Review: FIFA 11 (Xbox 360)

Review: FIFA 11 (Xbox 360)

I have an admittance, one that I’m not very proud of but it must be aired. I don’t think I should have scored FIFA 10 with a 9/10, instead favouring an 8. Not much change though, right? But that one number means a lot when it comes to franchise games. FIFA 10 was – no – is great; but if you played it for about a month, longer than a sports game review needs, then the real problems began to show through.

Issues with the AI, particularly defending, major problems with the career mode and the complete frustration that surrounded buying and selling players, were a number of the errors and issues within the game. I’m sure some people would not even have noticed these, distracted by the smooth gameplay on the pitch and the amount of options to explore.

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Review: Comic Jumper: The Adventures Of Captain Smiley (Xbox 360)

Review: Comic Jumper: The Adventures Of Captain Smiley (Xbox 360)

Twisted Pixel are fast becoming the rebels of the Live Arcade scene. They produce really fun and intriguing games, which manage to redeem that most fun of features, immaturity. This showing of childish carnage culminated last year with the truly awesome ‘Splosion Man. They’ve followed it up with what has to be one of the biggest Arcade titles this year, both in anticipation and size (1.92GB? That’s just under a third of the size of Modern Warfare 2, for those that wanted to know).

Comic Jumper follows Captain Smiley and his chest mounted sidekick Star, as they battle through 11 levels of side scrolling platform shooting action in their attempt to make enough money to relaunch their flailing comic book franchise, which everyone hates. Well, this is what it is for the fair majority of proceedings. There are other genres mixed in for good measure, as well as a couple of polite nods to software classics gone by. In amongst the Midnight Resistance style gameplay you will find look backs to such classics as Mega Man and Panzer Dragoon, along with the occasional movie parody, just to make things interesting (the Superman one is of particular mention). There is a blend of animation quality graphics with some toilet grade humour, occasionally bordering on “How can they get away with that?” when the Origami Kid comes along, for example.

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Review: NHL 11 (Xbox 360)

Review: NHL 11 (Xbox 360)

Everything I know about NHL comes from The Mighty Ducks films and the parts of Happy Gilmore where he isn’t golfing, so not much. I know it has three periods. I know it has a puck. I know it’s fast. I know it’s big in Canada. And I know that big guys like to fight each other during the matches.

My Hollywood training does not describe offsides, penalties and face-offs however, favouring big hits, emotional comebacks and the acting skills of Emilio Estevez. The latter are sadly not present in EA’s latest ice based outing. It does have all the rules and regulations that all you fans know and love, leaving unknowns like me lost in the blinding whiteness of the tundra.

I persevered and learned the hard way, through good old trial and error – as well as much berating from my coach. And once I mastered the basics of the blue lines, and found out that I’m not aloud to trip people up and smack them in the back of their heads – further evidence of Hollywood’s lies – I was opened up to the wonder that is the modern NHL game. The wonder that is not really hidden, as it boldly tells you how many awards the series has won in the opening introduction.

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