Pistol Whip is a transcendent experience. This brilliant rails shooter has the trappings of a rhythm game which helps to make an already sublime experience stand out that much further. With a vibrant world and a variety of tracks to test your mettle with, the game offers a solid package right out of the gate. And that's to say nothing of the upcoming content that will further expand what Pistol Whip has to offer.
More than anything, this game being both 20 years old and incredibly fun is a clear sign that a modern Podracing title should absolutely be a thing.
Monstrum crafts a genuinely frightening game of procedurally generated hide and seek.
While the gameplay is solid, we came away more impressed with the art direction and sound design than expected. The lightly stylised, cel-shaded look works for 1971, with the organic environments looking especially nice. The sheer variety of locations is impressive, too, including an oil rig, airbase, canyon, and nomadic village. Meanwhile, the exploration music is absolutely beautiful, though the combat soundtrack gets a bit repetitive.
Some custom options would have been a welcome addition and allowed even more fun to be squeezed out of the game. But if you’re looking for a quick, get-in, get-out play session of a great board game in digital form, you could do worse than Ticket to Ride.
Daymare: 1998 is a low budget release with an ambition that outpaces its production values, but it's still a good attempt. There are stumbling blocks – hit detection, boss fights, animations – but the lighting is good, the soundtrack is great, and the exploration is satisfying.
We found ourselves constantly craving more information, only for Below to not provide it.
Despite the relative lack of polish, wildly swinging lightsabers at one another is a blast. The multiplayer is just as fun as you remember it being.
Something that hasn’t aged quite as well are the shooting galleries. The enemy spawns feel too abundant on some levels, causing the gunplay to get a bit too monotonous. This is especially true on 'The Lost Levels' which are brand new bonus missions meant to connect “old” Doom to “new” Doom, but end up overstaying their welcome.
Ultimately, the biggest problem is the technical hitches. During the game's two hours, we experienced two hard crashes, and the framerate was almost never stable. Despite such a short run time, this made the experience feel much longer than it should have.
Even with a downright cavalcade of triumphs, Kentucky Route Zero's strongest asset is its ability to redefine itself from episode to episode. The deeper your journey goes, the stranger things get, but the more they make sense too. While the game will definitely be a bit too bizarre and densely obtuse for some, this is a game unlike anything you've ever played before.
The cast of characters is wonderful. Everyone has their own quirks and personalities, but they are all engaging, and we love preparing drinks for them and hearing their stories.
You probably won’t be thinking about it later this year once all of the big games have released, but it’s still worth a bit of your time.
Golem is a game had a shot at being good if it launched alongside the PSVR. Fast-forward a couple years and impressive virtual reality titles are fairly common. This, depressingly, is not one of those. By the time we took the headset off, we were left with not just a feeling of disappointment, but also one of anger. Anger at the promise it once held. Anger that, despite its flaws, it did some things really well. Anger that it simply wasn't good.
PlayStation VR isn’t hurting for good experiences, but it’s time to throw another on the stack.
Overall, Habroxia is a neat little arcade title with some cool ideas.
NHL 20 sees Franchise mode take a welcome step forward, while other areas have either remained the same or actually gone backwards. The new commentary makes it clear that different does not mean better, and all the slick new animations in the world can't hide poor AI. We feel like a broken record saying this, but the NHL series is in sore need of a comprehensive revamp.
Despite its short length, this is still very much a trip worth taking.
Ancestors Legacy makes a comfortable transition to console, serving up an RTS experience that plays superbly and looks the part. Minor technical issues and a moderately cluttered UI do little to detract from the overall action, which is strong across all of the release's main modes.
The downside is you’ll probably never have an interest in revisiting the title after that initial foray.