Poker fans have been waiting for Texas Hold 'em on Xbox Live Arcade for months... and this is what we get? As long as you're chatting and betting with other human beings, Texas Hold 'em works, at least until someone loses. If you play a tournament, there's no "railbird" option - once you're out of chips, you're kicked out of the room, so you can't watch to see who wins. So much for social conversation. Even when playing with other people, the computer takes its time moving the action around the
Last year, Madden glitzed its way onto next-gen platforms with sparkling graphics - lifelike stadiums, impeccable players models, feckless animations and solid gameplay. But the extras that current-gen users took for granted were missing. This year, that's all changed - but not for the better. The gameplay is better than ever, but the Superstar mode isn't properly executed and the minigames don't have the same oomph.
In fact, one of the game's greatest improvements spans all generations of
We had such high hopes for Ninety-Nine Nights, but sadly, this game bores us on an unacceptable number of levels. A tedious slog through an admittedly amazing number of on-screen foes, Ninety-Nine Nights lacks anything in the way of innovation or inspired design. Instead, you get a veritable Jessica Simpson of gameplay - a completely vacuous, albeit staggeringly beautiful
Most of the Xbox Live Arcade titles this summer are simply updates of classic arcade games... with one amazingly intriguing black sheep, Cloning Clyde. More than just a rehash of an old fashioned concept, Cloning Clyde mixes clever yet silly humor with entertaining puzzles that grow in complexity as the game progresses. Playing as the somewhat stupid Clyde, you must navigate your way through a perilous cloning lab using machinery that you are undoubtedly not qualified to operate.
See, Clyde
A true coin-op classic, Pac-Man ushered in the wave of non-shooting "cute" games in 1980 and gets credit as gaming's first pop-culture phenomenon. That's great, he's historically important - but do you still want to hang out with him?
Maybe not. Pac-Man is groundbreaking but ultimately pretty boring. As you race around gobbling dots, the maze never changes; only the speed of the monsters, the length of their vulnerability and the routes they take deviate between stages. The game also suffers
Is Dead Rising a zombie game, or a GTA-esque, sandbox-style beat ‘em up with wall-to-wall undead, or a mash up of dozens of different gameplay styles that are more than the sum of their parts? You would do the game right to call it pretty much all of the above. But one thing that Dead Rising isn't is a mere open-world zombie-killing simulator. That's apparent in its highly structured storyline which remains wonderfully true to every single serious-toned zombie flick that George Romero
Tuesday 8 August 2006
Screwing the lids on bottles of pop, bomb disposal and putting little boxes in bigger boxes: there are many jobs that we rely on robots to do for us, tasks too dull, dangerous or repetitive for fleshy humans to bother with.But look! Here comes Chromehounds to show us exactly how dull things can get and how boring it can be when you've got metal skin and cameras for eyes.
It should be great. It should be 60-foot towering titans blasting buildings and tearing across a
Ken, Ryu, Chun-Li and the rest of the World Warriors established fighting games in the early 90s, and with the release of Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting on Xbox Live Arcade, they're back to stir up more trouble. Not that they had to do much to attract attention. For whatever reason, the fanbase has been frothing for a chance to play old-school SFII on Xbox 360, which is probably as big a compliment for Street Fighter II as it is an insult for the glitzier Dead or Alive 4. Those fans will be
No discussion: Galaga is one of the best space shooters the golden arcade age ever produced. There's almost no need to review it now that it's on Xbox Live Arcade, right? Instant classic plus reissue equals massive score? Not so fast. There's something missing that makes this oldie a little less of a goodie.
The core gameplay still gets our adrenaline pumping. Insectoid aliens swoop down on your tiny starfighter, dropping bombs and flying in suicidal, looping lines as you frantically try to
If your idea of a good time is dancing in a purple wig with your face painted like a bulldog, welcome to NCAA Football. In the latest EA Sports entry to the long-running franchise, NCAA Football 07 dispenses with all the extra gameplay in the PS2 and Xbox versions in favor of brand new (and awesome) graphics.
We'll say it again, for clarity: the Xbox 360 version is nothing like the PS2 and Xbox versions. Instead of Campus Legend mode, where you can take some hapless youth through his
