Sure, it’s on the unfairly punishing side, and both the controls and the weapons could have done with more work, but this is a worthy rewind to the time of the Dreamcast. Pick up Rainbow Cotton on the Xbox and save yourself that £300.
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix on Xbox One is not just an incremental improvement on the original: this is a gold-mushroom boost into the distance. While it doesn’t quite get on the karting podium - the identikit weapons and flat courses scupper that - it’s a solid kart game which rewards you for persisting with it. If the jump in quality is as large with Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3, we’re going to have a hell of a race for the best kart game.
Recommending Ben 10: Power Trip on the Xbox One is difficult, because everything comes with an asterisk. It’s a refreshing difference from your traditional licenced kids’ game, as it attempts an open world BUT that open world is lacking in content and interest. It can be explored cooperatively BUT only if you stay joined at the hip. The platforming and combat are fun BUT you’ll have to fight the camera while you do it. If you’re desperate for a Ben 10 experience on Xbox One then it might be enough to scrub out those asterisks and give it a go.
Dark Grim Mariupolis on Xbox One feels like it’s been left on the shelf since the ‘80s. It looks and feels, at least initially, like a lost C64 point-and-click classic, but the tape on the cassette has deteriorated, making the game almost unplayable. Dialogue is meandering and surreal, and the puzzles have eroded to become a sequence of unrelated interactions. At least it’s only a couple of hours long, as the surrealist noise soon gets to boiling your brain.
If you pitched This is the Zodiac Speaking to us at a Dragon’s Den, we would have given you the money. A true-crime hunt for the real-life serial killer, in partnership with the Investigation Discovery channel: it feels like a no brainer. Unfortunately, like the infamous scene from the Hannibal movie, it feels more like someone else is spooning your brains out. This could have been the gateway to more true crime games on the Xbox One - instead, it’s a gateway to something a little more hellish.
It’s hard not to make comparisons in the case of Smart Moves. Watch the trailer and you’ll spot the influences: Crypt of the Necrodancer (and Cadence of Hyrule) and Fairune are definitely in there. This is a fantasy game where every step triggers enemies to move, and it takes on the aspect of a puzzle game as you evade enemies while clearing chests. Smart Moves makes a calculated boogie onto Xbox One today.
Where do you start when describing Dark Grim Mariupolis? It’s a point-and-click, which is the easy bit. Then there’s the wireframe vector graphics and smudged screen, which makes it look like an arcade cabinet from about 1986. It’s set in a dystopian future full of robots, and they’ve all deteriorated to the degree that most of their conversations make zero sense. Like what you’re hearing? Dark Grim Mariupolis is out today on Xbox One.
Team17’s busy year continues with The Survivalists, the next in their burgeoning ‘-ists’ franchise. This one looks a little bit special, not only because Team17 have been knocking it out of the park recently, and not only because The-Escapists-goes-Castaway sounds like an intriguing mix. We’re liking the look of this one because no one has ever really brought the ‘shipwrecked on a desert island’ fantasy to a decent video game.
I will admit that I was wary of 2K choosing Mafia to remaster, as the game was old and middle of the pack, but in hindsight it was a masterstroke: the story and structural core of the original was exceptional, but everything else had room to improve. 2K has thrown the sink at Mafia: Definitive Edition to make sure those improvements make an impact, and it’s barely possible to recognise the original under the lacquer.
As a fan of escape rooms, it’s been befuddling that they haven’t surfaced in video games more. The joy’s in the detail with an escape room - you’re searching with a fine toothcomb to get every last clue, then manipulating them all to get out of Dodge. That can be done in a video game, right? Area 86 is an escape room (wahoo!), but not in the way you might think. Rather than the graphic adventure-style we’ve just mentioned, Area 86 is a physics-based puzzler and it launches today on Xbox One.
Eastasiasoft suggests we stop banging on about that Tony Hawk remaster, and find time in our lives for that other skateboarding franchise. No, not Skate (come on, EA), but Skatemasta Tcheco!
In hindsight, it’s easy to see Rock Band 4 as the encore for the series - one last song before the franchise left the stadium. But rather than being the belter, the anthem that got everyone singing, it was like finishing with an album track. Sure, it was good to see the band coming back onto the stage, but, well, we were hoping for something a little more memorable.
We’ve seen our fair share of Kart clones, pulling on some of the barmiest of franchises (Hello Kitty? Garfield?), but Nickelodeon Kart Racers was one of the more acceptable ones, and it actually had enough recognisable characters to warrant the roster. Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix drifts onto Xbox One, Switch and PS4 today. A PC launch is due later this year.
Queen and Freddie Mercury’s personality may not come through in Let’s Sing Queen on Xbox One, but you probably won’t care. These are the 30 songs you would want, set against a backdrop of the videos you would want to see, with crisp presentation and faultless audio pick-up. Queen’s particular kind of magic comes through the songs, but not the game, and that’s enough.
It’s easy to recommend Rebel Galaxy Outlaw on Xbox One. As a space sim, it’s been built for console, and it manoeuvres through a minefield of controls that have junked so many others. The trading and upgrades will keep you hopping into the cockpit, over and over again, but be wary of overheating the experience: the missions aren’t hugely varied, so Outlaw should be best played in short bursts.
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.
Hankering for the old days of retro racing, where drifting was aplenty and music was chiptune in nature? Well, look no further than the pure racing of Super Woden GP II.Â
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.
