Tag: Mini Reviews - Page 5
Mini Review Gleylancer (PS5) - Solid 1992 Mega Drive Shmup Shines Again
Bust out the Busterhawk for two easy Platinums
From its July 1992 release, Masaya's Gleylancer didn't initially shine as a single player shoot-'em-up. It received a mixed reception, with Issue 2 of Mean Machines SEGA magazine describing it as unoriginal and tedious in a 48/100 scoring review. For years Gleylancer was more renowned for its reputation...
Mini Review The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes (PS5) - The Best Game in the Series So Far
Trapped between Iraq and a hard place
After the crummy Man of Medan and the better-but-not-quite-there Little Hope, The Dark Pictures Anthology has finally started hitting its stride with House of Ashes. Set in Iraq in 2003, the invading United States army is looking for weapons of mass destruction wink wink. Satellite imagery has alerted them to a...
Mini Review The Good Life (PS4) - SWERY's Latest Is Baffling, Broken, and Brilliant
Life is beautiful
In an industry that champions violence and gore, it's always refreshing to play something that favours nature and nurture instead. Sure, punching a goblin in the back of its weird head is great. Cathartic, even. But sometimes, just for a change, it'd be nice to have a lovely wander down a quiet English lane before enjoying a...
Mini Review Actraiser Renaissance (PS4) - SNES Remake Is a Game of Three Thirds
Generous, gabby god game
Praised for being "A Game of Two Halves" in issue two of Super Play, gaming magazines like CVG and Mean Machines were consistent in applauding SNES ActRaiser in the early 1990s for combining two contrasting gameplay styles. This effective structure is preserved in PS4 Actraiser Renaissance, as this remake retains the...
Mini Review Art of Rally (PS5) - Proof You Don't Need to Reinvent the Wheel
Not a burnout
Not every game needs to reinvent the genre. Sometimes, a game’s hook can be as simple as gently tweaking the preexisting formula. Instead of turning rally racing on its head, Art of Rally uses its great atmosphere to stand out from the crowd. Upon booting up the game, the game grabs the player with its incredible visual style...
Mini Review KeyWe (PS5) - Two Birdbrains Are Better Than One in Quirky Co-Op Title
Birds of a feather work together
KeyWe has about as left field a premise for a game as we've ever heard, but somehow, this co-op game about running a postal service as a pair of kiwi birds makes it work. Two players control Jeff and Debra, new recruits to the Bungalow Basin telepost station who also happen to be New Zealand's native flightless...
Mini Review Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania (PS5) - Sony Potassium 5
Ooh, chimpanzee that, Monkey Reviews
These monkeys have a problem. Well, a succession of problems, really, but the main one is that they've been trapped inside giant spheres for no reason. And they're beloved, these monkeys: since the GameCube days, Super Monkey Ball has been (perhaps bafflingly) popular, with increasingly diminishing returns across...
Mini Review AWAY: The Survival Series (PS5) - Life Finds a Way, Far Away
Sweet and sour
On paper, AWAY: The Survival Series sounds like a really interesting experience. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has died out and only pockets of life remain. You get to play as an adorable young sugar glider who is trying to survive in a dangerous and hostile environment with his family. It all sounds like...
Mini Review A Juggler's Tale (PS5) - Unravel Meets Limbo in Pleasant Platformer
No time to Playdead
The PlayStation Store could be considered overflowing with 2D puzzle platformers at this stage in its lifespan, and yet A Juggler's Tale from developer Kaleidoscube has still managed to find a teeny tiny feature to call its own. It's Punch and Judy come to life, with strings that both save protagonist Abby's life and get in the...
Mini Review Aragami 2 (PS5) - Nin-Jolly Good Stealth Action
What we do in the shadows
It may seem obvious, but stealth games tend to live or die on their clarity. Not just that of your protagonist as they sink their blade into an enemy’s jugular, but of their systems, the rules that govern the whole experience. There’s nothing less enjoyable in a sneak-‘em-up than getting caught without knowing why, so...
It's a livin'
Fans may rightly rue the lack of arcade sports games on the market right now, but imagine being into boxing: even EA Sports’ uber-popular Fight Night franchise has been put on hold while it flirts with the more commercially viable UFC. Survios’ movie tie-in Creed: Rise to Glory was a rare stand-and-bang outing on PS4, but its...
Mini Review F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch (PS5) - Awesome Metroidvania Punches Above Its Weight
Show me the bunny
The absurdly titled F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch begins in Torch City; a dirty, dieselpunk dystopia, inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, and a few years prior to the beginning of the game invaded by the robotic Legion and their 'Iron Dog' army. Our hero is a gruff rabbit named Rayton - a former ace pilot in a slump,...
Mini Review Golf Club Wasteland (PS4) - Post-Apocalyptic 2D Golf Game Is Well Above Par
I'll have a tee please, Bob
It's the future, and all is not well in Golf Club Wasteland. In a totally unexpected turn of events, the Earth has been rendered inhospitable by an ecological disaster that nobody saw coming. How were we supposed to know that using liquefied dinosaur bones to power our cars was bad? If those egghead scientists had told us...
Mini Review The Medium (PS5) - One of the Best Horror Experiences on PS5
Anything but medium
With all the rumours about Bloober Team potentially working on a new Silent Hill game, it's easy to forget why the team rose to fame in the first place. Its most recent project, The Medium, has finally made the jump to the PS5 and it could very well be the best psychological horror experience on the console. The story follows...
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...
Mini Review Quake (PS4) - New Coat of Paint for Legendary FPS
You got the nails
Quake is one of the shooters. Part of id’s holy trinity alongside Wolfenstein and DOOM, Quake is the newest of the bunch and, depending on who you ask, the best. This newest delivers the experience you remember, with a whole lot of added value. This is quite the bundle, packing in five campaigns – including both Machine...
Mini Review Rustler (PS5) - Silly Medieval Sandbox Houses Enjoyable Old-School GTA Clone
Tis but a scratch
For as iconic as Grand Theft Auto unquestionably is, it often feels like its PS1 origins have been resigned to the past. Titles like Shakedown Hawaii have attempted to recapture Rockstar’s early isometric days, but since the developer’s very own GTA: Chinatown Wars, there’s been a real dearth of top-down open worlds. Rustler...
Mini Review Islanders: Console Edition (PS4) - Simple Builder Is Brilliantly Effective
Island paradise
What a lovely little game Islanders: Console Edition is. It's the kind of game that you can boot up for five minutes of fun, or you can spend hours zoning out with. The goal is to populate procedurally generated islands with homes and facilities, creating miniature pockets of civilisation. In High Score mode, everything that you...
Mini Review King's Bounty II (PS4) - Turn-Based Battler Not Fit for a King
Not so bountiful
King’s Bounty II from 1C Entertainment is the long-awaited sequel to 2008’s fantasy roleplaying game King’s Bounty The Legend. You take control of one of three characters each destined to be the hero of the realm of Nostria. Warrior Aivar, descendant of a noble family and knight of the king’s guard, Mage Katherine, Countess...
Mini Review RiMS Racing (PS5) - Attempt for a More Realistic Motorcycle Sim Falls Flat
This bike needed more time in the pit stop
As the racing genre strives towards being as immersive as possible, the added realism can sometimes come at the cost of being enjoyable. RiMS Racing is the perfect example of this, as to simulate what it is like to be a motorcycle racer, the game adds tedious elements of motorcycle maintenance that ruin an...
Mini Review Recompile (PS5) - Digital Metroidvania Has Style But Little Substance
Hacked
Recompile is one of those games that shows extremely well, but the reality is an experience that doesn't quite stick the landing. Playing as a virus with the intent of infiltrating and fixing The Mainframe, a computer system that's gone awry, this is a 3D action game that looks great, but doesn't quite have enough to back it up. The...
Mini Review I Am Dead (PS5) - Posthumous Puzzler Is a Bittersweet Treat
Dead and loving it
I Am Dead is a quirky puzzle adventure game in which you play as Morris Lupton, the deceased curator of a museum in the island town of Shelmerston. It's an unusual premise, but it's one that developer Hollow Ponds pulls off with style and care. A game about tracking down ghosts and learning about inhabitants of the island could've...
Mini Review Foreclosed (PS5) - Cool Comicbook Framing Can't Mask Careless Gameplay
Shut it down
Foreclosed is a story-driven, third-person shooter set in a cyberpunk world where people are augmented with implants at birth. As a result, inhabitants are essentially corporation property as soon as they leave the womb, and this unsettling thought is at the heart of the game's narrative. You play as Evan Kapnos, a rather generic...
Mini Review Synth Riders (PSVR) – A VR Rhythm Game with a Different Sound
Ride the rails
We have espoused the virtues of VR rhythm games before, and now we have a new title to add to the mix: Synth Riders. While mechanically similar to Beat Saber on the surface, Synth Riders has some notable exceptions that allow it to stand out. Our favorite of these features are “rails”, in which you keep your hand balanced on a...
Mini Review Button City (PS5) - A Cute Adventure, But That's About It
Animal arcade
Button City is an adorable little game about a cast of cutesy animal buddies and their arcade-going adventures. Playing as Fennel the fox, you're new to town and wind up friends with a trio of regulars at the titular arcade. It's all extremely sweet, with a simple but heart-warming story keeping things moving along. The trouble is,...
Mini Review Omno (PS4) - A Lovingly Crafted Adventure That Journey Fans Won't Want to Miss
Omyes
Omno is an enchanting little game where you traverse a series of reasonably large environments, solving enjoyable puzzles along the way. You play as a kind of pilgrim — a staff-bearing being who is tasked with following the light. The light, in this case, is an energy source of sorts, scattered across the aforementioned environments...
Mini Review The Falconeer: Warrior Edition (PS5) - Bird Is the Word in Fun Flight Sim
Beware, sky hunter, beware
We’ve always wanted to ride a bird. No, not like that. Grow up. We meant, quite literally, ride on the back of a large avian like something out of The Rescuers Down Under. The Falconeer — making its PlayStation 5 debut after an acclaimed run on Xbox systems — attempts to allow us to live out this bizarre dream with...
Mini Review Cotton Reboot! (PS4) - Spooky Cute-'Em-Up's an Elaborate and Accessible 2D Shooter
Bless your Cotton shmups
Even if you're in the middle of a scorching summer, there are games that remind you of other seasons, and with a story that follows Cotton as a broomstick riding witch, PS4 Cotton Reboot! conjures up images of moonlit autumn nights. It's Cotton's sweet tooth, and love of candy wrapped WILLOW, which persuades her over seven...
Mini Review Night Book (PS4) - Interactive Horror Is More Funny Than Scary
Booking hell
Uh oh, Dad's possessed. What rotten luck! Here you are, heavily pregnant and living in a crummy apartment in Croydon, and your fiancé Pearce has inexplicably decided to jet off to the other side world on business when you need him most. Never mind, Pearce has a plan. He's installed security cameras all over the apartment so the police...
Mini Review Cris Tales (PS5) - Enchanting RPG Inspired By the Classics
Let’s do the time warp again
Cris Tales is an absolutely gorgeous game that's heavily inspired by classic RPGs such as Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, while also managing to put its own unique spin on things. The game’s protagonist, Crisbell, is a young orphan who acquires a magical time crystal which shows her a vision of the future where...
Mini Review Akiba's Trip: Hellbound & Debriefed (PS4) - Remastered JRPG Is Fun But Flawed
Strip Tease
How time flies! The Akiba’s Trip series has been going for 10 years and to celebrate Acquire has remastered the first game in the series, which was previously only released on PSP in Japan. The game takes place in Akihabara, an area in Tokyo that is famous for its maid cafés and abundance of stores filled with manga, anime, and...
Mini Review Where the Heart Leads (PS5) - A Surreal Slice of Life
Is this surreal life? Is this just fantasy?
Life can be pretty tedious, which is why we invented video games. Where the Heart Leads is a video game about life which successfully recreates the tedium of being alive, but only takes the best part of twenty hours to finish rather than seventy-odd years. So, that's one in the plus column. The game...
Mini Review A Plague Tale: Innocence (PS5) - Rats a Good Next-Gen Upgrade
French fancies
Would it be a push to call A Plague Tale: Innocence an overlooked gem? We don't think so; what Asobo Studio achieved on PlayStation 4 deserved a lot more recognition. The somewhat historical tale of Amicia and younger brother Hugo can hold its own amongst many of the greats, and while its stealth-based gameplay may prove formulaic for...
Mini Review Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX (PS4) - Who Thought This Game Needed a Remake?
Not a miracle worker
Before there was Sonic the Hedgehog, there was Alex Kidd, SEGA’s defacto Master System mascot. Once the blue blur took the spotlight in the ‘90s, Alex’s franchise was left as a relic of an older time, appearing only in a few compilations over the years. That was until a remake of the original game, Miracle World, was...
Mini Review Minute of Islands (PS4) - A Short But Beautiful Island Trip
Ah, fresh air
Minute of Islands is a beautiful adventure game that's maybe less light-hearted than you think. While the outer appearance is wonderful — we love its cartoonish, hand-drawn style — the game quickly establishes a darker, sadder tone for its six-hour runtime. You play as Mo, a young girl who resides underground after a devastating...
Mini Review The Persistence Enhanced (PS5) - Survival Horror Roguelite Still Rocks
Returnal
Before there was Returnal, there was The Persistence. Being tethered to PlayStation VR at launch, Firesprite’s roguelite sci-fi survival horror never quite got the attention it deserved, but it was a well-executed marriage of genres. Set aboard an abandoned deep-space colony ship overrun by a mutated crew, you find yourself revived by the...
Mini Review Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl (PS4) - Mallrats Brawler with Nine NES Chapters Nootch
NESnootchie bickety bam beat-'em-up
Can a retro modern game be too retro for its own good? This is a question we asked ourselves while playing Interabang Entertainment's Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl as a PS4 beat-'em-up restricted by the limitations of additionally being released on a cartridge for the original NES hardware. We also questioned...
Mini Review Tour de France 2021 (PS4) - Nacon Peddles Another Tactical Sports Sim
Battle of Brittany
Outside of fitness software like Zwift and VirZOOM, it’s hard to imagine how you can make a game about cycling entertaining. French studio Cyanide has been trying for several years now, and Tour de France 2021 is the culmination of its efforts so far, delivering a realistic simulation of the world’s third most-watched sporting...
EDF! EDF! EDF!
We’ve seen several Earth Defense Force games on PS4, but World Brothers isn’t your normal fare. Offering a family friendly spinoff with voxel graphics, this third-person shooter takes us to Square Earth, where we find this world shattered by Dark Tyrant’s forces as several motherships appear, and it’s down to us to restore it...
Mini Review Song of Horror (PS4) - Scare-Free Horror Is Frighteningly Dull
Sighlent Hill
Song of Horror begins with Daniel — a former drunkard attempting to escape the financial ruin that the bottle has left him in — taking on an errand for his boss. It's one of those go-to-a-creepy-house-and-investigate type jobs that any sane individual who has ever seen a horror movie or played Resident Evil before would know to...
Mini Review Operation: Tango (PS5) - Flawed But Fun Co-Op Espionage Action
Spy games
Operation: Tango has a great central premise; you and a buddy must work together in asymmetrical co-op to complete a globe-trotting set of covert missions. One plays the agent, while the other is the hacker, and you'll both play an integral role in saving the world from cyber-destruction. You both have different views on a given scenario,...
Mini Review Gadgeteer (PS4) - A Fulfilling VR Physics Puzzler
Go, go gadget Rube Goldberg machine
Virtual reality is a fantastic arena with which to explore puzzles – especially when the idea is such a fun and refreshing one. Gadgeteer sees you designing amazing Rube Goldberg contraptions by placing all the missing pieces to complete the machines, while progressing through an abode’s various rooms. What...
Mini Review Stonefly (PS4) - Tranquil, Bug-Sized Adventure Lacks Bite
Sleepy crawlies
Stonefly comes from the team behind Creature in the Well, but aside from sharing a gorgeous visual style, they have very little in common. This new game is an enjoyably peaceful experience about a world inhabited by tiny people living alongside the bugs in giant natural ecosystems. Humans get around by piloting bug-like rigs,...
Mini Review Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World (PS4) - A Gorgeous Cel-Shaded Remake
A world of wonder awaits
Over 25 years after the original release of Monster World IV, the cult classic 2D action-platformer has been remade for modern consoles. Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World keeps the style and charm of the original, while updating the game to feature cel-shaded, 3D visuals. The game looks gorgeous, thanks to the eye-popping...
A rough first time for newcomers
In a world where the point-and-click genre has passed its heyday, this notorious series is one of the few keeping it going. Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice is a direct follow up to 2018's Wet Dreams Don’t Dry, continuing the story with a similar cast of characters and plenty of callbacks to previous...
Mini Review Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection (PS4) - Armour-Strippingly Hard and Proud of It
You'll need a change of underwear
There's so much exploding clothing in this game that you'd be forgiven for thinking it's another instalment in the Senran Kagura series. Fortunately (or, depending on your opinion, unfortunately) it's just the unbelievably fragile armour of enduring Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection protagonist, Sir Arthur. You see,...
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...
Mini Review Just Die Already (PS4) - This Game About the Elderly Is Juvenile Fun
Disrespect your elders
Abuse of the elderly is, as a rule, generally discouraged. So, despite belonging to a fairly unshockable generation, we were a little bit taken aback by the sheer gerontophobia of the wickedly funny Just Die Already, which effectively does for the elderly what Goat Simulator did for, well, goats. Pick your pensioner, get...
Mini Review Call of the Sea (PS5) - A Pretty But Predictable Puzzler
Lost at sea
Norah is ill, and her husband Harry is missing after having gone searching the world for a cure. After receiving a mysterious package, Norah decides to go to the place Harry was last known to be — an island off the coast of Tahiti. Call of the Sea bills itself as a Lovecraftian mystery game, and whilst the first person adventure...
Mini Review Terminator: Resistance Enhanced (PS5) - Enhanced Is Pushing It
I'll be back, without improvements
2019 saw the release of Terminator: Resistance, a dull FPS that performed poorly and boasted unconvincing character models. This year, Reef Entertainment has released Terminator: Resistance Enhanced on PlayStation 5, complete with additional content, bug fixes, and DualSense features. Unfortunately, much like...
