Jahanzeb Khan

Hindsight 20/20: Wrath of the Raakshasa on Xbox is a creative tour de force from industry veterans, which integrates its thematic philosophy into both the narrative flow and game design. The game incorporates the weight and consequence of choice into the way the story unfolds, but also into enemy encounters as players have a choice to forgive their foe rather than simply vanquish these polygonal constructs.

Crown Trick on Xbox is one that encapsulates the true depth and intricacies of the random chaos in roguelike RPGs. The gameplay systems and mechanics are both rich and daunting, and they lend themselves to an organic turn-based experience which is deceptively simple on the surface, yet imbued with strategy.

Rise Eterna is an average and serviceable strategy RPG offering on Xbox. It’s certainly a welcome release on the platform that doesn’t often host too many games from the genre. The various moving parts are promising, but they don’t come together in a way that feels compelling from a game design standpoint and that means Rise Eterna is worth checking out only if you’re starved for options.

Lake on Xbox is a charming and refreshingly slow narrative adventure. Although your time in Providence Oaks is over before you know it, it offers what is perhaps a rare and much needed downtime in gaming. While there are some graphical and technical issues present, the experience as a whole succeeds in delivering its humble and largely inconsequential narrative, yet one where choices made actually have real consequence.

Mayhem Brawler on Xbox doesn’t do anything remarkable that can’t already be experienced in far better games elsewhere, especially since there is no shortage of beat ‘em up titles on the Xbox platform as is. This is a title worth checking out if you have already exhausted all the other alternatives and need another beat ‘em up fix.

Samurai Warriors 5 is no doubt the best iteration of the mainline series, be it Dynasty Warriors or Samurai Warriors (or even the Warriors Orochi spin-off). As it stands right now, this is as good as it gets for the Warriors series. It has a lot of ideas and systems which integrate in an interesting way, and the core gameplay is as fun as ever. The only caveat here is that the core gameplay loop present feels no different to that which we’ve experienced for the last two decades, and inevitably it will run thin.

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is no doubt among the best Xbox platform exclusives of 2021, and a staggering showcase for your console of choice. It manages to translate an ambitious PC epic almost seamlessly into a console experience, where the play mechanics and control scheme are mapped perfectly onto the Xbox controller.

Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX on Xbox is a fun and charming reintroduction to one of gaming’s oft-forgotten but still influential platforming icons. The game is tough to be sure, and is very old school and dated in some of its design conventions, but the quality-of-life improvements and the visual facelift help modernise this classic platformer.

Xbox owners certainly have viable means to experience these titles in other forms, but when it comes to convenience and accessibility, Ninja Gaiden Master Collection is a solid value proposition all the same.

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure feels like taking a vacation on your Xbox. Even while players explore a blissful island paradise, there is still an important environmental message to learn, and plenty of tasks to engage in as players interact with the vibrant setting and its various colourful characters. Although the experience is largely designed for younger players, there is plenty of incentive for any player to kick back and soak in a video game that genuinely feels like a holiday escape.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth is one of those rare cases where several influences and moving parts come together to create an experience which feels unique as a whole. Every nook and cranny of the gameplay and level design feels thought-out and deliberate, and as a whole the journey is both memorable and challenging, with a gameplay hook that makes it hard to put it down.

Capcom Arcade Stadium at its best brings the spirit of arcade gaming to a global online setting, providing the atmosphere of walking into a bustling amusement centre, with plenty of incentive to dive into the various titles and pursue a high score worth bragging about. The titles featured here are iconic Capcom classics and cover a range of genres and gameplay styles, and they all benefit from modern quality of life features.

There's much hype surrounding the release of Astalon: Tears of the Earth on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch and PC, with players across the globe holding out for the chance to get hands-on with the long-awaited 2D action platformer. We put ourselves in that camp, so when the opportunity arose to spend time with the team at LABS Works in order to find out more about the game, we jumped at the chance.

The real horror here is the fact that as the sixth instalment of a so called “series”, Outbreak: Endless Nightmares has absolutely no semblance of a functioning video game. This feels like an incomplete gamma build of a hobby project, and I shudder to think what the five prequels would be like. A solo development effort is an admirable endeavour, and making games is incredibly difficult, but there is simply no valid excuse to churning out a completely broken and non-functioning experience.

Arrest of a Stone Buddha is a superficial and empty video game. Despite having some novelty in its setting and ideas, there is simply no semblance of coherent game structure or practical gameplay mechanics. It almost feels like a concept to what could have potentially been a very cool 2D action game, but as it stands Arrest of a Stone Buddha is a pretty meaningless one; one that has been poorly ported and presented on Xbox.