Finger Guns

Unfortunately, if you’ve got a mobile phone or PC with an internet connection at hand then you already have access to a plethora of more innovative, more original and simply better Match-3 games that are free to play and will only cost you the amount of time to dismiss an occasional advert. When there are better alternatives with no monetary price, Rune Lord becomes a very hard game to sell or recommend.

A Fold Apart ends before it manages to make the most of its genuinely unique puzzle mechanics. It feels like there should have been another chapter to the game, really diving into the ingenious mesh of puzzle elements that too often require little more than a few seconds of trial and error to solve. The story A Fold Apart tells is a powerful one, unfortunately undercut by the way it is delivered at times but a beautiful piano soundtrack and art style that’s deeper than it first appears helps it stick the landing.

It’s not especially difficult with four players and the light-hearted nature of it all ensures Minecraft fans will find plenty to love. It’s just a shame there’s no sign of the Minecraft’s primary mechanic, which would have been a great addition to the overall experience. It’s a good laugh and as is so often with co-op games, you’ll get the most out of it with your pals/family.

Clocking in at just under 3 hours for a single play through, Gunman Clive HD Collection is a short yet charming experience on PS4. For the first game, the length isn’t so much a detriment because the game flows very quickly and is constantly fresh and fun. The remastered sequel is a far less enjoyable experience, doubling its length but containing some truly irritating or confusing sections.

There’s a lot of laughs to be had here with gaming friends at a party or online – especially around the hilarious ways you can quash, wreck and otherwise dispose of one another – but it does require some fast button presses so don’t come into this expecting it to replacing Super Mario Party at family gatherings any time soon.

If you enjoyed Hyper Light Drifter and like me, you’re a sucker for good pixelart, there are things to like in Resolutiion. It’s got plenty of HLD’s beauty, just little of its charm. Basic combat, an empty world devoid of reasons to return, and some odd design choices, mar its otherwise great potential.

Concept Destruction is instantly accessible a neat take on the Destruction Derby set on table tops with cardboard cars. There’s some odd rules that can cause a headache and there’s not a lot of content here. After a few hours, you’ll have seen everything the game has under the hood. The local 2-player mode is welcome but the game is crying out for an online battle mode.

It may only be single player, but treat it more like the Witcher than a party game: you are the shark, this is your time to rise as queen of the ocean. It may have a slightly bumpy start, as most games of this style do, but once it opens up the world is your… well, ocean. That sounds less dramatic when it’s literal.

Saints Row: The Third Remastered takes a 9 year old game that needed a spruce up, shines it up real nice and blasts it in your face on modern day consoles. The visual improvements here work really well even at 30 frames per second, bringing the game close to todays high standards, but there’s still some aspects of the game that betray its age, namely the NPC AI.

It’s a cracking good time with friends but on your own, it’s a meanderingly frustrating tiresome glitch-filled experience. There’s definitely fun to be had but in a package that still doesn’t feel quite ready for public consumption. It’s well intentioned, but doesn’t quite reach the lofty heights of other party titles on Team17’s bulging books. It’s exactly what it says on the tin;

Dark Nights with Poe and Munro is more of what D’Avekki does well – weird, cheeky, eldritch FMV games that have snappy dialogue and a penchant for the lovecraftian darker side of entertainment. If you enjoyed Shapeshifting Detective or The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, you’ll enjoy what this game does too – more so than those who haven’t.

Troubleshooter is ugly, mechanically shallow, stylistically mundane and lacks any kind of innovation. Without a framing or story to give it meaning, it looks like a hodgepodge of assets thrown together with some barely working systems and mechanics built around them. The design flaws are numerous, the soundtrack irritating and it is quite frankly the worst game I’ve played in 2020.

To summarise, then, Ion Fury isn’t a bad game. In the conventional sense, it’s a very functional shooter reminiscent of the heady days of all the aforementioned titles, with that modern (albeit minimal) sprucing. But it’s so laden down with questionable and somewhat controversy-baiting humour that lets it down a tad.

Metal Fury Slug Unleashed is a fast, frantic and fiendishly difficult combo speedrunner game for players who’ve recently loved (and got really good at) games like Dead Cells, or were able to one-life single-run Metal Slug back in the day, and it’s hard to recommend it to anyone else, even with Easy mode. It’s comic book art-style looks like no comic I’ve ever seen, and its story is a massive missed opportunity that feels unfinished.

It’s certainly an experience to be back in that mindset, with the good and the bad that comes along with it. Your enjoyment of The Eternal Castle will weigh heavily on either having fond memories of the era or wanting to leave it buried. It’s difficult to see how younger players will react to its visuals and punishing difficulty, but it serves as stark reminder that we’ve come a long way, baby.

I’m sure those who loved The Wonderful 101 the first time around will get a kick out of playing this game again on modern day consoles with nicer visuals. For those that hadn’t experienced it before though, this remaster feels like an artifact from a bygone age that couldn’t adapt to a new set of input’s without the Wii U controller. The combat and concept are still sound 7 years on. Everything else needed to be reworked or tweaked further.

You’re going to want a pen and a pad nearby to keep track of your characters, the threads and the keywords you’ll want to search for, and some questionable design decisions hold the game back from being an all-out classic of the genre – with the shocks and twists of Her Story towering over Telling Lies’ endgame – but it’s still well worth exploring if you’re looking for an interactive mystery to untangle.

The small hitches and spotty audio don’t spoil what is an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable narrative. The diverse cast of characters, showing more inclusivity than any other romance visual novel on the PS4, is certainly welcome. Arcade Spirit is tightly written, with only a hand full of lulls, but plenty of heart and a tonne of quirk. While it’s not going to be challenging the greats in the visual novel genre, It’ll surely raise a smile or 10 on your face.

It’s a cyberpunk dystopia, filled with every kind of throwback to what the 80’s thought the future would be, and it’s fantastic. You won’t need to Voight-Kampff me on this one, the sheer grin on my face will prove I’m human when I play this.

To some, a short relaxing spiritual adventure through some lush environments will really appeal. For me, I wanted more than what was delivered. I wanted to be a fox, I wanted that feeling like when I was a wolf in Okami, but clearly there was a lot more to that game than I appreciated.

John Wick Hex isn’t your traditional movie tie-in game. Whereas so many others take a franchise and shoe horn it into a genre, Bithell Games have taken John Wick under a microscope, examined its DNA and gamified the essence of it. It’s an ingenious take on what it means to be the Baba Yaga, an efficient killing machine that’s as human as the next guy but fights like an assassin savant.

I’ll leave you with this. Wavey was so unique and so interesting to watch that my wife, who rarely if ever plays videogames, was tempted into having a go just for the sheer novelty of it. It was a new thing, never encountered before. It took a few levels for her to get the hang of it, just as it will for anyone, but on level five she suddenly got it. She understood the waveform, she could shrink and grow it exactly as she needed to catch the wave.

Away from additional objectives, the new paths to find, there’s not much here that will keep your attention for longer than half an hour. The games origins is in mobile gaming (as part of Apple Arcade) and it shows. I dare say the Switch deserves a far more fleshed out take on the genre than another straightforward mobile port that sadly appears to be clogging up the eShop.

Streets of Rage 4 is not here to redefine the genre. It’s here to give fans something they have waited over 2 decades for and it doesn’t disappoint. If anything it has made me ask the question “why aren’t there more side-scrolling beat-em-ups?”. As soon as the game starts, it’s like you’re meeting an old friend again. When that title sequence starts you feel right at home.

If you’re a veteran of Solomon’s Key and are desperate for more, Ghost Sweeper will provide you with what feels like the levels from the 1980’s classic that didn’t make the cut. The mechanics and enemy types have been recreated with a spit shine for modern TV’s and having a second playable character is a nice touch. Compared to modern day puzzle platformers though, Ghost Sweeper feels like a relic from the past that needed more of a refresh that simply updated visuals.