Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge (PS5): COMPLETED!

A PS5 game? How rare! But yes, this game was on my Switch wishlist for a while waiting for a decent sale, but then it recently appeared on PS++++++ as a free rental so I played it there instead. It felt wrong, somehow, even though it’s on the same TV the Switch version would have been played on. Went through the game with my daughter. I was Mikey, she was Don, and it was great. It’s a proper sequel to …

Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS5): COMPLETED!

I talked about this a lot more on the ugvm Podcast, but for those who don’t listen (who even are you?), here’s a written account instead. Firstly, I want to point how how bad I thought the Little Big Planet games are. As toyboxes, as creation tools – they’re great. Clunky, but great. As actual platformers? Awful. Some really great ideas, totally ruined by stupid controls and physics and wonkiness. For this reason, I never even looked at Sackboy: A …

Biomutant (PS5): COMPLETED!

I do wonder sometimes what it is that makes me decide to play certain games. I’d cast a rough eye over reviews of Biomutant around the time it came out and it seemed to be an average open world adventure/explorey game, so ignored it. It’s now on PS+ (or possibly PS++ or PS+++: It’s hard to tell these days) and I downloaded it for reasons unknown, then started to play it. After picking the fur colours for my… rat? Meerkat? …

Earth Defense Force: World Brothers (PS5): COMPLETED!

I’m a fan of the EDF games, with their Massive Ants and Massive Wasps and Massive Robots and Massive Space Ships. I was intrigued by this, Minecraft-y looking entry into the series, but the problem with EDF games is they cost money and don’t often drop to Super Cheap, so I never got round to buying it. And I still haven’t, because it appeared on PS+! I thought the only real difference between this and the others in the series …

Toem (PS5): COMPLETED!

This looked like a lovely wee game when I saw it appear on the Switch eShop, so because I’m morally against paying full price for anything these days I put it on my wish list in the hope of a sale. And then, it appeared on PS+, saving me even more money! It’s a unique looking, black and white 2D characters in a 3D world game with a hand-drawn style, which is why it originally stood out to me. For …

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 (PS5): COMPLETED!

I’ve been eyeing this up for ages but it never really went cheap enough. Sure, I’m a fan of the series (although THPS3 is the best one), but I couldn’t bring myself to pay more than £20 for it. Then PS+ gave it away as a free rental, finally, so here we are. It’s a remake of the first two THPS games, mostly as I remember them, only in much higher resolution and with some of the music missing because …

Pile Up! Box by Box (PS5): COMPLETED!

No, I have no idea why I downloaded this, but then I discovered it was multiplayer co-op so played through it with my family. It’s a cute, relatively simple, platform puzzle game. Most of the puzzles relate to the height or distance you can jump, and manoeuvring or stacking objects (or your co-op partners) to reach buttons and switches and so on. There are springy things and floaty things, fans, fences you can burn, other characters you need to help, …

Moving Out (PS5): COMPLETED!

This is one of those intentionally obstructive co-op arcade games like Overcooked, and it has a similar art style and sense of humour to that game too. But, it’s a lot easier and I (well, we – daughter was on controller 2) had more fun with it. The aim is to clear a house of (mostly) furniture, by carrying it to the waiting lorry and packing it all in so it fits. Smaller items, like toasters and boxes, can be …

Stray (PS5): COMPLETED!

The first game to be “free” with the new higher tiers of PlayStation Plus on the day of release, Stray was a lovely surprise. I knew it existed, so I don’t mean like that, and it was announced to be coming to the service a while back. No, what I’m referring to is the gameplay, the setting, and just how good it is. Until downloading it, my interested was “ooh, a cat game? That might be fun”. But it’s so …

Minit (PS5): COMPLETED!

Another PS+ free rental, but a game I’ve nearly bought more than once elsewhere and actually own on PC (but I don’t have my Steam Deck yet to play it on!). Minit’s “thing” is that it’s a Zelda-ish game only you die every sixty seconds. Or sooner. And then you start again. However, some things are persistent and you do reach respawn points and open shortcuts so dying isn’t really an inconvenience. There’s a plot about having to go into …

I Am Dead (PS5): COMPLETED!

With PS+ Premium comes a huge number of games you can “borrow”. A few of those are titles I was eyeing up to buy on the Switch, so I suppose I’ve saved a bit of money now I’ve got them on my PlayStation “for free”. I Am Dead is one of those. It’s a hidden object game with a story and some quirks. Firstly, you’re dead (but then you surely guessed that from the title), and with the help of …

Sparkle Unleashed (PS5): COMPLETED!

A while back I played that Zuma clone Sparkle 2, and it was pretty good. Well, I recently got a free trial of PSNow to preview what the upcoming PS+ changes might be like, and the original Sparkle was on there and so I gave it a go. The only real difference between this and Sparkle 2 is that in that game you have the launcher in a fixed point but can rotate 360 degrees and shoot balls that way …

Spider-Man: Remastered: The City that Never Sleeps: Turf Wars (PS5): COMPLETED!

Although it is sort of its own story, this chapter continues on from the previous DLC. The Maggia are getting more dangerous what with Hammerhead nicking all the high tech Sable weaponry and outfitting himself with some impressive armour. There’s a new set of Screwball challenges too.

Spider-Man: Remastered: The City that Never Sleeps: The Heist (PS5): COMPLETED!

That’s more colons than a tin of cheap dog food. I won’t go into the mechanics of this DLC chapter as they’re the same as in the main game, but the story is much more low-key than what went before. It follows the return of Black Cat and how the Maggia (definitely not the Mafia) are resurging into Manhattan to fill the void left by Kingpin’s incarceration and how one of the Maggia family dons, Hammerhead, is trying to seize …