Marvel Rivals

(available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC. PS5 version used for this review)

Marvel Rivals is a new 5v5 shooter, very much in the guise of Overwatch, and it comes at a time where Overwatch has had a steep decline in popularity, and when many live service games are failing miserably- like the previously reviewed Concord, which did so disastrously that a mere week after the review came out, the game was no longer purchasable and access to the game was completely cut off, so that review is entirely pointless now.

Marvel Rivals comes in with some advantages, mainly that it obviously has Marvel characters to work with. Not every single one of your favourites will be here, but there are 33 characters to choose from! What’s good is that Disney didn’t really restrict what characters the developers could choose- I was expecting them to restrict it to just characters in the MCU, but there are plenty of characters outside of that. Most notably, they haven’t done what they did with Marvel vs Capcom Infinite and cut out all of the X-Men characters.

The word was strong with the Beta tests that took place, but now I can officially say that Marvel Rivals is a very good game. It definitely has a lot of different play styles for people to play with, and if you’re used to Overwatch, you could definitely jump into this with no problem, the only difference being that Overwatch is first person, and this game is in third person.

Frankly, I think that they did a very good job updating a genre that hasn’t been doing very well in recent memory, though I do have a few issues with the game.

PROS

• Choice of Characters

I mentioned previously that there are 33 to choose from and not all of them are from the MCU, but there are a few notable missing characters. This game has already been rather successful, so I suspect that we will be getting more down the line. The Fantastic 4 aren’t here for example, and neither is Daredevil, and weirdly you’d think Disney would want to promote the character considering the new film this year, but Deadpool isn’t here! One of his side characters from the comic is though and has become my main to play (that being Jeff the Land Shark).

But the selection is actually quite good! As mentioned, Jeff is a bizarre and out-there choice, but it’s good that he’s here. They managed to get some obscure characters like Cloak and Dagger and Moon Knight (who was obscure until recently), and some Guardians of the Galaxy here too, like Star-Lord, Rocket Raccoon, but weirdly Gamora and Drax are missing.

You obviously have the main Avengers here too, like Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, and Hawkeye. As previously mentioned, the X-Men are here too!

What’s great is that the selection of characters all has unique move sets, and despite the way they look, the move sets can surprise you. For example, Penny Parker from the Spider Verse is in the game, and she plays completely differently to what I was expecting her to be, a complete clone of D’VA from Overwatch. I would urge you to give each character a try, you’ll definitely find a character that’s to your liking.

I would say though, if you want good characters for new players, I recommend picking The Punisher, Jeff the Land Shark, or Wolverine. If you pick Ironfist because you want to get the cheapest kills in the game, just know that I hate you.

• Gameplay

While it’s not incredibly innovative, since again it’s very clear that Overwatch played a big part in the idea for this game, it does still play very well and certainly feels a bit more balanced than Overwatch in recent memory.

Rather like Overwatch, you’re going to be doing only a few different kinds of gameplay, there’s one where you try and take control of a specific part of a map, an escort mode, you get the idea. But again, it reminds me of how good Overwatch was back in the day. I can’t fault it for that.

The controls are very easily manageable, considering how complex some of the characters are, I thought that the button layout might end up causing more confusion, but I personally found it easy to get the hang of. I found it difficult to get control of the flight-based characters like Iron Man, and while that was an issue in Overwatch for me, I do also accept that it only really affects me. I’ve seen plenty of people play those characters well, but it does make trying to kill them with Jeff’s Special Move annoying.

It does make for a staggering amount of content and gameplay for an early live service!

• Character Designs

I actually really like some of the redesigns that the characters got in this game. Jeff is probably the best and most detailed he’s ever looked since his comic appearances which made him look a lot more cartoony.

For the most part, all of the redesigns are pretty cool! Some of them aren’t that crazy, you’re not going to change iconic character designs like Spiderman or Iron Man, but the team did a good job making the new special armour really stand out, and they do hit a good balancing act of making them fit into the gameplay whilst also resembling their comic counterparts.

Some of them are a bit obscure so we were able to go a bit more nuts in the redesigns, certainly Psylocke has had a massive redesign which won’t stand out that much, since not many people remember who she is unless you’ve played Marvel vs Capcom a lot, and you’ve probably forgot which of the X-Men movies she was in..

As a whole, there aren’t any that really bothered me. I didn’t particularly like how Thor looks a lot older than he does in any other incarnation, but the design isn’t offensive at all.

The only issue I did have was that the outfits that are similar to the MCU versions are locked behind a paywall, but this is a free to play live service game, so that is kind of part and parcel, and the prices on them aren’t too absurd, and you don’t have to go through a bunch of loot boxes to get them either.

MIXED

• Maps

The maps are fine, although I do think it’s one of the areas that is lacking. The variety isn’t entirely there. There are some cosmic maps for Guardians of the Galaxy, some Asgardian ones, and Tokyo 2099 is here too, as well as some maps set in Wakanda. I would say as a whole, I think it needed one or two more maps.

I’m staggered that they didn’t do one based around Manhattan considering how much seems to happen in New York in the Marvel universe, but this is what we got.

The maps can be a little generic at times and I would say they don’t stand out as much as its competitor Overwatch, but they’re fine and I grew to enjoy them. More are planned to be added as we go on, so I think that this criticism will be reduced by this time next year.

CONS

• The Overwatch Comparisons are Kind of Distracting

By this, I mean that at some points of the game there are some very distracting moments where you really get the Overwatch comparisons, and they can feel a bit off. Obviously, Overwatch was going to play a big part in this whole thing’s development, but I think you might become distracted with how similar these two things are.

Star-Lord is very clearly supposed to be Tracer, and they even gave him some of Reaper’s moves. Jeff is kind of Mercy and Ludzio, and Hulk is clearly D’VA, Groot is weirdly Mei…

It doesn’t bother me too much, but I do think that there are points where I felt the game was lacking in some originality, and this will become more noticeable if you have played a lot of Overwatch.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Marvel Rivals is a very well put together 5v5 multiplayer. The gameplay is easy to learn but hard to master, the variety of characters really sells it, and it really does fit into the spirit of Marvel Comics. It has its issues, I didn’t think the maps were anything extraordinary, but for a game to have 33 characters at launch is a hell of a lot of content compared to other live service games.

They do plan to release more characters and maps soon, and I hope that they go long term on this once, since I think that it could definitely become one of my regular multiplayer games and replace Overwatch.

FINAL SCORE: 9/10

Super Mario Party Jamboree

(available for Nintendo Switch only)

Super Mario Party Jamboree is the latest in the Mario Party series, developed once again by the studio that has recently been renamed Nintendo Cube. It’s the same usual affair for its main mode, 4 players will compete on a board game and every four turns there is a mini game that will distribute coins, collect the coins to buy stars, and whoever has the most amount of stars by the end is declared the winner.

But for a game that is coming out in the twilight of the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Cube certainly wanted to go out on a bang, because not only is there a ton of mini games, there’s also a lot more boards. If there is one thing that the previous two Mario Party switch games had as an issue, it’s the lack of boards. Jamboree comes with a total of six boards, two of which have to be unlocked.

There’s also a bunch of other modes as well to keep you occupied, so a lack of effort definitely isn’t here- and this is all on top of the fact that we have 22 playable characters! Overall, I can say right now that it’s a very strong multiplayer experience.

It feels like Nintendo Cube (since taking over Mario Party 9) have been fixing issues, and this feels like the culmination of that, though I will say it’s not entirely perfect.

There are several options for the players- button mini games and motion controlled mini games, though the motion controlled games are designed for a single Joycon- if you’d rather play with a Pro Controller or if you’re on the move, you can choose to switch off these motion mini games.

PROS

• Board Designs

As I mentioned, there are six boards in total: five new ones exclusive to this game, and two remake boards borrowed from Mario Party Superstars, those being Mario’s Rainbow Castle from Mario Party 1 and Western Land from Mario Party 2.

The new boards are Rainbow Galleria, Roll ‘Em Raceway, Mega Wiggler’s Tree Party, and Goomba Lagoon.

The two remake boards are pretty good, but it’s obvious that they were from the Nintendo 64 era, and while I do like them (particularly Western Land), it’s very obvious that the constraints from the era means that they don’t fit in with the mechanics from this one.

The new boards, however, have a lot of creativity. There’s a lot of luck-based activity to the boards, particularly in Goomba Lagoon with the volcano, but that’s what Mario Party is like! I really liked Roll ‘Em Raceway. Rainbow Galleria is now one of my favourite boards to date for how clever it is, and I like the fact that they use the shopping centre aspect in creative ways to tie into the board game.

If there’s one board that didn’t really click with me, it was probably Mega Wiggler’s Tree Party, since it felt too basic in several regards and I didn’t really have as much fun with it, but overall it’s the weakest one of a good bunch and I would still put it above any of the boards in the first Mario Party that appeared on the Switch.

• Mini Games Selection

The mini games are actually really good for this one. For one thing, Nintendo Cube had to design these games from scratch- it’s not like Superstars where they were remaking games from the series.

The mini games can be a bit basic at times, but there are some really interesting ones in the mix. One of my personal favourites would have to be the Block mini game, where you create a bridge by trying to pick the best possible path, while trying to anticipate what your opponents are thinking, because if you both choose the same path, you’ll cancel each other out.

If I had to complain, I would say that there aren’t a huge number of mini games, since I did start running into repeats quicker than I would in other Mario Party games, but there was never one that came up that I was disappointed to play.

I haven’t mentioned the motion control mini games, since they’ll be getting their own section in the review, so this only applies to the traditional mini games.

• 20 Player Mini Games

This is a new mode that has been added to Mario Party Jamboree, it’s called the Koopalathon, and it has you playing against 19 other players worldwide. It’s kind of their answer to Fall Guys. You’ll be playing one of three mini games on repeat, at the same time you’ll be earning coins, and your player will be moving across a board- the more coins you get, the quicker you’ll advance. After you get a certain number of coins, you’ll get an item that can impede the character in front of you. After each round of the three mini games selected, you’ll play an Imposter Bowser mini game, where the people who are eliminated will go back by a certain number of spaces depending on their position, and winners will get to stay in place with an extra item for their troubles.

This is one of my favourite aspects of the game for several reasons. One, while there aren’t a large variety of mini games (I think there was about 9 in total), there is a really fun factor of having to concentrate on mini games as well as your positioning, and the Bowser mini games were definitely challenging enough, that there were few challengers that ended up succeeded- I think the most I ever saw in a game was 5!

The fact of the matter is that unlike traditional Mario Party, this is a lot quicker. You can be done in about 10 minutes if you’re playing the five lap mini games, and it’s possible to play this with multiple players. I did test this out when I got into a game with 7 other players against the rest of the team being computer players, and we had a very good time doing it!

While I don’t think it has some of the exact same variety that Fall Guys has, I do think that as a short burst massive multiplayer online game, it succeeds.

MIXED

• Motion Control Mini Games

Okay, the motion control mini games weren’t particularly bad, they just felt tacked on.

They work fine, I didn’t hate any of them, but I found it fascinating that even when I turned on the option they barely showed up! Granted, at that point it was only a 10 turn or a 15-turn game and maybe if it had gone on longer we would have encountered more, but on the games I played it hardly showed up- and trying to play the traditional games with a Joycon is a nightmare.

As a result, after a certain point, I turned off the option. They barely show up, and when they do it’s hardly worth it. I didn’t want to put this in the Cons section because they’re not awful.

• A Few Too Many Modes

Again, this is a similar point. On top of the modes I’ve already mentioned, there’s also the Mini Game Bay, for people who just want to play the minigames- never understood that one personally, but it’s there for people who want it. But there’s also a mode called Bowser’s Kaboom Squad, Paratrooper Flight School, Toad’s Item Factory, Rhythm Kitchen, and then there’s even more modes to unlock on top of that!

I was made aware during the 8-player game that I did, that there was another mode to unlock, and at that point I realised that there were just way too many of these. None of them are bad, but they’re nowhere near as fun as traditional Mario Party of the Koopalathon. I played them about twice but then never went back to them. They’re good for a novelty, but you’ll end up putting them down.

Again, nothing inherently wrong, but I just didn’t really like it.

• No Wireless Communication Multiplayer

Now there is online multiplayer with all of the modes, and it works great- I barely ever experienced any framerate drops. However, one of my favourite ways for my friends to play the previous Mario Party games on the Switch was wireless communication, where all of your Switches in an area can communicate with each other. There’s lots of Switch games that can do this like Mario Kart 8, Pokémon, and even the previous Mario Party. The fact it was in the previous Mario Party games made me believe it would be here, but it’s not available! The only way you can play with multiple Switches is if you all connect to the same Wi-Fi and have a Wi-Fi match, but at that point, you might as well just get all of your controllers together and play on the TV.

However, if you’re trying to play it like that on the go, it’s damn near impossible given the size of the Switch screen. I don’t understand why this feature has been taken off.

• Pro Rules Mode

When you start a game of Mario Party, the game gives you the option to choose between Party Rules and Pro Rules. Word of advice: never pick Pro Rules. I’m sure there are people that like playing it this way, but I’m not one of them. This mode felt like Mario Party with none of the mad fun that comes with it. It removes most of the randomised elements where you land on spaces that do something random, the shops now have a limited quantity of items, and it tells you ahead of time what the Bonus Star is going to be.

I played this mode and while I was enjoying the minigames and the boards, most of the other aspects of the game that had luck aspects in place just drained the fun out of the game. I mentioned this to my friends, and my colleague Elliot made a good point that this feels like the team trying to turn Mario Party into an E-sport. And yeah, you probably could do that, but I don’t see why you would want to!

I immediately just went back into Party Mode and haven’t looked back since.

FINAL THOUGHTS

While I do have some gripes with it, I do want to say that I think that Mario Party Jamboree is one of the best Switch Mario Party games. It has the most creative boards, interesting game modes, as well as good online communication, and even when you don’t have that, the computer players aren’t incredibly dumb.

The minigames are really there, and this was a great multiplayer experience. I do think that the game has too many modes, and the motion-controlled games don’t really add much, but they’re not mandatory so I’ll give them a break. I don’t like that they got rid of Wireless communication and the Pro Rules did nothing for me.

If you like Mario Party, I would recommend getting this one. Even if you don’t have friends over a lot, playing online is a good solution for you because this game has really good online multiplayer and you can play the Koopalathon which is much quicker too.

FINAL SCORE: 8.5/10

Sonic X Shadow Generations

(available for Playstation 5, Xbox Series X & S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X versions used for this review.)

By the time this review goes out, I will be mostly done with live streaming this game, hence why I bought two versions- I was unaware at the time that the game would come with multiple file sizes. You can see some of my fly-by thoughts there. 

Short to say, this is a big year for the Sonic fandom. Not only are there more great products coming out including a new mobile game that will also go to PC, but there will also be the Sonic 3 movie, which will prominently feature Shadow the Hedgehog, hence why Sega have dubbed their initiative this year, ‘The Year of Shadow’. As such, they made the decision to remaster Sonic Generations as well as add extra content for a new game, Shadow Generations- hence the title of this game. 

The game originally came out in 2011, to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Sonic. I still stand by the fact that it’s the best 3D Sonic game. The level design is excellent, the new remixes for the soundtrack are great, I love trying to beat my time on various levels, everything is a joy to go back to; I find myself replaying Sonic Generations more than any other Sonic game, mainly because I saved my disc from the Xbox 360 and it’s backwards compatible on the newer consoles. 

I thought this would be a great addition to give Nintendo Switch users a version of this game, and Playstation users only had access to it via the Cloud gaming servers- which I tried to play, and trust me, you don’t want to play it that way. The lag made that game unplayable. 

If you have played the original Sonic Generations, then half of the game won’t give you anything new. Some of the cutscenes have been slightly altered and there are some new voice recordings with most of the cast returning (though there are some new cast members too), but the big difference is that they have added a new collectible, the Chao. In each level there are three Chao hidden for you to collect, and if you are having trouble finding them, the game does give you hints about where they’ll turn up.

The Shadow Generations segment is where we get most of the new content. It’s a fully single-player Shadow game, showing a side story that he was up to during the events of Sonic Generations and features levels from Sonic Adventures 2 onwards. It’s not much quicker than Sonic Generations, it comes at about 2 hours if you’re breezing through it, and it took me about 3 hours. 

Rather like Sonic Generations, it’s very replayable, especially considering they are not handing out the S ranks so easily. Unlike Sonic Generations, though, they have given a bunch of new powers to Shadow. The basic plot is that he gets brought into an extra part of the pocket  dimension as part of a plan from Black Doom.

Though the game doesn’t provide too much context for what’s happening (though Sega did release an animation on Youtube which acts as a prologue to his story), other than that, the gameplay is very similar. Shadow basically controls almost exactly the same as Sonic, but when his Doom powers are added, it does make replaying the levels very interesting as you can use them to skip some parts of the level and improve your time.

PROS

• Gameplay

The gameplay in Sonic Generations is amazing and it’s carried over well here. The team was smart enough not to alter Sonic Generations, and so Shadow Generations works brilliantly. It’s good fun and is a joy to play! 

All of the levels from Sonic Generations are very good and the level design carries over to the Shadow part of the game which is excellent too, especially considering they had to rework a lot of levels from previous games. I won’t give away what levels those were, since a lot of them were a nice surprise, but suffice it to say that most of the levels and boss fights in Shadow Generations bare more relation to Shadow’s character and his history.

The controls are also great. They did give you the reworked controls scheme from Sonic Colours as a default, but fortunately, you can go into the controls menu and turn it to Legacy Mode, which I did instantly- that’s something that is just muscle memory to me at this point. But either way, whatever control scheme you choose, the whole thing is just buttery smooth, Sonic has never controlled so well. Because they are building off the same idea, Shadow has the same effect too. I didn’t feel any issues with that, and any deaths I got were entirely my own fault.

• Visuals and Performance

Visually, Sonic Generations still looks really good. It runs now at a perfect 60 frames per second. I haven’t played the Switch version so I can’t say how well that one runs, but in my experience, it was really enjoyable to see how this game looks. The Shadow Generations levels do come with an option at the start, unlike Sonic, which has fixed visuals and framerate, Shadow’s was built on more modern hardware, so you can choose between visuals and performance. With this kind of game, you absolutely have to pick performance! Especially considering how fast paced these levels are. However, the game does start you in Visual Performance- change that as soon as you start.

Other than that, the performance is actually better than the original. There were a few instances in the older versions where the game lagged, but that doesn’t happen in this version. For example, the Green Hill Zone Modern stage was terrible in certain stages, but it’s vastly improved this time.

• Soundtrack

It’s a collection of the greatest music in Sonic history, of course it’s going to be amazing. The Shadow stuff does have to rework a lot of other songs, but because of a quirk in the level designs, you’ll hear a lot of Radical Highway. But as a whole, they did a really good job translating these songs and if anything, I think that they did a really good job with the remixes as well!

This was especially interesting in the Shadow section, since they had to rework two songs for each level, one for Act One and Act Two.

• New Hub World

Unlike Sonic Generations which has a simple 2D hub to access the levels, Shadow Generations actually gives you a 3D exploration hub, which feels like a more contained version of the open environments that we got in Sonic Frontiers. However, I think it’s more contained nature isn’t as visually interesting, but it does make exploring and trying out new powers more interesting than I was expecting, especially since I didn’t think it was a good idea originally. 

I did really grow to like the hub world and I think it’s a really good idea. 

MIXED

• Story

This is mainly because the Sonic Generations segment isn’t as great of a story as it was before, which is weird because I feel like it’s one of the more simplistic stories in the series. So that kind of drags the whole thing down.

The Shadow Generations segment is where I think things improved. It does a very interesting exploration of Shadow’s past and where he’s going. It doesn’t need to recontextualise what Shadow’s done since then, because he’s only really been in one game since Generations which is weird to think about… But it does a very good job in getting a sort of closure to a lot of the threads that have been dangling over the character for a long time. Let’s face it, his game on Playstation 2, Xbox, and Gamecube, wasn’t a great conclusion to his story arc, and if anything, this game’s story is what that one’s should have been.

However, there’s one character in the story which still doesn’t sit well with me. It’s when we dive more into Joe Robotnik. Fortunately, they don’t go down the root I was expecting to go down, but I do find it interesting that it seems to gloss over a lot of his worse qualities, especially considering what we know about him by the end of Sonic Adventure 2. 

CONS

• The Time Eater Boss Fight

The boss fights in Sonic Generations are still great, and there aren’t really any flaws in the Shadow segments either, in fact the second boss fight that you encounter might be one of my favourites.

There’s only one boss fight that sucks and even though they had a chance to improve it, they didn’t. It’s still awful! In some ways, I actually think that it’s worse this time around…

They actually tried to respond to the criticism that you don’t do as much as classic Sonic in that boss fight, so they tried to put more emphasis on his grabbing rings. But if anything, that means he’s now more prone to getting hit. It’s not as if this boss fight is particularly hard, it’s just annoying!

The Time Eater is always constantly too far away and by the time you speed up, you’ll do a move that forces you back. I’m so glad I got an S rank at my first attempt on the Xbox, because I don’t want to be fighting this boss multiple times. This boss fight always drags down the game, and it’s not different here. I really think that considering everything, they should have reworked or fixed this boss.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Sonic X Shadow Generations is an excellent remaster, and with the content it’s adding, I think it’s worth a repurchase. The Shadow segments add a lot of extra content, and to be honest I think that the Sonic stuff is fine even by itself. 

I do have some issues with the story, but I don’t want to be drawn in with several right-wing grifters who are making bad faith criticisms about it on Twitter, so I’m very cautious to distance myself from that. My position is that the rewritten lines take away from some of the humour that was good in the original.

I loved the gameplay, I love the soundtrack, it’s visually excellent, and there’s a reason that people still say that this is the best 3D Sonic, and I think that this is the best version of the best 3D Sonic.

Do yourself a favour and pick up this version. Just be prepared for how bad the Time Eater is.

FINAL SCORE: 9/10

Silent Hill 2 (2024)

(available for PlayStation 5 and PC, PS5 version used for this review)

This Silent Hill 2 remake was made by developers Blooper Team in conjunction with Konami and was one of several Silent Hill projects announced last year, as part of a big push for a franchise comeback. The reception was rather mixed, people were worried that there was an over emphasis on combat, and that some of the trailers didn’t make the games look great. I, however, was rather interested to see how all of this was going to turn out.

For the record, I’ll be approaching this mostly on the basis of what this game changes or does slightly differently from the original. Though I do suspect that many people will play this as their first Silent Hill. I will say ahead of time that I think you should play this over playing the HD remakes- but if you have access to a PS2, it’s worth trying out the original before this one.

The story hasn’t changed at all, so if you’re unfamiliar, it is about a man named James who travels to Silent Hill after his wife (who died three years prior) tells him to go- so no questions asked. If you’re not aware of the story and wonder why James would follow something that sketchy, just trust me that it makes a lot more sense in the story, especially in the later parts.

I would stress that I think Silent Hill 2 has one of the best stories of all horror games, and I think that people were worried about what changes the development team would make. But I am happy to say that they change very little, and most of the changes are for gameplay. This one moves to an over-the-shoulder view, similar to the Resident Evil remakes.

PROS

• Graphics in Fidelity Mode

I want to say that fidelity mode is what I’m specifically referring to, as there are some issues with Performance Mode, which is how I played most of the game. But in Fidelity Mode, it looks astonishing, especially the cutscenes.

The excellent motion capture performances have been done very well, and the actors are great too. The environments look really excellent too, and this is a game that can make fog look really good!

I do want to stress, however, that I wouldn’t suggest playing the game in Fidelity Mode as it tanks the framerate. At this point, I would also like to point out that I don’t believe that the game hasn’t received a PlayStation 5 Pro enhancement upon that version of the PS5 coming out.

I will also say that Performance Mode looks fine. It does a really good job, it just seemed that early on there were some issues, like shadows being pixelated. But as a whole, I think it looks really damn good.

• Updated Gameplay

I personally think that the developers have updated this game really well. It retains a lot of the classic Silent Hill puzzle structure and keeps the fact that your character is not that strong.

Despite what some of the trailers that emphasised combat were showing off, you really want to avoid combat! The game is very stingy when it comes to health pickups and you don’t get any of the good weapons until way later in the game, and certain enemies will become the bane of your existence, in my experience it was the dagger wielding nurses that were really deadly to deal with.

And by the way, the monster designs that have been updated are excellent! This is especially the case for the most iconic monster of Silent Hill, Pyramid Head.

I would also stress that one of the great decisions was to keep the difficulty separated between combat and puzzles- you can set the difficulty to Easy, Medium, and Hard on either end. But I will warn, if you choose a difficulty in puzzle mode, you’re stuck with that decision for the entire playthrough, but this isn’t the case for combat.

But because the game makes you want to avoid combat, it makes the time where you need to run away REALLY scary, especially if you’re on low health. I would say this is the case particularly in the latter portion of the game.

• Story

As I mentioned before, the story has been pretty much untouched. Some of the dialogue has had slight changes in the re-recording process, but as a whole it’s pretty much exactly the same.

It does have some slight changes here and there, but it stays mostly intact. Despite the fact that there have been some dialogue changes, some of the iconic lines are still in there. I particularly noticed that a few of them got repeated during the boss fights in the later portion of the game, if you know what I’m on about, you’ll know what lines I’m talking about.

If anything though, I think they tried even harder to make James somewhat likeable, but they also hint at some of his insecurities this time around. I also make note of the fact that he seems a lot less angry this time, and I actually think they did a pretty good job with Eddie, who I think this time around is one of the most interesting characters in the game, especially when you contrast him with James.

MIXED

• Boss Fights

While I do think that they amped up the difficulty in several areas involved in the combat, I don’t think this was the case for the boss fights. The game gives you way more ammunition than usual at these points, and the bosses have very easily readable patterns, so I didn’t feel very threatened by any of them, with the exception of the last two but even then, I only died once on the final boss fights.

If anything, the only boss fight that gave me any trouble was the one at the end of the prison sequence. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does take away some of the fear factor because these bosses are sometimes the easiest things you have to fight.

CONS

• Overuse of Repeated Jump scares

I’m looking at you, the mannequins that don’t set off the radio and then jump out. That got repeated so often that it stopped being scary and just became annoying.

I won’t say that this game isn’t scary, there are some sequences that are really frightening, particularly the labyrinth sequence. But as a whole, I did think that they repeated a few scares too often.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Silent Hill 2 is an excellent remake. If it had a little more polish for the early portions of the game when playing in Performance Mode, and if it didn’t repeat a few of the scares, I would be saying that this game was damn near perfect. I think that it can go toe to toe with the Resident Evil remakes, and I think that the story and performances were top notch. The gameplay was really good, and I think that it did a great job bringing Silent Hill to a new generation. If you’re on the fence, I would recommend picking this up as a first dive into the franchise or as a repeat trip.

FINAL SCORE: 9/10

Visions of Mana

(available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X & S, and PC. PC version used for this review.)

Visions of Mana is the latest in the rather dormant Mana series that Square Enix has owned, with titles like Trials of Mana and Secret of Mana, or as it’s known in Japan, Seiken Densetsu.

Now Square Enix, at the end of the 2010s started to put a bit more of faith in the franchise; they released the Collection of Mana, which not only gave excellent ways to play Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy Adventure (the Gameboy title that’s the beginning of the series), but they also brought Trials of Mana to the US and Europe for the first time ever, and then came out with a remake, which I previously reviewed.

I was actually in high hopes for this title, since it looks like they took onboard a lot of criticisms from the remake of Trials of Mana when this was announced at the Game Awards.

To bring everyone up to speed, I would say that the remake was very good. It had a good combat system, and the story was okay, but some of the voice acting did leave a little bit to be desired- nothing against the voice actors themselves, but it seemed as though they were given some bad direction.

Visions of Mana doesn’t tie into any of the other entries in the series. Rather like Final Fantasy, this is a new story in a new universe, though it maintains some of the frameworks of previous series.

It’s once again an action RPG, where you’ll control a party of 5 who are sort of avatars for the Mana Tree known as Alms, who are travelling on a quest to the Mana Tree in order to offer themselves to maintain the world’s balance. The different classes you can unlock throughout the game revolve around the 8 elements, which you will unlock through time. Of course, it’s an action RPG, so it does tie different abilities through those locked classes- so while some classes have their own abilities that will only be active while playing a subclass, you can bring over some of the powerful attacks that you unlock through upgrading those abilities, though they are tied to the ability seeds that you will get during your adventure.

Visions of Mana is actually a much beefier experience than I expected. You’re looking at around 30 hours for just the main story and 40-50 hours if you want to do extra side content or go for 100% completion, though for various reasons, I’m not sure if I’d recommend that.

I also wouldn’t recommend doing what I did and trying out the demo before you buy it. The demo sticks you straight into the centre of the opening act and doesn’t allow you to bring over your save data to the main game, and it also doesn’t do you any favours with how customisable the characters can be. So, if you got negative reception from the demo, I would say don’t take it too much at face value, it’s a badly made demo.

PROS

• Graphics

I’m pretty sure that this game was built in the same engine as Trials of Mana, but I was surprised at how much of an improvement this game was in terms of looks. Granted, I played the PC version, so I got the full 4K experience with a good framerate, so that probably helped my opinion of the game. I didn’t play it on either PlayStation or Xbox, so I’m not aware of what the experience of the visuals are on those ones- but from what I’ve heard, they aren’t much worse.

The team did a pretty good job modernising the Mana art style. One of the bigger issues I had with the Trials of Mana remake, while I thought they did a decent job, it didn’t feel like they put much effort into modernising those designs from the 16-bit generation.

Because they had a blank canvas this time, they’ve actually managed to make it work a lot better. There are certain sequences in cut scenes that were incredibly visually stunning.

• The Class System

As I mentioned, you get different classes depending on which element you unlock for which character- it basically boils down to some extra class abilities which you can unlock after spending a certain amount of elemental points (more on that later) as well as some extra class abilities.

Each character is really going to be tied down to one of three different weapons, with each class using the same weapons. For example, the moon and wood elemental abilities for one character use daggers, so his combat style doesn’t change up that much, though obviously, there are other elements that make it customisable, for example, adding the ability seeds can really benefit characters that use magic of certain classes. I would recommend unlocking all of the classes for all of the characters, not just because it’s tied to an achievement, but because you might want to swap, especially considering that some of the bosses and enemies that you encounter do have specific elemental weaknesses or even resistances.

I personally really liked this way of doing things, I don’t think it’s as user-friendly as a game like Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which has a very similar system, though I would stress that I did find it enjoyable to mix and match when I was deciding what classes I wanted for which characters. Though in fairness, I made a couple of my choices based on how much I liked certain character’s designs.

• Combat

It’s an action RPG, and it’s very similar in many ways to the Trials of Mana remake, but they definitely took a lot of inspiration from the Final Fantasy games.

You can put a pause on the combat to bring up an ability wheel, and you can also tie certain abilities and items to shortcuts to bring them out much quicker in battle.

The combat is something I would describe as really fluid; I did not hesitate to take up random encounters to grind levels because I really did enjoy testing out different combinations of characters and abilities. It definitely made the game an enjoyable experience.

The boss fights were a bit of a mixed bag if I’m honest, not because they were challenging or difficult but mostly because they were annoying, but as a whole, it’s a really good combat system. I don’t think it’s going to convince anyone who really enjoyed FF7 Rebirth’s combat system, but I thought it was really good.

MIXED

• Story

I mentioned Xenoblade Chronicle 3 on purpose earlier because it definitely reminded me of that game, and I got hints of Final Fantasy 10 as well. Maybe because of the hints of gleeful sacrifice, which those two games do play as themes.

I’ll obviously avoid spoilers, but I will say that there were a few times where it didn’t entirely work. The characters get pretty good arcs when they’re first introduced, but after that, it’s just the main character’s story and they don’t have much to do in terms of the plot.

While it does have interesting themes, it never quite capitalises on them. That’s not to say it’s a bad story, I actually thought it was pretty enjoyable, I just didn’t think it was as engaging as the writers wanted it to be.

• World Size

I don’t think people will enjoy the world size on this one. I didn’t think it was too bad, I don’t want every game to be a massive open world traversal game, but I was surprised at how often I repeated areas, especially considering that only some areas have access to fast travel and you can’t fast travel between continents, something that I think was a massive mistake, since it cuts off areas until you get the ability to travel at sea.

CONS

• Easy Difficulty

The exact same problem I had with Trials of Mana is back with this one: it is still TOO EASY! I played this on Normal difficulty, but it might as well have been easy- I didn’t die once! I don’t even think turning up the difficulty helped that much, I had to really go out of my way to see a Game Over screen by challenging enemies that were much higher levels than me by accident.

What I found interesting was that when I tried this again later on, even with a five to ten level difference I was able to win fights consistently. The boss fights did give me some challenge, but this was more out of annoyance than difficulty that I mentioned before. I still won all of the boss fights.

If you’re looking for a challenge, you really need to turn up the difficulty. While I think it’s good for beginners looking for a good RPG, I think it can be off putting to the RPG players that like a challenge.

I also think that when you make a game too easy it can often make you feel like you’re on autopilot while playing. Thankfully, it never got that bad, but I felt the need to mention it.

• Side Quests

I didn’t like doing any of the side quests, they are really, really dull. Some of them are a bit cryptic, for example, some of them say to kill a certain number of monsters and you’ll have to look up where in the world to find those kinds of monsters.

While I did enjoy the combat, the side quests felt like they were time wasting to grind levels. None of them offer interesting stories or really interesting ways to explore the world, I again think back to games like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 which had a similar dynamic, but those side quests were really good, and I did all of them!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Visions of Mana is a really good game, but I think that it’s lack of difficulty and tedious side quests hold it back from being a great game. That being said, I would recommend it if you wanted to get into the Mana series. While there are a few references that only fans of the series will understand, as a whole it’s really enjoyable and newcomer friendly.

The combat is great, the storyline has its issues but it’s serviceable, and I think it’s a really good-looking game, and I hope Square Enix makes more of them if they hadn’t significantly dismantled the studio that makes them upon its release.

Nevertheless, I want this game to sell well because I want Square Enix to take advantage of their lesser-known RPGs so we can get new entries in these series.

If you like good action RPGs made by Square Enix, this is a good one to try out, but as I said, if you want any sort of challenge, you need to turn up the difficulty.

FINAL SCORE: 8/10

Astro Bot

(available for PlayStation 5 only)

Astro Bot is the latest game from Team Asobi, one of PlayStation’s few remaining Japanese studios. The team previously worked on the VR demo Astro Bot Rescue Mission, as well as the PlayStation title Astro’s Playroom- which if you’ve done everything there is to do on that game prior to buying this one, you can now go back into that and get a few extra collectables for this game, though they don’t tie into any trophies and are purely optional. 

This game, unlike the previous two, isn’t a tech demo- this is a full release for the team, and it does take most of the controls from Astro’s Playroom, and you’re playing a basic platformer for the most part. It’s basically punches, kicks, and occasionally you’ll have to float over enemies to do a kind of feet-laser attack.

The gameplay is incredibly good! This might be a basic platformer, but there are a lot of creative ideas here. You don’t have to have played the previous games to enjoy this one, but I think it helps. 

You’ll be doing various levels across five galaxies, each culminating in a boss fight, and of course, each of the levels have collectables, which I would recommend getting, since parts of the game are blocked off without them; you need to get the puzzle pieces for the various facilities and some of the areas and boss fights are locked behind rescuing a certain number of robots in each mission. The level tells you exactly how many there are, including the special robots, and because of the way they’re ticked off, it’s easy to find out where the ones you have missed are in the level.

The plotline is pretty simple, the PlayStation 5 Space Station that Astro is piloting gets ripped apart by an alien bully who then steals a CPU and scatters the parts across various galaxies. Astro now has to rescue all of the robots that have gone missing as well as fix the PS5. Personally, I really enjoyed the game, and this is going to be a bit of a gush fest.

PROS

• Gameplay and Controls

I set out what the gameplay is mostly centred around, but there’s so much to do exploring these levels. I just loved going to each of the planets to see what creative ideas the team had. I should probably lump the level design in with this point, since they are all designed expertly, including some of the levels that you get through just exploring galaxies and hitting comments (you can get some extra levels that way that act as sort of challenges, including more difficult ones which are centred around the buttons on a PlayStation controller).

There are tons of great ideas and creativity, including some temporary power ups that you get for each of the levels that I don’t want to spoil, but it all has a great level of interactivity that the Playroom tech demo had as well. 

I can’t think of a single level where I thought, ‘Oh, that one didn’t work well’, or ‘that one didn’t have a great idea behind it’; they just worked so well and were so well put together.

• Use of the DualSense Controller

The controls in this game are fantastic, everything controls very buttery smooth, and I have no issues- but while many games have done a pretty decent job working with the DualSense controls, this has been the best use of it so far. The haptic triggers are done very well, the rumble really adds to the levels, and it uses the speakers in the controller- it even uses the microphone too in a way that hasn’t been used in any PlayStation 5 game (as far as I’m aware).

• Visuals

Astro Bot is a brilliant looking game. It just looks so bright and colourful, and all of the various creative designs have translated very well to the Astro Bot universe. You also don’t need to go into the settings to choose between Performance Mode or Fidelity Mode- this game runs at 4K 60FPS on a base PS5. This is a game where you’ll get the best visuals and framerate without having to upgrade to the seemingly unnecessary PS5 Pro.

• PlayStation History Celebration

Sony has never really done a celebration of their own history compared to the likes of Nintendo with their games like Smash Brothers, they tried something similar with PlayStation All Stars, but they’ve never quite hit that note. Astro Bot is the closest they have ever come, and this is mainly down to the special robots who are each dressed up as a cameo character from PlayStation history.

There are 300 bots in total, 150 of them being cameos. I don’t want to spoil what some of them are, but I will stress that they are all decently easy to spot, but you might end up missing a few of them and having to repeat some levels, but getting all of them makes the need of the game so much better. 

If you do end up missing any of them or any of the puzzle pieces or even the secret exits that lead you to the secret galaxy levels (which are some of the best in the game), you can pay 200 coins at the start of a level which gives you a bird which helps you to find them.

There are some obvious choices in there, and it is great to see them in action, particularly when you unlock the gacha machine which unlocks some puzzle pieces, and eventually you will unlock an item which makes them perform actions from their respective games. You get some amazing results, especially if you punch them at the crash site.

Man, they didn’t just get the first party stuff, there are some third party characters to, some of which I really wasn’t expecting to show up, and it really feels like a celebration of the history of the company as we approach their 30th anniversary, It really reminds me of the trophies in Smash Bros, and I don’t say that likely, I always looked forward to finding a new cameo bot, but I will say that some of them, were so obscure that I had to look up what games they were from! 

You really had to be deep into PlayStation lore to know what some of them are from. And it wasn’t just the classics or recent games either, there are characters from throughout PlayStation history, and a few of them even get special levels dedicated to their games, one from franchises that started on each of the individual consoles on the lead up to the PS5, and they were awesome to play.

• Soundtrack

Astro Bot has an excellent soundtrack, and some of the soundtrack is carried on from the previous Astro Bot games, but even the new stuff is excellent too. I was glad I got the deluxe version which meant that I got access to the digital artbook and the soundtrack, because I did actually go back and listen to a few of the songs after I got the platinum trophy. 

MIXED

• Backtracking and Repeating Levels

I put this in because it didn’t really bother me too much, but I could see it bothering people. If you’re going for 100%, you’re going to have to repeat some levels. It’s not as if there are branching pathways and some of the bots require being rescued, but you may discover the secret exit before you rescued all of the bots and have finished the level, so you may have to go back and get the robots that would have gone past that point. Though some levels did have the secret exit past the point of all of the collectables. 

I did mention that you can get a Bird Bot that helps you to get anything that you missed after you completed a level once, so this didn’t really bother me too much in general. It didn’t feel too much like busy work until I was getting the last few trophies for the platinum, but to be fair not everyone is going to want to do that and it’s my fault I didn’t get them when I played the levels previously. 

Though I will stress I rarely had to follow a guide, there were only a few trophies towards the end that I needed a guide for. I will say that getting all of the collectables is worth it, especially for that final sequence. The only thing is though, if you don’t want to repeat a bunch of levels very often, you might be a bit annoyed. Again, some levels do require it because of the different exits.

CONS

• None!

I really couldn’t think of anything to put in this section! I was wracking my brain but there wasn’t anything that I would count as a complete downright negative, so I just settled for the repeating levels in the Mixed section. I can’t say it’s the game length because I think 15 hours for a 100% is a really good length of time, though it did leave me wanting more, which is going to be answered sometime later this year or next year with DLC that has already been confirmed.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Astro Bot is one of the best games on the PlayStation 5 and you absolutely should pick up a copy if you have a PS5. I admit that this is a game that feels more catered to me and not everyone might have the same experience, but I really, really liked this excellent platformer that feels like a spiritual successor to Mario Galaxy. It’s a great celebration of PlayStation’s history and I just loved every moment of playing it, and I can’t wait for the DLC to come out.

This is visually, audibly, and interactively a brilliant experience.

FINAL SCORE: 9.8/10

And now Reece’s review

Astro Bot is mascot platformer game for the PlayStation 5, and serves as a direct follow-up to Astro’s Playroom, launch title of the PS5. The game sees Astro embark on a mission to repair the damaged PS5 spacecraft by collecting pieces of the console from across the 6 main zones of the game called Nebula. Along the way the player is tasked with collecting the scattered members of Astro’s crew who were lost when the ship was damaged. There are a total of 301 bots to rescue with over 160 of them being references to various games from PlayStation’s 30-year catalogue.

Pros:

• Graphical fidelity.

Graphically Astro Bot is the best-looking game on PS5. Not only does it have a cute flawless art style that ages perfectly (As evident by Astro’s playroom still looking gorgeous and that was a launch title) but I never.

noticed any jagged pixels or edges from the anti-aliasing mechanics. The game ran at a dynamic 4K for my play through with HDR activated and even when the screen quality dipped slightly in more hectic and action-packed sections, it wasn’t that noticeable since the frame rate remained locked at 60fps and the image quality would nearly instantly jump back up to 4K.

• Frame rate.

During my play through I never saw the game drop below 60fps as it remains consistent during the entire time playing. Even when first loading into the massive worlds or numerous bosses to the times when the players screen is flooded with physics-based objects that all render and move separately in real time.

• Level design.

There are 80 levels spread across the games 6 main nebulae that feature a wide variety of environments from grass plains to volcanic Badlands. Players will rarely see the same type of environments outside of the symbol challenge levels that act as a mix of all environments and hazards to get to the end. Even the bosses tie into the level design and environments, as Mighty Chewy is a giant robotic gorilla who inhabits a skyscraper city landscape that he jumps between to get around the level, acting as a homage to King Kong and his rampage through New York with the finale of his fight taking place with him hanging onto the side of a building like King Kong did on the Empire State building. Players will enjoy the sheer amount of variety in the levels, as most even had Astro.

specific gimmicks with the power ups Astro can acquire on select levels. This was a highlight for me when playing on the Casino level with the ability to slow down time around Astro as everything in the Casino moves at a blistering pace that can’t be navigated normally. So, the level design ties into the environments as with the previous mentioned Casino.

level featured in the trailers, it sees the Players navigating across huge gambling machines and dealing with enemies that tie into the level design and environment as they can fire playing cards like you see from Blackjack or Poker in a typical Casino, which the player can stand on in frozen time to act as platforms and navigate the rest of the level.

• Loading times.

Just like Astro’s Playroom the sequel has incredibly fast loading times considering how vast and detailed all the levels are. Even when the player dies as Astro in non-boss fights due to the 1 hit point the

player has, the reload from a checkpoint only lasts a second before the player is back on the action again. This means however, that death is not that big of a deal due to the fast loading of the game, unless the player is playing one of the symbol challenge levels or the final level in the game. Where if they die once, they have to restart from the beginning of the level, but the restart is quick no matter the scale of the level or how far the player progressed, as it will be near instantaneous.

• Boss fights.

The big new highlight of this game compared to Astro’s Playroom is the new bosses that serve as the end for each of the various nebula that Astro travels through and also the occasional mini boss in several of the worlds. While not difficult to beat The bosses are all visual feats that impact the boss arenas to make all their fights dynamic and never dull, that players of any ability should be able to defeat with little trouble and instead focus on the amazing boss music that players with each boss having their own distinct music track. The first major boss is a returning boss from Astro’s earlier game in Rescue Mission with the giant gorilla Mighty Chewy who features in earlier missions tearing through the construction worlds before the player confronts him in his boss arena. Then when the player defeats him by destroying his eyes and teeth, they become physics-based objects and during the rest of the fight Astro can move his destroyed body parts round the rest of the area with full physics mechanics.

• Throwback levels.

A new feature to this game is the throwback levels that sees Astro take on the form and powers of certain PlayStation icons from over the series 30-year history. The one that most players will know is the God of War throwback level that has been featured in all the trailers and see Astro take on the appearance of Kratos along with gaining possession of his Leviathan Axe. So not only do you have a change in appearance but the new weapons Astro receives in throwback levels also change level design since the Leviathan Axe allows Astro to freeze enemies, solid for additional platforms but also to throw the axe like Kratos does to interact with the environment to open up new platforming pathways but also to hit collectibles in the levels.

Con:

• Battery drain.

I was really struggling to think of a negative to this game with the only one that came to mind was how intensive the haptic feedback from the controller is. But if the player plays with the controller charger plugged in or turning the haptics off then this downside is mitigated. I would not recommend turning them off though, as they add so much enjoyment to

the experience as the player can feel the different textures of the ground that Astro walks over and with certain later mini games.

Conclusion:

Easily the best game currently on the PS5 and I would recommend it as the first game for any person wanting to enter the world of gaming.

I could not think of any major flaw with the game aside from a minor issue with the haptics draining the battery quickly, but that can easily be solved by just turning the haptic feedback off and enjoying the game for longer sessions. Astro Bot is a game that is a love letter to gaming as a whole and a celebration of PlayStation and it’s 30 year history, and while it takes heavy inspiration from Super Mario and Kirby games it brings enough new to the platforming genre to stand apart and is undoubtedly the best platformer game on PS5 and I would recommend players get the Platinum trophy for the game as it only took me 15 hours without a guide.

Score: 10.0