Everything I have said about Fall of Cybertron holds true for this one. It's a surprisingly fun 3rd person action adventure romp. It has 3rd person shooting sections and some driving too. Even as a non-transformers fan, I was drawn into this one and feel that with all the characters and story cutscenes, it would be even more appealing to fans of the series. It's difficult to separate the two games in terms of how enjoyable they are. They both have nice short and simple levels with some great action sequences which add a bit of variety to the gameplay. The voice acting and story is great and you can tell a lot of effort has been put into both games. I'd put this one slightly behind Fall of Cybertron as, while it is a very similar game, I found the environment in this game slightly blander and more gray. That being said, it's a great game in its own right and well worth picking up.

Another Dragon Ball game and another not very good one. This one was even hated by most Dragon Ball game fans, so It's probably not so controversial that I think this one sucks. It's another 3d Fighter with very similar mechanics to the other games. It feels like a much simplified version of Raging Blast and is even worse for it. Fights are basically a mash x combo followed by a pointless rock paper scissor style mini game. It really removes much of the player input and as such, the game feels like it is playing itself. There's less characters and the make your own hero mode just flat out sucks. There's a major lack of depth with the character creation and it's just very forgettable. To be honest, most people will either find the game itself super forgettable overall or remember it as rock paper scissors from hell. In a sea of Dragon Ball games on the console, this is one of them. Even the most diehard of Dragon Ball fans don't need this. Go pick up Raging Blast if you really must play.

High Moon Studios have a knack for making decent 3rd person licensed games on the console, with the fun Transformers games and the silly Deadpool game. This was their first effort on the 360 and it really feels like a clunky younger brother to the Cybertron duo. The game follows the story of the movie, presenting it over around 12 levels with some nice cutscenes throughout. Game play wise it is a nice mix of 3rd person cover shooting and first person hand to hand combat. You also have an adrenaline meter which, when full, lets you pull of a finishing move, either shooting or hand to hand combat, which leads to an instant kill. I enjoyed my time with the game, but the experience was dragged down by some flaws and poor design choices. For example, the game is predominantly a cover based 3rd person shooter, but it struggles to implement the movement into or out of cover, which is really down to the controls. The gunplay itself is good and aiming works fine. The levels are designed with this cover in mind, full of things to hide behind. The issue is that you don't really know which you can use as cover. I found myself running up to objects and then awkwardly standing around getting shot as my characters refused to hide behind whatever it was. It's little issues like this that feel a bit amateur and really highlights that this was one of HMS's first games. The reliance on quick time events was another frustration. When you are not headshotting bad guys, you are punching them in the face in a 1 on 1 fighting game style combat section. This was a nice change of pace from the many third person brawlers on the console, but it can get a bit stale as you basically mash x and y in between blocking. Because of this, the inclusion of random QTEs during these fights was a very weird design choice as you really don't have time to react in the middle of a mash X combo. These issues don't ruin the game, it is still a lot of fun to play and the short campaign doesn't overstay its welcome. I really enjoyed jumping around the globe visiting a variety of different areas, and the few driving sections were a nice distraction. However, it must definitely is a flawed game, clunky and full of strange issues and design choices. If you can get past these, you will have fun with it, but don't expect a polished experience.

No one likes this one. The 3rd release in the NFS series on the 360, 2008's undercover feels like a product of the yearly release franchise that NFS became. Taking notes from the popular most wanted series, the game tells the story of some cool underground racing scene, featuring stylised real life actors in the cutscenes. This was actually my favourite part of the game. It's so painfully 2008 that it hurts and masochists like me will feel right at home in this classic cringe fest. On to the racing itself, well it's not good. We have a very bland open world map. It looks very low res and ugly and doesn't feel like it was designed with racing in mind. These type of maps work in games when there are lots of nooks and crannies to explore, secrets to find and jumps to try out. Undercover's map isn't like this. It is empty. Racing around the same lifeless map is extremely tedious and made worse by the cop chases. How can I hide from the cops if there is no where to hide? The game also introduces some destructible elements to the map, which while nice, are heavily underutilised. The game is also 100% an arcade racer, so keep that in mind. Really can't recommend this one.

Insane Bomberman reboot which is a really interesting relic of the era. In an attempt to woo western consumers, Hudson transformed their cute loveable Bomberman character into a "realistic" post apocalyptic style disgusting brown robot thing. A lot has been said about this dumb change and the jiggly boob physics that the game has, and yeah it's weird but I don't hate it. It's a nice window to a time when this was the style of games and everything was brown and grim, gritty and cool. That's not really the issue with the game though, there are many more, far worse issues with this horrible game. The first noticeable offense is the weird camera angle. Instead of showing the whole battlefield from above, it gives a slightly angled view around your character. You can zoom in and out a bit, but you can never see the whole map. It's infuriating as you can't see what you are running into and can't plan your moves ahead. Weirdly, the free play mode gives you the standard camera, so this is only an issue in the campaign. However, this leads on to the second issue, the lack of couch coop. Another incredibly dumb decision, especially seeing as how dead the online servers were even at release. Like the main reason most people play Bomberman is to play with friends. So, you don't need to bother with free play, but at least it has a nice 100 level campaign right? Well, not really. Yes, it has 100 levels, but all the maps are the same. This seems particularly lazy, even the game boy game from 1994 had some map variety. Now if you can see past all these flaws and enjoy the campaign then great, but you have to complete all 100 levels in one sitting as there are no save points. Die on level 99, start again. No coop, shitty camera, 1 map, no saves. Ignore the graphics, this one has far worse problem.

Not much to say about this game which hasn't already been said. I mean if you own a 360, likely you will have played Halo 3. What's nice about Halo 3 is that even after all these year, with the multiplayer servers now shut down, it is still a great campaign and it really holds up well. The campaign is an excellent 8 hour romp through a variety of interesting environments with all the things you expect from a halo game. Excellent controls, a wide variety of useful weapons, wonderful enemy design and some of the smoothest gameplay you will see on the console. For some, Halo 3 is the last of the mainline Halo games, with Bungie passing on developing duties to 343 studios for Halo 4. I think this speaks as much to the quality of the previous Halo games as it does the issues with 4, and there's two main areas for me where this is really apparent. For a start its the music and sound effects. The new tracks in Halo 3 are great and really fit the mood of the series. Ending the game with another Warthog run, with the original Halo music was also a wonderful choice and has brought the series full circle. Secondly, the game has a great story. Not only does it actually make sense, it's also interesting. You get to know the characters and their intentions better. There's a couple of nice surprise moments towards the end too. Of course there are a few things I would change about the game. There are points where it is a bit difficult to figure out what the game wants you to do next and I did find some of the skulls a bit too difficult to find (I can't grenade jump, sorry). But that feeling when you finally get through the difficult section of a level on the hardest difficulty is still just as good as ever, and is what makes the game great. Of course you need this one!

With the birth of the arcade downloadable titles on consoles, we saw the death of budget titles released on disk. By budget titles, I'm talking of the games which didn't cost a lot to make, often were made by a small team and more often than not used less that half of the 8.3 GB of the space on the disk. This is a shame as often these games were fun, if slightly flawed titles. The Club is a great example of this. This 3rd person shooter focuses on in-your-face action and points scoring combos. You choose one of 6 characters, 50 Cent unfortunately not included, and take part in competitions in different locations. Each competition or tournament features a selection of events, either killing enemies to get points combos, holding off enemies for as long as you can or running through stages as quickly as possible. These events all take place on the same stage and you compete against enemy bots to see who can get the highest score. There are around 8 maps in the game, none of which are particularly exciting, but the tournament style events and the combo hunting gameplay is pretty decent. I enjoyed racking up some big scores and getting a run just right and there is a nice addictive feeling to the short levels. You string together combos by killing enemies in quick succession and getting special kills like headshots or multi-kills, all of which add to a point multiplier which will start to drop if you stop killing. This creates a fast and frantic style of gameplay, and while I found the camera a little lacking, the controls were decent and the gameplay was quite smooth. My main issue with the game is that this is all there is to it. Sure you can replay levels to get higher scores if you like that kinda thing, but that's about it. There's not really a lot here and it does become repetitive fairly quickly. Overall it's a fine game, but I doubt many people will invest much time with this one.

In the mid to late 2000s there was a bunch of 3rd person, over the top action games which I would call dumb fun. Games like Saints Row 1, Just Cause and Crackdown were not particularly graceful games, but they were fun to play. They often had dumb enemy AI, ugly graphics, horrible dialogue and a style of gameplay that focused on action but wasn't very refined. Mercenaries 2 is another one of those game. It gives me a certain style of nostalgia going back to play these games because they are really a window to video games at the time, when having a cool concept and a trailer with some nice explosions would sell a game. Looking back, these games kinda suck but they are fun which is the most important factor.

Mercs 2 puts you in the middle of a fairly insensitive for the time fictional Venezuelan civil war. You and your group of mercenaries start off trying to kill the president, but you end up in a big free-for-all with a bunch of different factions trying to blow everything up. The gameplay is peak PS2 style GTA loving open world 3rd person shooting. The enemy AI is horrible and the gameplay is pretty glitchy, plus it has some very tough missions that can be very frustrating.

Aside from the main story, you also have the constant battle for resources and turf with the rival gangs throughout the map. You can attack these bases on foot or by vehicle, with a huge number of weapons and some nice destructible buildings. They throw in a lot of random mechanics also. You can call in air strikers and air support from your home base. These require you to spend certain resources such as oil and money, which also need to be collected (via helicopter pick up which you call in) and are normally guarded by a bunch of enemies. It's a very time consuming ebb and flow, with enemies and bases respawning and various groups controlling different areas.

It reminds me of a mix of different mechanics from games of a similar era such as Far Cry 2, The Godfather and Just Cause. It's a classic case of dumb fun, these extra elements of open world gameplay are a nice distraction when you get stuck on some difficult campaign mission, yet you could find yourself totally engrossed in them. A dated buggy and ugly mess, Mercs 2 is a classic mid 2000s copycat game with its dated humour and gameplay design. Still enjoyable though.

Video game royalty in terms of movie tie-in games, the 007 films have spawned a surprising amount of great shooters, with Night-fire, Secret Agent and Goldeneye being some of my favourites. Unfortunately, after the 360 generation, the fairly constant stream of 007 game releases seems to have dried up, so these 360 releases are some of the most recent games for Bond fans. This one is based on the movie of the same name, which I barely remember, featuring the likenesses of Bond and I presume all the other characters. I have to admit I wasn't really interested in the story, I was mainly looking for a nice short FPS campaign, and that is exactly what I got. QoS is not going to blow you away, but it is a very decent shooter. It has a nice variety of detailed levels and a story to move the action along and explain what you are doing in each location. The gameplay itself is really fun. It blends first person shooting with some third person cover action and the good level of difficulty and decent AI make it work well. There are some collectables here and there but it isn't too complicated. It gives off a nice and simple Night-fire style feel and is a nice change from modern games without feeling dated or archaic. My only major complaint is the controls, which were unresponsive and a little frustrating but didn't ruin the fun. This one is a great shout for FPS fans, bond fans and in general people who enjoy a nice short linear campaign with a decent story. Grab it.

This one I dig. As I grapple with the sheer number of American Football games on the console, there are quite a number that stand out and NCAA 13 is one of them. The penultimate NCAA game on the console, 13 is rarely mentioned compared to the well loved and equally expensive 14, yet I think you could argue it's actually better. Now NCAA 13 doesn't make any big leaps in terms of the game modes, it still has the Heisman challenges, road to glory etc. Where it excels though is it's gameplay changes, which I think make the game modes even better. The game has been made a bit more difficult, you can't nail all those long throws you used to and the defense seems smarter. This made me pay a lot more attention in the training sessions in Road to Glory and tweak my gameplay style accordingly to try to level up my player with exp. It has an almost RPG like feel about it which is cool. Reaction time is also a nice addition, slowing down the gameplay for just a few seconds can be really helpful and help you pull out some big plays. For me though, the most interesting aspect is the in depth recruiting in the game when you are in charge of a team. Scouting players, inviting them to your school, even calling them on the phone, it really makes the process feel authentic and worthwhile. It doesn't quite reach the heights of NCAA 14, especially in terms of gameplay, but it's still an excellent football game.

Platinum games always strive to make interesting and stylish games. Bayonetta is their best known game on the system which managed to combine style and substance with its excellent combat. Vanquish came next with is substance but not much style, which makes it still a fun game to play. Anarchy Reigns is the third offering on the console and while it ticks the stylish box, it doesn't hold up in terms of substance. Gameplay wise AR is a 3D brawler set in a post apocalyptic future. A spiritual successor to the better Madworld, the game features 2 different but very short campaigns with different characters Jack and Leo. The story for each character is intertwined and works quite well, with some suitably cheesy dialogue between fights. It's a shame then that it's enjoyable on a very superficial level. The combat, while fun at first, quickly becomes repetitive and the lack of enemy variety later on in the game becomes a big issue. I found myself repeating similar combos all the way throughout the game and you are really given one set option to handle each enemy type which leaves you little space for creativity. Each level is set in a different area which seems interesting at first, there are different sections to each area and some special areas too, yet it all feels very superficial as when you spend a bit of time in a level you realise how small and dull they are. A lot of these problems are probably due to the fact the game wants to be a multiplayer brawler and maybe it did succeed in that, but i doubt you will be able to find any matches nowadays. A game which, while fun for a short while, looks more interesting than it actually is. Bonus points for the excellent music though.

2005 saw the release of one of the most beloved games in the NFS franchise, Most wanted. The game mixed street racing with an open world environment, police chases and street racing gangs. Unfortunately, it has been fairly downhill since then. The series has gone a bit off the rails with no real direction. While there has been some decent games, the street racing feeling has really gone missing. Most Wanted is EAs attempt to cash in on people's love for the original game, without really addressing what people loved about the original game and it's not massively successful. It does has some similarities with the original mixed with some parts of hot pursuit. Like most NFS games, the game handles well and the racing is pretty nice. It is the standard arcade style racing you would expect from the series and when you are actually in a normal race, it is pretty fun. The problem is that the game is bogged down by a lot of rubbish that you don't really want in the game. Now, I'm really not a fan of open world racing games. I think most of the time tracks are more suited for close contested racing battles. This one is no different, it looks great but doesn't really work in terms of racing. That's if you actually get into the racing. There is time wasted driving around the city, time spent avoiding the police and time spent on non-racing events. Another huge time waste is the long crash animations, every time you crash you get a shitty 5 second cut scene. It totally ruins the flow of the races. Overall, the game feels vapid. From its' lack of racing to its' horrible music, it's another case of NFS not really working out. The basic mechanics of the game work but all the silly extras just bring it down.

Sniper Elite 3 reminds me of Assassins creed in that the concept is much better than the gameplay. Playing as a sniper behind enemy lines in WW2 seems like a novel concept, but in practice there is just something lacking about the game. The basic concept of the game is that you are dropped into an open world map full of enemies and you need to assassinate a target - normally with your sniper. You sneak around the map, set traps for enemies, hide bodies and use noise to mask your shots. Of course, sometimes shit hits the fan and you mess up, alerting all the guards to your presence. In these cases you can pull out your SMG and go to town. In general, the game is pretty fun. The levels are fairly varied, some indoor and some outdoor, and they are designed to give you multiple ways to tackle a mission. There's some nice collectables to keep you occupied and attempting to complete a mission without getting spotted is fun. If you have played 2, then 3 is basically more of the same. It is a little less linear and they have added a relocation mechanic, but this doesn't change much. While it does hold it's own as a decent game, I can't help but feel like it could have been great. The open world nature of the game is nice, but in some ways detrimental to the gameplay. At no point in the game did I feel a real sense of pressure. If you get spotted, you just run away and the enemies will forget about you after a while. You can then come back a few minutes later to the same area and try again, often there are no consequences to your mistakes. Of course this can be solved in the difficulty options, but none of the difficulties really felt like the optimum balance of challenge and fun. Sniper Elite 3 is decent and I think maybe a slight improvement on 2. It's a nice game to have in your collection even though it feels like a lost opportunity.

The word hidden gem gets thrown around a lot, so much so that games which are heralded as hidden gems become popular well liked games. MXGP is a true hidden gem and due to its nature as a bit of a niche title I feel confident it will stay that way, especially considering how many good racers there are on the console. MXGP is the first official MX game on the console, but is fairly similar to the previously released MX vs ATV games. This is some fast action, dirt track racing and it is a lot of fun. The first thing I have to mention is the incredible track degradation/deformation, by this I mean the surface of the race track - the mud- being carved up by other racers, creating a totally different track each lap. Sega Rally Revo pioneered the track degradation/ deformation effects and MXGP takes it to another level. Lines and routes will get cut into the track, some of which are helpful and some of which deviate from the racing line. It's a really nice feature and it looks great and adds some variety to races. This is helped by the excellent physics. The cornering feels right and the ruble gives you some nice feedback each turn feeling very responsive. I'm sure fans of MX will dig this one, but even for none race fans it is a decent and polished package, with everything you would expect from a 2014 racing game. On the negative side there are a few issues. Perhaps this can be played with in the menus, but I found the game was a bit too forgiving of rule breaking and crashes. Even on the most difficult of handling settings I was able to maintain first even after a crash. This could also affect the longevity of the game as some may not find it challenging enough. For a fairly unheard of 360 title though these are minor flaws and it is a great game. If you are looking for more mud based fun after Sega Rally Revo, go for this one.