Category ps4

Secret Neighbor Party Game by Arcane Wonders is here to make your next party deceitful!

Video game players have known about the naughty Neighbor for many years from TinyBuild, but did they know there is now a party card game? Thanks to a partnership with Arcane Wonders the Secret Neighbor Party Game is here. Arcane Wonders sent us a review copy to enjoy with the family and friends. With a global pandemic playing a game with the family is much easier than with friends or both.

In the Hello Neighbor franchise players try to avoid the Neighbor and sneak around his property, trying to uncover just what dark deeds he is up to. In the party game players take the roles of either the Neighbors or the kids. As kids you must manipulate others to get the keys. If they use all of the keys to unlock the basement then the kids win.

While attempting to procure the keys kids must collect cards in triplicate in order to use their powers. Secretly though Neighbors will be posing as children to undermine their efforts or steal the keys for themselves. If a Neighbor gets the key and the majority votes to use them and they refuse to do so then the Neighbors win.

The game was more fun than I expected. Party games have a tendency to feel tedious but the game was fluid, easy to pick up and everyone found it enjoyable.

Chronos: Before the Ashes is the latest Role Playing Game from Gunfire Games.

Chronos: Before the Ashes follows a young hero as they navigate the labyrinth to destroy the dragon that guides the monsters bent on destroying humanity.

The game begins with an old woman telling a story about why you are chosen and what it is you were chosen to do. She tells the assembled group that the people were once plentiful and then one day the beasts came. A chosen hero will travel through a portal, the source of the beasts, find their way to the dragon and either kill the dragon or die trying. Having never seen the game’s trailers and after seeing this intro I made the assumption that based on the name it would follow some of the ancient Greek myths. That was before I realized the spelling was wrong for it to be. The Titan of Greek mythology was Kronos so clearly it was not the story I thought it would be.

You finally get to play as the hero and enter a series of elevators that take you to a massive floating rock and with the help of a couple computers you activate a smaller stone that transports you to the labyrinth. The intro and ambiance of the level made me want to play more, it felt like Dark Souls meets World War 2 with Vikings. Controls were a bit clunky. The game has two different leveling mechanics, the first is your standard RPG leveling that gives you points to improve skills and the second is your age. Every time you die you age a year and starting at the age of twenty you unlock a new ability every ten years.

Between the innovative mechanics and the dark world this game is worth a serious look but don’t expect to fare well right away, between mechanics and the classic gaming tropes (find a locked door, follow a long linear path to key, return to door, rinse and repeat) this game will leave you frustrated and only wanting to play in small doses.

Woody is back to make Mr Rottweiler’s life miserable in the remake Neighbours Back From Hell!

Mr Rottweiler has been a thorn in Woody’s side for as long as they have been neighbors. Woody has finally had enough and has even dedicated a television show to returning the favor in Neighbours Back From Hell from THQ Nordic and Epic Games. This game is what you get when you take Kevin McCallister and put him in charge of Jackass but instead of willing friends the gags are on his asshole neighbor.

The game is spread across 25 levels, half of which are focused on specific rooms in Rottweiler’s house and make up the first two seasons. Seasons three and four focus on Rottweiler’s trips abroad. No way Woody was going to let him relax on his vacation. Just be careful because if the Neighbor catches Woody then you are in for a beating and you only get two beatings per stage before you end up losing.

The pranks themselves range from simple nuisances to deadly feats that should leave Rottweiler dead but somehow he keeps coming back for more. To use some items they require specific setups in a specific order to get the chance to use and the level gives your very little information on how to prepare for these. Thankfully for those levels there are several guides out there that will walk you through the exact process to get each coin for the level. With enough patience the game is quite easy and some of the pranks are hilarious when they work. The game makes for an easy 1000 Gamerscore and was surprisingly fun.

Darksiders Genesis is the fourth installment in the fan favorite Darksiders series created by Joe Mad and Airship Syndicate.

War returns to ride alongside his brother Strife in the fourth installment of the Darksiders series- Darksiders Genesis. The timeline of this franchise is a bit muddled and that was before this installment. We won’t go into much detail on this because I frequently have to get help myself to make sense of it. The first game starts during the final war between Heaven and Hell which occurred earlier than the big guy/gal upstairs planned. Darksiders Genesis takes place long before the first game, before War was stripped of his power and had to redeem himself. This is only an installment of the franchise and no where near the end of the story (promises of one last story have been hinted at that would lead us to believe that we will see one that features all Four Horsemen)!

Gameplay has been completely revamped for this isometric “shooter” and that means a new way to play War. With the new playstyle and controls I half expected to lose out on the horses but they are there for the battle as well. Even better this is the first iteration of the game that allows for two players!

The Lord of Hell himself, Lucifer, has been plotting to upset the balance and that means War and Strife are to be sent to either shut his plans down or simply to shut him down. The single player controls are fluid, allowing you to instantly switch between heroes on the fly and tear apart the demons and angels around you. Graphicly the game is gorgeous and that opening cinematic that introduces you to Strife and highlighting both the humor in the characters and the classic Joe Mad art style will not only turn heads but also make you want to play to see more. This game is a must for Isometric shooter fans or fans of the Darksiders franchise.

Merge Games takes Blade Runner and mixes it with delivery mechanics in Cloudpunk.

In Cloudpunk you play as Rania, a Cloudpunk driver that will deliver anything to anyone regardless of the risk involved. As long as they are paying she will pick it up and take it where it needs to go. Immediately upon starting the game I was struck with a single observation, if you are driving a flying car why is everyone sticking to designated pathways when you could fly over everything? Determined to understand I pressed on.

Players must navigate a massive city that uses portal/tunnels that allow you to move between sectors all the while picking up various packages and dropping them off. Visually the game is a pixelated Picasso, far away it is stunning but up close it is a pixelated mess. The flight controls for the cars are intuitive and easy to pick up but the controls while walking are clunky and rarely move in a straight line let alone go where you intended the first few tries. The story is slow going but is easily forgettable and fails to grab your attention. For a game that goes for $25 I’d suggest waiting for a massive discount before picking it up.

A new edition of Kingdoms of Amalur has released by THQ Nordic and we got to check out it’s high definition glory.

An war against evil brings our hero to the frontlines where he is quickly cut down. In Kingdoms of Amalur players were treated to a game world created by R.A. Salvatore, Todd McFarlane and the team behind the classic Elder Scrolls Oblivion. The Re-reckoning edition features updated graphics, new side quests and all of the downloadable content from the original. With such a pedigree I was very excited to try this game out.

For a game that was considered a hit I was shocked to have never heard of it during it’s original release. Overall it looks and feels like the older version of the game with a fresh coat of paint. Game mechanics and controls felt like Oblivion. In my opinion Oblivion felt dated by it’s first anniversary and so this plays like something the belongs on the Xbox 360 when it was first starting as a console and not over a decade later on the Xbox One. I spent two hours exploring the world and was left wishing I passed on the title or at least spent a lot less time on the game.

Moons of Madness is a reimagining of HP Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness but instead of some twisted mountain it is the red planet itself.

Funcom brings us the game Moons of Madness, intended as a science fiction thriller on the surface of Mars. A strange signal has be coming from the planet’s surface and a team has been sent to investigate. The signal has baffled the scientists from Orochi and they decided to keep the signal from public knowledge, especially after they determined the source to be from someone or something with some sort of intelligence. As a lowly technician you have limited information regarding the signal and your job is simply to keep the station running.

Keeping everything working properly becomes more irksome as setbacks begin to happen and weird things begin to occur. Maintenance tasks range from the tedious and believable to the downright strange like a flooded greenhouse. A greenhouse being flooded is normally a believable occurrence but on a planet with virtually no water where it needs to be rationed closely how did no one notice the leak quick enough to prevent the flooding?

Visually the game is quite stunning but lacks in the ambiance to be a truly horrific title. The puzzles do have a more realistic feel to some of their solutions which makes up for some of the tonal issues but even when trying to up the tension it feels more like the game wants to be scary but simply doesn’t know how. It’s like me and dancing, I’d love to be good at it but don’t have any rhythm or even know how to dance.

Deep Sky Derelicts from Snowhound Games is a game of salvage, mining and combat in space!

Assuming the role of a scavenger in Deep Sky Derelicts, you are looked down on by society but with a twist. Other than normal occupations society is split into two main factions- the haves and the have nots, or simply the Privleged and the Stateless. As a member of the Stateless group of humanity you must scavenge your way through not only your daily routine but as a means of survival. You have a single way out of this life though, one last salvage to end them all- an ancient alien spacecraft.

Gameplay is a throw back to the Final Fantasy 7 days of old where you take turns with each action and when winning the fight you are stuck watching a celebration to, well, celebrate your win. As  you progress through a map that looks like a cross between a tabletop game and a classic 80’s role playing game. Aesthetically the game looks like it would fit as an animated backdrop for another release in the Dead Space franchise, but much more tame and missing the spook factor. Controls are easy to learn but the game offers little in entertainment, but makes up for it in combat that looks like it belongs in a science fiction based comic.

Chicken Police is a Noir-styled detective story featuring the personification of many members of the animal kingdom.

Chicken Police, Handy Games, looks and plays like a classic point and click adventure using images of characters from a detective film that was released in the 20s or 30s. The biggest difference though is that the heads have been replaced with those of the animals they are meant to represent. You play form member of the Chicken Police, Sonny and are met by a doe who looks to hire a detective.

Forced to team up with your former partner Marty you must get to the bottom of this case as you dive deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. Point and click adventures can be quite dull unless your bring the panache along with it. What on the outside looks like a silly concept ends up working quite well as you are thrust into the world of Clawville- basically Zootopia without the Disney touch. The character models are beautifully rendered with more detail than you would have expected from a game like this and dialogue that is full of wit.

Personally I enjoyed the world and visuals but would have preferred something other than the point and click stylings we received.

Little Big Workshop is the builder that allows you to build a manufacturing business from the ground up with the appearance of it miniaturized.

This title from Handy Games is all about industry on a miniature scale. Little Big Workshop focuses on automation and planning ahead. Aimed at all ages it seems to miss it’s mark. Cute animations and characters do not make for a child friendly game. You start the game simple enough, build a workbench,  then make and ship a couple gnomes.

After this first task thinks get much more difficult as you find yourself not only trying to build a bench but pre-plan multiple tasks. Many of these tasks don’t even link properly and required rebooting the game several times to finally get it to complete. For a tutorial that is require to play the game you would think it would be a little easier to navigate and no require the finesse of multiple reboots to complete.

With Little Big Workshop I would have thought it would be right up my alley with the fact that everything is miniaturized but it feels more like a tedious snooze-fest than an exciting game even without the numerous glitches I encountered.