John-Paul Jones's Reviews
Though Killing Time: Resurrected can't really hang with other boomer shooters in 2024, let alone more contemporary fare from a fundamentals perspective, I'm still happy that Nightdive Studios has cemented its heroic status by remastering it to an extremely high standard anyway and its love for the source material is abundantly clear. In spite of its clunky and flawed fundamentals, Killing Time is indicative of a shooter that wasn't afraid to try new things in 1995 and if there's one thing that remains true even now, it's that more FPS efforts could certainly learn to take a risk or two.
There's no denying that Throne and Liberty is a visual treat and certainly one of the best looking MMORPGs to come along in some time. Furthermore, though its massive world event battles impress, as does its innovative take on shapeshifting traversal, Throne and Liberty's flair-free combat, banal quest design and cluttered UI all weigh down a genre effort that deserves better.
I certainly enjoyed my time with Wild Bastards. The blended Wild West and sci-fi settings, together with hybridised strategy and roguelike FPS approach, all make Wild Bastards feel a lot fresher than many of the shooters on the market right now. Sure, the nuts and bolts of its face-blasting might not rub shoulders with the genre's best in the purest sense and the visual presentation is lacking somewhat, but the level of design ingenuity and rough-shackle charm that is on display here ably makes up for such shortcomings.
Despite some hefty flaws, the fact that Antstream Arcade has come on leaps and bounds since its debut in 2013 gives me hope that the service will continue to improve in the weeks, months and years after its PlayStation debut. Even so, in its current far from perfect form, Antstream Arcade still represents great value for what is a veritable mountain of games from a broad swathe of gaming systems that would otherwise be lost to time and garnishes that offering with a compelling social gaming hook.
An obscenely polished and soul-affirming triumph from every angle, Astro Bot isn't just an unabashed celebration of all things PlayStation, it's a deeply passionate celebration of everything you could and should love about a video game. There are no microtransactions, no season passes and no busywork padding - just precisely engineered 3D platforming with an overabundance of joy on offer. Astro Bot is a big, warm hug of a videogame that also happens to be not just one of the best platform games ever made, but one of the best PS5 games ever made, too. Team Asobi, please never stop making these games.
Though The Casting of Frank Stone doesn't make any sweeping changes to the formula etched out by the likes of Until Dawn, The Quarry and The Dark Pictures Anthology, it does manage to effectively marry up that formula with the universe of Dead by Daylight with impressive results. Notably, the usual flaws also apply here, with The Casting of Frank Stone beset by the same plodding horror adventuring, wooden dialogue and mostly annoying cast of characters that are usually the hallmarks of similar efforts. If however, you're fine with all of that and just want another handsomely made Supermassive Games romp then The Casting of Frank Stone will surely appeal. Should you be a devoted Dead by Daylight aficionado though, feel free to add a point or more to the score and dive in.
Concord largely nails the fundamentals - it feels highly responsive, is handsomely made, has good feeling, if slower gunplay than other games, super stable servers and minor concerns aside, has a roster of mostly well balanced characters. With Concord's obviously passionate team of developers confirming that they are absolutely in it for "years to come", I would love for Concord to still be around in one, two or three years time and even beyond that. I just don't know if gamers who have been experiencing varying amounts of genre fatigue will be generous enough to put a significant amount of time into a title that, on the starting blocks at least, seems roundly decent enough but doesn't offer anything thunderously new to upset the status quo. I know that I'll be playing Concord in the weeks and months to come, I'm just not sure a sufficient number of other folks will be joining me.
A nail-biting triumph that is without equal in the extraction shooter genre, Hunt: Showdown 1896's eye-opening overhaul couldn't come at a better time. With unmatched atmospherics, a thoroughly detailed world rife with grotesqueness to immerse yourself in and some of the most keenly honed risk and reward mechanics ever seen in the genre, Hunt: Showdown 1896 is arguably now more essential than it ever was.
Though the in-game shop feels poorly realised and it sometimes veers away from what it does best, Pepper Grinder nonetheless remains a resolutely well made, roundly attractive and frantically satisfying platformer that basically turns you into a terrifyingly militant dolphin obsessed with high speed loot and murder. And, well, who has never wanted to be one of those before?
Wrath: Aeon of Ruin feels like the hardcore peak of the so-called 'boomer-shooter' subgenre. A punishing (sometimes unfairly so), yet rewarding and surprisingly innovative exercise in first-person shooter goodness, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is recommended for anyone looking to test their genre skills within the confines of its grim design and unrelenting onslaught.
In a year when Sony's marquee first-party offerings seem to be almost distressingly thin, Stellar Blade's dogged pursuit of an engaging and polished single-player action adventure experience is more welcome than ever - even if much of it feels like a loving greatest hits interpretation of past genre luminaries. Nonetheless fans of gorgeously rendered, high-octane action adventures with style to spare will find much to enjoy in Shift Up's stellar PlayStation debut.
A jack of all trades and master of some, though Rise of the Ronin feels like a melting pot of influences from other games, it is also quite the surprise of the year for me thus far as it clearly shows that Team Ninja has a confident grasp of compelling open world design in a way that many of its genre stablemates do not. Though the visual presentation might be comparatively a little rough around the edges, Rise of the Ronin nonetheless is simultaneously the most accessible and ambitious game Team Ninja has done to date and one that both hardcore action RPG fiends and open world adventure aficionados will surely embrace.
An industry iconoclast, beloved eccentric and arguably the father of modern high score chasing, the sort of spotlight that the Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story puts on its titular subject feels hugely overdue to say the least. Beautifully put together with a wealth of painstakingly researched historical material, candid looks at Jeff's storied life from Jeff himself and just about all of the games that heralded his rise to prominence in the games industry packed in for kicks, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is a masterclass how you find out about one of the charismatic and genuinely talented legends of the games industry - and you'll have a great time doing it.
There's no getting around it - Helldivers 2 is a supremely fun, frequently unintentionally hilarious and bombastic squad shooter that builds upon its predecessor and deftly sets up a long-term future in the process. Though the lack of split-screen is keenly felt and Helldivers 2 is by and large identical to its predecessor in so many ways, Arrowhead Studios highly anticipated sequel nonetheless does a great job of repackaging a shooter that not nearly enough people played into a thunderous current-gen offering that sets a new bar for extraction shooters everywhere.
War Hospital is nowhere near the most sophisticated, nor the most polished strategy game money can buy, but it nonetheless does a commendable job of making you feel what managing an overwrought war hospital at the forefront of one of the most deadly wars in human history could be like. Though it's relatively simplistic tactical beats might not appeal to expert strategists, War Hospital's more narrow scope and poignant subject matter do make it a much more easily digestible proposition for both genre newcomers and perhaps more crucially, for first-person shooter folks who have ever given thought to what happens after they pull the trigger on an enemy soldier.
Boiled down to its most basic properties, The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered is the definitive version of the best game of the last generation and as such, it's still a ten. Easily.
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is the sort of game that the Warhammer 40K setting has long needed. A disgustingly massive, social calendar swallowing CRPG offering, Rogue Trader's numerous presentation issues aren't enough to distract from its galaxy-spanning odyssey into Games Workshop's most famous and beloved setting.
One of the best surprises of the year when it comes to the strategy genre, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin generously lavishes a glorious amount of detail on its presentation of the tabletop Age of Sigmar setting from which it derives. Though its more streamlined tactical beats might prove too simplistic for genre veterans looking for a broader dose of macro strategy, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin nonetheless provides a gorgeously framed and immediately compelling RTS offering that offers an irresistible on-ramp for newcomers into both the Warhammer property and the RTS genre as a whole.
Underneath the thick red skin of its unpolished exterior there is an entertaining and surprisingly sophisticated roguelike brawler to be found in Hellboy Web of Wyrd. It's just a shame that sluggish combat, uninteresting lore and poorly executed exploration all conspire to drag Hellboy Web of Wyrd down into the depths.
Ultimately, The 7th Guest VR is the best sort of surprise. A great mix of entertaining puzzles, compelling exploration and some unexpectedly cutting edge visual design, for this Halloween there's probably no better reason to get out your PS VR2 headset than this.