9 years ago
Project Root review (Xbox One)
Project Root was developed by OPQAM and published by Reverb Publishing on Xbox One. It will release on April 28, 2015 for $9.99. A copy was provided by Reverb Publishing for review purposes.
Shoot-em-ups are one of my favorite pastimes. There is an odd sense of satisfaction from seeing bullets fly by your ship (or equal equivalent) while shooting your own back and trying to survive. Failure occurs often, there is a thrill in seeing how long you’ll last before dying. In the old days, you’d coin feed an arcade machine until you (eventually) beat it. Nowadays, most shmups have reached niche status and rarely see support in the retail market. For every Deathsmiles or Akai Katana that sees a localization, there is another title like Eschatos and Ginga Force that fans hope lucks out with a region-free Japanese release. Occasionally, we saw XBLA shmup releases such as Triggerheart Exelica and Guwange, which are compact experiences. Project Root is one of the first shmups to reach the Xbox One and try something different: free roaming. As a fan of the genre and sub-genres like bullet hells, I was excited to try it.
Project Root can be fun. It really can be. However, the amount of time and effort to create that opportunity far exceeds the benefit. The game relies heavily on the player upgrading their ship to succeed, yet the experience system to level up for upgrades is atrocious. A majority of your experience will come from a first-time level completion bonus. If you can’t beat a level, you’re in for a miserable time. As is typical for progression systems, the other way to gain XP is to gradually fill the experience bar by killing enemies. The rate of gain, however, is slow, especially on the first few levels where you need it most. It takes one to two hours to level up once via killing enemies, and all of that effort is for a modicum of XP; it may not even be enough for the upgrade you’re pining for. Tack on having zero checkpoints and it becomes a frustrating sortie of trial and error. Adding salt to the wound, upgrades and progress do not carry over to other difficulties, so all of your hard work doesn’t matter if you want to try something harder or cruise through something easier. Outside of free roam, Project Root does nothing new or exciting to add to the genre. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone outside of the absolute diehard shmup fans that must have every shmup game.
9 years ago
Aaru’s Awakening review (Xbox One)
Aaru’s Awakening was developed and published by Lumenox on Xbox One. It was released on April 21, 2015 for $14.99. A copy was provided by Lumenox for review purposes.
Despite having cleared every level and obtaining all gold medal times in a day, a strange sense of self-doubt looms about my opinions on Aaru’s Awakening. Indeed, this title contains some fantastic features and tries a few things differently from many other games on the market. However, Aaru’s Awakening holds questionable design choices that have left me disgusted and passively angry. After all the trials and tribulations, I’m fed up with this game. As a platforming experience, this title falls somewhere between too difficult for casual play but easy enough for enthusiasts.
9 years ago
Infinity Runner review (Xbox One)
Infinity Runner was developed and published by Wales Interactive on Xbox One. It was released on April 22, 2015 for $6.99. A copy was provided by Wales Interactive for review purposes.
Is it possible to hate a game that you really enjoyed playing? Infinity Runner makes the case for that paradox. The production value is pretty awful, the difficulty level is ridiculously frustrating and it doesn’t add anything new to the genre, but I still enjoyed my time with the game.
Infinity Runner is an endless runner like the games you see on smartphones such as the mega-popular Temple Run. You’re constantly running forward, and the controls are limited to strafing side to side, jumping and sliding. There’s a few new ideas here, but otherwise it’s basically like a smartphone game on a console, with only slightly better graphics.
9 years ago
Goat Simulator review (Xbox One)
Goat Simulator was developed and published by Coffee Stain Studios and Double Eleven on Xbox One and Xbox 360. It was released on April 17, 2015 for $9.99. An Xbox One copy was provided by Coffee Stain Studios and Double Eleven for review purposes.
One might look at Goat Simulator and wonder why on Earth they would want to play a game as a goat. After all, it seems like a rather mundane life, filled a lot of grass eating and standing around, but the goat’s life in Goat Simulator is anything but mundane. I found myself attending rooftop parties, riding roller coasters and getting into fights all while laughing hysterically at the ridiculous bugs physics that surrounded me. After spending a day in the life of a goat I was asking myself if I could somehow become a goat in the real world because clearly goats are having way more fun than humans.
9 years ago
State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition review (Xbox One)
State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition review (Xbox One) State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition was developed by Undead Labs and published by Microsoft Studios. It is scheduled for release on April 28 and will cost $30 for new players or $20 for those owners of State of Decay on Xbox 360. A copy was provided by Undead Labs for review purposes.
Anyone who reads XBLA Fans’ reviews regularly will know that many of the games we cover are remakes, remasters and re-releases. They come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from somewhat rushed, cynical cash-cows, to incredibly rewarding nuts-and-bolts reduxes like Oddworld: New ‘n Tasty.
As a big fan of the original State of Decay, you can imagine how intrigued I was to see how this particular remake panned out. State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition (YOSE) exists between the two extremes of remakes, with a tempting value proposition aimed at both new and returning players, yet it delivers almost nothing new or revolutionary.
9 years ago
We Are Doomed review (Xbox One)
We Are Doomed was developed and published by Vertex Pop on Xbox One. It was released on April 17, 2015 for $9.99. A copy was provided by Vertex Pop for review purposes.
Do you love the Geometry Wars series but just wish there was less to do? Well, then you’re in luck! We Are Doomed takes the same twin-stick shooter formula, the same polygonal graphics, the same wild visual effects, the same electronic style soundtrack, the same multiplier score system and adds…well, nothing really. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun.
In We Are Doomed, you pilot a little polygon ship around a dark playing field with the left stick, while blasting away other geometric shapes with the right stick. This formula has become a genre unto itself ever since Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved released on Xbox Live Arcade in 2005 (although the genre really goes all the way back to the arcades of the ’80s). It’s very fun and pretty addictive. But with so many twin-stick entries in recent years, these games really need some original ideas to stick out from the crowd.
9 years ago
Tower of Guns review (Xbox One)
Tower of Guns was developed by Grip Games and Terrible Posture Games and published by Grip Games on Xbox One. It was released on April 9, 2015 for $14.99. A copy was provided by Grip Games for review purposes.
Tower of Guns is another in a series of recent roguelike games to reach the Xbox One via the ID@Xbox program. At first glance, it’s is a throwback to old school first-person shooters in both design and gameplay. While unexciting to start with, Tower of Guns grows on the player with the strange charm of its story mode and the straightforwardness of its objective. After that, it will make you rage. Roguelike games tend to spawn enemy and room patterns that will eventually kill the player in brutal manners. In some games, defeat can be deflating and cause the player to not want to play again. Meanwhile, Tower of Guns is a fantastic game for players who refuse to lose and find motivation in trying until they win. Even if you lose, progress is made toward unlocking new guns and new perks to use for future attempts to finally beat the tower. It’s a win/win for all (not a guarantee). So what do I like about the title? Take a look below.
9 years ago
R.B.I. Baseball 15 review (Xbox One)
R.B.I. Baseball 15 was developed and published by MLB.com. It was released on the Xbox One on April 1, 2015 and is priced at $19.99. A review code was provided by Major League Baseball.
When MLB.com decided to bring back the classic R.B.I. Baseball series, the developer had a decision to go one of two ways. They could have swung for the fences and attempted to hit a home run by building a game that would rival The Show and really showcased the product that MLB.com represents. With its first rendition in R.B.I. Baseball 14, Major League Baseball was caught looking at a called third strike. In other words, MLB.com just kept alive the horrors baseball fans on Xbox systems had come to expect thanks to the 2K series of games.
Last week, MLB.com released its second attempt at bringing baseball back to Xbox users with R.B.I. Baseball 15. With Opening Day upon us, and just like Cubs fans before the season starts, all Xbox gamers could do was hope that MLB.com would release a game at least decent enough to be called a “single.”
9 years ago
Resident Evil Revelations 2 review (Xbox One)
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.
9 years ago
Stealth Inc. 2: A Game of Clones review (Xbox One)
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. 2Â 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.