Fruit Ninja Kinect 2 (Xbox One) - Review

Fruit Ninja Kinect 2 is available now on the Xbox One, priced at £9.99.

We all know what to expect from a Fruit Ninja game at this point so this review will be a short one. Halfbrick Studios have made a triumphant return to our living rooms with the imaginatively named Fruit Ninja Kinect 2! So how is it on the shiny new gen of consoles?

The answer is pretty damn good! The improvements made to the Kinect play a massive part in this as there are nowhere near as many groans of frustration as the Kinect fails to pick up your flailing arms s you attempt to complete a combo. Kinect 2.0 is a hefty piece of kit that picks even the smallest in my household up with ease (my three year old daughter). 

Fruit Ninja Kinect 2 comes with all of the modes the last game did and a few more beside. You can play split-screen too, which is pretty much seamless in this iteration of the franchise. My children played this together for ages, giggling happily, with none of the usual shouts of 'Mum it's not working again'. Their favourite mode was one of the new ones which sees you having to chop fruit (duh!) whilst also dodging ninja throwing stars or spotlights. They hurled themselves around the room with gusto and the Kinect never dropped either of them. The game features leaderboards and unlockables aplenty for the more competitive readers too. 

What else is their to say about this game? We all know what to expect from a Fruit Ninja game, and this game is a very well polished successor to the hugely popular Fruit Ninja Kinect. There are more modes to this game than the recently reviewed Slice Zombies for Kinect, but it is a little more expensive. The improved capabilities seen with Kinect 2.0 mean that many of our past frustrations have been completely ironed out, and what is left is a fun little party game to play with family and friends. If you have kids I'd be surprised you haven't already got this game really, and definitely recommend you pick it up. For everyone else I'd say you can afford to wait for a sale, unless the urge to slice up some fruit is just getting too damn strong! 

7/10 TRY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.

Sparkle Unleashed (Xbox One) - Review

Sparkle Unleashed is out now on Xbox One and is priced at £6.39 (random?!) with a 20% discount available for Gold members. There's an Austin Powers joke in there somewhere...

Anyway, Sparkle Unleashed is a match 3 ball-shooting puzzle game akin to the likes of Zuma on the previous gen. Now I have a little secret to share with you...Zuma was my ultimate guilty pleasure on the last gen. I spent (read wasted) many an hour on the ball-busting games Zuma and Zuma's Revenge!, much to my partners disgust. So when I first saw Sparkle Unleashed I have to admit I got quite excited.

Sparkle Unleashed sees you control a little catapult that can move left to right along the bottom of the screen, unlike Zuma's stationary but twirl-able catapult. I did really struggle with this at first due to many areas of the map being unreachable if you have a snake longer than 5 balls, but I suppose that's the challenge of the game. The catapult holds two balls, which you can switch between by tapping 'B'. The mechanics and the general jist of the game are pretty standard fare for this type of game.

But Sparkle Unleashed tacks on a 'story' of kind. To be honest this isn't what I play this type of game for, so in the brief moments of unskippable one-line narrative I found myself reaching for my phone and checking on Twitter, so I can't really comment on it. Well I suppose it didn't seem that interesting. From what I can gather though you're on a quest to somewhere for something. Yeah, sorry. So you make your way through a forest and every few stages come to a brazier, which gives you a magic key. These magic keys unlock powers such as Orbs that change the colour within the blast zone, and my personal favourite, a tribe of purple butterflies that eat the balls that are closer to the hole.

Sparkle Unleashed gives the Xbox One a polished ball-shooting puzzle game that has definite longevity. I am currently completely stuck on Stage 107. It looks like I am close to the end of my quest but a quick look at the achievements shows that there are two more difficulty levels. There are also lots of Challenge levels. So for little more than a fiver (if you're a Gold member) I feel like you get a lot of game for your money. Yes it's the same thing over and over, but the same can be said of an FPS really. It's graphics do cheapen the game a little, but the game IS cheap, so I don't feel too upset by this. I'd say if you're looking for a game that's easy to pick up but difficult to master then you could do much worse than pick this game up.

8/10 BUY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

PS. Upon re-reading this review, I now realise how many times I mention balls. And holes. I did try to think of ways to reword, but let's be honest that would be ridiculous. If, like me, you giggled a little reading the 'eat the balls that are closer to the hole' line then congratulations. You and I clearly never matured past high school! :)

Shovel Knight (Xbox One) - Review

Shovel Knight is out now on the Xbox One and is priced at £11.99.

I initially wanted to get this review out on the day of release. But I couldn't because I couldn't get far enough in the game. I am now better at it, though not near finishing it, so I decided I could finally give you my thoughts.

Shovel Knight is great fun. The graphic style is a great nostalgia hit, and the accompanying music is PERFECT. I have recently got my Mega Drive back from my parents house and set it up to play with my son and when we loaded this up he asked me whether it was a Mega Drive game. Props to Yacht Club Games.

So as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I found this game hard to master (which I haven't actually done). By master I mean, actually get good enough to get past the first level without dying so many times my son turned away bored. I am better now, marginally so, but even so this game is so fun that I didn't mind dying. Normally, my OCD would kick in with games like this, and I'd be thinking about everything I've lost and getting myself all cross, but in Shovel Knight you drop your little bags of loot upon death, leaving them there for you to collect. YAY! This, inevitably, leads to little bags of gold floating over areas of certain doom but it didn't stop me trying, and subsequently dying and losing more loot. :(

Shovel Knight is a game where you play as a Knight (duh!) wielding - you guessed it - a shovel. The shovel it turns out is a great weapon. You can slay enemies with it, and also use it to bounce off enemies, a la Mario. You can also use it to bounce off bubbles, enabling you to get higher. You go around killing everything and digging all the mounds of dirt and hidden walls to collect loot and extra gubbins such as a fishing rod that allows you to fish in the ditches for more loot.

It sounds simple, and it is. But simple games done well are rare and Shovel Knight is done VERY well. It is a perfect game for some pick-up-and-play action, but three hours later you will find yourself still sat there playing. It is great fun and an amazing nostalgia hit to anyone lucky enough to have played old 16-bit games. The price I feel is more than fair for the quality of game you get, but by all means wait for a sale to pick this gem up. Do yourself a favour though, and definitely do it, you won't regret it!

9/10 BUY IT!

A ode was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Game of Thrones Ep. 4 (Xbox One) - Review

Wow! This was an explosive episode of my favourite Telltale episodic game yet. Yes the Game of Thrones game has managed to kick The Wolf Among Us off the top spot for me. That's a big achievement.

So. You pick up where you left off, obviously, which for me meant feeling shitty that I hadn't stopped Beskha from being hurt by the dragon seeing as she has stuck with me for a long time (or so it seems). This was just one of many regrets I have in this game. I can't wait until they are all out so I can play it over and over again, correcting all the things I have done wrong. Hindsight is a great gift in a Telltale game. But for now I am sticking with the decisions I make in the extremely small amount of time that they give you. And it sucks. Big time.

In the fourth instalment of the Game of Thrones game we get to spend quite a bit of time near/in Mereen with Asher, Beskha and Malcolm(?) Asher's Uncle. At the end of the last episode they had come face to face with Deaenerys. She isn't happy with me, but gives me a job to do - help her to take control of Mereen. I have to admit I absolutely love the nods to the show and how it is all interconnected. Anyway, things do get hairy for a bit, and she gives you the choice of approaching her dragon Viserion. I declined. I'm not absolutely mental.

Gared's story, as I thought, did play a great part in this Episode. I won't ruin it, as you know I am spoiler-free, generally. But suffice it to say that this part of the story is picking up quite a bit. Up to now, I've kinda hated playing as Gared. I hate his whiny voice, and that is mostly my beef with him, because actually his story hasn't been too dull. I just preferred everybody else's before and couldn't wait to get back to them. This is the first episode that I have not wanted Gared's segments to end. A great achievement.

In the previous episodes I guess I kinda forgot that it is clearly running alongside the show, seeing as it shows snippets of both the Red and Purple Weddings. I pitched myself to Tyrion when playing as Myra, forgetting the absolute mess he spent much of last series in. Oops. For now, at least, it seems no one is too mad at me for this. Maergery Tyrell is being a bit funny, but by this point it could be for a number of reasons. I have decided to play Mira as a pretty selfish girl, except for when it comes to her family. So there aren't many people in King's Landing that haven't been thrown under the metaphorical bus for her to get what she wants. And in this episode I was faced with protecting Sera's secret so that she could marry a Lord, or ruining this happy ending by telling him that she is a bastard. Guess which I chose? King's Landing has done horrible, horrible things to me. I am dreading what Sera will say to me when she inevitably finds out, but I figured better to not piss off a Lord. I hope I'm right, but I guess we will have to wait and see.

House Forrester, as always, is a hub of much discontent. They don't seem to have many friends, do they? In this part I will have to say SPOILER ALERT, as I'm not sure how my decisions in the previous episodes have changed what happens here. I managed to save my relationship with Elaena Glenmore, and convince her to marry me in one of the previous Episodes. She turns up with her brother Arthur in this episode, and 20 of their father's best men. YES! Her father has decided that she should marry Gryff Whitehill instead and she has come to see whether I can help her. I am concerned however, as I told her that I would kill Gryff. But I didn't. I didn't mean to save him really, but I accidentally said that I'd trade him for Ryon. I'm hoping I'll be able to double cross him when the trade comes in the next episode. The moment I got to confront Gryff Whitehill was THE BEST. It was perfect. I used the move that Ser Royland had taught me before to bring him to the floor and then banged my cane to bring the Glenmore soldiers in. It was spectacular.

So again, there have been many twists and turns in the fates of the Forresters. And, again, I am eagerly anticipating the next episode. A month is far too long to wait for a game this good. If you haven't already bought it, wait it out and save yourself the pain of having to wait after you've played the newest episode through on release day. The pain is just too much to bear.

10/10 BUY IT! (Eventually)

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Goat Simulator (Xbox One) - Review

Goat Simulator is available now on the Xbox One priced at £7.99.

I remember when I first heard about Goat Simulator when it came out on PC. I honestly thought the person who told me was taking the piss, until I saw it on the shelves at my local Tesco. I know simulation games offer a LOT of variation, but GOATS? Really?!
Then for months it seemed, we heard about how hilarious it was. It was a game that didn't take itself too seriously and actually embraced the fact that it was completely mental. In the game you control a goat, obviously. This goat has a huge tongue that is permanently sticking out of the goats mouth. Licking things can cause them to explode, or at the very least allow you to hurl them across the map, which is filled with things for you to have plenty of goaty fun with. So yeah, this game REALLY doesn't take itself too seriously.

It has now made the seemingly inevitable jump to consoles. This has seen developers Coffee Stain Studios embrace the mentality of the game even more, with them admitting to it being glitchy as all hell. They wanted it to be that way, after hearing about some of the hilarious glitches in the game they set out to NOT repair them for the console release. Indeed, when you load the game you are told that the goat may sometimes glitch (or words to that affect) so they have put a respawn function in the menu.

Now to my actual review. Graphically, it isn't going to win any awards, but it'll do nicely. The soundbites are actually pretty scary sometimes, a random person shouting something about goats when you're playing using a headset at night is less than ideal. There isn't much to do in the game, but I think that's kinda the point. There are some objectives which I mostly cannot do if I am honest. But I think the point of this game was just to provide a big playground for you to fulfil all your goat fantasies out in. And if that's the case, it does it tremendously.

I am not a fan of the game if I am honest, it's just a little too silly for my liking. Luckily I have a very silly six year old son, so I handed the controller to him for a few hours and watched him howl with laughter to complete my review. If you have a daft sense of humour, or kids, then you should definitely pick up this game. I cannot honestly remember the last game that made my son laugh so much. And I bought that horrendous Rabbid game...

6/10 TRY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.