Press Play Media

After spending nearly two decades in the shadows, Onimusha returns with Way of the Sword, but this is far more than a nostalgic attempt to recreate what worked during the PlayStation 2 era. CAPCOM has effectively used the long absence as an opportunity to rethink the series for a modern action game audience, retaining its fascination with samurai, demons and supernatural weaponry while building the experience around a much more sophisticated combat system. The result is an impressive comeback that feels accessible to newcomers without relying too heavily on familiarity with previous Onimusha games, although it occasionally struggles to make everything surrounding its swordplay as compelling as the swordplay itself. At its best, Way of the Sword is an intense and wonderfully tactile samurai action game; at its weakest, it reveals a certain amount of repetition that prevents the whole adventure from consistently reaching the same heights. Continue reading “Onimusha: Way of the Sword review”

There have been plenty of Star Wars games over the years, but surprisingly few have attempted to combine the galaxy far, far away with the kind of deliberate, squad-based turn-based tactics that XCOM made its own. Star Wars Zero Company is therefore an immediately intriguing proposition, and Bit Reactor has approached that combination in exactly the right way. This isn’t simply an XCOM-like game that has been given blasters, Jedi and familiar alien species to make it feel like Star Wars. The setting, its characters and the tactical systems all feed into one another, resulting in a game that feels like a natural fit for the license while also giving the genre a few ideas of its own. It is an impressive debut for Bit Reactor, although some technical rough edges prevent it from feeling quite as polished as its best ideas deserve. Continue reading “Star Wars Zero Company review (Xbox)”

Dormidin Studio’s Barbarian Saga: The Beastmaster arrives on PlayStation 5 with a fairly familiar pitch for Metroidvania fans, but wraps it in an old-school sword-and-sorcery aesthetic that immediately sets it apart from the genre’s more gothic and fantastical contemporaries. Set in the troubled world of Arborea, the game puts players in control of Ren, the last of the Beastmasters, whose ability to harness the souls and powers of animals makes him central to a new conflict between humans and non-human races. There’s a prophecy, an oppressive kingdom, dark magic and a heart-devouring talking sword, so the ingredients are certainly there for a deliberately pulpy fantasy adventure. Unfortunately, while the setting has plenty of potential and the game wears its 1980s inspirations openly, the actual narrative rarely develops enough personality to make its journey compelling. Ren and the supporting cast tend to feel rather thin, while uneven writing and translation issues can make conversations harder to follow than they should be. The wider framework of optional quests, NPC interactions and multiple endings adds some welcome ambition, but the story ultimately works better as a reason to keep moving through Arborea than as something that consistently draws you into its world. Continue reading “Barbarian Saga: The Beastmaster review (PS5)”

Serious Sam has never been a franchise that needed much of an excuse to throw Sam Stone into another alien invasion, but Serious Sam: Shatterverse at least finds a reasonably entertaining one for its latest spin-off. Uber Mental has fractured the barriers between dimensions and hunted down alternate versions of Sam across the multiverse, leaving the surviving Sams to form a last line of resistance. It is a premise that embraces the series’ long-standing absurdity rather than trying to turn it into something more serious, and the different versions of Sam give Behaviour Interactive plenty of opportunities for visual gags, one-liners and callbacks to the franchise’s past. The narrative itself remains relatively light, however, with the multiverse primarily functioning as a framework for repeated roguelite runs rather than a replacement for the more traditional campaigns the series is known for. The character banter helps give the experience some personality, and the conversations between the various Sams don’t seem to repeat too aggressively, even if not every joke lands equally well. Continue reading “Serious Sam: Shatterverse review (PS5)”