Category PS5

Ratalaika Games have ported over another game that was originally a PC release, this time with Sephonie, a gem developed by Analgesic Productions.

Sephonie follows three scientists from all over the world as they head to the island of the same name. As they approach the island they are greeted by a wave of energy, distorting their signals and washing them up on shore. A chaotic way to start the adventure for sure. The goal of your trio is to research the odd behavior in the local wildlife and immediately learn that it is happening to the bacteria as well when a member of the team begins having a strange reaction to an injury caused by coral.

The game focuses on pushing these researchers to their limits by testing them with physical challenges as well as twisting their dreams against them. Analgesic and Ratalaika have made this a near perfect port as controls are fluid and easy to learn. The platforming aspect of the game is pretty simple to grasp early on but increase in complexity as you progress. Visuals are clean as is the audio but I would have preferred if there were some voices for the characters- you can get so much more out of a character’s emotions or feelings by listening to them. Listening sure beats reading a ton of dialogue, especially when you’re a little tired. Curious to see where the story goes but I hope it’s not as dialogue heavy as the start of the game was.

Where the game shines most is the puzzle system. You play Tetris-like game mode to learn about different things in nature where you place various shapes made of blocks together. When you run out of pieces to place or run out of room to place them you have every set of blocks that touch that are the same color, as long as there are at least three, vanish and fill up the bar. Your goal is to completely fill the bar to complete your task. Trying to plan ahead and fill the bar leads to an engaging experience that makes the game worth playing for this alone.

Known for both new titles and revitalizing old ones, Ziggurat have brought another game back from the vaults- Terminal Velocity: Boosted Edition.

Terminal Velocity is a flight simulator where combat and tunnel maneuvering are the main focus. Using the Infernal Engine, Ziggurat have not only restored the classic but expanded on the mechanics as well. In what feels like the spiritual lovechild between Starfox 64 and Descent, players fly a high speed craft through tunnels and over the surface in search of targets.

It has been more than a few years since I played a flight simulator of any sort and this one stood apart from those I had played. There isn’t must story to speak of and the visuals were mediocre by today’s standards. That is to say that they didn’t receive much improvement if any to the graphics for this game. Controls were fluid and intuitive.

I would have liked to see improved graphics instead of a title that looked like it was already on the low end during Windows 95 and some sort of story involving voice actors so you didn’t need to look away from the action. With the perfection that were the controls, fast paced gameplay and engaging gameplay though I had a good amount of fun and would absolutely play this again, even with it’s many failings.

Garlic is a game about much more than delicious ingredients, this vegetable is on a mission to scale the tower and see the Goddess again.

The team at Sylph have recently released Garlic on the Xbox One and was previously available on Steam back in 2021. Your goal is to scale a platforming riddled tower to reach the top where you will be able to seduce a cyber goddess at the top. Traps range from jets of flame, dripping toxic waste and even flying fish. Garlic himself quickly picks up the skills needed to fly from platform to platform and the ability to launch in any direction.

Playing as the “onion headed boy” you go from room to room, launching yourself through enemies and around obstacles, climbing ever higher. The platforming itself is challenging but at the same time a lot of fun. Even the bosses give you a decent challenge but are still enjoyable to face. As with any platforming game, some levels are harder than others and larger as well.

The art style is comical as you play a ronin-esque fighter with an anime cinematic style and an enormous head that is also a vegetable. During the gameplay itself though it is similar to what we saw in the days of the GameBoy Advanced but with more vibrant color choices. The gameplay though was so much fun. I’m terrible at platformers, especially ones that are a bit chaotic and this one is VERY chaotic. Despite it being full of mechanics I am terrible at, it has proven itself to be a great game that I look forward to climbing that tower even more.

The team at Frictional Games bring the latest in their Amnesia series and first person horror with Amnesia: The Bunker!

Amnesia: The Bunker is the fourth full title in the Amnesia series from Frictional Games and takes place at the earliest point in the timeline, centered around World War I. Each game features a protagonist that suffers from Amnesia and is chased by some sort of evil entity. The atmosphere is a bit muted to start as you wander the trenches until the guns start firing around you, which adds to the realism.

Gameplay and premise remind me of a recently covered indie title called Trenches. I wonder which was in development first? Based on the official release dates Trenches was first but the world of Amnesia has been around much longer so it’s quite possible The Bunker was in predevelopment before Trenches was. My Google-fu was not able to identify the true order of development and without reaching out to the devs directly we’ll likely never know.

As I mentioned there are a few similarities. Both center around the trenches of World War I where some otherworldly evil chases you. Visually The Bunker is the superior title but when it comes to the ambiance Trenches has it beat! Trenches also wins in overall creepiness factor, specifically because of their use of audio and unnerving visuals with those creepy dolls all over the place. The experience between the two felt nearly identical but Amnesia: The Bunker had a lot more polish.

Planet of Lana is a side-scrolling adventure featuring playing hide and seek with robots that have no qualms about ending you!

The folks at Thunderful Games have delivered a side-scrolling adventure, full of hand painted environments. That game is Planet of Lana where the focus isn’t on just fighting, I mean there is some of that, but it features a plethora of puzzles to solve to reach your destination. Some of these puzzles or effectively games of cat and mouse, where others manipulate the environment around you to help you escape. The studio under Thunderful that developed the game was developed in 2018 and this is their first published title.

You play as a young girl who watches as her friend and village are abducted by robots. She must save both herself and the world while avoiding the dangers of the robots. Who sent them? Why are they capturing and likely enslaving the populace? What’s their end goal? Hopefully these questions get answered as you progress the story but so far they have not.

Visually the game is captivating and the attention to detail is quite impressive. When running through the fields and climbing the mountain you can see the wind blowing through individual blades of grass that are all hand painted. It feels like you are playing in a living painting, that is until the robots come. The beauty of the art draws you in and the story keeps you playing. Overall this was a great experience that leaves me wanting to get back to it to see where the story leads me next.

Replikator is a twin stick shooter from the folks at Ratalaika Games and posits that death is only the beginning of the story.

Ratalaika Games how been kind enough to share a copy of their latest twin stick shooter, Replikator. The game places you as a mercenary aboard an, until recently, abandoned scientific facility in space. Your role is to explore the facility and learn the secrets of the Replikator device. The first time you are killed by the denizens of the facility you learn that the device be able to make duplicates of any item, including yourself when you die. Like most twin stick shooters the game provides an isometric view that looks like feels like JRPGs from the SNES era.

Unlike most games of this style there is a limited amount of ammunition for your guns so aiming is essential. The good news is if you do run out you have a powerful melee attack you can use. Most enemies will have consistent attack patterns making both easier if you are patient. Trying to speed through the map is one of the easiest ways to end up dead. Along the way you will find dozens if not hundreds of weapons to use and items to improve your skills. Remember to explore everything and be patient. Did I mention, be patient? My impatience resulted in my death more than any single foe.

Visually the game felt like I was returning to some of my favorite titles from the early 90s and matches the level of quality we are used to seeing from Ratalaika. Overall I found the game engaging and at the same time frustrating. I have terrible aim and with limited ammunition some of the map sections were harder than they should have been. That is entirely a reflection of my skill and not of the gameplay quality. At $10USD the price is quite reasonable for the hours of gameplay you’ll find and I have played some garbage titles with higher price tags too. Once again I find myself looking forward to seeing what Ratalika comes out with next.

World Championship Boxing Manager has returned from Mega Cat Studios, do you have what it takes to take your gym to the top?

Mega Cat Studios have come back with the sequel to what is called “THE G.O.A.T. BOXING MANAGEMENT SIM RETURNS” with World Championship Boxing Manager 2. The game follows as you take on the role of Jake, a gym owner and promoter who is trying to make a name for himself. The game starts with the opening of his gym that is below the standards of most boxers.

Having never played the original and not being a fan of boxing I went into this game with low expectations. The game very much feels like a SIM game where you are micromanaging the actions and training of your fighters. This leads you to your scheduled fight nights. Each month you have matches that you must have at least one fighter participate in. This is where you earn money for your gym. You can even schedule additional fights any day of the month you would like. If you so choose you could even push your fighter to the breaking point by never allowing them to rest.

Using downtime between the matches you can assign different trainings and designated resting periods for the fighter. The game becomes a balance between training your fighter quickly to improve skills and stats and keeping them fighting to keep that money coming in. As the game progresses you add additional fighters to your roster and the balance becomes both easier and harder. Easier in that you can keep someone fighting every day but harder because you are having to balance their training on top of it.

The game far exceeded my expectations with how well the management and scheduling systems are built. Simply put the mechanics were interesting and engaging but where it really shines is the fights themselves. At the start of each round you give the fighter some basic instructions like choosing their fight style. One round you can choose to be defensive and the next can be wildly aggressive. There are about six choices from the start and each has their uses. More often than not I had my fighters choose the aggressive option with the water bottle. The water bottle adds stamina where the bandage recovers health.

During the fights the game was focused on tactics from the side of the ring where most other boxing games focuses on the speed and combos used by the players as the fighter. In small doses the game was enjoyable but in a longer stretch it became repetitive and dull.

Space Gladiators from Thomas Gervraud was first released on Steam in 2021 and has finally been released on consoles!

Space Gladiators is a side scrolling game where you must run through a gauntlet to reach an arena where you fight a boss wave. Each wave gives you options of prizes like extra gold or new abilities to choose to determine what foe or foes you’ll face. The tutorial you start with covers the full range of controls quite thoroughly and does it in a way that is simple to follow without neglecting any of them. The only thing missed is to tell you what the importance of the blue butterflies are- I still haven’t figured that out for myself. My guess is that they feed some of your abilities and help you charge them up faster.

The art style reminds me of the early works from The Behemoth and their later Battle Block Theater but without the chicken they are so fond of. Thomas Gervraud is known for Brotato, Space Gladiators, Lost Potato and Potato Tactics. This game includes a space potato as well. I feel like there is an underlying obsession with potatoes going on here. Thanks to a well made tutorial and smooth controls the game is easy to play but due to my own panic I still died. A lot. Overall I found the game chaotic, but in a fair amount of challenge kind of way, and a great deal of fun. The $14.99 price tag is a little on the steep side but not unreasonable either.

Evil Dead The Game has returned with the Game of the Year Edition from Saber Interactive!

Ash Williams has returned for Evil Dead The Game GOTY Edition, from Saber Interactive, and is bringing the fight to the deadites! Players choose up to a handful of heroes or enemies to try to secure or steal the Necronomicon. As the deadites you take control of the Kandarian Demon to kill the heroes or as the heroes you must survive the deadites and recover lost pages and the Necronomicon itself.

Visually the game is stunning and the gore effects are realistic and exactly what you would expect to see in an Evil Dead or Army of Darkness game. The execution animations are fantastic and I could hear a younger version of myself hooting and hollering at each brutal hit. Atmosphere is off the charts. Seriously. Between the fog, the music and the sounds of monsters in the night, not to mention the fear system, this game does a fantastic job of building the tension, even in the tutorial. You are nearly invincible in the tutorial and yet once it introduce fear to your game it gave me chills.

I had two primary complaints with the game. The first is that the online community is practically dead already but I’m hopeful that this edition will bring others out to play it either again or for the first time. The second complaint, and this is nearly a deal breaker for me, is the controls. You can’t modify them and the melee combat system feels slow due to the buttons being moved to triggers where nearly all games that play the same has the melee mapped to one of the four main buttons. It put a major damper on my overall enjoyment and left me wanting to play something else at the end of my session instead.

Gematombe is an Action-Puzzle-Versus game from Ratalaika Games that is a hybrid of several classic puzzle titles.

What happens when you take a fighter like Street Fighter Puzzle Fighter and blend in controls from Bubble Bobble? You get Gematombe from Ratalaika Games. Controlling one of six Greek entities, referred to as the daemons along with a hidden seventh character. Working alongside Pandora you are sent to help capture all of the evils in the world.

The game plays like Bubble Bobble in terms of controls and stage layout but with a slight twist. In BB you would shoot bubbles of a specific color to pop similarly colored bubbles that were already there or add additional colors to existing ones. With Gematombe, the bubbles you shoot hit and bounce off of different bubbles or blocks and as long as you hit two or more it will pop all connected bubbles of the same color. Each stage is a battle between you and one of the evils. Winning is done by either clearing your board OR banking enough combos to generate extra bubbles for the evil you’re facing to deal with.

Conceptually the game is quite simple as are the controls. Quickly planning combos though is where the real skill lies and I don’t have it. I was fast enough to clear my board on each level but could never bank the high points and deal damage effectively. The game is a fun game that is easy to play in small doses or longer runs. I feel like most games these days strive to increase the time needed to play a single level and draw out that conclusion. This is definitely not one of those games. In a matter of 10-15 minutes, tops, I was able to complete the first two stages. This game is perfect for my wife who is great at recognizing patterns quickly and I am excited to see how well she fares.