GamesRadar - Xbox Reviews

Fable (Review)

12/10/2004

The clue is in the title: Fable. It was supposed to be the game that let you write your own adventure. If this were a magazine given to swearing then that statement would be followed by an eight-letter word beginning with 'b' and ending with 'ollocks'. Fable lets you do nothing of the sort. It's probably best to get that major criticism out of the way first. TALL STORIES During the game's protracted development (over four years) we heard about how you could become good or evil, make decisions ...

Fable: The Lost Chapters (Review)

27/04/2006

Fable: The Lost Chapters improves the original Xbox RPG with an advertised 30 percent more content to the game. Much of the new stuff comes in the form of extra side quests, plus a tacked-on story quest at the end of the game that takes you to a new land (which we won't spoil). You start out as a young boy, living happily, until a vicious bandit raid wipes out your idyllic village. Orphaned, you are taken in by the Guild of Heroes, who train you to be a great warrior into your adulthood and ...

Family Guy (Review)

26/10/2006

One of the things that make Family Guy so riotously funny is how the salty jokes come fast and furious over the span of each half-hour episode. Stretch those same laughs over 8 hours or so of generally humdrum gaming, and the whole affair gets diluted to the point where fans will find themselves reaching for the DVDs instead of the game controller. Oafish dumbass dad Peter takes a hard one to the noggin and becomes convinced that the citizens of Quahog are disguised henchmen of TV's Mr. ...

Far Cry Instincts (Review)

21/12/2006

While still clearly a big success, a lot of folks would probably agree that the PC version of the first-person shooter FarCry was less a great game and more a great tech demo. This was thanks mostly to lush visuals and massive, go-virtually-anywhere levels that often far overshadowed the gameplay itself. It's no surprise then that this console-only, enhanced port actually feels like the better game, thanks to a number of tweaks that remind players that you're not here to gawk at the scenery - ...

Far Cry Instincts (Review)

30/09/2005

It's claimed that whatever you say to a Frenchman, he will translate it into his own language, and forthwith into something entirely different. Ubisoft Montreal's artistic, novel and moving interpretation of Far Cry is a particularly French, suitably transformed experience. Even if its technical handicaps are clear, what it achieves with the palette at its disposal is astounding. Instincts' lower resolution textures, sporadic pop-up, cruder characters and jagged shadows are all clearly defined ...

FIFA 07 (Review)

9/10/2006

The success and failure of a mans soccer team is akin to life and death - as the club goes, so he goes. While the World Cup is a quadrennial exercise in nationalism, nothing is more ingrained in the daily lives of billions of males around the globe than their favorite clubs fortunes. Whether its England, Germany, Spain, or any of dozens of other nations, wins, losses, and scandals are the stuff that sells tabloids every week. EA Sports FIFA 07 gets off of the world stage and back to the ...

FIFA Street 2 (Review)

20/03/2006

A thrilling game of footy may dazzle billions of spectators, but it puts most of us to sleep. In an attempt to bring Americans closer to the world's most popular sport, EA puts a heavy arcade filter on the game: teams of four, high-scoring affairs and lots of flair. The result, FIFA Street 2, defies normal conventions about soccer, but stumbles too often to convert many US gamers to the fold. FIFA Street 2 is all about one-on-one showdowns. One guy has the ball, and uses his dexterity and ...

Fight Night Round 2 (Review)

15/02/2006

For the uninitiated, Fight Night 2004 stood out because of a little gimmick called 'Total Punch Control'. Surprisingly, unlike 'First Touch Control' and the 'Golden Eye' this was genuinely revolutionary. By moving the punching mechanism from buttons to the right analogue stick, and then by patenting it (the sneaky blighters), they revolutionised the boxing game by adding a rhythmic reality to each blow. Round 2 has sensibly tweaked this system and addressed the rather confused presentation of ...

Fight Night Round 3 (Review)

9/03/2006

What does it sound like when you fire a canned ham out of a cannon targeted at a pile of brittle sticks? The answer is a fist against your face, unless you've put hours into Fight Night Round 3. Hang out learning the sweet science long enough and you might earn a PhD in placing punches ... or eating them. When you're up against the ropes and the slowing of time sounds like a rush of wind past your ears, the desperation seizes you by the heart. If you can defend a handful of punches and get a ...

Final Fight: Streetwise (Review)

4/05/2006

Despite kicking ass as one of the most classic, side-scrolling, "punch 100 dudes in the head, eat the food you find in the broken crate, repeat" beat 'em-ups ever, the Final Fight franchise has taken more black eyes than all of Metro Citys thugs put together. Home console ports with missing features, half-assed sequels, downright ugly forays into the one-on-one fighting genre (see the Japan-only Final Fight Revenge on Segas Saturn) - the series has been through it all. And now Capcom continues ...

FlatOut 2 (Review)

1/08/2006

Reckless destruction and gross bodily harm are two things were fond of in our games and FlatOut 2 delivers plenty of both. The focus here isnt so much on racing as it is on aggressive driving and destructible environments - cars will wreck, gas stations will explode and hordes of orange cones will go flipping through the air. Tracks are littered with dangerous obstacles and brutal opponents who want to turn your vehicle inside out and speed is only secondary to your ability to stay on the ...

Ford Bold Moves Street Racing (Review)

19/10/2006

Ford Bold Moves Street Racing may tempt you with its low retail price of $19.99, but racing fans should steer clear of this clunky lemon. You cant expect the best from a bargain title like this, but the game still fails to deliver any bang for your buck with clumsy controls, poor damage detection, repetitive gameplay, and generic tracks. Bold Moves lets you drive 18 licensed Ford vehicles. However, your driving experience will be equally bad no matter which car you choose. Whether youre ...

Forza Motorsport (Review)

15/02/2006

Massive in scope, Forza doesn't just want to beat its Xbox platform rivals from the start, but also wants to scream past Gran Turismo on the final straight to take the chequered flag before spraying champers in Polyphony Digital's face. So how does it fare? First you'll have to select your region - European, Yank or Japanese. Then they chuck you 23,000 credits and you get to buy a car and start thrashing the opposition. Instantly noticeable is that you're not restricted to crappy cars early ...

Full Spectrum Warrior (Review)

22/06/2007

Full Spectrum Warrior is like no other video war game on the market. Originally developed as a training tool for the US Army, the game arrived on consoles bearing hallmarks of strategy and action. As players patrol an urban corner of the Middle East questions will crop up - is this chess? Is it propaganda, and if so for what? And is war always this ...

Full Spectrum Warrior (Review)

15/02/2006

This is a game which ought to answer two of the most pressing questions facing gaming today: how valuable is the integration of 'realism' into a necessarily artificial world, and what happens when that realism causes videogames to trespass onto a political minefield? Full Spectrum Warrior, adapted for the public from an exacting US army training tool, carries as many 'really real' badges as the most disciplined flight simulator, and gives gamers the chance to corner infidels in the back alleys ...

Full Spectrum Warrior Ten Hammers (Review)

28/03/2006

Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers, the new iteration of the thinking man's shooter (read: the one where you don't really do any shooting yourself), outranks its predecessor in every way: better variety, better interface, better story and better multiplayer. But it's all for naught because someone got the bright idea that Ten Hammers shouldn't be fun but instead be as hard as boot camp in Full Metal Jacket. For those who haven't played the original, FSW is, at its heart, a training tool ...

Full Spectrum Warrior Ten Hammers (Review)

14/03/2006

The thing with all these war games is that they let us enjoy them too much. Don't get us wrong, stuff like Call of Duty is great, but when you're just running around blasting things like a superhero, then you might as well just hold the whole thing in space or the Mushroom Kingdom or something. If you're going to base it on the real thing, however, it might be nice to replicate the vulnerability that comes with real warfare. Our granddads never once spoke of 'respawn points'. And believe us, ...