Latest Reviews
Review Zero Escape: The Nonary Games (PS4)
A wild twosome
In the past ten or so years, the visual novel genre has found success in the West thanks to attempts to localise games you'd usually only find in the Japanese market. But one series that has never really had its time to truly shine is the set of Zero Escape games, which have been spread across multiple consoles. Fortunately, efforts...
Singin’ in the rain
The second title of Sony's indie Spring promotion, Rain World offers a drastically different experience from Everything, the initiative's first offering. Developed by Videocult and published by Adult Swim, this newest in the long enduring Metroidvania genre offers something rather unique from its ilk: Rain World is more a...
Review Dark Souls III: The Ringed City (PS4)
At the world's end
The Ringed City is the end of many things. While it marks the final instalment of Dark Souls III's short run of downloadable content, it also marks the potential end for Dark Souls as we know and love it. Oh, and it also marks the end of the world. Found within endless fields of ash, The Ringed City plays host to an array of new...
Review Mass Effect: Andromeda (PS4)
In space, no one can hear you meme
About half an hour into our Mass Effect: Andromeda playthrough, squadmate and cocky Londoner Liam snapped into a t-pose – arms in the air as if he was being crucified – and refused to come out of it until we reloaded our game. We had heard that BioWare's latest was buggy, but we couldn't have imagined just how...
2Bad
In 2Dark you play as Smith, a man with a tortured past. On a camping trip many years ago his wife was murdered and his two children kidnapped. In response to these tragic events, he dedicates his life to not only finding his own children, but also saving other kidnapped youngsters. To this end, the game will see you sneak into various areas of...
Oni you can save mankind
Toukiden 2 begins with a huge battle in Yokohama. Monsters known as Oni have wreaked havoc across the world of man and are advancing down from the North. There is a plan to stop their advance in Yokohama by leading a force of Demon Slayers against them. However, things aren't looking good as the Oni are on the rampage and...
Review This Is the Police (PS4)
911 is not a joke
Weappy Games' strategy-cum-noir adventure This Is the Police has you inhabit the day-to-day drudgery of retiring police chief Jack Boyd, grinding out his last 180 days on the force and trying to keep things running smoothly for the city of Freeburg's corrupt mayor. Dogged by allegations of corruption and a career full of regret, we...
Mind blowing
If there's one truth that can be guaranteed in this universe it's that Everything will divide opinion like few other games. The scientific simulation comes courtesy of Mountain maker David OReilly and promises the impossible: the ability to control everything in the universe – including the very fabrics of space itself. But can such...
Review FlatOut 4: Total Insanity (PS4)
Safety car
It's a miracle that FlatOut 4: Total Insanity exists at all really. The previous instalment in this smashtastic series – 2011's irreparably awful FlatOut 3: Chaos & Destruction – is widely regarded as one of the worst racing games of all time, sitting just a position ahead of the notoriously appalling Big Rigs: Over the Road...
Review Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (PS4)
It's a supernatural fright
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a 2D side-scrolling platformer that firmly plants its feet in the Metroidvania genre. Stop us if you've heard that one before. But what is a debut on consoles is actually a fourth entry in a series that dates back to 2010 on the PC, with the game in question debuting back in 2016...
Snow KONA
It's 1970 and Private Detective Carl Faubert is heading deep into the wilds of Northern Quebec on a job. Hired to investigate a spate of vandalism in a rural mining community, Carl's looking forward to getting out of Montreal so that he can do something that doesn't involve divorce and cheating spouses. Unfortunately, as soon as he arrives...
Review Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey (PS4)
The Fast and the Firis
The Atelier series is one of the longest running and most prolific Japanese role-playing game franchises, with Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey being the 18th instalment in the series' 20 year history. Atelier Firis is also, in many ways, the biggest leap forward the series has ever taken, implementing a...
Tonight, Mathew
Dying: Reborn's one of those games that, as a reviewer, makes you feel a bit rubbish. It's not a good game – in fact, it's pretty bloody bad – but you can tell that a tiny studio has tried its very best to make something cool. Also available on PlayStation VR and the Vita (either individually or as part of a three game bundle),...
Tap happy?
The humble clicker will eventually kill productivity here at Push Square Towers. Following in the free-to-play footsteps of AdVenture Capitalist is the kinda crumby Clicker Heroes, a tap-'em-up in which the primary reward loop involves ever-increasing numbers. Its gameplay loop is about as entertaining as punching numbers into a...
Review Journey (PlayStation 3)
The road less travelled
Update (14th March, 2017): To celebrate the five year anniversary of Journey's release, we're bringing our original review back from the archives for one day only. A seminal moment in PlayStation history. Enjoy! Originally published (1st March, 2017): Journey is a seminal release; the kind of title that comes once in a...
Brick it to the man
Upon its release in 2011, Minecraft drew plenty of comparisons to LEGO. It was like playing with everyone's favourite Danish export – no, not him – but virtually, and without the damage to your bank account. Hell, LEGO even made Minecraft sets, so you could play your favourite virtual LEGO game in real life with LEGO. So...
Review Styx: Shards of Darkness (PS4)
Sticks and stones
Admission: we weren't the biggest fans of Styx: Master of Shadows. Despite showing a bit of potential here and there, it was impossible to look past how incredibly frustrating and repetitive the entire game was – there was simply no fun to be had. So going into the sequel, our scepticism was naturally at an all-time high. But we...
Review Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - A Criminal Past (PS4)
Playboy
The entirety of A Criminal Past is set in the Penthouse, a sophisticated, maximum security prison for augmented ne'er-do-wells. It's a perfect location for a Deus Ex playground: there are tons of restricted areas, guards, security cameras, and turrets all begging to be sneaked past, exploited, and eliminated. The DLC is set between Human...
Wind stammers
High Horse Entertainment, the tiny two-person team behind futuristic PlayStation 4 frisbee-'em-up, is a big fan of two things: Windjammers and Rocket League. It's hard not to compare the launch of this sphere slingin' sports title with Psyonix's soccer cars – it's launching as a PlayStation Plus freebie and is even structured...
Divisive
Death Squared sees you playing as artificially intelligent robots under the supervision of robot tester David, a worker for the futuristic tech company Omnicorp. A co-op puzzle game for 2-4 players - although there is a "lonely co-op" mode for those who don't have a companion on hand - developer SMG Studios' first console outing is a solid...
Ys not?
Some eleven years after its original Japanese release, Ys Origin has been brought to PlayStation 4 by publisher DotEmu (via a PC localisation by XSEED back in 2006). Set 700 years before the events of the main Ys series, Origin steers away from the series' familiar protagonist Adol Christin in order to focus on the background of the series'...
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...
iO, iO – it's off to work we go
iO is a 2D physics puzzle game where you are tasked with rolling a ball from A-to-B. The key to getting to the objective is keeping your momentum going by growing and shrinking in size, which directly affects your movement speed. Sounds simple enough, however there are multiple obstacles along the way that are...
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...
Loot scootin' baby
There have been a lot of permadeath roguelikes released recently. In fact, the only thing more ubiquitous than permadeath roguelikes themselves are tedious and facile declarative sentences about how many permadeath roguelikes have been released recently. This writer should know - he's written a lot of them. They're usually...
Too good 2B true
We'll probably never write a harder review. NieR: Automata is an enigma: a game with such contempt for convention that we can't even talk about two-thirds of it without spoiling the surprises that await you. This is a game that defies all expectations, flourishing with frequent playthroughs and building to a crescendo that breaks...
Review Night in the Woods (PS4)
Gregg Rulz Ok
Night in the Woods, from developer Infinite Fall, is the newest in a line of successful Kickstarter stories. Funded back in late 2013, the game massively exceeded its initial goal, before finding its way into backers' – and consumers' – hands. It's an adventure game that sees you assume control of Mae, an anthropomorphic cat who...
Review A King's Tale: Final Fantasy XV (PS4)
King Regis takes to the Streets of Rage
Final Fantasy XV is anything but straightforward, both in terms of its development and how it's been presented and released to the public. The Kingsglaive movie felt like a mandatory aspect of the main game – a separately packaged alternative to the traditional Final Fantasy opening sequence, and an...
Ghost in the Hell
Bullet hell shoot-'em-ups can be intimidating to jump into if you're not a diehard player of the genre. Where Ghost Blade HD succeeds most is in finding the delicate balance between offering a level of difficulty that doesn't turn off newcomers, but also challenges seasoned veterans. Before starting the actual game you can jump...
Writer's block
Writing is rewarding in its inconsistency. Half of the time, your fingers can fly across the keyboard where your stream of consciousness flows like a river. Nothing can stop you as you ride these waters of inspiration – but there are plenty of moments where you'll get caught on something. How should this sentence be structured?...
