For each game I will post info about the game including comments, overall scores from more than one source (where possible), screenshots/video clips, box art, european release date and price in GBP/€ (at current exchange rate).
If you own or buy/rent one of these games and do not agree with what you have read here, please feel free to add your own comments & overall score.
European Release : Out Now Price : £49.99 / €73.00
Conclusions Taken From eurogamer.net Review Written By tom bramwell
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Online is something MotoGP helped kickstart for Microsoft in its original incarnation (albeit with an add-on component bundled with the original Live package - it wasn't until GP2 that the game was built to fully accommodate Live), and it's smoothly handled here with separate players-of-matched-skill and ranked matches and all the options you'd expect - including a PGR3-style spectating facility if you have to sit out a round because you got there late. Then again there's another flag to be raised for the decision to hold back the more interesting modes, like Tag, where you have to try and put the best times in on corners to claim them in your name, with the winner the person who "owns" the most corners by the end. Tag may be something that those with a solid base of skill will most enjoy, but it would've been nice to have the option to lose horribly at it from the start - if only to whet the appetite.
Still, none of this is fatal in the slightest - and once you've unlocked a few things and reached a plateau halfway up the learning curve, there's a huge amount of challenging content to pick at and a great deal of incentive to do so thanks to multiple rating systems, rewards, integrated leaderboards and a huge number of unlockables, including reversed tracks.
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MotoGP remains a bit of an acquired taste - but then that's motorbikes in general isn't it? Approached with a bit of patience it yields great results - and probably represents the pinnacle of biking games across both Xbox formats to date. Improved load times and a bit more encouragement for the newcomer would guarantee it higher marks, but don't confuse yourself with that score - if you've a passion for bikes this could be a system-seller, and if you like well designed racing games you'd be a fool to miss out too. Where PGR3 appeals to people who see "red car" just as much as them that can tell it's a '97 Audi, similarly MotoGP '06 is a game that knows its place and welcomes you to it whatever your background.
European Release : Out Now Price : £49.99 / €73.00
Conclusions Taken From eurogamer.net Review Written By graham swann
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Online, players are ranked from F through to S, letting you choose the skill level of perverted opponent you want to face. Four people can play sexy tag online, but on your own (as RRXX is meant to be, er, enjoyed) Xbox 360 AI isn't what it should be. The poor bimbos get easily confused, stumbling about, ignoring you and generally refusing to put up anything like a decent fight.
You might spend quite a while looking for other modes and options, but don't bother - the game structure is extremely simple. There's just a vague world tour of fight locations, a shop, that pervy Xbox Live photo-swapping and online play. And here's another disappointment - the Xbox Live Achievements are ridiculously hard, forcing you to earn and unlock every single item for each character to get one single Achievement.
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The only play innovation that sets Roses XX apart from all other wrestling games is its use of H-moves. Thanks to a peculiar Japanese thing where they consider blushing to be more sexy than, say, seeing someone having actual sex, RRXX lets you fill up a 'humiliation' gauge then unleash the H-move. Which usually involves bottoms being spanked. You get to see the girls humiliated and their little cheeks blush. That, if you're Japanese, is the equivalent of finding a copy of Razzle on the back of the night bus home.
Pull off an H-move and you get an even closer close-up of the already close-up view of the semi-naked girls, leaving us to form only one possible conclusion - this is a game for pervs. Seriously. If you want a proper wrestling game, buy one. Rumble Roses XX is simple fun for macho gamers who feel their sexuality threatened by watching Triple H manhandling Kurt Angle.
Slip Rumble Roses XX inside a copy of SmackDown if you must buy it, just don't go expecting any innovations other than a big tickling stick, blushing faces, a gigantic Xbox Live porn archive and the wobbliest boobs yet seen in a video game.
European Release : Out Now Price : £49.99 / €73.00
Conclusions Taken From eurogamer.net Review Written By kristan reed
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In technical terms, Prey rarely rises above 'satisfactory', and looks every inch the medium range PC port that it is. The interior environments of the sprawling spaceship certainly appear detailed and impressive at first glance, but quickly get samey and - rather like Doom 3 - aren't especially interactive. There's almost nothing in the way of destructible scenery, physics barely even figures in the entire game and the majority of it takes place in small, enclosed, darkened environments that make it feel just like any other corridor-based shooter you care to mention. Fair enough, the occasional flying sortie around the more cavernous parts of the ship adds a fleeting sliver of welcome variety, but it's frankly not enough to make you want to tell all your friends that you've seen the future of the genre.
And apart from the amusing licensed jukebox inclusions at the very beginning of the game, the soundtrack is entirely forgettable watery string-based sci-fi fodder that noodles just outside your consciousness whenever the action amps up. Depressingly, the voice acting is shockingly run-of-the-mill amateur dramatics fare which adds little to any attempt to build the atmosphere. We wish we could be kinder to a game we've been really looking forward to for ages, but the closer you examine Prey, the more disappointing it gets.
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At the end of Prey you'll probably just feel a little blank. Its tendency to lapse into generic blandness might be acceptable on boring days in July with no other games to focus on, but it'd have to a fairly rainy one at that. Even with our feel-good glasses on it feels like we're damning Prey with faint praise to write a sentence that ends with "reasonably entertaining few hours of gunplay that never really stretches you". More likely, you'll mutter to your mates in the beer garden that you're glad that you got through all those slightly irritating, rarely satisfying puzzling sections without having to resort to a guide, and feign surprise as the subject gets changed in an instant. Back home, you'll wonder why anyone made a fuss about the storyline in the first place, wonder what 3D Realms really think about it, and sit the summer months out, waiting patiently for the next developer to do something truly surprising in the FPS genre.
Perhaps inevitably - although maybe not intentionally - Prey struggles to break free of its late '90s genesis, and essentially what we're left with is a game whose good intentions simply don't translate into wide-eyed entertainment. With uninspiring and basic deathmatch multiplayer options failing to rescue the package, it looks like it's going to be another long hot summer for FPS devotees.
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