Category xbox one

Deep Sky Derelicts from Snowhound Games is a game of salvage, mining and combat in space!

Assuming the role of a scavenger in Deep Sky Derelicts, you are looked down on by society but with a twist. Other than normal occupations society is split into two main factions- the haves and the have nots, or simply the Privleged and the Stateless. As a member of the Stateless group of humanity you must scavenge your way through not only your daily routine but as a means of survival. You have a single way out of this life though, one last salvage to end them all- an ancient alien spacecraft.

Gameplay is a throw back to the Final Fantasy 7 days of old where you take turns with each action and when winning the fight you are stuck watching a celebration to, well, celebrate your win. As  you progress through a map that looks like a cross between a tabletop game and a classic 80’s role playing game. Aesthetically the game looks like it would fit as an animated backdrop for another release in the Dead Space franchise, but much more tame and missing the spook factor. Controls are easy to learn but the game offers little in entertainment, but makes up for it in combat that looks like it belongs in a science fiction based comic.

Chicken Police is a Noir-styled detective story featuring the personification of many members of the animal kingdom.

Chicken Police, Handy Games, looks and plays like a classic point and click adventure using images of characters from a detective film that was released in the 20s or 30s. The biggest difference though is that the heads have been replaced with those of the animals they are meant to represent. You play form member of the Chicken Police, Sonny and are met by a doe who looks to hire a detective.

Forced to team up with your former partner Marty you must get to the bottom of this case as you dive deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. Point and click adventures can be quite dull unless your bring the panache along with it. What on the outside looks like a silly concept ends up working quite well as you are thrust into the world of Clawville- basically Zootopia without the Disney touch. The character models are beautifully rendered with more detail than you would have expected from a game like this and dialogue that is full of wit.

Personally I enjoyed the world and visuals but would have preferred something other than the point and click stylings we received.

Little Big Workshop is the builder that allows you to build a manufacturing business from the ground up with the appearance of it miniaturized.

This title from Handy Games is all about industry on a miniature scale. Little Big Workshop focuses on automation and planning ahead. Aimed at all ages it seems to miss it’s mark. Cute animations and characters do not make for a child friendly game. You start the game simple enough, build a workbench,  then make and ship a couple gnomes.

After this first task thinks get much more difficult as you find yourself not only trying to build a bench but pre-plan multiple tasks. Many of these tasks don’t even link properly and required rebooting the game several times to finally get it to complete. For a tutorial that is require to play the game you would think it would be a little easier to navigate and no require the finesse of multiple reboots to complete.

With Little Big Workshop I would have thought it would be right up my alley with the fact that everything is miniaturized but it feels more like a tedious snooze-fest than an exciting game even without the numerous glitches I encountered.

Let’s face it, humans are terrible creatures, just look at what they’ve done to the planet. With Destroy All Humans you can give them what’s coming to them.

Who wants to help Destroy All Humans? They suck, well most of ’em anyway. I am a firm believer that if more people had even a slight sense of decency this world would be so much better than it is and these last four years make that even more apparent. Hell, even this pandemic has highlighted the selfish nature of the human race. THQ Nordic and Black Forest Games bring us this classic kill ’em all video game with a full High Definition overhaul.

I had never played the original but had always heard that it was a fun game. When offered the opportunity to play and review this remake I jumped at the chance. Players take control of Crypto as he attempts to harvest brain stems to harvest the intermixed DNA that is stored there. Between abducting random citizens, killing cows and burning buildings to the ground you can quickly become overwhelmed but with some time spent unlocking abilities you can soon turn the tide.

Overall the game is quite goofy and entertaining but other than the ability to raze the world around you there wasn’t much to keep me engaged for a long period. Cutscenes are quite long, voice acting tolerable and the controls were easy to pick up. There are worse games out there but this one fell short of my expectations.

Have you ever had a loud neighbor you couldn’t shut up? With Party Hard 2 you can live your fantasies of a permanent solution.

TinyBuild have a history of exploiting a franchise for all that it’s worth so why should Party Hard 2 be a surprise? Having never played the original and hearing that it was mediocre at best I was surprised to hear there would be a sequel. I am never one to turn down a game offered for review though and as always my opinion is never swayed by the price I had to pay to play the game.

Presumably the original Party Hard leaves off with the killer going to therapy. As no surprise the Party Hard Killer finds himself getting upset at the noise coming from the nightclub nearby and upon hitting his breaking point dons his mask and knife once again and begins a new killing spree. The game visually isn’t much to look at as the bulk of the detail is rather pixelated and feels like it is meant to capitalize on the frequent waves of pixel-based nostalgia. The story feels like it just might be trying a bit too hard to justify why you are killing all of the party-goers from one location to another- we’re adults dammit, sometimes we just want to kill random people. Controls are easy to pick up and some of the items make for some rather interesting combinations.

The game is quite difficult to play and if you aren’t careful you will be arrested by the police and must start the game over. With a bit of patience however you can capitalize on people leaving the group so you can jump them in an alley. Gameplay is quite addicting and entertaining as you find new ways to kill the party-goers, drug dealer, bikers and more. I found myself wishing I had played the original game because this game was utterly fantastic and extremely addicting. I regularly find myself saying “one more try” or “I’ll stop when I beat this map” and each time I find that one more try becomes two and three tries.

Suicide is never a good thing but what makes the Suicide of Rachel Foster particularly noteworthy?

The Suicide of Rachel Foster by Daedelic Entertainment is a video game that focuses on investigating not only her final moments but how it affected Nicole and her family. Immediately upon starting the game you learn that Rachel Foster was you father’s mistress and soon after the breakup between them she had committed suicide. Nicole, our protagonist in this story, reads about this briefly in a letter sent to her by her dying mother, asking her to close the story and sell the family hotel.

If investigating a suicide from years ago while trying to sell a hotel wasn’t enough you arrive during one of the worst storms hitting Montana in decades. When I heard about this game I was told it would be an investigation based narrative and based on that description sounded like it would be quite dull. Playing through the first few minutes after arriving at the hotel it feels suspiciously like it was hiding a horror game under it’s mundane dressing. The music and effects add a bit of tension (or perhaps that’s my lack of sleep after working the graveyard shift) but is offset by the slow movements and bored dialogue- Nicole sounds dreadfully bored.

The visuals of the game are quite detailed but many of the more interesting sites cannot be interacted with in any way. Gameplay is maddeningly dull and tedious. Movements slow without any options to speed them up (it seriously needed a jog option while navigating the hall of the hotel. Playing over an hour I am no closer to unraveling the secret of the suicide and wonder if perhaps she played her own game. I expected much better from Daedelic and unless it is a free title I would avoid this one, of course if you need help going to sleep at night playing this before bed just might help.

Dread Nautical is a tactics based horror game with an Eldritch twist.

In Dread Nautical you are on a cruise ship sailing through the Bermuda Triangle. What could possibly go wrong? This title from Zen Studios attempts to answer just that by putting players on a luxury cruise and everything goes to hell rather quickly.

You might as well be Bill Murray because you get thrown into a Groundhog Day situation where each day you wake up and the day starts over. Playing as Fargo Drexler you must solve the mystery of what is going on and why you wake up back where you started each time you sound the ship’s horn.

Conceptually a cruise ship in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle makes for an interesting locale and the introduction of Eldritch creatures make for a story that leaves you wondering what is behind your new world of horrors. Controls are quite easy to master as you maneuver the ship but where this game really lacks is the visuals. The visuals look very similar to the original Virtua Fighter game and feels out of place among the many other titles in their library– namely Pinball Fx. I was expecting something a bit flashier but it is not enough to take away from the experience. The gameplay is enjoyable enough but the game just comes off feeling tedious.

Through the Darkest of Times is a strategy game based on one of the world’s darkest periods in history- the rise of Nazi Germany.

Through the Darkest of Times by Handy Games is a historical strategy game that puts you behind the resistance movement in hopes of preventing Hitler’s rise to power. When I started this game I knew that your goal would fail but figured I’d stick it to every Nazi I could along the way. Little did I know how close the game would hit to home. Not only did it give me a reality check but it literally made me nauseous. It wasn’t the graphics or video quality that did it either.

Within a couple game days I noticed a sickening trend, how much the rise of the Nazi party mirrored our own country’s politics the last couple of years. The things Nazi sympathizers would say would mirror almost word for word things I have heard and read said by Trump supporters. Whether this was intentional or not I have no idea. This wouldn’t be the only time I’ve compared the rhetoric to Nazi Germany and certainly won’t be the last. I just hope that the current election woes will pass soon and we can return to making our country a better place, without the need of war and outside interference.

The game itself plays similar to games like the original Where in the World is Carmen San Diego and it’s many sequels but instead of quizzing players it allows you to turn the populace towards revolting against the regime. Visually the graphics would fit well with the late 80’s computer games and it feels like that was the goal, aiming for some semblance of nostalgia. The gameplay however is mind numbing but interspersed with tidbits of story to keep you curious. If you want to watch a resistance movement like a fly on the wall, observing the plans and the results only as the members return to headquarters then you will enjoy this game. The story is fascinating and disturbing in equal parts and worth the play for that alone but don’t expect much in terms of excitement.

Beyond Blue is the title meant for every aspiring marine biologist or anyone that wanted to be one as a child (myself included).

Beyond Blue from E-Line Media is an adventure where you play as Marine Biologist Mirai as she explores the ocean collecting data. Her primary focus is on studying a group of whales, or a pod, specifically Humpback whales. Each in game day gives a list of tasks to perform like scanning the pod of whales and fixing buoys. With the couple hours I already put into the game the worst of the tasks was holding the X button down for about five seconds. The game has a story but it is far from exciting, however it does have a bit of backstory you can pick up regarding Mirai and her family.

Visually the character models look like they belong to some of the classic Xbox days and not the Xbox One. The best thing though is how natural the underwater creatures move. The reactions of the AI have a bit to be desired as you can swim through a school of fish and the just keep swimming instead of darting away from you like real schools of fish would. The game is easy to pick up to play and can be played with your whole family in the room. It was an enjoyable game that was a bit too slow to keep my attention for more than thirty minutes at a time.

Many games allow you to play as an insect and many more allow you to play in a first person perspective but only Metamorphosis allows you to play both!

Based on the writings of Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis begins with players waking up in a hotel room, vague memories of the night before. After leaving your friend behind you enter a strange hallway and start to notice things about yourself changing the further you get. Soon after you realize you have not only turned into a bug of some sort but see a letter offering you employment at a secretive location called The Tower. Deciding to accept the offer the page sucks you into a dizzying world where you use the written words as stones to bridge your path.

Along the way you encounter various dangers and puzzles to solve to bring you closer to The Tower. As a bug you find that traversing steep slopes is far easier and with the help of something sticky can easily walk along vertical walls. One of your first tasks is to return to your friend and wake him up to try to get him to see you as yourself and not just the bug you have been turned into.

Visually the game leaves a bit to be desired as an Xbox One title I would expect the visuals to be a bit cleaner. Gameplay is quite fluid as you traverse the many varying terrain in ways you never expected but can be quite glitchy. Multiple times over the course of an hour of play the game crashed and required rebooting the system before I could return to the game to only do it again. Glitches and visuals aside though, the team at All In Games made an enjoyable title that is well worth playing for the mechanics alone, not to mention an interesting story that will leave you wondering what’s at the tower? After nearly four hours of play (including two reboots) I feel like I am nowhere near the tower but wanting to get there and learn it’s secrets.