Now, XIII is the kind of game that deserves a remaster. Routinely ignored on launch, it deserves a second appraisal with a few more eyeballs on it. It was pretty damn good, for a start, albeit with some obvious nips and tucks that a remaster could provide; then there’s the slick art style, one of the first to adopt cel-shading, which stands the test of time. All of the above makes a strong case for a remaster, and we’re eager to get our hands on it for review. XIII is out now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4 and PC via Steam.
XIII was a pacey first-person action game, released way back in 2003 on the Xbox, PS2, PC and Gamecube. It fit snugly into that period, as it had a Jack Bauer, 24-like storyline about conspiracies and the murder of the President of the United States. You wake up on a desert island with a tattoo of the number XIII on your neck and a locker key. Of course, evidence implicates you in the death of the president, so you’re Richard Kimble-ing across the world to prove that you didn’t have a thing to do with it. Trouble is, you have amnesia, and you’re never quite sure if you’re innocent.
The cream was in the single player campaign. This was a 34-level thriller, and it managed to keep the attention throughout. The multiplayer is included too, but if memory serves it was the plain digestive to the single player’s chocolate.
The remaster has upgraded the visuals of XIII, but tried to keep what made the cel-shaded original unique. The music and voices of the original are also included, rather than re-recorded.
Features include:
* The remake of the 2003 cult FPS initially released on PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Nintendo Gamecube.
* A new artistic direction that respects the original work and its iconic cel-shading design.
* Numerous references to the eponymous graphic novel, with onomatopoeia, speech bubbles, panels and more.
*Music and voices from the original version.
* A conspiracy-based plot with numerous twists and turns.
* Varied gameplay with action, infiltration and exploration phases.
* A breathtaking solo campaign with 34 levels.
* A brutal arsenal of 15 weapons to get your memory back.
WHO ARE YOU, REALLY? XIII is a remake of the cult first-person action game that was initially released in 2003. You play as “XIII”, a man without an identity, in a solo campaign with numerous twists and turns. Inspired by the eponymous graphic novel, the game features a completely reinvented and unique cel-shading design. In XIII, players can also take part in fierce multi-player fights. The country remains in a state of shock following the assassination of President Sheridan. You wake up, wounded and with amnesia, on a deserted beach on the east coast. The only clues as to your identity are a tattoo of the number XIII near your collarbone and a locker key. Even though your memory is failing, you discover that you have the reflexes of a highly trained professional fighter. You set off in search of your past, discovering that you played a role in the murder of the President of the United States of America, and revealing the most astounding conspiracy ever hatched in the country’s history.
Welcome to the new generation! And what better way to christen your new Xbox Series X or S than with a brand-new Yakuza title! Yakuza: Like a Dragon is now available on Xbox Series X, Series S, Xbox One, PC and PlayStation 4.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon is somewhat of a fresh start for the franchise featuring an all new protagonist that goes by the name of Ichiban Kasuga. His origin story echoes that or fan-favourite Kiryu Kazuma in that Ichiban has recently been released from an 18-year stint in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. His epic journey for truth will see him make new friends and entrust them into his inner circle.
Ichiban’s newfound friends also act as your party as Yakuza: Like a Dragon completely flips the action brawler fighting style on its head and becomes a turn-based affair. Each member of your party can choose from one of 19 different jobs to fight on the battlefield. With job titles such as Bodyguard and Musician, you can wield bats and guitars to smash over peoples heads!
Despite this being a new area for the franchise, the core Yakuza gameplay remains. Expect hilarious substories, crushing fights and attacks, more plot twists than you can imagine, and of course, lots of karaoke!
Yakuza: Like a Dragon is available to buy and download now from the Xbox Store, and comes in three different versions. All pre-orders come with the Legends Costume Set that allows Ichiban and his crew to dress like classic Yakuza characters such as Kiryu, Goro Majima and Haruka. Firstly, there is the Day Ichi Edition is the standard edition and is priced at £54.99. Then, there is the Hero Edition at £64.99 that comes with the Devil Rocker and Matriarch jobs for battling and extra characters for the Management Mode roster. Finally is the Legendary Hero Edition at £74.99that comes with all the above, plus the Karaoke and Crafting Mat sets.
You’ll find the game available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC and PS4 right now, with PS5 launch in March 2021. Keep an eye out for our review.
Game description
RISE LIKE A DRAGON Ichiban Kasuga, a low-ranking grunt of a low-ranking yakuza family in Tokyo, faces an 18-year prison sentence after taking the fall for a crime he didn’t commit. Never losing faith, he loyally serves his time and returns to society to discover that no one was waiting for him on the outside, and his clan has been destroyed by the man he respected most. Confused and alone, he embarks on a mission to discover the truth behind his family’s betrayal and take his life back, becoming an unlikely hero for the city’s outcasts on his journey. LEVEL UP FROM UNDERDOG TO DRAGON IN DYNAMIC RPG COMBAT Experience dynamic RPG combat like none other. Switch between 19 unique Jobs ranging from Bodyguard to Musician, and use the battlefield as your weapon. Take up bats, umbrellas, bikes, street signs, and everything else at your disposal to crack some skulls! ENTER THE UNDERWORLD PLAYGROUND When you’re not busy bashing heads, relax by hitting up the local arcade for some classic SEGA games, compete with locals in a no holds barred go-kart race around Yokohama, complete 50 unique substories, or just take in the scenery of a modern-day Japanese city. There’s always something new around the corner.
When Gears Tactics was announced at E3 2018, it was coupled with Gears POP!, the Funko crossover that probably shouldn’t have been. The combined result was that many people came away underwhelmed, particularly as they were expecting something more mainline. But after some ecstatic reviews for the Windows version (including a 5/5 from TheXboxHub), it’s fair to say that we’re on board the hype (Cole)train. Gears Tactics is out now on Xbox One, fully optimised for Series X|S and via Game Pass. It’s also been out for a while on PC via Games for Windows.
For the unaware, Gears Tactics splices the gritty and bulky Gears of War universe with the turn-based tactics of X-Com. It’s a marriage made in Imulsion, as Gears has always been a cover shooter, and the strategy of where to attack and when has always been lanced into its flesh.
In story terms, Gears Tactics makes some interesting choices. This is set 12 years before the events of Gears of War, making this an origin story for the Locust, Raam and the rest. You play Gabe Diaz, a COG on the fringes of the known universe, on a planet called Sera. You’re about to get a momentous surprise, as an army of feral aliens surface and begin a war with humans that will last for decades afterwards.
If you’re like us and love the optimisation and levelling of your traditional turn-based squad game, then you’re in for a treat. There are 20 skills to work through, plenty of weapons to find and upgrade, and Supreme equipment to bolster your defences with. You’ll need them, as in traditional Gears fashion, the Locust have brought some bosses with them. Let’s hope the Hammer of Dawn was invented back then.
Features include:
– Immersive and character-driven story: Play as the defiant soldier Gabe Diaz, rescuing and building your troops in a journey of leadership, survival and sacrifice.
– Customizable squad and equipment: Prepare your troops to face tough enemies, upgrading their skills and outfitting them with loot collected in challenging missions.
– Aggressive gameplay: Command your squad in fast paced, turn-based battles, advancing and surviving intense and visceral encounters with the unstoppable, swarming enemy.
– Massive boss battles: Defeat towering deadly bosses that defy your strategies and completely change the scale of the battle.
– New content: Jack joins the fight with over 20 skills to combat new, powerful enemies. Improve your weapons and armor with Supreme equipment.
– Optimized for Xbox Series X: Gears Tactics features Smart Delivery and plays in 4K Ultra HD at 60 frames per second.
What a future we live in, as Gears Tactics is available to play on launch on Xbox Game Pass. It’s also optimised for Xbox Series X via Smart Delivery, and plays in 4K at 60fps.
Gears Tactics is the fast-paced, turn-based strategy game set 12 years before the first Gears of War. Cities on the planet Sera are beginning to fall to the monstrous threat rising from underground – the Locust Horde. With the government in disarray, a squad of survivors emerge as humanity’s last hope. Play as Gabe Diaz, recruiting, equipping and commanding your squads on a desperate mission to hunt down the relentless and powerful leader of the Locust army: Ukkon, the evil mastermind who makes monsters. Against all odds and fighting for survival, outsmart your enemy in uniquely brutal, turn-based tactical combat. Experience the intensity of one of the most-acclaimed video game sagas in an exciting new way.
Gone are the days when a sports video game was just about the on-pitch/court/field antics. Nope, now it’s all about the side hustle as well, with multiple options available to players. With NBA 2K21 though, much of the draw of the entire experience is found in the stunning soundtrack that accompanies the game, with 2K now dropping further details on enhancements; one of which includes unreleased tracks from 2 Chainz.
NBA 2K21 is already available on Xbox One and PS4, and as our review states it provides an incredible level of detail and texture, comes with a super slick match engine, and is fully capable of delivering an emotional punch. But things can be better, and that is what is due to unfold within the game.
2K have today announced that from November 12th 2020, NBA 2K21 – on current and next-gen consoles – will premiere unreleased songs from the Grammy award-winning hip-hop artist 2 Chainz’s upcoming album “So Help Me God,”. The long-player is out on November 13th and the in-game music experience provides first access to five new 2 Chainz tracks for 24 hours within the 2K Beats in-game playlist, a whole day before the album drops. As you would expect to hear, this is a groundbreaking milestone for the release of major label music in a video game.
“I’m always looking at new ways to drop new music and connect with my fans. Premiering my music in NBA 2K21 is an incredible , exciting opportunity,” said Tauheed “2 Chainz” Epps. “Music and sports go hand in hand, rappers wanna be athletes and athletes want to be rappers. 2K has grown into a leading music platform and we wanted to bring the NBA 2K community these hits to ball out to in The City or at the 2K Beach.”
“Music fills every area of our lives, so it is imperative to meet listeners where they are. Gaming is a cutting-edge industry, and within the industry 2K is a tremendous platform for music curation and discovery,” said Rodney Shealey, executive vice president Def Jam. “We’re proud to partner with them as they innovate music experiences within the gaming industry, including this first of its kind music debut”
NBA 2K21 is gearing up to provide an even more stellar experience on next-gen consoles, with the soundtrack representing one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of music ever assembled for a sports video game. And now NBA 2K21 is not just amassing an impressive collection, but it is bringing access to new music like never before with the arrival of 2 Chainz’ tracks.
Further to that though and the NBA 2K21 industry-leading soundtrack is also getting an upgrade, with the next-gen version receiving 150 new tracks, for over 350 tracks available to players throughout the life of the game – an expansive addition only possible on the next-gen hardware. These 350 songs are broken up into two distinct listening environments, 2K Beats, and The City Soundtrack, each offering unique listening and discovery experiences.
The full NBA 2K21 soundtrack can be found on Spotify.
If you haven’t yet played NBA 2K21 then we highly advise you do so. You’ll find it available on Xbox One, PS4 and PC right now, with Xbox Series X|S and PS5 options opening up as the consoles roll out.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is coming, gearing up to probably smash sales records as is typical for any Call of Duty game.
Like 2019’s Modern Warfare, this new Black Ops will be a ‘soft reboot’ for the series, with the Cold War setting and many of the characters from the first game returning for another go around. It will also be the fifth game to carry the Black Ops moniker in ten years. But how did we get to this point?
To answer that, we need to rewind ten years to 2010 and the release of the original Call of Duty: Black Ops – a game that is rightly revered amongst Call of Duty fans as being one of the best ever. It wasn’t always like that though. At the time of its release, reception was mixed. Forums were filled with people raging that this was the worst Call of Duty ever, and the reviews weren’t much better.
Some of the criticism was justified. Black Ops did have poor hit detection, issues with lag and server difficulties. But at least part of the criticism, to my mind, was born out of the fact that it had such a tough act to follow. Modern Warfare 2 had been wildly popular and touted by many as the best Call of Duty ever made. How could Black Ops even hope to follow that, especially when it was so different in so many ways?
I contend that Treyarch managed it masterfully. It may not have seemed like it at the time, but Black Ops’ differences are the game’s real strength and the reason why the game has slowly cemented its place as one of the best over this last decade.
Take the campaign for example. In a franchise known for its Michael Bay-esque, blockbuster, high-on-action-low-on-plot storytelling, Black Ops is so radically different in its approach. It’s a tale of subversion and conspiracy with a dark and gritty atmosphere – perfect for a story set during the Cold War. It’s also remarkably well-written for a Call of Duty game, with plenty of twists and turns along the way and plenty of things left open to interpretation (like that ending scene).
We play as Alex Mason, who wakes up strapped to a chair in a CIA Black Site. Our faceless interrogators demand to know the meaning of a set of numbers. What follows is a journey through Mason’s fractured, broken mind in order to decipher those numbers and stop the world from falling into nuclear war. It’s a tale that takes us from the shores of Cuba, to a Russian labour camp, all the way to the frontlines of the Vietnam War.
It’s clear that Treyarch went all-in with this campaign. It’s backed up by some serious star power. Ice Cube, Ed Harris and Sam Worthington all put in solid performances as Bowman, Hudson and Mason respectively. Meanwhile, Gary Oldman returns from World at War to once again play Viktor Reznov. The best of the bunch though is James C. Burns, whose performance as Frank Woods is one of the best in any Call of Duty. It’s no wonder that we’ll be seeing a lot of these characters return in the upcoming reboot.
Similarly, Black Ops’ multiplayer plays much differently to Modern Warfare 2. Treyarch were mindful to trim away a lot of the game-breaking stuff that plagued that game. That means there’s no Commando, Danger Close or One Man Army. There’s no shotgun secondaries. There’s no game-ending nuke, and killstreaks don’t stack. Grenades do much less damage, and quickscoping is much more difficult to pull off.
Not only does this make the game much more balanced, but also much less hectic. And that’s a good thing, because it means that Black Ops is a game where skill takes precedence over just being able to cheese overpowered mechanics. It also means the game has aged quite well. The gameplay still holds up ten years later, and you can still find plenty of lobbies. Of course, it’s not perfect: the aforementioned lag and hit detection issues still cause frustration today, and things like the Famas and Ghost Pro are unreasonably powerful. But hey, it’s better than being noobtubed to eternity, right?
Not only that, but Treyarch took the Call of Duty formula and added some important innovations. There was the emblem creator, where you could let your creativity run wild. There was the combat record, where you could see just how good (or bad) you were at every aspect of the game in amazing detail. There was combat training, where you could practice against bots of varying difficulties. And there was the Theater Mode where you could edit and save your best clips to show off to your friends.
Most importantly though, Black Ops implemented the COD points system of currency. Players would be rewarded a set amount of points based on how well they did in games. These could then be spent on new guns, attachments, perks and killstreaks. There was also a staggering amount of customisation items that players could buy with their points, including camos, face paint, reticles and custom playercard backgrounds. It’s fair to say that the sheer amount of customisation you find in Call of Duty nowadays has its roots here.
Another net positive of the system was that it allowed players to gamble their COD points with other players in unique wager match types, such as Gun Game, One in the Chamber or Sticks and Stones. Each one brought forth its own intensity and entertainment. Indeed, some of the most fun in this game came from trying to desperately hang onto a lead in the dying seconds of a wager match, for fear of losing all your COD points.
In last year’s retrospective on Modern Warfare 2, I wrote that it wasn’t unreasonable to claim that that game had the best maps in the entire series. I also think that Black Ops has a genuine claim to that title. This game is a demonstration of excellent map design. Pretty much every one is well-balanced and well-suited for a variety of game modes. Jungle, Havana, Firing Range, Launch, Summit and, of course, Nuketown – a map so well-loved that it’s been remade for every Black Ops game, including the upcoming one – are all considered classics and rightly so.
With Black Ops Zombies, Treyarch built upon a solid foundation laid down in World at War and set the mode well on its way to the juggernaut status it enjoys today. But it’s also fair to say that Black Ops almost feels like a transition game for Zombies. Playing through the base game and DLC maps again, it’s clear to see that the developers were exploring new ways to expand the game mode beyond just ‘survive’. As a result, over Black Ops’ lifecycle we can see the pure survivability element of World at War becoming less important as an overarching narrative begins to take shape.
Still, Black Ops manages to strike a nice balance. The Zombies map design is so excellent that it’s entirely possible to just go for high rounds and kill thousands and thousands of zombies with your friends, without having to worry about completing long, complicated Easter Eggs. And the game gives you a whole set of iconic weapons so you can do just that – including the Ray Gun, Thundergun and Monkey Bombs. There’s also Pack-a-Punch and Perk-a-Colas available to give yourself an even better chance of holding off the zombie horde. Similarly, if you’re interested in the storyline, each of the DLC maps has a prominent Easter Egg that pushes the plot forward.
So what do we have with the original Call of Duty: Black Ops? Quite simply, one of the best Call of Duty titles of all time. This was the game that enabled Treyarch to finally emerge from Infinity Ward’s shadow and shake off its reputation as the ‘lesser’ studio. This was a game that laid the groundwork for a multi-billion dollar franchise – one that will continue when Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War releases. I’d encourage anyone to go back and replay this masterpiece, especially since it’s backwards compatible from the Xbox Store on Xbox One.
It all kicked off with Man of Medan, before being followed up with Little Hope. Now though Bandai Namco and Supermassive Games are looking to push forward ever more with their narrative driven The Dark Pictures Anthology – detailing and dating the next chapter, House of Ashes.
Teased in the recently released Little Hope, today Bandai and Supermassive have confirmed the The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes – the third story in The Dark Pictures Anthology – will release on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5 and PC in 2021.
Set in Iraq, 2003, as the conflict draws to a close, House of Ashes will focus on CIA field operative Rachel King as they join an elite military unit on a raid of a suspected underground chemical weapons facility in the shadow of the Zagros Mountains. After arriving at the coordinates, the unit is ambushed by a local patrol led by Sergeant Salim Othman. During the battle, an earthquake opens sinkholes in the ground, pitching both sides into the ruins of a buried Sumerian temple.
It is here, in this darkness beneath the Arabian Desert, where something evil is awakened; something savage and unstoppable; a nest of ancient and unearthly creatures has a new prey to hunt.
In House of Ashes you will happen across horrific discoveries and impossible decisions, as the survivors strive to navigate the underworld and escape the terrifying threat. Will they each prioritize their own survival, or put aside their fears and their personal rivalries to fight together as one? As always with The Dark Pictures Anthology, it’ll be your decisions that dictate the ongoing affairs.
“We are thrilled to reveal this third game within The Dark Pictures Anthology. Like the previous stories, House of Ashes will bring a brand-new story and cast of characters to players, with its own unique twists and turns, and a new threat for the characters to face. We can’t wait to share more details about the story!” said Pete Samuels, CEO of Supermassive Games.
A first glimpse of the House of Ashes can be seen below. From there hold tight until The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes launches in 2021 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and PC Digital.
I love a quiz show. You might say thatWho Wants To Be A Millionaire?is the daddy of them all. It’s an absolute classic where the structure is simple. Answer fifteen questions to win £1m. Sounds easy right?
The TV format has been replicated on a global sale, with numerous adaptations having aired all over the world. Not long ago we had our first £1m winner for fourteen years here in the UK, and it was still incredible television to watch.
In fact, there have been companion games to the hit show since the very beginning. I remember owning the PC and PS1 versions, which did a good job of capturing the tension of the TV programme. They were simple, but fun. Here however, the million pound question, if you like, is what more can a new game based on a 22 year old format possibly offer?
Well, straight out the traps there was a feature I hadn’t seen before in past iterations of the game. After initially noticing the logo contains dollars rather than pounds, I was delighted to see you can choose from six regions to make the experience more authentic to wherever the player is from. Each of the countries has 2,000 tailored questions which is a small but welcome touch, and should add some longevity to the game by avoiding repeats from the outset.
In Solo play, you can then go on to choose your question topics, and deselect ones you would rather not come up. As you play, and hopefully win money, you will earn Neurons which can be used to purchase new topics – some which are really specific such as “Star Wars” and “Harry Potter”.
Finally, you’ll be able to choose a character to play as. The eight or so you can play as are pretty generic, but do offer a little variety, which is no bad thing as the structure of the game is essentially unchanged each time you play.
The other thing I immediately noticed was the iconic music kicking in. That’s right: the game is properly licensed so all the hallmarks of the show are present and correct, just how it should be.
That said, sadly there’s no Chris or Jeremy hosting here. Instead, the nameless host speaks like a machine and is creepily devoid of emotions as he chats you through the game. It’s as if the part is actually voiced by a machine. It’s good that each move you make is backed up by voice acting, even if it is hard to listen to and doesn’t always flow with what is going on. It’s a cringe-fest from the host and the contestants; sometimes it’s better to say nothing at all. For example, Heng, the young chap you can play as, proclaims he’s amazing for getting the £300 question correct. You’d be doing pretty rubbish if you didn’t pal.
You can play through the questions on Normal or Easy. If played on Normal, questions will be time limited to put you under pressure. The difficulty changes this only – there’s no noticeable difference in the difficulty of the questions themselves though, despite what you might expect.
In another nice little touch, after choosing your answer you’ll get a second chance to confirm it’s your final answer, before it’s locked in. However, you’ll get tired pretty quickly of being asked if “that’s your final answer” as it happens on every question in a monotonous, repetitive way. Still, you can make use of the “skip” feature to avoid this, but then you risk breaking the tension that the game is trying to create, especially at the big money questions.
The famous lifelines are all here, as well as the short lived “Flip”, which featured towards the end of the Chris Tarrant era. “Phone a Friend” is pretty well done and “50:50” and “Ask the Audience” work just as you would expect. The Neurons system is a good way of making the “walk away” option worth taking, as the more money you win, the more you’ll earn. It means you are gambling with something else instead of virtual money, so there is actually a consequence if you play and lose.
However, it’s not all about playing solo as in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? there are a fair few multiplayer options thrown in. Locally, there are a good few ways to play which are: “Family Mode”, “Cooperative Mode”, “Taking Turns” and “Free-For-All”. Respectively, this sees you facing easier questions so everyone in the family can play, teaming up to take on the “money ladder” together, sharing the controller, thus competing together, and all battling it out to answer the most questions in a row. “Free-For-All” is the best of these, whereas the rest don’t offer much of a change to the usual gameplay.
More interestingly, there is also an online “Battle-Royale” mode where you can play against 99 other players to see who is the last one standing. This is also accompanied by leaderboards for you to flout your greatness on, if you’re good enough. However, despite trying numerous times I couldn’t find one single player to matchmake with for this mode, which doesn’t bode well for the game’s online community. It’s a shame too, as it sounds quite fun and is something that hasn’t featured in previous releases.
However, I might be able to explain why this is. The price. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on Xbox One will cost you £33.49 from the Microsoft Store, which is, frankly, extortionate. Despite a few new tweaks on the well-explored formula, this is essentially a remake of games we have seen and played before. The core gameplay hasn’t changed in over 20 years. It’s not as if developers Appeal Studios haven’t tried either, but it’s hard to imagine what else can be done with a game like this. The only potential *er hem* lifeline was the online battle royale mode, but so far this is not the case. Unfortunately, it may be time for players to walk away.
Despite some good ideas, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?shows that as a full price title, there’s not enough here to justify to cost. Fans of the show will get some enjoyment here, but even they will feel short-changed by the price tag.
Coming from developers Hidden Achievement is a new entry into the somewhat crowded “Metroidvania” genre. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, these games pay homage to the old-skool Metroid/Castlevania style of games, where you have to make progress through the game, find a new power or ability, which will then open up new paths, more abilities, and so on and so forth. Now, the one thing I don’t think I’ve ever played on an Xbox is an honest to goodness Metroid clone, so I was pretty pumped to take in Outpost Delta, as it looks like someone has run a Metroid game through a photocopier, scribbled the main character out, and replaced her with a robot. So, was this a fair snap judgment, or have I had my mind changed? Come with me to a deserted space station…
The story is fed to you in dribs and drabs, but here is what I have pieced together. We are Delta, a robot who is the last line of defence for a space station known only as the Outpost. We are awakened by Joule, the station AI, who knows that something is going wrong, but isn’t really able to tell us what or why. As we progress through the game and find computer terminals, the story becomes a little clearer. The Klaath, for this is who the invading nasties are, have appeared and are busy trying to do something or other. Joule manages to find three main baddies, one in the Armory, one in the AI core and one who is hidden away. With our path clear, we need to set off to kick many types of monster ass on our way to these three significant Klaath. For ease, let’s call them “bosses”!
Graphically, Outpost Delta looks great. It has a really cool, pixel art kind of style, and while the sprites are fairly small they have a surfeit of personality and you soon start to care whether Delta falls into a laser pit or gets zapped by the baddies. The sound is all perfectly pleasant too, with the jelly-like blob monsters slurping and slapping about the place, and the sound of Delta’s gun being pretty much on point. The music is nice as well, and sets off the exploring vibe perfectly. There should also be praise thrown at the design of the enemies; the bosses are traditional screen-filling affairs, whilst the little enemies are as annoying as you’d hope.
Now, as you’d expect it isn’t going to be quite as simple as Delta just walking up to these critters and handing them an eviction notice. No, they are dug in like Trump in the White House, and will certainly need about as much persuasion in order to get them to leave. Luckily, Delta is armed with a gun, which can be upgraded to allow him to shoot through damaged sections of the space station, for instance, clearing new roots through the innards of the Outpost. It can fire grenades as well if you find them (either in breakable boxes or dropped by enemies), so in all it comes in pretty handy. Delta also has the ability to mess with the gravity on the station, making it either light so he can propel himself around with a jetpack (it has limited fuel, but will refill itself if you don’t use it), or you can make the gravity even heavier, making foes unable to move. This ability is locked in the first section of the game, but as you progress it works its way in.
Combat is a bit of a mixed bag, if I’m being honest. It is dealt with in a twin-stick style, with the ability to run left and shoot right, which certainly comes in handy. However, what Delta is missing is a dodge or a block move, as if you meet more than one of the heavily armoured robot-type enemies, you’re pretty much toast – there’s only so much jumping and ducking you can do before you get rinsed, sadly. However, if you manage to get a box between you and the enemies, when they run right up to the box they can no longer shoot, so you can stand there and blast them to pieces. You are also afflicted with the “No shoot if stand too close” problem however, so bear that in mind. And don’t even get me started on the speedy electric flying balls of death!
The issue with the shooting – the big issue – is that the right stick aiming is very imprecise, and doubly so if you are trying to avoid being shot. Trying to hit a whizzy small ball is very difficult, and even the bigger, slower enemies seem to need a good rub of the rabbit’s foot to hit them first time. Traversal of the platforms is another issue, especially when you find transitioning from a vertical surface to a horizontal one with the magnetic boots being a lot trickier than you might think. While the range of the boots can be a good thing, going up in a lift with them on can lead to some amusing sights, as the boots stick to the wall and the lift then passes straight through Delta, leaving him stuck.
There’s a lot to like about Outpost Delta on Xbox One; despite the rough edges, I’ve had a blast playing through. The exploration keeps you guessing, with various keys needed to progress and upgrades that are required to advance. As a Metroidvania, it is firmly on the Metroid end of the scale (as an aside, my son, who has played all the Metroid games, thought it actually was a Metroid game when he saw the save capsule thing) but as a target to aspire to Metroid isn’t a bad one. It is a little glitchy, there’s no getting away from it, but it’s challenging and, above all, fun to play.
Online casinos offer a variety of slots, table & card games, instant win games, video poker games, and live dealer games. But the gaming experience goes much beyond playing games and winning prizes.
The best online casinos enhance the online gambling experience by offering regular bonuses, lucrative promotions, cashback deals, payment method bonuses, and loyalty programs. Players tend to avoid online casinos that do not offer them these extra perks, especially when they fail to have a loyalty program in place.
What Are Loyalty Programs?
Loyalty programs, also known as rewards programs, VIP Clubs, or VIP Programs, are online casino schemes that reward players for their loyalty. The following are the main features of a loyalty program:
The online casino gives you points whenever you wager real money on a game.
The number of points you earn depends on the type of game you played and the amount you wagered.
Once you collect a specific number of points, you can redeem them for real money bonuses subject to wagering requirements.
The number of points you earned also determines your level in the loyalty program.
The higher your loyalty level, the bigger the rewards and benefits you will get.
Loyalty programs are free to join. Usually, you automatically become a member when you register, make a deposit, and start playing games for real money.
Golden Nugget VIP Program
U.S casino players throng to this online casino for a number of reasons. One of the reasons why Golden Nugget is a standout from crowd is its impressive VIP program. We give you a detailed break of Golden Nugget’s loyalty program below as an example of what a great VIP program should look like.
Golden Reward Player’s Club – Ultimate Rewards
You become a member of Golden Rewards Player’s Club as soon as you open an account. Once a VIP at Golden Nugget Casino, you will always remain a VIP. There are no minimum play requirements to bother about. You can earn an unlimited number of points through real money play.
For every $100 wagered on slot games, players get 5 points, 1 point for every $100 wagered on blackjack, table games, video poker, and roulette. Players who deposit between $50 – $99 every day get 20 points and those who deposit $100 or more get 40 points. When you collect 100 points, you can redeem them for $1.
The loyalty program has three levels which are grouped into Golden Rewards Club, VIP Rewards Club, and VIP Elite Club.
Golden Rewards Club: You get into this level when you have 0 – 4,999 points. Some of the perks here include daily, weekly, and monthly bonus offers, birthday bonuses, leaderboard giveaways, 24/7 customer support.
VIP Rewards Club: Once you cross 5000 points you reach this level. Some of the perks here include All the benefits of Golden Tier Rewards plus faster payouts, weekly VIP cashback, exclusive promotions, complimentary perks at Golden Nugget Atlantic City and 5 star VIP support.
VIP Elite Club: You get access to this level by invitation only. All the benefits of VIP Tier Rewards plus enhanced promotional offers, luxury gifts, personal VIP hosts, and exclusive invitations to events & tournaments
What Are Loyalty Rewards
Depending on your loyalty level, you get to enjoy the following benefits and rewards:
Larger deposit bonuses
Level-up bonuses
Free spins and free bonus casino
Invitations to participate in exclusive promotions and tournaments
Surprise gifts, including non-cash gifts, luxury vacation packages, invitations to exclusive casino events and coupon codes.
Birthday bonuses and anniversary bonuses
Tickets to sports events
As loyalty programs are as diverse as online casinos, you cannot expect all the above-mentioned rewards at all online casinos. It is important to read reviews from peers to assess which loyalty programs are indeed the most player friendly.
Some online casinos share a common loyalty program. For example, the Casino Rewards Loyalty Program has 29 member casinos. When you join one of these member casinos, you automatically become a part of this program.
Some online casinos only reward players with complimentary points (comp points) that can later be redeemed for bonus cash or used to purchase bonuses and free spins. They do not offer multi-level VIP Clubs.
Usually, loyalty programs are free to join, but some casinos allow players to become a VIP member on invitation only. At some casinos, only the highest tier of the loyalty program is invitational like the one at Golden Nugget casino.
Casinos Offering Great Loyalty Programs
All top-rated online casinos reward players for their loyalty. Avoid online casinos that do not have one as you are losing out on free perks. We take a look at three more casinos offering amazing loyalty programs.
Casino Joy – Become a member of Casino Joy VIP Club and enjoy benefits such as exclusive bonuses, dedicated account managers, exclusive VIP events, monthly VIP prize draw, personalized birthday gifts, luxury vacation packages, personal payout services, and exclusive promos.
House of Jack Casino – Join Jack’s Pack, the VIP Club at House of Jack Casino and enjoy benefits such as exclusive tailor-made bonuses and promotions, higher withdrawal limits, faster payouts, dedicated VIP hosts, gifts, freebies, and incentives, and VIP bonuses.
To become a member of Jack’s Pack, you have to prove your loyalty to the online casino by logging in frequently, depositing often, and wagering as much real money as possible. The online casino will soon send you an invitation to join the pack.
Boo Casino – Boo Casino offers a VIP Program that is invitational. Prove your loyalty to the online casino and wait for an invitation to become a VIP player. As a Boo Casino VIP player, you get to enjoy faster payouts, personal VIP managers, free spins, birthday gifts, welcome offers, monthly cashback, and much more.
Who knew that almost three decades after the original The Karate Kid trilogy, the saga would be given a new lease of life in the form of a premium YouTube series, Cobra Kai. Well, it’s been a phenomenal comeback, with the epic feud between Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence being embraced by a whole new generation. Subsequently, Cobra Kai has hit even greater heights since Netflix picked it up and now there’s a video game tie-in titled Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues.
Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues is a beat ‘em up brawler that’s simultaneously looking to pack a punch and satisfy the fans of the immensely popular show. With the fantastic Streets of Rage 4 only recently bringing the genre back to the forefront of gaming, can the Cobra Kai game capitalise on it and deliver a fun-filled, side-scrolling brawler too? Well, while Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues has a lot going for it, there’s not much point having the components if they’re not put together well. And, unfortunately, the impressive depth of the gameplay is seriously undermined by poor execution.
Whether you’re wanting to represent team Johnny or team Daniel, Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues has got you covered by presenting two story campaigns. Keep the excitement levels under control however, because it’s essentially the same narrative for both; just told from the alternate perspectives of Cobra Kai and Miyagi Do. After a member of the respective dojo of your choosing gets ambushed, the adventure leads you to hunt down whoever orchestrated it.
On paper, the storytelling should strike hard and strike fast, with several of the actors reprising their roles from the TV series, including William Zabka and Ralph Macchio – the two main protagonists. Sadly, a combination of lacklustre voiceovers and comic book style scenes will fail to draw you in to the barebones tale on offer. The only saving grace in this regard is how developers Flux Game Studio incorporated a lot of memorable moments and characters from Cobra Kai into the action in one way or another. The Demetri and Hawk shopping mall incident is a prime example, as is the All Valley Karate Tournament encounter. But, ultimately, its own narrative struggles to create new memories.
The actual gameplay is another matter entirely, with every tool in its arsenal that’s needed in order to create a deep, action-packed experience. As a beat ‘em up, you’ll traverse the levels in a side-scrolling manner, clearing out any enemies that are present, before advancing forward – a fairly standard trope for these types of games. Where it sets itself apart however, is in the whopping amount of different attacks available, which ensures the combat should feel fresh for ages.
Depending on the campaign you’re playing, the moves will either be fire-based (Cobra Kai) or ice-oriented (Miyagi Do), with both sides possessing four playable characters – that’s a total of eight – to switch between on the fly. Aside from regular combos using kicks and punches, there are four dojo-specific skills such as a ground pound that can knock enemies off their feet and cause elemental damage. Additionally, every character has four special moves to unlock, which are all very cool and easy to initiate; as an honorary member of Cobra Kai, I especially love how Miguel’s moves, like the flying double kick, fit him perfectly. Although they have a cooldown, you can use them multiple times, unlike the devastatingly dangerous Ultimate maneuvers that require a meter to be built up.
Hang on just a moment though, because I haven’t even mentioned the environmental interactions yet, seeing opportunities arise to slam foes into cars or chuck them into a cabinet and plenty of other damaging objects. Given that there are also attacks to perform when the baddies are lying prone, various offensive grabs, and weapons to pick up, the amount options are actually ridiculous.
What’s more impressive is the inclusion of fairly in-depth skill trees to upgrade, which then unlocks the full range of moves, makes them more deadly, and allows characters’ attributes to be improved. All you have to do is beat some people up to earn coins to spend on these trees, which are separate for each character alongside a dojo tree for boosts to the whole crew. This means you could just ensure one fighter is a real badass and pile everything into them, or share the love between all four.
So, what’s the issue? Well, there are a few, with the most disheartening being the hit detection – or lack thereof.
You wouldn’t believe the number of times a kick, punch or even the special moves just don’t connect with the enemy character models. In fact, it’s all too easy to walk through them and have multiple attempts at causing pain have no effect whatsoever. And that leaves you vulnerable when there’s a swarm surrounding you, with your health taking a real pummeling in mere seconds. It’s unfair when your chances of landing an attack are left to the flip of a coin, but what’s worse is when well-timed parries are also ignored. Hence, even the counter-attacks can be fruitless. These particular problems occur often enough to kill the fun, especially in some levels that are akin to pulling teeth as a result.
Whether you’re en route to LaRusso’s car dealership, the high school, or even the beach, the thing that becomes apparent rather swiftly is the pacing of the levels. Granted, the average one takes around 15 minutes to wrap up and ends with a decent challenge from a mini-boss. Those involving a boss however seem to drag on forever and, by the time you reach the major encounter, you’ve probably already had enough – the last thing you want is an opponent possessing powerful moves, multiple health bars to drain and the ability to call for reinforcements.
It is a shame really, because the enemy and boss variety is damn good on the whole. The regular enemies range from teens dressed in skeleton outfits and quarterbacks to hippies and mall cops; all offering different kinds of threats. The bosses are some of the characters you may recognise from the TV series, like Kyler, Tom Cole and the always devious Kreese. They’re no pushovers, especially when combat is literally hit and miss, but I do appreciate the effort put into differentiating them in terms of attack patterns.
Visually, Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues delivers an array of colourful locations and characters that stand out from each other. That’s great and everything, but it still ends up looking like a game from a previous console generation, which isn’t really ideal for a game priced at £34.99. To cap it off, you can even see the sprite stuttering as you move your character around the areas.
On the whole then, Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues on Xbox One gets about as many aspects right as it manages to mess up. There’s a surprising amount of depth to the movesets, the enemy variety is smashing, and the RPG-like skill trees are an added bonus. When the hit detection and technical accuracies are lacking though, it’s very annoying and off-putting. Throw in the phoned-in voice acting, budget graphics and bang-average story, and you find that most of the good work comes undone.
If there’s a patch anytime soon, you should be giving Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues a look, but until then I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it.
Well, where do I start with this one? I guess that personally, Counter-Strike was my first foray into online gaming. Being able to play online with friends after school really is a fond memory of my early gaming years. It all started here.
I’ve never been a huge PC gamer, mainly because I have never invested in a decent PC. My back catalogue is mainly filled with RTS (Age of Empires II) and Sim (Roller Coaster Tycoon) games due to my less than cutting edge graphics cards. I’ve always turned to consoles for everything else.
However, Counter-Strike was a bit different. It was an online centred FPS that, at the time may have looked decent, however never placed any considerable strain on the system running it, so it could be enjoyed by as many as possible. It actually started life as a Half-Lifemod, before Valve acquired it and released the game we know today, often referred to as Counter Strike 1.6. Thanks to the online platform Steam, online matchmaking was pretty easy as was setting up private games with your mates.
There were hundreds of servers to choose from, each with their own game mode and map. These playable battlegrounds, such as “Dust” and “Assault”, became famous in their own right. The beauty of the game being on PC, was the fact it could be modded. Players did loads with the game, however my favourite changes featured excerpts of songs being played when you found yourself in certain situations. For example, when you were the last one in your team left fighting, and “I am the one and only” by Chesney Hawkes would blurt out, from his similarly named song. A classic moment for me.
Each round had terrorist and counter terrorist forces facing off in different scenarios. These included bomb diffusal, hostage rescue and assassination. Each is pretty self explanatory, seeing you race to stop a bomb going off, rescue a group of hostages or protect a VIP respectively. Of course, if you were playing as a terrorist then the objective was the direct opposite.
When you die, or if you choose to at the start of the round, you can become a spectator and choose any player to follow, or operate a free camera to survey the battlefield. Also, if you are killed you will return to having just basic equipment for the next round, whereas if you survive you’ll keep your better weapons, and therefore have an edge.
Of course, no matter how good your weapons were you’ll have come across plenty of “elite” players who seemed to be unkillable due to playing the game pretty much 24/7. I distinctly remember getting headshotted regularly, not even being able to figure out where from. Wall hacking was also another widely employed tactic, allowing players to pass through walls to escape or sneak up on other players. Although frustrating, when playing with friends, it was still loads of fun trying to take these players down. But to be clear, those players were dirty cheaters.
Something you may not know is thatCounter-Strike made its way to Xbox via a port in 2003. However, with console online play in its infancy, it was overlooked by many. Half-Lifewas also ported, but oddly only made it to PS2.
The series saw a handful of releases, however eventually the original evolved into Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). It was released in 2012 and remains the most recent game in the series, and was a huge success. So much so that a couple of years ago Valve made it free to play, leaving no excuses for not checking it out.
Counter-Strike is truly a classic. It paved the way for so many games that came after, and has a fanbase which has kept it active decades after release. Despite being simple compared to the games of today, it’s still hugely playable with nothing else which quite compares. It’s an icon which I can still happily recommend to this day.
Art in Heart have released a sequel to their previous game, GoNNER – the imaginatively titled GONNER2. Now, I’ll admit that I never played the first game, and so was coming to the action of GONNER2 completely fresh. But was it a pleasure to play, or more of a chore? Well, come to a very strange world of giant worms, giant guns and weird heads. Come to the world of GONNER2!
The first thing that strikes you when you fire up GONNER2 is the unique graphical style, with the second thing fast following that normally being an enemy coming out of nowhere and headbutting our hero back to the start. The graphics are simple, colourful and effective, and luckily with the amount of action that is on the screen at any one time, there’s no slowdown and the controls are tight and up to the job. The sound is a bit minimalist, with just the sound of gunfire and the audible cries of Ikk’s – the hero – inevitable demise being heard. In all though the presentation of the game is very much on the indie end of the spectrum. The other characters in the game are a mixed bunch too, with Death appearing to be almost Mexican Day of the Dead or Mayan-inspired. The design choices are very interesting.
Now, the story is a bit of an odd one. Apparently, Death needs a hand, as her lair (yes, in this game, Death is female) has been taken over by a mysterious presence. We are described as an altruistic and unexpected hero, and our name is Ikk, at least according to the official website. You see, in order to find all this out, internet research is required as there is absolutely no exposition in the game at all. Not a dickie bird. I was thrust into the game, seemingly squeezed from a giant worm’s rectum, and was left to figure out what to do.
As you enter a level, you do indeed seem to squeeze out the backside of a worm, with the goal being to make it to another worm, jump into its mouth and then be swallowed. So far, so simple, right? Well, unsurprisingly there are enemies on the way that seek to ruin your whole day. Now, as you begin, you are unarmed, and while jumping on the baddies’ heads works quite well, it is quite tricky to time, so sometimes discretion is definitely the better part of valour. A clean pair of heels is a good defence. However, as you progress, you will find not only firearms, such as rifles, to pick up, but also heads that Ikk can put on. Yes, again, you read that right, Ikk can put heads on like other characters would put on a hat. You can also find backpacks that I assume allow you to carry more things, but again it’s not explained. When Ikk has no head on, he (or it, it’s not clear) dies in one hit. With a head on, the first hit will make him drop not only the head, but the firearm and backpack he is currently carrying. It is possible to pick them up again, and this is usually a great idea, as otherwise Ikk is just too squishy to survive.
So, Ikk must jump, wall jump, dash and shoot his way through the various levels, in an attempt to be eaten by a worm. Shooting is taken care of in a twin-stick style, with Ikk bouncing around like an idiot and attempting to shoot the many creatures that have a grudge against him for some reason. Unfortunately, there does seem to be more enemies than Ikk has bullets, so some dodging is in order. This isn’t counting the fact that some of the levels are set underwater, where guns don’t seem to work. Thankfully, swimming is easier than jumping about the place, but the enemies seem to be faster in water too, so it is very much a case of swings and roundabouts. In the levels that aren’t filled with water, Ikk has a natty line in wall jumps, where he can just constantly jump up the same wall to get to where he needs to be. Add to this difficulty in moving about, the fact that the levels are procedurally generated, and also that if you die you are sent back to the hub world where Death seems to hang out, and you can surely see that frustration soon sets in with GONNER2.
Well, it did for me at least. You see, I’m not a fan of the whole “rogue-like” genre, as I find them just difficult for the sake of being difficult, if I’m brutally honest. This game certainly falls into my personal category of “harder than it needs to be”, and as such it frustrates. However, the more you play, the more you understand what is needed to make progress, and so begins the opportunity to stay alive a little longer. I think that some of my issue is that there doesn’t seem to be any progression: no skill trees to unlock, no extra health or firepower to accrue. Ikk stays Ikk, even when he’s fighting the crazy bosses in the game, and sometimes it feels like you’re banging your head against a brick wall. To aid in the run, it is possible to bring a co-op buddy in, and while this does take some of the heat off you, it’s very easy to get confused as to who you are, and a lot of deaths occur when you mix up your character. It’s nice to see co-op included though, as not enough games allow couch co-op.
GONNER2 on Xbox One is absolutely rock hard and requires the reflexes of a ninja hopped up on Red Bull to get anywhere, and so this is not a game that you would play for a nice, relaxing blast before work. However, if you enjoy a challenge, it is certainly worth playing. Even with fingers made of butter, progress can be made by concentrating fiercely, and it is then when GONNER2 starts to become rewarding.
If you are in need of a cyberpunk appetizer, luckily for you Ghostrunner is now available on Xbox One.
Created by the studio One More Level, this first-person platforming action game wastes absolutely no time in getting started. Booting the game up plays a slick little cutscene showing the events that lead to the titular Ghostrunner’s initial circumstances. After getting his mechanical booty handed to him by Doctor Octo- er… I mean an evil scientist named Mara who just so happens to have four, long, telepathically controlled arms with grabby claws coming out of her back, the Ghostrunner reboots in the slummiest of cyberpunk slums. With the irritable voice of a mysterious stranger in your head pushing you onward, you are now free to dash, wall run, and slash your way through a series of levels in order to exact revenge. And maybe save what’s left of humanity.
As far as stories go, Ghostrunner gets a passing grade. It isn’t something you’ll be saving in your desk to show future students as an example of going above and beyond, but it gets the job done. Exposition is delivered competently enough through the various voices in your head, and the ultimate goal of defeating Schmoctor Schmoctopus is a perfect motivator. Don’t expect anything too original, however. I won’t spoil anything here, but if you’ve ever watched a film before, you’ll likely be able to tell what happens in every portion of the story long before it actually does reveal it.
Now, it gives me great joy to declare that a game developer has finally admitted to the world that bumper jumper controls are the superior way to play. Bumper jumping is the default setting for Ghostrunner, because if you tried to play by jumping with the A button you would need Usain Bolt thumbs. You’ll be doing a lot of jumping and aiming at the same time, so this is your opportunity to join me in the bumper jumping club. Of course, if you’re stubborn and wrong, you can change these settings.
Let’s talk more about that jumping and aiming. The game starts incredibly strong. Movement is fluid, quick, and responsive. In fact, this is the best wall running I’ve seen since Titanfall 2. Sliding and dashing both feel a bit less refined than they should be, but not to the point that they inhibit gameplay. Additionally, you have a grappling tether with a generous amount of range that saved me on more than one occasion.
Combat, like movement, starts strong. Every enemy you face dies with a single slice of your sword. Yet the same is also true for you. A single shot, slice, explosion, or platforming mishap means game over. However, the game has checkpoints that always feel fair, and beginning your next attempt is faster than instant. In the first half of the game, finishing a level with 50+ deaths always surprised me, because it never felt that high. Zipping around the various combat encounters for the solution that finally worked was such a joy that no amount of failure felt frustrating at all.
Unfortunately, that joy is fleeting. You may have noticed how I mentioned the first half of the game is free of frustration. That is because the second half feels like it has been designed with almost no thought at all. Within the first few levels, enemy variations are gradually introduced. These new foes present unique situations for you to adapt to and work around, and encourage experimentation. However, in an attempt to continue injecting variety into the combat, even more enemies are introduced and they are awful. Three, in particular, feel as if they were shoehorned into the game at the last minute. They aren’t fun to fight, and the majority of instances where they bested me in combat felt like it was the game’s fault more than mine – whether that meant the sword-bearing guys phased through me, the giant droids shot invisible projectiles, or the little suicide units slowed the entire game down.
I would like to talk about the suicide units specifically, for a moment. In one of the final levels, these enemies are introduced. I can confidently say that they are the worst enemies I’ve ever seen in a video game. Rather than building on the primary gameplay loop, their behavior throws everything you’ve done and learned completely out the window. At times, this type of thing can be done well in games. Mixing up the player’s expectations can be a breath of fresh air that far along into a game. However, these units are completely broken. Their blast radius is enormous, there is no clear method for eliminating them, and they make loud, gross, guttural noises that sound like the devs asked Dave from accounting to eat the microphone. My final encounter with these despicable creatures caused my game to dip into single digit frame rates. I had to slog through portions of gameplay that looked and felt like a glitchy flipbook.
Following the absolute disaster of those exploding pieces of garbage, the game continued to feel unfinished. More weird ideas and enemies were introduced, the inconsistent shuriken upgrade was used too often, attempting to wall run became more difficult as the Ghostrunner just slid off, and the final boss was horribly underwhelming. In fact, each boss fight in the game could be used in a graph to show the exact moments that things got worse and worse.
Ghostrunner’s flaws are tragic ones. With it starting so strong, the bugs, poor optimization and horrendous design choices stung more and more. If all you’re looking for is a cyberpunk distraction until CD Projekt Red’s hotly anticipated title, this may be just what you’re looking for. However, if you want a game that’s consistent and well-made throughout, you could play the first eight levels of Ghostrunner on Xbox One and pretend it ends there.
With one of the most highly regarded racing pedigrees in the gaming scene, Codemasters have continually pushed the boundaries of what fans of the genre demand. With the F1 scene all but sewn up by their developmental brilliance in F1 2020, it could be said that they are the current kings of the racing sim. But move away slightly from that, pushing the envelope towards the more arcade-styled racer, and things get a little trickier, with the likes of the Forza Horizon series continuing to evolve and compete. Thankfully Codies have the DIRT franchise to work wonders with, and even though it’s all now a far cry from the simulated aspects found in the original source material that was Colin McRae, it still happens to be a name that gets racing fans excited, even more so when you consider the team behind the latest iteration is the same one as those behind the hugely underrated ONRUSH. That said, whilst you’d expect this to be the best DIRT title to date, DIRT 5 just fails to take the podium top step – but it’s certainly not through the fault of the actual racing.
I’ll start with the positives of DIRT 5, and they most certainly revolve around the on-track racing that takes place. No matter whether you are playing online, or rolling yourself across the offline scene, through the deep career or into the Arcade or Time Trial settings, DIRT 5 excels in the racing. Everything is pretty much on point with not a hint of lag or stutter, full of glorious visuals and audio that bring cars and environments to life, and complete with vehicle types which handle well – each with a slightly different feel and vibe. The opportunity to go from hero to zero no matter which of the multiple car classes and events you partake in, in just the blink of an eye, is real.
Yep, make a mistake when hammering down a straight or trying to nail a turn at 100mph in DIRT 5 and you’ll know about it, with cars rolling and spinning as they flip out of control. But get a grip with their feel, and begin to understand how each handle, and it really won’t take you long to find your feet at all. With multiple race types and a decent number of vehicles included, DIRT 5 will keep you busy for a while.
Obviously it is the Career which is the main draw in any racer and that is the case here, with a star-studded voice cast helping dictate the on-track racing and why it all takes place. It must be said that the career isn’t the trickiest to work through, and even though I’d like to think that I know what it takes to find success in a racer, it’s been a bit of a breeze to blast through the events here. For the most part you’ll be found picking off certain event objectives, pleasing sponsors and earning a huge amount of XP, Rep and in-game cash in the process – hell, all three of these are thrown at you in gargantuan amounts. It is the latter of these which allows you to gain access to faster, better handling vehicles in each class, yet even though I’ve had cash coming out of my ears pretty much from the get-go in DIRT 5, I’ve rarely found the need to splash out that cash on new vehicles, mostly due to the lack of real variety in each category. Instead I’ve happily moved through events with whatever comes my way; it’s certainly not like in a Forza title where you want that Subaru Impreza or sporty Merc – here you’ll find yourself content with what you’ve given, left to get on with it.
The Career is supremely tight, letting you work your way through a variety of paths, picking and choosing your race types without the need to tackle a strictly linear route. It works well too, and just as you may find yourself tiring of completing specific brackets, you’ll realise that there is absolutely nothing stopping you from heading back to earlier moments in time and pushing forth with a different route too. This ensures that the Career is constantly kept fresh, never failing to excite or let you enjoy personal favourite events. Yet this is a game that continues forward when you’re looking for even more of a test, with DIRT 5 bringing online racing into play. Split across either ‘races’ or ‘party games’, showing your driving skills off to the entire world is simple; even if there is a bit of a wait as matchmaking processes kick into play. Thankfully, as you would expect to hear, there are a plentiful amount of racers enjoying what Codies are providing with the online scene, and you’ll never fail to find a match at any point in time, particularly if you decide on the straight-up racing route. It does however all come into its own when you have a party of friends though – the sheer joy found in the party games with friends in tow is what has always made the DIRT series what it is, and things are no different here.
DIRT 5 looks good, sounds great and, frankly, plays brilliantly, but as I hinted at with the start of this piece it isn’t the go-to racer it really should be. Why? Well, that is pretty much due to the bits and bobs that have been added in order to complement the on-track affairs. If I’m honest, they don’t really work for me and the cultural vibe it tries to deliver gets really old, really fast.
Prior to release of DIRT 5 there had been huge hype behind the fact that Codemasters had drafted in both Troy Baker and Nolan North – two of the very biggest names in the voice-over scene – in order to push along the Career narrative. In my eyes though, they would have done well to save a bit of that cash and pump it into more of the important stuff. Even though the script that has been created for them is well-written and, as expected, extremely well-delivered, it’s just all a bit too, well, in your face. I take on a racing game in the hope that I can spend the majority of my time behind the wheel of some of the fastest, best looking, most intense vehicles on show, and that’s usually the case here and now with DIRT 5. But in between that racing, I really care very little for the reason and rhyme behind it. Let me work between classes, let me enjoy multiple categories and let me have the opportunity to spend time honing racing skills. I don’t want to be sat there listening to some gumpf in between. And even though Codemasters have fixed and patched initial audio problems that frequented my early time with the game, switching the podcast hosts off and just getting on with the racing has been my preferred playstyle.
This narrative is however just one part of the DIRT 5 audio aspect, and thankfully sitting in place alongside the – quickly muted – storytelling is a cracking soundtrack. It’s one that fills the space when you decide to do away with the script, and the tunes which have been included are of the highest quality. Expect to hear the likes of Stomzy fresh from his stint in Watch Dogs: Legion, and some of the best tracks from The Prodigy, New Found Glory, Pearl Jam, Foals, Chaka Khan and more. It’s a really good mix and is easily one of those soundtracks that you could sit back for hours listening to; in fact, I have done on multiple occasions. Again though, there are issues with this audio and whilst you can’t debate the quality of the tunes, there is the occasional hold and freeze of audio as you move between menus, backing out of races and the like. It’s just all a bit slack.
Whilst I’m on the hunt for negatives and I’ll have to also admit that I’m not a huge fan of the way the Playground elements have been tacked on to the DIRT 5 experience. Even though the brilliant Career holds a few little Gymkhana events alongside the host of other race types found in the Ice Breakers, Stampedes, Ultra Cross, Land Rush events and more, they are too few and far between, with players instead forced to come out of the immersion, into the menus and across to the Playground element itself – either then finding a single event to enjoy or taking time creating their own masterpieces. As a huge fan of the Gymkhana aspect in previous games, it’s a shame to see this is pretty much relegated to a side hustle. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if this one event type had a more considerable presence in the Career, helping to break up the standard racing, but as it stands, ‘tacked on’ is the overriding feel.
Furthermore, call me boring and unimaginative, but I’ve never really been a fan of the allowance of creativity in games such as this. For instance I don’t think I’ve ever created a livery in a Forza title and even though it’s a cinch to find plenty of Gymkhana action in the Playground, the whole ‘creative fun’ aspect fails to provide much appeal here. Designing your own imaginatively designed playground is nice and all, but it’s too clunky for more liking. That’s not to say I don’t think there should be a place for it, as for many I’m sure there is, but personally I could quite easily give that a wide berth.
Thankfully, at the end of the day DIRT 5 is a racer, and racing is what it does best. If you go into it looking to pound through a deep Career, learning the handling characteristics of a multitude of vehicles and wishing to understand the quirks of a variety of courses, it utterly excels; Codemasters are at their very best when they stick us behind the wheel of a vehicle and let us get on with it. Really, that racing should be enough to sell a purchase of DIRT 5 to anyone, even those with only the slightest bit of interest in the motorsport scene. With the standard genre staples of Online racing, Time Trial and Arcade Free Play elements thrown in, there are a host of racing opportunities to embark on, leaving just the left over bits, bobs and sillier culture-fuelled filler being of use to just a select few.
DIRT 5 on Xbox One isn’t the best DIRT title there has ever been but it definitely deserves a place in the line-up. Just involve yourself in the racing, forget about the faff, and you’ll be sure to have a jolly good time.
I am London born and I am London bred; except for a few years when I escaped in my early 20’s, London has been my life. It’s in my heart, my soul, and even though it has a ton of problems and will cost £9 for a pint, I love it. Thankfully, the problems that do exist are absolutely nowhere near those that are found in the slightly future London of Watch Dogs: Legion. You see, it is here where the big smoke is on the brink, but it’s also here where all the famous landmarks stand proud, as a huge open world unfolds for you to drive, run or sneak around. Yep, Watch Dogs: Legion is here as the first big game to attempt to straddle the generational divide. Has it been worth the wait?
Let me put this out there before I begin – I loved the San Fran world of Watch Dogs 2 and prior to that hugely enjoyed the Chicago-based shenanigans in the original game. In fact, I’m a fan of the franchise as a whole, finding that the games provide worlds which combine the fun, with landscapes that don’t ever take themselves too seriously.
In Legion we find ourselves slap bang in the middle of a dystopian alternative London; holograms, electric cars, and plenty of drones are regular occurrences in the city landscape. This is a world where the Met Police force has had to be disbanded after a mysterious terrorist bombing and now a privatised security force is in charge of everything – Albion. But it is this Albion who have big plans to control the city. And you need to stop them.
Kicking things off is a neatly paced prologue – something that has almost been ripped straight out of the latest Bond film – as you work through the bowels of the Houses of Parliament. Here you learn that there is a rebellion dead set against the fascist regime of Albion, causing fear on the streets of London. DedSec is the group of hacker rebels that you will be recruiting for, seeing you taking part in missions for the group. And part of the big change with Watch Dogs: Legion is that very quickly you begin to understand that you won’t just be found playing as one hero, but anyone you like if you can manage to recruit them. But we will get to that piece of gameplay in a moment.
The story, mission structures, dialogues, and the overall writing found in Legion are all great. The world Ubisoft have created is one that is socially complex but, like the previous games, doesn’t ever take itself too seriously. Think of it as a film and you’d come away from the rolling credits asking a million questions. How do all these recruits off the street know how to hack so well? How is everyone such an amazing shot and fighting expert? It’s all assumed of course, and you completely buy into it. What’s really great though is getting the chance to listen in on multiple pieces of dialogue from radio chatter, strangers that you find on the street, or those that you find yourself taking part in side missions for. It’s a massive world and allows for a very fantastically successful piece of world-building by the development team.
The gameplay pretty much consists of the normal stuff that Watch Dogs has allowed before it, and if you’ve ever played previous games you will find muscle memory kicking in right away. You can walk, run, jump, and climb like in any normal open-world third-person game and there’s a host of combat as well, all in the form of shoot and cover gameplay spread across a range of lethal and non-lethal weapons, including pistols, shotguns, and rifles that deal a bolt of electricity to the combatants. There are also plenty of opportunities to work stealthily, sneaking from pillar to post as you move through the world.
Of course though, this is Watch Dogs and that means that hacking comes to the fore – and it is this which is the most enjoyable part of the game for me. With a simple click, you can hack into almost anything that has an electrical pulse. Cameras can be hacked so you can view the layouts of buildings and switching between them instantly, gaining a variety of different viewpoints through the cameras, is easy. There are also a number of drones flying around and as you level up through a perk system you will also gain the ability to hijack and control these – opening the world up some more. They can be used to scout an area from the sky, or, as you discover more advanced ones, attack enemies with guns. You can even use a drone to physically hack networks or to open doorways, whilst cargo drones are big enough for you to ride, allowing access to hard to reach rooftops. But they aren’t your only friend – the spiderbot is something you can employ on ground level to creep around ducts, to crawl through tight spaces and to hack servers or download important information.
The beauty of Watch Dogs Legion is that you can tackle the environment and the majority of the missions in any way you want. You can go in all guns blazing, taking out enemies one by one if you are happy to put up with the aggro and abundance of reinforcements that brings. But you can just as easily stay outside, hacking through an area using cameras, drones, and spiders, or you may find yourself attempting to roll through basements in a stealthy manner in order to nail targets. The beauty of the game is that the multitude of options available always ensures that Legion is fresh and interesting throughout.
The other way to play things though is to blend into the environment. It is here where the real game-changing aspects come to the fore.
A lot has been said about the ability in Watch Dogs: Legion to choose anyone you like, and play as them. It is a system that works well and it’s glorious to be able to change up the hero in the story. It works by allowing you the chance to go recruiting anyone off the street; anyone who has possible recruitment possibilities when you scan them with your phone. These may be special people that DedSec let you know may be worth recruiting, characters with unique professions like that of a spy or hospital surgeon. To recruit them you just need to action a task for them – stuff like hacking an organisation or rescuing them from some thugs – in order to see them become part of the team. It is wholly possible to collect a bunch of operatives for DedSec to choose from. Do you need someone who can get you into a hospital without raising suspicion? Or maybe an Albion guard who will enable access to the belly of the beast? It’s a great system that is cleverly implemented yet it will mean that at times you will find yourself loving certain characters and hating others. I found I had a tendency to always rely on favorites – one of those was a surgeon who stunned her opponents by zapping them in the head with a pair of hospital defibrillators.
For this to really work, you do have the choice at the start of the game to turn on permadeath options, and this is something I would highly recommend. It ups the stakes massively and you find that throughout Legion you will do your utmost to ensure certain people survive. In fact, I’ll admit that I found myself in a couple of sticky situations, deep in trouble, when the only way out was to switch off my console. Fail to, and my beloved surgeon would have been lost forever.
Visually we find Watch Dogs: Legion constructing a crunched version of London; one that has moments of complete accuracy in the details of the streets while also being able to create new buildings, Tube stations, and bits of geography. All the major icons are there – Big Ben, the Tower of London, and The Shard – and I’ve found it a delight to wander around the city with its future upgrades, brilliant lighting, and active world. It’s good-looking too, yet it’s a shame that the interiors are limited in comparison to the open-world sections. For instance, you will stand outside a shop in order to get access to new cosmetic gear and the only places you can go in (outside of the missions) are pubs, taking in a swift half and a game of arrows if you feel the need.
The soundtrack is exciting and dramatic throughout, all to great effect. When you find yourself traveling around in cars there are some superb radio shows to listen in on, ranging from chat shows to an excellent range of music; pretty much everything from dance to classical to the classic Three Lions. The voice-over is excellent as well, with some great characters coming into play.
Honestly, my first moments with Watch Dogs: Legion on Xbox One didn’t quite wow me and I was left expecting it to do more; maybe it was all a bit too familiar to the last couple of games, or maybe I was expecting something else. But the more you find yourself wandering this version of London, the more you will love it. It’s a vibrant and exciting open world full of a wealth of missions, side missions, and recruiting to do, complemented by some decent visuals and brilliant audio work. As the hours have progressed I’ve become ever more excited for the opportunities that it throws up, so much so that now I’m already well invested in upcoming DLC and the promise of multiplayer elements. Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner so I love London Town, but Watch Dogs: Legion has helped confirm that.
We are so close to the new console generations of Xbox Series X we can almost taste it (please don’t lick your new Xboxes when they arrive). But just as one eye looks forward to the future, the other looks back on the generation just gone. And what better way than by looking back at our thoughts on the Xbox One’s Generational Game-Changers.
We’re starting our list with the most recent one, having only launched in February 2020.
Originally starting life as a spin-off from the Sniper Elite series, Zombie Army has taken on a life of its own, much like the thousands of re-animated corpses you are shooting. Set in the same timezones, Zombie Army has you shooting Nazi zombies because there really is nothing worse. The similarities end there though; Zombie Army 4 doubles down on the cheese and the B-movie feels to deliver a devilishly fun romp through some unique scenarios.
Zombies could spit at you, shoot at you, but also hunt you down in a zoo or chase you down in a tank. Basically, in this world anything and anyone can be a zombie, but they still require shooting.
Our review gave it a 4/5, praising the multiple campaigns, the hidden Easter eggs and the high level of gore. You can check it out here.
9. Life is Strange
We couldn’t pick our favourite episode from Life is Strange so we’re including the entire game in our list! Released throughout 2015, Life is Strange is one of the precursors to episodic gaming alongside The Walking Dead, but it remains one of the best examples of episodic gaming on Xbox One.
In Life is Strange, you play as Max, a photography student at Blackwell Academy who suddenly realises she has the ability to rewind time. This alone flipped the episodic structure on its head by allowing players to rewind time if their previous decision produced an outcome they weren’t happy with.
All this is wrapped up in a coming-of-age indie film setting, with a hazy filter and a killer soundtrack. Artists such as Foals, Alt-J, Angus & Julia Stone and the inimitable José González – who was also present in Red Dead Redemption – the soundtrack is almost as important as the plot itself.
If you need any further convincing that Life is Strange is deserving of a place on our list, then check out our review of the first episode here.
8. Slay the Spire
Our next game on the list is a roguelike, which some consider to be a dirty word, but Slay the Spire puts a highly unlikely spin on this divisive genre: it adds a deck-building element.
By fusing these two genres together, Slay the Spire is one of the most unique and original games on this list. As progression continues, you unlock more cards to increase your deck; death however means you not only lose all progress up the spire, but all your cards as well. Your reward though at the end of a run are points, and we all know what points make? Prizes! New cards and artefacts then help you on your next run.
Your deck is used in turn-based combat against the enemies of the spire, and new cards are a joy to discover. But don’t expect them to massively turn the tide in your favour; Slay the Spire has been meticulously designed that every card has its advantages and disadvantages. Your knowledge gained from running the spire is almost as invaluable as the deck you build.
Our review of this genre mash gave Slay the Spire an almost perfect 4.5/5. Check it out here.
7. Forza Horizon 4
Much has been said about Microsoft’s first party offerings this generation, but it hasn’t all been lacking. And one release is perhaps the pinnacle of its genre.
Forza Horizon 4 is the latest iteration from the spin-off series from Forza Motorsport. In recent outings it has perhaps even overtaken the original series in terms of quality and enjoyment.
This time around, the festival turns its attention to the UK, and if there is one thing the UK is famous for, it is the weather. Forza Horizon 4 introduced seasonal gameplay where every few weeks the entire map is transformed based on the season represented. In winter for example, the massive lake freezes over and can be driven on. This commonly takes the form of a useful shortcut in Online Free Roam, as many of the TXH team can testify during our gaming nights.
Forza Horizon 4 still contained the usual elements from past entries: barn finds, tight street races, showcase events, expansive off-road events and more radio stations than you can shake a stick at. But post-release updates also brought tons more including LEGO cars and environments, hundreds of more cars, and even a battle royale mode!
Our review gave it a full 5 stars, praising the progression system and sheer amount of detail. Seriously, every time I turn the game on, I unlock something new. And that’s pretty damn often.
6. Yakuza 0
Now for my personal favourite game of the genre, that just so happens to be my favourite game of all time after playing it. Sorry, Final Fantasy X, but know that you’ll always have a special place in my heart.
Yakuza 0 originally released on PlayStation 4 in the West in January 2017 but made the transition over to Xbox One back in March 2020, and launched straight onto Xbox Game Pass. A prequel to the Yakuza franchise, it introduced legions of new fans – myself included – to a series now receiving the plaudits it deserves.
Yakuza 0 features two playable protagonists: series regular Kiryu Kazuma and Goro Majima, everyone’s favourite anti-hero. Their stories take place in separate cities but revolve around a place in one of the cities called The Empty Lot. Whoever holds the deeds to this seemingly insignificant piece of land in the heart of Kamurocho potentially holds the key to controlling the entire city.
At its core, Yakuza 0 is an open-world action brawler, but it is the sum of all its parts that make it deserving of a place on our list. There are the crazy and often hilarious substories, the huge number of minigames – not least the ability to play OutRun in full – the sheer number of plot twists keeping you on your toes, or the fantastic and underrated soundtrack.
If you have a spare 150 hours, this is one open world you could explore and still not see everything.
5. Rocket League
If there is one thing you need to know about Rocket League, it is that it is an immensely easier name to remember than its predecessor – Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars. What a mouthful.
Another game that originally launched on PlayStation 4, Rocket League arrived on the Xbox side in February 2016, with fans eager to get stuck in. A football game where you drive cars into an oversized football? Sign me up!
Rocket League doesn’t have a story, hardly any career mode, and only a few core modes. It does however contain some of the best physics committed to a game, and one hell of an addictive gameplay loop. The process is simple: choose an RC car, and then try and get the giant football into your opponent’s goal with up to a team of four players.
And yet, Rocket League has taken the world by storm, becoming a huge esports draw and in 2018 it passed over 40 million different players. And with the game recently going free-to-play, it looks set to be sticking around for a long time on the new generation of consoles.
4. Inside
We’re fortunate at TheXboxHub to play a lot of indie games, as this list will testify by showing a healthy balance of triple-A and indies. Some indie games though transcend into popular culture, and just like Rocket League, Inside is one of those.
After the developers at PlayDead’s first release, Limbo, hopes were rightly high for whatever came next. Inside was that game, and at first glance it shared many similarities. It’s a side-scrolling platformer – at least boiled down to its most puerile elements – but Inside proves that less is more.
You play as an unnamed boy who is on the run from something but quickly is caught and placed into a factory of some sort. You, as the boy, must piece together what is going on, whilst trying to escape. Without going into much more detail, the less you know going into Inside, the more enjoyment you get out of it.
Then there is the ending, which is equal parts shocking and unbelievable, and yet you can’t take your eyes off it.
Into the top three games now, and if Inside and What Remains of Edith Finch are shorter experiences, our top two are the exact opposite.
What Remains of Edith Finch is interactive storytelling at it’s finest. Avoiding the term walking simulator, you play as Edith Finch returning to her family home after a tragedy. Room by room, you explore the house and begin to piece together what has happened to your family.
Gameplay is inventive and constantly surprising you with a sheer variety of different elements and mechanics in each of the short stories. You could be playing as a cat one minute or travelling through a comic book story in the next. You will laugh and you will cry.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a jack-of-all-trades, but also a master of them all.
2. Red Dead Redemption 2
Yup, the big cowboy simulator was destined to appear in our list, but I was surprised to see it ranked at number 2 – I simply couldn’t get used to the poorly designed control scheme.
One of our top games of the last decade, Red Dead Redemption 2 was worth the wait from Rockstar Games. Set before the events of the first Red Dead Redemption, you play as Arthur Morgan as a member of the Van der Linde gang as they rise to power in the dying Wild West.
Just like the development cycle, everything in Red Dead 2 is designed to be slow, meaningful and impactful. A traditional fast-travel system is removed as you spend much of your time riding on horseback, forming a bond with your hoofed friend. Bonds are formed with other members of your gang though as you eat, sleep, drink and cowboy together.
There is a huge and highly detailed open world to discover on your own too, almost so much to completely detract you away from the main story. Stick with it though, and the tragedy of the first Red Dead game is dwarfed by what happens to Arthur Morgan in the second game.
Then there is the online component, which took a huge leaf out of the juggernaut that is Grand Theft Auto Online and replicated it in the world of Red Dead 2.
It will take months to fully explore everything Arthur Morgan and the Van der Lindes can do in the Wild West, and we can only think of one more game where your time is better spent.
1. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Our top spot for generation number eight and one of the most important games in the Xbox One’s quest to deliver generational game-changers goes to Geralt’s swan song, The Witcher 3.
After the middling success of The Witcher 2 on home consoles, the team at CD Projekt Red went back to the drawing board for the trilogy finale. By changing to an open world, the Witcher 3 literally opened itself up to a world of possibilities and success.
As an open world western RPG, the easiest comparison to make is with Skyrim. But the games really are night and day different, not least in the way that Geralt performs. He mainly wields two swords: a steel sword for humans and a silver sword for monsters and creatures. Any healing potions take time to drink, and spells need to be prepared in advance.
Geralt is a Witcher – a monster hunter for hire. In the Wild Hunt he is spurred into action after the reappearance of Ciri, his lover Yennefer’s adopted daughter who disappeared to escape the Wild Hunt, who are a supernatural group of warriors.
But after that, what happens next is entirely down to you; The Witcher 3 features 36 different endings depending on character outcomes, though with an average playtime of around 100 hours, we doubt many people have gotten all 36, as good as this game is.
Then there are the expansions: Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine, widely regarded as some of the best pieces of DLC. There is a reason that The Witcher 3 is receiving next-gen updates next year for the Xbox Series X|S, such is the simply exceptional game that it is.
All that and I didn’t even mention Gwent!
And that is our list of some of the generational game-changers to be found on the Xbox One. These are just our personal top 10; in our league ranking the likes of DOOM 2016 just missed out, and Nier: Automata was closer still. We also considered the likes of Rise of the Tomb Raider, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Killer Instinct which weren’t too far behind either.
Agree with us? Disagree with us? Let us know your top games in the comments and stay tuned for our coverage of the next-generation of games coming very soon!
Due to a short delay to development, this year’s Dark Pictures offering is releasing at a perfectly spooky time. This second game in the anthology focuses on witchcraft and the occult – a stark comparison to 2019 and Man of Medan’s terrifying ghost trip hallucinogenics. How does The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope stand up?
After a bus crash, four members of a college class and their professor end up in the town of Little Hope. The bus driver has all but disappeared, and there is a mysterious fog that prevents them from turning back away from the town. It all feels very Silent Hill in these opening moments.
As they try and find someone in this seemingly deserted town, each member begins to feel that things aren’t as they should be in this town. Echoes of witch trials ring through, and a few even experience flashbacks to a time when people were being hung, drowned, or worse if they were suspected of witchcraft. What is even more weird is that these flashbacks appear to show their doppelgangers as the ones being condemned to death.
To differentiate, their doppelgangers all have broad Yorkshire accents, which pleased this proud Yorkshireman no end. Laughably after the first couple of flashbacks, many references are made to how the main American cast cannot understand what these people are saying. There is even a setting in the subtitles to turn them on for the 1692 crew! Thanks, Little Hope for giving me a complex surrounding my accent.
I joke of course: it is a joy to hear my native tongue. Even if it is for a town obsessed with the occult.
As the group progresses, these flashbacks occur more often. They are always preceded by a jump scare of a ghost grabbing one of them; initially these are a highly effective scare. But repetition sets in and it gets to the point by which you can anticipate when these will occur.
Little Hope does however feature creepy little girls, and if there’s anything I’ve learnt from my Bioshock days, these are always nightmare fuel.
Just like Man of Medan, all of the main cast are hugely dislikeable, and perhaps this trait goes back to its predecessor Until Dawn. Even after a particular tense moment they are bickering amongst each other; sometimes it is a joy to get one of them killed off early.
That’s because, once again, Little Hope is a narrative-based choose-your-own-adventure affair, where every decision has an impact on proceedings. You are overseen, as always, by The Curator who cryptically guides and advises you as the player about what has been and what is to come.
As you progress, conversation responses are usually graded by a head or heart answer. And as I discovered in my first playthrough, these have far more of a bearing on character outcomes than they did in Man of Medan. Due to the nature of the story – and without giving too much away – decisions in Little Hope need to be far less selfish this time around as it isn’t just people in the immediate vicinity that can be affected.
But whilst every decision ‘can’ have an impact, Little Hope can quickly take all that away and make you play by its own rules. I wouldn’t say I was an expert by any means, but after repeat playthroughs of Until Dawn and Man of Medan there was one point in Little Hope where I knew something wasn’t quite right. Andrew – the main character played by Will Poulter – had picked up a gun and now was the time to use it against a shadowy figure approaching the group. It felt like this would have been a perfect time to use the combat button prompt to aim up the shot but, as I wasn’t totally convinced the approaching figure was an enemy, I wanted to miss the shot. Instead, Little Hope took that option away from me and took the shot for me. It turned out to be a member of my college class, and my no death run was ruined.
There are other improvements made over Man of Medan; you seem to have a bit more time to anticipate an upcoming QTE. An icon will appear giving you a few seconds to prepare yourself, whereas previously it would just appear without much time for you to react. Collectible secrets and premonitions also make a return, helping you piece together the overall narrative and get a helping hand on some tricky, life-threatening decisions for the cast.
There is also a premonition hidden away related to the next title, House of Ashes, as well as a little teaser trailer for it after the credits. Stray off the linear path and you will be rewarded.
Improvements have been made performance-wise as well, but Little Hope still suffers at times. On one occasion, Angela, the mature student, witnesses a flashback. Or at least she was supposed to, but all I got was a stutter to the end of the previous cutscene, and then her mentioning what had happened moments after. Other times, the game briefly froze for a few seconds. Thankfully though, this time around I was able to complete Little Hope in more than one sitting as my save state managed to not corrupt itself.
The excellent Movie Night and Shared Story experiences are once again both present in Little Hope. Movie Night allows up to five people – all in the same household – to play through the story and experience it together as a film, passing the controller around when it is your chosen character’s turn on screen. Then, Shared Story allows two players online to simultaneously play different sections at the same time. I would always recommend playing Shared Story with the microphone off though; not so you don’t have to hear your mate’s screams, but because you are less likely to share information between each other that may dampen the experience.
Shared Story will also reduce the overall length that Little Hope takes to complete, but even so this is a longer game than Man of Medan.
Little Hope on the Xbox One is a substantially different horror game than Man of Medan, and that is one of the beauties of The Dark Pictures Anthology. However, that does mean that gone are the tight corridors of Man of Medan, replaced by a lot of walking on empty roads and dirt paths in Little Hope. It was a tale that I personally found a lot less scary, though this could be down to familiarity of the anthology starting to creep in. It is still more than capable of producing a decent amount of scares though as the nights start to draw in.
Sports games tend to move to the wacky side in fun ways. From the great RC car football of Rocket League to the quirky ‘70s theme of Stikbold – there’s something fun in seeing a sport torn apart at the seams and stitched back together again. HyperBrawl Tournament grabs a little bit of a Stikbold, a little bit of Disc Jam and a lot of fighting to make a fun title in desperate need of more.
HyperBrawl Tournament doesn’t have much of a story but that works in its favour for the most part. Playing out rather similarly to the story of Tekken, HyperBrawl Tournament is a gathering of the universe’s greatest heroes in an almighty showdown. Partly for their own ego and partly for glory, you play any of the 12 heroes available at launch to try and take the win. Heroes are shaped by four main stats: Health, Speed, Power, and HyperCurve. We’ll come back to this after talking about the gameplay.
HyperBrawl Tournament’s base gameplay is fun and rewarding. It’s quite punchy, literally – you punch a lot in it. If you hold the ball, you can only move, pass or shoot with it. If not, you can activate your weapon for an ability, your left bumper for a special move, B for a punch and X to swap characters. As there are only two players on each side, you rarely get lost in that regard. Due to the ball carrier not being able to do any of the cool stuff, there tends to be a constant back and forth like playing FIFA without any rules. You tackle in and take them out, only to be immediately dismantled by their other player. If you do enough damage, players are knocked out and respawn back at their goal, after a few seconds of delay. This means a teammate can take the other team out while you hold the ball and prepare a powerful shot.
But the controls aren’t quite as simple as that. You can choose your weapon before a fight, and this will allow you to do special things like perform an AOE circle attack or grab the ball to bring it towards you with a grappling hook. You can grab the ball with this move and dive out of the way with the left trigger for a nice surprise shot. You also charge your left bumper move by taking damage. Depending on the stat type of your hero, this changes your stances and abilities to make you a better player for a few seconds. Most of them focus on being able to attack quickly and knockout opponents for your teammate to take advantage and score. This is where the stat types are made important: “Health” means you can take more damage and can survive a harder shot to the face if you get in the way; your “Speed” makes you move faster; your “Power” affects your shot type and damage and “HyperCurve” means you can make a great curl on the ball.
This brings us to another central mechanic of HyperBrawl Tournament. Feeling somewhat similar to the likes of Disc Jam, you can curve the ball after you’ve hit it to send it flying across the arena or just out of arm’s reach. This adds an extra layer of tactics to each attack and defence as you always have to be prepared for a rogue curve in the road. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always work perfectly. The arenas and gameplay are so arcadey that each shot bounces wildly around the arena and this means you can play a certain angle in annoying ways to get easy goals. At no point does HyperBrawl do a huge amount to limit this, which in turn leads to huge win streaks. Even online, this prevails, as the number of online opponents is very limited. The game matches you with bots if it can’t find a game and I have rarely played any matches that weren’t filled with them.
This leads to the biggest issue HyperBrawl Tournament has – its longevity. There are customization features, levels and loot boxes, sort of. This adds a level of replayability to the game but it feels hollow most of the time as there are few modes, bots are generally terrible and it’s hard to play online. AI behaviour is easy to guess and even easier to break, and it is simple to force them into a position where they just hang out in their goal. If you blast the ball hard enough, it will crash into them, knock them out and drift lazily for a score. Customization, for the most part, is rather rewarding but pointless when you have no one to show it to.
HyperBrawl Tournament on Xbox One has some of the features required to make up a great game, but not enough to stand out. Its gameplay is fun and rewarding but it is also quite stiff, with some lazy AI. It’s nice that there are progression levels and customization but it doesn’t add much to the overall experience. There is also not a large enough variety of game modes and what there is gets boring very fast. HyperBrawl Tournament is like going for a game of football with your friends, but nobody bothers to show up. Rather than wait for them, I’d prefer to go home and take my ball with me.
According to my wife, these were the three (printable) things she heard on loop as I was playing Visage, the latest horror game/torture from SadSquare Studios. I played most of this one while crawling around our sofa, barely sitting down and ready to press the ‘Home’ button at a moment’s notice.
Visage really is that good at jangling your nerves and never letting you settle. It’s a remarkable achievement; a bar that only Resident Evil, early Silent Hills and PT have ever reached, and it should be enough for most horror fans to start up their Xbox One and navigate to the Store. Bravo SadSquare Studios – you’ve done what hundreds of horror games have failed to do.
That mention of PT is a pertinent one, as SadSquare are clearly fans. Visage is the answer to whether PT could be stretched to a full fat game; a house and its grounds rather than just a corridor. As with Guillermo Del Toro’s demo, you’ll turn your camera to find that mirrors have moved, landscape paintings have lengthened, and a slithering intestine has skirted round a corner. From the subtle to the not so subtle, this house barely stands still, and it gives you no safe haven.
You are Dwayne (hur hur), home alone in your house, having not left for the past few weeks. It’s a house of tragedy, with various deaths, suicides and madnesses having befallen its owners. We hazard to call it a moment of quiet, since it’s still tense as anything, but you’ll have a chance to explore the house before finding an artefact – a key – that triggers a chapter. These centre on one of the tragic members of the family. Then things get real.
It must have been a fascinating level design challenge, as each of the different chapters plays out in the same house, with the same layout. Visage does obvious stuff, like opening locked doors, and letting you bust through areas with a sledgehammer. But it has another brilliant tool in its toolbox: this is a psychological horror as much as it is a pure horror, and the house will flex and bend with the chapter’s themes. Mirrors will suddenly appear across the house, acting as portals to alternate, Silent Hill-like versions of the house. An imaginary sewer runs beneath the house. Reality warps and twists to become horrific Escher paintings.
This is a game that has a lot of fun messing with reality, not only when shifting things around the house to mess you up, but also in creating memorable scenarios that will stick with you. The world drops away to leave you in a dark room and a single ring of mirrors. A kitchen suddenly gains sentience. A corridor falls away into pixels. SadSquare Studios clearly didn’t leave their humour at the door, as so much of Visage can even be funny, and I laughed out loud more than once. A moment with a shotgun will stick with me.
It also has one of the most effective audio designs in recent memory. It can get a bit much – even opening a drawer can release a guttural roar – but Visage does a superb job of layering rain, creaks, moans, camera clicks and radio static to make this a constant, threatening soundscape. I mean, I hated the game for it, but the number of times that the game unsettled me, exactly when I didn’t want to be unsettled, was magnificent. I’d say that the pacing could have done with some relaxed moments, but I’m a wimp.
It should be noted that Visage isn’t actually a barrage of monsters and jumpscares – just tension. All of the indicators were that the monsters would be non-stop: the superb trailer was a creature-feature, the opening text in the game says “Visage is designed to be difficult”. This last one is odd from my perspective: this isn’t actually a hard game, not in the traditional sense. There aren’t that many enemies at all, for one, and the majority are triggered by the game’s Sanity system, which punishes you for staying in the dark for too long. Keeping to light sources (more on that later) and paying attention generally saves you. Puzzles, once you know what the game wants from you, are also reasonably simple. This is a game of smoke and mirrors, and your own fears will be the greatest obstacle to getting through the game.
Actually, that’s a lie. It’s about time to raise the two major caveats with Visage, and they both make it incredibly hard to score the game. There are two design issues that could, feasibly, dwarf everything I have already written, and it will be personal taste about whether they’re debilitating.
Visage is not one for guidance and hand-holding. It’s at pains to strip out as much UI as possible and for you to focus on the game screen, rather than a game map, for example. It’s admirable, and is one of the big reasons that it gives us the willies. But that comes at an incredibly high cost. The house is littered with items and 99% of them have no game use. Still, you can pick them up and look at them. The problem is that game progress is so often based on finding key items: a slipper, a key, a tub of pills. Without any key item highlighting, Visage can be a giant game of Finders Keepers as you desperately hunt for something, anything, that will move on the game.
The same is true of ‘spotting’ the scare that processes the chapter. We found ourselves travelling most of the house before stepping into the room where the scare is, like a game of horror Russian roulette. It was tense the first few times, and tedious beyond that.
The house, too, swings between extremes. At points, you will be screaming at the game to tell you where to go, but you’ll have little to no idea. When you’re on edge and bored at the same time, it’s an odd mix. At other points, the house will have become a reality-shattered version of itself and you’ll lose all notion of where you are. The mental map gets etch-a-sketched and you lose track. About 80% of my time in Visage was trying to comprehend what the game wanted me to do next.
Then there is the clunkiness of a lot of the interactions. This is a wonderful game to look at, but to interact with it is a constant nightmare. Opening and shutting things becomes a Herculean task, as you try to maneuver your body in such a way that you’re not in the way. The inventory and item management – I’m getting the shivers just thinking about it – is bewilderingly bad. You’ll have two hands to hold things in, a personal inventory and a storage closet, and knowing which item has gone where is just the first of your problems. Moving things to your hands, between your hands, or – heaven forbid – using one item on another becomes a Mensa test. Some puzzles require you to rotate things or manipulate them in some way, and it’s like eating M&Ms with chopsticks.
A small note on the Sanity system, which too has problems. What is light and dark is more arbitrary than it needs to be, so you’re never quite certain if you’re losing sanity, staying in a status quo or regaining it. There are multiple dead ends, so sudden darkness can lead to certain death, which brings the slightly sparse autosave system into focus.
How much all of this impacts you will change on a case by case basis. We played it as a two-some, and it helped to overcome some of the handholding issues. We suspect that it’ll be a killer for less patient players.
Let’s not forget just what has been achieved here, though. Visage looks and sounds fantastic, with only substandard human faces breaking the immersion, which is presumably why SadSquare shows them as little as they can. The chapters are varied and memorable, and the scares are only occasionally cheap, poking and prodding you until you’re a nervous wreck.
You could have put ‘Silent Hill’ at the front of the title and we would have called Visage a return to form. Ultimately, this is an exercise in stretching PT to a full house, which is almost entirely successful, with masterful scares and near constant tension. Play it with friends and see them all sublimate to jelly. You’ll have to wrestle with a lack of handholding, an abysmal inventory system and your own sanity, but it’s ultimately a haunted house that’s worth spending a few nights in.
You knew about it, I knew about it, the dog even knew about it; the Mass Effect trilogy is getting a remaster and will be coming in Spring 2021 as the Mass Effect Legendary Edition.
The worst kept secret in gaming has just officially been unveiled with a short teaser trailer that features some of the classic Mass Effect characters including Garrus, Liara, Wrex and Miranda from the original trilogy. Bioware have been hard at work updating textures, models, framerates and resolutions in this highly anticipated remastering.
Details are on the short side at the moment, but we do know that the Legendary Edition will include all single-player content from across the trilogy, and DLC. This does look likely that it means there will be no multiplayer from Mass Effect 3.
The trilogy will also be optimised in 4K Ultra HD and available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, but also for the next generation Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 with additional enhancements. It is due for release in Spring 2021, but we should expect more details in the new year.
In the Bioware blog post, Casey Hudson, VP, Studio GM of Bioware, also teases that work has started on the next chapter of the Mass Effect universe. This should be taken with a pinch of salt though, as we know they are busy gearing up development on the next Dragon Age title. So, any new Mass Effect game to follow that of Mass Effect Andromeda will be a long, long way down the line.
Mass Effect fans will know that today (7th November) is known as N7 Day in reference to the series and after a multitude of leaks it is fantastic to finally see the remastering is real. And as someone who never got around to playing the third game, I will finally be able to create my own Shepherd and see the trilogy through to the conclusion. Shout out in the comments with your own memories of Mass Effect!
Even back in 1995, Full Throttle felt like an odd cousin to the zany, wisecracking graphic adventures that LucasArts were known for, like The Secret of Monkey of Island and Day of the Tentacle. Rather than playing everyone’s funny bones, project lead Tim Schafer aimed to be more cinematic: the CD-ROM had just launched, FMV sequences were possible, and LucasArts had lost money on their last few adventures. They needed something that more people would swing a leg over and ride, and Full Throttle was the dramatic bet they chose to make.
Hindsight is 20-20, and Full Throttle was never going to reverse their financial fortunes. It wasn’t quite the thigh-slapper that the audience had come to expect, and brash bikers and rock-and-roll weren’t as mainstream as Tim Schafer believed them to be (Brutal Legend would only ram home that fact). At the time, Full Throttle also received muted reviews of being too short and not funny enough. In our age of remasters, though, we have a fantastic opportunity to give it a reappraisal, as it’s one of a three-shot salvo to come to Xbox Game Pass, alongside Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango.
You play Ben, leader of a biker gang called the Polecats. For reasons that are never quite explained (and it’s refreshing that it’s not), this is a post-’something’ world where everywhere looks like Arizona, biker factions rule, and a single multinational called Corley Motors is responsible for making the world’s bikes. It feels like Mad Max, or at least the months before the world goes full-Mad Max, and it’s moody, industrial, and great.
In terms of plot, you’re decompressing in a bar when in strides Malcolm Corley, founder and CEO of Corley Motors. He’s looking to procure your protection for an upcoming shareholder meeting. You say no, but his scheming second-in-command named Ratburger kills Malcolm Corley and attempts to kill you, framing you for Malcolm’s death. You’re on the lam, your Polecats are in custody, and Ratburger is going to the shareholder meeting. He plans to shift production from motorcycles to minivans, which is just about the worst thing you can do to a biker.
To give an assessment of Full Throttle, you really need to split it in two, as it does one thing extremely well, while the other splutters a bit. On one hand you have Full Throttle the movie, which is sensational; one of the best examples of storytelling in a LucasArts game. On the other, you have Full Throttle the game, and it’s this that hits an oil slick more times than you’d like.
Let’s go for ‘Full Throttle the game’ first. In a reasonably radical move, Full Throttle only offers four verbs to use on the environment, all represented on a skull motif: you can use your hands on something, use your feet on something (mostly kick it – you’re a gruff biker after all), use your mouth on it (talk or lick, and the game has fun with that last one), and look at something. That covers most of the interactions you’d want to make anyway, as ‘use hands’ and ‘look at’ are hefty catch-alls.
You’re then chucked into a sequence of areas, but there’s really only three of note: a caravan park, an interstate, and the Corley Motors factory complex. It’s mostly traditional point-and-clicking: hovering your cursor over things, picking them up, using them elsewhere and chatting to characters to unlock both areas and items. In functional terms, Full Throttle works well, and the reduced verbs make it one of the most console-friendly of LucasArts adventures.
What surprises, returning to Full Throttle, is how little there is to do in each area. There are two to three things in each tableau that are worth interacting with, and you might come away with one solitary thing to pick up. In point-and-click terms, that’s spartan, and it robs a little of the joy from Full Throttle. Managing a full inventory and working out what goes where is one of the genre’s joys.
Puzzles have a variable hit-rate. There are some fantastic, logical sequences involving Duracell rabbits, a remote control car and a junkyard dog, but there are far too many that need trial and error or a guide. There’s a sequence in the middle of the game where you need to lose some bikers that are on your tail. To solve it, you need to detach your trailer and use it to pop some cat’s eyes from the middle of the road, even though the trailer is the last thing you’d use to do it. It’s just a bit logically scattershot, and there are plenty of other examples.
Ambitiously, Tim Schafer also drops a couple of arcade minigames in there. One is a Road Rash-style thing, where you’re looking to whack an enemy in the face before they get you. The other is a top-down demolition derby. You’d have to be a staunch LucasArts fan to defend them: they’re both pretty awful. The Road Rash minigame is unresponsive, but luckily you can brute-force it by leaning your opponent into the corner. We just wish you didn’t have to play it a dozen times or more. Unfortunately, there’s no quick way out of the demolition derby, and you’ll be nudging other cars in an inaccurate and painfully slow manner, wishing throughout that you could find the eject button.
When you add together the limited interactions in each scene, and the small number of scenes, it amounts to a lightweight graphic adventure with some frustrating bottlenecks. This is less than half of the length of The Secret of Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle, say, and it’ll be no more than a couple of nights before you get to the end.
This sounds downbeat, but the story more than makes up for the caveats. The world of Full Throttle is a testosterone-fuelled joy. We’re so used to dreary post-apocalyptic wastelands, but Full Throttle creates one where everyone’s chilled, looking good and getting by. The plot developments are worthy of a movie, and while the editing is a bit choppy, the FMV sequences retain absolutely all of their charm. Graphically it’s a bit inconsistent, but it sounds brilliant, with stellar voice-acting from Mark Hamill and Roy Conrad in particular, and a rock-and-roll soundtrack that drafts in the San Fransiscan band The Gone Jackals to give it a rockabilly edge.
It’s funny, too – more than an apocalyptic biker movie should be. The sequence involving Duracell-style bunnies is a standout, and the main character has a habit of running in a head-back, knees-up way that tickles. Characters like Mo and Malcolm Corley are memorable, and parting from them only underlines how much a Full Throttle sequel would have been welcomed.
Of the LucasArts adventures that have come to Xbox One,Full Throttle is not the first that we’d recommend. It’s too lightweight in its gameplay to be a favourite, and it takes a few ambitious punts, particularly into arcade territory, that don’t pay off. But that’s not to say that Full Throttle is running on empty: it’s better at being a movie than a game, and that movie is exhilarating, noisy and more than a little kick-ass. Since Full Throttle is now on Xbox Game Pass, that might be a drive-in that’s worth getting a ticket for.
Way, way back in 2005, a new game appeared from Rare. Now, I had been aware of Rare’s work for a good long time, having played such classics as Sabrewulf on my ZX Spectrum, and also having fallen in love with the original Killer Instinct arcade game in 1994, when I was a fresh-faced young man. So, having played the conversion of Killer Instinct on the SNES to death, the news that Rare were due to release a game for the shiny new Xbox 360 was very welcome indeed. So come with me down memory lane while I cast my mind back to a time when the world was a much shinier, much more hopeful place than the one we see today, with the elemental good times of Kameo: Elements of Power.
The first thing to say about Kameo is that it certainly took its time arriving. During its development life cycle, it was pencilled in for a grand total of four different consoles: the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube, then the original Xbox, and finally it was finalised as a launch title for the awesome new Xbox 360. The story was the usual kind of throwaway nonsense, if I’m absolutely honest, and the Big Book of Character Cliches was raided mercilessly for the narrative. Kameo is an elf, and she has to travel the world to recover her elemental powers so she can rescue her family from her outcast sister, Kalus, and the Troll King, Thorn. The tutorial/introductory level was interesting, as in it Kameo does have access to three of her elemental powers, but at the end of the level she is ejected into the outside to grow stronger and try again. And thus begins her journey.
The way that the elemental powers were implemented made things interesting. Instead of having creatures under her control (which was apparently the plan from the start, turning the game into an almost Pokemon-like experience in the early days), Kameo can instead morph into the shape of the creatures, such as a fire breathing monster who can light torches, right up to a plant-type thing that can punch enemies, using the well-known trope of violent plants. In all, Kameo has five separate powers to choose from, these being Fire, Plant, Rock, Ice and Water, and she can use two different forms of each power, making ten “Elemental Warriors” in all for her to utilise. Each of the powers is found or activated just in time for it to become useful, so while the game does have some puzzle elements built in to it, the majority of the time all you need to worry about is to think back to which power you got last, then utilise that to make progress.
I think it was fair to say that the puzzles were solved more by the application of a judicious beatdown, rather than by the utilisation of meticulously crafted logic. Each Elemental power can also be upgraded by finding fruit and giving to the Wotnot book (yes, really). These upgrades are a nice touch, but honestly I never really felt they were that necessary. Still, since when has collecting things ever been a chore in a game, eh?
Combat in Kameo was a nicely weighted affair, and had a very interesting time dilation twist built into it. As Kameo landed successive hits (or rather, as one of her alter egos did, as her abilities in the fisticuffs realm seemed to be limited to breaking crates) an on-screen meter filled up and she was able to slow down time, making fighting a lot more manageable. And boy was that lucky, as while the combat wasn’t overly taxing, especially when each enemy’s elemental weakness was worked out, there was still a lot of fighting to do. Each level kind of followed a similar kind of plan, with a roomful of baddies to deliver a good kicking to, and a “Shadow Beast” – the boss of the level – to find and defeat, usually rewarding us with a new power to use.
One thing that stood out about Kameo was the visual look, and I can imagine that way back at the launch of a new generation of hardware, it would have blown the punters away. The world was bright and vibrant, and even when I played the game again – around about 2009 if I recall correctly – it still looked amazing, with draw distances seemingly to the moon and many, many bad guys to fight. The sound was, however, a little more middle of the road, and while the tunes were pleasant enough, none have really stuck in my head from way back when. Still, having come from Tomb Raider on the PS1 to this (I include this as a testament to how far the games industry had come in 9 short years!) it really does show how the games industry has come on leaps and bounds, and again comparing Kameo to today’s offerings makes me want to go and have a little lie down.
As Kameo went on in its life cycle, they obviously released some extra downloadable content. Luckily, Rare were fairly classy about it, and had promised before release that they would add a co-op mode in for free; they were as good as their word. Other DLC packs included the obligatory costume packs, and also the Kameo Power Pack which, in addition to leaderboards, gave players new achievements to try for. The biggest surprise was the addition of new game modes, however, as these ‘Expert’ offerings made the game more challenging. Time Attack allowed co-op players to attempt to finish levels as quickly as possible, and Rune Battle would give the option for two co-op players to go about collecting as many Rune items as possible.
As time went on, Kameo: Elements of Power was re-released as part of Rare Replay, including all the DLC, and this helped bring it to a new generation of players. You could even, if you had a cloud save from the Xbox 360 version, import it onto the new shiny Xbox One, and this was another very good piece of fan service, in my opinion. It may surprise you to learn (as it did me) that a sequel was planned and in production before being dropped in favour of Rare going about developing games for Microsoft’s Kinect. A video looking at this unreleased game was included in the Rare Replay package, narrated by the concept artist for the game, Peter Hentze.
So, these are my memories of playing Kameo. How about yours? Did you play it on launch, when it was one of only a couple of games available? Did you pick it up later, or play it in Rare Replay? Let us know in the comments.
The short story form factor, whether that be in books or the episodic content of TV programmes, has had something of a rise in popularity in recent times: programmes like the Twilight Zone or Tales of the Unexpected gave the viewer unique individual stories set over half an hour, all framed in a sort of uber-universe of the strange. Stories Untold reminds of that format especially, as it comes complete with four different episodes with each one starting with its own credit sequence and logo. However, Stories Untold does a great job of making you feel comfortable with the format, before pulling the rug from underneath your feet and spinning it in the air. And without a word of a lie, I love it.
Stories Untold comes from the brains of those behind the amazing Alien Isolation and the most excellent Observation. It was first released in 2017, gaining a cult following and rave reviews. Now though it has popped up on Xbox One, suddenly released at the end of October 2020 without any fanfare or notice. And that’s a shame, as it would be crazy to see this gem get lost in the huge hype of blockbusters that are rolling out.
When you first fire up Stories Untold you will find four episodes to play in sequential order. The first episode puts you in a room with an old 80’s computer in front of you, complete with huge monitor. It isn’t long before you discover you are playing a text adventure about someone arriving at their home, left to utilise commands on screen; GO KITCHEN, LOOK AROUND, OPEN DOOR. The story tells the tale of someone exploring their old home, but things turn very meta extremely quickly. For instance, the text adventure you are playing may mention “a door opens behind you”, then in the actual room you are in, the sound of a door opening behind you is heard, sending shivers down your spine.
The second episode goes off in a completely different direction, whereby you find yourself in a lab taking part in an experiment. There is a monitor filled with instructions of the experiment asking you to, for instance, operate the X-Ray Machine. You then can look deep into the experiment itself via some scientific-looking machines that you have to operate in order to complete specific tasks in the correct order. Thankfully there is a manual in place, letting you use it as a guide if you get stuck, but the overriding feel is that once again things aren’t what they seem to be.
The third episode takes place in the middle of the Arctic, in what seems to be a weather station; this time you’ll be working a radio signal and making use of old code words that need to be added into a computer. For reference, it is an old-fashioned microfiche that you need to read, all in order to find clues for the codes that need to be added. As this episode progresses the world surrounding the weather station gets spooky, and strange things happen once more. In the final episode… actually, I’m not going to say any more. All you need to know is that it’s brilliantly done and has moments of excellence like those I’ve never experienced in a game before.
Stories Untold has a great visual style, one that is capable of dealing with the ordinary and switching to the unusual in the blink of an eye. It ensures that you will constantly question what is both real and fiction, all through the events that happen in front of your eyes. There is an attention to detail found in all the scenes, especially in the machines and equipment, that is perfectly designed and utterly accurate. The sound design is also outstanding, pretty much from the start to finish with an amazing score and voice-over that creates atmosphere and tension throughout.
Stories Untold is a game that has surprised me with every moment, from the change in gameplay, to the narrative reveals to looking through a microfiche again for the first time since 1989. All four episodes are very different in their approach and gaming style, but all link together perfectly, even if it will require you to play through the entirety of the game in order to fully understand why. If I had one criticism to make, and it’s hard to poke holes in a brilliant game, but it would be on the switch and translation from PC to Xbox; there are moments where the cursor isn’t as accurate as a mouse would be, failing to register clicks.
Stories Untold on Xbox One should be applauded. It’s a masterclass in storytelling and an experimental success when it comes to how you find yourself engaging with gameplay and game styles all in one package. It will turn your head inside out, but it will also leave you thinking about what has happened long after you finish. It’s helped that it also comes in at an extremely cheap price point.
The Isle of Wight is a magical place and somewhere great to visit and spend a holiday; I once capsized in a canoe there and haven’t got over the trauma. It also boasts its own railway line, one that has been around since 1864 – the Island line – which operates between Ryde and Shanklin. It also has the best train stop in the UK, literally at the end of Ryde pier itself with the ocean all around you. So it’s a no-brainer that Train Sim World 2 has released – as part of many DLC packages – one that whisks us off to the island, with a showcase route. Everyone wants a day out by the sea, don’t they?
We reviewed Train Sim World 2 back in September 2020 and thoroughly enjoyed the features, tracks, and trains on offer. Since that time the team at Dovetail Games have released a host of new content, with this one being one of the most intriguing.
What you get for your buck with the IOW Ryde – Shanklin DLC in Train Sim World 2 is the chance to travel and drive a train along this historical, and slightly unusual, track right from Shanklin to the top of the Ryde pier. The stock being used is original 1938 London Underground stock, re-modified in order to be used on the track since 1989, used here because the standard mainline stock used wouldn’t fit through the Ryde tunnel. So one of the first things you notice as you begin the tutorial is how weird and small the train looks when it’s parked in the station, and because the platforms are higher it looks like you are towering over the train before you get in there to drive it.
The route that Train Sim World 2 focuses its attention on is an 8.5-mile length of track featuring the countryside and the seaside town of Ryde. It takes about 20 minutes to complete the route in a one way direction, as you take in everything the Isle of Wight has to offer. It comes with all the usual detail you expect from the Dovetail team, along with quite a detailed tutorial section that shows you how the train works and what order you need to action things to get the thing moving correctly. Even though I’ve spent many an hour with the original game and now Train Sim World 2, I still have trouble with this, making the mistake of skipping over instructions thinking I know best. Of course, I don’t. It’s not helped by the fact that this IOW offering features quite an old-fashioned piece of stock which is hard to get used to after driving the flashy German trains that take pride of place in the main game. Thankfully you’ll get used to it, and will quite quickly learn to love the old-school elements to it, like a madly oversized handbrake that you have to pull down after you park the train.
Included in the Ryde – Shanklin DLC are five scenarios to try out – basically the 20-minute route starting from different stations with a variety of route tasks. These are all good, but aren’t essential, and you’ll have no issue just driving the route on the timetable – just be aware that this does get a bit too repetitive after a while. There are lots of little secret collectibles to find though, things like ice-cream stands, cameras, and tickets to hunt throughout all the locations. And of course, if the driving gets too much you can always pop into the livery editor or pretend that you’re a passenger, staring out of the window if that’s your thing.
Visually, and as you’d expect to hear Train Sim World 2 looks good, and this Isle of Wight addition doesn’t change anything. The rolling stock and outside locations look good and are detailed throughout, but I still have a little problem with the frequency of passengers and the train platform being nearly empty. If anything it feels a little worse in this DLC; there are usually passengers that instead of wanting to hop aboard my train are happy to just stare mournfully into the distance on the platform. Expect all the usual bells, whistles and noises in the audio department though.
Train Sim World 2: Isle of Wight: Ryde – Shanklin on Xbox One is a piece of DLC that the Train Sim World enthusiasts will lap up. It features an iconic track and great piece of rolling stock that will have the fans salivating. It’s a pretty route too, especially the Ryde pier section that rolls along the seafront. I do however find that the more I play this game, the lack of an upgrade in passenger design and AI becomes all the more concerning, and I feel that Dovetail would do well to examine this issue as the franchise progresses. Possibly the price is a tad high for what you are getting here too, especially taking into account the amount of content and length of the route. But if you are one of the many who loves the base game, then this is once again going to be for you. For now though I’m off to get an ice cream and have a paddle in Ryde.
