Fantastic plastic!

Fire Cars, as my five-year-old son calls Hot Wheels, has been a staple in my life since he found a free-to-play Hot Wheels game on his tablet. Yes, he has a tablet. Yes, I’m a terrible father and I’m losing that title to a bloody touch screen. A touch screen and a regular screen, apparently.

Game Information
Release Date: September 27th, 2021
Developer: Milestone
Publisher: Milestone, Deep Silver
Availability: PSN (Digital) Retail (Buy on Amazon USA / Amazon UK)

Hot Wheels Unleashed takes the traditional toys and brings them to life in a fun, easy to play, and highly enjoyable arcade racer. I say “arcade” racer, but honestly, I don’t think I ever put coins in any arcade racing game that was as good as Hot Wheels Unleashed. But you get what I mean. It’s not a simulation. In fact, it’s a massive change of pace for developer Milestone, with the Italian outfit swapping out the two-wheel rides of motorcycle racing for the sturdy four wheels of little toy cars. It’s a nice change, though, and it’s easily one of the best games to come from the developer in a long time.

The concept is simple and it doesn’t do much to stand out from the norm. You race little toy cars around the trademark yellow and blue plastic tracks that have been elaborately built around everyday places. You’ll loop-the-loop in a stylish base basement; you’ll tear down the plastic around a skatepark – minus the drug-dealing hippies I had to contend with as a kid – and much more.

The tracks are nicely thought out and definitely more imaginative than anything I could put together as a kid – and as an adult, actually, so I’ll leave the track editor to smarter players than me.

The tracks are fair but challenging and full of little surprises. You’ve got booster pads for a kick of speed, barriers that’ll slow you down if you’re clumsy, spider-webs that’ll hold you back, and more. Some of the more extreme tracks – the “Boss” races – up the ante even more with the tracks actively working against you. Speed lanes can reverse to bring you to a crawl while obstacles are more tricky to avoid. Sadly, there are only five of these races throughout the career mode, but they were always good fun.

The controls are as standard as they come but they don’t need to be elaborate. Pull R2 to accelerate, L2 to brake, and X to boost. That’s all you need. Elegance comes in simplicity, right?

Car handling is a different matter, though, and I’m glad to report that each car really does feel different to the last – and there are many, many cars, including familiar modern machines, golden oldies, and some fun licensed stuff, like a Superman car, the Batmobile, and many more.

The big heavy-set machines are slower and early braking to hit the drifts just right is crucial, while lighter, more nimble cars need to be handled with care. They’ll fly down the straights but they’ll have trouble slowing down in time, and if you hit a jumping ramp you’ll have to fight to hit the landing right, otherwise you’ll careen off-course and lose valuable seconds and possible the race.

For me, this was fair. I’m a big boy and I’ve played racers my entire life, but my boy, Charlie, who is still finding his gaming thumbs, had some troubles. There are no assists like in Mario Kart, Nickelodeon Racers or Race With Ryan, and he often got frustrated, especially when he couldn’t control his car while it was in the air. He wouldn’t be able to hit the landing right and he’d get annoyed. My DualSense was constantly in danger…

Speaking of which, the DualSense support was really good. It wasn’t over the top, but quite subtle but ever-present. The speaker support was a real highlight with each clink and clank coming out of the speaker being satisfying and not annoying. The dull thuds complemented my poor driving, which is better than endless screeching.

Something that was annoying that I probably should have foreseen is the split-screen multiplayer. I only have one DualSense controller and I thought that maybe we’d be able to do split-screen with the DualShock 4 as player two. No bueno. If you’re on the PS5 version of the game, you need to have two PS5 DualSense controllers for two-player mode. In hindsight, it’s obvious, but it was still a bit disappointing, but that’s not really a problem with the game as much as it is with the hardware.

Still, we managed to have fun by passing the pad as we worked through the game’s career mode, which takes the form of a big city map littered with different activities. There’s a fair spread, too, with standard races, boss races, and time trials, as well as secret events.

Completing events earns you currency which can be used to buy blind boxes. Blind boxes contain random cars and you earn them through certain events or you can buy them at 500 gold-a-pop. It feels fair and I appreciate the game wasn’t trying to dip into my wallet every five minutes, and I’m sure fellow old-timers/parents out there will be happy to know they can give their kid a game that won’t pressure them into buying loot boxes. There are extra car packs that can be bought with real money, but they’re not intrusive and with so many cars already in the game, I don’t think I’ll be left wanting any time soon.

I played How Wheels Unleashed on PS5 and it looked, ran, and sounded brilliant. The cars are really well detailed and in those few seconds before a race starts, you can see the effort in every fake-metal crease and ridge. It’s impressive, and the tracks, too, have that polished sheen you’d expect to find at a Hot Wheels enthusiast meet-up. Come on, there must be a group of dads somewhere hosting bi-monthly car meets featuring their best oiled tracks and polished toy cars. I’m not one of them, to be clear, but I’m definitely a fan of Hot Wheels Unleashed.

Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.

Primary version tested: PS5. Reviewed using PS5.

Die, mother-slugger, die!

Nobody likes slugs. I’ve committed my fair share of slug murder in life and, I’m ashamed to say, I used to take a grotesque pleasure in pouring salt on the blighters and watching them shrivel up and become a snack-to-go for the local birds.

It’s been a long time since my troubled teenage years of slug genocide but Clid The Snail has put me back into the fray, but at least the reason this time around is a good one. Slugs are bad, snails are good. Most animals are good, but some are bad. I can get behind that a lot more than “it’s Saturday, my friends are on holiday, I’m going into the garden to make an animal suffer.” Sorry, PETA. I’ve changed, I promise. Besides, these are digital slugs. They’re not real.

Game Information
Release Date: August 31st, 2021
Developer: Weird Beluga Studio
Publisher: Koch Media, Gamera Nest
Availability: PSN (Digital)

Clid The Snail is a game about a snail named… Clid. Duh. He’s a reckless boozer and after being kicked out of the snail citadel for being an asshat, he’s left alone to wander the world that The Giants (humans) have left to the little anthropomorphic animals.

After salting a dozen slugs with his pulse laser, Clid faces his first real test – a psycho mouse with a flamethrower. After a long and drawn-out battle (over several attempts…) Clid wastes the mental mouse and gets introduced to the Animal Avengers. They’re not really the Avengers, obviously, but they’re a crack group of furry (and spiky) heroes. With nowhere else to turn, Clid joins the group and starts righting his life’s wrongs.

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Played from a top-down perspective, Clid The Snail is part twin-stick shooter, part puzzle game. It’s tough as nails, too, and I had to keep reminding myself that the site doesn’t pay me enough to get through new DualSense controller’s every time a game gets hard. And it is at times very hard.

Clid has a small arsenal of deadly weapons to fend off the beasties. He’s got his pulse laser gun, a puke grenade launcher (yuck…) and more. Despite having so many guns, I found myself feeling underpowered and against the odds on more than one occasion.

An early stand-off had me guiding Clid to protecting the rabbit citadel from an invasion. Stangely, the rabbits were only a touch bigger than Clid, who despite having walky-walky legs, was still about the same size as you’d expect a snail to be. The sizing of all of the characters is a bit whack, actually. But it’s not a big deal.

The invasion took me over an hour to finish and I cheesed it hard. The relentless enemies smashed their way through the barricade so many times, I wondered if I was supposed to do something else. Was there a switch nearby? An ally to let loose? An army waiting for my signal? No. Just sweaty palms, lots of swearing, and more luck than I deserve.

Generally, the combat is good, though, and it’s mostly fair. Ammo is plentiful and there’s always the trader willing to part with some bullets and bombs for a few pennies. The weapons are fun to switch around and figure out which are best for different situations.

But those moments where my back was against the wall and my DualSense was in danger of being a fixture on my wall, I wanted to go out to the garden with the salt shaker and get me mine. I didn’t, don’t worry, PETA. I’ll leave the snail munching to the French.

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Clid The Snail’s puzzle gameplay is the stronger half of the game, for sure. Using Clid’s laser gun to hit crystals – and sometimes in quick succession with the accuracy of Hawkeye on meth – was fun and it gave me time to think and explore the miniature world that the humans have either left or lost.

It’s a detailed world, too, and it opens up to give more insight but also more questions. I love me a mystery and I’d love to see it pushed further, though with a few refinements.

One of the more annoying aspects of Clid’s journey from drunken zero to drunken hero is the lack of guidance. I don’t need a great big Crazy Taxi-style arrow to tell me where to go, but a simple map to show me where I’ve already explored and where else needs my attention would have been appreciated.

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Instead, the game goes with the old-school cutaway to show you the path you need to take before pulling the camera back to Clid. That’s all good and well but there are collectables to, er, collect, and branching paths to explore. Once I’ve taken a turn off-route, you can bet I’m forgetting the normal path. I’m 31. Age hurts the back, knees, and the brain.

Even though I spent a lot of time cursing Clid and the murderous slugs, moles, scorpions – you name it, I cursed it – I can’t help but feel a little attached to the hero in a crunchy shell. I was invested in his story from the start to the end, and having some upgrades along the way helped build that connection. Not to the point that I’ll go on Etsy to search out some homemade Clid The Snail merch, but enough that I’ll call dibs on review duties if Clid manages to bag himself a sequel.

Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game that was provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.

Primary version tested: PS4. Reviewed using PS5.

Roll up, roll up! Come and see The Amazing American Circus!

I’m not a big fan of clowns, and if I’m honest I’ve never been to a circus, but circus paraphernalia is something that I have always been obsessed with, especially ye oldie circus’ with their red and white stripes and that art style that just screams of whimsy and wonder.

The Amazing American Circus is there to scratch that carnival itch, and it makes a pretty decent card game out of it. Who doesn’t want to be the ring leader at least once in their life? Calling the shots for your big top performances and managing their needs like a mother hen.

I haven’t even mentioned the best bit of this game, it’s all set in the wild west – yeehaw!

Game Information
Release Date: September 16th, 2021
Developer: Klabater, Juggler Games
Publisher: Klabater
Availability: PSN (Digital)

The Amazing American Circus is a mix of three genres; RPG, adventure and strategy, and these three categories combine perfectly as you travel across America collecting enough fame to win a big dollar cash prize for being the best circus in the whole of the United States.

The game started quite normally, though with a sad undertone; my dad died and left his circus in his will to me, and I have apparently always hated the circus but after some persuasion from my uncle – mostly being told about a lot of prize money – I agree to go on my travels with him to scare off other carnivals and work my way up to the cash prize.

Travelling between locations is done through a top-down map, this itself must be met with strategy as travelling between locations requires feeding your artists. Some journeys may take up to three meals while others may only require one. When in a town, there is a chance to make meals in the cooking wagon. This is incredibly important to balance as each meal can either provide a negative or positive to Satisfaction, Health, or Nutrients.

I was constantly mixing and matching the meals I created to try and keep all three in the positives as this could have advantages to your artists when they perform, such as gaining more points for the finale bar or gathering more defence from an ignore card.

If I didn’t pay attention to what I was feeding them then it could go the other way, where my artists could suffer penalties from what I was feeding them. It never came to that though – thankfully.

Once arriving in a city it’s time to start up a performance. First things first, I had to decide who would be performing in the show. With over 15 types of circus artists to pick from I was spoilt for choice on who to use. I tended to fall back on my three favourites, the Aerialist, the Fire Eater and the Fakir as they were the most likely to get the job done when I needed it.

I really enjoyed these performances, though I had my moments where I would fail miserably but other than that it was pretty simple to understand. The performance aim is to impress the audience, this is done through the beautifully illustrated cards which have different effects. For example, on my Fakir there was a card which, when used, would pull three more cards and times the vitality of them by three and that was how much impress it would do to all the audience members.

The aim was to impress the audience by depleting their ‘health’ bar to zero.

They don’t make it easy either, as each turn will see them either attempting to defend from or sneer at your performers and there is this beautiful rotten tomato throwing animation that hinders the focus of the performers on stage. This focus bar is basically a health bar but as you can’t die in the circus (well not this one) they can’t have your acts dropping dead.

Once the focus bar reaches zero it doesn’t mean they are gone just yet as you can discard a card they own for good in that performance. However, there were many times that a difficult audience proved too much for me and I would run out of cards leaving them to get dragged off stage and taking a cost penalty – or just losing altogether.

Some performances were even split into different acts which if I wasn’t careful could leave me in a difficult position as I had lost all my cards in the other one – when failing a performance in a city, you can’t visit them again until you have succeeded in three other shows. If you manage to fail three in a row then it’s game over but I found that pretty difficult to do.

My only issue with the cards is there were many times that the writing on them was very difficult to read. This happened mostly to me when trying to upgrade specific cards. I couldn’t read everything the card did due to how small or blurry the writing was making it a risk to change the card to it. My TV isn’t small either, which made it even more stressful as I would have to sit with my eyes glued to the screen, squinting to make out the letters.

Another mechanic I enjoyed in The Amazing American Circus was looking after these performers. Each show would give a performer some experience which after two shows would mean they could level up, this is where I could really cater a performer to my own needs. I could either get a new card or upgrade an old one and therefore change up my deck for specific performances.

They also had the chance of gaining perks or quirks after performing, which could either hinder my artist such as the quirk Leprosy that decreases the focus received by an artist by 5 or perks like Altruist which meant my artist would receive more ignore from cards – this is the way to protect from sneering.

I wasn’t stuck with these features as a quick trip to the Voodoo Wagon was sure to heal their worries. I could pay a cheap sum to delete the perk entirely or lock in a particularly good perk so it wasn’t replaced with another. If an artist you don’t usually use has a really great perk then you can pay to copy that perk to another artist.

By upgrading the Voodoo Wagon, and others similar to this, I could change the likelihood of something happening, making it much easier to perform – and I got quite good at it.

The story itself wasn’t too bad, though it did get repetitive quite quickly. I remember getting to 50 Fame going to impress some other carnival and then being thrown into a different area of America with my Fame set back to zero and being tasked with earning fame again to go impress someone else.

It was a bit underwhelming but for a game with quite a simplistic mechanic I can’t be too mad at it and I still enjoyed the full-voiced narration even if at one point the voices were completely gone and the same character model was used for two people at the exact same time – creepy.

Besides my lacklustre experience with the main story, the funny side quests did make me laugh. One I really enjoyed was a train heist on a priest. We aren’t any boring circus, we rob priests for mayors who ask.

I first had to get two new artists to pull off the performance that was going to be a distraction and then the last part was my favourite bit. My uncle had found a chicken who could crack safes it was down to this little chicken to open the safe – well with my help I had to press the right number cards in order.

After this, I even got to keep the chicken for my performances, and he had some interesting cards like only being able to use a certain card if my hand is an even number or that the discard pile has a number that can be found in the Fibonacci sequence – I’m no good at maths and I still enjoyed it!

The Amazing American Circus is a bundle of laughs to play. The storytelling is magnificent and reminded me of an old western, it isn’t too difficult to learn and never overwhelmed me to play. By the end of it, I felt like I had actually been to a circus or even better, that I was a part of the circus.

Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.

Primary version tested PS4. Reviewed using PS4.

I’ve ridden buses my whole life, but I’ve never had the luxury of actually driving a bus. I did try and start the school bus one time, but that got me nothing other than a month-long ban from the school bus and a slap around the ear from my parents.

Bus Simulator 21 is where dreams are made, so long as you’re not dreaming big. You can run your own bus company, earn fat stacks, and, well, drive buses all day and all night if you want to.

Game Information
Release Date: September 3rd, 2021
Developer: stillalive studios
Publisher: astragon Entertainment
Availability: PSN (Digital) Retail (Buy on Amazon USA / Amazon UK)

I’m not a stranger to the weird world of German-made simulation games. My local Saturn store has an entire wall dedicated to numerous simulations, and I’ve tried them all. From harvesting crops to hustling hookers (Reeperbahn Simulator…) I’ve done it all, but the only series to keep me coming back with every new release is Bus Simulator. Not because it’s especially great (it ain’t) and not because it’s a looker (it certainly ain’t) but because it’s comforting. It’s easy to pick up and play and it doesn’t tax my meagre brain too heavily.

Bus Simulator 21 is the latest entry to drive me around the bend. I both adore and detest it. I’ll pick up the pad and be ready to settle in for an hour of bussing weirdo-looking creeps around the city, and then I’ll get annoyed.

The biggest annoyance at the moment is a weird bug where the wheel turning on the screen doesn’t match the actual interaction. So if I’m taking these daring passengers for a ride of doom and pull hard to the left – because they’re getting to their Final Destination on time, damn it! – the wheel in my driver’s cabin will show turning to the right. It doesn’t actually affect the gameplay, but it’s very weird and very distracting, and it seems like one of the things you’d work to get right from the beginning.

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“Sir, the wheel turns in the opposite direction to the input. Should we fix it?”

“No. Ship it. Fans will understand. They’ll steer us in the right direction.”

We won’t. It’s just bloody weird, and it shouldn’t have been a problem in the first place.

It’s not the only curio in Bus Simulator 21 (people can warp through buses and their heads can protrude out of the roofs) but it’s definitely the most noticeable.

The core is good though, even if there are a few rotten spots on the outside of this apple. For one, there’s a brand new way of life for wannabe bus drivers.

For the first time ever in the series, us weird sim-loving folk can now ferry passengers around a make-believe American city, rather than the usual German-inspired locales. There’s still a European city to take fares, though, but it will be familiar as it’s the map from the last game recycled and expanded with the DLC. So you’re getting half a new game, and in the age of endless sequels, remasters, and remakes, that’s actually not bad.

For those wanting to really get into the nitty-gritty, there’s a lot going on away from the comfortable cabin, though we’re still yet to get an office to work from. Is it too much to ask for an office away from the actual office? Like, another simulation inside a simulation? I guess they’re saving that to add to the wall of weird at Saturn. Office Simulator 22, coming next year. Dunder Mifflin DLC as a pre-order bonus. You heard it here first.

While the under-the-hood stuff is daunting at first, I appreciated that the game did hold my hand for a long time and guide me with constant “quests” that levelled me up, got me funded, and taught me the basics of managing my bus empire. It’s not all easy, though.

Creating routes with specific demands can be time-consuming and fiddly with a gamepad, especially with the need to balance peak times and demand, and that’s before you’ve driven the route, scored well, and then added another machine and worker to the fleet to work the route for you.

Driving around is good fun, though, if you find this kind of thing fun. I do. I’m weird, and so are you.

The driving model is good but not perfect and I would often incur lots of fines for silly things like hitting the curbside or twatting a signpost when I was sure I was coming in right on the bend. I even hit a few old ladies with my bus thanks to misjudging how the hefty machine manoeuvres. It takes some getting used to but I adapted quickly enough to not bankrupt my fledgling bus company with an army of crippled victims in my wake. They were more of a platoon. Only a couple dozen. Hardly an army.

Where I felt let down by Bus Simulator 21 is where I always tend to; the tecnicals and presentation.

As always, the inside of the buses are immaculately detailed. I’d notice the familiar stop buttons and seat arrangements of the European models as I’d run up the gangway and tell some muppet to move out of the way of the door, or to question every single passenger who didn’t buy a ticket. Sure, most of them are honest, but there are more than a few fare-dodging scumbags and I sniffed them out… at the cost of timeliness. Whatever. Justice comes first.

The cities and their residents are another thing. If I had to describe the dress sense of the population, it would be muggles. Almost everybody dresses really strange and looks like they’ve fallen through a jumble sale with no clothes and a fiver and come out with whatever was left at the bottom of the box, which, judging by the hair choices, was lots of bright paint.

The locations aren’t too shabby, to be fair, and I took the time to jump off my bus and have a good walk around to see what was going on and to see if there was a secret casino I could bet my earnings on. There wasn’t. They’re quite static but there is a day-night cycle and the small details like the lights going on and off and the shop front illuminations changing were nice touches. They didn’t make the cities feel alive, but they felt far from dead.

Bus Simulator 21, for me, is still a decent game, despite its shortcomings. Nobody goes into any of these sims expecting to be blown away. You go into them expecting a nice time-waster and you get a nice time-waster.

Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.

Primary version tested: PS4. Reviewed using PS5.

Thanks, Bezos

Did you ever expect a golf game would ever make you feel something other than… bored? I’ve got no love for the sport, aside from the mini and crazy varieties. Golf Club Wasteland is a mix of the latter, but all told, it doesn’t really matter. I didn’t stick around for the golf.

Golf Club Wasteland doesn’t just give you 30+ challenging stages where you need to get a ball from one end of the stage to the hole in another location. It tells a story. The story of how humans fucked up the earth thanks to the super-rich 1% and their arrogance. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Game Information
Release Date: September 3rd, 2021
Developer: Demagog Studio
Publisher: Untold Tales
Availability: PSN (Digital)

After ruining the good thing they had going for them on Earth, those who could afford it, left the planet for a fresh start on Mars – a planet where humans can’t even breathe. That’s how you know you’ve fucked up – you run away to a planet where you die outdoors. Wonderful.

The super-rich pricks now treat Earth as their golf club, a place to play a few holes and not learn a single lesson.

The game is broken up into 35 levels and you can either play it on challenge mode or story mode. If you want a challenge, you’ll have to get the ball in the hole in a set amount of attempts. If you want the story, you can smack that ball around all day long and suffer no punishment.

I played on the story mode because life is challenging enough, thank you very much. And I’m glad I did. Without the pressure of making the shots count, I could listen to the in-game radio that transmits from Mars. This is how you get your story.

The golf side of the game is perfectly fine. You knock the ball around and try to get to the hole. Standard stuff and it’s not doing anything we haven’t seen before in a golf puzzle game, at least not in terms of its gameplay. I liked looking out for the secrets in each level; the tubes and pathways that would deliver the ball to the hole, provided I could make the tricky shot in the first place.

The levels were also worth exploring. Yes, it’s a 2D game and you can only move the camera around a 2D plane, but there’s still a lot to see and the developers crammed in plenty of not-so-subtle pokes at our world.

For me, once I started to really pay attention to the stories being told over the Radio Nostalgia from Mars channel, the golfing became secondary as I pushed through the chapters to get the next instalment from the radio.

There was a particularly moving scene that I did not see coming. The character you’re golfing as is not one of the 1% pricks. He’s a pilot who shipped people from Earth to Mars, and he has come back to Earth to play a bit of golf and be on the planet he sorely misses.

At one point, the RNFM DJ addresses the pilot directly. There’s no reply from the pilot. Instead, he takes off his helmet and curls up into a ball against the backdrop of a world he longs to live in. This scene caught me completely off guard and I still don’t know how to put it into words, but it moved me and in that moment, it made me consider what the fuck are we doing with this planet we call home.

If the mini-golf gameplay doesn’t speak to you, the story surely will get you thinking. There’s only one Earth and we’re all fucking it up. If you want to play your golf on expansive green fairways and not on the ruins of our planet, don’t act like a Bezos bellend or a Musk muppet. As one city poet said: “it’s not Earth that’s in trouble, it’s the people that live on it.”

Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.

Primary version tested: PS4. Reviewed using PS5.

Claw your way to success

As an adult, the closest I’ve come to horticulture is watering the houseplant hanging off my window ledge. Sadly, adult life gets in the way of exploring new hobbies.

So when Kitaria Fables presented the opportunity for me to go back to my roots and become one with the land with an RPG spin, I was ready to pick up my sword and watering can and get down to the dirty business of growing a virtual farm. You don’t have to go on this journey alone. One of Kitaria Fables standout features is that you can play the game in two-player couch co-op, and both players share the same screen.

Game Information
Release Date: September 2nd, 2021
Developer: Twin Hearts
Publisher: PQube
Availability: PSN (Digital) Retail (Buy on Amazon USA / Amazon UK)

The story begins long ago; an evil force known as The Calamity plagued the land of Canoidera with hostile monsters until a group of heroes brought peace by quelling The Calamity. Fast forward to the present day, our anthropomorphic protagonist, Nyanza von Whiskers, otherwise known as Nyan, is a feline soldier who the empire has deployed to Paw Village. Their loyal companion Macaron accompanies them to take up the task of protecting the slumbering village from an insurgence of monster sightings.

Not too long after reaching the quaint village, they meet the village chief, and he informs the pair that monster harassment has dramatically increased. Nyan then decides to take up residents in the old family farmhouse nearby and use it as a base of operations to investigate the mystery. However, they soon discover the disturbance may not just affect Paw Village but the land of Canodiera itself.

For the most part, Nyan is mute, and their expressions to situations are often coupled with emoticons above their head or the occasional dialogue option. On the other hand, Macaron is a right old chatterbox, which thoroughly makes up for the Nyan’s quietness.

You can project a bit of personality onto our hero by changing their fur colour at the farmhouse, and later down the line, you can buy different armour that will also change their appearance. Overall, our dynamic duo is entertaining to watch, and the world they interact with is incredibly cute and charming.

Kitaria Fables is an RPG adventure that incorporates real-time combat, and you should expect this element to dictate the majority of your gameplay time. The battle system is reasonably good; you can use a sword, bow, or cast magical spells to fight against enemies.

My weapon of choice was the sword as it would allow me to get close to enemies and inflict big damage, and I could still roll and dodge any incoming attacks. If any enemies were particularly problematic, I had the option to heal with my magic or cast an offensive spell from a safe distance.

There is no levelling up system in Kitaria Fables, which is odd for an RPG, but you can buy upgrades for your weapons, spells and clothing from shops.

Usually, to progress to the next part of the storyline, Nyan will have to help fellow animals with a variety of tasks, including relaying messages to other animals dotted across the map, because why not use a trained imperial soldier as a glorified errand boy?

Other animals will have requests and you’ll have to get them particular items. This is where farming comes in as you’ll sometimes have to grow crops and harvest ingredients to fulfil these requests.

It’s as simple as digging a hole in the ground, selecting a seed, planting it, and then watering it each day until they’re fully grown and ready for harvest.

Unfortunately, farming is only really needed to get through the story. You can consume food to use as health items in battle, but why bother growing food when you can use a spell that has the same effect? You can sell your crops for cash, but you can also get high-value gear from monsters that you can sell on for cash, making farming redundant.

It’s a shame because I enjoyed the farming side of the game, but there’s no incentive for expanding the farm. In fact, I went through a large portion of the game without ever touching the farm. Organic goods just aren’t as lucrative as they seem to be, eh?

Kitaria Fables is a decent RPG with a good combat system that’s best played with a friend in couch co-op. The farming side was definitely a letdown despite showing promise. Ironically, it never grew to its full potential. Despite this, if you’re looking for a cute RPG experience, you won’t be disappointed with Kitaria Fables.

Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.

Primary version tested: PS5. Reviewed using PS5.

Eye of the tiger?

Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions will be familiar to anybody with a PSVR headset and a love for boxing, because this is a spin-off of the VR boxing game, Creed: Rise to Glory. The difference here is that instead of swinging your arms wildly and working up a sweat, you’re mashing buttons on a gamepad and getting cramp in your thumbs.

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Game Information
Release Date: September 3rd, 2021
Developer: Survios
Publisher: Survios, Koch Media
Availability: PSN (Digital) Retail (Buy on Amazon USA / Amazon UK)

Creed Champions has an arcade mode, training mode, and a versus mode, which is also the cheat mode. More on that later.

Arcade mode is the main course, offering up stories for each playable character as you fight through a selection of each character’s opponents. Obviously, being that I was a 90s kid, I played as Rocky first because I already knew his story.

The stories are… poor. Connecting each fight you get some cutouts of each character with some on-screen text to deliver their lines. It feels cheap and once I was done with Rocky’s story – which completely skipped out the events of Rocky V and 2006’s Rocky Balboa – I didn’t pay any attention to any of the other stories. You can, thankfully, skip these dull scenes with the circle button to get into the ring quickly.

What you can’t skip are the pointless montage mini-games that serve as you “training” between bouts. These were half decent relfex tests in the original PSVR Creed: Rise to Glory, but with a gamepad they fall flat as repetitive exercises that don’t serve a purpose.

Creed Champions plays out like a traditional fighting game, except the controls are super simple and there are only a small amount of moves and combos to pull off. You’ve got your basic and heavy attack buttons, as well as dodge, grabble, block, and super attack.

The idea is that by chaining basic and heavy attacks together, you chip away at your opponent’s health bar until they’re on down on the mat while the count to ten begins. You can get them down quicker by using your super attack which charges up with every blow you land. This move does bigger damage but you need to get the timing just right, otherwise, the man across from you can dodge, block, or even counter with their own super attack.

If you get smacked down to the ground, you have to the count of ten to mash the square button to fill a meter and get your fighter back on their feet. Mind you, this can only happen three times before you’re knocked out for good.

There’s no judge’s decision in Creed Champions and no real tension to the countdowns – you either knock the other boxer down four times and win, or you get knocked down four times and lose, or fail the basic button mashing to get up and be done quicker. It’s a bit too basic for my liking.

That goes for the actual fighting, too. It’s fun and fairly easy to play, but it’s far too easy to cheese your way through fights by spamming the dodge button and block buttons and then smacking in some dirty power attacks from behind.

It’s very arcadey and there are plenty of visual cues to help you out. The gloves of your opponent will glow a certain colour, giving you the chance to respond quickly. Some attacks can not be blocked, while others can be interrupted or even countered with a push of the block button. It’s simple stuff and while I liked it, my mind kept on going back to the PS Vita game I’ve been playing recently, Real Boxing, which is a very good little game.

Your rewards for slogging through the Arcade stories are new fighters and fighter outfits. However, you can totally cheat the system. The game allows you to unlock characters and outfits by playing in Versus mode. So, if you want the baby but don’t want the labour pains, you can turn on a second controller, batter yourself, and then brag about your lack of skill to nobody. Or you can play with a mate or a family member. You can reach over the sofa and punch them in the leg to get the upper hand while you land the uppercut.

Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions is a decent arcade boxing game tied to a very likeable license, but it feels a bit cheap and easy. There’s only one mode with any kind of progression and the actual boxing feels more like a watered-down Street Fighter than a heavyweight competition.

Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.

Primary version tested PS4. Reviewed using PS5

That’s not on my pace notes…

I started my WRC 10 journey by going straight for the Career Mode. Before I’d properly gotten the chance to warm my brakes, I was already thrown into a do-or-die situation. If I wanted to go straight into top tier racing, I had three attempts to beat the time on a set track. Fail three times and it’s off to the junior championships. I didn’t want that.

I failed the first attempt miserably. I failed the second attempt even more miserably. The third and final countdown to go had me wondering how many PSN profiles I would have to make to avoid the junior championships.

Game Information
Release Date: September 2nd, 2021
Developer: KT Racing
Publisher: NACON
Availability: PSN (Digital) Retail

Thankfully, I didn’t need to resort to such measures – I crossed the finish line with a second to spare and that rally racing bug was back.

It’s been a long time since I’ve played WRC 9 – I reviewed it last year and thought it was a fantastic game, but as is the life of the reviewer, I’ve had to sideline a lot of what I like (including sleep…) to put the hours into work reviews. I’m glad that WRC 10 landed on me then.

This year’s game is celebrating 50 years of WRC and that means you can take a flat left down memory lane by replaying some classic rally stages from throughout the sport’s history. There’s a bunch of classic cars which I really liked and, dare I say it, I preferred many of them over the modern cars. The retro Lancia’s were my favourite – there’s something about the weird and wonderful angles that you just don’t really see in modern rally cars. I know, aerodynamics and all that jazz, but there’s no harm in enjoying the fun oldies.

The 50th anniversary is a separate mode all by itself and you can spend hours rambling your way through and unlocking further courses and cars. Or you can take to a quick race and choose your car, course, and weather options.

Throughout the game’s Career mode – which is as extensive as ever – special Anniversary events are available to play to earn some extra cash and points, though you aren’t forced into these time-travelling tests of skill.

Career Mode is where most of us will spend our time, though there is a full multiplayer suite that includes the option for online championships, co-op, and even split-screen local multiplayer. As my mates are all banned from my house until they’ve been fully jabbed and have learned how to behave like indoor people (they’re feral lads) I’ve only got my partner and my five-year old son to play with, and neither want to play WRC 10, so I can’t test it out.

Multiplayer isn’t a big thing for me anyway and given the way rallying is done – it’s an asynchronous competition – I prefer to play offline and test my admittedly crap rally skills against the A.I in the deep Career mode or try to beat my own times in quick races.

Unlike last year, I’m playing WRC 10 on PS5 and so I get to experience first-hand what the next-gen experience is like. It’s good, but there are some niggling problems.

The DualSense support is great and feeling the rumble of the track in my hands and my trigger fingers was cool and not overdone. The audio coming out of the controller, on the other hand, was a bit overboard. Going over gravelly areas, the controller would spew out some awful sound effects and it wasn’t long before I was muting my gamepad.

Performance-wise, it’s not perfect. WRC 10 aims for 60fps on PS5 and it does feel great for the most part, but there are definitely some judders.

That’s not the worst of it, though. WRC 10 has lots of screen tearing and I did find this distracting. Pair the screen-tearing with the pop-in and you’ve got a recipe for sending me careening off a mountainside. That’s an exaggeration, sure, but it was very distracting. Over time I just got used to it, but whenever I saw it – and it’s frequent – I always noticed it.

It could be worse, sure, and while it may look a little rough around the edges, it is still a decent looking game and it does at least feel good to play.

There’s a deep simulation if you want it – and I do! – but I was happy to see that there are a lot of options to open up the game and make it a little bit more forgiving and inviting to newcomers. The difficulty of the Career mode can be tweaked and there’s a load of accessibility and assistance options, which is always nice to see.

Something I really liked about WRC 10 was the unintentional comedy. The co-driver this year is a genuine bag of laughs. Smash your ride into the plebs standing on the corner and your co-driver will say something like “I don’t have this area in my notes” or “not there” or “the tracks over there.”

Clear a section ahead of time and the co-driver will let you know that they’re happy with your performance by yelling “PERFECT!” or “YES!”

It’s a small thing, sure, but it made the experience that little bit more believable. Now, if KT RAcing can get the driver to scream and pray as I refuse to use the brakes, that would be something.

Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.

Primary version tested: PS5. Reviewed using PS5.

GT-Hay Plague City

Throwing poo at authority figures is something I can only dream of doing. I’m too pretty to go to prison, though, so my poo-flinging fantasies are destined to live on as mid-afternoon daydreams. Or, I can boot up Rustler and throw as much poo at as many people as I like.

That’s just one of the barmy off-beat activities that you can do in Rustler, a new open-world action game that takes inspiration from the old GTA games. And if your idea of old GTA games is GTA IV, go away and look up GTA 2 or GTA London. They’re classics.

Game Information
Release Date: August 31st, 2021
Developer: Jutsu Games
Publisher: Modus Games, Games Operators
Availability: PSN (Digital) Retail (Buy on Amazon USA / Amazon UK)

You play as Guy, a lowlife skinhead thug who wakes up battered and bruised in a field. His life is in the gutter but he decides to make some changes. He’s going to enter The Tournament and win the hand (and more…) of the princess.

To enter The Tournament, Guy needs to get himself some funds to pay the entrance fee, so he and his lazy mate, Buddy, set out to scratch together the coins needed. This epic quest takes the duo across the kingdom, flinging poo at anybody who gets in their way. You can also stab, shoot, punch, and run over people with horses. It’s not all about poo.

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Obviously, the comparisons between Rustler and GTA are obvious. In fact, it’s part of the marketing spiel for the game – they’re trading on the fact that they’re bringing back that old school GTA gameplay, but with knights and nobles instead of crackheads and cops.

The bulk of the missions are standard GTA-style jobs. Go to this place, do this thing. Go to another place, kill a person, as well as some more unique objectives fitting for the period. You can take on the Medieval Martial Arts championship and beat your way to the top. You can earn some side coin by bullying people into attending church. And of course, you can also race horses, among other things.

Rustler isn’t getting any points for originality, then. It takes the familiar and puts a medieval spin on it, though not everything translates so well.

The Wanted system, for example, is very poor. To escape the guards you can either rip down posters to reduce your wanted level or ride a horse through a Pimp a Horse garage to give your mount new colours and send the guards away. It’s far too simplistic and, much to my annoyance, there are only two such medieval Pay ‘n’ Spray locations across the entire map. I got the attention of the guards while selling weed on a mission, and I had to go back and forth half a dozen times to lose the wanted level and finish the mission. It was annoying and there just wasn’t any thrill in the chases when I knew it was going to be as easy as trotting into a barn, even if the filth watched me do it.

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Combat is another stumbling block in Rustler. It’s just not very fun. Whether it’s using the automatic crossbow, the scythe, or any of the weapons in the game, it just doesn’t feel great. It’s awkward and the game could have done with a lock-on system to help you swing your sword in the right direction. It’s serviceable, but it’s not good enough, and whenever I was forced into combat, I’d try to run around and pick the enemies off with the ranged weapons rather than struggle through the melee brawling.

What keeps Rustler fresh is the dialogue, though, sadly, it’s all text. There’s no voice acting here which is a real shame. I laughed out loud plenty of times just reading the character’s lines, so I’m sure I would have busted a rib had they been voiced. Plus, it would have been easier to follow the dialogue; trying to read the on-screen text and not plough into people with my horse was a tough time.

Rustler has no radio. Instead, you have to hire a bard if you want a soundtrack to your thuggery. The idea is good and I love that you have to punch the bard to change the song, but in reality, it’s a bit of a misstep.

As there are no character voices, you don’t hear any chit chat on the streets, just sneezes and coughs, which I’m 100% sure are in there as a jokey poke at our diseased world. Lovely.

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So, if you don’t have a bard with you, it’s a bit boring on the ear lugs. There were large stretches of the game where I only had the triggering coughs and sneezes to fill in the background, or if I was out in the wilds, the uber-realistic chirping of the birds. The game could have done with some ambient music and kept the bard beating in as a fun extra.

From flinging poop to cross-drossing, Rustler has the ingredients for a very funny game, but sadly, with some poor combat, a lifeless world, and a lack of variety, it’s just not a very fun game to play.

Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.

Primary version tested: PS5. Reviewed using PS5.

Return of the king?

King’s Bounty 2 is by far the most difficult turn-based tactical game I have ever played in my entire life, and that’s partly why I couldn’t gel with this long-awaited sequel.

The game’s story isn’t great but it’s not terrible either. You begin by picking one of the three heroes: Aivar the Warrior, Katharine the Sorcerer, or Alisa the Paladin. Each character has their own little backstory that has led them to be found in an icy cold prison.

Game Information
Release Date: August 24th, 2021
Developer: 1C Entertainment
Publisher: Koch Media/Prime Matter
Availability: PSN (Digital) Retail (Buy on Amazon USA / Amazon UK)

After a slow-going tutorial that sends you running to a merchant for a crossbow, a soldier to get your battalion, and last but not least, a horse to take on your travels, you’re kicked out into the snow to go and find the prince of the Kingdom of Nostria.

The story lost me quickly after this point. I made it to the kingdom and spoke to the prince who basically told me that the whole world was falling apart and that I’m the only idiot in the Kingdom who can fix it. Mind you, he used fancier words and sent me on my merry way to once again explore and fight my way through main quest battles that were so hard I wanted to throw my console out the window. The side quests weren’t bad, though, and they were my saving grace from insanity.

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It’s a shame as I really enjoyed the variety of units I got to play with, ranging from generic foot soldiers to controlling the undead and throwing them onto the battlefield.

I enjoyed learning how best to use each unit as well as managing morale while I mixed and matched units and perks. This could make or break a team as I’d attempt to use both Anarchy units with Order units, and without the right perks, this could cause me to skip turns during battle, something I couldn’t risk doing.

While you explore the open world, you’ll come across giant yellow markers on the ground. These are the battles, and once you’ve got your courage to enter the battleground, you get one final chance to run away before accepting your fate.

King’s Bounty helps you with this by putting a lovely message at the top of the screen, that lets you know the strength of the opponent you’re about to face.

The most important parts of Kings Bounty 2 are the battles but I really struggled to get into them. The game transforms into a top-down strategy game where you travel across the terrain in turns on a hexagonal grid slapped on top of the land you were just walking on. It’s simple to use and you have the freedom to spin the camera around to spot where pesky archers or mages could be hiding.

One of my biggest problems was that my units would die. I know, right, soldiers dying in battle. How dare they? Ranged units weren’t as susceptible to death’s embrace, but the up-close and personal units were always in for a beating. Most of the time, the best way to win was to have more soldiers in a unit than the enemy had. Winning by throwing sheer numbers isn’t very satisfying, and even in the best of battles, I’d end up losing a lot of my units.

If I somehow managed to keep at least one of the unit soldiers alive I could heal the whole unit back to its max soldiers in the victory screen. This was great, however, depending on how awful I did during the battle, the amount of money I received from winning wasn’t enough to cover all of my losses. If I had lost a unit completely, I had to go and buy them again. Soldiers aren’t cheap, either.

There just wasn’t any satisfaction to winning battles, or losing, obviously. If I lost and all of my units were dead, there was no game over screen. It just said “defeat” and I was teleported to the nearest fast travel point with zero soldiers. The game doesn’t give you a second chance, so it’s brutal in that respect. Rather than scrounging around to build an army, I’d just reload an autosave and try again. And again. And again…

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This is where my enjoyment of the side quests came into play as many of them were simple and fun to complete and they always paid hard cash money, and that meant I could keep buying soldiers. The side quests were also necessary to level up the units.

There’s a fun but difficult tactical game hidden inside this lacklustre RPG. The story was wasted by being broken up by difficult to beat battles, and it didn’t take long for me to just blank the narrative. I spent several hours on one battle just to get 2000 gold and a pair of gloves that I didn’t even use, and for what? Just to be told to go and fight another tedious battle.

Overall, King’s Bounty 2 was not for me. It had its moments like the occasional exciting side quest or the battle mechanics which were fun to use even if I wasn’t very good at them, but the learning curve of this tactical game was too steep for me and the story wasn’t there to back up my hours of the anger of trying to complete it. There is enjoyment in playing but for me, it didn’t feel worth it and by the end of this review I was ready to throw in the towel for good.

Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.

Primary version tested: PS4. Reviewed using PS4.