Featured Reviews

Resident Evil Revelations 2 was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. The last episode was released on March 17, 2015 and the complete season is available for $24.99 on Xbox One. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

Alas
We’ve finally reached the end of the crossroads, and it’s been a long journey. You can find reviews of individual episodes at the Resident Evil Revelations 2 hub, which gives finer details on each leg of the campaign. If I were to score to just the campaign, it would be “Try It.” The campaign is somewhat short but fair at its current price tag, and it has a bunch of interesting concepts filled with exciting highs and lows — and a few other concepts that just didn’t work very well. It is not, however, the only gameplay option available.

Resident Evil Revelations 2‘s Raid mode is an arcade-like experience featuring players hunting down hordes of enemies in an arena-like setting while trying to survive and ultimately reach a goal. Players level up from killing enemies, which allows drops of higher level weapons and weapon parts and gives skill points to upgrade perks that increase character durability. It’s similar to a role-playing game in which you play to see your character grow stronger, tackle harder levels, progress forward and hopefully beat the toughest challenges. Raid mode is addicting to play through and features 15 playable characters (two are DLC characters and one is unlockable from an extra episode) and six different weapon types with multiple weapons in each category. I’ve put over 200+ hours into it, which is much more time than I spent on the campaign. Raid is not without its faults, however, as you’ll find out below.

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Stealth Inc. 2: A Game of Clones was developed by Carbon and published by Curve Digital. It was released on April 3, 2015 for $14.99. A copy was provided by Curve Digital for review purposes.

One of the most unique things about XBLA Fans is our rating system, which encourages reviewers like me to rate games based on a simple “Buy, Try or Skip” scale. Although this can occasionally make our jobs more difficult, I believe that the system means that the written content of our reviews becomes ever more important in getting the message across about how a game plays.

With this in mind, there has perhaps never been a game more deserving of our “Try It” rating than Stealth Inc. 2: A Game of Clones. This is a game that riffs heavily on other roguelike and metroidvania games (not to mention the extremely popular Portal) but also offers its own brand of gameplay and humour across a very expansive package. Stealth Inc. 2 is likely to attract a number of diehard stealth fans, but the steep learning curve and a few minor issues might make casual gamers think twice.

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The journey of a little girl and her teddy bear.. sorta.
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Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast and Furious was developed by Playground Games and published by Microsoft Studios on Xbox One and Xbox 360. It was released March 22, 2015 for free and will remain free until April 10, 2015 when it will begin costing $10.

When I first heard about Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast and Furious I was blown away by the fact that the power of advertising had reached this point. A limited-time free game to promote both an upcoming movie and a six-month-old game was completely mind boggling to me. But the sheer brute force of advertising that is apparent is actually quite irrelevant. All that really matters was if Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast and Furious was any good. And to be blunt, my mind was quickly put to ease about the game’s quality and soon focused on the task on hand: finishing sets of races to unlock the next new and shiny car.

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Resident Evil Revelations 2: The Struggle was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. It was released on March 17, 2015 for $4.99. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

The Struggle is a side story that bridges the gap between the end of Claire’s campaign and the end of Barry’s campaign and features Moira Burton and a character who was introduced in Episode 3 . As such, for continuity purposes, this episode should not be played until after finishing the main game.

The goal of the extra episodes seems to be to provide an alternative gameplay experience to the original campaign, and The Struggle does not shy away from that. About two minutes into playing The Struggle, I was already dubbing it “Moira Gear Solid 3,” as it contains small animal hunting for rations as well as stealth sections. After a hunting segment, multiple battles take place that function remarkably similar to Revelations 2‘s Raid mode only with the frailty of using a campaign character.

Is this extra episode worth playing?

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Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty was developed by Just Add Water and published by Oddworld Inhabitants. It was released on March 27, 2015 for $19.99. A copy was provided for review purposes.

It’s a funny thing, nostalgia. Only last week I was preparing to write my review of the excellent Shiftlings and likening it to the original PlayStation One Abe’s Oddysee and now, here I am, reviewing the actual remake of that very same game. Unbelievably, the existence and imminent release of Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty had completely bypassed me up until last week, so it’s been especially satisfying to experience it alongside a modern peer.

The good news is that because New ‘n’ Tasty is a ground-up remake of the 1997 PlayStation original, it looks absolutely fantastic running on next gen hardware. More importantly, it retains the clumsy, deliberate weight that epitomises the games titular character, Abe, and adds so much to the way that the game plays. People often say that you should be careful what you wish for, so let’s find out if New ‘n’ Tasty lives up to both the expectation set by the original, and the demands of an increasingly picky modern audience.

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Resident Evil Revelations 2: Metamorphosis was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. It was released on March 17, 2015 for $5.99. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

Many elements that contributed to the excitement of the first three episodes are missing and players may be left with a strange sense of both satisfaction and disappointment.

Claire’s campaign starts off after the climactic boss fight of Episode 3: Judgment in the middle of the tower nearing the top. Little did I know, the boss fight was the coup de grâce to Claire’s adventures. Claire’s campaign is very short with the top time on Xbox One clocked in at 6 minutes 44 seconds as of time of writing. The one major scene is incredibly anti-climactic with no player interaction at all. It feels like the player went on a great big adventure with Claire for nothing. With brief puzzles thrown in, less than double digit enemy count and players playing most of the episode with a countdown timer, there isn’t much positive about this segment other than at least its short to replay. I can understand not putting in two major bosses in one episode or starting an episode with a major boss fight but one can wonder if the episodes could have been segmented better.

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Game of Thrones Episode 3: The Sword in the Darkness was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Telltale Games. It was released March 25, 2015 for $4.99. A copy was provided by Telltale for review purposes.

Where Episode 1 and Episode 2 of Telltale Games’ Game of Thrones adaptation gave us a slow but intriguing insight into what the series might have in store for us, Episode 3: The Sword in the Darkness is somewhat lacking in the same kind of peril, intrigue and action that fans of the epic novels have come to expect.

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Tales from the Borderlands: Atlas Mugged developed by Telltale Games and published on Xbox 360 and Xbox One by 2k Games. It was released March 18, 2015 for $4.99. A copy was provided by Telltale for review purposes.

Atlas Mugged happens to be a big milestone for Telltale Games: this is their 100th episode across all series.

Atlas Mugged shows that Tales from the Borderlands is here to stay by continuing a precedent of uber-awesomeness. It delivers more great performances, more laugh-out-loud moments, more crazy action sequences and more Loaderbot. It’s more Tales from the Borderlands, and boy is that a wonderful thing.

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Ziggurat was developed and published by Milkstone Studios on Xbox One. It will be released on March 20, 2015 for $14.99. A copy was provided by Milkstone Studios for review purposes.

Ziggurat is best described as a Heretic style rouge-like first person dungeon crawler. That is certainly a mouthful of genres all stacked together, but the experience is a unique mix. Like most Rogue-like games, you are going to die many times in a series of trial an error encounters, which is exactly as the game intends. In Ziggurat each time you die, you are generally given a few cards that will be able to be found in your following adventures. Ziggurat features a number of various unlockable characters and items, all of which are displayed on cards you gain as you play.

The game itself plays like a mix between Heretic, Doom, and Diablo. There are various rooms to traverse, and each room contains a chance to battle either monsters, overcome traps, or partake in jumping puzzles. The creatures drop mana, life, and experience, all which are needed to further progress your hero. Generally, loot is found at the end of a large encounter or set of traps, and often after boss fights. Each level has a similar formula of many rooms with encounters, a room with a key to the boss portal, and then of course a boss fight. The difficulty increases as you progress through each level, and eventually you can beat the game with one final boss fight.

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