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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the late phase 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.

I had slightly high hopes for this one. I mean being in a motorcycle club sounds cool as fuck. Road rash was absolutely great, smashing riders off their bikes with chains, excellent. Godspeed you black emperor is one of my favourite movies. Even ride to hell had some cool gang brawling. Motorcycle club doesn't do any of this unfortunately, and even with some nice ideas, it fails at some of the basics. To be fair, I should have seen this coming a mile off, but the game initially looks kinda cool. The club house style menu is nice. You have some bike customisation and different real life bikes to purchase. The racing itself features boosts, jumps and skill points which charge up your boost, fairly standard but still nice. The most interesting part is bike swapping. You have 3 bikes to use and you can swap between the three to handle different types of terrain. This is quite tactical and adds some variety to the game. Swapping between the three bikes to get the fastest times is novel at first, but as soon as you realise all 3 bikes handle like shit, it's pretty much game over. Not being able to properly handle corners is criminal. What makes it even worse is the visuals. The visuals are very cluttered and depth perception is really bad. It makes it almost impossible to see where you are meant to turn. It feels like one of those old 16 bit fake 3d racing games. This is even worse in stages set at night when it is already dark and hard to see. The other really annoying point is the weird screen blur that happens far too frequently. It's very much an unfortunate disaster of a game, but in line with big ben studios other work.

There are a lot of 2K games on the 360. 2K is one of the early period games from 2005-2009 which unless you played them all when they came out end up being pretty similar. I quite enjoy watching basketball, I enjoy playing basketball, and I sometimes enjoy basketball games. Yet, I definitely am more of the casual market when it comes to basketball games. Now as a casual, This first group of 5 games feels pretty similar. It's a premium quality package, the FIFA of basketball with the biggest market share. It feels quality, the menus, the licensed teams and players, the music and variety of game modes. But again, as a casual, it's kinda hard to play. You use the right stick to shoot, pulling down then up in a straight motion, a bit like golf games. This seems to work quite well and I would imagine if I didn't suck, it would be a more realistic way to shoot. As someone with no idea of tactics, plays and when to shoot, it just adds more barriers to my entry. Within this series of games there are a few minor differences, with 2K8 stripping a few features that 2K7 added and 2K10 introducing the MYplayer mode which went on to become pretty popular. Should you pick up one of these games? Well they were good on release, they really killed off the inferior NBA Live series which died with NBA Live 11, but with the later and better 2k games on the console, all of which are mega cheap, there little point in owning these aside from nostalgia. Decent basketball games at the time, but pretty much worthless in terms of creating a 360 collection now. In terms of 2K8 specifically, nothing really stands out. It was praised for it's graphics and online play on release, but neither of those are big factors now. The major complaint is about the poor defensive AI, but again I suck too much to know the difference. There's nothing special here that you can't find elsewhere so for that reason I can't recommend it.

Another extremely niche sports game, probably catered for the EU market. But for once it's a sport that I actually quite enjoy watching. As an endurance sport, long stage cycling events such as the tour de France as all about the incredible athleticism of the competitors and the fine line between when and how much to push. It's a sport of tiny battles over a long and gruelling war. Unfortunately, this doesn't translate very well to a video game, at least not for those like me with a short attention span and a sever lack of time. The game involves battles on shortened versions of the tour de France stages as part of a team. You can choose which rider from your team to race with each race, issue team orders and eat snacks to sustain energy. In theory, cyanide studios have done about as well as they could with the type of game they are making. In practice though, the gameplay is just boring really. The crux of the game relates to setting a speed for your rider to go at, then speeding up and down slightly to keep in line with other riders. You will also occasionally time some attacks to get you to the front of the pack, but these come few and far between. The thing that really puts me off is how long races are. Of course this makes sense due to the nature of the sport, but each stage takes a long time to complete and a lot of this time is spent not doing a lot. If you are extremely patient and love the sport, I am sure this game could be enjoyable. I just think it's not for most gamers.

The first mainline release in the beloved fighting series on the 360, KOF12 generated a lot of hype. I've never really got into the series as the yearly releases put me off, so this was my entry point. Unfortunately for me and those hyped about the game, KOF12 sucks. It's pretty apparent from the moment you put the disk in that the game lacks polish and care. There is a very simple menu, with few options to choose from. Story mode, training, arcade mode, that's about it. The story mode itself is only 5 fights long and there isn't really a story, there is a shockingly low number of stages to fight on too. Also lacking is the array of characters. For a game known for it's huge roster of fighters, 22 characters is extremely disappointing, especially when the fights are 3 vs 3, meaning there are 7 teams of fighters effectively. The graphics are also poor, not that its a huge deal, but when we see how beautiful other 2D fighting games like BlazBlue look, it's almost surprising to see how ugly these character models are. Another complaint at release, which is not so important now, was the netcode for the online play, which was criticised as being laggy and having huge button delay, yet I can't comment on that personally. So as an overall package it feels a bit lacking in terms of polish and features, all this can be forgiven with good play though right? Well KOF12 is lacking in that department too. I'm a bit of a novice in terms of fighting games and I often struggle to get to grips with complex fighting techniques and move lists that require hours of gameplay to master. KOF12 on the other hand felt so simplistic. You have the 4 face buttons for different attacks and that's about it. Each character does have some special moves but when you browse the move list it is again shocking how short it is. On top of this the fighting doesn't really flow. I found myself unable to string together useful combos, with the fighting style feeling slow, sluggish and disjointed. If you can get past all these things the game is playable. It's not intrinsically broken or a real drag to play. It's just not very good.

One of the worst feelings is getting quite a few hours into a game before realising, I'm not having fun. Your left with the difficult choice of giving up or attempting to keep going. The best thing about NFL tour is that it is not like this. You can tell pretty much as soon as you but the disk into the console that it's going to be bad. From the gaudy loading menus and music to the complete lack of game modes or features, it's obviously junk. You can jump into the Tour mode, try exhibition or try some of the weird mini games. The thing is, all of them are fairly similar. You are stuck in this weird walled NFL pitch, given the option to run along the walls and press A to dodge tackles. One big problem is that it is really easy to duck out of tackles, so if you have the ball, you will score. The other issue is that once you have played one game you have seen it all, that's all there is to the game, it's that bad. But nothing compares to worst thing about these game. The horrible horrible commentary. I'm not sure if this made me like the game more or less, but the commentary is so bad it might have come back around and become good again. Horrible.

This is another one of those games that makes you question: how is this a game? What would you even do in this game? Well, let me tell you. Some inane and seriously unfunny dialogue. Go to the crime scene. Click on some things. Some terrible one liner from the "funny" character. Play a boring mini game. Click on some more things. Go back to the forensics lab. More clicking and boring mini games. An achievement pops every time you touch the controller. Goth girl keeps talking about how great she is. Some dude walks in and shouts "deduction board". Rinse and repeat 4 times. Game over. No I have not seen NCIS, and after playing this I have even less interest in watching it. It all just seems very low effort. If there is one enjoyable thing about NCIS, it's that the voice actor for one of the characters sounds like a robot. Unless you are a huge NCIS fan (do they exist?), avoid.

Played on the 360 which is not listed for some reason. The thing I remember most about the game was the extremely aggressive intro video. It's very dated, just like this game. Rugby league live 1 is the first in the series of rugby league live games of which 3 were released on the console. Confusingly, there is also the rugby challenge series, also rugby league, and the World cup rugby series. This one feels incredibly dated. The player models are huge and move incredibly slowly. This makes it really difficult to get into an attacking flow, and I found my games to be quite stop and start. The terrible AI didn't help either. It feels like a early ps2 game, which, while absolutely fine with me, says a lot about a game released in 2011. The rugby league series does get a lot better, but this first installment is just a pain to play. Stick to the later releases.

A common scenario in the 360s lifecycle is sequels of games which change very little from the previous release. It's refreshing then to see H.A.W.X 2 go against the grain and completely revamp the game. No I'm just joking, it sucks. Not only does it seemingly have no improvements over the first game, it actually feels worse. The missions start of boring and repetitive before becoming extremely hard. No attempt to improve the boring landscapes has been made either. Yes, I'm not a fan of aerial combat games, but even I can tell this one sucks. Point at the enemy and click fire. Fly around a bit. Point at enemy and click fire. I cannot recommend this, even to the most hardcore of flight fans.

When I put summer games into my console, there was something that felt instantly familiar. Very awkward music. Horrible graphics particularly the strange looking sports men and women. A very European budget feel. Ah it's 49 games back with their old tricks of attempting a yearly athletics franchise. While the winter franchise was one of the only ways to get winter sports on the console. This summer variant is fairly pointless as we already have the much superior Beijing 08 to play with. Bundle this with the fact that they haven't included the most interesting part of the winter games, the mini challenge board, it's a bit of a disappointment. That being said, summer games does boast a huge number of sports to try, with 29 on offer. Of course there are the duds, mostly due to the difficulty of the controls. Swimming is an absolute chore which I still don't understand how to do. Others can be quite fun and have some nice tactical variance. Some of the cycling events require some tactics and understanding to defeat the computer opponents. Overall it just feels like a budget title. There's enough to keep you entertained, but some of the sports are so frustrating that it can really take the fun out of the game. Not horrible, but not good.