VideogameUK

Review: Just Dance 3 (Xbox 360)

Words by

Jennifer Allen

Posted on November 18, 2011

Wave your arms in the air like you just don’t care! A dance cliché for sure, but a fun one at that. In one sentence this sums up Just Dance 3 perfectly. It’s loud, it’s silly, it’s far from skilful but it is fun.

Wii owners have had the chance to experience the Just Dance series for a while now and it’s done phenomenally well, topping the charts for weeks on end. Now available for the Xbox 360, and most crucially Kinect, how does it perform with the added technological advantages? Well, admittedly, it’s much the same as before. Dance Central 2 continues to reign as king of the most accurate and skilful of dance games but the pick up and play mentality of Just Dance 3 makes it a worthy equal, just in an entirely different kind of way.

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Review: Dead Island (Xbox 360)

Words by

Thomas Mullin

Posted on October 31, 2011

We all remember that girl falling upwards through a window, the fire axe removing itself from the concierge’s neck, and we all certainly remember the haunting piano accompaniment. Dead Island had been revealed to the world, and the hype machine screamed into life as the internet began to buzz about another zombie game.

It turns out that no game can live up to that level of hype, and there was never a doubt that an emotional rollercoaster that was the infamous trailer was nothing more than a publicity piece, as the game couldn’t be more removed from the deep experience some may have expected.

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Review: Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)

Words by

Sayem Ahmed

Posted on October 12, 2011

The JRPG genre has been stagnating, whether we want to admit it or not. There have been no real revolutionary steps in the genre to revitalize itself and become relevant to the games industry. Final Fantasy is being beaten like a dead horse, many of the Tales series games are not being localised for western audiences, and lets not even talk about what happened to Star Ocean. This is where Xenoblade comes in.

Director Tetsuya Takahashi has been instrumental to creating prolific RPG’s such as Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI and Secret of Mana. With this pedigree behind him, Xenoblade does not disappoint. Honouring many traditional JRPG elements and conventions, Xenoblade has a plot that takes a few hours to really kick in, but when it does you realise you have stepped into a massive, sprawling world and the slow start just ushers you into a tantalising and surprisingly refreshing world. Even with truckloads of JRPG tropes in tow, it feels more modern than any other JRPG I have played this generation.

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