Tag: Reviews - Page 6
Mini Review Strayed Lights (PS5) - Defence Is the Best Medicine in This Mysterious Adventure
Artful dodger
Demonstrating a striking visual style from the outset, Strayed Lights is an indie fantasy that opens with an abstract sensory assault. A newborn spark (a fitting first protagonist for dev studio Embers) staggers out of a cave into a vast, alien landscape. Quickly evolving into adult form and battling a shadowy version of itself, it...
Fight for your right
The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story is the next building block in Riot Forge's ever-expanding League of Legends universe. It's a top-down, story-driven action RPG that tells the tale of Sylas, a magic-sensitive revolutionary who seeks vengeance on the titular Mageseekers after years of being kept in chains. Keen to...
Review Live A Live (PS5) - 90s JRPG Is Still Amazingly Unique All These Years Later
Live life throughout time
Last year saw the remake of Live A Live launch on Nintendo Switch, some 27 years after its original 1994 launch on the Super Famicom. This marks the first time the title has been made available outside of Japan, and now that it's coming to PS5 and PS4, we're happy to report that Live A Live is still a unique and...
Mini Review Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster (PS4) - One of the Greatest 2D RPGs of All Time
Locke it in
Final Fantasy VI arguably perfected the 2D Final Fantasy formula. Ahead of the series' shift to 3D graphics in Final Fantasy VII, the sixth instalment delivered previously unparalleled drama through breakneck plot pacing and a diverse cast of interesting characters. The storytelling that's so often revered in titles like Final Fantasy IX...
Mini Review Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster (PS4) - Oft Forgotten RPG Deserves Another Chance
V has come to
Final Fantasy V is probably the most overlooked instalment in the mainline series. It didn't come West until years after its original release, and by the time that it finally got a PlayStation port, it had been left in the dust by its genre-defining successors. What's more, V never really received the retroactive attention that was...
Mini Review Teslagrad 2 (PS5) - Puzzle Platformer Focused on Tremendous Traversal
A shocking shadow drop
Teslagrad 2 is a sequel to the well-received PS4 title, Teslagrad, developed by Rain Games. It is a three to five hour Metroidvania-style 2D puzzle platformer in which you play as a young girl, Lumina. While out training to become a teslamancer, she crashes her airship in Wyrmheim, stranding her in this treacherously foreign...
Review Disney Speedstorm (PS5) - A New Direction for Racers That Will Raise Some Eyebrows
Mickey Mouse Kart
Disney video games are slowly making their impact felt on the industry again lately. For a long-time Disney fans, the re-emergence of Mickey Mouse and other iconic characters being used in video games like Disney Dreamlight Valley and seeing success is something we have waited what feels like forever to see. In the case of Disney...
Mini Review Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster (PS4) - The Gripping RPG That Rocked Square's Series
Go ahead and jump
Final Fantasy IV is the game that put Square's series on a new path, one that prioritised dramatic, character-driven stories — something that would define the franchise going forward. It tells the twisting tale of Cecil, a skilled knight who starts to question his country's militaristic ambitions. Even 32 years after its initial...
Mini Review Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster (PS4) - Job System Stars in a Solid RPG
Job's a good 'un
Where Final Fantasy II felt like it was really trying to branch away from the original Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy III almost feels like a retread of the very first game. In both its storytelling and its core gameplay systems, the third instalment in Square's series has much in common with its progenitor — although it does well...
Review Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores (PS5) - Aloy's New Chapter Is Essential for Fans
Quen-tessential Horizon
For us, Guerrilla Games' Horizon series has been brilliant from the very start, but it's getting better each time we return to it. Horizon Forbidden West is an excellent sequel that builds upon the first game in practically every way — a larger, more varied open world, a better ensemble cast, more interesting side quests,...
Mini Review Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster (PS4) - The Best Version of a Flawed Final Fantasy
The Empire strikes back
Final Fantasy II has long been considered one of the weaker mainline entries in Square Enix's series. While it did attempt to push the property forward in terms of storytelling, its intriguing but deeply flawed levelling system has left many a player unimpressed over the years. In Final Fantasy II, you play as a group of...
Mini Review Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster (PS4) - Series Originator Is Still Hard to Fault
It wasn't final after all
Ah, the game where it all began. The original Final Fantasy is an incredibly basic (and relatively short) RPG by today's standards, but there's still an inherent charm to its no-nonsense adventuring. It's light versus dark, good versus evil, four heroes standing against the end of the world — and that's just about all...
Mini Review God of Rock (PS5) - A Decent Fighting Game Which Shares Similarities with Rock Band
Rock of ages
Punching is cool, but what if punching was instigated by musical notes instead? Well, developer Modus Studios liked that idea, and the result is God of Rock, a fighting game that pits rival musicians against one another. Mechanically, God of Rock is solid. While it's a fighting game, the core of the experience relies on note charts a...
Review Dead Island 2 (PS5) - A Surprisingly Refreshing Zombie Slasher
A Zom-pocalypse worth the wait
Nine years ago, Dead Island 2 entered the public zeitgeist with a vibrant and funny reveal trailer. It teased a new, colourful setting in L.A. whilst doubling down on that irreverent tone of the original game. However, as the years passed on, the rumour mill began to churn out tales of internal struggles, with the...
Review Cannon Dancer - Osman (PS5) - Breathless, Brilliant Retro Romp Finally Accessible to All
Hiryu go
There’s a strong chance you’ve never played Cannon Dancer, or Osman as it’s perhaps better known to North American arcade goers. That’s the beauty of this current retro renaissance, though: we’re not only seeing the return of well-loved classics on contemporary consoles, but also obscure underground gems like this one from the...
Review Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (PS5) - A Lovecraftian Mystery Recreated for a New Era
Sherlock, wake up
A total remake of its 2007 game of the same name, developer Frogwares has embarked on a complete overhaul of Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened. This Lovecraftian adventure sees Sherlock investigating a series of disappearances that ultimately end up linked into the Cthulhu Mythos. The Awakened opens with a pretty low stakes case to...
Mini Review Atari Mania (PS5) - WarioWare Inspired Microgame Compilation Isn't Quite Tight Enough
18-Volt would like it
After decades of mismanagement, Atari finally seems to get it. The company is greenlighting a lot of cool retro-themed projects lately, and microgame compilation Atari Mania is the latest in a growing line of great ideas. Inspired enormously by the likes of WarioWare and NES Remix, this minigame mash-up sees you overcoming...
Review Meet Your Maker (PS5) - PS Plus' Raid and Build FPS Doesn't Quite Deliver on a Great Idea
DIY deathtraps
The concept of user-generated content has been around for quite a while at this point. If a game can sustain itself based on the input of its own community, well, that's a win-win, right? Create something so engaging that the audience will make more to keep the good vibe going. Obviously, this doesn't always work out, but when it...
Mini Review Creed Rise to Glory: Championship Edition (PSVR2) - Boxing Upgrade Bests Predecessor
It's still a little Rocky, though
Creed Rise to Glory is a boxing movie tie-in title that originally launched back on PSVR in September 2018, and you can check out our original review through here. Now with the release of a new movie, Creed III, Rise to Glory has been upgraded to the Championship Edition which comes with a whole bunch of bells and...
Review EA Sports PGA Tour (PS5) - Truly Stunning Sim Plays a Very Pretty Round of Virtual Golf
Fairway to heaven
It’s been almost eight years since EA Sports politely bowed out of the virtual golf arena with its half-hearted Rory McIlroy PGA Tour on the PS4, ending decades of dominance from the publisher – and inviting 2K Sports to take its place. But after a couple of commercially successful PGA Tour 2K titles, the Redwood City...
Mini Review Across the Valley (PSVR2) - Repetitive Farming Simulator Crawling with Bugs
Diddly squat to do
Across the Valley is a hand-drawn style, farming simulator from the small indie developer, FusionPlay. Each in-game day lasts 15 minutes and as your role of farmhand you’ll have to fit in as many missions from the task board as possible before dark. The daily tasks around the farm include planting, watering, weeding, and...
Mini Review Road 96: Mile 0 (PS5) - A Tonal Nightmare with Some Interesting Moments
Talk about whiplash
Road 96, the procedural hitchhiking game, was a title with an interesting presentation and a slew of good ideas. Developer DigixArt took that great foundation and spun things off into Road 96: Mile 0, a narrative-focused prequel that strips away the procedural elements, replacing them with rhythm gameplay. The world presented in...
Mini Review The Last Worker (PSVR2) - VR Doesn't Save the First-Person Order Picker
Welcome to the Jüngle
Games exploring the contemporary world of online order fulfilment work were inevitable, but we pictured they’d hit harder and have more to say than The Last Worker does. Playing as the last human employee picking packages to be delivered for a retail monopoly named Jüngle, the real-world parallels are obvious and the setup...
Mini Review Last Labyrinth (PSVR2) - Tediously Torturous Escape Room Experience
Sadistic
Last Labyrinth is a unique escape room experience, and not in a good way. You're strapped into a wheelchair with very limited manoeuvrability. With only head movements available to you and a laser pointer attached to the middle of your forehead, you must guide a young girl through a labyrinth of puzzles and ultimately escape this torturous...
Mini Review Citizen Sleeper (PS5) - Solemn Yet Satisfying Sci-Fi Storytelling
Don't sleep on it
Citizen Sleeper merges the RPG with the visual novel, wrapping it up in a brooding sci-fi blanket. Playing as the titular Sleeper — an android with the emulated mind of a human being — you explore Erlin's Eye, a vast space station run by corrupt corporations and inhabited by people making the best of it. As you progress, you'll...
Mini Review The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners - Tourist Edition (PSVR2) Must-Buy VR Survival
Saintly survival
The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners - Tourist Edition is a 15-to-20-hour post-apocalyptic survival experience developed by Skydance Interactive. Playing as The Tourist, you find yourselves in a flooded New Orleans, among several conflicting factions all fighting over access to The Reserve, a haven full resources for surviving an...
Review MLB The Show 23 (PS5) - Netflix Documentary Inspired Negro Leagues Mode Is the Real MVP
Jazzed up
It’s becoming increasingly difficult for the developers of sports games to offer transformative new experiences in annual releases. With budgets soaring, deadlines looming, and a demand for live service support all season long, franchises like MLB The Show 23 feel like they’ve been caught flatfooted. But San Diego Studio’s baseball...
Mini Review Deceive Inc (PS5) - Multiplayer Stealth Is Mission Mostly Accomplished
Tactical espionage action
Deceive Inc. is an online multiplayer game that puts the emphasis on staying incognito while you work towards your objective. It combines hero shooter-style characters with the stealth and deduction of Among Us, or even the multiplayer of Assassin's Creed, and presents it in a cartoonish, James Bond wrapper. The merging of...
Mini Review Dredge (PS5) - Eerie Fishing Adventure Will Reel You In
There's always a weirder fish
Dredge is a fishing game with eldritch nastiness lurking beneath the surface. It's a perfect combo, and although the spooky side never descends into true horror, there's an ever-present sense of unease as you explore the small open ocean and its island outposts. Playing as a freshly hired fisherman, you begin the game...
Farewell party
Reisalin “Ryza” Stout and her friends are back in another heart-warming RPG which closes out the 'Secret' sub-series. The long-running Atelier series is well known for featuring young alchemists who spend much of their adventure gathering ingredients, crafting new items, and beating up foes. Atelier Ryza 3 is no exception to that...
Review Ridge Racer Type 4 (PS1) - The Pinnacle of PS1 Ridge Racer Games
I want to be R4-ever young
Republished on Saturday, 18th March, 2023: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of March 2023's PS Plus line up. The original text follows. Push Square has pondered the infancy of 3D console graphics during the 32-bit era, and reflected that the ageing process was not always...
Review The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners - Chapter 2: Retribution (PSVR2) - Great Game, Sinful Name
Born on the bayou
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners - Chapter 2: Retribution deserves recognition. Never before have we seen such a verbose title manage to communicate so little while saying so much. It fails to convey to newcomers that it’s a standalone game complete with its own campaign, and it coyly obfuscates the fact that this isn’t...
Review Tchia (PS5) - Unique Island Adventure Is a Joyful, Creative Playground
Totally tropical
Developer Awaceb created Tchia as a love letter to its native home of New Caledonia. Though the game itself is set on a fantastical archipelago, it draws deeply from its real-life counterpart in terms of environment and story. It feels really genuine as a snapshot of the culture; its story is heavily rooted in the territory's...
Review The Light Brigade (PSVR2) - Solid Rogue-Lite Doesn't Need to Reinvent the Wheel
Look for the light
Developer Funktronic Labs is no stranger to crafting interesting, meaningful roguelike experiences. Look no further than Nova-111, a fantastic game released back in 2015. Fast forward a handful of years, and the developers have revisited this ever-fruitful well, delivering the rogue-lite The Light Brigade for Sony's new headset...
Review Resident Evil 4 (PS5) - A True Masterpiece Made Even Better
Bingo time
No new console generation feels quite right until a re-release of Resident Evil 4 rolls around. Following a PS2 version in 2005, the Capcom classic has been ported to every home system from Sony since; you can't have one without the other at this point. However, following the developer's recent remaking efforts with Resident Evil 2 and...
Review The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR (PSVR2) - Lousy Rails Shooter Is a Supermassive Shame
Ride it out
Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, a rails shooter with a rollercoaster theme, was one of the surprise highlights of PSVR’s catalogue, so there was understandable enthusiasm surrounding the announcement of Supermassive’s spiritual successor, The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR. Unfortunately, this is a dour shadow of a follow-up, let-down by...
Review Anno 1800 Console Edition (PS5) - Victorian Strategy on an Industrial Scale
Moving up in the world
Anno 1800 Console Edition sees the advent of 2019's excellent PC colony builder on PS5, and we were pleased to find the transition has been an incredibly smooth one. What was once the province of mouse and keyboard finds an incredibly comfortable fit on console, enhanced with all the DualSense bells and whistles. If you...
Mini Review Job Simulator (PSVR2) - A Port Worthy of a Promotion
Jobsworth
Job Simulator’s enduring popularity is no coincidence: it is, after all, the quintessential virtual reality game. Spread across four impressively interactive occupations, you’ll turn your comically exaggerated hands to all kinds of amusing tasks, like cooking the books as an office worker and dealing with a robbery as a convenience...
Mini Review Unplugged: Air Guitar (PSVR2) - An Entertaining Rhythm Game, Warts and All
This game’s got the beat
Originally released on the Meta Quest, Unplugged: Air Guitar is a rhythm game where you, well, play an air guitar. You strum with one hand and move the other to different parts of the neck according to a note chart similar to games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero. With a core track list of 20 plus tracks from across the...
Review Mato Anomalies (PS5) - Surreal Turn-Based RPG Falls Flat
Neo-future Shanghai is about to explode
Mato Anomalies is a hodgepodge of ideas and motifs that works, for the most part, but suffers from trying to do too much with too little. It's aspirational, but the experience as a whole suffers from poor pacing and repetition, and comes off feeling like just another mediocre JRPG as a result, despite some...
Review WWE 2K23 (PS5) - 2K Sports' Wrestling Series Continues Its Steady Rise
Never give up
Minor tweaks and improvements are the usual selling points of annualised sporting titles. Yes, the teams and kits may be updated, player ratings may be tweaked, and 4K beard follicles may now be visible in replays, but that’s usually your lot. Not so with 2K’s WWE series. Standing on the shoulders of WWE 2K22’s solid efforts, the...
Mini Review Puzzling Places (PSVR2) - A Lovely Game with a Few Problems
Puzzle me this, Batman
Puzzling Places is absolutely lovely — that’s the best way to describe it. A puzzle game best described as a 3D jigsaw, this is far and away the most relaxing time you can have with your PSVR2. The game leans into its unique appeal, allowing you to put together 3D dioramas of things that under normal circumstances would be...
Mini Review The Last Clockwinder (PSVR2) - A Satisfying, Chilled Out Puzzler
Going it a-clone
In a nutshell, The Last Clockwinder is a blend of solving puzzles and building factories. It's not the most original idea, but it's executed really well, taking advantage of virtual reality's unique perspective to create some truly engrossing gameplay. Set within the Clocktower, an enormous tree acting as a safe haven for various...
Mini Review DC's Justice League: Cosmic Chaos (PS5) - All-Ages Brawler Is Surprisingly Good Fun
Justice for all
With absolutely no word on this game ahead of its release, you'd be forgiven for being a bit wary of DC's Justice League: Cosmic Chaos — a sandbox action title aimed squarely at an all-ages audience. But this cutesy take on DC's superheroes is actually pretty good. It's a surprisingly heartfelt release, featuring chunky combat,...
Mini Review Pistol Whip (PSVR2) - Still One of the Best VR Games You Can Play
Whip it
Upon its PSVR launch, we found Pistol Whip to be a sublime experience, brilliantly blending rail shooter and rhythm mechanics. How does the upgraded version fare? Well, even better. Unlike some of the PSVR2 upgrades, Pistol Whip doesn’t make a huge impression graphically. It was a stylized title with a solid aesthetic on first attempt, so...
Mini Review No Man's Sky (PSVR2) - Explore an Infinite Universe on a Whole New Scale
Space is big
We've revisited No Man's Sky a number of times over the years. It only seems fair to check in every once in a while considering how much changes with each major update. The latest of these, Fractal, adds full PSVR2 support, allowing you to explore planets, space stations, and everything in between within Sony's new headset. The initial...
Review Before Your Eyes (PSVR2) - Eye Tracked Tearjerker Will Move You
Blink and you'll miss it
There will be no dry PSVR2 headsets among those who choose to try Before Your Eyes. This truly unique 90 minute narrative experience asks you to set aside your DualSense, and relies on the headset’s eye tracking as its primary form of engagement. Rather than using the controller, you’ll instead blink to interact with...
Mini Review Rez Infinite (PSVR2) - PSVR Classic Remains a Must-Play on PSVR2
To Infinite and beyond
Rez Infinite was a transcendent experience on PSVR. A game originally from the PS2 days, the title seems at home in virtual reality to such a degree that it might as well have been made with that in mind. And the PSVR2 glow-up actually makes things even better. First and foremost, the graphical upgrade is immediately...
Review Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (PS5) - A Warts and All Survival Horror Remaster
Photographic Violence
Here at Push Square it's site policy that we don't believe in the supernatural. Vampires, werewolves, and Frankensteins? Poppycock, hogwash, and flannel, we say. Having never believed in ghosts we've never considered what we'd do should we ever come face to face with one. We can plan for World War 3 or Covid 2 or bumping into...
Review Destiny 2: Lightfall (PS5) - A Brilliant Yet Disappointing Set-Up
Can an expansion have middle child syndrome?
Since the original launch of Destiny back in 2014, there has been an ambitious yet overly vague storyline building in the depth of its ever-expanding lore. The gist of it? Good versus Evil, or in the case of this universe, the Light versus the Darkness. For so long, it's felt like a meandering excuse for...
