GamesRadar - Xbox Reviews

Scarface: The World is Yours (Review)

12/10/2006

Everyone always knew Tony Montana was one tough hombre - but strong enough to survive the famous attack on his mansion? Last time we saw the Cuban drug lord, he was knee deep in blow and bullets, and his life appeared to be finito. However, in Scarface: The World Is Yours, our antihero has emerged none the worse for wear. He's as bad-ass as ever: a coke-dealing, woman-chasing, f-bomb-dropping son of a bitch hell-bent on reclaiming what he feels is still ...

Second Sight (Review)

1/09/2004

With TimeSplitters and its sequel, Free Radical's staff seemed to struggle deliberately against the prevailing trends in FPS and action games, trends that they themselves had helped create in their work at Rare on GoldenEye and Perfect Dark. Filmic style, narrative coherence and considered, tactical combat were all eschewed. In their place were frantic, twitchy arcade shooting and a charmingly silly kitchen-sink conceit that could accommodate every spoof and staple they could think of. The ...

Serious Sam 2 (Review)

22/06/2007

All these so-called "authentic" war-themed shooters are fine and dandy, but what if your one of those people who thinks the gritty realism of is a bummer? Step forward square-jawed hero, Sam, for a second outing. With a stash of noisy whack-ass weapons and vehicles, a ridiculous plot thats so thin you could stick a miniskirt on it and call it Kate Moss, and little more to do than frag your way through a near endless succession of ludicrously designed but grin-worthy enemies, Sam is the perfect ...

Serious Sam 2 (Review)

14/10/2005

All these so-called 'authentic' war-themed shooters are fine and all that.But when a member of your family has been dodging real bullets and real grenades on the streets of Basra and has seen men in their troop stretchered into the medical tent with limbs missing and faces burnt beyond all recognition, your appetite for shooting virtual Arabs/Vietnamese/Germans/Japanese does tend to disappear a bit. Not that the likes of Brothers in Arms and the Conflict series aren't decent videogames, but in ...

The Sims 2 (Review)

22/06/2007

As successful as the Sims 2 juggernaut has been on the PC, the designers of this newly minted console remix probably could've offered a straight port of the same content. After all, if PC players can't avoid an unhealthy obsession with cooking, cleaning, working, dealing with relationships, and decorating the Bed, Bath and Beyond out of their little virtual people's homes, console players would probably develop the same affliction. However, that isn't what happened. While the signature ...

Sniper Elite (Review)

22/06/2007

Sniping - and were sure lots of you will agree with this - is one of the best activities in modern videogames. A supreme mix of satisfaction, skill and cowardice, youre made to feel like a ninja, but a ninja armed like a small tank. A fair few of you out there probably have PhDs in headshots too. So, what about an entire game dedicated to this most simultaneously tense, irritating and exhilarating of Deathmatch ...

Sonic Heroes (Review)

17/02/2004

It's been several years since gamers moved on from the 16bit era, but Sega, it seems, is still struggling to find a comfy space for Sonic on today's generation of hardware. His defining characteristics - excessive speed and loop-the-loop abandon - still have no acceptable place in 3D platforming, and Sonic Team still seems hogtied by the idea of making a character move this fast in an environment that's more than just a racetrack.So, Sonic Heroes brings with it the prospect of teamwork - ...

Sonic Riders (Review)

7/03/2006

What was once a great and respectable franchise has now become a dumping ground for half-baked games. Sonic Riders straps the world-famous, sonic-booming hedgehog onto a hoverboard in the hopes of creating a blow-your-hair-back, thrill-a-minute mix of Mario Kart and snowboarding trickster SSX. It's fast all right. And loud, too. But everything else that matters (control, course layout, decent multiplayer ... you name it) comes up dead last. The various hoverboards, or "Extreme Gear," ...

Splinter Cell 3 (Review)

15/02/2006

It's like a lesson in how great games should be made. The adventures of aging, likable, last-chance super-spy Sam Fisher gripped us from the moment he made his debut over two years ago. As this is the third time we've got behind Splinter Cell's wheel, it was going to take something jaw-dropping to get our attention. Unsurprisingly, that's exactly what we got - visual splendour the like of which you've never seen before on a console. The beauty and authenticity of the environments creates an ...

Splinter Cell 4 (Review)

28/11/2006

You all know Sam Fisher. Muscle-bound guy, voice like a moose with a hangover and one of the leading men in video games thanks to his acrobatic sneaking, versatile gadgets, and witty knifepoint interrogation banter? Well, he's at it again in Splinter Cell: Double Agent. The excellent, albeit very familiar, stealth action gameplay is spiced up by the fact that Sam now has to serve two masters, juggling opposing objectives in order to maintain their trust - and stay alive. Trust is the crux of ...

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (Review)

15/02/2006

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (Review)

15/02/2006

Sam Fisher has been skulking in the shadows for the last few years, but he seems to have spent the time honing his stealth skills before sneaking back with this sequel. This is Splinter Cell almost exactly as you remember it, but Sam is in a multitude of new places facing different dangers. Infiltrating jungles and a train, it looks as though the tight reins that restricted his spying to indoor locations have been well and truly slashed. We weren't convinced that Pandora Tomorrow needed to be ...

Spy Hunter Nowhere to Run (Review)

8/09/2006

The easiest way to make long-time franchise fans jump out of buildings or hurl themselves in front of oncoming locomotives (other than making a string of craptacular sequels) is to take a proven formula and toss it out on its butt. Better yet, make the different stuff so dreadful that newcomers to the series hate it too - the perfect storm. It pains us to say it, but they took your Spy Hunter and turned it into Generic Action Game #714. In Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run, the super-sweet ...

SSX: On Tour (Review)

22/06/2007

SSX: On Tour is a fantastic game... but scratch beneath the surface veneer and its definitely an evolution rather than revolution. Yet youd be forgiven for assuming the latter. First up is the new skiing option. There are those in the boarding fraternity that cant abide their cousins on skis and imagine that the introduction of the two-footers into their extreme sports games tantamount to collaboration with the enemy. But apart from shelving this outdated view (hey - we all love the snow, ...

Stacked featuring Daniel Negreanu (Review)

30/05/2006

If there's no money on the line, could you still play poker for real? A lot of people can't, but Stacked forces you to bring your best strategy or suffer humiliation. And if you're not careful, you might actually become a better poker player in real-life after a few severe beatings. Professional player Daniel "Kid Poker" Negreanu graces the box, but the real star here is the Poki AI, an artificial intelligence research project that has only recently been applied to video games (though you will ...

Star Wars Battlefront (Review)

29/09/2004

On paper, it's the best idea in the history of all things, ever. A massively multi-player Star Wars game that allows you to re-fight all those legendary cinematic battles, from Hoth to Endor and beyond. Fried gold, right?Well... if you're lucky enough to have Xbox Live, a decent broadbanded-up PC or you've wrestled with your PS2 long and hard enough to have successfully got it online, then yep, Star Wars: Battlefront can be a thing of transcendent beauty - depending, of course, on the depth of ...

Star Wars Battlefront II (Review)

2/03/2006

Of the following, which best defines Star Wars? Is it the stormtroopers? The Ewoks? The low-flying skirmishes on Hoth? Or is it guys with laser swords fighting wars in space? If you picked that last one (or any of the others, really), then youll be glad to know that Star Wars Battlefront II features everything youd expect from a Star Wars game. Like the first Battlefront, the game lets teams of players shoot it out in sprawling, open battlefields as soldiers of the Republic, the Trade ...

Star Wars Republic Commando (Review)

21/04/2006

Star Wars: Republic Commando is a first person shooter that puts you right in the middle of the Clone Wars. Prepare to get your pretty little armor splattered with bug slime, alien guts and droid parts. As a specially-grown clone attached to an elite commando unit, you and three AI teammates blast through fast and intense combat; as the squad leader, you'll have to make some critical decisions while blaster bolts sizzle past your head. Thankfully, the process of commanding your squad is ...

Star Wars Republic Commando (Review)

4/03/2005

We'll be honest; Republic Commando has always been a bit of an unknown quantity. It's always threatened to show a grittier, greyer side to the black-and-white morality of the Star Wars universe, but given the overall quality of games set in Mr. Lucas' money-making universe (low, simply because there's so many of them and the few good ones have been swamped by a deluge of mediocrity and tat) we've naturally had our suspicions about it. Not entirely a fair way to approach the game, frankly, but ...

Stolen (Review)

7/04/2005

No guns? NONE? Not one? There must be a mistake somewhere. Hang on - let's check the disc. Maybe it's been scratched in just the wrong place to... nope. Weird. How can you have a video game these days without any guns in? What on earth could the triggers be used for? Accelerating and braking the lead character? NO GUNS?Play Stolen for even just a little while, though, and that absence of hand-cannons becomes clear as those patio doors that everyone seems so fond of walking into - it's purely ...