There will be a couple of different reactions to The Skylia Prophecy on the Xbox. Anyone who expects decent action from their action platformers, with responsive controls and a powerful set of moves, is going to be disappointed and should probably back away. But those who persist past the flaws will find something well-paced, surprisingly non-linear and flecked with good ideas.
Can you believe it’s been five years since SUPERHOT landed on the Xbox One? It’s one of those ‘time goes fast’ things, which - of course - is the opposite of what SUPERHOT’s about. To mark the five year anniversary of the wonderful red and white bolt-from-the-blue that arrived in 2016, we thought we would suggest some spin-offs for the IP. SUPERHOT - you’re welcome.
Battle Axe on the Xbox is fast-food in an action-brawler wrapper. It tastes and looks good in the short-term, full of E numbers and shots of adrenaline. But it leaves you unsatisfied in the long term, leaving you hungry for something more than thirty minutes of easy hacking and slashing. When you’re £25 lighter after the experience, you’d be forgiven for expecting a heartier meal with more courses.
There is so much ambition to be found in Protocol on the Xbox. At times, it’s on a path to becoming a hybrid of Prey and Portal, both in the way it feels to play, and its ability to generate left-field ideas. Unfortunately, the ideas never fail to be executed poorly. Thanks largely to its controls, you will be, by turns, infuriated, bored, confused and offended. For a game that starts by feeling like a commentary on the lack of control in video games, it’s when you’re handed control that Protocol is at its worst.
A modest success, Savage Halloween on the Xbox slaps a spooky mask on a Mega Man run-and-gunner and chucks in some Battletoads-style racing levels for good measure. What it lacks in surprise, it makes up for in charm, and there’s some challenging moments to overcome. It’s more trick than treat, then, and for £4.19 it’s barely more than a family-sized pack of Haribo.
As a snapshot of a frostpunk future, Dull Grey on the Xbox is evocative, if ineffective. At fifteen minutes long, it’s too short to be anything but a sketch, it offers only one meaningful choice over its runtime, and it struggles to say anything that sheds light on its world or ours. Far from dull, then, but grey in the sense that no clear picture emerges.
There are two ways of looking at Little Mouse’s Encyclopedia. It is a children’s reference book that happens to be on the Xbox, and as such it’s lovely to leaf through for a few minutes. But while it does a great job of putting names to animals and plants, it does a less successful job of making you care about them, or telling a child anything that might stick. It could feasibly form an hour-long home-schooling lesson, but you’d struggle to make a curriculum out of it.
We worried that we’d never get to play another Actraiser: a game that was foolish enough to twist platforming around RTS bits. But what we have is so much more. Smelter is leagues ahead of its ageing relative and deserves all the success that it (hopefully) gets. Smelter is a belter.
If you’ve played SNES classic Actraiser, you will know it’s possible, but it doesn’t stop it being a strange mix: Smelter is a mash-up of action-platforming, not too dissimilar from a Metroid or Castlevania, and a simple real-time strategy game. You know, like Starcraft. If you’re intrigued, Smelter is out now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, Switch and PC.
Make no mistake, Kingdom of Arcadia on the Xbox offers absolutely nothing new. Hundreds of action-platformers have been here before, and looked better as they’ve done it. Surprisingly few, however, have done it with its levels of charm, and with its tight handle on controls.
Animal Doctor on the Xbox is less about being a vet than it is helping one, and you’ll be fetching antibiotics from pharmacies more than you’ll be nursing sick puppies. It’s realistic rather than cute, educational rather than fun, and that’s not necessarily what your little doctors ordered. But if there’s still interest, even after those caveats, then Animal Doctor might actually work out.
2011 was an absolute monster of a year. In any other year, you could have crowned Batman: Arkham City, Skyrim, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Dark Souls, Minecraft, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Bastion, Gears of War 3 or Dead Space 2 as the Game of the Year, and be confident that the gaming world would nod and say ‘yup, that’s the one’. But yet, we would like to make a case that the best game of 2011 isn’t even on that list. The best game of 2011 is my greatest game of all time. And that game is Portal 2.
Tribal Pass on Xbox is an endless runner that feels like a prehistoric boot camp, pushing you to get up, get better and keep going. It’s far from easy, and it is particularly unfriendly in its opening moments. But push beyond them and there are morsels of enjoyment.
As I've played almost every fishing experience that you can find on the big black box, I thought I'd attempt to rank them, nailing a list consisting of 5 of the best fishing games on Xbox One, if you will.
The Apex All-Stars Series come to an end this week in Forza Horizon 5, and as sure as night follows day, I’m here to provide you with the info you need to get your hands on shiny new cars.
There's aren't many (in fact, there are hardly any) boxing games on the market, especially those that utilise the power of current-gen consoles. But come this October all that will change as we get the opportunity to rule the ring in UNDISPUTED.Â
