I haven't got through all the Moto GP games yet, but I'm predicting this to be my favourite of the series. Moto GP 14 was great, it added some interesting features and just made racing fun. Moto GP 15 is very similar to its predecessor, but polishes things up where they really matter, in the racing. The bikes feel better than ever and handle very well. It's difficult to explain what changes have been made, but the racing just feels right. Different bikes handle differently. Different race strategy can really make or break a race. You'll find yourself remembering corners from previous races and whether the tactics that you used on that corner worked or not. While I'm maybe not being critical enough of milestone for how similar this is to 14, I had a lot of fun with it and that's what counts.

If you are nostalgic for some oldschool sega fun, these are the games for you. There is something so unique about these very arcadey and very japanese sega titles. The upbeat music, the calm and cool menus, the warp sound as you move through the menus and best of all the way the announcer shouts virtua tennis as the game starts. Super Monkey ball fans and Dreamcast owners will know what I am talking about. Virtua Tennis, or Power Smash as it's called in Japan, is an arcade style tennis series, which doesn't take itself too seriously. It has the standard tennis modes and a bunch of fun mini games to play. If you are looking for some fun with friends and the occasionally non commital round on the courts this one is for you. However, if you are looking for depth, this is probably not for you. The controls are very simple, there are not to many different tactics or shot types, the main campaign is very similar to top spin, but again simplified without the in-depth stat building mechanics. On top of this, there is not a great deal of progession between games. Virtua Tennis 3 holds up pretty well against Top spin 2, but there is a pretty big gulf between Virtua Tennis 4 and Top Spin 4. All these factors make it a worse series, but they are still fairly fun to play and really saved but the top notch audio. If you are looking at picking up a game from this series, you can't really go wrong with any of them, but I would probably pick 3 as my favourite and likely the cheapest of the bunch nowadays.

Revelations, a side story to the mainstream resident evil games, start with a 3DS game which was then ported to other consoles. Here, rather confusingly, we have the sequel. It's a sequel in loose terms as it links to the first game, but isn't really a direct continuation of the story, or at least it doesn't feel like it. The game is split into two main story arcs, Clair and Barry's daughter and then Barry and some random kid, with each story split into 4 sections. This intense segmentation of the game is because it was released in small installments, similar to the walking dead or the latest series of hitman. This seems like a strange decision, and I'm really confused as to why they did this, luckily its all available on the disk. The game actually starts off quite nicely. The first segment of the game is a lot of fun. It has coop gameplay throughout and is perfect for couples with a more dominant character doing most of the combat, and a side character helping out with finding hidden objects and distracting enemies. After playing through a level with Claire and Barry's daughter you then get to try a different route on a later timeline with Barry and the random kid. Unfortunately, the level design gradually gets worse, meaing it becomes a real pain to repeat these boring levels again. It's a shame because the game starts off so well, the gradual decline to bore fest is sad to see. The game also includes the excellent mercenaries levels, where most of the fun can be had. You take part in various combat challenges in coop or with friends online, from levels from previous games in the series. This mode is fun, and the call backs to enemies and locations from previous games is a nice touch. Overall the mercenaries section saves this game which ends up leaving you feeling gradually more and more disappointed.

Some games have such a bad ass premise that they are almost destined to fail. Fighting Mythical creatures in NYC, the badass boxart, distributed by gamecock, protagonist call Dickhard, wait what? Legendary in many ways suffered from its own success and ended up with terrible reviews. Well, I'm here to tell you that these reviews were probably too harsh, and Legendary is pretty fun. It's a member of the 4 hour campaign crappy FPS group that I am overly fond of. Playing as Dickhard, you have to blast your way through waves of enemies, more doom style than call of duty, including minotaurs, griffins and werewolves. The enemies are pretty badass, and you have to deal with them in different ways which adds a bit of variety. Werewolves have to be shot in the head after they die to stop them regenerating, fairies can only be shot when they are attacking, human soldiers can only be killed if you can aim the shitty controls. Yes this game is made by the same people who made turning point, so its no surprise that the controls are quite slow and unresponsive. It is however a huge improvement on Turning Point, both in terms of controls and how much fun it is to actually play. It reminds me more of a budget F.E.A.R than Turning Point, with its difficulty and how quickly the enemy soldiers kill you and while the horror elements mostly miss the mark, they do help the game stand out from the crowd of generic FPS games. I was wuite disappointed with some of the level locations. It's awesome to start off with civilians get eaten griffins in time square and seeing big ben getting smashed by a giant Kraken was dope, but the intermittent sewers and metro station levels are far less imaginative. I also want to give a shout out to the wolves for always glitching out and getting stuck in walls so you can't blast their head off, thanks guys. Yes it's kinda bad, but no where near as bad as the reviews state and it IS fun to play. Worth picking up cheap just to experience the short campaign and see if you disagree with the critics.

The golden compass is one of two games on the console that features a mission asking you to sweep up shit. Just like Risen (the other of the two games), I actually quite enjoyed this one, and consider it quite underrated. Based on a movie, which I haven't seen, which is in turn based on a kids book that I haven't read, this game really stands out for both good and bad reasons. Starting with bad, the story makes absolutely no sense. The levels are cut with various clips from the movie which seem to have tenuous links at best to whats happening in the mission. It's a shame because it does seem like quite a nice idea for a story, particularly for younger players. The game also isn't great at explaining at what you have to do and I had to use a guide a some points, which isn't great for a kids game. To be honest I'm probably just an idiot. On the positive side, its really quite different from a lot of other movie tie in games. For a start the levels look really nice, the graphics aren't anything special, but many of the levels are very colourful and the variety of levels really stands out. You go from a frozen tundra to a stately home in oxford to a pirate ship. It's a nice change from the dull gray levels we see in a lot of similar budget games. The gameplay also is quite unique. There's a mix of some platforming, fetch quests, puzzles and simple combat and dialogue challenges in the form of mini games. None of them are anything special, but all fairly enjoyable. My favourite aspect is the alethiometer. There are hidden symbols that you can find throughout levels. These are used to solve riddles using the aethalometer. If you find them great, but if you don't you can still make educated guesses. Its a nice incentive to explore levels without forcing you to replay them, and a unique gameplay feature I haven't really seen in other games. If you are looking for something a little different, I would recommend giving this one a try. A worthy addition to any collection.

As a mid 30s dude, WWE (we all know it's WWF really) games hold some form of nostalgia for me. I was a kid at the height of its popularity and loved wwf warzone and attitude. If you go back now, these games are almost unplayable. The controls are mental and you need to remember a bunch of random button combinations. The later WWE games on the system realised this and have simplified things a great deal. You now just need to grapple and use the right thumbstick to pull off a variety of moves, which personally I think is a good thing. One nice thing I will mention about 2K16 is it has a stone cold story mode, where you play out scenarios from stone cold's career. As a fan of this era, that was a nice touch and it has been done well, feeling like a quality package. Aside from that, there are not a great deal of differences from the other WWE releases around this time, and unless you are a big stone cold fan, you can probably also look at 2k15 or 2k17. I quite enjoyed this one, but I'm not a huge WWE fan so take it with a pinch of salt.

The first game I played on the 360 and still one of the best. Making a sequel to the original 2 fallout games on console was always going to be a challenge, transitioning from isometric RPG to a first person rpg shooter hybrid while still creating a weird but believable wasteland surely couldnt work. But my god it does. Using the same engine as the excellent Oblivion, Besthesda created a wonderful world to explore, full of interesting events, characters and some easter eggs. The first sequence of missions is one of my favourites in video game history. Waking up as a member of a vault, an underground community where humans moved to hide from the atom bomb, you start the game as a bady crawling around your room.The game holds your hand as you explore life in a vault and get used to the controls and wonderful progression system, before disaster strikes and you are thrust out of the vault into the iradiated wasteland. The balance of the interesting weapons and combat of FPS games mixed with the dialouge, quests and interesting progression system of an RPG works extremely well, and keeps you wanting to play just 10 mins minutes. It's not a perfect game. The main storyline is pretty bland compared to some of the sidequests and it suffers from a bunch of bugs and crashes. Fortunately, playing on the series X with backwards compatibility solves half of these problems. It's a bit of a tossup between this and Fallout new vegas to me, and perhaps its horrible DLC (not all of it) let it down, but it really is a must own game.

Under rated game alert. Viking: Battle for Asgard manages to tread the fine line between simplicity and being too simple and manages to deliver a hack and slash experience that is a lot of fun. You play as some random viking dude hacking the shit out of orcs as you fight to reclaim your lands. It's a simple story, with simple gameplay mechanics and it works great. Being completely sick of these repetative open world games which are made artificially longer by repeating pointless tasks, Viking gets straight to the point. There are 3 islands that you have to reclaim, each being fairly small without a great deal of filler. The gameplay is a simplistic but nice take on god of war, mostly hack and slash but including some blocking and dodging which add to the variety. The best part of the game is the epic wars that you find yourself in. Hundreds of enemies on each side, just slicing limbs off of each other. The game does have some bugs. I found that every so often it would stop for a second or two. This wasn't game breaking, but was very annoying. If you can get past this, it's a great little game, which I highly reccomend.

As a series need for speed is exhausting. When you pick up one of these games you never know what you are going to get. Games like Most Wanted are street racing and battling rivals. Shift went more down the simulation route. The Run introduced some weird giant race mechanic. Rivals is the last game released on the 360 and one of the better ones in my opinion. The game seems to follow on from the Hot Pursuit series, mixing up some underground gangs and police chases. You have two parts of the game, the police side and the gang side, both offer slightly different gameplay. You are dropped into a decently sized and quite pretty open world map and given 3 different sets of challenges. You work your way through the ranks, completing these tasks in any way you choose, and leveling up unlocking different cars and gadgets. The tasks are quite nicely varied and the cars handle well and are fun to drive, but its nothing particularly special. Perhaps I am jaded from playing too many crappy NFS games, but as I had such low expectation I was almost able to ignore the shortcomings of this game. At the heart of it, it is Hot Pursuit 2. All of the criticisms that I levelled against that game are even more relevant here. It is everything a bland modern racer stands for and sticks far too closely to the standard set up of many racing games of this era, making it very forgettable. However, it is still a fun fast paced arcade racer. It doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, but fans of simple arcade racers will enjoy it.

Me and my team enter a two story building overlooking a village. Upon exiting the balcony, we come under heavy fire from enemies in a building further down. We have a decent vantage point, but can't see the enemies hiding behind walls. I take position on the balcony, and send my team down to secure the building. It's dangerous, but under the cover of the crowded village they make it safely. With the enemies now focused on my team, I am free to cover them. As the team reaches the entrance to the building, an enemy pops his head out of the window to fire at them. Splat. I land a direct hit, right in the face, enemy down. My team breaches the building. But wait, as they enter the building another enemy flanks them and attempts to enter behind them. Splat 2. Another direct hit, this time to the torso, takes the enemy down. My team secure the building safely, no casualties on our side. It's moments like this that really show off the how much fun Red River can be. It's not always this good, long periods sat in transport vehicles being shouted at are a lowlight, but when it is good, it's really good. This is a tactical shooter, few of which exist on the console, so it's a little different from the standard COD, battlefield fare. You are in charge of a team of 3 soldiers, and must use tactics and commands to achieve your goals. What's nice is how useful your AI team mates are. Its so common in games nowadays to have AI teammates that do absolutely nothing. You are shooting a group of enemies with your team mates and take cover after getting shot, when you pop back up 15 seconds later, your AI team mates have killed 0 enemies. Having such helpful teammates makes you want to utilise them, and working out strategies to take down heaving fortified enemy positions is an absolute joy. There are quite a lot of people who do not enjoy this game, and would be surprised at my praise. I think its safe to say that I regard this game as underrated. I do totally understand the detractors. Firstly, tactical shooters are not for everyone. They can be a bit slow, difficult and require patience. Additionally, in Red River we have a much dumbed down version of the operation flashpoint series, and I am sure long term fans may find it a bit lightweight. For me though, it really strikes a nice balance between accessibility and authenticity, and I think it's definitely one of the more interesting shooters on the system. Worth a try for sure.

One of the more surprising games on the console, BlazBlue is a 2D fighting game with beautiful Japanese anime graphics. As far as I can tell, it's a completely new IP with new characters and a story, unrelated to any TV show or movie. Visually the game is very impressive, the characters all look great and have a nice variety of moves. The story is also pretty interesting and as the first game in the series it is a great place to start. The gameplay is probably too complex to explain here and while playing the game I probably only scratched the surface of the various blocks, block cancels and combos which the game uses. In this regard, it's definitely got longevity, but it also felt quite easy to pick up and play. A very interesting and unique new IP on the 360, definitely worth a try.

The first game I played on the 360 and still one of the best. Making a sequel to the original 2 fallout games on console was always going to be a challenge, transitioning from isometric RPG to a first person rpg shooter hybrid while still creating a weird but believable wasteland surely couldnt work. But my god it does. Using the same engine as the excellent Oblivion, Besthesda created a wonderful world to explore, full of interesting events, characters and some easter eggs. The first sequence of missions is one of my favourites in video game history. Waking up as a member of a vault, an underground community where humans moved to hide from the atom bomb, you start the game as a bady crawling around your room.The game holds your hand as you explore life in a vault and get used to the controls and wonderful progression system, before disaster strikes and you are thrust out of the vault into the iradiated wasteland. The balance of the interesting weapons and combat of FPS games mixed with the dialouge, quests and interesting progression system of an RPG works extremely well, and keeps you wanting to play just 10 mins minutes. It's not a perfect game. The main storyline is pretty bland compared to some of the sidequests and it suffers from a bunch of bugs and crashes. Fortunately, playing on the series X with backwards compatibility solves half of these problems. It's a bit of a tossup between this and Fallout new vegas to me, and perhaps its horrible DLC (not all of it) let it down, but it really is a must own game.

Another of the collections of old games on the console, this one focusing on old arcade game cabinets. As a fan of these type of collections, it pains me to see that most of them focus on the same bunch of old arcade games. I've played enough Defender Joust and Pacman to not get excited when I see them on collections. Thankfully, Arcade Origins does include some less common games. Personal favourites of mine include Smash TV, Gauntlet, Toobin and the very weird Rampart. This compilation includes 30 games, which is a decent amount, even if some of them are stinkers (did anyone enjoy Pit Fighter?). The presentation is nice too. The menu lets you scroll through the original arcade cabinets and listen to the music from each game while reading some information about the release. It's a bit of a shame that there are very few extras included. It would have been nice to see some interviews or maybe have some unlockable games, but maybe the achievements and online leader boards are enough for some people. You will probably know if you will enjoy this one or not, its a decent collection but could have been better.

The less you relate this game to gothic the more you will enjoy it. As someone who has not yet played a gothic game, (I plan to change that) I had a pretty good time with this one. Arcania is a WRPG in the vein of Two Worlds, Dragons Dogma, Risen, Kingdoms of Amalaur etc etc. If you haven't tried any of these, its a single player adventure RPG, which features some hack and slash combat, spells, leveling up your character, a bunch of quests, loot and a semi- open world to explore. Most of these type of games have fairly servicable but simple combat style, so in my opinion live and die by the way they ask the player to interact with the environment. In this sense, Arcanaia is a fairly linear affair, with the game splitting the open world into small sections with a main quest and a few small side quests. It's probably to the games benefit and there is enough material to let you enjoy the environment, but not to get bogged down. It also means that the game doesn't suffer from the issues of going back and forward between locations a million times, ala dragons dogma. Another nice thing about this game is your bag does not have a weight limit, making loot super easy to deal with. The combat itself is fine, theres a bit of variety to the melee and it doesn't feel as clunky as Two Worlds. Magic can get a bit boring, just spamming auto targetted spells without much thought, but at least you have that option. The environments are quite nice and varied, but the game seems to be constantly loading the enivornment as you walk around. It has some flaws, horrible voice acting, dodgy controls, a poor camera. Yet, none of this really takes away from the fun. One of the better WRPGs on the console while not really standing out from the crowd for any positive or negative reasons. Does it hold up in 2023? Yes, I think so, especially if you are sick of the cluttered, busy modern rpgs.

I'm weirdly nostalgic for movie tie in games. At the time, everyone hated them. Yet, I can't help but feel a bit of happiness when I see a random movie tie in game from previous consoles. Pirates of the Caribbean, only one on the console thankfully, is a quite decent action adventure game. You play as Amber heard's ex husband on an adventure through parts of the movie? To be honest, I haven't seen the movie, BUT the game does look nice. The areas are all detailed, colourful and varied, and I really enjoyed exploring them. Gameplay is a mix between hack and slash, platforming and some elements of puzzle solving, with a few collectables thrown in there. The gameplay is simple but varied and the levels do feel realistic. The game also has quite a nice plot with some great cutscenes. Did they get Legolas to do the voice lines? No idea. But the story was interesting and didn't feel tacked on. There is a quite unique duel system to the game, in which you sword fight one on one which was enjoyable and worked well. I also like the variety with different weapons and enemy types. Overall it's a game which appeals to both adults and children and will keep you entertained through it's short campaign. It's nothing incredible, but we rarely see games like this nowadays and I do miss them.