Latest Reviews
Past, present, future
Already a colossal adventure clocking in at over 100 hours, Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age just got even bigger, and, crucially, even better. Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition adds to and reshapes the game with new character-driven stories, substantial gameplay features, and more. It's...
Review Immortals Fenyx Rising (PS5) - Formulaic Fun Takes Ancient Greece by Storm
Gods & Monsters aplenty
Immortals Fenyx Rising is what happens when Assassin's Creed Odyssey meets The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. There are some ideas the latest IP from Ubisoft can claim as its own, but it's impossible to deny the comparisons between it and the two open-world juggernauts. As such, it feels like the French publisher has...
Mini Review Tesla Force (PS5) - Twin-Stick Roguelite Needed More Time in the Lab
The greatest minds in history cannot save this game
In an already bizarre year, Tesla Force’s absurd concept of pulling famous people from history and making them fight monsters seems right at home. Tesla Force is a roguelike twin-stick shooter starring Nikola Tesla and Marie Curie, fighting waves of monsters with over the top guns and powers...
Mini Review Maneater (PS5) – Some New Shiny Bits and Bobs Make for a Fun Time
Let’s fin-ish this
One of a number of free next-gen upgrade titles being offered on Sony’s newest hardware, developer Tripwire has returned to its undersea all you can eat buffet, and brought a few new bells and whistles with it. Maneater now runs at 60 frames-per-second and with a native 4K resolution, though honestly these changes are rather...
Mini Review Esports Life Tycoon (PS4) - Manage Virtual Athletes in Moreish Strategy Game
Repetitive strain injury
With last year’s YouTubers Life, Spanish studio U-Play Online transformed content creation into a kind of arcade strategy game, where your objective was to grow your subscriber count across a variety of different disciplines – from gaming through to cooking. Esports Life Tycoon is a similar sort of experience, marrying...
Review Spirit of the North: Enhanced Edition (PS5) - A Beautifully Brief Adventure
Foxy
It’s been a year since Spirit of the North first took us on an adventure on PlayStation 4, but with the PlayStation 5’s recent launch, Infuse Studio has brought it back for a second round. Set within Iceland, we find ourselves playing an ordinary Fox, guided by the Guardian of the Northern Lights after the land and skies become stained by...
The storm is here
If you're the kind of player who spent hours upon hours coming up with absurdly cool combos in Devil May Cry 5, then this expanded re-release is for you. Likewise, if you're totally new to Capcom's bombastic action title, then this is the best version of an already exceptional game (you can read our original Devil May Cry 5 PS4...
Mini Review Overcooked: All You Can Eat - Remastered Culinary Co-Op Is Still a Tasty Treat
Fill your plates
Overcooked: All You Can Eat is like enjoying your favourite meal while wearing newly prescribed glasses. Sure, you've had this plenty of times before, but it tastes just as good, and it looks better than ever. This is a PlayStation 5 re-release that brings together all the content from the two games along with all the DLC. However,...
Mini Review Rocket Arena - Competent Shooter May Be Fun for Free
Quake live
Republished on Wednesday 25th November, 2020: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of December 2020's PS Plus lineup. The original text follows. Electronic Arts put out a new PlayStation 4 game earlier this week and there's a pretty good chance you never even knew it existed. Rocket Arena is a 3v3...
Review Just Cause 4 - An Explosive Open World Romp
Just bores
Republished on Wednesday 25th November, 2020: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of December 2020's PS Plus lineup. The original text follows. There's moments playing Just Cause 4 when you'll almost certainly find yourself grinning from ear to ear in much the same way that you might watching a...
Review Observer: System Redux (PS5) – A New Coat of Paint Can Do Wonders
What’s old is new again
Observer was a polarizing title for us when it originally launched on the PlayStation 4. It was an experience that was maybe a little too bloated and more importantly it was absolutely littered with technical problems that made playing it a chore. This time around, we have some bad news for you and some good news. The bad...
Review DIRT 5 (PS5) - Raucous Arcade Racer Looks and Plays Best on Next-Gen
Mucking around
We've already delivered our main verdict on DIRT 5 with the PlayStation 4 release, which you can read about through the link. However, Codemasters has graced us with a PS5 version as well, and as you might expect, it's the optimal way to play this arcadey off-road racer. Everything we liked about this game is either the same or...
Review WRC 9 (PS5) - Haptic Feedback Helps Bring the World Rally Championship to the Next Generation
Good vibrations
WRC 9 is a superb rally sim. We said as much when we first reviewed it on PS4 three months ago. Bringing keen improvements to handling, lighting, and graphical fidelity – in addition to a selection of new rallies in Japan, Kenya, and New Zealand – such refinements in key areas helped define it as one of the best rally sims of the...
Review Katamari Damacy Reroll (PS4) - Roll 'Em Up Remake Rocks
Keep rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin'
We're sorry for the Limp Bizkit lyric in the tagline. But if we had to think about them while trying to come up with puns on rolling then it's only fair that you think about them too. If, by chance, you don't know who Limp Bizkit is then all you need to know is that the early 2000s weren't kind to rock music, but...
Review Assassin's Creed Valhalla (PS5) - Next-Gen Upgrade Is One of the Best Games in the Series
The raven's call
Assassin's Creed Valhalla was a disappointment on PS4. Plagued by a constant and unending stream of bugs, an otherwise great open world adventure was held back on Sony's last-gen console. Thank the Norse gods for PS5, then. The new system improves Valhalla massively, to the point where we could actually sit back and enjoy the game's...
Review Marvel's Spider-Man: Remastered (PS5) - Next-Gen Makes Insomniac's Superhero Romp Even Better
(Be) greater than ever before
It has been just two years since the original launch of Marvel's Spider-Man on the PlayStation 4, yet Insomniac Games has been hard at work improving the core game. Since then we’ve had three DLC packs, a Game of the Year edition, and a brand new console launch, which explains why Insomniac Games felt this was the...
Review Bugsnax (PS5) - Appetising Adventure Is Even More Delicious on PS5
Talkin 'bout Bugsnax again
As we've already established in our PlayStation 4 review of Bugsnax, this game is delightfully different. A semi-open world adventure game about capturing sentient snacks and feeding them to your fellow grumpuses? It's a silly concept, but pulled off wonderfully, and underneath the whimsical top layer are some great...
Review Godfall (PS5) - Good Combat Means It's Not Godawful
Falling into mediocrity
Since earning the title of the first-ever game to be announced for PlayStation 5 last year, it feels like Godfall has been stuck between a rock and a hard place. From Counterplay Games, a studio whose previous output includes just a single free-to-play PC experience named Duelyst, expectations it was probably never going to...
Review NBA 2K21 (PS5) - An Ambitious Effort That Excels on the Court
Green release
Sports games go hand-in-hand with console launches like LeBron James and retweets. Except this hasn’t been an ordinary year at all: the basketball season only just concluded after being played in an empty gym in front of virtual crowds and NBA 2K21 is the only sports simulation available on the PlayStation 5 for now. That will change...
Review The Pathless (PS5) - Giant Squid Avoids the Sophomore Slump
They call me the wanderer
Giant Squid Studios’ debut title ABZÛ was a stunning debut for the studio founded by former thatgamecompany art director Matt Nava. Given how great that debut title was, surpassing it was never going to be an easy task. However, the team – with the help of one of the best publishers in the business, Annapurna – has...
Review Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (PS5) - A Very Safe Entry for the New Generation
Out of the Woods
It was always going to be tough for Treyarch to follow up on both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Warzone. The twosome has created a powerhouse for the past 12 months, providing the franchise's devout fanbase with some of the best and most consistent content drops ever seen. But such is the Activision statement that...
Review Watch Dogs Legion (PS5) - Bland Open-Worlder at Least Looks and Runs Better
Rude Brittania
Technically speaking, at least, Watch Dogs Legion is an objectively better game on PlayStation 5 than PlayStation 4. It runs better, it looks better, and it loads much faster. That all does wonders for creating a much smoother experience on Sony's latest console, making sure you spend a lot more of your precious time in the thick of...
Mini Review Lair of the Clockwork God (PS4) - A Witty and Effective Blend of Genres
Point n' click platformer
Lair of the Clockwork God presents itself predominantly as a point and click adventure game, but doubles up as a 2D platformer. Ben and Dan, who respectively personify these two disparate genres, are the stars of this quirky game, and they must work together in these opposing styles to help save the world from multiple...
Mini Review King Oddball (PS5) - Weird Physics Puzzler Is Still Addictive
Royal rumble
Odd by name, odd by nature – and even odder when you consider it’s on a next-gen console now. King Oddball baffled us a billion years ago on the PS Vita, but now this bizarre physics-based puzzler has hooked us with its over-extended tongue for a second time. We can’t believe we’re playing this on a PlayStation 5 – but it’s...
Review Demon's Souls (PS5) - Cult Classic Becomes PlayStation's Best Ever Launch Game
So the world might be mended
Long have the cacophonous cries for a remake of FromSoftware’s PlayStation 3 cult hit Demon’s Souls reverberated through the Internet. Those wishes were undoubtedly amplified after the game’s servers were shut down back in 2018, turning a once-bustling bastion of experimental online interactions into just another...
Review Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS5) - Lovely Launch Game Revives LittleBigPlanet Protagonist
Material world
Sackboy is too good a character to sit on the sidelines, but for the last six years that’s exactly what the LittleBigPlanet protagonist has done. With creator Media Molecule turning its attention to the outrageously ambitious imagination simulation Dreams, it’s been six long years since we saw the smile of Sony’s only knitted...
Review Astro's Playroom (PS5) - The Perfect PlayStation 5 Pack-In
U R not Red E
Is there an argument that Asobi Team is the most inventive Sony studio right now? The small sector of Japan Studio is certainly getting the most out of the platform holder’s hardware, as Astro Bot Rescue Mission proved by completely reinvigorating the classic 3D platformer on PlayStation VR. With its latest project, free PlayStation...
Review Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS5) - A Sublime Superhero Spin-Off
Be greater. Be Yuleself
Insomniac Games came out swinging with its first foray into the world of Marvel’s iconic wall-crawler, but this spin-off has even more vigour and verve than its PlayStation 4 predecessor. Booting – in less than 10 seconds, we’re eager to add – with a shot of protagonist Miles Morales on the subway, the release takes...
Mini Review Five Dates (PS4) - Interactive Romantic Comedy So Bad It's Almost Good
Daters gonna date
"I've got a surprise for you," says Vinny to his friend Callum over a video call: "I've joined a dating app!" Callum reacts with such glee, one would be forgiven for thinking that Vinny had just announced the reformation of The Beatles. Surely everyone uses dating apps in 2020? Who wants to awkwardly wander up to someone in a bar...
Review Planet Coaster: Console Edition (PS5) - A Thrilling Business Sim with Lots of Ways to Play
Ride it out
The business simulation genre is one that had us hooked to our PS1 during our formative years. Despite playing best on the PC, we lost hundreds of hours huddled around a 14” CRT, building amusement resorts in Theme Park and medical complexes in Theme Hospital. Bullfrog’s slogan for these titles at the time was “big business, big...
