Includes PushSquare
Last reviewed: Mina the Hollower · 5 days ago
A referential and joyful deep dive into the world of Batman, the latest LEGO effort from TT Games is elite brick gaming. Legacy of the Dark Knight just wants to be an enjoyable time, and it refuses to falter from that commitment. This new LEGO Batman will be some of the best fun you have all year.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is an excellent action RPG that offers an even more hardcore take on the increasingly popular Soulslike formula. It's fast, frenetic, and hits like a truck, with one of the most mesmeric combat systems we've ever had the pleasure to master. It might scare off more casual players, but those looking for a challenge, well - you can stop looking.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Final Vendetta wears its heart on its biceps: it’s a burly and brutal beat-‘em-up that serves as a love-letter to the 16-bit greats from a bygone era. Ass whoopins have never felt quite this good.
While a PS5 version of Resident Evil 3 could never rectify the glaring issues of the PS4 remake — cut content, very short run time — it does at least shine bright with ray tracing implementation and a native 4K resolution. Capcom was simply trying to make Resident Evil 3 look and run better on PS5, and it at least achieved that.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is a superb beat-'em-up that captures the spirit of Konami's coin-op classics, but modernises them in all the right areas. With smooth combat, gorgeous presentation, and rock-solid rollback netcode, it all adds up to deliver a super fun experience.
Capcom hasn't gone to any great lengths with its updated PS5 version of Resident Evil 2, offering fans and newcomers two imperfect graphical modes to choose from. Very speedy load times will have you immersed in a flash, though, and the support for the PS5's adaptive triggers adds another extra wrinkle on top. Resident Evil 2 is still every bit as good as it was three years ago; this PS5 version simply gives you the chance to experience it all over again with further shine.