In the late phrase of the 360's life, developers KT racing, under the famous BigBen banner, released a bunch of very obscure European 360 games, and I love them for it. I mean the majority of them are very bad, but it's a nice weird subset of the consoles library. Here we have one of their 3 attempts at a hunting game, the only one released on disk. Hunter's Trophy Europa puts you in the shoes of random bald expressive hunting guy. This is important as you will see him every time you finish or fail a level as he flaps his hands in the air without saying anything. It's slightly unnerving, and perhaps the most interesting aspect of the game. The game is fairly standard hunting-fare for the most part. Killing innocent animals for fun in a nice forested area and walking around in first person trying to sniff out animal turds. There are a couple of things that set KT racing's effort apart from the other hunting sims on the console. Firstly the game is segmented into tiny and very short levels. You are often given one target, a time limit and a small area to work in. This is a real bummer as it really takes away from the relaxing feeling some hunting games have and makes the game quite stressful. The other unique aspect is your dog which can be used to follow scents. This small respite from the standard duck shooting has you chasing a red cloud of fart in a black and white environment. It's kinda cool at first, but gets old quick. Why does this game suck? Well for one the controls are terrible, aiming the gun feels like those weird PC ports where the mouse hasn't been ported to a console properly. Another important part is that animals are so easy to scare. Repeating deer killing levels again and again just because you shot them in slightly the wrong place is no fun. There is also a mega unnecessary bullet time slow mo, WTF? Is it worth playing in 2023, no. Was it worth playing when released, no. Do i still kinda like it, yes.

Such a legendary game in many ways, I'm not really sure where to start. My Horse and Me 2 is quite famous among 360 fans for quite a number of reasons. First of all it got a pretty limited print, I have heard rumours of only 2000 printed in the UK, and it's only available in PAL territories. Secondly, it is an extremely easy 1000k, hence being attractive to achievement hunters. Finally, and probably as a result of the first two points, it is really quite expensive. So what do you do in the game? Well, the gameplay can be split into two section. One is where you spend your time walking around your farm, caring for your horse or trying some of the "fun" minigames. They game won't let you enter a competition unless your horse is in good condition, not that it seems to make any difference to your performance, so you need to play some boring mini games to get the horse ready. Once your horse is clean and fed, you can join a competition, which is the majority of the game. These competitions are basically one of 3 mini games, over and over again. There is dressage, in which you follow button prompts on a screen. Racing, where you run around a track. Finally, we have show jumping, where you time your jumps. That's about it. Really nothing of interest here. However, where this game excels is the horrible cutscenes and story. This is so bad its good kinda stuff. Awkward delivery, strange lines and weird script writing. Add an evil aunty who seems to disappear and a bit of cousinly incest, you are in for a treat. It's dreadful but worth it for the story, and yes I did complete it.

This one is a real turd. Billed as the most realistic shooting game and designed with the help of the US army, you can see the rather niche market they are targeting. Tactical shooters are few and far between on the console, with most shooters just copy call of duty, and this certainly offers something different. That's probably the biggest compliment I can give this game, it does try to do something different. Levels consist of military training exercises, with a team of 3 other soldiers. Instead of real bullets you use non-lethal force, and "enemies" sit down when they are shot, similar to paintball. You gain exp through completing missions, and use this to upgrade your solider in different skills such as aiming or stamina. This is quite a cool concept, these upgrades make a huge difference and it really feels like you are working towards something. Then a missions later the game just stops and becomes an online only shooter, which in 2024 is obviously dead. There's no story, no real combat, nothing. It's a huge shame because it could have been an interesting game, and I could have forgiven the poor graphics and controls if it went somewhere. I commend Red Storm entertainment for trying something a bit more interesting, but this really ended up as a disaster. A very short and boring single play FPS experience.

German developers 49 games are back with a 3rd iteration of this winter sports franchise. Snowboard , bobsleigh and ski your way through a variety of different competitions and challenges. With 3 games being released in 3 years it seems like they were trying to make this a yearly franchise. However, looking on true achievements at the number of players we can see it failed. This is one of the games with the least players on the console and there are quite a few reasons for that. The first I want to point out, is that like it's predecessor 2010, they have severely reduced the number of sports available to play. Down to a measly 9. Secondly, it is weirdly only available in the pal regions. Another problem is the games themselves. They range from fun but way to easy, like figure skating, meaning you will get a gold medal on your first attempt. Others are rock solid like bobsleighing, which is very poorly explained leaving players a bit bewildered. It also commits the cardinal sin of being nearly exactly the same as the previous year. Sure they added a team upgrade, so you can upgrade individual team members. For example I chucked all my points into my bobsleigh dude so it wasn't impossible any more. They also have new challenges, but they seem exactly the same as the previous challenges. It's hardly enough to make it worth a purchase. Finally, I have to add how vomit inducing these cut scenes are. They somehow are both extremely bland and totally offensive at the same time. Never have I hated poorly rendered sports people more. To sum up, it's basically the same game as 2010, which was basically a worse version of 2009 with added online play. Americans, don't worry, you aren't missing out with this one.

From the people who totally fucked up the WRC games we have this pile of junk. It's come to the point where if I see that BigBen logo on the front of a game, I can tell two things. No.1, it's likely to be some obscure EU only game. No.2 It going to be shit.Yeah, I mean regardless of who made it, there is no way this one was going to be anything other than utter shit. Truck Racer, while not the worst game title of a 360 game (Carrier Command: Gaea Missions?) such an incredibly lame title basically shows how much effort they have put into this. Terribly handling trucks race around in circles. It feels so half baked. No music. No story. Oh cool they have some Mario Kart style power ups. Nah I'm kidding they are also shit. There is nothing redeeming about this one. Just ignore it. Pretend it never existed. That way it can't haunt your dreams.

Not much to say about this one. It's a dynasty warriors games (and not a very good one) with a Gundam skin. I don't know much about gundam, but don't they shoot guns and rockets and stuff? It feels really weird controlling this giant mecha robot thingy, but mostly using a lightsabre? The maps are extremely bland with little detail, even more so that most DW games as you are in space. Even though there are two modes, one of which includes a new story, there's not very many missions. It does have coop which I guess is a plus. I found this one a bit more challenging also, with the enemies more likely to hit you when you are down, and the minions a little more likely to be aggressive, but it also may just because I suck and this game sucks, so there isn't really any tactics to it. For those of you who love mashing X, make sure you pick this up.

When it came to the battle of the NBA games on the console, there were two main competitors, NBA Live and NBA 2K. Both games started with a 2005 release, hoping to corner the market first and build a loyal following. Unfortunately for EA, 2K sports released the better game, especially over the first couple of years, and slow sales lead to the series be cancelled before the infamous NBA elite 11 was released. The games themselves are fine. It's interesting that both companies managed to get licensing and it has all the basic modes that you would expect. Interestingly also is that they managed to improve the games each year, especially in terms of how it plays, with NBA Live 9 and 10 much superior to 6 and 7. At the end of the day though, they lost the battle because it was a worse game. The live series is more simplistic and less detailed than its 2K cousin, feeling more arcadey and less polished. This actually makes the first few hours of play more enjoyable and for a casual player this may be a good thing. However, most people who pick up a basketball game are basketball fans and are looking for something a bit more detailed. With over 10 2K games on the console, as a serious basketball game, the only reason to play this is to compare it with them. On the casual arcade side, we have a selection of much better and more fun games to fill this void such as NBA Jam and NBA streets. Not horrible games, but pointless to own nowadays.

The general trend of the FIFA games on the 360 is for them to improve each year up until they are exactly the same game every release. This one bucks the trend a bit as it is a little better then 07. After the absolutely horrendous Road to the World Cup 06, here we can actually play in a world cup. But that's about it. You can do qualifying for all 6 regions, and then play in the big tournament itself. There is also a challenge mode, which gives you some difficult tasks to complete, and an achievement after completing all of them. The challenges are actually kind of interesting and based on real footy events. However, it's still sorely lacking in features compared to the later games. The gameplay is also slightly better than 07, but only just. One of the weirdest things about it is how quickly the ball moves. It's difficult to plan attacking or defensive moves because the ball moves so quickly, and that's on normal mode, there is a fast mode too! Tackling is very boring too, hold the B button for long enough and your player will steal the ball, no matter the position. This is slightly better than the ping pong of the 07 game but we have gone from one extreme to another. The one positive I can say is that at least it's interesting to see the changes in each game, and these early titles really stand out (in a bad way) for how differently each one plays.

Paintball Championship 2009, a game which features slightly different branding in the PAL and NTSC markets, is one of 2 paintball games on the 360. I think it is also the first paintball game I have ever played. Upon inserting the disk you are greeted by some aggressive music, a montage of men shooting each other in the face with paintballs and the message "Just a game????". It reeks of an attempt to portray paintball as some hardcore sport, which is fine, but we are playing a game, so yes it's just a game. You are left with a few game modes, some exhibitions and a fairly difficult training mode, but the main focus of the game is the campaign and its team building. In the campaign, you enter into paintball tournaments, all of which are capture the flag style games, with some variety in terms of the number of players on each team. You can also buy better equipment and improve your players skills as you play. It all sounds fine, but its a bit of a train wreck. Firstly, every match is pretty much exactly the same and goes like this. You spawn in as your player, run to hide behind an obstacle before you get shot, wait a little while as your teammates try to shoot the enemy team, then try to rush to get their flag. There may be other tactics, but the controls are just so broken it's hard to do anything else. That's about it really, that's pretty much all there is to see in the game. They don't make games like this any more, but there's a reason for that.

Nowadays, Fifa is basically known as the copy and paste of games. Add a different number on the front of a the box and hey presto. But looking back at these early 360 fifas really shows you how much they used to change every year. That doesn't mean Fifa 07 is a good game, it's shite. But its complete lack of features and teams compared to next year's title is astonishing. There's only about 7 leagues to choose from and very few game modes. The gameplay itself is also rubbish. The ball tends to bounce of players in an awkward way. If there's a player anywhere near the ball when you shoot, they will block it. It's not unplayable, and is an improvement over the previous two Fifas, but there's really no reason to play this version in 2023, especially when you people practically give away these sports titles for free.

It's 9am, I've got the house to myself for a couple of hours. I hastily close all the curtains and slip the Just Dance 4 disk into my console. I pray that no one walks in on me dancing to Umbrella by Rihanna 3 times in a row on my own just to unlock some dumb video game points. As the song goes on, I start to get into the rhythm of the song and put a bit more effort into my moves. Maybe I am having fun, I think to myself. I start to build up a slight sweat and really get into it, running my hand up my leg and shaking my hip, the best Rihanna impression I can muster. As the song comes to a close, I manage a 5 star rating, sick! Following the song the game decides to share with me lots of images of me dancing and I realise how stupid I look. I hang my head in shame, shut down the console and remind myself to never embarrass myself like that again.

This game has a target audience and I'm sure you know if you are part of that target audience or not, and I am not. However, for the sake of reviews, I wanted to give all the Just Dance games on the 360 a try. JD4 was the second of the mainline games on the console, after 3, and it is actually really good. Getting the basics out of the way, unlike a lot of kinect games, the game actually works. The motion sensor can track your movements really well and I never really felt hard done by missing moves, it was normally my fault. The songs can be attacked on your own or with a group of up to 4 players and you follow a on screen chracter to perform moves to match the songs. Unlike some other version which use the controllers, the 360 has the kinect to track your whole body and it uses this tracking images to give you scores from perfect to miss. The song list is very subjective, so I won't go too much into that, but it's some basic pop stuff ranging from recent to classics. The songs work well from this type of game and it's just fairly solid all round, with all the songs being fun to dance to and enough content to keep you entertained for a long time. There are some negatives though. The game has a work out mode which measures how many calories you have burned. As far as I can tell though, this is just more dancing, it doesn't change up the game in any drastic way and isn't really competition to any of the kinect fitness games on the console. The other, and more frustrating thing, is the menu navigation. It's a little difficult to explain, but instead of the standard hold your hand over an item to select it method of most kinect games, JD4 goes for a push the button to select it input method. If you have every played a kinect game, you will know how bad at depth perception the kinect is and how frustrating this will become. Still, if you can get past this, you will enjoy this one. It's one of the better kinect games on the console.

SBK brings more bike racing to the console, with X being the 2010 version and the third SBK title on the consoles. SBK, a competitor to the slight more popular MotoGP series, features road bikes instead of specialist bikes, but for the uninitiated it won't make much difference. Now these games are tough, especially the older versions of SBK which are full on simulation games, and for me the SBK series is even tougher than the Motogp series, leaving beginners likely to give up fairly early on. SBK X is no different in its simulation mode, it requires precision and skill to get around even one lap of a track, and tweaks are required for different weather conditions, tire degradation and track layout. There is a solid campaign here, with constant upgrades to the bike and different competitions to take part in. How SBK X differs however, is the newly introduced noob mode. This beginners mode has most of the features of the regular simulation career, but its really easy. You basically can't fall off the bike if you try. This feels great for maybe 1 or 2 races, but gets boring quickly. What you are left with is a bit of a mess, games modes which are either too easy or too hard, and little to help you improve. The game also feels quite dated and low budget. The game models of the characters you meet throughout the campaign are weird static images that don't change at all. The graphics are ugly which doesn't really matter as there is nothing to see on these boring tracks. All of it feels a little off. I think some huge racing fans may get some fun out of this, but for most others, avoid.

I think it's fairly safe to say that you have played Monopoly before, and if you are like me, you agree its one of the most monotonous board games out there. So it's safe to say I wasn't expecting much with this one. Monopoly is basically exactly what you expect it to be, whether that excites you or not is down to the individual. The game consists of 2 games modes. The original game mode, which plays basically the same as the board game, is the main event. You can take part against your friends, all on one controller which is cool, or the AI, in a standard game of Monopoly. It's fine. The extra package is a new updated version of the game, featuring mini games. 4 dice are rolled, each dice representing how many spaces will be randomly chosen for you. You then play a mini game and from it are ranked 1 to 4. The winner gets to choose the first dice, thus how much random spaces they are given. If you land on an empty space it becomes your to keep. If you land on a property owned by someone else, you need to give them some of your owned properties. If you land on the community chest space, the lowest ranked player recieves 3 properties from the highest ranked player, and your score at the end of the game is the total value of your properties owned. It's a really dumb system which is very random and doesn't really work. There's very little skill involved, aside from the mini games which aren't great, and the game tends to quickly evolve into one random player snowballing. My advice is to ignore this mode. If you want to play standard Monopoly on your console, pick this up. If like me you don't, then don't. Easy.