As always with these games, the more players you can round up, the more enjoyment you will have and competing with friends and family brings G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra together.
There is no sign of any Spring-like weather outside my window, but in Forza Horizon 5, it is Spring already in Series 40 of the Festival Playlist Weekly Challenges.
To celebrate 40 years in the business, the imaginatively titled SNK 40th Anniversary Collection has been released on Xbox One, including 13 games at launch, with a further 11 promised as free DLC. There’s certainly no shortage of content included but can games from this period hold their own today? Is this a history lesson worth looking into?
As much fun as it would be to play A Link To The Past, there is no way that Nintendo would allow that to be remade for Microsoft’s black box, so even though it had a massive effect on me as a younger man, it won't appear in this list. But other than that, here, in no particular order, are the five RPGs that I'd like to see remade that don't include the words "Final" or "Fantasy".
It’s a general rule of thumb, in the movie world as well as the gaming arena, that the sequel to a film or game is usually not as good as the first. This can be seen every day: Iron Man 2 is not as good as Iron Man, Final Fantasy X-2 is not as good as Final Fantasy X, no CoD game has been as good as Modern Warfare, and so on. However, for every Predator 2, there is an Aliens, and the same goes for games. What I will attempt to do here is list the five games that I think were better than the games that preceded them - the 5 gaming sequels that blew the prequels away.
From Fatalities to Brutalities, even Babalities, the idea of humiliating an opponent by virtually dismembering them has proven to have legs. With the eleventh iteration of this formula, is Mortal Kombat 11 more of the same, or have new ideas been injected to try and keep things fresh?
I'm a sucker for a turn-based strategy game, so a new entry into the market always gets me excited. I loved the Fire Emblem and Advance Wars games back when I had my Gameboy Advance, so seeing that 6 Eyes Studio has taken Fire Emblem as one of the inspirations for Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark had the old gaming juices flowing before I even turned it on.
Eschewing the "action" approach taken by their last release, Frane: Dragons' Odyssey, Revenant Saga sees a return to what, in my opinion, KEMCO does best… an old skool, retro styled, turn based RPG with anime overtones. And a proper story as well, even if the developers have used almost every one of the cliches from the Bumper Book of RPG Stories this time around.
Riding on the wave of hype of the announcement of Borderlands 3, the first Borderlands has now been remade for Xbox One. Including all the DLC for the title, this is dubbed the Game of the Year Edition, and a more cynical reviewer than yours truly would suspect that this is a bit of a cash grab - pure and simple. With the original Borderlands already playable via Backwards Compatibility, do we need this game or is it a remaster too far? I took a trip into Fyrestone to find out.
Do you want to play a new action based RPG? One with tight, responsive controls, a compelling story and a real drive to push on and see what happens next? Well, I have bad news for you - KEMCO's latest offering is not the game you're looking for.
Borderlands, whichever game you play, isn't short of amusing NPCs to interact with. These can be mission givers, people you need to recruit to your team, or even just strangers wandering around in the settlements. Whoever they are though, they all have something to say.
And normally when they speak, it’s worth listening to. With so many people to choose from across the multiple games, it’s hard to narrow the field of best non-playable Borderlands characters down to just 5. But that’s what I'm going to attempt to do here - list my favourite NPCs in the Borderlands series.
Way, way back in the mists of time, in 1987 to be precise, when this reviewer was a fresh faced 14 year old, a game called Shadowgate was released. It quickly gained a following and was elevated almost to the status of a cult game, due in large part to its atmosphere and difficulty. See, in Shadowgate, if your torch went out and you didn't have a replacement, you died. If you chose the wrong option, you more often than not died. You see where I'm going with this?
Fast forward to today, and Shadowgate is launching on the Xbox One. But has time been kind?
In an attempt to move into the modern era, the latest offering from KEMCO ditches the retro graphics and brings a fully realised 3D world to the screen, with their latest game, Sephirothic Stories.
Another month and we have another instalment of the ongoing attempt of world domination by KEMCO and their seemingly endless back catalogue of RPGs. By now we almost know the story before we start the game: a band of characters that initially don't get on need to become a team, all in order to take down a big bad guy and save the world. And surprise surprise, that seems to be the story here with Bonds of the Skies. Is this the straw that breaks the camel’s back, or is this a good KEMCO game in its own right?
Ah, Dead or Alive, the guilty pleasure of adolescent male gamers everywhere.
This is a series that has always been more famous for the attention to detail in the animation of it’s female protagonists than for the actual gameplay, but is the sixth entry in the series, Dead or Alive 6, any different? With promised tweaks to the way the game plays, and the addition of a "super" gauge and extra moves, has the Dead or Alive franchise finally come of age, or are we going to need seasickness pills to cope with the heaving bosoms? It’s time to strap on our black belts and find out.
News from Funkotron has been on the thin side, at least until now. See, HumaNature Studios, with the backing of a successful Kickstarter campaign, have brought a new entry - ToeJam and Earl: Back in the Groove!. Playing like the original game, is this a step too far for our funky aliens, or will the gameplay still work today? Let’s strap on some spring shoes and find out!
Yes, the puzzle systems are complex and deep, and it is genuinely satisfying to fully repair a messed up ship in Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop. But the roadblocks to get there are rougher than you may care for.
