Alex Stinton
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Push SquareLatest Reviews
Republished on Wednesday, 10th August, 2022: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of August's PS Plus Extra, Premium lineup. The original text follows.
Republished on Tuesday, 19th May, 2020: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of Mafia III: Definitive Edition. The original text follows.
Republished on Wednesday 30th January 2019: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of February's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows.
Republished on Wednesday 28th March 2018: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of April's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows.
Are we alone in the universe? Whatever the answer ends up being, it has some pretty heavy ramifications across multiple facets of society, such as religion and science. The Station looks to explore these topics by telling the story of The Espial, a space station setup to observe an alien civilisation to determine if first contact should be made. When the facility suddenly goes dark and all contact is lost, you’re sent to find out what happened to the crew and assess the status of the mission.
No one was really expecting that much from Wolfenstein: The New Order when it came out a few years back. It was a nice surprise to find that its bloody, satisfying combat and memorable, well written characters helped make it one of the best shooters on the PlayStation 4. Now that the sequel – Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus – has arrived, many are no doubt interested to see if developer Machine Games could deliver again, and this reviewer is very happy to say that recent proclamations regarding the death of big budget single player titles have proven to be somewhat premature.
Watching Saturday morning cartoons as kid, there was always one thing that bothered us about shows focusing on paramilitary groups such as M.A.S.K. and G.I Joe. No, it wasn’t the fact they were designed primarily to sell toys to impressionable young minds, it was the way none of the teams ever showed up en masse to foil the plans of whichever evil organisation they were up against. Instead, they’d only ever opt to send a few team members (at least one of which would be a laughably over-the-top stereotype).
As one of the deadliest conflicts in human history, World War I had a massive impact on the twentieth century. Not only did both sides suffer an absolutely horrific number of casualties, but the geo-political upheaval it caused planted seeds of division that would resonate throughout the century to come. With the "bad guys" of the conflict widely being viewed as the politicians and military leaders – on both sides – who let the war escalate into a protracted stalemate, it makes basing a video game on the conflict a hard task. While titles such as Valiant Hearts effectively tapped the era to tell emotionally weighty stories, Battlefield 1 – the latest entry in the bombastic shooter series – has taken up this challenge in an attempt to move away from the futuristic trajectory of their competitors.
Shared universes certainly seem to have become a bit of a thing in recent years, and it's easy to see why they're attractive to game developers. Not only do you get the chance to genre jump between games, but you can also immediately pique the interest of anyone who enjoyed your previous efforts. Such is the case with Image & Form's SteamWorld series, which has hopped from tower defence (SteamWorld Tower Defence), to dig-em-up (SteamWorld Dig), and finally to a tactical turn based shooter, with SteamWorld Heist.
If you've played many competitive multiplayer shooters, then you've likely spent far too much time celebrating – or, indeed, lamenting – your kill death ratio. Long has this little number been seen as a barometer of your success in online battles, and this in turn helped feed a steady stream of gamers into the Team Deathmatch grinder, while turning off more casual players. Coming to the end of match only to find yourself consistently propping up the scoreboard is really demotivating, and Overwatch – Blizzard's first foray into the shooter genre – wants to try and avoid this by giving gamers a competitive shooter that's extremely accessible, while still having enough tactical depth for those who want it.