TXH

In the past few years Xbox users have been pretty well treated with some great Xbox exclusives. It’s certainly been an enjoyable experience watching PlayStation fans salivating with envy about the way that we all got to play Rise of the Tomb Raider months before any other platform.

A few days back, we highlighted the latest batch of free Xbox Games With Gold (these being for the month of June) and asked the question: are they any good? As anyone who read that piece will tell you, the answer is a definite "yes," as it's hard to turn up one's nose at the chance to play Super Meat Boy, The Crew, and others for the cost of an ongoing Gold membership. OK, sure, Goat Simulator is absolute rubbish after a handful of minutes, but at least you didn't really pay for it, right? Not technically, at least. Anyway, looking back at that post made me think more about Microsoft's approach to rewarding its users and why it works so well. And part of the answer to that particular thought is quite simple, actually: rewards help to retain consumers and create a loyal following. By giving back to the consumers who fatten the company's pockets, the company is keeping those consumers happy. That, in turn, will clearly lead said consumers to continue spending money and, even better, convince others to become Team Xbox.

For many in the industry, there is an expectation that Microsoft could join the virtual reality revolution. However, nothing on ground presently suggests it could come to life anytime soon; if at all.

Replay: VHS is not dead is a refreshing, mechanically complex platforming puzzle game. It embraces VHS, and all the quirks and movies that came from it. The game utilises the quick convenience of being able to rewind your VHS; allowing for a lot of interesting and varied challenges and it does this within a setting that will be sure to invoke some form of nostalgia.

The Assassin’s Creed Chronicles trilogy is a group of games that are okay, but really fail to deliver much more. Each game shares similarities with the others. They all offer a relatively bland story and deliver it in a lacklustre fashion, failing to draw you in, or allowing you to develop a connection or attachment to the plot or the characters. As a result, I feel the protagonists are quite unmemorable. For side-scrolling fans, the gameplay is pretty good and compliments the excellent level design very well, with an interesting array of new weapons to take advantage of. However, the key stealth mechanics do not feel as satisfying as they have in the previous big budgeted AC games.

Dad Beat Dads is an indie, couch multiplayer brawler in which you play as various dads doing what dads do best… like beating each other up, throwing diaper bricks and climbing the corporate ladder. The usual stuff then!

Despite the wars between the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One continuing over issues of graphics and gaming exclusives, Microsoft seems to have been making some recent efforts to provide a more user-friendly gaming experience.

Over the decades, video game heroes have come and gone. The debate over who is your favourite hero of all time could quite easily run and run so instead of looking at the very best heroes, checking out some of the most memorable ones from recent times is quite possibly the way forward. So I did. Here are 5 of my most memorable video game heroes!

If I asked you to name the top five best villains in video game history, it would really be a gargantuan task since there has been so many! With that in mind, instead of trying to establish the five best, I am instead going to pick out five particularly memorable villains from games that I have played.

The game is certainly not bad and took me on a nostalgia fueled ride back to when I first played it about 10 years ago as an 11 year old kid. The remastered graphics look great and I thoroughly enjoyed the story, far more than I enjoyed the actual gameplay.

Hyperdrive Massacre is exactly what it says on the tin; a super fast game that gives the player the ability to continually destroy their friends in a variety of game modes over and over again. Its simple controls coupled with its fast paced action creates an experience that can be enjoyed by you and up to three other friends. Although it isn't without its faults, Hyperdrive managed to keep me, and a number of my friends, coming back to test out each others massacring ability time and time again.

Xbox games are leading the way when it comes to the quality of game play and graphics but which titles out there are the ones that possess the best graphics? Here is our list of top 5 Xbox games that offer the greatest graphics.

If Dark Souls was a two dimensional, action-RPG platformer then Unepic would certainly be it.

With Christmas and the New Year out of the way I’m sure there are plenty of new Xbox One owners who are wondering just what they are going to spend their money on this year. That means it’s time for a run-down of the top 10 most anticipated games of 2016.

In my last post I gave my opinion on the easiest game completions of 2015 and now it’s time to go to the other end of the spectrum by taking a look at the top 5 most difficult and/or longest game completions from this year. Seriously, these games have some extremely annoying and tricky achievements so you’ll need to be prepared for a massive grind to 100% them.