ilomilo Game Review XBOX Live Arcade

The first thing you will notice about ilomilo is that it is possibly one of the most adorable and cute games ever to hit the XBOX Live Arcade. The bizarre, yet extremely beautiful patchwork world of ilomilo is reminiscent of games like LittleBigPlanet, but manages to retain it's own unique feel and art direction. The two little stars of the game are ilo and milo, adorable little plush creatures who want nothing more than to be reunited. These two delightfully cute little guys always seem to end up stranded apart from each other and it's your job to reunite them, solving the puzzles and using the strange gameplay mechanics to successfully reach this goal. This is a wonderful little game full of charm and fun.

As i previously mentioned, the goal here in each level is very simple, reunite ilo and milo. The characters will begin at opposite ends of the cubic maze and you can switch back and forth between the two, controlling one at a time. The game begins cheerfully with it's cute adorable charm, but soon begins to get extremely difficult. You can manoeuvre various types of blocks around the environment and they will create new paths and ways to reunite you with your missing friend. Special carpets can be used to walk over the edges of cubes, changing the direction of the cubic maze, and the maze itself is filled with pesky critters who want nothing more than to get in your way. The key here is planning ahead, to solve these challenging puzzles you will need to visualize your next move three steps ahead, to work out how to get where you need to be.

Nail'd Game Review

Nail'd is an off-road arcade style racer which focuses on speed and chaos rather than real physics. We have seen this in recent racing games like Pure and the Motorstorm franchise, but the majority of modern-day racing games focus on realistic physics and arcade racing fans have been left with little to cheer about. Nail'd is the latest arcade-racer to hit the market and although it's not perfect, it's extremely fun.

The games setup is very simple, the main focus is on Career Mode, where you can race with either an ATV or MX Bike where you can race through several leagues and courses in quest of winning the Nail'd Championship. Most races consist of 3 laps around a course, however, Nail'd will sometimes mix the action up a bit, "mutators" add quirks such as infinite boosts, or no collision with other drivers to races. Or there are Stunt Challenges were you will have to complete tracks within a specific time while performing some of the many impressive tricks to gain a high score. There is a great deal of variety with the tricks, however, something as stupid as running another player off a track can be considered a trick which is a bit strange. The game also contains multiplayer racing for up to 12 players at one time, this will likely be the portion of the game which will hold players interests for a long time.

Splatterhouse Game Review

The development of Splatterhouse was originally given to Mark of Kri developers Bottlerocket Entertainment back in 2007. Namco snatched the title away early last year and gave it to the team behind 2008's Afro Samurai game. After 4 long years we can finally play Splatterhouse, but was it worth the wait ?, no.

Splatterhouse starts off more or less the same as the classic 80's arcade hit original, protagonist Rick is lying in a pool of his own blood as Dr. West drags his girl friend Jen away. An ancient mask offers Rick a deal, put on the mask and destroy Dr. West and all his creations, if this is done Rick will save his girl friend Jen. From then on the game is pretty much a bad VHS horror movie gone wrong from the 80's.

Splatterhouse rolls around in Lovecraftian themes that feel pretty tired in 2010, but the games slightly goofy sensibility takes the edge off of this somewhat. The game does nothing new and feels standard at best. The game follows the basics for a traditional third-person action game, light and heavy attacks, upgrades and better combos, quicktime kill moves, and hordes of pawn-like enemies followed by one oversized tougher enemy. This is the standard layout for a game like this and Splatterhouse doesn't even attempt to add it's own unique feeling or twist on this traditional layout for a third-person action game.

MotionSports Kinect Game Review

With a less than impressive line-up for the launch of Microsoft's Kinect, a system which uses motion sensing technology, MotionSports Kinect is just one of many games which fails to impress. Ubisoft's MotionSports features six different sports that are broken down into various challenges. The big problem is MotionSports fails to deliver the accurate, engaging, and enjoyable experience that Kinect Sports provides.

In MotionSports your real body movements are mapped onto your on-screen character, using the Kinect technology. You'll compete in various challenges, set in a variety of sports such as football, skiing, soccer, boxing, hand gliding, and horseback riding. The list of sports contains some familiar well-known sports, but there are some strange additions here. Even stranger is how the challenges in each sport don't seem to represent the sport very well. For example, playing football (American) will consist of you running down a pitch avoiding tackles and throwing the odd pass, rather than actually playing a game of football.

SingStar Dance Game Review

The SingStar franchise is well known throughout the Playstation community, with it's simple concept appealing to many of us around the world. You buy the game, along with a microphone and begin you're karaoke dream in you're very own living room. You can try to fill in pitch and timing bars with you're voice to earn points, but we all know the only reason to buy this game is to blast out you're favourite tunes along with a group of friends and feel like celebrity's for the night.

The SingStar franchise has always been about singing, however, now they have taken advantage of the Playstation Move's motion sensing technology and added dancing to the mix. Now the 30 songs also have dance routines and this certainly adds much more value to the content. As always the singing part of the game is fun and great entertainment in a party environment, the dancing however, is just a frustrating mess.

Dance Central Kinect Game Review

So far Kinect has been less than impressive with a string of prommissing launch titles, crippled by Kinect's poor motion sensing technology. Dance Central is the first family-friendly Kinect party game from the people at Harmonix. This game will require you to do more than just tap you're feet in sync, you will use you're whole body when playing this game and it will take allot out of you at times. You will need a happy attitude to play this game with friends or family because the game is only fun when you play it in a group. The game is far from perfect, but if this is what you are looking for then you will likely have allot of enjoyment here.

Dance Central uses Kinect's motion sensing technology to read player's body movements, movements which should be in sync with the on-screen prompts for you're dance to be successful. These "flash cards" each represent one move, and that move can range from a simple shuffle step to an advanced series of upper body motions. There are more than 30 songs in the game providing a great deal of variety for every taste. There are new hits (Cascada - Evacuate The Dance Floor) and old classics (Jungle Boogie) so there is something here to get everyone up on the dance floor. Each track has three different difficulty settings which must be unlocked in order.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Game Review

The Call of Duty franchise has grown ridiculously fast over the past few years into the Hollywood blockbuster game we know and love. The game which truly addicted fans to the series was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. It took the series from a World War II setting into the modern battlefields we see on the news every day. Treyarch's latest instalment to the franchise, Call of Duty: Black Ops, has had fans anticipating something big and although it doesn't do anything really new or unique, it provides fans with yet another COD experience.

You begin the campaign as Alex Manson, a soldier who is being interrogated for information he can't remember. You play through Manson's memories in search of the information. The story has some twists which will catch you off guard, the middle does seem to loose track but unlike Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops gives you the big finale you would expect. The story is definitely the strong point this time around which is quite a welcomed surprise.

Kinect Adventures Game Review

Kinect Adventures places you in the boots of a typical adventurer, with a variety of games and challenges to complete and explore. Players will use Microsoft's Kinect motion sensing technology to compete in these beautiful and colourful events which are fun for the first few hours, then thing's start to feel repetitive. There is allot here for players to enjoy but this mainly feels like a small package of games showing off Kinect's potential.

Kinect Adventures is a bunch of mini games packed into one family friendly package, it comes with the Kinect device itself and provides a taste of what you can expect in the future from Microsoft which is great. You play as a fun-loving adventurer who travels the world in search of new challenges. This all sounds promising, but once you realise the "adventurer" of Kinect Adventures is actually just a man repeating the same 5 mini games over and over, you begin to feel less adventurous. If you're looking for a full game experience then look somewhere else, as previously mentioned this is nothing more than a few mini games showing Kinect's potential, the charm will wear off fast.

Kinect Joy Ride Game Review

Joy Ride was originally going to be a free download for everyone on Xbox Live but Microsoft decided to make it one of their main launch titles for the highly anticipated "Kinect", which uses motion sensor technology. I'm sure everyone has pretended to drive some sort of imaginary vehicle with their arms at some point in their life, i personally used to do this at McDonald's drive through with friends, but the point is Joy Ride finally makes this a reality.

Joy Ride drops players into the world of casual arcade racing powered by Microsoft's motion sensing system, Kinect. The game is full of vibrant beautiful colours and lots of challenges, providing a very fulfilling package for anyone who chooses to give it a test drive. The game is designed to feel approachable for anyone, it feels like it has something to keep everyone happy but the only problem is the controls, Kinect just seems to ruin what would otherwise be a fantastic Xbox Live Arcade title.