Sam Brooke's Reviews
Death Squared is a solidly fun and challenging experience with friends, and even more so when played as a single-player game. Its lighthearted nature, lengthy story mode, and couch co-op possibilities are all good selling points, but SMG Studios' puzzler suffers thanks to a lack of innovation. Test passed - just.
While it's not as unique or charming as its predecessor That's You, Knowledge Is Power is a solid, fun quiz game for when you've got friends or family around. While it's a little light on actual quizzing, the Power Plays allow for plenty of game-changing moments and inject some tension into the game as everyone scrambles to wipe virtual goo off of their phones and answer first. With another solid game added to its lineup and many more coming over the next few months, Sony's PlayLink service won't be going away anytime soon.
Melbits World is a nice attempt at creating a fun, simple puzzle game suited to PlayLink's smartphone functionality.
Desert Child is stylistically fantastic and has some of the more exciting racing gameplay we've seen this year, but it really suffers from its short length. There's an interesting, colourful world to explore in Olympia, but unfortunately things ends when it feels like Desert Child is just getting started. Still, it's an admirable effort from a talented one-man team.
If you're looking for a complicated game that will take a lot of time to master, then look no further, but if it's a pick-up-and-play shooter that you desire, then World of Tanks isn't Reich for you.
Three ten-hour games in one package might seem good value, but the truth is the Crysis series only hits its stride in fits and spurts until the third game. On PS4 the remastered graphics get better as the series goes on, so there’s no real reason to play the first game unless you’re already a fan or you’re interested to see how Crysis started. Crytek’s series is certainly interesting to dissect as you go through. Consistently fun to play, though? That’s a different story.
Simple but tight, Shadow Warrior 3 is a solid shooter with some occasional flashes of excitement. It's a shame the game's attempts at comedy squeeze the life out of it — and £40 for an eight-hour campaign is barely good value.
Aside from the setting, Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India doesn't make much of an effort to distance itself from its side-scrolling predecessor. While its stealth system works well and its combat feels good, it's just more of the same. The dialogue is dull, the art style doesn't look good at all, and the game just doesn't have much appeal. It's certainly not bad, it's just so bang average that you'll have seen it all before.
Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia Marx the end of the ill-fated Chronicles series, but instead of making a final stand, Climax's latest treads water. While the visual style is pleasant and the atmosphere is strong, attempts to inject the game with innovation fall flatter than the Berlin Wall in 1990, and the title hasn't really got much to offer to fans old or new in terms of stealth or combat. There are far better Assassin's Creed games and far better platformers, so this spin-off has nowhere else to go but the gulag.
Demetrios is a valiant effort from one-man developer COWCAT at reviving the witty point and click adventure game, but ultimately its selling point - the humour - is its downfall. The gameplay is fun and puzzling, the graphics are quirky, and occasionally the dialogue does get a giggle, but the characters are too unlikable and the jokes too obnoxious to make all ten hours (a good amount for a game of this genre) enjoyable.
Mark McMorris Infinite Air gets the fundamentals roughly right and has quite a bit of customisation, but that's about all there is to it. It's a blank, newly laid sheet of snow – fresh and clean, but nothing exciting comes of it.
Playing LEGO Marvel Superheroes 2 is a constant battle between being pulled in by TT Games' charm and being pushed away by the repetitive gameplay. For every excellent moment there are seemingly multiple forgettable ones, but if you can stomach the lows of the story, then there are some fun times to be had. Still, this middling effort shows that the LEGO series is in need of some revitalising changes.
Containing an impressive adaptation of the Isle of Man's Snaefell Mountain Course, TT Isle of Man Racing: Ride on the Edge will be attractive to motorcycle nuts looking for a new experience. But its high asking price, repetitive career mode, and lack of any online community means that everyone else can simply pass this by.
Knowledge Is Power: Decades is still the solid quiz game that its predecessor was, but other than that it's hard to argue a case for its existence. The visual style is fun and appealing, but the format is still too light on questions and there's not much in this year's edition that wasn't already in the original. It certainly does its job, but not much else.
Chimparty is fun in places, but the repetition and occasional frustrations of its minigames means it's not likely to stay that way for long. As a family game it's too fiddly to be enjoyable for a sustained period of time, though its visual style is appealing enough to soften the blows of the substandard gameplay. Mario Party it certainly isn't – hopefully there'll be some better family games coming to PlayLink sooner or later.
Table Top Racing: World Tour feels like it could be a fun multiplayer battle racer, but it falls flat. The gameplay seems stuck in first gear, the races are too quick and easy, and – most damaging of all – the game has no real personality of its own. Sure, it'll probably provide you with a cheap thrill for 10 minutes or so, but look any further, and you'll realise that this is just the chassis of a far better game.
The Voice may have the advantage of branding and licensing, but in terms of gameplay it hits a bum note. The song selection is quite good and has quite a bit of variation, but the fact that only two players can sing simultaneously really detracts from the concept of it being a party game, and the Show mode feels no different to any other karaoke game option.
Though Eko Software has tried to give virtual rugby a breath of life – and in some ways, with a revamped control and camera system, it has – the lack of modes and dismal presentation leave a bad taste in the mouth. At full-price, Bigben is demanding an obscene amount of money for a game that feels years behind where it should be.
London Studio's latest karaoke effort may have a decent Party mode and PlayLink functionality, but its one-note tracklist and lack of four-player functionality make it a poor choice for a party game. SingStar: Celebration certainly doesn't live up to its name, then – it's only marginally more fun than a Jehovah's Witness' birthday bash.
It's such a shame that Kerbal Space Program is so shoddily ported, because underneath its buggy, messy experience lies a fantastically detailed game with plenty for science nerds. The career mode offers replayability and near-endless depth, while the tutorials are hugely helpful in bringing new people into the complex clutches of physics, but its plethora of bugs and some huge design oversights make it very hard to recommend. The gameplay itself shoots for the stars, but its technical problems bring it crashing back down.