Push Rewind

It's been a relatively quiet week here at Push Square. The E3 rush is finally over, although we can't help but feel like a little part of us is missing because of its absence. Nevertheless, we tried to make sure that the past week was still packed full of content to keep you entertained during this Summer gaming lull, even if your favourite national team was unceremoniously booted out of the World Cup. We've got videos, reviews, damning Vita news, and, as you may have guessed from the title, a whole lot of Destiny. Seriously, that's a lot of Destiny coverage.

Murdered Soul Suspect

Reviews

Murdered: Soul Suspect - 6/10

Less game and more interactive story, your enjoyment of Murdered: Soul Suspect will be directly proportional to how much you buy into the tale that it tells. Those looking for a title with engaging gameplay will be sorely disappointed by the lack of challenge, boring stealth, and hunt the clue investigations. But if you can overlook its shortcomings and throw yourself headlong into the fiction, you might just find a detective yarn with a supernatural twist that’ll keep you engaged until justice is done.

1001 Spikes - 8/10

While 1001 Spikes’ extreme difficulty may pose a barrier to some, masochists will enjoy every minute of this punishing platformer. Tight controls and massive replay value make this a brilliantly brutal experience – and one of the PS4’s better side-scrollers to date.

Other Reviews

Destiny First Look Alpha 20140615145434

Features

First Impressions: Testing the Hype in Destiny's Exclusive PS4 Alpha

Over the last four days, we've spent 26 hours exploring Destiny's surprise First Look Alpha. Announced during Sony's E3 2014 press conference, the 6.6GB download offers a shockingly robust early look at the upcoming sci-fi epic, sporting an impressively vast map full of enemies, a player-versus-player mode, a lengthy co-op mission, and the hub-like Tower. The fact that we managed to spend so long playing what is essentially just a single chunk of the full game speaks volumes, and simply put, it's hard not to feel that developer Bungie is on to something very special.

Talking Point: Should Sony Ditch E3 Stage Shows Like Nintendo?

Very few people earnestly enjoy change. This author gets the jitters if Chart-Track’s weekly UK sales data isn’t ready to write about first thing on a Monday morning, and don’t even mention routine rupturing Bank Holidays. It was little wonder, then, that the web was awash with cynicism last year when Nintendo opted to circumvent its usual E3 stage show shenanigans for something a little more personal – a format which it furthered in Los Angeles last week. But with the House of Mario exiting this year’s colossal convention in an unexpectedly strong position, has the firm proven that press conferences in their traditional guise are well past their sell-by date?

Other Features

Vita

News

Now a Second Sony Exec Says That the Firm's Not Making More 'Mega Budget' First-Party Vita Games

Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida recently declared in an interview that the platform holder’s not planning to make many more big first-party PlayStation Vita titles, and SCEE boss Jim Ryan has since elaborated on that point in a fierce interview with Metro GameCentral.

PS4 Firmware Updates Will Add Missing Features in the Future, Stresses Sony

Sony appears to have taken your complaints about firmware updates from the previous generation a little too literally, as it is looking a little tardy with the PlayStation 4 right now. The next-gen console’s last major software overhaul deployed several weeks ago, and we haven’t heard a peep from the platform holder in the time since. That's because its operating system team’s been busy beavering away behind closed doors, Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida assures.

May NPD: PS4 Outplays the Competition as MLB 14 The Show Hits a Home Run

Considering that Microsoft announced its Xbox One price drop at the start of May, there was never going to be much chance of the maligned machine overcoming the PlayStation 4 in the latest NPD report – and as expected, Sony has revealed that it accrued the most next-gen hardware sales for a fifth consecutive time in the United States last month.

Other Noteworthy News

Video of the Week

What Were the Five Best PS4 Games at E3 2014?

Remember our super-duper E3 2014 poll which we may or may not have forgotten to include Mortal Kombat X in? Well, we used that to help us pick our PlayStation Game of the Show. And now, because we were always taught to reuse waste, we’re milking the results one more time with this, well, super-duper look at the top five PlayStation 4 games from last week’s Los Angeles show. Bonza!