Tinker Racers on Xbox is a fun little game despite its limitations. However, when all is said and done, it doesn’t do enough to escape from the shadow cast by the game which inspired it.
Hitchhiker may not be a game that is able to give you all the answers you want, but it will take you on an incredible journal that focuses on relationships, love, life, and death. It's a story about everything and nothing... and it's brilliant.
Cozy Grove on the Xbox lies in the shadow of Animal Crossing, and the moments where it steps out of that shadow are its weakest. While Animal Crossing never stops feeling welcoming, Cozy Grove keeps pushing you towards the door, and a lot of the charm goes with it. Regardless, there’s plenty of room on the Xbox for an experience as undemanding and beautiful as this one, and you’ll find yourself rummaging for walnuts in a spare thirty minutes. You certainly can’t live in Cozy Grove, but it’s great to visit.
There’s a fantastic premise at the core of Die With Glory on the Xbox. Rather than striving for victory, you’re looking to die spectacularly. But that premise never quite gets realised: the deaths are never outlandish, and the quests to get to them are too simplistic.
Rain on Your Parade is up there with some of the most fun, the most unique, the most humorous and the most well-designed, crafted, created and developed games I’ve played in recent years.
Without a fun world to explore, Moon Raider can’t fall back on its charm or style, as it only has a limited pool of it, and it doesn’t feel good enough to play. Moon Raider has been stripped back too far, and what’s left is a pencil outline of a Metroid game, and that’s not enough.
For as slow-moving El Hijo - A Wild West Tale on Xbox is, once it gets up to speed and starts throwing clever ideas at you, it can become an enjoyable puzzling playthrough. It’s a shame then that the poor AI, basic visuals and a lack of proper puzzling ideas then creep in.
SturmFront - The Mutant War: Übel Edition on Xbox is a blow for blow recreation of the arcade games of yesteryear. It’s loud, gory, brash and unapologetically retro, with action that is nothing but non-stop.
What The Dub?! on Xbox is a one-trick pony, then, but it’s a trick that will keep you and up to five friends cracking up for a good hour or two. Whether you come back to it is another question, but seeing straight-faced actors spouting your drivel is probably worth that low price of admission.
Radon Blast on Xbox presents a novel take on the classic brick breaker game, almost adding an element of survival. But even this doesn’t stop the game from becoming tiresome after only a short time. There is a lack of features, music and almost everything else; so much so that even the £4.19 price tag is asking a bit too much unless you are a true achievement hunter.
Chess Knights: Viking Lands on Xbox is pretty unique and the mash-up between Vikings and chess is one that I could never have imagined would work. But as a puzzler, it does - even if the control scheme doesn’t particularly help matters. On the whole though the puzzles are clever and if you're into your brain teasers then you can't go wrong with what's on offer here.
Random dungeons, random perks and continuous progress: it’s a winning mix, and it elevates Space Robinson beyond mediocrity and into the realms of ‘just one more go’.
Balan Wonderworld, even with all of its surface-level faults, is a genuinely charming 3D platformer that is blissfully imaginative both in its artistic presentation and game design.
Less a strategy game and more a three-hour long tutorial, Mittelborg: City of Mages on Xbox manages to remove pretty much anything that would lead to interest or a satisfying choice. If it was brave enough to hand the reins to the player, it might have gone somewhere interesting, but - as it stands - this is a lightweight board game with most of the pieces removed.
