PlayStation Universe
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My opening days with Blightbound were ridden with crashes and bugs. Luckily the say one patch fixed most of these and you, if you buy it, will never have to suffer as I did. When I got through the initial pain, there are parts of Blightbound I liked. I enjoyed combing abilities together, I really enjoyed multiplayer and collecting new heroes is delightful. Be wary of playing alone though, the AI is tosh and the game can get quite repetitive in longer sessions. There are better examples of dungeon crawlers out there but Blightbound does have some good qualities mixed in with its bad ones.
Eldest Souls wears its inspiration on its sleeve, though in the end that counts for very little. The boss fights are often unbalanced and tedious, which only contributes to a frustration that deters you from wanting to pick the controller back up.
Variable State follows up the wordless weirdness of Virginia with a far more talkative, and more grounded, supernatural drama with Last Stop. The focus on its three protagonists' everyday problems over the underlying odd phenomena helps to make each tale more engaging, and in turn, makes the stranger things that occur feel more captivatingly mysterious in their initially limited use. It's a little light in terms of traditional player control, but Last Stop tells a hell of a good story that you still very much feel like you're in the director's chair for.
The FMV acting is great, as are the production values but ultimately the story just doesn't hold up. There's simply too much repetition required to uncover everything Night Book has to offer.
Utterly absorbing and rarely anything less than completely fascinating, The Forgotten City is an intoxicating microcosm of Ancient Roman society embedded in a dialogue heavy adventure and wrapped around one of the most smartly designed mysteries and sleuthing yarns to come along in a good long while. Occasional technical creakiness and issues aside, it's a deeply pleasant irony that The Forgotten City will remain long in your memory after the credits have completed their roll the first, second, third and fourth time.
Blue Fire had all the potential to become a top-notch Zelda clone for PlayStation's audience, but misses the mark significantly with dated level design, unwieldy controls and an unforgiving checkpoint system.
A deliberately slow, and sometimes frustratingly patient, start aside, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles revamps the Ace Attorney formula by injecting it with a take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Great Detective stories that is recognizable, and yet oh-so-perfect for this series in how it changes it. If the Phoenix Wright games have lost a little of their luster for you, then this double header Victorian-era spinoff may well be worth investigating.
Neo: The World Ends With You offers up something all its own while still keeping its roots in view. Some slow pacing and long-in-tooth writing doesn't keep Neo from being a delightful RPG. If the art style and music don't take you, then the combat and its mechanics will.
The Warriors franchise has always had a strong following and Samurai Warriors 5 keeps that following going. With an entertaining story, strong characterizations and a gorgeous cell-shaded art style, Samurai Warrior's 5 is the best entry in the franchise in a long time. If you've never had an interest in jumping into a Warriors title before, Samurai Warriors 5 is the best time to jump in and see what makes these games so addictive and fun.
With new characters, items, game modes and customisation options, the Mr. X Nightmare has made Streets Of Rage 4 feel like a brand new game again. Survival mode is one hell of a random trip that you'll be going another round at again and again. The new characters are exactly what you would want them to be, but the options for customising move sets and aesthetics mean that you can tailor your fighting preferences even further. The randomness in survival mode can be hard to take at times, but it's never swallowed without a smile. The Mr.X Nightmare is outstanding fun all the way, and the best sidescrolling brawler in town just got even better.
An attractive JPRG with a hugely innovative central time manipulation mechanic, it seems as though the developers behind the game fell head over heels in love with that element of Cris Tales design at the expense of crafting a world with memorable characters, motivations, places and events. That said, Cris Tales non-linear story and neat use of time manipulation will still hold a fair amount of allure for genre newbies and stalwarts alike.
Where The Heart Leads is a fascinating and enthralling look at life and the full timeline of it and just how every moment shapes us as humans. Marrying gameplay and narrative wonderfully, Armature has created one of the best narrative-adventures ever. Overall, it is a little long and the opening doesn't grab like the end does, but even still, Where The Heart Leads is a journey like no other. It is an experience that I will carry with me as I progress through life.
If you've grown tired of last year's game then you can probably sit this iteration out; for first time players, or those returning after a couple of years' hiatus, Formula 1 games have never felt so authentic, so in-depth, yet so accessible. Slip on your race suit and climb into the cockpit.
Sniper Elite VR is a well designed, well implemented VR shooter. It has a massive amount of options to suit even the most trepid VR gamers. The short levels are well suited to the medium, as they encourage exploration and experimentation, while Sniper Elite VR also looks great, it also sounds good too and I don't think being a sniper has ever been quite so immersive and tactile as this.
Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is a step up for CI Games and the franchise. Running much better than its predecessor and finding the right gameplay formula, the experience is a fun one that allows you to turn your brain off and just let loose, sniping some fools from a cliffside. Whilst not amazing, I am hopeful for the future of the franchise and where CI Games takes it.
With its well designed stealth mechanics, unique setting, captivating story and stifling, often terrifying atmospherics, in A Plague Tale: Innocence, Asobo Studio might well have crafted the best and most pure horror title of the year.
The Eternal Castle Remastered delivers a faithful MS-DOS inspired title. That means it comes with all the issues those games carried with them. If it was simply a visual representation with modern game mechanics, The Eternal Castle Remastered could have been an amazing title, but alas, the broken platforming, melee combat that sees you button mashing until you win an encounter and gunplay that leaves you running for your life more often then holding your ground all conspire to make The Eternal Castle Remastered feel desperately dated. The unique art design is visually appealing, and when the electronic music plays, it sounds incredible. Unfortunately though, it's not enough to save The Eternal Castle from being a below-average title.
DOOM Eternal on PS5 quite simply underscores the already lofty calibre of one of the best shooters ever with a delectable coat of visual polish which keeps id Software's PlayStation swansong ripping and tearing among the very best of its genre contemporaries.
Whether you latch on to the interesting technological tale of Scarlet Nexus or dig into its intricate combat system Scarlet Nexus is well worth your time and effort. It's full of beautiful characters, strange creatures, and plot twists. The camera can be irksome and some of the environments can look dated but overall the experience is a pleasant one. There is a fair amount of content for your hard-earned cash and the game never outstays its welcome. I can recommend it to most players, even people who rarely dip into the JRPG genre, such as myself.
Blackwood brings an intriguing new story full of conspiracy and demonic dangers to The Elder Scrolls Online, and while that's good, it's the addition of Oblivion Portals and A.I. Companions that really make the latest expansion a winner.