DeVuego

Aside from some decent presentation, Curse of the Sea Rats doesn't do much to innovate the crowded metroidvania genre but it's a solid example of the genre and provides a degree of fun to go with some of the frustration.

Overall though, this is a pretty good game.  It’s not quite up there with the best in class (Mantis Burn Racing) but it offers a rewarding racing experience.  While progression is a little slow in the game we did appreciate the varied tracks and thought that the rally mode was a clever addition.  The couch multiplayer was a mandatory addition of course but works well here.  So, all in all, this is a pretty decent racing throwback.

In starting up writing this review, I had a softer attitude to it and was considering even going to a 4 for the final score but when you lay out all of the game’s flaws, each of which is entirely obvious and should have been picked up in playtesting (this isn’t even a one-man studio, there are plenty of names on the credits), then honestly, you can’t justify anything higher than a 2.  If they had nailed the story, that might have helped but even that is hard to follow (thanks mainly to it all being via text unless you speak Spanish).  There is potential here but it’s a million miles from being realised.

So while we can get behind the core character-switching, puzzle aspects, Nuclear Corps probably would have benefitted from a few hundred hours of playtesting and maybe a couple of decent coders on the team.  Instead it feels like what it is, a good idea let down by poor execution.

The basic gameplay of Indigo 7 is a good mixture of lesser-seen mechanics with a traditional puzzle game feel. That said, it isn't particularly intuitive once you get past the basic colour matching and into the combo building. It's not that it doesn't work but it definitely doesn't work brilliantly. As such, the game feels like a struggle to play rather than one that is easy to play but hard to master. Some of the variations on the main mode are good though but if this was ever going to work, somebody would have made it years ago.

If you’re going to take a classic, heavily-populated genre then you’ve got two choices.   You either make it spectacular or you make it simple but perfectly playable.  Jade’s Ascension does neither.  It’s slow, unexciting, flawed and the exact sort of thing that we didn’t want to close out the PS4 era with.  If this came out in this form twenty years ago on the PS1, it would have been forgettable then.  On a PS4 this is really without merit.

Tamiku borrows heavily from a few arcade classics but manages to do its own thing and that is admirable but this simple platformer is over pretty quickly. Not bad for the price but not a game that'll last in the memory.

Super Soccer Blast is the best budget football game on the system and one that offers some old-school footballing fun for those of us who remember the pre-FIFA days fondly but a lack of finish, and some technical issues, spoil the party a little.

Taito have done great things with the Space Invaders series so copying the original and ignoring the brilliant sequels seems kind of lazy. If you want cheap platinums while looking at something that kind of looks like a MAME rom then this will serve that function but if you want anything approaching a good game then this isn't for you.

Ultimately, this is a game that leaves us feeling conflicted.  The controls and, to some degree, the visuals are enjoyable but this gameplay and concept deserves a better, more substantial game.  We like short games, especially on PSVR where it can be uncomfortable to stay in the headset for too long, but this is really a twenty minute game with a couple of minor hurdles that may extend your stay a little.  Anyone’s Diary is impressive but it’s just not particularly good.

With the right friends, Melbits World is a cute and clever exercise in collaboration and coordination that offers more than just a gimmicky control system and some sweet presentation but the very young and the jaded old might not get much from it and solo players aren't catered for at all.

In the end, most of Stay‘s story is worth seeing and the originality of the premise definitely deserves praise but the puzzles and pacing of the game really let it down and mean that the game doesn’t really do justice to the idea.  We want to like the game more than we do but we probably like it more than it deserves.

Demon's Crystals is a twin-stick shooter that does little to stand out from the crowd. It has a degree of confidence and charm but the gameplay is so thin that it makes the game impossible to recommend.