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Mini Review Venba (PS5) - A Moving Tale of Love, Loss, Family, and Food
The Venba bus is coming
Venba is a delightful video game. What it accomplishes in a little over an hour is impressive, both in terms of introducing and authentically portraying a culture that most Western gamers will have limited familiarity with, and in presenting a moving story of love, loss, family, and the important role that food plays in tying...
It's Life Is Strange, Jim, but not as we know it
On paper, Life Is Strange developer Don't Nod pivoting to the visual novel genre makes sense given its penchant for twisting, choice-based narratives. In practice, Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is an underwhelming first foray into the space, lacking the world-building necessary to truly sell a story...
Review Park Beyond (PS5) - Shallow Park Builder Besieged by Technical Issues
Beyond a joke
At its heart, Park Beyond evokes memories of the Theme Park games from a couple of decades ago, and it's perhaps due to our nostalgia for those titles that we enjoyed our time with this as much as we did. There's something to be said for the simplified theme park builder, in which you don't need to worry about navigating a dozen...
Review Miasma Chronicles (PS5) - A Frustratingly Uneven But Mostly Rewarding Tactical RPG
Kicking My-Ass-Ma
Miasma Chronicles is a tactical role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic America in which the disparity between the haves and have-nots has grown to an unfathomable degree. The country is ruled by The First Family; an untouchable, self-serving elite born from the ashes of big corporation in the post-cataclysm world. They've got...
Review Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (PS5) - A Warts and All Survival Horror Remaster
Photographic Violence
Here at Push Square it's site policy that we don't believe in the supernatural. Vampires, werewolves, and Frankensteins? Poppycock, hogwash, and flannel, we say. Having never believed in ghosts we've never considered what we'd do should we ever come face to face with one. We can plan for World War 3 or Covid 2 or bumping into...
Mini Review Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator (PS5) - Fun But Not Quite Masterchef
You'll always find me in the kitchen at parties
You'd think given the countless hours we've spent watching Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares that we'd have picked up a thing or two about running a successful restaurant. Alas, it seems the only thing we've picked up is his proclivity for foul-mouthed tirades, which we discovered a mere couple of...
Review Wild Hearts (PS5) - A Fast-Paced, Thrilling Alternative to Monster Hunter
Domo arigato Mr. Kemono
Let's get the boring paperwork out of the way quickly. Yes, Wild Hearts is a lot like Monster Hunter: World. The similarities are plain to see, both structurally and conceptually. However, far from being a Monster Hunter clone, thanks to mostly fantastic creature design and splendid, fast-paced combat with an emphasis on ad...
Mini Review Ten Dates (PS4) - A Much Improved Rom-Com Sequel
Seven out of ten dates
Has humanity ever had a worse idea than speed dating? Once you forget all the obviously terrible stuff like biological weapons and motion controls, speed dating must be right up there. Five minutes of pish banter with a person who isn't laughing at any of your killer jokes before you half-heartedly ask for contact information...
Game of the Year John's Top 5 PS5, PS4 Games of 2022
Put an Elden Ring on it
Our individual Game of the Year articles allow our lovely team of writers to share their own personal PS5 and PS4 picks for 2022. Today, it's the turn of reviewer John Cal McCormick. 5. Cult of the Lamb: I really enjoyed my time with Cult of the Lamb. I 8/10 enjoyed it according to my review. It’s grisly, and dark, and...
Mini Review Brewmaster (PS5) - All Hail the Best Beer Brewing Sim on PlayStation
"Just a half for me, Susan. I'm driving"
Back in the good old days you could go to your local pub for a pint of Housewives Knee and the only other people in there drinking proper beer would be old men and people who go to Games Workshop. People wearing fedora hats. Those sorts of people. But then they came. The normal people. Suddenly craft beer...
Review Star Ocean: The Divine Force (PS5) - Space Age JRPG Barely Takes Flight
One small step for man. One smaller step for JRPGs
After forty-five hours, a few smiles, and one or two frowns, we walked away from Star Ocean: The Divine Force with a shrug. It’s a middle-tier Japanese role playing game that at no point, ever, threatens to get promoted to top-tier status nor sink so low that it ends up sandwiched between...
Review New Tales From The Borderlands (PS5) - No Tale, Too Much Borderlands
Fails from the Borderlands
There’s an argument to be made that 2014’s Tales from the Borderlands is actually the best game in the Borderlands series. Now, hold on. Don’t go typing up your angry comments just yet. Hear us out. Sometimes you just want a capital V capital G Video Game that’s about running and jumping and shooting and looting...
Review Valkyrie Elysium (PS5) - Quality Combat Elevates Drab Action RPG
Par for the Norse
There's something distinctly old school about Valkyrie Elysium, and we don't mean because it's part of a long-running franchise; a series that started with the turn-based JRPG Valkyrie Profile way back in 1999. This is a game with an almost PlayStation 2 style design philosophy, for better and worse, and what you're here for will...
Review Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed (PS5) - We're Just Remaking Anything Now
Close Encounters of the Turd Kind
At some point during the billion hour long campaign for Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed — a remake of 2006's Destroy All Humans! 2 for PS2 — we began to wonder where it had all gone wrong. There we were, running around as a little alien shooting innocent passers-by with a gun that reduces them to skeletons and...
Review Cult of the Lamb (PS5) - Deliciously Evil, Giddily Gruesome, and Bloody Brilliant
Breaking Baa-d
Few games make as strong a first impression as Cult of the Lamb. It had us in its thrall within a minute, and we remained enraptured for most of our 20 or so hours with the game. It’s a title that frequently delights, with an arresting tone, gruesome gameplay, and a cavalier approach to taste and decency. Only a handful of minor...
Review Two Point Campus (PS5) - Stress-Free University Builder Is a Lazy Good Time
School's out
Uh oh. Your mum told you that you either had to go to university or you had to get a job so you begrudgingly signed up to a Media Studies course and dossed about for three years smoking doobies and watching Countdown. Now you've got a useless degree, a lingering reputation as the family pothead, and a mountain of debt from tuition fees...
Review Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series (PS5) - No-Frills Remasters of Old School Platformers
It's-a me, Klonoa
Back in the late '90s, the platforming genre was going through a bit of an identity crisis. The technological heft of consoles like the original PlayStation meant that, for pretty much the first time, our gaming worlds could be expanded into true three-dimensional spaces. However, this meant there was a whole new dimension of...
Mini Review Yurukill: The Calumniation Games (PS5) - Zero Escape Meets Bullet Hell Mystery Madness
Virtue's Blast Reward
Oh no. You've been convicted of murdering 21 people and sentenced to 999 years in prison. Now you've been kidnapped by a super-rich megacorporation so you can take part in a series of games against other teams and the ultimate prize will be your freedom. You're fitted with a collar that can inject you with lethal poison at the...
Review The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan (PS4) - An Unexplosive Opening
Until yawn
Republished on Wednesday 29th June 2022: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of July's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows. Maybe it's just because our Dad let us watch Jaws when we were six, but we've always been skeptical of the sea. It's wet, and there's weird things in there...
Mini Review Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel (PS5) - Hotel Hell Makes for Effective Survival Horror
Hotel Califobia
If we were reviewing the St. Dinfna Hotel for Tripadvisor, then it would be a bit of a mauling. Old fashioned décor, a serious damp problem, monsters, rubbish WiFi, and a smug receptionist that didn’t even offer to carry our bags to the room. We simply couldn’t recommend staying there. But here at Push Square, we’re in the...
Mini Review Super Perils of Baking (PS5) - Charming Old School Platformer Rises to the Occasion
Hell Soufflé
Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, People of all gender persuasions, Cats and dogs and goldfish too, You join us on quite the occasion. We're here today for a Push Square first, A review written entirely in rhyme, A review for Super Perils of Baking, A two dimensional good time. The story of Super Perils of Baking, Is told in...
Transylvanian Families
Vampires get a bit of a bad rap, we think. Thanks to a few rotten apples like Dracula and Kristen Stewart we've grown accustomed to seeing vampires as insidious creatures of the night, but there's lots of fun vampires, too. Count Duckula, for example, and the one from Sesame Street that goes "Ah-ah-ah!" Anyway, what we're...
Review Tiny Tina's Wonderlands (PS5) - Borderlands Fantasy Spin-Off Can't Quite Find the Magic
No time to dice
If you read our review of Borderlands 3, then you've basically read our review of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, only this game isn't as good. We're just doing it again in different words, and we're a little more weary this time around. Nothing of much consequence has changed between the two games. The budget is lower, clearly, and the...
Everything you need to take the fight to Chaos
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is the new action RPG from Square Enix and Team Ninja, available now on PlayStation 5 and PS4. While it comes up short in some areas, we think it just about redeems itself with its fun combat, awarding the game a 6/10 in our Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy...
