From the moment Crisol: Theater of Idols opens its creaking gates on PlayStation 5, it announces itself as something different from the usual survival horror fare – a hybrid of methodical exploration and first-person action that wears its inspirations proudly but adds its own, sometimes blunt, identity. Developed by Vermila Studios and published by Blumhouse Games, this Spanish-rooted journey into the cursed isle of Tormentosa doesn’t just borrow from classics; it fuses familiar mechanics with a uniquely baroque aesthetic that makes it impossible to ignore. Continue reading “Crisol: Theater of Idols review (PS5)”
Developer interview: No Stone Unturned
Gareth Owens – a onetime film-and-TV writer who cut his teeth with studios from Aardman to Pinewood before founding Wise Monkey Entertainment – has spent the last few years turning a lifelong love of British whodunits and absurdist comedy into something delightfully strange: No Stone Unturned, a comedy‑noir detective RPG game that casts an amnesiac squirrel, Detective Cox, as its hard‑boiled protagonist and stitches together murder mysteries, bespoke mini‑games, and theatrical puppetry‑inflected performance into a single, mischievous package. The game wears its influences proudly – Columbo and Jonathan Creek meet surreal animal farce – but it’s also unmistakably Owens’: part escape‑room puzzle design, part cinematic storytelling, and all pointed, playful weirdness aimed at making players laugh while they peel back a much larger mystery beneath the village’s quaint surface. Continue reading “Developer interview: No Stone Unturned”
One Battle After Another review (BluRay)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another on Blu-ray is as audacious and kinetic a cinematic experience as the award season buzz around it suggests. The film charts its own course: ex-revolutionary Bob Ferguson, long removed from the fervor of his younger days, lives off-grid with his fiercely independent daughter, Willa. Their uneasy stability shatters when the obsessive military officer Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw re-emerges, seeking revenge for past humiliations and dragging the pair into a maelstrom of pursuit and conflict. What might have been a straightforward chase narrative becomes instead a sprawling, often surreal exploration of ideology, identity, and the inherited legacies of rebellion, with father and daughter each navigating their own battles in a world quick to resort to violence. Continue reading “One Battle After Another review (BluRay)”
High of Life 2 review (PS5)
From the moment High on Life 2 kicks off, Squanch Games’ sequel makes it abundantly clear that it wants to be bigger, weirder, and more audacious than its predecessor, doubling down on the franchise’s trademark absurdity while trying to knit its off-kilter humor into a more varied game structure. The narrative premise – returning you to the role of a celebrity bounty hunter dragged back into intergalactic chaos to save someone close to you – sets the stage for a road trip through some of the most bizarre backdrops in recent shooter memory. Story beats are punctuated by parodies of nerd culture and unexpected twists that keep the tone unpredictable, and while the script isn’t uniformly sharp – leaning at times on broader jokes rather than clever wit – it does an admirable job expanding the universe without merely rehashing its foundations. Continue reading “High of Life 2 review (PS5)”
MindsEye review (PS5)
MindsEye’s a great example of believing in something and going for a second chance. When it landed back in June, it became shorthand for how not to launch a AAA action-adventure. Ambition hung heavy over its dusty near-future desert city of Redrock – a place where rogue AI, corporate greed, and fractured memories promised a techno-thriller on par with the big cinematic adventures of the genre – but the reality that greeted players was far more prosaic and, frankly, broken. Build A Rocket Boy, a studio helmed by industry veterans, looked as if it had delivered a triple-A spectacle on paper, yet what slipped out the door was a product beset by stuttering performance, glitchy AI, and missions that felt lifted from a decade-old template. Critical and player sentiment was deeply negative in the weeks after release…
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