GamesRadar - Xbox Reviews

187 Ride or Die (Review)

22/06/2007

GTA: San Andreas may have led to a lot of moral outrage and criticism of the game industry, but its worst effect might actually be 187: Ride or Die. Apparently, someone thought that the secret to success was to throw young black men into cars, give them guns, and let them run wild. Instant videogame hit, right? No. You're Buck, an up-and-coming gangsta running for a Southern California OG named Dupree. When Dupree says jump, you jump - and when he says "grab a semi-automatic weapon, jump into ...

2006 FIFA World Cup Germany (Review)

6/06/2006

The two main "simulation" franchises in the soccer video game genre - FIFA and Winning Eleven - have been engaged in a death struggle for years now. 2006 FIFA World Cup adds a little more of Winning Eleven-style flair to its familiar gameplay formula this time around, but not much. FIFA remains more pick-up-and-play for the mainstream sports gamer, but offers some depth and subtleties that will enable more experienced players to do their best Beckham impersonation. Experienced FIFA gamers will ...

50 Cent Bulletproof (Review)

22/06/2007

Conventional wisdom says that first you crawl before you walk. 50 Cent Bulletproof shoots this theory in the face, and decides to try to outrun a freight train before doing either. As you can imagine, it ends up falling a little flat. When working to get 50 Cent, his crew, Dre and Em, and 50's music and his videos into the game, the developers forgot one minor detail: the ...

Advent Rising (Review)

4/05/2006

Most video game plots stink. For every brilliantly penned epic like Half-Life, there are dozens of True Crimes whose narratives wouldn't impress a sixth-grade English teacher. That makes the science-fiction actioner Advent Rising a particular treat - it delivers both power and plot. Orson Scott Card (author of the sci-fi classic Ender's Game) spins humanity's survival against a race of aliens (the Seekers) hell-bent on their destruction because they believe humans to be the most powerful ...

Aeon Flux (Review)

22/03/2006

First off, Majescos movie tie-in ... isn't. This third-person action game doesn't replay events of the Aeon Flux movie. Sure, it lays a gloss of Charlize Theron in slick vinyl over everything, but at heart, it throws back instead to the old MTV cartoon series for its personality, artistic sense, and level designs. True, Aeons skills and abilities are pretty cool. She leaps nimbly around with almost Spider-Man-like agility, wields various gadgets, rolls shiny globes around (it's cooler than it ...

AMF Xtreme Bowling 2006 (Review)

13/07/2006

Of the millions of Americans who enjoy bowling every year, perhaps dozens will find themselves damaged by AMF Xtreme Bowling 2006. We're here to stop you from being one of them. Since the old game of ten-pin bowling isn't too hard to replicate - how many polygons do you need to create a lane, anyway? - Xtreme tries to doll it up with black light, neon and, naturally, dames. The opening cinema shows more bare midriffs than you're likely to find in a real lane, strikes are rewarded with ...

And 1 Streetball (Review)

16/06/2006

AND 1 Streetball sets itself apart from other basketball games by placing equal importance on outscoring your opponent and looking damn cool doing it. Just like the real-life, trick-play AND 1 traveling team, the game overflows with impressive athletic moves, grandiose showboating and tongue-in-cheek entertainment value. As a foul-less, unruly streetballer, AND 1 emphasizes action and delivers with an incredibly deep “I Ball” control scheme that allows you to juke, jive and ...

Area 51 (Review)

12/05/2005

Most FPS titles have you running around while shooting at everything else that's running around. But Area 51, in its opening stages at least, is tenser than that: you've got to stand still while hell breaks loose around you. Sweeping through a ruined and still-burning underground science complex, Area 51 begins by throwing more enemies at you in one go than most games manage per level, and it's your job to hold your ground without being overrun by them. It's a rush, that's for sure. Moody looks ...

Atari Anthology (Review)

6/01/2005

We open our eyes, cold and broken, our minds a maelstrom of painful hazy, half-remembered thoughts. We reach up to check for eyelids - we remember opening our eyes but all we can see is a brainwashing fusion of flashing primary colours and we collectively scream.Is this the aftermath of one of the most horrendous drinking sessions ever? No. Just the result of blinking while playing Atari Anthology.This game should not be released. Simple as that. Playing through its repetitive selection of ...

Avatar: The Last Airbender (Review)

31/10/2006

Avatar: The Last Airbender, an anime-styled cartoon on Nickelodeon, has gained quite a respectable following for a show that was originally targeted at younger viewers. In a mythical world of four quarrelling nations (Air, Earth, Water, and Fire), the Avatar named Aang is the only one who can bring peace and stability through harnessing all four elemental powers. The show combines an entertaining mix of humor, drama, and likable characters that has drawn in a wide demographic of viewers. ...

Battlefield 2 Modern Combat (Review)

22/06/2007

Military shooters keep popping up like dandelions. It's sometimes hard to tell them apart. Heck, even their commercials look identical. EA's Battlefield series has always carved its own path, however, with its unique large-scale warfare. But the landscape of consoles is a different battleground altogether, and this series both flourishes and flounders in its new setting. On consoles, your game needs a single-player campaign mode; there's no getting around it. Instead of slapping a half-assed ...

Battlefield 2 Modern Combat (Review)

15/02/2006

Halo 2 is a right bastard. It may be one of the best games ever conceived but its brilliance has had a harmful effect on Xbox Live. Once mightily populated servers are now as empty as Gary Glitter's diary. We tried to get a game on Burnout Revenge the other day and there were dustballs rolling across the tarmac. So it's going to take a cracking game to make people give up their Halo 2 habit and play something different. Battlefield 2 is the one to do it. The most impressive aspect of the ...

Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance (Review)

22/06/2007

Unlike what the news would have you believe, the only crime stemming from Grand Theft Autos popularity is the theft of its own content. A petty crime at best, but the market is about to be inundated with two-bit clones trying to muscle in on San Andreas turf. ...

Black (Review)

7/03/2006

Forget everything you think you know about Black. It isn't to first-person shooters what Burnout is to racing games. It's not an over-the-top explodaganza that lets you destroy anything and everything you see. Hell, you can't even tear chunks out of most of its walls. What it is, though, is a fast-paced shooter that takes long, loving looks at its guns as often as possible. There's a ton of pre-designated stuff to destroy (plenty of it explosive) and the intensity ramps way up in later levels, ...

Black (Review)

22/02/2006

Expectations, eh? While Black is technically flawless, painstakingly designed and probably the best single-player shooter on PS2, we can't help but feel a little disappointed. Why? Because it doesn't keep its promise to "do for first-person shooters what Burnout did for cars". Burnout changed the way we looked at racing games, with its speed, hypnotic structure (one nudge meant an instant crash) and benchmark graphics. Black's victory isn't innovation, but execution. Forget the plot - its ...

Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII (Review)

24/03/2006

Screaming low over the roofs of London while unleashing a scorching fury of bullets into a formation of hapless Nazi pilots brings a joy that warms our justice-loving hearts for days afterward. Executing a flawless barrel-roll in between the legs of the Eiffel Tower to evade a German ace hell-bent on swiss-cheesing your fuselage delivers unmatched satisfaction. While tooling around in a WWII plane may not sound complicated, that lack of complexity is exactly what makes it such good ...

Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space (Review)

14/12/2004

Rewind your mind a little bit. Remember Blinx: The Time Sweeper on Xbox? A curious time-bending platformer fronted by a terrifyingly ugly cat, it delivered little on its promise of allowing you to control the world around you as if you had a VHS remote control - pause it, rewind it, record it, speed it up. All we got was a messy, frustrating game with all the logic and order of a monkey house.Fast-forward back to the present. Blinx 2 is better than the original, but not by much. Gone are the ...

Breakdown (Review)

2/04/2004

It's arguable that upping the amount of manual labour in a game can sometimes be a good thing. Having a strong work ethic (as in, say, Morrowind or Shenmue) can be a way of grounding the player in the game world, of strengthening the illusion through a deliberate use of dullness. Small wonders become greater when they feel like you are getting a reward. Entering a new town in Morrowind feels all the more exotic, actual and populated when you've just had to trek across a square mile of ...

Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood (Review)

22/06/2007

A quickfire sequel to Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, Earned in Blood has been developed with feedback from the playing community in mind - hence the improved AI (evident both in the enemy and your own squadmates), enhanced multiplayer modes and the increase in urban combat. You play as Sgt Joe ‘Red Hartsock in a story thats part retelling of Road To Hill 30s events (from Reds perspective) but mostly an entirely new story that takes place on D-Day and the days beyond as the 101st ...

Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (Review)

15/02/2006

"I can't shoot there, Sarge." Simple, scary and powerful words. When you hear them in Brothers in Arms, be assured that they carry more weight than Vanessa Feltz's slippers. You're hunkered down behind a hedge with your fire team, bullets whistling past your ears. There are two machine gun emplacements buried deep in the foliage up ahead and you can barely make out the landscape, let alone the whites of their eyes. You went out on a limb to get round the back and Hartsock and Leggett can't ...