PS3, PS4 Reviews - Page 9

King of the ring

Virtua Fighter is the Beck of the gaming world. Adored by critics and shouted about by its fans, but virtually inaccessible to newcomers. It's never reached a wide audience like Street Fighter or Tekken, but now Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown has dropped the cost of entry to just £9.99/$14.99 there is no excuse for fight fans not...

Axed at the knee

Insomniac Games left a strong lasting mark when it stepped away from its Resistance series after the atmospheric and emotionally gripping Resistance 3. With Insomniac Games now hard at work exploring new avenues for us to enjoy, Nihilistic Software has stepped in to send us back into the Chimeran infested world once again, with the...

You drive me crazy

A title like Mad Riders conjures up all sorts of wild possibilities. Alas, you might be disappointed to discover that this game does not, in fact, involve racing rollerskate-wearing elephants down rainbow highways, nor does it include oversized hammers to swipe at foes. It's actually a rocket-powered ATV racer, the promised...

A kind of magic

Sorcery is the game that PlayStation Move owners have been craving. The motion controlled title that captivated crowds at E3 2010 has been a constant source of conversation right the way through to its re-reveal late last year. But having spent almost 18 months shrouded in the secrecy of Sony’s invisibility cloak, the title finds...

Broken locks and broken hearts

Everything is different in the dark. The play of light and shadow can lend any partially obscured object an ominous tone. If you've ever navigated your room late at night after waking from a deep sleep, half-aware of reality and half-aware you're no longer in your bed, you know this feeling – the feeling that dwells...

Enchanting

When the original Trine released back in 2009, it took us on a fun yet flawed 2D physics-based puzzling quest, inspired by the cult favourite SNES classic, The Lost Vikings. Even with its faults, nothing stopped the game from rapidly growing a large fan base. With Trine 2, developer Frozenbyte has pulled out every bit of magic it...

Crafty

Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland is the 13th instalment of Gust’s storied Atelier series and the third part of the “Arland” trilogy. While at first glance the sheer amount of ground this series has covered makes for a high barrier of entry, skip this title based on intimidation and you'll miss a very enjoyable experience. The...

Ghost squad

If you're expecting to sneak about undetected for the entirety of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, prepare to be disappointed. While there are many clandestine moments throughout, Future Soldier plays closer to the rulebook established by the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare titles. Levels start out with stealth at the forefront but...

Fender bender

You get the feeling Codemasters has wanted to make DiRT Showdown for a while. Freed from the shackles of the mainline series, Showdown takes DiRT’s semi-reserved personality and steers into a head-on collision with Ken Block culture. With less subtlety than a shocking pink livery, this is a raucous, gnarly and, at times, downright...

All night long

Making music is hard. Ask any budding music producer and they’ll tell you that learning the intricacies of Reason is more challenging than trying to platinum Dark Souls while blindfolded. PixelJunk 4am, the new downloadable title from PSN stalwarts Q-Games, attempts to erode that learning curve by transforming the PlayStation Move...

You sunk my battleship

You've got to feel sorry for Double Helix Games, the developer saddled with the challenge of transforming Battleship's big screen debut into an interesting video game. That sympathy comes partially from the realisation that the studio has done an adequate job of combining the tried-and-tested formula of Hasbro’s...

Payne: Killer

Max Payne is a man who can't catch a break. Haunted by the murders of his wife and baby girl, and the loss of the woman who managed to crack through his rock-solid shell, Max has become a washed-up, broken man with an addiction to alcohol and pain killers, waiting on the day for the planet to stop so he can step off. Left with no other...

Hot stuff

You have to hand it to Capcom: it's releasing Dragon's Dogma at just the right time. Six months after The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and ahead of the traditional summer drought, it has the PS3 adventure landscape all to itself. Thankfully it's got quality as well as good timing. In development for three years with a supposedly enormous...

Blue streak

The backlash against Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I must have hit SEGA hard. Here was a game everyone said they wanted — a high-definition return to Sonic's 2D roots, and while it was a decent game on its own merit it didn't feel like a true continuation of those classic 16-bit adventures. It was almost like an athlete coming out of...

Brave new world

It’s a testament to Warhawk's longevity that almost five years after its original release, it still maintains a vibrant and enthusiastic community. Most other multiplayer titles shed their numbers at a worrying rate, but engaging core design and unprecedented post-release support has ensured the downloadable shooter a place amongst...

Not a bad shot

Sniper Elite V2 is a pretty single-minded game, when all’s said and done. The Rebellion-developed remake has grand plans of being a stealth action title with tactical frills, but in reality it’s much more content with being a profoundly simplistic shooter. With a limited arsenal and even fewer gameplay distractions, the success of...

Awesome or naut?

It's the year 3587, and two robot armies are in a galactic struggle for power. It’s up to the elite group of combatants known as the Awesomenauts to determine the fate of this cosmic clash. Gameplay in Awesomenauts revolves around a series of three-on-three battles as each team attempts to break through the enemy's defences and...

Goresome

Warner Bros. and NetherRealm Studios released Mortal Kombat on PS3 last year, returning the series to its über-violent 2D roots and right back into the top tier of fighting games. The lengthy story mode and robust online options were only the start of what the game had on offer, and that’s before the DLC started rolling in. With the Vita...

Perplexing petals

Don't try too hard to understand. Datura is bizarre, a short adventure designed to be played in a single sitting with PlayStation Move, seemingly intended to bewilder anybody who comes before it. Yet that's one of its strengths. With no background information whatsoever, you take control of a man who is apparently as lost as the...