be coincidental. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t actually deliver the goods, nor hire a courier, and had to delete the save data to start afresh. Without knowing exactly what the issue is, there’s no way to know if and when these problems can reoccur.
Bakery Simulator – the bread bun of baking
Bakery Simulator is the bread bun of the baking world – bland and uninteresting, but some people might still like it. The simplicity and ease in which recipes can be followed is good, while the progression is pretty decent as it keeps introducing new things. Sadly, those things are often boring and the more you unlock, the less input you’ll have in an already uneventful process. Throw in the horrendous driving section, as well as the bugs, and it’s difficult to look past the negatives.
Save your dough and look elsewhere for a good food-orientated simulator.
There is a danger when playing games like House Flipper that my partner will ask what I am doing. The obvious reply is that I am cleaning up a room so that I can decorate it later. But then she looks at me, scans the state of my living room in the real world, sighs heavily and leaves.
More to the point though, why do sim games like this become so addictive. Why does the player begin to obsess in creating the perfect in-game environment and tasks, whilst the real life work is a bit too hard? But hey, here I am back in House Flipper with its sequel – the imaginatively named House Flipper 2. And once again, I’m trying to avoid being thrown out of my real house.
What. A. Mess. Clear it up.
The first House Flipper became one of those games that people seemed drawn to; a bit of a surprise, breakaway hit. A game that is capable of delivering a sort of zen-like state, where cleanliness and feng shui practices might all come into play. It’s similar in House Flipper 2, with two modes to enjoy – campaign or sandbox. We’ll start with the former.
At the beginning of House Flipper 2 you get to choose as to whether you want to be Dave or Hannah in your handy-person career. There is a basic story here where you come to your hometown in mid-west America, left to clean up your parent’s old house. Here you start to renovate, get jobs from other locals, doing up their places. I quite liked this simple premise and the missions give you a slow build into the creative process and tools that House Flipper 2 has to offer.
Gameplay-wise the controls take a short while to get used to, and once again, we have the age-old problem of things not quite being as intuitive with controller as it would be with a mouse. But the menus in House Flipper 2 are clean and concise; it won’t be long before you’ll be fast flicking through them.
Looks good, no?
But what do you do in House Flipper 2? Well, an early job may consist of clearing things up. Here you walk about the property, picking up bits of rubbish and junk. And some of those bits will be sellable. Others – read: most – will be destined for the bin or chucked in recycling units. And when you’ve done that you can mop up, cleaning stains from the floor, surfaces and windows. There is a handy little menu that gives you a rundown of the percentage of stuff you need to complete job-wise. Then the creative stuff begins.
It’s here in House Flipper 2 where you get to paint, put up wallpaper, do the electrics, take down and rebuild walls. You can then access the shop and start to buy items of furniture, fixtures and fittings, to put around the place. And as you progress through the campaign you get XP which can be used to get perks. For example, these will give you the opportunity to collect rubbish quicker, or paint walls across a larger area, making things much quicker. Obviously there will be some out there who like the slow pace and love watching paint dry…
Aside from that campaign is the Sandbox mode – it’s here where you can just let loose without worry, forgetting about constrictions or objectives and just letting the house designer in you run free.
House Flipper 2 does a great job visually, especially in the range of interiors and exteriors. The stuff you can buy to decorate and furnish your home is pleasing to the eye, but there is some fun stuff in there as well. And whilst the audio is fairly limited, there is some voice acting included across telephone calls. Mostly though, expect chirpy music playing, going along with your cleaning and decorating. You should however know that when you play a game like House Flipper 2 you’ll be best to stick on your own playlist or podcast, beavering away to familiar tunes.
House Flipper 2 is an improvement
Let’s not beat around the bush – if you didn’t get on with the first House Flipper, failing to understand the beauty of cleaning up a place, rebuilding it into a palace, then House Flipper 2 is not going to be for you. But if you did like things first time around, then this is an improvement, thanks to a fun campaign and various environments, areas and items. The only real criticism is that with an Xbox controller in hand, House Flipper 2 does take a bit of time to get used to.
Ultimately, for me, House Flipper 2 is the best excuse for not doing any real housework. And that makes it a win.
New slot machines always include big jackpots. Australian online casinos update my collections regularly.
Today, online pokies machines include a free demo mode. Players can have a full training session.
Tricky Monkey by FunTa Gaming
This slot machine belongs to the genre of “Fruits”. It was developed by the supplier in 2019. The volatility of the slot is at the average level. In theory, the game gives away 94.7% of the money from gamblers’ bets.
The minimum allowed bet per spin is 4 coins. A player can bet up to 12 coins on a maximum of one spin. The maximum amount of winnings that can be obtained within a single scroll is limited to the amount of 12,000 coins.
The slot machine’s playing field has 3 rows and 3 reels. The winning combinations in the game can be formed taking into account 5 fixed directions. To create a winning combination, the player must catch three identical images along the line, but the cheapest icon is paid for single drops.
The slot also provides the following bonus features: A bonus game, a scatter symbol, and Repeated scrolls. The cheapest icon in the slot machine is Plums. It brings 2 coins to the gambler with a single drop, but it does not form prize combinations along the lines like other symbols. Pear and Coconut are medium–paying badges that bring the player 7 or 10 coins in combinations of three pieces. Pineapple, BAR and Crystal are highly paid icons that can bring a win of 15 coins in a combo of three pieces.
Road to Rio by TGC
This slot machine was released by the developer in 2019. It belongs to the category of “Travel”. The volatility of the slot is at an average level. Its RTP rate is 96.01%.
The minimum bet per spin in the game is 0.01 coins, and the maximum for scrolling the player can bet up to 500 coins. 100 thousand credits is the maximum win per spin, which becomes available only with the highest bet amount and activation of additional options.
There are 3 rows and 5 reels in the playing field of the slot. Prize combinations can be formed based on 50 paylines. The coin value is subject to manual adjustment by the gambler in the range from 1 to 10 coins. You can bet from 1 to 50 coins on the line.
The following additional options are also supported in the slot: Wild symbol, Scatter symbol, Cascading icons, Bonus spins rounds. The card values from 9 to A, as well as the Reel, are low-paying icons that bring in winning sequences from 2 to 30 coins. Dancers in green, red-blue and blue are the average icons, for combinations with which the gambler will receive from 5 to 80 coins.
The most valuable is the yellow Dancer’s badge. This icon can bring in winning combinations of 30, 50, 100 or 500 coins. Cheap icons create combinations in the amount of 3 to 5 pieces, and expensive ones from 2 to 5 pieces.
The scatter symbol was presented in the form of a Reel. In combinations, it gives a small win, but activates a Series of bonus spins. The wild symbol was presented in the form of the inscription “Wild” on the background of the ball. It can replace all other icons, except for the Scatter.
Graffiti: Block Pays by Fugaso
This slot machine was produced by the provider in 2017. It belongs to the category of “Animals”. The level of variance of the slot is average. The indicator of the theoretical return of the machine is 95.85%.
The minimum bet in the game is 0.10 coins, and the maximum is 20 coins. A gambler can win up to 100,000 credits per spin. The slot machine’s playing area consists of 6 reels on 5 rows.
There are no paid directions in the game. You can form a winning combination from identical images on any cells. The combination will be created when the same icons fall out in the amount of 9 to 30 pieces.
The slot also supports a number of bonus features: Jackpot, Repeated Scrolls, Free spins Rounds. A cap, Skateboard, Respirator and Helmet are cheap game symbols that will bring the gambler from 5 to 2,000 coins in paid combos. The Snake and the Dog are medium–value badges that are paid in the amount of 20 to 5,000 credits in prize combinations.
The tiger is the most expensive badge, for which the gambler will receive a payout in the amount of 30 to 10,000 credits. The “Free spins” bonus symbol activates free spins rounds, in which mode all cheap icons are removed.
