Latest Reviews
Review Marvel's Spider-Man: Silver Lining - A Lukewarm End to the City That Never Sleeps Story
Every cloud
The release of Silver Lining marks the conclusion of the City That Never Sleeps expansion for Marvel's Spider-Man, and as a finale, it's a slight letdown. It's clearer now more than ever that a sequel is coming, but leaving so many narrative threads dangling makes for quite an unsatisfying ending to this extra story. Even so, this still...
Review Atelier Arland Series Deluxe Pack - A Trio of Delights
Atelier what, it's pretty good
The Atelier series is something of an acquired taste. The games tend to be a mix of super-relaxed storylines with anxiety-inducing time limit systems. The juxtaposition can be a bit off-putting to some, but once you realise that the time limits aren’t as harsh as they first appear then you can start to appreciate...
Review Borderlands 2 VR - A Handsome Adaptation
You don't know Jack
Sony’s not stupid, and it seems to recognise that titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Borderlands 2 VR need to exist in order to get potential PlayStation VR adopters through the door. While headset veterans will accurately argue that it’s the titles like Astro Bot Rescue Mission and Beat Saber that really shine in...
Review Subnautica - An Excellent Underwater Survival Game
Awe-inspiring as far as the eye can sea
Fear of the ocean is hardly an uncommon affliction. The disconcerting tension as you bob, completely vulnerable on the sea’s surface. Calming ripples of salty water lapping against your arms as you battle to remain afloat, all the while blissfully unaware of the strange horrors that lurk in the murky depths...
Review Nippon Marathon - Janky Japanese Japes
Takeshi's hassle
It does feel like there's some strange appetite at the moment for multiplayer games that are actually a little bit shoddy. Gang Beasts is kind of the poster boy for this brand of title, with its flailing, imprecise brawls leading to some golden moments. Nippon Marathon slots very neatly into this small but growing convention,...
Review Desert Child - A Fantastic Retro Racer That's Way Too Short
Eat my red dust
Desert Child is pretty special. Stylistically, it’s a magical experience, its ‘90s adventure game art style mixing well with an absolutely fantastic soundtrack. Set on Olympia, a city on a fully-colonised Mars, in a not-to-distant future, its world is an intoxicating mix of cultures, from Aussie beach bums to Middle Eastern...
Review Gungrave VR - Don't Rise from Your Grave
Grave Danger
“Not another virtual reality shooter,” we hear you sigh. Yes, another one, but this time with a relatively recognisable name tacked on: Gungrave. For those that don’t know Gungrave VR isn’t the first title in the series, as it debuted on the PlayStation 2 in 2002 and did well enough to get a follow-up title, Gungrave: Overdose...
Review Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales - Some of the Best Writing You'll Find on PS4
Queen me
CD Projekt Red knows how to write a character-based story. For what is essentially a visual novel broken up by relatively brief card game battles, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales spins a seriously impressive yarn, and it's this gripping narrative that keeps you glued to your controller. Thronebreaker tells the story of Queen Meve, a stern...
Review Beat Saber - Guitar Hero Meets Star Wars
What's old is new again
Something exciting is happening on PlayStation VR right now. A couple of years into its life, we’re starting to see developers really get to grips with the hardware. It’s always the way – early titles are often the most experimental, testing the waters to see what can be achieved. With virtual reality, it’s a whole...
Review Override: Mech City Brawl - Fun But Flawed Giant Robot Fighting
Mech it count
Override: Mech City Brawl is a surprisingly fun time, at least, for the first few hours. It's a relatively simple brawler featuring big colourful robots, and when you're stomping around a destructible stage smashing your opponent through multiple blocks of skyscrapers, it's hard not to enjoy yourself. But look beyond its shiny...
Review PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds - Return of the Battle Royale King?
Royale lineage
While not the first battle royale game, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (also known as PUBG to its friends) managed to kick-off a genre land grab in the wake of its massively successful appearance on PC in 2017. Since then Fortnite has surpassed it in terms of raw popularity, and every developer and his dog has tried to shoehorn a...
Review Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden - Farmlife Tussles in Tactical Battles
What the duck
You know you’re about to be thrown in at the deep end when a game asks you to pick between the difficulty options of Normal, Hard, Very Hard, and a permadeath toggle for all three. Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is a brutally tough experience that will contuinally pull the rug out from under your feet even when you feel like you’ve...
Review The First Tree - A Deep and Meaningful Journey
The fox and the profound
The First Tree effortlessly intertwines fluid gameplay, silky visuals, and two heart-breaking stories. The game opens on a snowy mountain peak where a fox awakens to find her cubs that have vanished. At the same time, a troubled man awakens and begins to tell his partner a story about his youth, rebellion, and coping with...
Review Just Deal With It! - A Party Game without the Excitement
Bad hand
A theme in our reviews of the recent wave of PlayLink games has been whether a game is necessary. When PlayLink was revealed last year, it felt like something new: That’s You couldn’t have been made without smartphones, while other titles like Hidden Agenda at least attempted something interesting. Fast-forward to this year, though,...
Review Earth Defense Force 5 - Buggy in More Ways Than One
A real bugger by yourself
Earth Defense Force 5 is about as close as you can get to the definition of a guilty pleasure. It scoffs at the realism and deeper philosophical themes that are proliferating throughout modern video games as they become a more diverse and ubiquitous entertainment medium. EDF 5 unabashedly keeps both feet planted firmly in...
Review Just Cause 4 - Explosive in the Wrong Ways
Just bores
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 ridiculous '80s action movie. It doesn't matter that the characters are personified clichés, or that the plot's limper than the lettuce in a Big Mac, because you just strapped four...
Review Assassin's Creed Odyssey: Legacy of the First Blade - Episode 1: Hunted - Off to a Good Start
To the point
Assassin's Creed Odyssey: Legacy of the First Blade - Episode 1: Hunted (there's no way in heck we're writing that again) is the first chapter of downloadable content for Odyssey -- a game that's already fit to burst with... Everything. Fortunately, Hunted does enough to stand out as its own little slice of adventure, ensuring that it...
Review Arca's Path - PSVR's Next Must-Have Title
Marble madness
2018 has been a stellar year for PlayStation VR. After Sprint Vector kicked things off with a speedy locomotive system that had everyone at Push Square Towers working up a sweat, we’ve been treated to the likes of cutesy platformer Moss, horror fanatics were swept away with The Persistence, and those looking for a
Review Ridge Racer Type 4 - The Pinnacle of PSone Ridge Racer Games
I want to be R4-ever young
Push Square has pondered the infancy of 3D console graphics during the 32-bit era, and reflected that the ageing process was not always visually kind, especially to PSone launch games. Some early titles like Jumping Flash! hide their pixelated wrinkles behind bright colours and plain models, while others like Battle Arena...
Review YouTubers Life OMG - A Video Making Sim That's Fun But Flawed
Dislike
This was only a matter of time, right? There's a sim/tycoon game for more or less every profession in some form or another, so one focusing on the noble art of the YouTuber was a dead cert. YouTubers Life originally launched on PC a couple of years ago and, as you might expect, it became a pretty popular title on the video sharing platform...
Review Intelligent Qube - The Most PSone Game Ever
Blockstar
You run around on a floating platform in the middle of a void, swallowing cubes into the ground one-by-one as they menacingly roll towards you. Every time you survive one wave, a disembodied, booming voice shouts “PERFECT!” before more cubes are sent your way. The process goes on for what seems like forever until the cubes eventually...
Review Rayman - An 'Armless PSone Platforming Treat
Ray-manifestation of UbiArt
Even twenty years ago, any love felt towards PSone Rayman's luscious art style could quickly turn into hate due to its spikily relentless difficulty barrier, but a cathartic sense of satisfaction could also be found by perseverant gamers who endured to conquer all eighteen of its levels. As a December 1995 EU launch...
Review Battle Arena Toshinden - Significant But Not Special
Not quite a load of old Tosh-inden
"Play History. Make History." The marketing tagline for the 2018 release of the PlayStation Classic highlights an added attribute of the miniature console in the sense that all 20 games included may not actually be classic PSone games, yet even the less worthy inclusions provide gamers with a snapshot of playing...
Review Asterix & Obelix XXL 2: Mission: Las Vegum - Well Done But Well Expensive
Asterix and what now?
Nothing about Asterix & Obelix XXL2 seems attractive at all from an outsider’s perspective. It’s a remaster of the second game in a duo of licensed PlayStation 2 and PC games based on a series of French comics – and that’s not even getting into that complete mess of a name. Given how inaccessible it all seems from...
Review Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six - Not a PS Classic, But Interesting Nonetheless
Back to basics
Believe it or not, but there was a time when the Tom Clancy game franchise that haemorrhaged titles in the 2000s was actually less popular than the legendary novelist himself. Even by the late 90s, only a handful of games based on his books had come out – most of them Hunt for the Red October submarine sims. That all changed in...
Review RIDE 3 - High-Octane Motorcycle Realism
Wheely quite something
If there’s one thing that RIDE 3 has in spades, it’s content. The sheer number of tracks and bikes to unlock, not to mention available modifications, is head spinning. Poor old motorcycle sim games seem to live in the shadow of their four wheeled brethren and are usually reserved for a more niche audience as a result. The...
Seal of approval
Republished on Wednesday 28th November 2018: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of December's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows. Just what is Papers, Please? Four years on from ex-Naughty Dog developer Lucas Pope’s chilling debut, we’re still not sure this long-awaited...
Heart wrenching
Republished on Wednesday 28th November 2018: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of December's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows. Iconoclasts is the brainchild of Swedish developer Joakim Sandberg. Working alone on the game for seven years, this is a real labour of love, and...
Drive club
Republished on Wednesday 28th November 2018: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of December's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows. It may look a helluva lot like MotorStorm, but Onrush is a completely different beast. The first multiformat project from the developer formerly known...
SOMAch to do, so little time
Republished on Wednesday 28th November 2018: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of December's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows. Horror games should be scary – but this is easier said than done. Sure, there have been some very successful examples such as...
