Slice Zombies for Kinect (Xbox One) - Review

Slice Zombies for Kinect is out now on Xbox One and is priced at £7.99 (there is a 20% discount available for Gold members at the minute though).

My son and I have been playing this game since last night. And unfortunately I have found it to be plagued with a problem that makes it impossible to play at the minute. Literally, as 3/5 times of booting up the game it refuses to pick either of us up. We took turns standing in front of it waving like maniacs to get the little hand to appear so that we could actually press the play button to no avail.  Each time this happened we had to quit out of the game and reboot, and on average it took about three reboots each time before it saw us. When we do get it to see us initially though it picks both my son and I up exceptionally well, unlike some Kinect games my son has played which struggle to pick up the movements he's making with his spindly six year olds arms. With Slice Zombies for Kinect he has been able to play without getting frustrated, which is great.

Slice Zombies for Kinect is very obviously based upon Fruit Ninja. Except now you're slicing zombies. Obviously. The gameplay is much the same as the Classic mode in Fruit Ninja, with you having to slice zombies and coins and avoid slicing the bombs to complete the level. You initially have three lives, but once you have swiped enough coins you can buy an extra one in the store.

The zombies are very cartoon-y, clearly based upon Plants vs Zombies, which makes it a great one for kids to play. When I initially told my son about this game he told me he was a bit scared of  zombies, but once I'd shown them to him he loved them, they are completely unthreatening. Little hands crawl across the screen too, which had my son howling with laughter as he chopped them up.

Slice Zombies for Kinect does only have this one game mode, which gets progressively harder as you level up. It is a shame, I would have liked to see a few more modes - a co-op one especially - but maybe these could be added in future updates (hint hint, Made!). It is a fun game though, and at it's current price of 20% off it's a steal for anyone who still actually wishes to use their Kinect. Families with children especially would benefit from buying this game, all kids like Fruit Ninja and Slice Zombies for Kinect offers kids the chance to whoop some zombie ass. The difficulty progresses well but as I mentioned earlier a few more modes definitely would help to propel this game to greatness.

7/10 TRY IT!

EDIT:

I have been in touch with the game dev today, and they explained that to work the menus you have to salute, which solved many of the problems present in the game. They have also confirmed that they did have plans for many more modes, but unfortunately being a new dev they ran out of money. Please buy this game and support these devs so that they can continue doing what they love, and hopefully bring more to the game via updates. 

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.

Game of Thrones Ep. 3 (Xbox One) - Review

You all know I have been absolutely loving my foray into the Telltale depiction of Westeros so far, so has it continued to keep me gripped into Episode 3?

Well the answer to that is yes. That's it. Review done. If you even remotely like Game of Thrones and do not own this game yet then you are mental. What? You expect more of a review than that? Oh go on then!

This episode sees you pick up where you left off (obviously!) and it is this episode in particular which really shows you how your choices have affected the fates of the Forrester family. This episode, more than either of the previous ones really drills home the sense of desperation the Forrester family must be feeling.

DAENERYS!

In this episode the cast of main characters is pretty well known, leaving more room for the plot to continue. The Whitehill occupation of Ironrath is still causing tension, forcing the limping Lord Rodrik into some kind of action, as always with a Telltale game, the nature of that action is yours to decide. Mira is clinging on in King's Landing, and in my story at least is now in a very precarious position, following the death of King Joffrey at The Purple Wedding. Gared's story at the Wall is also coming along nicely, and looks sure to be a brilliant part in the next episode. Asher makes his way to Mereen, and we meet the next big character from the show... Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, etc. etc. Seriously how does she even recite all her titles anymore?

This episode, more than either of its predecessors had me hooked from start to finish. My heart was beating so fast in certain parts and I have questioned most of the decisions I have made almost constantly, to the point where I am now pissing off my other half with my constant ramblings about the state of House Forrester ('How will they cope if another one dies?' etc.). If you want a Game of Thrones gaming experience that feels true to the franchise then the Telltale game is the only way to go. They've hit the nail on the head with this one, and I cannot wait for the next three instalments.

10/10 BUY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.

Tower of Guns (Xbox One) - Review

Tower of Guns is out now on the Xbox One priced at £11.99.

When I first heard of Tower of Guns I expected it to be a tower defence game, a game type I really enjoy. Then I found out it was an FPS bullet-hell rogue-like in procedural environment, like Ziggurat, a game I have recently reviewed and loved. Tower of Guns had a LOT to live up to.

I'm gonna cut straight to it and say that Tower of Guns does not stand up next to Ziggurat at all favourably. Unfortunately Tower of Guns feels like a cheap attempt to cash in on any success Ziggurat may be having. And when you have one rogue-like procedural shooter, do you really need another?

The answer is of course no, one will suffice for most people so unless you are the biggest fan of this type of game to ever grace the planet you will likely only choose to buy one of these games. To make it easier for us they are both the same price.

Anyway let me get back to Tower of Guns for now. From the off the game feels cheap. I feel like this game may still have verged on the too expensive if it was priced at £7.99. The graphics aren't the greatest, the sound is just simply awful and the gunplay sin;t nearly as polished as I have come to expect from this type of game. It's unfortunate that I can;t really talk about Tower of Guns without talking about Ziggurat and how much better that game is. Ziggurat offered a polished foray into the world of the rogue-like. Tower of Guns on the other hand feels rushed and completely lacks even an iota of the polish of Ziggurat. With Ziggurat the gunplay was tremendous, aiming with pinpoint accuracy was a doddle, and fun to boot. Tower of Guns feels difficult to play, not because of the enemies, but because you feel like you are constantly wrangling against the controller.

As mentioned the graphics for this game are certainly sub-par, menus feel cheap and even the supposed to be humorous descriptions of the guns fall short of the mark. Tower of Guns is out of its depth, when really on the Xbox One market there shouldn't be much competition.

It pains me to say this but skip it please. This game offers no real value for money. If it was cheaper than Ziggurat I may have been able to say try it to the people who maybe can't afford Ziggurat. Pricing it at the same point seems like a really silly move, and I have no qualms pointing you towards my review of Ziggurat here http://dkplaysgames.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/ziggurat-xbox-one-review.html and telling you that if this genre of game interests you then go and get Ziggurat instead.

1/10 SKIP IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.

Blue Estate (Xbox One) - Review

Blue Estate is out now on Xbox One and is priced at £11.99.

Blue Estate can be played using either the Kinect or the controller. I played it using just the Kinect, in a desperate attempt to justify its continued presence in the living room, past just being able to bark orders at my Xbox like I do to the unfortunate people that live with me. The Kinect listens to me slightly more than the humans I am in charge of do, but not much more, leading me to want to throw things at it A LOT. So cue me looking like (even more of) a mental case to my neighbours, as I stood wielding my fingers like a gun, looking very much like Mr Bean in the old 1997 movie 'Bean' (see below).

Now I have to be honest...I didn't really listen to the story when it was telling me what was going on. I was too busy closing my curtains and attempting to stop my children howling with laughter at the sight of their mummy looking like an idiot. Blue Estate centres around you, a guy called Tony Luciano, who seems to be a bit of a muppet with a near to the knuckle sense of humour. He has to save girls from mafia bosses. Or something like that anyway. I remember one girl was called 'Cherry Popz'. Yes, really.

It isn't going to win 'Graphics of the Year'

But, and I hope you don't get too mad with me here, it really doesn't matter that I didn't listen to the story. I did consider reloading it and listening intently to the narrative for the sake of this review. But I just didn't see the point. Does anyone really buy an on-rails shooter for the story?! I highly doubt it. You buy an on-rails shooter to have fun, and I had that by the bucket load.

This game will not be everyones cup of tea. I'll be honest it isn't usually mine. But its a bit of fun, and it came out at a time when the market was saturated with super serious AAA titles. It provides a great bit of nostalgia for me, as loading this up I was reminded of playing Time Crisis on my PSX with my dad many years ago. Albeit without the super cool plastic gun. But if you have kids, use one of theirs as a prop. Actually maybe buy yourself one from the pound shop if you don't, as this game works infinitely better with some form of prop.

The movement feels quite natural

As I mentioned I played this game using Kinect, and it worked remarkably well. I recently purchased Kinect Sports Rivals on the Xbox One and had to send it back in the end. The Kinect refused to pick up my really tall six year old son, who was the main reason we had bought the game, rendering it unplayable for him. I have reviewed a few Kinect titles on this blog now, and honestly that was the worst one I have encountered. I always get my son to jump on games I deem fit, so I can garner his opinions on a game too. With Kinect titles I always mention whether there are any difficulties in picking up the smaller members of the family. So I allowed my son to have a quick jump onto Blue Estate. It struggled slightly to pick him up fully, but it did really well and only really struggle with his fingers, meaning we had to go and get one of his Nerf guns to play it with. Then I borrowed it too, and it really was much more responsive with it.

Be warned. THIS is what you will look like. 

A few more modes unlock as you continue through the chapters, giving plenty of opportunity to replay levels. Graphically the game is no great shakes, but neither is it awful. The gunplay I feel works well, and there are movements you have to do to, to pick up items or whatever. All of this is done in a cohesive manner and the way in which you move feels quite natural. But more than anything this game is really fun! Being a downloadable game too means that you can boot it up whenever you feel like it, be it for a good hour long session on it, or a quick 10 minute go on a level. I refuse to believe you won't have fun on this game. The humour misses the mark pretty frequently and I feel like it was just trying to hard to be funny. It didn't need to do that. At £11.99 I don't think this game offers bad value for money, but if you don't feel like getting some use out of your dusty old Kinect, I'd wait for a sale. I think the fun of this game is in being stood up waving your fingers around like a mad-man.

6/10 TRY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Ziggurat (Xbox One) - Review

 

Ziggurat is out now on Xbox One priced at £11.99.

Up to now, to my knowledge at least, there have been no other games truly like Ziggurat on the Xbox One. Steam and PSN have rogue-likes aplenty, but this seems to be the first one to come to the Xbox One. I think the closest game to this I have played is Diablo III, although it's not really a rogue-like you can't deny that the repetitive dungeon crawling is very much like that. But Diablo III featured robust customisation, a narrative, the ability to save progress. Ziggurat takes everything I enjoyed about Diablo III back to the very basics...and I love it for that! I feel like this kind of game is a perfect fit for the Xbox One, and it was a game type I was certainly craving for.

The game doesn't take itself too seriously...Carrot Minions!

A little video when you load up Ziggurat shows you the premise of the game. You are a sorcerer that must battle their way through the dungeon of Ziggurat. You will always start on the bottom floor, there are no options to save your progress through the tower and this is part of its brilliance - this game is meant to be enjoyed NOW, picked up when you have a spare five minutes but ending up making you late as you progress further than you thought you would. To get to the next floor you will need to find the portal key for that floor which will summon the floors boss. Beat him and you get to battle through another floor. If you don't manage to make it past the boss (or even get to the boss like I did a few times) then you start right back at the very beginning again. As any good rogue-like should be Ziggurat is procedurally generated, meaning no two games are never the same. Dungeons will be laid out slightly differently. The minions held within may also differ as will the locations of any upgrades and extra weapons for you to pick up.

Bosses are usually a bigger, badder version of a minion

You begin each game with a magic wand and will collect more as you progress. You can carry up to four weapons, all of which spend mana, with some spending it all extremely fast. This means you will have to exercise some control, you can't just nuke everything with the best weapon you have, you will soon find yourself with no mana and a ton of pissed off minions ready to eat your face. The shooting is good though, really accurate, particularly with the magic wand so luckily I never felt too hard done to having to use it. Ziggurat is a game that handles itself really well. It feels perfectly paced and doesn't throw too much choice at you at once. Indeed any customisation is in the form of picking out one card (of two) when you progress, making it really quick and really simple to make your character that little bit stronger.

Ziggurat is a great game. It is simply fun. The minions you come up against aren't always the usual fantasy fare, and include carrots (yes really) and magic mushrooms, but there are skeletons, wraiths and other more traditional enemies to fight too. Ziggurat doesn't take itself seriously, and it is all the better for it. There are a few issues with a drop in frame-rate when certain enemies are killed, but honestly this is easily ignored in the face of such a fun game. I feel like it is one of the first indie games on the Xbox One to be competitively priced, and I can wholeheartedly recommend you pick this one up sooner rather than later.

9/10 BUY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Riptide GP2 (Xbox One) - Review

Riptide GP2 is out now on Xbox One priced at £3.99.

Yes you read that correctly, an Xbox One game that is less than a fiver! This price point is quite possibly this games largest saving grace. Who can argue with paying less than the price of a McDonald's for a game? Well I can, for one. Even though I do actually believe that this may be the cheapest game available onto Xbox One (is it? Let me know if you find cheaper!) I cannot recommend that you buy it. I am sorry, but let me explain...

I love my readers. I want you to be happy. I want to help you spend your hard earned cash on entertainment that is WORTH IT. And I just can't say that Riptide GP2 is.

Even the tricks can't keep this game interesting.

I believe that the main problem with this game is that it is a port from a previous release onto mobile devices in 2013. Yikes. Now this may work for many games, and indeed it has, but for this it just does;t. It feels like you're playing a mobile game. It is an enormous grind to feel like you're getting anywhere, which I think may be remnants of the free-to-play model on mobile. You have to earn stars to unlock future levels, which many games have pulled off with aplomb but in this it just leaves you incredibly bored. The levels just don't have enough diversity to keep you going. The AI is incredibly fierce in their fight for pole position, leaving you sometimes having to repeat the already repetitive races so as to unlock some more inevitably boring tracks.

You can buy new jet-skis, but they're insanely expensive so you will end up just upgrading your existing ski to the hilt. The numbers count in this game. You need them all to be as high as possible to stand a chance of winning but the upgrade menu (along with the regular menus really) are incredibly non-intuitive making it a drag to do any of the tasks. You can complete tricks in certain parts of the tracks, but even these feel tired.

Overall this is a game that feels like it has already had its day. It feels like a tired old man, desperately trying to compete on the consoles of today. And the sad news is that even at the really low price point it just can't. There is local multiplayer so that accounts for one star below, but there is no online multiplayer, which just seems like a silly decision really. If you are really really missing an arcade style racer then yeah I suppose you should get it, but for anyone else I'd say skip it.

3/10 SKIP IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.