Hidden Cats in Spooky Village ramps up the scare factor with buckets of gore and disturbing imagery. Nah, we’re kidding, it’s the same cute cats in folk horror locations and is a solid addition to the hidden cat pantheon that Silesia and Nukearts are excelling at. Some cats can be tough to find due to being really tiny but generally it’s not a huge problem across twelve generous levels.
Devil Jam is one of the better auto-battling roguelites that we've seen on PSN and it has a bit more personality than most of them too. It's just a little bit too repetitive for its own good.
Toxic Commando feels just like World War Z and that ship sailed a while ago for us. It's an adequate shooter but just lacks excitement. And originality. It's got none of that.
As the final entry to the series, Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered does its best to polish up a game that doesn't always hit the mark. The voice acting remains fantastic and is delivered with all the gravitas I'd come to expect. The pacing can be hit by Raziel's constant need to monologue but the helpful breadcrumb trail should prevent players from getting lost. Above all, it's a nicely put together package with a wealth of cut content and extras.
Sumerian Six is a solid real time adventure with all manner of fun gadgets and a mean difficulty streak. The PS5 port isn’t particularly optimised though with UI scaling being a particular problem as well as a camera that’s clearly more set up for mouse control as opposed to a DualSese. It’s still fun despite that, just be aware that playing on a 4K display is your best bet as it’s virtually impossible to see if you play on 1080p unless it’s a few feet in front of you.
Vampire Therapist manages to be a thoughtful delve into psychiatry whilst still remaining manageable for newcomers. Sam is a likeable character and the rest of the cast have plenty of energy to bring to the table. I do wish the locales were more varied and two mini-games don't carry any real consequence. The heart of the game is the conversations with clients and they are very well written. It's worth recommending for that insight alone and the peek behind the curtain.
There may be fans of City Hunter, the manga comic, but we'd be surprised to find any fans of this game's original PC Engine version so this expensive port is hard to recommend, especially because of the game's awful level design.
Under The Island is a lovely pixel art adventure in the grand style of SNES and GBA era Zelda adventures. Yes, there’s some issues with pathfinding on occasion and some of the collectibles appear to be bugged, but you’ll no doubt enjoy this as we did. Get to it and start exploring under the island. Sorry not sorry.
Ship’s Cat is a game of two halves, the first being what you might expect, the second being something else altogether. The fact this is cobbled together by a solo dev and ends up being as impressive as it is, is quite something. Yes, the bugs halt progress a little, but with a patch already submitted to Sony, the prospects for Ship’s Cat are good going forward.
Disco Simulator's approach to management is incredibly simple. Whilst you can tinker with a few facets, the two resources that matter can be easily acquired. Turning a profit requires little effort and reputation does tend to be handed to you. What remains is a game with very few stakes and, as such, I wasn't encouraged to change my gameplan. That led to something that felt tedious pretty quick.
