Chris Harding's Reviews
The Hong Kong Massacre is a treasure of a game. It’s basically John Woo’s Stranglehold, but as a top-down shooter, and as Stranglehold is one of my favourite game’s of the PS360 era, that’s the highest praise I can give it.
The Grand Tour Game could have been a decent little add-on to a brilliant TV show. Instead it crashes and burns at every turn. You can thank to ‘naff handling for that.
Smash Hit Plunder has a great concept but it doesn’t do a whole lot with it. Smashing things is always fun and it’s even better with friends. Get this one for the multiplayer.
Nippon Marathon is a weird game for weird people. I consider myself to be weird, but this is some next-level stuff. If you find that your tastes in games generally align with mine, leave this alone. If you sit around watching anime on your Hello Kitty TV whilst eating imported noodles with authentic wasabi sauce – go for it, you weirdo.
Spyro Reignited Trilogy offers great value for money with three fantastically presented remakes of classic games. The quality-of-life additions are a nice touch, too, as is the option for dynamic music. The performance could have been a little better, but if you played these games on the original PlayStation then you’ll no doubt be able to look past the very few shortcomings this collection has.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is an interesting game. Fun is pushed to the background in place of realism and a dedication to keeping the world grounded in reality. You’re a guest and you have to play by the rules, and Rockstar lets you know this by dictating everything and putting a limit on what you can and can’t do.
Marvel's Spider-Man leans heavily on the tried-and-tested open-world formula, to its benefit and its loss. While it apes those that came before at every turn, it does so in such a way that it doesn't even matter - it's a beautiful Spider-Man game that tells its own story while delivering gameplay that's familiar but fine-tuned. Spend a few minutes swinging around and you'll barely care for the game's shortcomings. This isn't just the best Spider-Man game to do - it's the best super-hero game thus far.
The American Dream is silly from start to finish. Its over-the-top commentary will no doubt rub some the wrong way, but for those of us with a modicum of intelligence, The American Dream is a silly gallery shooter that just happens to mock American gun culture.
Surviving Mars has its flaws, sure, but they're inescapable when you're dealing with complex RTS systems on a console that doesn't allow you to use a mouse. Once you've got the controls nailed down and you've started building your colony, everything just clicks into place. It's a deep, rewarding time-sink of a game that should keep RTS fans happy for many, many sols
Pure Farming 2018 isn't going to change the genre in one go, but it does a good enough job to stand out from the current leader in the farming sim space. It's welcoming to newcomers with an extensive campaign, but it doesn't shy away from the hardcore micro-management that proper farming nuts crave.
It's definitely rough around the edges and it's not comparable to FIFA or PES, but that's not a terrible thing at all. It's a completely new way to experience the beautiful game from the comfort of your living room, and new things always come at a cost. If the player base for VRFC can stay alive, I can definitely see VRFC being a permanent weekend fixture in my house.
Bravo Team was supposed to be the next big thing for PSVR. A tactical shooter that you'd spend hours of time playing with your mates. Instead I'll probably spend more time telling people about how bad it is than I'll ever spend playing the damn thing. It's that bad.
Mulaka has ambitions. It has potential. Neither of them have been fully realised in this outing, but there's something there. If it released a generation ago, it'd have been a decent offering. As it stands, there are plenty of better-made indie games in the same vein of Mulaka. Give it a shot if you're genuinely interested in the cultural aspects and don't mind a bit of naff gameplay, but avoid it otherwise.
I've said enough about this in the body of the review. There's nothing I can put here you haven't already read. I'm already wasting my time writing this. It's a bad game.
inFamous: Second Son still carries a lot of the weight of a last-gen release, but with the pretty coat it's wearing it's easy to overlook the few issues it has. Even those crappy graffiti mini-games...
Morphite wants so badly to be No Man's Sky that it takes as much as it can from Hello Games' indie flop without giving anything back. There's little in the way of originality. This is No Man's Sky: Poor Man's Edition - The Low Budget Sequel Nobody Asked For.
I'm giving this one a 'Not Bad'. It's not a terribly bad game and there were some flashes of brilliance, but unfortunatley it's just not quite there. At least not yet. Perhaps a sequel could right the wrongs and get this racer back on track.
X-Morph Defense is a strange one: it doesn't deserve to be as good as it is, and it's very good! Fans of twin-stick shooters will be happy, while tower-defense nuts will also be happy. You take on Earth, you kill the good guys, and you can even do it with a mate in co-op mode. There's a decent campaign, though that's about it. In all, it's a shame there aren't more modes and that the voice acting can be irritating, but if they're my biggest complaints then I say it's a job well done to the developers.
Redout: Lightspeed Edition attempts to fill the void that the big guns aren't willing to. For the most part it does a great job: massive speed, funky anti-gravity racing ships, mind-bending tracks - even some electro music for those who're fans of it. That being said, it's let down by its poor technical performance. Apparently it runs fine on the PS4 Pro, but if you're rocking an OG or Slim PS4, you're gonna have to live with dodgy frame-rates until an update is released.
If you're a veteran airship racer then you'll have no qualms with this collection. It's decently priced, it looks bloody amazing, and it plays like a dream. If you're a newbie coming in fresh as a daisy, take the time to learn WipEout's intricacies and style before you resign it to the bin. What you're getting is effectively three great games at one great price. They're a little old, and at times their clunky, but it's a decent release no less.