Latest Reviews
Review Mark McMorris Infinite Air (PS4)
Snowbored
We haven't had a snowboarding game in a while, let alone a good one – and you could say the same of the entire extreme sports genre as a whole. The last shredding simulator came out in 2012, and even then it wasn't a very good one; it seems that the golden age of SSX and Shaun White Snowboarding on PS2 is well and truly over. Mark...
Review Yomawari: Night Alone (PS Vita)
Horror never looked so cute
Yomawari: Night Alone tells the haunting tale of a girl, seemingly alone, trying to find her sister and lost dog Poro in her small town. As our heroine's adventure beginss, it's clear from the offset that the town is haunted, and she must go on her quest without being caught by the many ghosts that roam the streets...
Review Dark Souls III: Ashes of Ariandel (PS4)
The weather outside is frightful
Enter The Painted World via the grovelling NPC at the Cleansing Chapel bonfire and you're plunged into a harsh and isolated environment, with vision-impairing snow and unfamiliar faces. Wolves hunt you down and axe-wielding warriors make the very earth beneath you quake. It seems like a tough environment where...
Review Dragon Ball XenoVerse 2 (PS4)
Make a wish
Dragon Ball XenoVerse certainly wasn't perfect, but for a mostly fresh take on the Dragon Ball license it got a lot of things right, and its direct sequel, Dragon Ball XenoVerse 2, isn't looking to shake things up. Instead, this is a brawler that takes the typical Japanese sequel route, in that it's happy to keep the fundamentals in...
Pot luck
SportsBarVR is, as you'd no doubt guess, a virtual reality sports bar, which has all the attractions of a real sports bar minus the alcohol and the live footy. This leaves you with pool, darts, air hockey, and skeeball, with more due to be added in the future. Pool is the most interesting game on offer here, and it's playable in four...
Bot's your lot
The Playroom VR is a collection of asymmetrical multiplayer minigames that show off the PlayStation VR headset's capabilities in many different ways. It's free and comes with a total of five mini-games to enjoy with your pals: Cat and Mouse, Monster Escape, Wanted, Ghost House, and Robots Rescue. Let's break them all down...
Review Farming Simulator 17 (PS4)
Corny
It may have inspired a throng of gag games, but Farming Simulator 17 remains just about as serious as simulations come. Take the new addition of pigs: you need to pork them up with a balanced diet, keep them tidy, ensure that they have ample bedding and water, and only then will you reap the returns from your sows. It's hard labour of the kind...
Review World of Final Fantasy (PS4)
Stacked
Billed as an accessible spin-off based on Square Enix's beloved role-playing property, World of Final Fantasy is a colourful and buoyant game with an emphasis on collecting and battling monsters. Featuring critters and characters from past Final Fantasy titles, existing fans of the series will get more out of the experience, but the game's...
Review Batman: Return to Arkham (PS4)
Blockbuster
The Batman: Arkham series has housed some of the best superhero games of all time – Spider-Man 2 and perhaps Deadpool aside – so it's easy to see why Warner Bros and Rocksteady decided to return to Arkham with, er, Batman: Return to Arkham. Consisting of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City (along with all DLC), right off the bat it's hard...
Over the top
As one of the deadliest conflicts in human history, World War I had a massive impact on the twentieth century. Not only did both sides suffer an absolutely horrific number of casualties, but the geo-political upheaval it caused planted seeds of division that would resonate throughout the century to come. With the "bad guys" of the...
Keep on ridin'
When it comes to racing, there's a raw thrill… An adrenaline rush that can't be explained. In terms of gaming, it's a genre that's much beloved and for good reason, whether it be arcade-style or simulation-based. Italian developer Milestone is no stranger to the racing genre, and last year it put out a motorcycle-sim racer called...
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...
Funjack
One of the games that drew a lot of attention at the launch of PlayStation VR was EVE: Valkyrie. A space dog-fighting virtual reality game is an idea to excite just about anyone. But what you may not have known is that Crowd Control Productions – usually referred to as CCP – has actually releasing a second VR game at launch. This is...
Review Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters: Daybreak Special Gigs (PS4)
Hits some good notes
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters: Daybreak Special Gigs is billed as an enhanced version of the original Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters, which was released to Western audiences only last year on the PlayStation 3 and Vita. The story, played out as a visual novel, is developed through chapters, and is a fairly formulaic affair. New...
Review Skylanders: Imaginators (PS4)
Crash bash
Ever since it was kickstarted by Mattel's U.B. Funkeys titles a decade ago, the 'toys to life' genre has become a juggernaut, raking in billions and becoming the bane of parents' wallets worldwide. Skylanders is its flagship, a colourful platforming series with a now gigantic selection of stylised action figures to import into the game...
Norse to see you
Viking Squad is a sidescrolling arcade brawler for up to three players, both offline and online, and it proves to be good old fashioned beat-'em-up fun with friends sat beside you. Filled with colour, cartoon characters, and daft humour, it's got a lot in common with a game like Castle Crashers - except here, you're plopped into the...
Review Harmonix Music VR (PS4)
Off-beat?
As part of the launch lineup for Sony's PlayStation VR headset, there are a wealth of games, alongside some less interactive experiences. In between each of these is Harmonix Music VR, which fits neither bracket. The package boasts several different types of experience for you to mess around with. All of them involve playing music and...
Review Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour (PS4)
Here we go again
Duke Nukem has had a somewhat turbulent past. Even in the 90s, it was a constant uphill struggle for our chauvinistic protagonist, having to compete with shooter behemoths like Quake and DOOM. In more recent times, he's attained notoriety as being overwhelmingly naff thanks to the awful experience that is Duke Nukem Forever. World...
It's a virtual EVE-olution
Cold. Disorientated. You awake in a clone tank. No, it's not the aftermath of a Push Square office party, this is the future and you're already dead. EVE: Valkyrie is a strong space dogfighting sim that got quite a lot of love when it launched on the Oculus Rift, and now it deserves to get more love as it hits PlayStation...
Review Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (PS4)
Boom, boom, shake the room
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes places you in the shoes of someone you'd never want to be in reality: a bomb disposal expert. As the PlayStation VR player, you're faced with a bomb that must be disarmed within a time limit. The catch, however, is the manual is in the hands of your fellow friends and family. What could...
Review Mantis Burn Racing (PS4)
Burned out?
Well, this is quite the departure for VooFoo Studios, the developer responsible for the likes of Pure Pool, Hustle Kings, and Pure Hold'em. Mantis Burn Racing is, as the title suggests, a racing game, but it's a rare example of a top-down arcade racer. This sub-genre has obviously seen better days, and with the prestigious Micro Machines...
This 100ft bogey’s all over me
Golf, eh? A gentleman's game, leisurely paced and frightfully mannered. Not the sort of real world sport you might immediately think to add giant mech suits and mass destruction to – but 100ft Robot Golf brings heavy metal mech mayhem to the PlayStation 4's first real-time PlayStation VR compatible golf game. The...
Additional assembly required
We knew going in that the promise of Sony's cheaper PlayStation VR headset meant that the graphical output was going to be inferior to that of its competition. Even with this knowledge, some of the titles have been shockingly unimpressive. It's easier to work around the headset's lower specs when using abstract art...
Thumpin'
Virtual reality is a new addition to Sony's gaming repertoire, and with it has arrived a glut of new experiences and games. In fact, PlayStation VR has secured an impressively robust launch lineup with upwards of 20 titles on day one. Sure, not all of them can be winners – but luckily, Thumper is. A rhythm game described by the two-man...
Back of the net
Every professional footballer goes through a bad run of form, but it's particularly problematic when you're a striker and the goals dry up. Headmaster takes this very idea and spins it out into an entertaining virtual reality game, as you assume the role of a down-on-his-luck superstar who's been sent back to heading school. Your...
Review Super Stardust Ultra VR (PS4)
Super Starbust
Super Stardust is becoming a bit of a new PlayStation hardware tradition. Ever since the venerable Super Stardust HD, the Housemarque developed arcade shooter has appeared on every Sony system released – including the PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, and now PlayStation VR. But is the concept strong enough to...
Review NOW That's What I Call Sing 2 (PS4)
Come and get it if you really want it
NOW That's What I Call Sing 2 is really only a game for people who like modern pop music. Only one or two of the 30 songs on the soundtrack were made before 2016, and even then they're five years old at their oldest; the fact that one of these songs is 'Sexy and I Know It' by LMFAO is enough to mark this game...
An existential acid trip
Rez may have started life on the Dreamcast all the way back in 2001, but veteran Tetsuya Mizuguchi's synaesthesia shooter has finally found its true home on PlayStation VR. Despite being released on dozens of platforms over the past decade-and-a-half – including, of course, the PlayStation 2 – it feels like those...
Eyes on the road
One day, the veterans of Evolution Studios will tell their great grandchildren the tale of DriveClub, and it'll make for entertaining listening. The first-party, selected as one of the teams to help launch the PlayStation 4, missed its deadline by a country mile – and then delivered a product that ultimately didn't work. But the...
A Shu-in
Recent years have seen the resurgence of a genre largely swept under the carpet: the 2D platformer. Perhaps encouraged by the triumphant return of Rayman in Origins and Legends, indie developers have been working hard to bring back the simple thrills of running, jumping, and then running some more. With even Sega bringing us Sonic Mania...
