One of the latest to go down the Game Preview and Game Pass route is that of Lightyear Frontier, a game that takes farming sim elements but puts it into space.
The final week of the Horizon Race Off dawns in Forza Horizon 5, yet as we prepare to bid farewell, there is a last hoorah in the shape of the Festival Playlist Weekly Challenges for Series 32 Spring.
You may not have heard of Loretta, but dismiss the psychological thriller at your peril. In Episode 197 of TheXboxHub Official Podcast you'll get to hear about the game - and why it is very nearly perfect.
Developed by Nerd Monkeys and published by Hatinh Interactive, Out of Line is an adventure platformer with a heavy emphasis on puzzle-solving. With no dialogue or text boxes, the narrative of the game is told through details in the background and the actions of the characters. Which makes sense, given that the most eye-catching aspect of Out of Line is the art style - the entire game is in a hand-drawn 2D style; this includes the characters, animations, and backgrounds.
What is Eldest Souls? Well, it’s a strange beast to try to explain. Imagine Dark Souls, with an isometric top-down view, and with no little enemies, just the bosses. With me so far? Now imagine that game with perfectly executed pixel art graphics in a 16-bit style, and you’re about halfway there.
It’s been a couple of weeks since all the excitement of E3 2021 and so now, after a short break, TheXboxHub team return to chat about the latest games and news. Expect to get the lowdown on Sony’s newest acquisitions, EA’s next advertising scheme, and more. There are also opinions on games such as Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, Gold Rush: The Game, and Chivalry 2. So, make sure you tune in to TheXboxHub Official Podcast Episode 88!
We were recently invited to a hands-off presentation of upcoming action-RPG sequel ELEX II, shown a quick video of some early gameplay footage and given the chance to ask some questions afterwards. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get us mildly excited for this upcoming release that offers a lot of promise.
Football might not be to everyone’s liking, but you know what is? Cheap, easy Gamerscore. It’s true! And here are some of the easiest Achievements that you may have missed from the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S games which have released or dropped onto Game Pass in the month of June 2021. Is football coming home? Not as quickly as it takes to unlock these cheevos.
We’re heading into that post-E3, pre-silly season lull. So, what will be the indie darling of July 2021? Some strong bets include Last Stop and Eldest Souls, which might sound like FromSoftware did a collaboration with, um, FromSoftware. The biggest studios are taking advantage of the AAA wasteland too. Microsoft Flight Simulator gets unceremoniously crammed onto an Xbox, while the F1 series receives its latest iteration in the form of F1 2021
At first, Inside was a transcendent experience. I had goosebumps as I played through its fever dream environments and lucid puzzles. I loved it as a game. Over time, Inside has taken on a new meaning. A personal one, an academic one, a political one.
June marks E3 month, and Xbox did not disappoint in their 2021 showcase. But since Game Pass is now such a big part of Xbox’s strategy, it would be impossible for them to not mention the service at the biggest gaming event of the year. If you’re looking for some Game Pass glories though, here are June 2021’s Xbox Game Pass highlights and the games you should be playing right now on Xbox
I think that the battle royale genre is here to stay. Sure, upcoming titles like Halo Infinite and Battlefield 2042 have said that they won’t be including any battle royale modes, but the currently popular battle royales like Call of Duty: Warzone and Fortnite show no sign of slowing down. That popularity means we’ll definitely keep seeing battle royale games pop up, and I surely hope they continue to be as inventive as Super Animal Royale.
Super Mario 64 remains effortlessly brilliant to this day. Thanks to a leap forward graphically, a real feeling of freedom in how you play and everything present which makes the franchise so brilliant, it’s fair to say that Super Mario 64 is quite possibly one of the most influential games of all time.
A lightning quick hedgehog is the perfect oxymoron for a video game character, and it is one that has served Sonic the Hedgehog well for a whopping 30 years now. And the blue blur has been through almost as much as a regular 30-year-old during that time: girlfriends, betrayals, facelifts and reinventions, Thanksgiving parades, cloning, cartoons, feature films, brand crossovers, peaks, troughs and everything in between.
PAC-MAN is one of those characters - assuming you can call a yellow circle with a segment missing, a character - that has entered popular culture and shows no sign of leaving. He is instantly recognisable, and like Mario and Sonic, known by gamers all over the world. I have already written at length about his history in an article celebrating his 40 years in showbiz, and so will concentrate this time around on the subject of PAC-MAN 256 and the release of it in 2016.
Shadows of the Damned wouldn’t be made nowadays. But there is a lot that’s sad about that statement. By all accounts it went through development hell, as studios tried to contort it into western-friendly shapes, but it doesn’t really show in the final product. This is still deeply weird, and very, very Suda51.
After all the excitement, the dust may have settled, but it’s definitely not over until TheXboxHub team shares their thoughts on the latter stages of E3 2021. We’ve got Gareth, James, Darren and Richard wading through the best and worst of four more showcases. Expect TheXboxHub Official Podcast Episode 87 to cover what Nintendo, Square Enix, Capcom and even Bandai Namco, were showing off. Be sure to have a listen and join us while we talk about lots of games!
