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We’re giving Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel the benefit of the doubt. It’s flawed for sure. But the ten or twelve-hour playing time is mostly a good time thanks to the effectiveness of the titular guest house as a setting and the oppressive atmosphere it manages to conjure during your stay there.
Overall, F1 22 is another high quality simulation of the motorsport, with great handling and detailed, engrossing career modes. While the presentation is strong and the game generally looks and sounds great, some aspects like character models just aren't quite where they should be, and F1 Life doesn't add all that much to the experience. We encountered more bugs than expected, too, although we expect patches will iron those out in due course. It's got it where it really counts, then, but some extra polish would put it higher on the grid.
If there’s one bright spot, it’s the new “trails” game mode, a checkpoint-type race that has more varied terrain. It’s quite fun, and very chaotic, serving as the high point amid innumerable lows. And that about sums MX vs. ATV Legends up: at its core, this is a buggy, flawed mess that falls far short of other racers on the market.
Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee is a classic and one of the defining games of the PlayStation era. From its grim, dystopian setting to its quirky sense of humour, it exudes personality and charm. Though on the surface it may appear to be aimed at children, its surprisingly dark tone, plot, and difficulty make it more appropriate for an older audience. Due to the clever choice using a 2.5D perspective, it's aged quite well graphically. Though the platforming controls are a little sloppy, the puzzle solving is still great fun and the atmosphere and world are established so well that you'll be too invested in its odd tale to notice.
The main thing that lets it down is its new economy; unlike previously, you cannot use Crowns to purchase the best costumes in the shop, and Kudos is harder to earn too. Your Crowns instead go towards a ranking with long-term unlocks. They're replaced by Show-Bucks, a premium currency needed for all the coolest stuff, which stings a bit after years of access to everything. It lessens the impact of winning because you can just buy all the rarer items now. The free Fame Pass is still there, but it's supplemented with a premium tier, which is really the only way to earn Show-Bucks without simply buying them. Despite these concerns, the game is just as fun as it ever was, and thankfully none of the things you can buy alter gameplay. There's so much to like about Fall Guys, and now it's open to everyone.
But ultimately Astro Aqua Kitty blasts its way to PS5 with panache. With its Metroidvania formula, light RPG elements, strong presentation, and slick retro synth music, this is an old-school outing that manages to also feel contemporary.
Capcom's Production Studio 4 built Spencer Mansion to remain as haunting as the monsters that inhabit it. This 1996 PS1 game has minor skeletons in its closet, including a stingy save system, sluggish load times, and bewildering puzzles as terrifying as the creepy Chimeras. The GameCube renovation stole some of its thunder, but riding this ghoul train's balance of power between vulnerability, survival, and Colt Python carnage is gruesomely gratifying. The lumbering Lurch-like controls become reanimated as you adjust to speed run through its halls, and the tense atmosphere is more memorable than any dusty antiques on its shelf. There's a stack of content hidden in the basement of the 1997 Director's Cut, with extra difficulty levels and secrets adding replay value beneath the creaky pre-rendered floorboards. Panic-building level structure and a spine-chilling audio arrangement establish Resident Evil as a horror-ific humdinger of a PS1 game for Hallowe'en.
Of course, it was Tekken 3 that truly took the series above and beyond, but it's still easy to see why Tekken 2 was a big deal back in 1996. In its visual style and its excellent soundtrack, Namco had established an identity for something quite special.
Pocky & Rocky Reshrined's ability to seamlessly segue from what seems like a simple remaster into a full-blown remake is brave – and it does it beautifully, too. This looks and sounds like you remember the Super Nintendo release, but is bursting with vibrant flourishes that elevate it beyond mere nostalgia. For purists, it'll no doubt be perfect – but newcomers may scoff at the archaic control scheme, which purposefully limits your capabilities and leads to significant pain.
If you flash back to a concern exacerbated from our Turrican Flashback review, Wonder Boy Collection's paltry four titles puts pressure on retro gamers to question its value for money, because it omits series defining titles and key console ports when compared to the more expensive Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection from Strictly Limited Games — which has sold out of its 2,000 PS4 retail copies. It's also worse value than retro compilations that released within weeks of the Wonder Boy Collection, when set side-by-side against the cheaper and more complete Pac-Man Museum+ and the superior extras in Sonic Origins.
As a first-person platforming game, with massive triple-jumps, and boss battle shoot-'em-up stages, playing Jumping Flash! feels like burrowing down the rabbit hole into a distinctive and unconventional gameplay experience. The masterful music compositions by Takeo Miratsu match the colourful and vivid visual themes of each of the six worlds perfectly, ensuring that the presentation in Exact Inc.'s 1995 game has aged gracefully. Arguably as a result of its position among the PS1's launch, the main flaw in Jumping Flash! is its short completion time. However, controlling Robbit feels accessible for such a skyrocketing protagonist, so you will hop right back into each of the 18 stages to dig up secret modes, or to vault your way towards achieving a flashier time attack speed run.
Intelligent Qube is a very, very unique PS1 puzzler. Words don't do its unnerving style or relentless gameplay justice, which is probably why it focuses so much on numbers. There was nothing else like it before, and there hasn't been much like it since. Play it.
Sonic Origins presents four of the hedgehog's best games with style, and it's a joy to revisit these iconic platformers. Presentational flourishes like the animated cutscenes, as well as a host of extra modes like Boss Rush and Missions, give fans and newcomers alike plenty to see and do, and the Museum is full of interesting artwork you might not have seen before. Some stingy DLC practices let the side down, and of course, the games themselves have some 30-year-old weaknesses, but this is by-and-large a wonderful spin down memory lane.
Taking a look at Capcom Fighting Collection, it's very clear that it does exactly what it set out to do – you've got superb versions of ten arcade classics here, several of which are significantly difficult to play elsewhere. The online play works beautifully, with efficient menus letting you switch games in the lobby. And that online is really all that matters in the end. Can you play Hyper Street Fighter II online with no lag? Yes. Then it's more or less perfect, isn't it?
What we're trying to say is that Redout 2 won't be worth the effort for a lot of people. It is rewarding, sure, but to be brutally honest, part of us thinks that you should just boot up WipEout Omega Collection instead and save yourself the trouble.
If you can stomach its rough exterior, Shadowrun Trilogy is an easy recommendation for RPG fans. The games' straightforward structure makes them approachable in ways that other tabletop-based titles on PlayStation aren't, and the role-playing options are engaging throughout. Combat could do with a bit more punch, and the technical issues are an annoyance, but there's a lot of value to this well written sci-fi-fantasy package.
VOID Riders is a solid addition to OlliOlli World that justifies itself with a neat new mechanic, fun characters, and some cracking extra levels. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it doesn't need to; if you're into it already, this just gives you more excuses to keep things rolling.
Atari, in its current incarnation, seems setup solely to profit from its past classics. Gravitar: Recharged, though, actually does justice to the original – and even if you weren’t around in the 80s, there’s fun to be found in this sprightly shmup at the right price.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard always faced an uphill battle in comparison to the two other PS5 upgrades, and the mountain has proven too much. While the game looks and runs better, it's still a long way off Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3. It's like playing a really good-looking PS4 game rather than something native to PS5. Still, at least the game itself remains a cracker.
While nirvanA Initiative doesn’t stray too far from the formula established in the original, the gritty sci-fi story and likeable characters mean that it is a compelling adventure. Piecing together all the threads of the story will lead you on a rollercoaster of a journey and keep you guessing until the very end.