XBox One Reviews

At the beginning of “The Last Campfire,” I had a nagging sense of deja vu. The main character — Ember — looks like he’d belong in the 2012 indie megahit “Journey,” while the art style, storybook narration and music feel like an indie game playbook.   Cutesy artwork; bright colors; melancholy story; understated soundtrack; mysterious narrative; and so-on. In some ways, it’s hard to believe this game comes from the same studio that created No Man’s Sky and Joe Danger.…

Back when the Summer Game Fest Demo Event was going on with Xbox, I had a hard time keeping up with what was being offered. Part of it was pure laziness, part of it was I really didn’t know where to begin considering all of the demos available for a short period of time. So I reached out to my audience and said, alright folks pick out a bunch of games and I will play through them and stream them.…

The remake of the first two Tony Hawk Pro Skater games — recently released on Xbox One and PS4 — continues the recent Activision trend of stellar updates of classic games from the 1990s. This package, more than any remake or remaster in recent memory, speaks almost directly to me. The original games were among my favorites on the original PlayStation.   Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 perfectly captures the memories and feelings of playing the originals. The visuals are…

Who knew that a TV series following gangsters with Brummy accents could have such selling power? Birmingham has become the unlikely setting of Peaky Blinders, one of TV’s most popular British shows, giving our second city a focus outside the meat market and that funny shaped shopping centre. It only makes sense that a game was going to follow, and Mastermind has come along to fill that gap. What you end up with is a title that suits its source…

Released yesterday, Marvel's Avengers is, surprisingly, the first big-budget Avengers game available on PC and current-gen consoles. Despite the overwhelming success of Marvel's movies and TV shows in the last 12 years (since 2008's Iron Man re-ignited their franchise), their heroes have been noticeably absent on the gaming scene. Other than some mobile games and the latest installment of the always enjoyable Marvel Ultimate Alliance series, fans have been left waiting for a triple-A Avenger's title for almost a decade. Now, Marvel's Avengers is here and it's ...

Once upon a time there were two mischievous little goblins. They worked tirelessly to help the beautiful princess keep her hideaway in the woods liveable and together they were hard-up but happy. Everything felt almost like a fairy tale… until it got very real. Tell Me Why is the story of what happens after once upon a time, and of the dangers of romanticizing the past. People will talk a lot about Tell Me Why’s transgender main character, Tyler, and…

What do you get when you take Harvest Moon, take out all the RPG elements, add some really simple puzzles and then charge £17 for it? Well, you get Harvest Moon: Mad Dash, and you might well wish you hadn’t. Here is a game that’s almost entirely the opposite of what Harvest Moon is all about, but with the name splashed all over it and the familiar sprites front and centre. It’ll almost make growing vegetables seem a chore, if…

Golf, I would propose, is the real-life sport best-suited to translate into a video game. The sport’s electronic history dates back more than 40 years, and has had its share of highs and lows. The latest simulation golf game, PGA Tour 2K21, is unequivocally one of the best representations of playing a round of golf. It’s also a game more than seven years and four games in-the-making. Developer HB Studios released its first The Golf Club game in 2014, and…

Once upon a time, games were made to work as well as possible, and any janky physics or annoying glitches were the result of mistakes or oversights by developers. Today, as with Brunch Club, janky physics and annoying glitches are the game. Apparently it’s fun. We’ve seen it time and time again. Goat Simulator and Surgeon Simulator put their awfulness front and centre. The only reason to buy into it is the memes. Brunch Club isn’t that bad, but it’s…

Finally, the answer to the question “Do you have Battletoads?” is an emphatic “Yes!”, at least if you have an Xbox One (or PC) and subscribe to Gamepass (which…c’mon man. If you’ve got an Xbox One, you should have Gamepass).   Anywho: 26 years after the franchise last appeared in the arcades, and 27 years after the last console release, the Battletoads have returned to kick some tail. The game tries to be a lot of different things, and mostly…