Flutter Bombs doesn’t quite start players off in a typical twin-stick shooter setting. There’s no story based on hate or revenge - or even a story based on anything to be honest - there’s no world ending catastrophe, or corrupt organisation to topple, and most surprisingly of all, there are no proper guns.
Much like that Sex Pistols gig that every man and his dog has claimed to be at during some point or other, it is likely that every man and his dog claims to have played Final Fantasy VII. The reality being though that they’ve just seen that bit involving Aeris/Aerith and Sephiroth in ‘X Most Shocking Videogame Moments’ and reckon that’s the whole plot right there.
Well, I am here to tell you it isn’t and if you are basing your opinion or experience of this JRPG classic on that one moment then stop what you are doing right now and pick up this classic. The version on the Xbox One may not be the best but it is easily the most accessible, and probably the cheapest way to play too.
Konami are celebrating their 50th birthday in 2019 and are doing so by re-releasing some of their classic games in a series of collections. Castlevania and Contra collections are just around the corner but first up is the Arcade collection, bringing together some of Konami’s biggest coin-op classics in a much smaller package.
A new IP has appeared, one that is found to be taking us back in time to 14th Century France. A Plague Tale: Innocence is a middle aged adventure that is beautiful to look at, with intriguing and unique gameplay mechanics and a fabulous story to boot.
World War Z is lots of fun and easy to pick up and play, despite being a little on the expensive side. It may not have loads of new ideas, but it delivers a solid online PvP experience that doesn’t disappoint, especially on the zombie front.
Marketed as being an old school RPG at its best, can Realms of Arkania: Star Trail deliver an experience that manages captivate a modern day audience in tandem with hooking in those wanting a blast of nostalgia?
Black Paradox has a lot of well-intentioned ideas, but the execution of those inventive ideas results in a gameplay experience which doesn’t quite achieve the pace and flow expected of a shmup.
Like many others before me, I have had many a day in my youth, sat in my pants on the sofa, playing games. Most of you will have done it at some point, but for those of you that are still afforded the opportunity for such luxury, there is now a game to match it – Brief Battles on Xbox One.
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?
The world of We Happy Few was a place that I very much enjoyed spending some time in, but there were some problems. There were bugs. There were horrible survival elements. There were weird combat problems. But the writing, characters, and world-building in this strange 1960s alternative Britain was a wonderful piece of production. In fact I found it very much… groovy baby. Now though we have the first piece of DLC for the game; a new piece of story that has the very B-movie title, They Came from Below. So I put on my swanky psychedelic shirt again, combed my beehive and went wandering back into this weird and wacky world.
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.
As a big fan of top-down twin-stick shooters, the fact that they tend to be so few and far between on Xbox One is something that I find disappointing. Here to shake off that disappointment though is God’s Trigger, a twin-stick shooter that puts you in the shoes of an Angel and Demon duo, Harry and Judy. And it is their task to work together harmoniously to kill their way into Heaven and put the brakes on the impending apocalypse.
The term ‘Metroidvania’ has been bandied around since the late 1980s, essentially for action-adventure games that feature large interconnected world maps that can slowly...
