Turniplord

The Council Episode 3 is a clear decline over the previous episode in terms of stability and content, however, the quality of the actual narrative and the small details is still up there with the best of the adventure games this generation. The game is riddled with bugs, from non-moving mouthes to our protagonist randomly going cross-eyed and having a fight with himself as both eyes operate independently and look all over the place! But, in regards to the game itself, episode three is all about the council participating in their summoned duty - the discussion of what's going to happen in world events once again. That's right, there is an actual reason why all these figures have gathered at the mansion. The story is great, all the new information, secrets, lies, and saucy info you dig up is very surprising and really cool to find. However, it comes at a price - there is only one puzzle within this episode at the very end, a puzzle which can't be undone or tried again unless if you restart the chapter. It's a nice twist and very welcomed. Anyway - I actually gave the game a 7.8 as I really enjoyed the game, it was just let down by the bugs which they seriously need to fix before working on the next episode. My full review can be read here: ****/the-council-episode-3-ripples-ps4-review/

Gene Rain is a good attempt at a third person shooter from Chinese developers, Deeli Network. The game looks great for an indie title, with some high-quality textures, detailed character models, dynamic lighting, and a great use of particle effects. However, what lets the game down is its clunky controls, poorly translated and executed narrative, and the sub-par voice acting. I overcame the control issues by manually remapping my pad on the PS4, the script could be forgiven as it’s not their native language, and the voice acting was ambitious due to the fact all the actors are clearly Chinese. However, the story wasn’t explained clearly and it’s easy to forget what’s going on as you enter the next cover-based combat area. If you ignore the story and play the game as an indie cover-based shooter with little depth and a decent amount of combat sections with the ability to play as three characters and upgrade your weapons, then it’s not that bad. I was surprised at how much fun I had and I still drop in and out of the horde mode between playing other games. There is also a PSVR mode coming in the near future, along with an Xbox One and PC version. I've done a full in-depth review on my site, here: ****/gene-rain-ps4-review/ Basically, the game isn't as bad as some people are making it out to be. If you look beyond the few issues it has, it's a decent cover-based shooter which you'll spend about 8-10 hours moving from arena to arena as you take out a variety of enemies with a decent selection of weapons. - I gave it a 6.8/10 (but MetaCritic only does whole numbers)

Pic-a-Pix is a very challenging and casual puzzle game which is playable by everyone. It will test your logic skills as well as keep you entertained for hours via both the PS4 and PS Vita via cross-buy. Don’t worry if you’ve never done a Picross style puzzle before, the game gives you a full introduction and will gradually get you into the bigger puzzles without dropping you in the deep end. With its simplistic design, charming music, and the plethora of puzzles on offer – Pic-a-Pix has easily become my favourite logic-based puzzle game on Sony’s platform. ****/pic-a-pix-color-ps4-ps-vita-review/

The team have done a great job with this remaster. The core mechanics and story are all faithful to the original 1999 masterpiece with a few new control mechanisms thrown in. There isn't enough room to write my review here - the full one is over on SquareXO - but what I can say is, if you liked the original game or were ever interested in the first ever 3D Open world game - the one that defined the genre, check it out! The more support this dev gets, the more likely we will see a real sequel as well.

I'm not sure why this game is getting a lot of hate - it seems to be around the fact that it isn't a standard Musou style game, does this warrant the bad reviews though? No, it doesn't. I bought this on release, played through the story, which took about 40-50 hours then played through it a second time (there was a trophy for doing this but also I was so engaged in the game that I couldn't stop playing). If you are a fan of games such as Fire Emblem or even the old Final Fantasy Tactics then you will feel at home with this game. You take your turn at moving and attacking the enemy from a top down view then the enemy has their turn to do the same. Missions will range from flat out 'kill everyone on the screen' to 'escort a certain person to an escape area' with enough variety and a load of familiar DW characters you can play as and experiment with. During battle you can perform a 'sync' attack, where you line up your characters and the ones within the symbol will get another chance to move and attack and then lay down a massive attack - this can sometimes end the battle really quickly or help you progress if you have been surrounded by the enemy. You also have separate skill trees for each character which can been upgraded with SP, which you earn by killing enemies - so the more active the character is, the more they can upgrade - this is great as it gets you to actually use the other characters and not just settle for the same party in every mission. Speaking of missions, you have a set story, which you follow from town to town but after you have completed a mission it unlocks 3 'free-play' missions per town, these are usually an escort, kill everyone and protecting peasants. These can be replayed as many times as you want with whoever you want - and once you have completed the game once then you can also replay all of the story missions as much as you want. Another thing you are given is a set of challenges which you much achieve to progress certain characters' stories, so, for example, get Lu Bu up to level 50 and Kill Lei Bei with Cao Cao etc... If you achieve the set criteria then you unlock mini conversations which leads to unlocking more of the DW family to join you in story mode and free play and even new weapons, items and artwork. All in all I really enjoyed this game, I've spent easily over 100 hours on it and I'm still quite far from platinuming it - however, I love both Musou games and turn based strategy games such as Fire Emblem. I know a lot of people aren't happy with it being digital only, to you I would say, if you like Fire Emblem go look at gameplay videos of this on youtube, if it looks like something you would enjoy then I guarantee you will love it.