GamesRadar - Xbox 360 Reviews

Mad Tracks - Xbox Live Arcade (Review)

31/05/2007

May 30, 2007 was a red-letter day for race fans with an Xbox 360. Forza Motorsport 2, probably the most anticipated driving game of the year, hits this day. But the type of road rage found in that game appeals more to gearheads and purists; not to mention those with fairly deep pockets. If you want a lighter, cheaper driving fix on this day of all things fast and motorized, look no further than this weeks Live Arcade offering: Mad Tracks. Mad Tracks is less a racer and more a mix of ...

Madagascar Kartz (Review)

12/11/2009

Hello, and welcome to the Automated Game Tie-In Development Program. Please obey the following instructions to the letter and your game will be produced within the hour. If you would like to make a 3D platform game with hundreds of collectible fruit, please press ‘1’ now. If you would like to make a kart-based racing title, please press ‘2’ now. ...

Madballs in Babo: Invasion (Review)

13/08/2009

Back in the mid-80s, someone thought it would be a great idea to create a series of toys that looked like a cross between baseballs and shrunken heads that looked like they’d been violently mauled by a rabid animal or a runaway semi-truck. Madballs were gross. Kids loved them. But a Madball-themed XBLA shooter released about 25 years after the fact just seems inherently wrong. ...

Madden NFL 06 (Review)

15/02/2006

Madden games have always been the market leader for digital translations of America's most popular sport and nothing seems set to change as we enter the next gen. Admittedly, there's not much competition. Or, in fact, any at the moment. So, as EA's leading franchise, what did we hope for? A game built from the bottom up specifically for Xbox 360? Yep. A Madden that looked absolutely gorgeous? Hell, yeah. A game that packed in all the modes we've come to love and expect over the years? ...

Madden NFL 07 (Review)

23/08/2006

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 ...

Madden NFL 08 (Review)

17/08/2007

Those of us who love pro football games are tired of having scorn heaped upon us, and we're not going to take it anymore. While the rest of the video gaming world makes fun of us for blindly buying Madden every year (and often nothing else), we're quite content to ignore them and restart our NFL fantasies each summer. Sure, the first couple of games for the next-generation consoles have been kinda middling, but the promise of a true event horizon has been building with each release. Happily, ...

Madden NFL 09 (Review)

12/08/2008

Like the career arcs of many promising first-round draft picks, Madden’s next-generation games have steadily improved from unwatchable embarrassment to veteran excellence. Perhaps, then, we were expecting too much - or (more likely) the short development cycle allotted to Madden 09’s crew didn’t allow enough time for all their ideas to get fully implemented. ...

Madden NFL 09 En Espanol (Review)

8/10/2008

Cómo ocurre a veces en las carreras de algunos novatos meritorios, los juegos nuevo-generacion de Madden han mejorado calladamente desde una basura inaguantable a una veterania excelente. Quizás esperabamos demasiado, o (mas probable) el corto ciclo de desarrollo asignado a la pandilla del Madden 09 no les dio tiempo suficiente para poner en orden todas sus ideas. No importa. ...

Madden NFL 10 (Review)

18/08/2009

The NFL has long prided itself on parity. Each new season has little, if anything, to do with the year that preceded it; players come and go with astonishing speed as 5-11 teams become Super Bowl competitors and champions fall apart. In many ways, the Madden games of the PS360 generation mirror this erratic arc. ...

Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers (Review)

17/08/2009

Countless hours spent tapping mana, summoning minions, strategically incanting spells, and trading cards with friends during study hall all came flooding back this month. Having once abandoned such pursuits long ago, the release of Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers has once again opened Pandora’s Box. The faithful will be pleased, for the most part.

Playing the role of dueling wizards, Magic: The Gathering ...

Magnacarta II (Review)

13/10/2009

Take an amnesiac hero who discovers his true inner power within the first hour, a sprawling world ripped apart by warring factions, a twee supporting cast with surprisingly clear gender distinctions (in true ‘JRPG’ fashion the girls all have child’s faces surgically implanted onto adult bodies) and a cast of amateur voice actors. Enchanted Arms? Infinite Undiscovery? No, this one’s Magnacarta 2. ...

Major League Baseball 2K6 (Review)

13/06/2006

As the only baseball game on the Xbox 360, Major League Baseball 2K6 is something of an all-or-nothing proposition. Unfortunately, this next-gen rookie gets outplayed by the seasoned vets on the "old" consoles. At first, everything looks fine, especially on an HDTV. Field details are sharp and textures appear to have depth. The audio commentary boasts a larger library of lines, giving players more variety in what they hear when compared to the PS2 and Xbox games. But the game suffers from the ...

Major League Baseball 2K7 (Review)

2/03/2007

Exclusives scare us - were fans of competition in our sports video games. For the second straight year, 2K Sports owns the only rights to build a licensed MLB game for the Xbox 360, and last seasons was little more than a painful foul ball off of the foot. To their credit, the gang over at 2K did an in-depth overhaul rarely seen in annual sports games; the result, were happy to say, is a smashing success. As we expect by now from a next-gen game, the visuals and sound are pretty darned sweet. ...

Major League Baseball 2K8 (Review)

7/03/2008

It takes a lot of guts to open up the engine of a great annual sports game, rebuild its core mechanics, and toss a pile of new features on top of it all. It takes even more cojones to do so when you’re the only game in town on the Xbox 360. ...

Major League Baseball 2K9 (Review)

3/03/2009

The promise of next-generation sports has, in many cases, turned into a curse. Trying to meet the demands of hardcore fanatics without rendering casual players inept has proven more difficult than anyone imagined at the start of the 360/PS3 cycle. Nowhere has that paradox been more evident than in the baseball realm, which has proven to be tough as nails for all but the most dedicated to crack. ...

Marble Blast Ultra - Xbox Live Arcade (Review)

19/04/2006

In the long history of video games, the act of frantically rolling balls around multileveled tangles of track has a proven appeal. From Marble Madness to Super Monkey Ball, navigating your orb through a ridiculous obstacle course in record time is the pinnacle of arcade satisfaction. Marble Blast Ultra is the high definition realization of this time-honored ...

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (Review)

24/10/2006

Raven Soft and Activision have teamed up for two of the best X-Men adventures in videogames (X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends II: Rise of the Apocalypse). Now, using some of the best, most powerful and most popular heroes in the Marvel universe, Marvel Ultimate Alliance is an enormous adventure filled with dozens of vile villains and multiple universe-shattering threats. The game features an ambitious story and an equally ambitious cast... that's wrapped up in the same old gameplay you've ...

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (Review)

15/09/2009

Comics fans are pretty blissed out right now, as they just got one of the best games ever to be based on a comic book with Batman: Arkham Asylum. It really raised the bar for superhero games, and will affect how all future games based on caped crusaders are judged. Which leads us to Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, and how the action-RPG series is starting to look like it’s on the wrong side of “evolve or die." ...

Marvel vs Capcom 2 (Review)

29/07/2009

Thanks to Marvel vs Capcom 2 we finally know who’d win in a fight between The Hulk and Jill Valentine (it was Jill, with her ability to summon a bloody great Tyrant). We’ve also managed to settle that age-old debate about the relative merits of pre- and post-adamantium Wolverine, and make Captain America beat up a small girl. ...

Mass Effect (Review)

19/11/2007

Your boss called. He's busy, so he needs you to take care of a few things today: Take the new spaceship on a test run, buy milk, discover an ancient alien civilization, save all organic life in the galaxy from annihilation, and get yourself a little cosmic bow-chicka-bow-wow in the process. If you don't think you can get all that done, he says he can probably wait until the weekend for the milk. Well, of course it's impossible. But it's exactly what you do in Mass Effect, a starry-eyed space ...