Quintumply

@PuppetMaster I'm 34

To be clear, I have absolutely no problem with, and in fact very much relish, a game presenting a challenge, and I completely understand the old arcade sensibilities you and others are describing. However, with all that in mind, it's my opinion that the lack of ways to earn more continues is a step too far — especially when combined with ill-placed difficulty spikes and inconsistent input recognition.

@RZ-Atom Once you choose a difficulty you are locked in, so if you decide you want to play on easy for the unlimited retries, you've got to start again.

It's not a long game, so it isn't the end of the world, but I still think the inability to earn yourself more attempts in the higher difficulties is too much. At least the easy mode is there, but again, I found the difficulty modes too rigidly designed. More power to anybody who's looking for that tough challenge, of course, but I believe there are friendlier ways to achieve that.

@RZ-Atom Typically, games with limited lives or continues will give you ways to earn more, by collecting coins or finding 1-ups or rewarding skilled play. This doesn't have any of that, so if and when you run out of continues, your run is done, and you aren't afforded the opportunity to try and extend it. It just struck me as a little too restrictive.

@somnambulance Free-to-play.

@Mikey856 Best of luck and congratulations!

@Member_the_game The majority of our audience is from the US, so we tend to default to USD these days, but GBP prices should be in there when relevant, you're right. Added them in (though not for our poll results).

Updated. Very likely a false alarm, sorry folks.

Another one I've been itching to play all year, really pleased it's coming to PlayStation.

@Wario_Waha I understand your point, but whether it constitutes its own separate experience or not, it's still just part of a whole. If it was truly standalone that would be different.

I think the best solution would be a Best DLC or Best Additional Content category where stuff like Erdtree can be celebrated, and Best Game/Game of the Year can remain for full games. The way it is right now simply doesn't make sense to me.

@Wario_Waha But it literally is not separate. You have to already own (and have played a significant amount of) Elden Ring before you can play Erdtree.

The category is Game of the Year; Erdtree is an add-on for a game. In other words, it isn't a full game in its own right. It shouldn't be eligible.

I think DLC should have its own category, where Erdtree would likely take the award, but it feels out of place among full games. It doesn't matter how good it is.

Very cool, and hopefully the start of a series. Being able to build all the machines would be great.

You can make an argument for remakes/remasters being eligible but any DLC that isn’t completely standalone shouldn’t be included.

@JimmyRiddle @Cerny One thing to remember is that you can toggle on an option in the settings that replaces motion controls with the left stick, which makes climbing quite a lot easier.

Been meaning to play this, glad it's coming to PlayStation!

@rjejr I think it's four main chapters, each with five or six levels. If you beeline it through the story, it's probably below 12 hours. My save is just above 20 hours but I was messing with customisation and doing apex hunts etc on top of the main story.

I want to be clear — the people saying that this is just like the other LEGO games? The level design here is much simpler even than any other LEGO game you can think of. I haven't played them all but I recall levels having secret areas, collectibles to find, alternate paths you can take with different characters — none of that is in LEGO Horizon's stages. It's very pretty, and the combat is good fun, but the levels themselves are painfully straightforward.

@ThaBEN Once you finish a chapter's set of campaign levels (I think five or six typically), Apex Hunts for that area become available. I think there are four of these for each chapter. After you finish those, Free Mode unlocks, and you can do that as often as you want.

The Free Mode stages don't have any cutscenes associated with them but, content wise, they're pretty much identical to the campaign levels. The combat throughout the game is fun and definitely the best part of gameplay.

It's fun in co-op but there's a real lack of collectibles, diverging paths etc that normally motivate exploration.

It's tough because LEGO Horizon does have its bright spots and your son may well enjoy it, but I'd argue that LEGO Marvel Superheroes and other past LEGO games have more going on than this does, moment-to-moment.

Personally I'd sooner recommend Sonic X Shadow Generations as there's simply more to do; particularly in Shadow's half of the game, the levels are intricate, there are things to find, you can replay stages for improved scores/ranks etc. The downside is no co-op, but I suppose you could take turns?

@Rob_230 The level layout in Free Mode is randomised each time, so no, you're not revisiting levels from the campaign.

Happy to answer any questions, as always

Updated.

@Maubari Haha, I've played all stages and challenges, but not collected absolutely everything, so that's all it is. I haven't seen those other two tracks either yet, as it so happens!

@Maubari I've not collected every single track, though I have most of them, and so far I haven't seen Endless Possibilities.

@AdamNovice Sonic Generations' remaster is definitely better constructed than Colours'. It does have one or two odd hitches, as I mention, but it's mostly very smooth sailing.

Happy to answer any questions

Updated.

@MARl0 Hopefully the parrot's improvements will make that portion a little easier.

@Sveakungen If a game has the PS5 Pro Enhanced tag, it shows above a game's title on its PS Store page (in the same place you'd see stuff like Standard Edition)

@Hogs-of-War-General @LifeGirl I'm not talking about the difficulty curve; of course, games broadly become more challenging as you get better/unlock more powerful abilities etc. I'm saying there are one or two missions that feel too difficult for where they're positioned. I think that's a reasonable thing to point out. It's something games have gotten better at, generally speaking.

The controls here are different from what I remember back on PS1, but I played this a lot growing up so I was able to adapt pretty quickly. However, I recognise that, for newcomers, the controls are not that straightforward (definitely not as simple as you suggest), and are poorly explained in tutorials. The game is a lot of fun, but only once you're familiar with how it all operates, and in this regard it definitely feels 25 years old.

I'm not saying it's bad, far from it! In many ways I think it's impressive how Armageddon stands the test of time.

@NielsNL I'm 34 and played Armageddon (and World Party) a lot on PS1 I have a lot of love for it, but that's not to say it's immune to criticism. As for the two point difference, I am a different human being from the lovely Ollie, so have different viewpoints and opinions and all that. It's really crazy stuff.

@pyrrhic_victory No prices yet.

@jrt87 The vertical stand is included in these bundles!

@Coolmusic The music is good and very pleasant but nothing really stood out to me in particular.

@BPrimrose You can change the difficulty whenever from the pause menu. There are also several accessibility options that let you do things like increase jump height, make enemies die in one hit, turn you invincible etc.

@Kraven Probably around the 10 hour mark. I think I clocked about 12 hours myself but I'm almost always behind the curve on playtime.

Platinum Trophy isn't very hard but you'll really need to watch out for collectibles as you go. You can replay chapters once you've completed them, but doing so doesn't count towards your save file, so that means you can't just hop into a random chapter and clean up.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Crazy news! I imagine the team that's left will be back soon enough under a new guise, but that's still pretty shocking to see.

@caiol92 That was already there

@ShutenDoji Yes, but it's being rolled out slowly over the next couple of months so might be a little while yet.

@rjejr Don't get me wrong, it makes full use of all DualSense's features — you'll be tilting the controller and blowing into the mic (and yes there is a little bit of that climbing mechanic from Playroom, but just the one level).

However! Important to point out that you can toggle a setting that lets you move the left stick instead of tilting the controller, and you can also just mute your mic if you don't want to blow into it.

@Bluetrain7 Nearly every level has at least one Bot to rescue, including the challenge levels and secret levels. In order to get the Platinum, you need to rescue every Bot and get every Puzzle Piece.

I'd say your only potential hurdle is some of the challenges, as they can be quite tough, but broadly speaking the game is on the easy side.

@MrPeanutbutterz Yes — if you mute the DualSense's mic, any moments where you'd normally blow into the mic will just happen automatically. And there's an option in the settings to toggle off controller tilt, and just use the stick instead.

@kcarnes9051 The main levels I would say are fairly straightforward to get through without much difficulty. However, as you play through the game, many smaller challenge levels will become available and these amp things up, testing your platforming and combat skills with short gauntlets. Generally speaking, it's pretty easy breezy, but there are tougher challenges to find if that's what you want.

@StylesT The main levels are pretty breezy but there are lots of challenge levels which can be quite tough!

@jmac1686 Okay, thanks for letting me know!

@Rich33 Haha, it does not.

@rjejr I personally wouldn't describe any of it as gimmicky; if I could compare it to anything, think of Super Mario Galaxy. Mario gets various power-ups throughout the game and often they only feature a couple of times — it's like that. And it's the same in terms of level design as well, just a huge level of variety that means certain motifs and mechanics are explored only once or twice. In my opinion, the variety and constant new ideas is a big part of what makes this game great, but it sounds as though that might not align with your taste. If you liked Playroom overall, though, you'll definitely like this.

@Darude84 I would say, regardless of age, if you have any interest in 3D platformers at all, I can't recommend this highly enough.

@nicc83 I would say around the 12-15 hour mark if you just do the main levels and that's it, but if you want to see and do everything, likely 20 hours or more. Obviously it depends on how much exploring you do and how much you're bothered about collecting everything — it's a very meaty 3D platformer in my opinion and a really nice length.

Hey everyone! As usual, happy to answer any questions about the game and the review Thank you for reading.

@BeenGamingSince_83 Yes!

TimeSplitters is a series that completely passed me by on PS2 so I might have to give these a try.

Always been curious to try the Two Point games but honestly, Two Point Museum appeals the most to me so I might just hang on!

@Legacy2K If it helps, there's a demo section on the console PS Store. From the home page of the PS Store, just scroll down and you'll see various horizontal sections. One is headed 'Demos' and shows the latest demos first. (If you scroll all the way to the right, you can open the whole section to see all of them.)

Searching on console only brings up the games themselves, but if you go into them, and select the three dots icon, you should see an option to view the page for the demo and you can download from there — that's another way to do it on PS5 itself

@breakneck They would definitely be in the mix, but Nintendo doesn't share digital sales data.

@Nepp67 You're so right, I've amended the article. Thanks