Cars and coffee, eh? Those are two of the things I like in real life, but now they have come to Forza Horizon 5 and Series 36 of the Festival Playlist Weekly Challenges.
Doug’s Nightmare is almost perfectly middle of the road. It isn’t the worst twin-stick shooter in the world, but neither is it anywhere near the best.
Strategy games eh? For so long the preserve of PC gamers (in fact my first experience with this game type was many many moons ago, as a university student playing Dune 2 on a housemate’s PC), there have been few successful entries on the Xbox. The most notable of these has been the Halo Wars series, which entertain by being a multi coloured laser-fest, using vehicles to do the fighting, in addition to the foot soldiers. Numantia is a beast of a different stripe, swapping the future for the past, science fiction for reality and laser rifles for swords. Can it still entertain?
Waking up to a winter wonderland, and then sitting in a huge tailback on the M1 motorway, I was moved to consider which were my favourite snow-filled levels in games.
First appearing way back in 2008 on the Nintendo Wii, de Blob is a platform-puzzle game coming from THQ Nordic. I missed this game the first time around, so the news that it has been ported to the Xbox One off the back of a successful port to PC is good news for me. The big question that I will attempt to answer in this review though is, is it good news for Xbox gamers in general? Come with me to Chroma City as I try and find out!
The latest piece of Destiny 2 content has now launched, and I've been hands on with it to see if Bungie have brought their A-game this time. Entitled The Curse of Osiris, it deals with the re-emergence of Ikora Rey's mentor, the Warlock Osiris. He was exiled from the City a very long time ago when his research began to take him in a heretical direction, and then disappeared from the face of the Universe. Well, now he’s back, and predictably trouble isn't far behind. But having spent hours with the new content, is this expansion a new Rise of Iron, or is it more a House of Wolves?
Every so often a game designer decides to try something different. Sometimes these games work, and sometimes they don't, but the spirit of experimentation and of pushing the boundaries, should never be discouraged. Coming from Radiationburn Games, the latest in the catalogue of "something a bit different" is Dead Exit, a card based, zombie survival game. Set in a post apocalyptic world, the idea is to gather resources, and escape the city. The big question is does this style of game translate well to the Xbox One, or is it better left on the PC that spawned it? Let’s find out!
In just a couple of weeks the first of Destiny 2's DLC additions will be released. Called "the Curse of Osiris", or, as a friend of mine quipped in an Xbox Live party last night, "The Curse of Miley Cyrus", this is Bungie’s chance to address the numerous and noisy complaints of the Destiny player base. With complaints about the lack of meaningful end-game content hitting epidemic proportions, have Bungie done enough to keep everyone, or indeed anyone, happy? I've watched the stream over and over again looking for clues about what we can expect, and I'm cautiously optimistic.
The latest entry in EA's popular Need for Speed franchise is the appropriately named Payback, which traces the exploits of a crew of three street racers. These are Tyler, the self proclaimed "best racer in the city", who will take on responsibility for race and drag events. He is joined by Mac, who takes on off road and drift events, and Jess, a hard nosed female racer who participates in "Runner" events - which largely revolve around escaping from the police. Coming from Ghost Games, who brought us the last entry in the series, Payback has a lot to live up to if it is going to match the highlights of the series. The question is, does it do just that, or is it left spinning its wheels by the side of the road?
At midnight on the 7th of November, I was once again stood in the queue at my local GAME store, awaiting the handing over of my shiny Xbox One X Project Scorpio console. After being handed the surprisingly heavy bag (this thing is a lot smaller than my OG Day One Xbox One, but weighs a lot more), I hot footed it home and plugged it in to my old and trusty TV. Well, when I say old, it’s about 8 months old, but when I broached the subject of a new 4K version with the wife, I was slapped down in no uncertain terms.  Somehow I ended up buying my son a new bed just for even thinking about the act of buying a new TV. I'm not sure how that works, but there you go! Anyway, the collected ramblings below will chart my adventures in the Xbox One X owners club (I really hope that’s a thing), as a proud non-4K TV player.
I'm a big fan of the EA Access program, and in particular the way it lets you download trials of popular upcoming games early. In this way, I learned that I didn't like Star Wars Battlefront without having to pay for it, and that Battlefield: Hardline was a lot more fun than the description made it sound. The latest game to get the Early Access treatment is the upcoming Need For Speed Payback, so being a massive driving game fan I dived straight in and downloaded it as fast as my internet would allow.
Now, I've played every Need for Speed game since back in the days of the PS2, when Most Wanted was my favourite, right up to the travesty that was The Run. So how does the new one stack up, I hear you cry? Well, I'm glad asked! Here are my thoughts from the 10 hour free EA Access trial.
I've been fishing in real life for over 30 years now, and so would seem to be in pole position to review a fishing game, should such a thing happen to come along. Luckily, Rapala Fishing: Pro Series has come along, so I strapped on my virtual wellies and dived in. Does it measure up to sitting by the side of a lake in the elements and taking in the fresh air, or is sitting in the rain next to a dirty old canal better than this game? Let’s tackle up and find out!
Come with me back to the ‘80s; a time of tie-dyed clothes, outrageously coloured socks and the most shocking fashion crimes committed since, well, the ‘70s! When we weren't trying to style our hair like A Flock of Seagulls, or look like Boy George out of Culture Club, we had another diversion in the shape of adventure games. It appears that the crest of the wave for retro ports of old games hasn't been reached yet, as the 8-Bit Adventure Anthology - Volume 1 proves. Is it me, or is calling your game Volume 1 a bit ambitious/presumptuous? How do you know that the first Volume will sell enough to warrant a second? Let’s check it out and see if that faith is displaced.
It’s getting to that time of the year when witches fly and things go bump in the night. Yep, it’s Halloween! And what better way to make the night in question go with a scream than by playing some of 2017's scariest Xbox One games? There is an added bonus as well - to appreciate these games fully you need to have a headset plugged in and turned up loud. If you do, you won't be able to hear the trick or treaters banging on the door, or indeed the splattering of eggs on the outside of the house with. So turn off the lights, crank the volume and get ready to tremble!
Charlie is an electrician. A brave electrician, apparently. I'm not sure what qualifies him as brave. Maybe he works on circuits without flipping the breaker? Although that would make him a stupid electrician, surely?
For those of you who have been living under a rock or deep in the jungle for the last ten years, the Devil May Cry games feature a protagonist called Dante. And this is Dante when he was just effortlessly cool...
Cars and coffee, eh? Those are two of the things I like in real life, but now they have come to Forza Horizon 5 and Series 36 of the Festival Playlist Weekly Challenges.
Now available on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch and PC, Abathor has you playing as a heroic warrior, fighting to save Atlantis from a horde of monsters sent by Atlantean gods.
KontrolFreek have been making Performance Thumbsticks for Xbox for longer than I care to remember, pushing out a multitude of products with varying features, specifications and ideas. You can get high-rise concaved designs, you can caress your thumbs with mid-rise convex options, and you can put the lowest of height increments on your standard controller, giving an increase in grip, surface area, feel and overall user experience. It is with the latter in which the OMNI come into their own.
