John has been an avid gamer since the late '80s and has been playing primarily on PlayStation for as long as PlayStation has been around. Since starting to write for Push Square in 2016 he's penned over a hundred reviews and most of them were pretty good. He's a huge fan of JRPGs, likes Kiryu Kazuma more than he likes most people he knows in real life, and spends an absurd amount of time coming up with cute outfits for his character in Final Fantasy XIV.
Review PaRappa the Rapper Remastered (PS4)
Don't stop believin'
It's been two decades since PaRappa the Rapper first appeared on the original PlayStation in 1997. As one of the first rhythm games to make a dent in the public consciousness, the poetic puppy was instrumental in paving the way for the music-based games that would follow in his wake: Amplitude, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Hatsune...
Review Danganronpa 1&2 Reload (PS4)
The kids aren't alright
The Danganronpa series is built around a deliciously gruesome premise: a bunch of high schoolers are held captive - in a school in the first game, a tropical island in the second - and they're told that the only way they'll ever be allowed to go back to their normal life is if they kill one of the other members of the group...
Review The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing (PS4)
Bram Joker
Abraham Van Helsing was first introduced to the world in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. He's a Dutch vampire hunter with a vast array of skills and a practically never-ending sequence of letters after his name that highlight his various qualifications. While not a huge hit at the time, Dracula became more successful after Stoker's...
Review Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Future Tone (PS4)
Tone stop believin'
2015's Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X was a little bit of a departure for the long-running rhythm game series. Rather than adhering to the traditional, gameplay-focused framework of the franchise set up in earlier instalments, X thrust players into a sugary sweet narrative starring the popular virtual popstar and her equally...
Game of the Year 2016 John's Personal PlayStation Picks
Treasured
It's time once again for the indomitable staff here at Push Square to share their own personal Game of the Year picks. Every year, we herd our writers together and force them to spill their opinions on their five favourite games of the last 12 months. Usually, this involves poking them with a stick until they come clean. Below, you'll find...
Review Exist Archive: The Other Side of the Sky (PS4)
Existential crisis
Dying has been a part of playing video games since the early days of the arcade, but few games in that time have killed you off right at the beginning of the story. By the time the opening credits for Exist Archive: The Other Side of the Sky finish rolling, our avatar – a teenage boy named Kanata – has been caught in a...
Review Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness (PS4)
Don't worry, be happy
Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness takes place in the same universe as the popular anime show, Psycho-Pass. Set in the year 2112, an always online system named Sybil is constantly monitoring the mental state of the entire population, and pointing out individuals who are psychologically likely to commit a crime in the future. As a...
Review Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X (PS4)
It's got the X-Factor
One of the songs in the brand new rhythm game, Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X, is called Holy Lance Explosion Boy, and it's about an unsettlingly young boy accidentally getting someone pregnant, featuring lines like: "This 0.02mm barrier is seriously getting annoying." If the thought of a kawaii, virtual boy's condom splitting...
Step Inside
Reviewing Inside is a tough proposition. On the one hand, this is a game that is fully deserving of a write-up overflowing with superlatives. On the other hand, to describe practically anything that happens in the game in anything other than the vaguest of terms would be to rob the player of the joy of discovering those moments for...
Give up the ghost
The hubbub surrounding the new Ghostbusters movie has been so well documented that even the Internet-deprived people of North Korea have likely heard about it. The response to the first trailer for the 2016 reboot of the supernatural comedy franchise has been nothing short of vitriolic, to the point that it's one of the most hated...
Review The Banner Saga 2 (PS4)
Stop! Banner time
Few games are as relentlessly bleak as The Banner Saga 2. It begins right after the climax of the previous game, but regardless of your prior choices, the story will play out largely the same; the dredge (a relentless horde of warriors) are hunting down the remaining humans and varl (hulking, horned giants), in the wake of past...
Review Dino Dini's Kick Off Revival (PS4)
The beautiful lame
Dino Dini's Kick Off Revival is the latest attempt to resurrect the classic football franchise that began way back in 1989 with the original Kick Off. Back then, games came on cassette tapes a
Shatwen
Shadwen is a third-person stealth-action game that begins with the implied murder of a king at the hands of a skilled female assassin. As the monarch's crown falls to the ground, we see the face of a young girl travelling with the killer, and the game flashes back to a
Review Shadow Complex Remastered (PS4)
Press X to Jason
Today, independent and digital titles sit fairly comfortably alongside big budget games in terms of critical reception and public acceptance, but when Shadow Complex was released in 2009, it was customary to finish any sentence that started "It's great..." with a
Review Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (PS4)
It's y'arrrrrrrrlright
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse is a 2D side-scroller in the classic Metroidvania vein, but with a whimsical story and an anarchic sense of humour that helps separate it from the pack. Taking on the role of a half-genie named Shantae, you'll spend approximately ten hours exploring various islands, solving puzzles in dungeons,...
Er, unepic?
Unepic begins with a few friends playing a table top RPG over one or two beers. Our hero, Daniel, gets up to use the bathroom and, mid-toilet break, the lights suddenly go out. He's in the dark feeling around for a light switch when he discovers that he's not actually in the bathroom that he was in before. Daniel has been magically...
