REVIEW: Unturned on Xbox One

Review by Jon Donnis

In Unturned you take upon the role of a survivor who has been dropped into a post-apocalyptic world full of Zombies, your job is simple, to survive. You need to seek out food, clothes and weapons, as well as collect wood and metal to create defences. As you progress through the game you will be able to upgrade your character to give you the very best chance of survival.

Unturned has been out a few years on PC but has finally made its way to the consoles.

The game includes huge maps, 8 in total. And although it has what I would call a pretty basic single player offline mode, this is a game to be played online and even better with friends.

The graphics are erm.... simple, reminiscent of some of the Lego games or Minecraft, with characters having square heads. Despite the cutesy looks of the game, I imagine this game is aimed firmly at the 30-50 year old male. So not for young kids.

The Good

The maps are huge, large areas to explore, and if open world sandbox games are you thing, then this game will keep you busy for a long, long time.

The Bad

The graphics just didn't impress me, I understand they are made to look like that on purpose, the whole Minecraft/Roblox world of crappy graphics being the in thing at the moment, but for me they didn't quite work.

Overall

You may have picked up that I didn't enjoy this game, and you would be right. A few hours of wondering about bored me senseless. But then I am not a fan of this type of game, I simply do not have 8 hours a night to sit and play such slow games. With that said, this game is insanely popular on PC, and has hundreds of thousands of positive reviews. So, there is clearly a market for this type of game out there. Will it cut it on console? I am not sure, console gamers tend to be a bit different to PC gamers.

Check out the video below, it is from a gamer who plays the game for the first time and gives his opinions, and if you like these types of games then give it a shot, but if you are more of a typical console gamer like me then perhaps this game is not for you.

Review by Jon Donnis

REVIEW: The Falconeer on Xbox One

Review by Jon Donnis

The Falconeer is what you get if you swap fighter planes with giant war birds. Yes really. Your job is to pilot a giant bird and engage in dogfighting and acrobatic aerial combat, (sadly there are no giant dogs to fight, a missed opportunity for sure).

As you play you will take on missions and join or oppose various factions and clans, missions may involve accompanying boats carrying goods between locations, where by you need to protect them from pirates or other war bards, or maybe you need to find out why defence Buoys have gone missing, or maybe you need to help defend an outpost from attackers, one way or another you will be flying back and forth a lot and getting into dogfights with the enemy.

You will buy upgrades for your warbird, better weapons, maps and so on, but let's not worry too much about that as it really isn't what is important about this game. This is a game about flying a giant warbird, and the question then becomes, is that fun? The answer is..... yes and no. The basic mechanics of flying about are perfectly fine, you can do barrel rolls, you can fly up high, dive down and even hit the water below, there are ocean thermals that you can fly into that shoot you up high in the air, and then jet streams up high that you can catch a ride on. It is all quite fun. But you still have to complete various objectives, and unfortunately this is where there game lets itself down a bit, when you are in a battle with the enemy you will find yourself flying round in circles while the enemy does the exact same thing, you may flying into an airship you are attacking, and you just kind of bounce off it in a weird way, the fights should be the best thing about this game but they are a bit of a let-down, that is not to say they are bad, but they should have been the main concentration of the game makers.

The various missions are clear and easy to understand, you have a handy map that tells you where you need to go, and you can discover new areas, secrets, and physics destroying sunken areas in the ocean.

Check out my short game play video below.

The Good

Flying about is fun, when you need to recharge you can fly into a storm cloud and that is great idea.

The Bad

The dogfights themselves aren't the best, but my biggest gripe with the entire game is the menus, the writing is TINY.

Most of us like to sit on our sofa when playing a console game, I have a decent sized TV, and whenever I needed to remind myself of the controls, I would open up the menu, and the writing is so small, I would need to get off my sofa and go right up to the TV, I suspect that since this game was created on a PC, whoever designed the menus didn't think about seeing if you could read them if you were sat more than a foot away from the screen. For the record I have perfect eye sight, and this was a big frustration.

There was also a slight issue with game-play freezing for a second while it loaded up a bit of speech, you will see that in my video. I suspect this might just have been a one off, maybe my internet was playing up, or my Xbox was busy doing something else.

Overall

Despite my complaints, this is a fun game, I still think we need giant dogs, but that is just me being a bit silly.

If you are a fan of games with giant war birds then you should enjoy this.

I score the game 7/10. 

You can buy it now from Amazon at https://amzn.to/3nloToR

REVIEW: The Last Show of Mr. Chardish on PC (Steam)

Review by Jon Donnis

The Last Show of Mr. Chardish is a story about the relationship of two artists, who founded a theatre in a British countryside.

You start the game in first person view, playing as Ella, set in the 1970s, Ella decides to travel to an old theatre that she used to perform at, as she explores she is able to access memories, and as she does you are transported into the mind of Mr Chardish, and you then see the world as he did, and this is where Act 1 Starts, and this is the first of the different "play styles" that exist within the world. Solitude, Anger, Symmetry, Ascension, and Daydream. Each play style is very different, and basically different games in their own sense.

I will keep this review to just the Solitude and Symmetry levels, as they are what I have played and completes so far.

As you play you will find letters to be read, records to be listened to and so on, they all make up what is a lovely story, which is very engaging.

Solitude is pretty standard game play, easy to figure out in the 3rd person view, you explore the area, and have to solve puzzles so you can progress to the next area, for example you may need to move a stage light so that it shines on an area which in turn may make some steps appear, or more the light away and a door may become unlocked. Once you figure out how to do this, you can pretty much work your way through the level, all the while enjoying what are some amazing hand drawn graphics, now you do need a decent graphics card to get the best out of this game graphics wise, so do be warned.

Symmetry, you play as a robot on wheels, you meet a companion and together you will try to pass obstacles and area, you may need to control a lift by mirroring yourself with the lift, or open and close gates, all in all this is a completely different experience to that of Solitude, and I found it much harder too. But once I got the hang of it, and with a bit of trial and error I found myself confident in what I was doing and so passed through the level.

In the video below you can see a couple of minutes from both Solitude and then Symmetry to get an idea of the game play, keep in mind I had to have the graphic settings on low to get everything running as smooth as I can.

The Good

A fascinating idea for a game, with glorious graphics (if your PC can handle them), and a lovely engaging story.

The Bad

Once you figure out the basic idea for one of the 5 play styles, you will quickly complete it, so the game in that sense is quite short.

And unless you have a powerful PC you may not be able to truly enjoy the incredible graphics.

Overall

Although the game is short, it is enjoyable, and best of all you can play the Solitude level for free as part of a Prologue release on Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1397140/The_Last_Show_of_Mr_Chardish_Act_I/

An enjoyable game that I score 7/10

Review By Jon Donnis

REVIEW: Rusty Spout Rescue Adventure on Xbox One

Review by Jon Donnis

Many of us grew up in the 90s, and of those of us who did we all remember Puzzle Bobble (also known as Bust-a-Move), a simple bubble bursting game.

And over the years there has been 100s of clones and re-imaginings of this format. Well, the latest attempt at just that is Rusty Spout Rescue Adventure.

For those of you who do not know the drill, these types of games work on one main principle, you fire bubbles up the screen and try to hit other bubbles of the same colour, get 3 or more in a row and they burst, once the screen is clear you win. Simple as that. Throw in bonus bubbles like bombs etc and there ya go.

Now before we go any further, let us all admit that Rusty Spout Rescue Adventure is an excellent name. 

Rusty Spout is the name of a pirate, he sails around in his ship, looking for adventures and a desire to help people. Cocco is an evil pirate or has kidnapped all of the children from Rusty's village, so Rusty needs to defeat Cocco and he needs your help to do it.

That is the story, and in the story mode the game includes 5 different worlds, each with 10 levels, and a boss fight every 10 levels.

As you progress through the story mode you will unlock new characters which you can then use in the Endless Mode and the Battle mode.

This is all pretty standard stuff, the endless mode is exactly what you think it is, just an endless game whereby you try to rack up as high a score as possible, and the battle mode is the multiplayer mode.

A special mention also needs to go out to the "Colour Blind Mode", this simply puts numbers on all the different coloured bubbles which makes it much easier for people to differentiate the bubbles, not to mention easier if your TV is a bit dodgy, or you just want that extra certainty.

Here is a video I made showing the colour blind option while playing Endless Mode.

The Good

This is a classic style of game, and it is done well, nice and clean graphics, simple gameplay, easy to pick up and play.

The Bad

The cannon that you fire the bubbles from seems a bit slow when you move it, and you then have another button to slow it down further for more accuracy, surely this would work better other way around? Also the fact that the bubbles drop based on time passed and not bubbles shot, this makes this a game of timing and not skill, I would prefer an option where you could choose, in fact both of these complaints some people will prefer, so why not give people a choice?

I would also note that this game really does increase in difficulty pretty quick, the story mode which you need to progress in to unlock the other modes, including the battle mode, is pretty tough, and once your lives run out, you have to start all the way from level 1 again. 

Overall

Rusty Spout Rescue Adventure does a decent job within the bubble bursting genre, although it is not without its problems.

It is only £5.79 on the Xbox store so it is not going to break the bank, if you enjoy these types of games, then give it a shot.
I score this game 7/10

Review by Jon Donnis

REVIEW: Sensible World of Soccer - XBOX

Review by Jon Donnis

Back in the early 90's we had a game called Sensible Soccer, it was quickly followed by Sensible World of Soccer or SWOS for short, it was quickly hailed as the greatest game of all time, best football game of all time and won award after award. Originally available on the Commodore Amiga, it truly was the must have game of its time.

So fast forward 25 odd years and it is available on XBOX Arcade, does it still hold up?

Checkout 30 seconds of game play, then read on. Also make sure you subscribe to my Youtube Channel, I will be uploading more gaming videos, and I promise to keep them all nice and short and easy to watch. - Youtube / JonDonnisShow

Well, the game has eight directional controls, and one button for everything else. By modern standards this is really poor, but still there is something special here, yes, the graphics are quite dated even if they have been smoothed a bit, but look how often newly made games go for that retro pixel look. Here you have a game that still has it.

I am not going to talk too much about the game modes, it is a football game with some dubiously named teams (for where they do not have the rights), some dodgy team badges, but it is pretty clear who the teams are supposed to be, the controls are basic, but still there is something about this game.

Simply put it is addictive, if you played it back in the 90s and you pick it up now to play, the first thing you will say is "this game is rubbish", 30 minutes later you will still be playing it, and that is the point. If you have never played the game then there is a chance you simply won't get it, but if you played it as a kid, the magic is still there, the aftertouch curling shot, the guaranteed scoring if hit from the exact right place over and over, the goal you know you can score every time but you deliberately avoid doing it to see if you can win without resorting to that as your back up.

The game is addictive and that is all that matters.

The Good

SWOS still has that "little bit of magic" as Glen Hoddle would say. You WILL moan the first time you play it, but you will be determined to prove that you are still as good at it as you was 25 years ago.

The Bad

The graphics and sounds are dated, but if they suddenly made a 2020 version with all the bells and whistles, you know you would hate it more.

Overall

It just has that one thing that so many great games have. And that is the fact you will keep playing it.

Perhaps no longer the greatest football game ever made, but still one of the most addictive. I score this 8/10

Out now on Xbox Arcade

https://marketplace.xbox.com/en-gb/Product/SWOS/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258410869