HappySpaceInvad

I really enjoyed this game for the most part. What it does best is to “deliver us The Moon”… in other words, give us a relatively realistic experience of going to The (actual) Moon and travelling around a deserted moon-base. It does this partly by above-average graphics, but also by sound. Muffling the sound when you’re in zero-oxygen environments is a particularly effective touch, conveying an appropriate level of claustrophobia. And there’s so much detail to the environment… I really advise taking this one slowly and drinking in everything it shows you, listening to each of the audio files, reading the various posters on the wall. For a game set in the vacuum of space, there’s so much atmosphere! But I should also point out that I’m a massive fan of Elite Dangerous, and an insufferable space nerd… so of course this game is right up my street. It reminded me most of “Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture”… which is where it will be somewhat divisive. I personally enjoyed that game more than most people and I think the best parts of this game are those in which you’re exploring the environment and finding out about what happened via the holographic replays. Where it falls down is in the somewhat uneven moments of interactivity, such as unexpected QTEs, platforming sections, stealth sections, timed missions where you have to get from A to B before running out of oxygen, etc.. These are all a bit clumsy and awkward, and it feels the designers didn’t really know what kind of game this should be. In many ways, I think this game should have remained “a walking simulator with some puzzles” and left out the action parts. At least there’s a saving grace in the very forgiving restart points. I did not personally experience any performance issues on Xbox Series X and hardly any bugs/glitches. There was one occasion where the PDA I was reading didn’t scroll properly… I can’t remember any other significant ones. Given the relatively low price, I think you’re getting a decent amount of playtime from this, at around 4-5 hours (depending on whether you solve the puzzles yourself, or follow a walkthrough).

This appears to have been made for nostalgic fans with rose-tinted spectacles only. I bought the original game on release, but quickly tired of it as it seemed really childish. To be fair, I was already 25 in 1997, so possibly not part of the target demographic. I did enjoy the battles though…. So I decided to give this remake a go, thinking it might be made to cater to modern sensibilities… but no. The dialogue is still horribly corny (and full of bizarre non sequiturs), the voice acting is hammy as heck, the characters are hackneyed and 2-dimensional (protagonist of few words, fawning female, jolly fat man, gruff muscle man who’s always shouting…). I don’t even think the graphics are especially good for a PS4 title, with very repetitive NPC models. And the combat is no longer typical JRPG turn-based, but instead a rather vague and sloppy real-time affair with abysmal camera controls. I always felt the original was a bit overrated, but I’m stumped as to why this remake got such glowing reviews. Nostalgia is a powerful force, I guess.

Well... it's mostly the battle system that lets this down. It's a real-time button-mashing festival. There is more to it, explained at the start of the game and then never again. You steer your character/familiar around the battle arena with the left thumbstick, and you switch actions with the... what? The left d-pad? Well there's a massive design flaw right there. I played on easy, and during the bit where you look for the cat king in the sewers, the difficult suddenly ramped up severely. My character or familiar could easily be taken out in a few hits. The only way through was to pick just one familiar each time and mash the attack action repeatedly and hope for the best. When I tried anything more tactical, I was decimated... and I quickly ran out of MP trying to heal myself in-between each fight. So, after only 2 hours game time, I quit in disgust. I expect what I did wrong was not grinding to level up my character in some easier area first... well pffft. Any game that requires a grind is, by definition, poorly balanced. What's hilarious is that if you watch any YouTube video explaining the battle system... the narrator commonly apologises for how confusing it all looks. In fact, I haven't yet found one that explains it clearly. But it's not just the battles... there's far too much back-and-forth fetch quests, the text speed is too slow (even on the fastest setting) and the text makes a super-irritating noise as it displays which will drive anyone else in the room up the wall. And the music, although lovely at first, quickly gets repetitive, as they're pretty short audio loops. It's a real shame as the voice work and graphics are absolutely top notch. With a turn-based battle mechanic, this would have been unmissable.

The best iOS port I’ve ever played of one of the best first person stealth adventures I’ve ever played. The choices on offer are remarkable… you can play with touchscreen controls, or a bluetooth joypad, or a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, or the official Apple keyboard+trackpad. On iPadOS, it has been reformatted to fill the iPad’s 4:3 screen ratio, but you can adjust the field of view. I would have preferred the option to play in 16:9 letterbox though. There are 3 graphics settings: “Graphics”, “Performance” and “Battery Saver”. On the iPad Pro 11”, the “Graphics” mode performs extremely well, and looks incredible… unlike any other game I’ve played on iOS/iPad OS. The sound is also excellent, although I would have liked support for spatial audio, as this game would really benefit. Some concessions to the small screen (this plays on an iPhone too) have been made: the layout of the crafting menu and tool selection screens has been changed, for example. Overall, the port is faultless; on the iPad. it plays just like the game you’ve probably already played on PC or console, but further refined. For your £12.99 you get the full 20-30 hour game, plus all the DLC. There are no micro transactions, loot boxes, NFTs or other cynical wallet-drainers. In my opinion, this game is the best canonical sequel to Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and, on iOS/iPadOS, a stunning example of what mobile games could/should be if publishers weren’t so greedy.

Bottom line: pick this up in a sale, as it feels very much like a budget title. The core golf game is great, the commentary is great and the music & sound effects are also very good. Sometimes the computer picks an inappropriate club for you when teeing off: it seems to prefer a 3 Wood rather than a Driver even when you’re facing a very long straight fairway, and on one short Par 3, it’s given me a 3 wood to get to the hole when an iron would be far more appropriate. This can be overridden, but anyone new to golf is going to find this tough. The graphics, however, are dire. The player models (particularly their faces) are absolutely horrifying. In many long shots there’s no shadow under the player, shadows from trees melt into view as you’re watching the ball fly through the air, the shots of the scenery between holes has awful aliasing/jaggie problems, close-up cut scenes of the player dip to below 15fps. The list is endless… this is not a good looking game at all and I can see why the developer has chosen to disable video capture (however, you can still take screenshots). It’s also one of those awful games (we don’t see as often on the Switch) full of micro-transactions. Your player is deliberately dressed in terrible-looking clothing; any other clothing choices have to be paid for with real money. Finally, for reasons I can’t even fathom, you need to be online to play this game… even if you’re just playing a single-player career match. I got it for £12 in a sale… I wouldn’t pay a penny more, and I have severe doubts the inevitable 2K22 will be any better.

This is a very poor and lazy effort, and inferior to both previous Watch Dogs in almost every conceivable way. Pretty much the only thing it has going for it is the London location. The dialogue is cringeworthy; characters in the game speak like a 50-year-old’s idea of how teenagers speak… and they do this no matter their age or social class. Hearing a Barrister say “that’s well lit”… just, please… no. And almost every character (including the supposed comedy AI narrator that’s ripped off Portal 2) swears constantly in a way normal people simply don’t. And no attempt has been made to make the voices sound like they’re coming from the actual character in the game environment - it’s just a raw file from the soundproof recording booth pasted into the game with no post effects., The voice acting itself is abysmal with **** Van Dyke “****” accents and horribly flat emotionless “phoned in” delivery. And the way they’re sometimes inappropriately matched to certain characters likenesses strays into uncomfortable racist territory (witness an Asian female character speaking with a Jamaican accent, for example). The graphics… well, it’s a sort of London (heavy condensed - would only fool tourists), and the buildings and streets generally do look great. But, unlike previous Watch Dogs games, you can’t go into any of the shops. The cars are mostly electric, but don’t sound like actual electric cars (they seem to change up through “gears”!) and the steering is very laggy. And there’s no in-car “cockpit” view - the previous two games had this, why is it missing here? In fact just about every cool feature from the previous two games is missing in this one, such as your mobile phone. The playable and NPC character models are awful - they’re all slightly freakish-looking in some way or other; again, worse than the previous two games. The plot is… hardly anything worth thinking about. You’re part of an underground movement fighting against bad people and a bad establishment. The game is just boring, with every mission feeling pretty much the same, and many missions going back to locations you’ve already visited. Seriously… play this for a bit, and then go back and play the original Watch Dogs (which came in for so much criticism at release)… even in 2021, it’s much more fun.

I’m sure there’s a great game in there somewhere, but the implementation is so poor and feels unfinished. Screen tearing, sub 20fps framerate, flickering graphics, crude looking models, unresponsive controls…. and this is on a PS4 Pro. It all looks so awful. I chopped at a Yukka for some fiborous material, and what I saw drop to the ground then started twitching endlessly, unable to be picked up, and visually didn’t look anything like a part of a Yukka. Even as a free PSN download this couldn’t hold my attention.

It’s the kind of game you wish were possible on the Mega Drive or SNES. Gorgeous pixel art graphics, great animation, great heavy metal music, full screen scaling (but that effect is not over-used). Frequent save points so it never becomes too frustrating and, once you work out your shield can trap incoming projectiles (requires a bit of timing) and fire them back at enemies, the whole thing plays very smoothly indeed. Having mastered Blasphemous too, I can safely say this is a lot easier than that. Of course, if you only have the patience to mash away at the buttons, then you’re unlikely to enjoy this. On the Switch, this is in every respect an upgrade from Slaine Back From Hell, which had terrible performance issues that were (sadly) never fully resolved despite patches. The music is far less repetitive and of higher quality, the graphics are smooth throughout and the gameplay more interesting.

This review is for the Switch version only, and scoring low for the terrible framerate which, despite a supposed patch (1.02) is still an unwatchable 30fps (possibly lower) for the foreground scrolling. And with everything else (some sprites and the 3D background layers) running at 60fps, the contrast is even more off-putting. This is especially the case when playing docked on a large screen. It’s a real shame because, unlike most reviewers, I don’t think this is a particularly difficult game. Like Valfaris and Blasphemous, it’s just a question of being a bit more patient than you would be in a Castlevania game and learning to block at the right time to return with a power strike... or to swat enemy projectiles back at them. The pixel art is absolutely gorgeous and the soundtrack (if you like metal) is atmospheric if a little repetitive. Given Valparis from the same developer runs so smoothly on Switch, I’m not sure why they can’t get this game to run the same.

Let’s get what this game gets right out of the way first: the visuals. This game defies belief... especially if playing on a proper HDR screen. The attention to detail in the animation, the weather effects and particularly the mud and snow effects are like nothing else in gaming. Although it’s far from perfect... I’ll come back to this. The music and sound effects are also incredible... just take the noise your horse’s hooves make on the various different surfaces. A lot of effort went into that. The surround sound placement is possibly the best I’ve seen in a PS4 game. Now the bad... the user interface and controls of this game are without doubt the most confusing and badly designed I’ve ever encountered... and bear in mind that I play (and have no problem with) Elite Dangerous on the PS4. Let me give you just 4 examples (but there are loads more). Example 1: To bring up the weapon/item wheel, you hold L1, then hold a direction with the right joystick, then release L1 while still holding that direction. The problem is that the right joystick moves the camera after exiting the weapon wheel, which is irritating if what you were wanting to do was switch weapons. Example 2: Selecting certain weapons involves holding L1 to bring up the wheel, holding the right joystick in a direction to select a category, then pressing L2 or R2 to cycle through those choices. Example 3: Quick draw... you’re told to gently hold the R2 button until a meter rises to a certain level... except the meter is not very obvious. I’ve not looked this up on the Internet yet, but after 3 or 4 quick draws... I have no idea what meter they’re talking about, but the screen also turns yellow, so I wait for that to happen before fully depressing R2, and then maybe spamming R2 a few more times. And this seems to work! But it’s very likely not what you’re supposed to do. Each quick draw seems to have its own rules as to what a successful outcome should be. Example 4. Cinematic View... you hold down a button (the touchpad on PS4) to initiate cinematic mode, and are told to hold the 'X' button to continue moving. But you're then told R3 will change camera angles. With your thumb already on 'X', how exactly are you supposed to do that? And these are just part of the “standard“ controls - you also get completely different ad hoc controls for things like changing a wheel on a wagon. What it reminds me of most is those awful David Cage games. It’s all horrendously confusing. If you’re playing every day, then you do eventually get used to it, but if you stop playing this game for more than a week, getting back into it is gruelling. The story isn't terribly interesting, the characters are mostly two-dimensional stereotypes and the dialogue's the typical Rockstar fare... what you'd expect a teenager to write after watching a bunch of Tarantino/Scorcese movies. Also disappointing is the relative lack of interactivity. So much of the main story is effectively "on rails", with you as little more than a bystander. In one mission, you have to rescue a particularly unpleasant person from jail or else he will hang. There's no option to not reduce him and simply watch him hang. In another mission, someone gives you a hand-drawn map showing clues where to find some treasure... but as soon as you put the map away, the game gives you the location of the treasure on your main map anyway, so there's no puzzle to solve... you just follow where the game tells you to go. How patronising. Back to those visuals... good as they are, they’re far from perfect. The number of times your main character clips through objects (e.g. when sitting on a train or tram seat)... given the attention to detail elsewhere, this feels sloppy. First time I encountered the palaeontologist lady, she was clipping through the scenery too... and the first time I visited the “fence” in Emerald Farm, his entire shop counter was invisible, save for a candlestick floating in the air in front of him. One of the most common in-game sequences is where you sit down on your bed to take a nap... and your gun holster clips through the bed. NPCs commonly get stuck on scenery. And this is in July 2020... why have these things not been patched? This is Elder Scrolls levels of bugs. So, on the one hand, you have this absurd attention to details that don’t really matter... and on the other you have areas (UI and gameplay consistency) that do matter neglected entirely. When you consider the punishing hours the developers reported put into this... well it shows that “crunch“ merely delivers quantity rather than quality. What bewilders me still is the ludicrously high review scores the game got... but I put this down to craven sycophancy in the gaming press, combined with a similar attitude to rushing out material to meet a deadline

A very difficult game to review. On the one hand, it seems to be a very very detailed sim (although not being a train driver, how would I know?). There are lovely touches like rain on the windscreen of the ICE3M and the environments you drive through are reasonably realistic looking (although the inside of a tube tunnel can't have taxed the developers much). The audio is spot on - very authentic. I have no complaints there. But unfortunately there are a few things that detract from the obvious care and attention that went into this game. First, the graphics, while very beautiful, have very visible level of detail pop-in, and shadows that draw in about 10 yards in front of the train. This is on PS4 Pro (with an SSD drive) and switching from 4K to HD has no effect except to change the resolution. There's no HDR colour support either. And yet, when driving the ICE3M through heavy rain, the rain effects looked (and sounded) amazing, and that the rain stopped momentarily whenever you went under bridges was a nice touch. Secondly, the tutorials are terribly obtuse. They walk you through the sequence required to get a train moving, but also leave a lot out so you can have followed all the steps but your train simply won't move. In many cases where this happened to me, it seems to be because I'd applied the power too quickly. At this point, the tutorial abandons you until you work out what's wrong or quit and start again from scratch. The tutorial VoiceOver will ask you to "take a quick glance at the platform to ensure all is safe", but won't explain how to do that without leaving your seat (how do drivers do this in real life?). In one tutorial where I was supposed to change to the cab at the other end of the train, the prompt says "Press the triangle button to sit in any available seat"... when the only seat I should sit in is the driver's seat! It's this lack of polish that frequently makes the game far too frustrating. The joypad controls are also rather awkward. In the German trains the power control is on the left but mapped to R1 and R2... and the brake is on the right and mapped to L1 and L2. This takes some getting used to. You can opt to point at the thing you want to move and press or hold 'X', but good luck with that. Sometimes you'll hold on a lever and get the symbol indicating where to move it, yet the thumbsticks do nothing. Release and grab on a second time and suddenly it works. On the Underground train, the Dead Man's handle seems to release far too easily while you're changing power/brake, and the initial unlock switch can't even be seen when sitting in the drivers seat (as it's right behind), so turning the key once it's in is a matter of moving the pointer around blindly until you see the right label. Ok, so it might be like that in the real thing, but at some point you do have to make a concession to this being a video game. Overall then, I'm having fun with this because I got it at a severe discount. If you're an absolute train fanatic, maybe you won't mind the below-par graphics. Otherwise, steer clear and see if they make a better version for PS5.

A very difficult game to review. On the one hand, it seems to be a very very detailed sim (although not being a train driver, how would I know?). There are lovely touches like rain on the windscreen of the ICE3M and the environments you drive through are reasonably realistic looking (although the inside of a tube tunnel can't have taxed the developers much). The audio is spot on - very authentic. I have no complaints there. But unfortunately there are a few things that detract from the obvious care and attention that went into this game. First, the graphics, while very beautiful, have very visible level of detail pop-in, and shadows that draw in about 10 yards in front of the train. This is on PS4 Pro (with an SSD drive) and switching from 4K to HD has no effect except to change the resolution. There's no HDR colour support either. And yet, when driving the ICE3M through heavy rain, the rain effects looked (and sounded) amazing, and that the rain stopped momentarily whenever you went under bridges was a nice touch. Secondly, the tutorials are terribly obtuse. They walk you through the sequence required to get a train moving, but also leave a lot out so you can have followed all the steps but your train simply won't move. In many cases where this happened to me, it seems to be because I'd applied the power too quickly. At this point, the tutorial abandons you until you work out what's wrong or quit and start again from scratch. The tutorial VoiceOver will ask you to "take a quick glance at the platform to ensure all is safe", but won't explain how to do that without leaving your seat (how do drivers do this in real life?). In one tutorial where I was supposed to change to the cab at the other end of the train, the prompt says "Press the triangle button to sit in any available seat"... when the only seat I should sit in is the driver's seat! It's this lack of polish that frequently makes the game far too frustrating. The joypad controls are also rather awkward. In the German trains the power control is on the left but mapped to R1 and R2... and the brake is on the right and mapped to L1 and L2. This takes some getting used to. You can opt to point at the thing you want to move and press or hold 'X', but good luck with that. Sometimes you'll hold on a lever and get the symbol indicating where to move it, yet the thumbsticks do nothing. Release and grab on a second time and suddenly it works. On the Underground train, the Dead Man's handle seems to release far too easily while you're changing power/brake, and the initial unlock switch can't even be seen when sitting in the drivers seat (as it's right behind), so turning the key once it's in is a matter of moving the pointer around blindly until you see the right label. Ok, so it might be like that in the real thing, but at some point you do have to make a concession to this being a video game. Overall then, I'm having fun with this because I got it at a severe discount. If you're an absolute train fanatic, maybe you won't mind the below-par graphics. Otherwise, steer clear and see if they make a better version for PS5.

It's bizarre that Cyberpunk 2077 came in for such a beating when this game is just as bad if not worse. Everything about this game screams "UNFINISHED". It really needed another 6-12 months in development instead of being rushed out to make a quick cash grab. Instead, it was rushed out and none of the issues have been addressed 2 months on. You've got the missing online mode, the terrible contrast/brightness settings in HDR (that can't really be fixed), the missing character animations (trying leave a moving vehicle for example), the terrible voice acting (with oddly misplaced swearing), NPCs stuck in walking animation while facing walls, combatant AI is completely ineffective, the stuttering frame rate (on PS4 Pro) the random crashes, the half-assed story, the PS2-era character models... and this was apparent within the first 30 minutes of gameplay. Loading times are long, and occur in odd places... like where the screen fades to black for 5 seconds in between each tutorial section, even though there's no change of scenery or characters. The facsimile of London is ok, although a shame they had to cut so many corners... streets... buildings... etc. I would have preferred they cover a smaller area at 1:1 scale. If you're not as familiar with London as I am, you'll probably be fooled. The character design is bizarre... potato-faced mannequins animated like marionettes. Some of the face designs are hilarious and don't matched the voices. There's not even an attempt at lip sync when they speak. But you'll soon tire of the mini-London sandbox... because there's no real story, no character development, no incentive to carry on. Just a string of identical missions. It's not even up to the standard of other Ubisoft open-world games like Far Cry 5 or Assassin's Creed. Yeah yeah... COVID-19... I get it. But why release something half-assed when another 6-12 months polishing could have delivered something of quality?

Not very well optimised for Switch at all... the onscreen text is far too tiny to read while in handheld mode and there’s no motion support for aiming. Additionally, you can’t pick a username, it generates an ugly one from your Switch online ID plus a number. Finally... if you create your account on Nintendo Switch, you can’t then log in from your PSN acccount (unlike Fortnite).

Authentically and prophetically captures Covid-19 era snooker, with completely empty and silent venues that occasionally pipe canned applause if there’s a good shot. The table and balls look good... the physics seems spot on. Everything else looks like about 15 years behind. The player models are particularly awful looking. The biggest problem is there’s nothing to encourage newcomers... by default the game is set to “hard” mode, but even if you select “easy” you’ll be playing against guys that can clear an entire table from scratch (if not from the break). You’ll never see them fluff a medium-to-easy shot like you do in the real game. One mistake, and it’s game over. At all game difficulty levels, these are superhuman players. Want to build up your skills with some specific puzzles/challenges? Well, this being 2020, the age of nickel-and-diming us all, that costs extra. This is a really average game that targets a tiny niche audience. Lots of luck with that one.

A lot of 10/10 reviews here, finding no fault with the game despite the outrageously derivative content (Skyrim, Dark Souls, Just Cause, plus every flippin’ Ubisoft open world game). And more than 1,000 ridiculously low scores... this game is certainly above average in some respects. Personally, I think the Jimquisition review hit the nail on the head with both the score and the two key aspects that spoil this latest Link adventure. It’s the ludicrously fragile weapons, and Link’s surprisingly limited stamina that instantly breaks immersion and make you feel the game doesn’t want you to enjoy your time in Hyrule too much (unless you’re a masochist of course). What makes this worse is this situation doesn’t improve as you progress through the game. It’s actually impossible to ever get Link’s stamina anywhere near that of an average human (in terms of running ability) and the one single unbreakable weapon you eventually get has a limited number of hits before it’s unusable for a period of time... so not a massive improvement. My personal bugbear is that I never seem to get one-handed weapons other than useless wooden clubs... I have 8 two-handed swords, that I dislike fighting with. And the faux-English accents of the (American) English language voice actors really are dreadful; if you are even vaguely conversant in any other language (bearing in mind you can retain English subtitles) I would urge you to switch (pun intended). I chosen Spanish (Latin American) myself, which means the game serves a second purpose as a much-needed boost to my vocabulary. Mexican Zelda (Zeldacita?) is much less of a sighing wet blanket, and you can actually hear what she’s saying above the background music, which is a bonus. If the game didn’t apparently hate me so much, I’d love to give it 8 or 9 out of 10. As it is.. 7 will have to do.

For some reason, for the PS4/XboxOne generation, there’s a massive shortage of tactical squad-based shooters with a campaign you can play in single player. Operation Flashpoint is nowhere to be found. ARMA hasn’t made the leap to console... and Rainbow Six went multiplayer only. Fortunately Ghost Recon: Wildlands just about scratches that itch. You’re accompanied by 3 AI players and a drone, the latter being able to set up shots for the former to take for you. You can order your crew to a location, and call them back again. You can ask them to hold position. And then you can order them to “Fire”, which is a slightly confusing option, because if you’ve cleared a building, but you’re not sure you have... your crew will simply run off somewhere to look for trouble. There are a lot of similarities to the later Far Cry games (from the same publisher) here, but then some differences that throw you off. Most disconcertingly, the order/weapon wheel and throw grenade buttons are swapped around. And there’s no auto-drive feature... yet for some reason you can still climb into the passenger seats of any vehicle... and wait like a lemon, wondering why your crew aren’t joining you. The single-player campaign is just about sufficient. You get radio chatter filing you in on the story, but it’s all so bland, it doesn’t matter. What matters is... go to an enemy area on the map, and tackle it in the most stealthy way you can possibly manage. Get skill points, upgrade your abilities, rinse and repeat. Come to think of it... the previous Ghost Recon games as far back as I can remember didn’t really have the most amazing stories either, and didn’t suffer for it. A lot of people have complained that it’s boring, but even in single player, I’ve found masses of “emergent gameplay”... which, in my opinion, is the best kind of gameplay. And the multiplayer is just the same thing, but with your buddies. I imagine. Sadly, being a rather old autistic man, I know precisely one other person on the planet with the same taste in video games and availability to play them... and he prefers to play Far Cry 5 with me.

I have not played any previous Monster Hunter game ever... let me describe how this game appears to fresh eyes. Overall, there are two main issues with the game. It lacks the polish and accessibility of Western titles, and a lot of it is very poorly translated from the original Japanese. For example, in game hints are referred to as "tutorials". To actually play the game, you have to find a menu item called "post mission"... is that "post" meaning "after" or "post" as in what you do with a letter? Why not "start mission" or "choose mission"? In the hub world, there are characters with an icon over their head, which indicates you can talk to them... but at what distance? There's no pop-up prompt to "speak", so you have to get to what seems like talking distance. I managed to start a mission, but again it was extremely confusing, as my companion character would just stop and wait, not responding to any attempts to speak to him. I pretty quickly figured out that I have to walk forward and encounter the monsters myself. But then before I'd finished the second wave of monsters in the first mission, my companion congratulated me and some victory music started playing. Online co-op multiplayer is extremely fiddly to set up, and you may have to endure a few rounds of being kicked from your friend's quest before getting through. Once it was working, it was quite hilarious, perhaps unintentionally so, as we clip our swords through dinosaurs spouting purple liquid for a few minutes, and then it's all over. You're treated to a screen from which you can select a bunch of icons, and then you're back in the hub world with prompts asking you to complete things that I suppose must be for single player?. Anyway, rinse and repeat. There's no story to speak of. The graphics are pretty weak for a PS4 game - many of the ground textures are quite pixellated up close and the characters are poorly animated and frequently clip through the animals you're battling. Your own character is rather awkward to control, with some bizarre button assignments, such as triangle to draw your weapon but also to reload it, with R1 to stash your weapon again. ... or circle to pick up stuff but also fire a flare of some sort. The HUD layout is also a confusing mess. The character lip-sync is... well, there isn't any. This may be because they're lip-punched to the original Japanese, but the effect is quite immersion breaking if you're playing in English. Also, only a small proportion of the dialogue is there in audio format... so there's reading... lots of reading. I feel like this is a game designed for extremely forgiving fans, rather than newcomers to the franchise. I found it a confusing mess compared to any other online multiplayer of any genre.

For a game that is arguably most famous for its incredible soundtrack, this iteration is extremely disappointing in that area. For a start, the sound levels are far lower than any other Switch game in my collection, to the extent that I have to turn up my sound system about 50% to bring it to an acceptable level. The sound is particularly lacking in bass... surely the heart and soul of electronic dance music. And the “Retro” soundtrack is even worse... you get the original Mega Drive (Genesis) soundtracks, but again with all of the bass **** out of them. Compare to a real Mega Drive, an Analogue Mega-SG or even a half decent emulator and you’re going to be extremely disappointed. It’s all such a shame, given the core gameplay is extremely satisfying, and a great nostalgia trip. The game’s a bit short and grindy though... which is presumably why there was a review embargo until release day. I really should learn that these modern tributes to old games rarely work out well (Flashback, Shadow of the Beast). Sonic Mania really was an anomaly... I should remember that next time.

I'd like to address one of the most damaging criticisms of this game: that the game is the prelude to something better and ends on a cliffhanger. In fact, this criticism put me off bothering to complete the game until today, despite having bought the game at release. But it's simply untrue. If you were expecting "and they all lived happily every after", then yes you might be disappointed... but the story in fact closes in the most logical way, given the direction it was heading. It does leave open the possibility of a follow-up, but by no means demands it. With that out of the way, I really enjoyed the game, despite its obvious shortcomings. Besides the astonishing graphics and motion-capture (which still haven't been bettered on PS4), the story was original and the lore rich enough to allow me to enjoy the slower sections of the game. Some of the weapons were really fun to use and the combat against human AI was always enjoyable. The voice acting was solid, and the music is possibly one of the highlights... I ended up getting the soundtrack album. In terms of story and replayability, it is no more linear than Uncharted, and I will certainly be going back to play it again to get the trophies I missed, perfecting my combat (I managed to finish the game without even being aware of the "Blacksight" skill) and trying the harder difficulty setting. I was really only disappointed with the fact that there were too many quicktime sections for their own sake, and some where missing them did not affect the consequences. Also, although I was happy with the length of the game, I don't consider it value for money at its original price. If you can pick it up for around £20/$20, I think that's about right.

I am not exaggerating - Kona VR has the worst graphics of any PSVR game. If you can cite a PSVR game with worse graphics, I will retract that statement. There have been many PSVR titles criticised for "blurry" graphics, but Kona takes this to a whole new level with a resolution so low, you can count the pixels. It's difficult to know whether this is the result of ineptitude or severe efficiency problems with Kona's game engine. We all know what the PSVR is capable of; Kona VR is worse than nearly all the launch titles. The original Kona engine is surely quite simple? The graphics are nice, but not mind-blowing, there are relatively few visual effects and the draw distance is naturally short due to the perpetual snowy fog. And yet, this VR adaptation seems to run at a resolution around the 480p mark... possibly even lower. Compare this to the incredible-looking Skyrim VR, which has to attempt a draw distance of several miles, in a massive open world with no loading screens (except going in/out of buildings and caves) and many fancy visual effects. Kona VR does the PSVR a huge disservice, and one has to wonder why they didn't call out for help from Sony (or any other PSVR developer) instead of releasing it in this state. The graphics are so bad that you can't read any of the leaflets you pick up - so the game presents you with a black screen and white text that you sometimes have to scroll to read. For the "journal" instead of doing this, you're presented with the graphical version at what feels like 2 inches from your nose, which is extremely disconcerting. Presumably this is done so that you stand some chance of reading it, but it's still painful to look at. Forget reading road signs or posters on the walls unless you can get close enough to them. One of the best things about the original version of Kona was looking around at the detail in your environment. Forget all that in the VR version. But it's not even just bad in the game - the initial setup menu is so low resolution, it's hard to tell whether a setting is "Enabled" or "Disabled". The Move controllers are largely redundant, and are not explained at all in-game, so good luck figuring out how to run, jump or crouch. They're particularly useless in the setup menu, as you can only click on the various settings boxes to turn them from yellow to red, but there's no obvious way to change the values. In-game, there's no smooth turning option (with either Move or DualShock), so if like me you find that makes you dizzy/nauseated then your enjoyment is going to be impaired throughout. You can at least turn off teleport and vignette. Loading screens occur far too often (again, compare with the amount of graphics Skyrim chucks around) and are a completely black screen that can last anything up to 16 seconds, leaving you wondering whether or not the game has crashed. I really wanted to give this a 1/10, but I love the original game so much, I felt I had to give at least something for the gameplay underneath. Sony really need to raise the standard for PSVR games, as Kona VR is a poor advertisement for the platform.

You either buy into this game's premise or you don't. It's a point-and-click adventure game, a genre that was never particularly popular, even in its heyday. It's set in a dystopian post-apocalypse in which petrol-based vehicles have been overtaken by electric hover cars. The voice acting is utterly superb and the script is extremely witty, with lots of great in-jokes (for Star Wars fans on most occasions). The original game had, for its day, she incredible visuals, a mixture of great pixel art with occasional 3D-rendered models. The music/soundtrack is about as appropriate as you can imagine; The Gone Jackals may not be terribly well-known, but their biker rock is absolutely spot on for this adventure. What you're getting on PS4 (and other platforms) is the exact same game, but with an updated art style in 16:9 (the original was 4:3) and remastered audio. You can switch seamlessly between the two (by pressing the touchpad on the PS4 controller). Switching to the original visual style also switches to the original audio quality. The new art style is unfortunately a bit of a letdown, looking a like the kind of Flash animations we used to see in websites of the early 2000s. The huge missed opportunity is for the original pixel art to be extended to 16:9, or an option that doubles/quadruples the pixels while retaining the original look. This is particularly noticeable in the Mine Road section, where the grittiness of the original is replaced by an overly bright aesthetic that would look more at home in a Roadrunner cartoon. It's as if whoever was in charge of this remaster had failed to notice how popular pixel art is in the late 2010's. There's also an annoying and entirely superfluous spinning CD icon that appears in the top left of the screen every time you start a new dialogue with a character. Not a dealbreaker, but certainly something that shows a distinct lack of finesse. Absolutely nothing else about this game has been updated or improved, besides an optional "Director's Commentary" and 147 examples of concept art (the latter is unlocked once you complete the game). There are some sections of the game rendered far more difficult than they should be due to the lack of a mouse input. I won't spoil any surprises here, but one or two sections require quick reactions to events, and at this point you can suddenly find your cursor is on completely the wrong area of the screen. The very end of the game is more challenging than it should be, due to this. Additionally, the save/load system is extremely cumbersome on PS4. The Save menu takes around 15 seconds to load before you see the available save slots and then another 22 seconds to save your game. The Load menu takes about 18 seconds to load and then another 5 seconds to load an actual save point. There are some points in the game where you will want to be saving regularly, so this becomes painful to use. As such, and given the extremely short play time (about an hour once you already know the solutions to the puzzles) and lack of replay value, it's hard to recommend this to anyone other than the most hardcore LucasArts fans.

Skyrim is probably my favourite game of all time. I've played it on PC, PS3, Xbox 360, Switch and now PS4. This version has a significant graphical upgrade from previous console versions, the ability to load in mods (albeit in a very limited fashion compared to the other platforms) and shorter load times (at least with the digital release, which is what I'm reviewing). So far, so good... but there's a massive problem with this release which you will only discover if playing with a surround sound system (5.1 or 7.1). The sound channels are completely messed up, particularly for speech. For some reason, the NPC's dialogue and other sounds comes out of the opposite left/right rear channels to what you would expect. So, if the NPC is on your right, their voice comes through the front right speaker (which is correct) and the rear left speakers (which is wrong!). And the reverse also happens. As well as ruining the immersion, this also makes locating potentially combatants confusing to impossible. I've tried to live with it, but it's a game breaker unless I force the PS4 into stereo output, which is a pretty miserable concession when every other PS4 game works just fine. This has been raised on Bethesda's forums, Bethesda's Twitter channel... but the problem remains to this day. It rather demonstrates a lack of proper quality testing (perhaps the QA testers only play with 2-channel headphones on?). The PS3 version doesn't have this problem (although it has many many other problems). The Nintendo Switch version also doesn't have this problem, and I have been told the Xbox One version is also fine. I have loads of other games that use 7.1 sound perfectly (such as Uncharted 4). The problem is solely with Skyrim. In short, if you have (and use) a multi-speaker surround sound system, buy this game on anything but the PS4.

Well, this is slightly disappointing. It's a very similar set of games to "Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection" for PS3 and Xbox 360, but with a redesigned front-end and a few more emulator choices. This would all be ok and worthy of something well above 5/10, except that the emulation is actually shade worse than the PS3 release in two key areas: 1. Sound: Ok, you may not have an "echoic memory" like I do, but if you played the original games back in the day, there are bound to be some moments where you realise the sound is off. The most noticeable are the noise Sonic makes as he spins through the end sign in the first Sonic the Hedgehog, and the noise made in Toejam and Earl when you cause parts of the land to appear. 2. Performance: This emulator frequently stutters badly in certain parts of certain games. Often when transitioning to a new background screen, but I haven't yet narrowed it down. You will lose frames of animation and the music will noticeably stutter. Neither of the above are game-breaking, but shows a general lack of care and finesse, not to mention the fact that these issues don't occur when running the same games in emulation on a Raspberry Pi 3, which has a fraction of the processing power of the PS4 and Xbox 360. In terms of the games you get, it's easiest to compared with the PS3/X360 release. The following games have been dropped: Ecco The Dolphin, Ecco: The Tides of Time, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles. ... and, in their place, we have: Alien Soldier, Bio-Hazard Battle, Columns III, Galaxy Force II, Gunstar Heroes, Landstalker, Light Crusader, Shadow Dancer, Space Harrier II, Sword of Vermillion, The Revenge of Shinobi, Toejam & Earl, ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkatron. These 14 new games are extremely welcome, but why did we have to lose 4 absolute classics to make way for them? A Sonic 3 + Sonic & Kuckles combination is surely long overdue Sega? I'm pretty sure the hidden games from the previous collection (such as the arcade version of Shinobi) have also been dropped, so the total number of games is roughly the same. Perhaps more games will be added via DLC? Time will tell. You can play the games in fullscreen with borders, or stretched (which is yuk!), or in a TV Mode where you're looking at a 14" Trinitron-like TV set with a slightly curved screen. That last one is actually quite cool, but my preference is fullscreen with black borders. The new emulator "pixel-hiding" settings may please some, but I personally find they ruin the look. There's a scanlines option, but it causes banding on large areas of the same colour (such as the blue sky background on Sonic) and causes a weird moiré effect in TV Set Mode. This is a shame, as other games such as Sonic Mania and the entirety of the SNES Mini collection managed a more convincing scanlines option. If you already have a working PS3 or X360 and a copy of the previous collection, it's difficult to recommend this unless you consider the 14 new games essential. If you've gone down any of the alternative routes towards Genesis/Megadrive emulation, then I think you're definitely wasting your money unless the convenience of being able to play specifically on a PS4/Xbox One is critical to you. It's possible the sound/performance issues could be addressed with patches, in which case add another couple of points to my score. For now though, this gets a "meh" 5/10. (Tested on: PS4 Pro)

For this update to the original Pixeljunk Monsters, Q-Games have ditched the Pixel Art style, and gone for a true 3D "claymation" style. It looks incredible, but unfortunately interferes with the gameplay to the extent that veteran fans may be disappointed. The first disappointment is the lack of levels: there are five areas, each with 3 levels. The levels can be played in "fun" or "tricky" mode (reminding me of Lemmings), but there's actually not a massive difference between these difficulties. So essentially, you're only getting 15 levels before you've seen everything the game has to offer. In terms of visual design flaws, there is no way to view the entire playfield. In the original PS3 game, you had a fixed perspective of the who area; in subsequent versions (such as Pixeljunk Monsters Ultimate on PS Vita), you could toggle between this and a slightly closer view. PixelJunk Monsters 2 has two views... a top-down view similar to the original, but which follows your Tikiman about and an almost "over-the-shoulder" 3rd person view. The top-down view doesn't let you see the entire map at once, which means a lot more wandering around to figure out what's going on. The 3d person mode looks adorable, but serves no useful purpose whatsoever... except perhaps to spot things that are hidden from view in the top-down mode (more of which, later). It's not terribly pleasant to remain in the view for long, however, as there's an extreme depth-of-field effect in play, and the camera is far closer to Tikiman than you'd probably like. The lack of a completely "zoomed-out" mode is baffling, as it is as essential as it was in the original game: sometimes you need to see everything you've arranged, in order to figure out the best strategy going forward. The towers upgrade in a similar way to the original game, but the towers start with no flags at all, and then go through a different colour scheme (dirty yellow, dark green, blue and dark red). The flags also display the level number on them, but it's often hard to see the flags in top-down view, due to the towers being rendered in 3D. Your tower faces the nearest path, and the flag is on the right hand side of the tower... so if your tower is facing left, the flag is hidden behind the tower. This is one of the two possible use cases of the 3rd person view. Speaking of things that are hidden... you will frequently miss coins and gems dropped by the various monsters you annihilate. They can often drop behind trees or the raised bits of earth the trees sit on. There is a visual indicator to show that you've missed something, but you need to walk away until the item is offscreen to activate this. Once you're near the item, the indicator moves away, so whether you find the coin/gem is largely down to luck. Or, you could switch to the 3rd person view... the second reason it's there. Another minor annoyance is the permanent "vignette" effect around the screen, in all modes. It makes the 3rd person view particularly claustrophobic. It would be nice to determine when it does and doesn't appear. With all of the above criticisms, you're probably going to conclude that I hate this game, but I really don't. I'm simply disappointed that it's not as fun to play as the original, which I played on PS3, PS Vita and PC extensively. In fact, the original Pixeljunk Monsters is in my top 5 video games of all time, and I've been playing these things since the late 70s. I honestly think everything I've mentioned above could be remedied in a future update, in a way that would not upset anyone currently 100% happy with the game. I've noticed many online reviews bringing up the same points in their analyses, so hopefully Q-Games will sit up and take notice.

One of the major problems with Elite Dangerous, in 2017, is that we have now seen far more realistic depictions of space in the media and popular entertainment... such that the graphics (and physics) of Elite Dangerous look horribly dated. You won't see a black hole like the one in Interstellar, complete with acretion disc. You will see stars and planets unfeasibly close together, with absolutely no matter transferring between them (as per the introduction to Star Trek Discovery). You won't even see a realistic depiction of Earth - it's not aligned properly on its axis, and hours of daylight seem to be opposite to the in-game UCT clock. And countries are a blurry and unrecognisable mess. There's a lot of smoke & mirrors too... particularly loading screens trying desperately to pretend they're not loading screens. You've probably not realised most of them... but when you do, they become annoying and 4th-wall-breaking. At this point, I could really spoil elements of the game in a big way for you, but I'm going to hold back and let you discover them for yourself. So, with scant visual rewards to speak of, you're left with the gameplay, which falls into two categories: 1. Dogfights 2. Tedious Delivery Missions If you don't have the appetite or skills for #1, I've got bad news for you: this is what the game tries to push on you at every opportunity. This is a combat-focussed game, make no mistake. All of the major story points and community missions require combat. 9 times out of 10, ranking missions also mandate combat. While attempting to play the game in a peacful fashion, you will be pulled out of SuperCruise ("interdicted") by an NPC who wants to fight you, you will be approached while mining by someone who wants to fight you. So, to get the most out of Elite Dangerous, you have to be up for dogfighting... not in the fun sense of space battles, but tedious technical flight-sim dogfighting (turn, rotate, pull up to get enemy in sights, fire, repeat). Seriously... just go onto You Tube and look at some of the dogfighting tutorials people have put up. If that floats your boat... then go for it. So, I don't hate the game, and I did get a good number of hours out of it... but it's not a sim, and it's not as immersive as I'd hoped.