Manual Samuel (Xbox One) - Review

Manual Samuel is available now on the Xbox One and is priced at £7.99.

This game is bonkers, so naturally I wanted to give it a look. With half term now here I am always on the lookout for games I can still play with two eagle-eyed children about full-time, and this seemed like a good one to let my kids watch between play fights and epic battles between clip dolls and Imaginext figures.

I was right. This game has had me and my kids howling with laughter. You play as Samuel, who is a bit of an idiot. He manages to get himself ran over whilst chasing after his now ex-girlfriend and thus makes a deal with the devil to live manually for 24 hours in order to win his life back. Samuel now has to consciously do everything we take for granted, including blinking and breathing.

The day starts off simply enough with you learning to just blink, breath and put one foot in front of another. Soon though you have to have a pee, then brush your teeth and have a shower. Then you have to drive to work and dodge an obscene amount of grannies jaywalking. Anyway, the day progressively gets harder and more buttons are introduced, you get the idea.

I didn't struggle with this for quite awhile and was feeling rather smug with myself. And then suddenly it just felt like I didn't have enough fingers for the task at hand and I got completely sick to death of hearing the dialogue I had thought was funny a few hundred attempts ago (this might be a slight exaggeration).

It started off as a game I would definitely recommend to most people, the graphics are cartoony, the voice acting is great and the game is generally enjoyable. But then it wore me down and I just didn't find it as funny anymore. Luckily it's a fairly short game with easy achievements so there are plenty of people that would like to add this game to their collection.

6/10 TRY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Bioshock: The Collection (PS4) - Review in Progress

Bioshock: The Collection is available now on PS4 and is priced at £44.99.

I did have all of the Bioshock games on the Xbox 360. I bought the first two at the same time, way past release date (read: cheap) thinking that I'd enjoy them and get round to them fairly soon. Then I played a bit of the first one and scared myself to death before I even got to Neptune's Bounty and have never really played it since. Bad Dannie. I bought Infinite in a Deals with Gold thing ages ago in the hopes it would become backwards compatible at some point - and that I'd have grown some balls and played the first two games through.

If, like me, you haven't played the Bioshock games before then Bioshock: The Collection offers immense value for money. It feature all three games and the DLC and they've all been given a graphical overhaul too. All of this for less than the price of one new game!

It has taken me ages to get around to writing this review, because I wanted it to be a complete review. But, having never played the games before, I can't just dip into each one for a few hours and tell you about how they've changed. I still want to enjoy them and I won't if I have to go to Bioshock 2 and Infinite before I've finished the first one. I was gonna just wait until I had played them all to write this up, but given that my PS4 has been a bit temperamental and I am out of the house more than usual at the minute looking after family I haven't been able to play them as much as I'd like. So I'm gonna do an ongoing review and come and update this as and when I have something more to say.

The PS4 version comes on two discs, one disc for the first two games while Infinite gets a disc all to itself. With the first disc in you just slide left or right to choose which game to launch. They both install separately too, good news for anyone struggling for space on their HDD.

Now obviously I haven't looked at Bioshock 2 or Infinite yet so I can't tell you which looks better now, but Bioshock 1 looks a hell of a lot better than it did originally, the graphics have been cleaned up really well. Don't get me wrong parts of it can still look weak - with the character's being probably the most dated looking - but it does look great now. It's a great remaster.

I have encountered a couple of glitches but nothing game-breaking. A few times it has appeared to have frozen completely but just pausing it for a second has fixed it and I've been able to continue as normal. I've read about a lot of glitches, but in all honesty that has been the worst one I have found.

I'm probably one of very few people that hadn't already played these games. If you haven't played them you've got nothing to lose by buying them. They do offer great value for money for newcomers and die-hard fans alike. Anyone who has already played them can afford to wait for a sale and make these games even more worth it. We do game in the era of the remaster now, but it is refreshing to see a whole collection remastered, rather than just one of a larger whole. And this collection is cheaper than the upcoming Skyrim remaster and many of the remasters we've seen already.

For now I'm going to get back to my play through, but I'll be back to ramble on at you more when I can!

XCOM 2 (Xbox One) - Review

XCOM 2 is available now on the Xbox One and is priced at £44.99.

You may remember that I have previously reviewed XCOM 2 when it first released on Steam earlier in the year. I LOVED it. I had been excited for this game for months and it didn't look like a console version would be released at the time. I know, I know, how naive of me, eh?! But I HAD to play it so when a little box popped up and said that it was literally impossible to install the game on my trusty six year old MacBook Pro I had a little cry and then bought a laptop more suitable to my gaming needs. Thos being playing XCOM 2, because thankfully Sims 4 DOES work on my ageing Mac. There is a God.

Anyway as much as I loved playing XCOM 2 on my shiny new laptop I was ecstatic when I found out it was coming to consoles. I know you can use a controller with PC's but I dunno, I just feel more at home gaming on a console. Which is annoying because games for PC are a hell of a lot cheaper usually.

I'm not going to go into the story here, obviously it is the same game I reviewed on Steam, so if you want to know more about the story, click the link at the top of this review. Graphically it is still as beautiful as I thought it was then, and there are still plenty of customisation options. It IS the same game after all.

There are some issues with the console port though, that as of yet I don't know when they will be patched. It lags sometimes in game, the framerate can be incredibly choppy and the cutscenes have glitchy dialogue that chops in and out. So it's not a perfect port, by any means. Despite that though I still choose to play XCOM 2 on my XB1 now rather than my PC, so I definitely don't consider them bad enough to ruin the game for you. Don't get me wrong, the cutscene glitches in particular are so annoying but they're never that long and the game is so much fun that I kinda don't care.

If you have ever shown even a passing interest in turn-based strategy games then you need to add this game to your Xbox One collection. Technically it isn't a perfect port, but it's a damn perfect game. Even if you do want to break your controller because a shot with a 69% chance of hitting misses and results in your death.

9/10 BUY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.