PS4 Game Reviews
Review Assassin's Creed Odyssey - A Masterclass in Open World Design
Kraken good fun
After the deserved success of Assassin's Creed Origins, someone at Ubisoft must have decided to replay The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Bayek's Egyptian adventure had already borrowed heavily from CD Projekt Red's masterpiece, but Assassin's Creed Odyssey doubles down on every role-playing mechanic that it can. The result is an open world...
Review Scribblenauts Mega Pack - Two Great Puzzle Platformers in One
Not all heroes draw their own capes
Video games often get a bad rap. Parents can demonise them as the scourge of education, the ultimate in distraction, and a waste of time and money. The media doesn’t help with its panic of the month over games like Fortnite. But hold up, what we have here are two video games that actively encourage not just...
Review Disgaea 1 Complete - Dishing Out 1,000 Damage Never Looked So Good
DOOD! What a remake!
Walk in the shoes of Daemon Prince and antihero Laharl as he awakens after the passing of his father in hope of fighting for the title of Overlord of the Netherworld. In this remake of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Nippon Ichi Software spoils us with reworked graphics and a new 'Etna Mode' all carefully intertwined into the same...
Review Mega Man 11 - Hard As Rocks Return for the Blue Bomber
Robot rock
It's been eight years since the last Mega Man game, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it wasn't that long ago. Since 2010's Mega Man 10 released on PlayStation 3, Capcom has subtly kept its robotic hero in the limelight with a spate of Legacy Collection re-releases, while Keiji Inafune himself created the lacklustre spiritual successor,...
Review Astro Bot Rescue Mission - Just Like Super Mario VR
Asobi-Wan Kenobi
Astro Bot Rescue Mission is the closest thing you’ll get to a Nintendo platformer on a PlayStation platform. Japan Studio hinted at something special in The Playroom VR’s acclaimed Robot Rescue tech demo, but this fully-fledged campaign is destined to be one of the sleeper hits of 2018. Designed specifically for PlayStation VR,...
Review Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise - Marvellous Manga from the Yakuza Team
Definitely not dead
Fist of the North Star is one of the most popular Japanese manga series in history, starting out all the way back in 1983. TV adaptations, novels, and live-action films capitalised on the original 27 volumes in order to continue and sustain the legacy of legendary martial artist Kenshiro, but when it comes to the latest entry in...
Review CREED: Rise to Glory - Should Have Been a Knockout
Sun’s out, guns out
Boxing seems like a perfect area for virtual reality to explore. The tactile nature of beating the pulp out of another person seems ripe for the medium, and there have been relatively few PlayStation VR boxing forays thus far, making CREED: Rise to Glory stand out a little more than it otherwise might. CREED is a tie-in to the...
Review Life Is Strange 2 - Episode 1: Roads Is Profoundly Political
A tale of two sons
Life Is Strange 2 is profoundly political, but that shouldn’t be a surprise. This is a tale about two Latino boys travelling across Trump’s America, and it plays out more or less exactly as you’d expect it to. The story’s much more grounded in reality than the original series ever was, and that means that it’s filled to...
Review Catastronauts - Intergalactic Overcooked Shouldn't Be Overlooked
Panic stations
It was only a matter of time before the Overcooked series inspired similarly chaotic co-operative experiences, and Catastronauts does a pretty good impersonation. Following the blueprint of Team 17's co-op cooking game fairly closely, Inertia Game Studios swaps kitchens for spaceships, creating a familiar experience that's not without...
Review FIFA 19 - Well Drilled... Unlike Jose Mourinho's Man Utd Team
Good touch for a big lad
Spend just a few minutes with FIFA 19 and you'll wonder if EA has just re-released FIFA 18 with Champions League licensing. At first it can feel very familiar – more so than usual – but give it a couple of hours and you'll start picking up on all the little things, all the subtle improvements that EA Sports has carefully...
Subscribe to Push Square on YouTube152k Watch on YouTube Review Laser League - Futuristic Sport in Dire Need of Fans
Laser tag
Republished on Wednesday 26th September 2018: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of October's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows. At first glance, Laser League bares little resemblance to Roll7's previous work, but the similarities are there if you look below the surface. Like...
Review Valkyria Chronicles 4 - The Strategy Sequel We Waited a Decade For
The Art of War
Republished on the 25th September, 2018: We're bringing this review back to coincide with the launch of Valkyria Chronicles 4. The Valkyria Chronicles series is set during a low fantasy re-imagining of World War II, here called the Second Europan War. The topography of the Europan continent is only marginally different to our Europe,...
Review This Is the Police 2 - An Enjoyable Sequel with Bad Difficulty Spikes
That's the sound of da police
After a brief two month period of exclusivity over on the PC, This Is the Police 2 has made its way to the PlayStation 4 with new gameplay mechanics and expanded offerings in an attempt to build upon the foundations laid by the successful 2016 original. While one or two of these additions may have caught its fan base...
Review Timespinner - Don't Let This Metroidvania Pass You By
Spin the wheel
Ah, September. The month where triple-A games flood onto our consoles seemingly non-stop. A month in which avid gamers turn into vigilantes web-slinging through the streets of New York. Explorers plunder the ruins of hidden cities in search of artifacts. With titanic games consuming our free time, it's hard to miss sprouting little...
Review NHL 19 - Ice Hockey Deserves Much Better
Puck off
The NHL series is a weird one. Years ago, when 2K had its own NHL series, there was a competition for attention between the two franchises that drove both series’ forward as time went by. But without the competition that NBA Live deals with or the massive install base of Madden, NHL usually comes off as the series that is generally...
Review Boundless - Not Quite a Minecraft Moment
Bountiful, sort of
Up until now, we haven't seen much from Wonderstruck, the creative minds behind Boundless. Boundless is another in a large set of procedural sandbox games that have sprung up in the last half decade or so. The game has been in early access on Steam for about four years, and has finally received its full digital release. So how...
Blink and you'll miss it
RGX Showdown's promise of a new arcade racer from the creators of Burnout and Split/Second is a fairly empty one. It's a minuscule indie racing game with some impressive talent behind it, and while it certainly evokes elements of your old favourites, it isn't really in the same class. RGX Showdown's online only races see...
Orthanc was a Ubisoft tower?
Transference is one of those games that’s best experienced knowing as little about what awaits you as possible. As such, we intend to remain as vague as possible when it comes to discussing narrative threads and consequences, while still giving you a good idea of how the experience adds up as a whole. Although, with...
Basketbawl
When it comes to sport simulation video games, it’s clear that EA Sports is king. It has the crown in just about every major sport, and this was the case for many years with its NBA Live series. Live was the standard bearer for close to 15 years, but during the jump from the PlayStation 2 to the PlayStation 3, it began to lose its grip,...
Review Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle (PS4)
A brawler CPS-pecialist's dream Capcom-pilation
Don’t hang up! We have a little business proposition for you. Push Square propose that any retro gamer with a love of side-scrolling beat-‘em-ups make it their business to play the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle, particularly as a historical jaunt through an impressive display of seven cherry-picked...
Are you afraid of the dark?
When Tiny Bull Studios first announced Blind, they were, for the most part, ahead of the curve when it came to first-person titles based around using echolocation. However, in the ensuing years, that type of game has practically burgeoned into its own sub-genre, with titles like Perception and Stifled leading the charge...
Review Little Dragons Café (PS4)
All fired up
Booting up Little Dragons Café for the first time, the first thing that strikes is how damn cute the whole thing is. From the adorable twins you choose between to play as to the quaint café itself complete with delightful miniature vegetable patch and impossibly sweet chickens running around, everything is designed to immediately tug...
Review The Gardens Between (PS4)
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Puzzle games are a dime a dozen, so in order to really stand out, the game in question needs to do something special to garner attention. And The Voxel Agents’ time-manipulation puzzle game, The Gardens Between, happens to be one title that achieves this. The Gardens Between is a puzzler where all of the scenarios you encounter...
Find a new slant
It gets lonely at the top. The NBA 2K franchise has been the undisputed king for almost a decade now when it comes to virtual basketball. Long gone are the days of being the plucky underdog who scrapped for years, slowly but surely chipping away at EA’s vast, seemingly untouchable, video game sporting kingdom. NBA 2K is now the...
Va va voom
The fact that it’s been sixteen long years since the last V-Rally is enough to make some of us at Push Square feel positively ancient. Eden Games’ 1997 original was always seen as a friendlier rival to Codemasters’ excellent off-road sim Colin McRae Rally. It only makes sense in 2018 that, upon its return, it should be considered...
Review Downward Spiral: Horus Station (PS4)
In space, no one can hear you groaning
Finnish developer 3rd Eye Studios has borrowed and plucked a wealth of talent from both the video game and movie industry in order to help craft its debut title, Downward Spiral: Horus Station, but it hasn’t really worked. Boasting of past projects like Alan Wake, Quantum Break, Trials, and films Gravity and
Review Destiny 2: Forsaken (PS4)
The cycle repeats
It's hard to shake the feeling that we've been here before with Destiny 2: Forsaken. When The Taken King hit the original Destiny and propelled the game to a point where it once again felt complete and compelling, it was a welcome addition after months and months of frustration. It's the same story with Destiny 2, a title that's...
Review Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk (PS4)
Tractie-cal warfare
Nippon Ichi’s latest release Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk is a first-person dungeon crawler where you play Tractie – that is, the Tractatus de Monstrum – a mysterious book with a soul trapped inside, able to communicate by filling out its pages. Tractie is under the control of a witch named Baba Yaga, or Dronya as...
Review Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (PS4)
Timeless
For its first few hours Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age is happy to just mosey along at its own pace. It's a typically pleasant jaunt through a colourful fantasy world, complete with supremely cute monsters that you whack over the head with big swords, but it's a bit... Boring. It looks lovely and everything's polished, neat, and...
Review 428: Shibuya Scramble (PS4)
Tokyo timehop
The visual novel genre is a strange beast, a niche corner of gaming that’s littered with some classic narrative experiences and bizarre oddities. Developer Spike Chunsoft is responsible for the lion’s share of popular visual novels on the market, with Steins;Gate and the fan favourite Dangonranpa series. Now it's re-releasing 428:...
