Latest Reviews
Review Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (PS5) - Intergalactic Stunner Puts PS5's Power on Display
Lombax for good
If the Earth was in peril from intergalactic invaders and needed a game developer to save its ass, governments across the globe would turn to Insomniac Games. You can practically bank on the Burbank-based developer to deliver top-notch titles these days, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is no exception. TL;DR: this PlayStation 5...
EDF! EDF! EDF!
We’ve seen several Earth Defense Force games on PS4, but World Brothers isn’t your normal fare. Offering a family friendly spinoff with voxel graphics, this third-person shooter takes us to Square Earth, where we find this world shattered by Dark Tyrant’s forces as several motherships appear, and it’s down to us to restore it...
Mini Review Song of Horror (PS4) - Scare-Free Horror Is Frighteningly Dull
Sighlent Hill
Song of Horror begins with Daniel — a former drunkard attempting to escape the financial ruin that the bottle has left him in — taking on an errand for his boss. It's one of those go-to-a-creepy-house-and-investigate type jobs that any sane individual who has ever seen a horror movie or played Resident Evil before would know to...
Mini Review Mighty Goose (PS5) - Bombastic 2D Shooter Is Really Good Fun, Despite Frustrations
Honk if you're brawny
Mighty Goose is a chaotic side-scrolling shooter in which you play as a cybernetically enhanced goose. This particularly aggressive bird is an intergalactic bounty hunter, and the game's loose plot takes you to a number of sci-fi locales as Goose brings justice to the baddies. It's all suitably dumb right from the word go, and...
Mini Review Operation: Tango (PS5) - Flawed But Fun Co-Op Espionage Action
Spy games
Operation: Tango has a great central premise; you and a buddy must work together in asymmetrical co-op to complete a globe-trotting set of covert missions. One plays the agent, while the other is the hacker, and you'll both play an integral role in saving the world from cyber-destruction. You both have different views on a given scenario,...
Mini Review Gadgeteer (PS4) - A Fulfilling VR Physics Puzzler
Go, go gadget Rube Goldberg machine
Virtual reality is a fantastic arena with which to explore puzzles – especially when the idea is such a fun and refreshing one. Gadgeteer sees you designing amazing Rube Goldberg contraptions by placing all the missing pieces to complete the machines, while progressing through an abode’s various rooms. What...
Review Necromunda: Hired Gun (PS5) - DOOM Rip-Off Broken Beyond Belief
Go to hell
You can hardly blame Streum On Studio for trying to make the next DOOM Eternal. With shooters very few and far between this early on in the PlayStation 5 generation, the developer had the opportunity to leave its mark with a fast-paced FPS that picks up right where id Software left off last year. It even had the Warhammer 40,000 license...
Mini Review Stonefly (PS4) - Tranquil, Bug-Sized Adventure Lacks Bite
Sleepy crawlies
Stonefly comes from the team behind Creature in the Well, but aside from sharing a gorgeous visual style, they have very little in common. This new game is an enjoyably peaceful experience about a world inhabited by tiny people living alongside the bugs in giant natural ecosystems. Humans get around by piloting bug-like rigs,...
Mini Review Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World (PS4) - A Gorgeous Cel-Shaded Remake
A world of wonder awaits
Over 25 years after the original release of Monster World IV, the cult classic 2D action-platformer has been remade for modern consoles. Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World keeps the style and charm of the original, while updating the game to feature cel-shaded, 3D visuals. The game looks gorgeous, thanks to the eye-popping...
Review Capcom Arcade Stadium (PS4) - Capcom-asters of 32 Arcade Games from 1984 to 2001
Worth every Zenny
The widespread use of CD-ROM formats during the 32-bit era allowed space for decent retro game compilations on the PS1, but the potential of retro collections blossomed into larger libraries and extra features on the PS2 and PSP. The likes of Taito Legends, SNK Arcade Classics, and especially the various volumes of the
A rough first time for newcomers
In a world where the point-and-click genre has passed its heyday, this notorious series is one of the few keeping it going. Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice is a direct follow up to 2018's Wet Dreams Don’t Dry, continuing the story with a similar cast of characters and plenty of callbacks to previous...
Mini Review Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection (PS4) - Armour-Strippingly Hard and Proud of It
You'll need a change of underwear
There's so much exploding clothing in this game that you'd be forgiven for thinking it's another instalment in the Senran Kagura series. Fortunately (or, depending on your opinion, unfortunately) it's just the unbelievably fragile armour of enduring Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection protagonist, Sir Arthur. You see,...
Review Star Wars: Squadrons - This Might Not Be the Game You're Looking For
Squad goals
Republished on Wednesday 26th May 2021: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of June's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows. Star Wars: Squadrons probably isn't the next title from a galaxy far, far away that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order fans were looking for. It may not even be the...
Mini Review King of Seas (PS4) - A Slow But Seaworthy Pirate RPG
Weathering the storm
King of Seas might have an uncomfortably similar name to Microsoft's Sea of Thieves, but the two are very different takes on nautical adventuring. This is a top-down, sea-faring sandbox in which you play as the child of the titular monarch, framed for his murder and forced into a life of piracy. The story isn't going to blow you...
Review Rust Console Edition (PS4) - Ugly Survival Game Has Special Moments
Endure and survive
Rust Console Edition should be rubbish. Double Eleven’s tardy PlayStation 4 translation of the seminal PC survival smash has taken its sweet time to release, and it’s not exactly enjoying the smoothest launch period, with crafting bugs, hit detection hiccups, and some of the most vomit-inducing visuals we’ve seen in years...
Mini Review Exodemon (PS5) – A Fun By-the-Numbers Throwback Shooter
Jump on it
Retro shooters have a well-trodden formula these days, so anytime a game sets out to tweak that, the results vacillate between clever and calamitous. Exodemon happens to come down on the side of cleverness, tweaking the process in just the right ways to cleverly mask a small development team while making the experience a fun one. Whereas...
Mini Review Just Die Already (PS4) - This Game About the Elderly Is Juvenile Fun
Disrespect your elders
Abuse of the elderly is, as a rule, generally discouraged. So, despite belonging to a fairly unshockable generation, we were a little bit taken aback by the sheer gerontophobia of the wickedly funny Just Die Already, which effectively does for the elderly what Goat Simulator did for, well, goats. Pick your pensioner, get...
Hell is whenever
18 years removed from its original release on PlayStation 2, Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne still has a lot to offer hardcore RPG fans. In fact, its heavy focus on dungeon crawling and monster management is perhaps even more unique today than it was almost two decades ago, especially when it's placed side-by-side with modern Atlus...
Naill-ed it
The open world, RPG-infused Assassin's Creed games — Origins and Odyssey, before Assassin's Creed Valhalla — received some great post-launch support. Origins in particular was blessed with a fantastic expansion in the form of Curse of the Pharaohs, and Odyssey lived long thanks to a slew of solid episodic escapades. We had reasonably...
Review Subnautica: Below Zero (PS5) - Aquatic Open World Is Cooler Than Cool
Ice cold
Subnautica: Below Zero is a game about crafting for convenience. This frigid follow-up to Unknown Worlds’ seafaring survival sandbox subscribes to the same blueprint as its 2017 predecessor, plunging you into an aquatic open world and willing you to explore it. Where you go, and how you get there, is entirely up to you. While there is a...
Mini Review Call of the Sea (PS5) - A Pretty But Predictable Puzzler
Lost at sea
Norah is ill, and her husband Harry is missing after having gone searching the world for a cure. After receiving a mysterious package, Norah decides to go to the place Harry was last known to be — an island off the coast of Tahiti. Call of the Sea bills itself as a Lovecraftian mystery game, and whilst the first person adventure...
Mini Review Terminator: Resistance Enhanced (PS5) - Enhanced Is Pushing It
I'll be back, without improvements
2019 saw the release of Terminator: Resistance, a dull FPS that performed poorly and boasted unconvincing character models. This year, Reef Entertainment has released Terminator: Resistance Enhanced on PlayStation 5, complete with additional content, bug fixes, and DualSense features. Unfortunately, much like...
Mini Review Wreckfest (PS5) - Not a Huge Jump on PS5, But Still a Smashing Good Time
Get wrecked
Wreckfest just fully embraces what it is, and you have to respect it. Bugbear's brash, fender-bending racer has been unleashed on PlayStation 5 as part of May's PlayStation Plus lineup, and it's still very much the chaotic, crash-happy, Destruction Derby-esque experience people love. In the jump to new hardware, the game definitely...
Mini Review The Colonists (PS4) - A Nice and Chill Civilisation Building Sim
Human after all
The Colonists is an addictive little world-builder featuring cute robots. And while it doesn't do much to set itself apart from its strategic peers, it's a relatively accessible game, complete with step-by-step tutorials and a gameplay structure that's easy to understand. In a genre where complexity can be a serious hurdle, The...
Review Resident Evil Village (PS5) - Capcom's Best Horror Game for 16 Years
Goth punk
If we're being brutally honest, Resident Evil Village puts Resident Evil 7: Biohazard to shame. That's not to say we've soured on Ethan Winters in the four years since his introduction, but rather what Capcom has done next goes way above and beyond the events of the Baker incident. Resident Evil Village is incredible. By borrowing the best...
Mini Review Skate City (PS4) - Lo-Fi Beats to Kickflip To
Ollie-oop
From publisher Snowman comes Skate City, a port of a 2D mobile game that focuses on trick mastery and moody visuals. The translation from mobile to console isn’t exactly seamless, and performing tricks can be a pain, despite the simple controls. Skate City only rewards absolute precision. Landing what should be rudimentary tricks can...
Mini Review R-Type Final 2 (PS4) - One of the Greatest Shmups Ever Gets a Timely Sequel
Blast the Bydo, again
When you’re taking time to consider the true greats of the shmup genre, a few names tend to crop up with alarming regularity. Darius. Gradius. Space Invaders, if you’re feeling particularly bookish. However, few shooters have had the same degree of impact that R-Type achieved when it hit arcades way back in 1987. The savvy...
Review Returnal (PS5) - Housemarque's Deep, Dark Shooter Is a PS5 Must Have
Selene Die On
Returnal is a much, much bigger game than you think it is. For all the noise surrounding the game's price point, Housemarque has produced its largest, most ambitious project by a country mile. This isn't a small scale title with a premium cost; the studio has made something on a whole new level. There's an awful lot of game here, and...
Mini Review Battle Axe (PS4) - Top-Down Mix of Brawler and Run-'n'-Gun with Henk Nieborg Pixel Art
Not an old battle-axe, a new Battle Axe
Considering that Makoto Uchida's work on Golden Axe was inspired by combining a fantasy backdrop with Double Dragon's gameplay — alongside the fact that Golden Axe was originally going to be named as Battle Axe or Broad Axe instead — the greatest compliment we can give Numskull Games' PS4 Battle Axe is...
Mini Review Hitchhiker (PS4) - Intriguing Concept Can Be Monotonous
A Hitchhiker's guide to philosophy
In a world of fast-paced action and strategic decision making, sometimes it is nice to play the role of a bystander. Hitchhiker is a game that prides itself on taking you through a journey, instead of letting you create your own path. The end result is a monotonous but thought provoking journey that is closer to an...
