October2023
Mini Review Headbangers Rhythm Royale (PS5) - Musical Party Game Is Frustrating and Fun
Let's get this bread
Glee Cheese Studio's Headbangers Rhythm Royale is the latest in a growing roster of battle royale party games. Heavily reminiscent of Fall Guys, the game sees floppy-headed pigeons duke it out in rhythm-based puzzles. Thirty competitors fight to earn the coveted title of master headbanger. You'll be familiar with the format by...
August2023
Review Blasphemous 2 (PS5) - A Marvellously Macabre Metroidvania
The bigger the better
Since Elden Ring secured its position as one of 2022's best games, Soulslikes have seen another huge spike in popularity, with a plethora of titles already released or in the pipeline for this year. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Remnant 2, Lies of P, The Lords of the Fallen, Hollow Knight: Silksong, The Last Faith — the list goes...
Mini Review Moving Out 2 (PS5) - Chaotic Co-Op Capers in Safe But Solid Sequel
F.A.R.T.ing around
Moving Out 2 is your typical sequel — a bit bigger, a bit better, but ultimately quite familiar. Taking the act of moving belongings in and out of buildings and turning that into a chaotic co-op game, this is largely the same as the original Moving Out, but mixes things up in some fun ways. The gameplay is super approachable...
June2023
Mini Review Killer Frequency (PS5) - An Intriguing Call-in Murder Mystery
Radio is dead
Killer Frequency is an odd concoction that just about delivers on its unusual premise. Playing as Forrest Nash, a smooth-talking DJ on a small town's local radio station, you're in charge of a late night call-in show. On top of that, though, a serial killer is on the loose, and the tiny police department is in disarray. Somehow, it...
November2021
Mini Review Epic Chef (PS4) - Silly Culinary Life Sim Mostly Hits the Spot
Kitchen quest
Epic Chef mixes together varied ingredients to create something rather tasty. It's a story-based adventure game about a man named Zest moving to a new town and rising through the culinary ranks, but the gameplay isn't just about cooking. While you'll concoct numerous recipes using weird and wonderful ingredients, the game is as much a...
September2021
Mini Review Overcooked: All You Can Eat - Remastered Culinary Co-Op Is Still a Tasty Treat
Fill your plates
Republished on Wednesday 1st September 2021: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of September's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows. Overcooked: All You Can Eat is like enjoying your favourite meal while wearing newly prescribed glasses. Sure, you've had this plenty of times...
May2021
Mini Review King of Seas (PS4) - A Slow But Seaworthy Pirate RPG
Weathering the storm
King of Seas might have an uncomfortably similar name to Microsoft's Sea of Thieves, but the two are very different takes on nautical adventuring. This is a top-down, sea-faring sandbox in which you play as the child of the titular monarch, framed for his murder and forced into a life of piracy. The story isn't going to blow you...
March2021
Mini Review Narita Boy (PS4) - 80s Soaked Action Adventure Is a Digital Delight
Narita Booooooy
Narita Boy is a side-scrolling, 80s VCR-soaked pixel adventure. You play as the titular Narita Boy, a chosen hero of sorts who's tasked with saving a digital dimension from its all-powerful creator. There's a lot more story here than you might think — most of it told through lengthy dialogue boxes — but the gist of it is that...
December2020
Mini Review Monster Sanctuary (PS4) - A Monster Taming Marvel
This one's a Keeper
Here's the elevator pitch for Monster Sanctuary: It's like Pokémon, but it's structured like a Metroidvania. It boasts a reasonably large map of interconnected corridors and rooms, complete with some light puzzle and platforming elements. The world itself is a bit unremarkable, but it's the in-depth and addictive gameplay that...
Mini Review Worms Rumble (PS5) - Simple But Successful Spin-Off Proves the Series Has Wriggle Room
A new species
The Worms franchise has more or less stayed the same across its 25-year history, so it was due a shake-up. Worms Rumble is an offshoot that ditches the strategic turn-based gameplay in favour of more immediate, real-time action. Fans may well wrinkle their noses at this, but honestly, it works better than you might think. Up to 32...
September2020
Review Going Under - A Compelling and Comical Roguelite
Upstairs downstairs
Many roguelikes and roguelites follow a similar template, and if you've played one, it can feel as though you've played them all. However, they're not all cut from the same cloth; yes, they share some common design and gameplay choices, but others are true outliers that do things differently with the formula. Going Under is one...
July2020
Review Neon Abyss - Fast-Paced Rogue-Like Can Be a Little Too Chaotic
Gotta hatch'em all
Neon Abyss is a procedurally generated, rogue-like platformer that takes heavy inspiration from the likes of Enter the Gungeon and The Binding of Isaac. You play as part of the Hades formed ‘Grim Squad’ and are thrown into the Abyss, equipped with nothing more than a gun to blast through room after room of menacing foes in...
April2020
Mini Review Moving Out - PS4 Couch Co-Op at Its Most Literal
To me, to you
Moving Out successfully gamifies the otherwise highly stressful process of relocating. As employees of a somewhat questionable removal company, you and up to three other local players are tasked with shifting all the marked goods out of each building and into your truck as fast as possible. It's daft, easygoing fun. Levels start...
October2019
Review Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair - A Great Example of Less Is More
Going batty
Yooka-Laylee was born out of a desire to return to the 3D mascot platformers of the mid-nineties. The initial game by Playtonic, a studio that has several ex-Rare staffers in its ranks, found a degree of success in this mission statement, but it didn't quite measure up to expectations. It's a cutesy, colourful collect-a-thon with nice...
September2019
Review Blasphemous - An Unholy and Triumphant Metroidvania
King of the castle
Perhaps ‘Dark Souls-vania’ is a bit of an overstatement, but there’s no denying the plethora of influences, both modern and contemporary, in this gorgeously sacrilegious metroidvania. Blasphemous is dripping in grim atmosphere and stuffed full of macabre religious iconography, bloody combat, and enough lore to fill the Old...
April2019
Review My Time At Portia - A Delightful Post-Apocalyptic Life Sim
Workshop till you drop
My Time At Portia is a charming life simulation game, revolving around your new life running a workshop in the post-apocalyptic town of Portia. Unlike most such settings, Portia is brimming with vibrant colours and cheerful residents. However, the town still bears the scars of the apocalyptic event which ravished the world...
September2018
Out of this world
We all know the difference between day and night on Earth, but do light and darkness cause similar transformations on alien worlds? This is the question driving Planet Alpha, a 2D platformer featuring an unnamed spaceman, stranded on a mysterious planet. To escape, our lost astronaut is going to have to delve deeper into an unknown...
August2018
New and improved recipe
With Overcooked, Ghost Town Games landed upon a delicious recipe for co-operative cooking chaos that dished up a perfect helping of frantic fun. Although fairly short and straightforward in structure, the fiendishly designed levels meant players really did have to communicate effectively to succeed, and it's this that makes...
July2018
Mug shot
Our time with Mugsters has been short, it has been simple, and it has been sweet. Mugsters is the newest game from the publisher behind Overcooked, The Escapists 2, Yooka-Laylee, and most recently Yoku’s Island Express. Knowing all that, Mugsters has some big shoes to fill. Can it keep up with the endless wonder of Yooka-Laylee? Can...
May2018
Review Yoku's Island Express (PS4)
Pinball Wizard
Because many video games lean on familiar gameplay loops, archetypal characters, and genre conventions, when you're reviewing them it can sometimes feel like you're saying exactly the same thing about a game that you already wrote about previously. But every now and again you'll have to write a sentence during a review that you know...
November2017
Review Worms Battlegrounds (PlayStation 4)
At war with itself
Republished on Wednesday 1st November 2017: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of November's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows. Way back in the hazy days of 1995, we doubt that plucky British studio Team 17 imagined that it would be making Worms games a...
July2017
Aventually
Aven Colony tells the story of the human colonisation of an alien world, and each mission of the fifteen hour campaign is a variation on that one, singular idea. Like Earth, the planet offers everything from frozen tundra to lush, fertile landscapes capable of supporting the growth of crops like corn and wheat. The aim of the game is to...
August2016
Wriggly good
Explosions litter the battlefield, reducing soldiers to nothing more than corpses and gravestones. A poisonous gas sneaks around, grasping its enemies and withering them away to a point of no return. A hawk-eyed missile eerily seeks out its victim, locating and dispatching them with mechanical ease. War, you see, has changed. But all...
March2016
Crawl out through the fallout
Sheltered is a strategy game about ensuring that your family survives after a nuclear apocalypse. To be totally fair, it's about a lot more than that – resource management, adventuring, trading, etc – but you'll spend the majority of your time with this plucky indie not thinking about those things in the abstract,...
February2016
Review The Escapists: The Walking Dead (PS4)
Daily Grimes
The Escapists: The Walking Dead is an aptly named amalgamation of the prison break indie game, The Escapists, coupled with the smash hit comic book and TV series, The Walking Dead. It takes all of the original game's mechanics and fits them into the world of Rick Grimes' undead uber-brand. As expected from a game set in that world,...
