Xbox 360 Game Reviews T

If the Xbox 360 hasn't already been firmly established as the RPG system of this generation, it definitely should be now. Tales of Vesperia is yet another great JRPG that is only available on the 360. It looks good, sounds phenomenal, tells a decent story, features great characters, and offers a nice real-time combat system that makes fighting fun rather than a chore. Tales of Vesperia is a great game that no RPG fan should miss.

Tekken 6 offers 40 characters, plenty of modes, and the great Tekken gameplay that the series has always been known for. It doesn’t look as nice as other Xbox 360 fighters, and the Scenario Campaign is pretty darn awful, but the core gameplay is still really, really good which makes Tekken 6 worth playing even if there are some rough spots in other aspects of the game. Find out all of the details here in our full review.

If you have been eagerly anticipating the US release of Tenchu Z to live out your secret fantasies of being a ninja, you’re going to be in for a letdown. Tenchu is a mess of bland graphics, repetitive missions, and just plain bad game design that sucks all of the fun out of the experience from the moment you load up the game. Rent it if you are desperate, but don’t buy it.

Test Drive Unlimited 2 follows the massively multiplayer open world racing formula of the original to the letter. Did Atari and Eden Games strike gold once again? Find out in our full review.

Test Drive Unlimited is huge. More than 90 vehicles, 1000 miles of road, and hundreds of missions and races mean you’ll be playing for a long time to come. Just driving around and exploring the gorgeous island of Oahu is a thrill and a large part of what makes TDU so addictive and fun. The gameplay takes some getting used to, but once you wrap your head around it the game is very enjoyable and stands as one of the best racing games on the Xbox 360. For just $40, you can’t go wrong.

I’m going to come right out and say it. Tetris Evolution is probably the finest version of Tetris ever released. It has a ton of modes, lots of options, a bargain pricetag, and the classic Tetris gameplay we all love. Consider also that you can use your own custom soundtracks, and you have an extremely addictive and enjoyable puzzle game that is worth the $30 price of admission.

The Beatles are the biggest rock band ever. Rock Band is the best plastic instrument music game ever. When you put them together, you get magic. We have all of the details right here.

Crazy, simple, fast, fun – these are just a few good ways to describe The BIGS 2. It is like a fan edit of your favorite movie that just shows the good parts. It is a dessert with a mound of frosting and a tiny sliver of cake. It is an all Rush mixtape collection. The BIGS 2 is baseball broken down into the best parts – hitting and pitching and chasing down crazy stats. And it is the best baseball game the Xbox 360 has to offer. Find out all of the details here in our full review.

The BIGS is an arcade-style baseball game that puts the focus on pure hitting and nasty pitching rather than the tedious stat tracking and complex controls that you find in simulation baseball games these days. The result is an enjoyable, although shallow, game of fast paced baseball that hardcore fans and casual sports fans alike will enjoy. It isn’t without some issues, but the hitting is extremely satisfying, and that really is what The BIGS is all about.

The Club is basically Project Gotham Racing with guns and no cars. It is all about being stylish and setting fast times and high scores, and it works surprisingly well. And it is a fresh take on a third-person-shooter genre that has been feeling kind of stale for a while now. It is addictive and fast paced and pretty darn fun once you get into it. The Club is solid all around and is worth checking out.

After all of the hype and delays and waiting and worrying, Bethesda has delivered The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. In a rare feat for a game of this magnitude, it not only lives up to expectations but also surpasses them to create an experience that everyone can enjoy and not just the nerdy, dice rolling, RPG-elite. Oblivion is one of the best games available right now and is well worth the $60 investment.

The Godfather videogame from EA is an intriguing blend of great story, many different gameplay elements, and decent production values that all come together to create a surprisingly good videogame adaptation of one of the most beloved films of all time. This is a license that EA couldn’t afford to mess up and, thankfully, they have delivered. The Xbox 360 version isn’t too different from the others, but with better graphics and achievements, this is the version to own.

The new Incredible Hulk game sure feels a lot like the old Incredible Hulk game, Ultimate Destruction. You are free to roam around a city and cause destruction as everyone’s favorite bi-polar hero, the Hulk, just like before. Three years ago on the original Xbox, this formula was fun and fresh and interesting. Now it is just kind of boring. And it doesn’t exactly help that this new Hulk is riddled with glitches and overall uninspired design. Find out more in our full review.

The Orange Box is one of the best videogame bargains ever. For your $60, you get Half-Life 2, the Episode One and Two expansions, puzzle/FPS Portal, and online multiplayer game Team Fortress 2. None of the games are perfect on their own, but taken as a whole this package is very, very good and is highly recommended for all Xbox 360 owners.

The Simpsons Game from EA delivers great visuals and sound and is really genuinely funny throughout the 6-8 hour campaign, but the gameplay is so bland and uninteresting that it really is a struggle to force yourself to see it all. Simpsons fans will definitely enjoy it, but it isn’t the end-all-be-all Simpsons game we had all been hoping for.

The Sims 3 for Xbox 360 is a solid port of the ultra popular PC life simulator that manages to keep most of what makes the games so addictive and fun intact. Unlike past console versions of The Sims, The Sims 3 isn't some watered down, half-featured, not-as-good, quick port. This is the real Sims, and everything that goes with it.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 on the Xbox 360 continues the same trend of missing features as the other EA Sports launch titles, but the narrower list of features isn’t as unforgivable here. My only complaints with Tiger on the Xbox was that the graphics were far from impressive and the game was way too easy. Tiger on Xbox 360 solves both of those problems so even though there are fewer golfers and less courses, the gameplay overall is quite a bit more enjoyable.

Golf fans, the first true next-gen version of your sport has finally arrived. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 offers twice as many courses as last year, a ton of modes, great create-a-character, and some innovative new gameplay features that make this the best playing golf game yet. And best of all, the Xbox 360 version is actually better than the older-gen versions.

With sports games, there seems to be two levels of effort put in. Some years developers will go all out and really make improvements, and some years they just coast and ride the success of the year before. Unfortunately, Tiger Woods 08 falls into the latter category. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 is a solid game of golf with a couple of nifty gameplay improvements, but the graphics and sound and features list aren’t all that different from last year’s entry.

After a solid, but fairly safe and unchanged 08 season, EA has come out swinging with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 to produce the best next-gen golf game yet. It packs all of the solid gameplay, great graphics, and tons of authentic courses and gear we have come to expect from the series, but ups the ante with new real-time challenges, a club trainer, and a great skill advancement system. This is a solid game of golf all around and is well worth checking out.

A mere 9 months after Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 was released and Tiger 10 is already on store shelves. Usually this quick turn around is a bad thing (and Tiger 10 does have a few more glitches and issues because of it), but since Tiger 09 was such a great game to build off of Tiburon has been able to tweak and tune and generally improve the experience in pretty much every area. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 is simply a great game of golf. Find out all of the details right here.

One sports series that has consistently gotten better every year on the Xbox 360 is the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series. While other yearly sports games have been up and down in terms of quality, the Tiger Woods games keep getting better. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 is no exception. It looks and sounds great and features tons of modes. New additions to the gameplay this year make it more challenging …

After being in development for seemingly forever, TimeShift is finally out on store shelves. But was the wait worth it? Yes. Absolutely. TimeShift is a solid game that looks and plays remarkably well. The time shifting aspect of the game could have used more work, but the core shooting is fun enough to make it worth playing even after the wow factor of the time controls wears off. Make some room in your holiday game release schedule, because TimeShift should not be ignored.

What do you get when you mix the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles attitude with Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia-style gameplay? TMNT, that’s what. It looks and sounds like the Turtles, but with far more interesting gameplay than the franchise has ever seen before. There are a few nagging issues, but for Turtle fans or people that just want to rack up 1,000 easy Achievement points, TMNT is worth checking out.

The SmackDown series has stood alone in the wrestling genre for a many years now, mostly due to a lack of real life competition for the WWE. Finally, a challenger has risen as TNA wrestling makes the jump from Spike TV to the videogame world with TNA iMPACT!. For a first attempt at a new wrestling series, it is surprisingly decent. But the laundry list of rookie mistakes mean it isn’t quite ready for a title shot. Find out all of the details in our TNA iMPACT! review.

Tom Clancy’s HAWX throws realism and physics out the window in favor of accessibility and pure simple fun, and the results are mostly positive. It is a surprisingly intuitive experience that is easy to pick up and a heck of a lot of fun for flight combat vets or novices alike. It isn’t quite as polished or deep as Ace Combat 6, but it is a solid flight combat game overall that is worth a look. Find out all of the details here in our full HAWX review.

Crystal Dynamics and Eidos have done the impossible. They have revived the Tomb Raider franchise. What was once the butt of many gaming industry jokes has been rebuilt. Bigger. Stronger. Faster. Better than ever before. Tomb Raider Legend is a darn good game that series fans and newcomers alike will find very enjoyable.

Tomb Raider Underworld is easily the best Tomb Raider game yet. It is the best looking and best playing TR game ever. But it is not without some issues. It really speaks to the core experience, though, that we shrug off a wonky camera and occasional glitches and happily continue playing in spite of them. Tomb Raider Underworld is a game that is pretty much an extra layer of polish away from being one of the best games of the year. Find out more right here in our full review.

Tony Hawk needs a year off. Nine games in nine years is just too much. The gameplay has become too complicated, the level designs aren’t nearly as good, and the fun and humor and real skater feel just isn’t there anymore. With the first real competition that the series has ever had this year in EA’s Skate, the latest Tony Hawk game just feels old and outdated by comparison. Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground is an okay game, but it isn’t anything special.

The Xbox 360 version of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland maintains the same exact gameplay and features as the Xbox version but gives the graphics a little boost. If you don't already have it, this is definitely the version to own.

Tony Hawk’s Project 8 brings the series back to its roots, so if the antics and silliness of the THUG games and THAW weren’t your cup of tea but you still loved the gameplay, Project 8 will make you very happy. Activision and Neversoft have delivered the best looking, most realistic, most challenging, and one of the most fun skateboarding games yet, and I am also happy to say that the level design this year is as good as it has ever been. This is a fantastic game.

Take one part Toy Story, complete with nifty visuals, and one part Super Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie, and you end up with Toy Story 3: The Video Game. It is a 3D action/platformer that has you exploring areas and finding hidden items while playing as your favorite Toy Story characters. And who wouldn't want to do that? Find out all of the details here in our full review.

The videogame adaptation of the first Transformers live action movie was a mess, no two ways about it. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen comes to us from a different developer who has listened to the criticisms of the first game, found out what Transformers fans really want, and produced a game that is miles ahead of the last one in terms of quality. Transformers: ROTF is fun and rewarding and a pretty darn good movie game. Find out all of the details here in our full review.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Transformers: The Game was supposed to be the first good movie game of summer ’07. It was supposed to be the first good Transformers game ever. With such a great license to work with, and with Traveller’s Tales behind the development, we expected LEGO Star Wars-levels of awesome. Instead, we end up with yet another disappointing, thrown together, crappy movie game. Rabid Transformers fans might like it, but I’d suggest renting it first.

Transformers: War for Cybertron is pretty easily the best Transformers game yet. And it isn't just good "for a Transformers game", it is a solid game period. This third-person-shooter has you flying and driving and transforming and fighting all over the Transformers' homeworld of Cybertron, and every aspect from the presentation to modes to the core gameplay is remarkably well done. War for Cy…

Everyone always talks a big game about how a country should be operated, but few ever get the chance and even fewer actually know what they are doing (see what I did there …?). Now you can put your leadership skills to the test in Tropico 3, a game that lets you play El Presidente of a Caribbean island. Think you have what it takes to balance the economy, healthcare, education, politics, fore…

The Turok series has always had the coolest concept around: Shoot dinosaurs with really big guns. But for some reason, each game has had issues that turned people away. With Acclaim long dead and a new developer and publisher at the helm, hopes were high that the new Turok could deliver on the promises and potential we saw in the first game on N64 more than 10 years ago. Unfortuantely, that isn’t the case. It isn’t awful, but there are a lot of little things that make Turok hard to love.

You love ES IV: Oblivion. I love Oblivion. Everyone loves Oblivion. So it is no surprise that eventually someone made an Oblivion clone. What is surprising, however, is just how extremely poorly put together this clone is. Two Worlds sort of looks and feels like Oblivion only, you know, with much poorer looking graphics, bad sound, bad combat, and bad menus. And the most touted new feature, online play, is completely broken. Simply put, Two Worlds is a mess.