Xbox 360 Reviews

The Fancy Pants Adventures Review

Side-scrolling action games seem to be a staple on the Xbox
Live Marketplace. From Contra to Earthworm Jim to even original titles like
Alien Hominoid, the marketplace is filled with them. It seems as if there is a
new one every month, and this month it’s The Fancy Pants Adventures’ turn. Is
Fancy Pants Adventures just another side-scroller that will be thrown by the
wayside or can it be something that requires your immediate download?

The Fancy Pants Adventures is based off the flash game
released by Brad Borne, which I had never played until starting my review of
its XBLA counterpart. One thing that definitely carried over into the new Xbox
Live version of Fancy Pants is the cartoon look that adds a very unique visual
style to the game. It has a recently hand drawn look, but not in a bad way.
Colors pop and more importantly, the animations are fantastic. Watching Fancy
Pants do backflips and then transition into a quick sprint up a winding loop
can drop your jaw in a heartbeat.

Yar’s Revenge Review

It’s not
very often that I’ve never heard of an old game like Yar’s Revenge. A remake of
the original game for the Atari 2600, this iteration bears little resemblance
to the original though. While we do have modern graphics and controls to thank
for that, the game itself plays very differently. Yar’s Revenge is a very
simple twin-stick shooter, however, you’re not viewing everything from a fixed
angle like in most games of this type. Instead, the camera is placed behind you
as you fly through the levels, constantly switching from one viewpoint to the
other. While the standards set by this type of game aren’t incredibly high,
Yars Revenge does virtually nothing to add to the overall experience provided
by this type of game.

Let’s start
with the story, the titular Yar is now some sort of female warrior wearing a
pretty cool looking suit of power armour. The entire story is delivered through
silent, picture scrolling cut scenes that fall flat the minute they begin. The
lack of any voice talent is baffling here, due to how hollow the plot is
anyway, this comes across as being incredibly lazy. You battle your way through
six levels in the campaign, all of which can be played cooperatively and have
several modes of difficulty.

Stacking: The Lost Hobo King DLC Review

DLC in games can range from a brilliant add on to something completely unneeded, which can even occasionally tarnish a bit of the original games reputation. If you don’t believe me, just ask Mass Effect or Assassins Creed 2. In most of those cases, the DLC is released mere months or even weeks after the original’s release which seemingly means the developer was crafting the DLC while also doing some work on the full game, and that’s one warning sign that the upcoming DLC will not be up to snuff with its full game brethren. Stacking, the glorious Xbox Live Arcade Game released back in early February, has received its first piece of DLC, titled The Lost Hobo King. Can The Lost Hobo King avoid all the previous demerits I mentioned about early DLC? Or will it be just another forgotten piece of content left for dead on the Xbox Live Marketplace?

Dynasty Warriors 7 (Xbox 360) Review

Another year means another Dynasty Warriors game.  I have to admit I was kind of excited to see this coming out.  I was hoping that the team at Koei would be able to put together a great Dynasty Warriors package since they have had time to craft their in-game engine to take full support of the Xbox 360.  Were my expectations too high or did Koei hit it out of the park? 

The Dynasty Warriors 7 story takes place after the fall of the Han Dynasty where the Three Kingdoms are fighting against the Chinese Emperor.  This results in huge battles that span across countries in an attempt to overthrow the opposition.  The story gets confusing and is really hard to follow to a certain point.  If you are playing a Dynasty Warriors game, there is a good chance you are not playing it for the story.  You will probably end up skipping most of the little story to begin with.  The story seems to be just like another Dynasty Warriors game, so there is nothing new or interesting about it.

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile Review

It’s been about four years since Microsoft announced the winners of its first “Dream-Build-Play” competition, with the intention of promoting the XNA developer tools that have been the backbone of the Indie Games area of Xbox Live. If you take a look at the Xbox Live Arcade releases in mid-2007, it’s easy to see why the prospect of indie games, let alone any original game, was extremely exciting.

While two titles were awarded the grand prize of $10,000 and a spot for their game on Xbox Live Arcade, not many people remember Blazing Birds, but there was a lot of buzz, and still a lot of love, for The Dishwasher.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters (Xbox 360) Review

Even before cracking open the box for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12, you know that EA Sports wants to make it crystal clear that this is essentially The Masters: The Video Game. They’re right to brag since this is the first time you can play a virtual round of golf at Augusta National. In fact for the majority of us, it will be the only way we’ll ever do so.

For those not savvy with real golf, bringing The Masters to this series is the equivalent to adding the Super Bowl to Madden NFL Football if it never before appeared in the franchise. The fact that there is so much more to this year’s installment than The Masters makes Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 the most excited I’ve been about the game in almost half a decade.

WWE All Stars (Xbox 360) Review

The WWE Smackdown! vs. Raw series has always been a very technical, controls focused game. This has resulted in many non-hardcore wrestling fans being put off by the inaccessibility of the franchise. THQ San Diego (comprised mostly of people who worked on TNA Impact’s video game) and Yukes have teamed up together to rectify that problem with their arcade style fighting game,WWE All Stars. All Stars features legends and newer wrestlers, and attempts to combine them in a way that sucks in the causal wrestling fan, but also the fan that has been watching since Hulkamania started running wild in the ‘80s. But is WWE All Stars just another failed attempt to try and please everyone? Or is it something that will stay in your Xbox 360 for days?

WWE All Stars’ visuals are one of the more striking things in the game. The characters look like the old action figures we all used to play with as kids (and eventually rip apart), they’re obscenely muscular and everyone’s face looks like they were ran over by a steam roller. In WWE All Stars though, this is not a bad thing. It sets up the arcade style feel really well and makes you appreciate the out of control moves even more. Apart from that, all the stages look really nice and the vibrant color palate makes the game very appealing and fresh to the eyes.

Swarm Review

Describing
Swarm by its core mechanics would leave most people rather puzzled. The
game takes very clear inspirations from the Lemmings titles, in that you
control a group of creatures that act as a single unit and you have to make use
of their abilities to make it to the end of the levels. The similarities end
there, however. The Swarm controls are far more dynamic and you are not limited
to the number you start with. There’s virtually no narrative to speak of in
Swarm; this is a game that is all about the gameplay, which offers up more
depth than you might initially think.

Homefront (Xbox 360) Review

War on American soil is a petrifying thing, especially for Americans. Because of this, that topic is rarely touched upon in gaming which is a disappointing fact as it is an interesting concept that can evoke strong emotions from many different kinds of gamers. And when it has been touched on, such as in Turning Point: Fall of Liberty and Modern Warfare 2, it’s either not taken seriously enough or in Turning Point’s case, everything about it is broken. Will Homefront be another game to take that faithful war on US soil risk and fail at it? Or can it finally break that very frustrating mold established by past games?

In Homefront, you’re thrust into a chaos ravaged war where North Korea seems to own almost everything and gas prices are rising to around 20 dollars a gallon. This along with the rest of the premise of the game (North Korea invades US, Kim Jong Ill dies, North Korea takes over Japan, etc) is established before you start playing the game in a very engaging opening video. It shows all live action situations such as Hilary Clinton speaking on North Korea, a mad redneck yelling “the only good communist, is a dead communist” (in a rather hilarious fashion might I add), among other things. Thankfully it doesn’t look too silly and manages to make you quickly afraid of both North Korea and of what will come of the United States.

Halo Reach Defiant Map Pack Review

Well it is official; the Defiant Map Pack is the last hurrah
for Bungie’s involvement in the Halo series. They officially have moved on to
Activision and have fulfilled all of their contractual obligations of
supporting Reach. That being said Bungie’s involvement in this map pack is
minimal with the majority of the work being done by Certain Affinity under the
supervision of 343 Studios, the internal Microsoft studio that will now steer
the Halo franchise. The results are surprising and offer perhaps some of the
best maps available thus far for the shooter.