Tag: PlayStation

Astro Bot: The Full-Price Game That Actually Earned Its Full Price

Game Review · Purchased September 6, 2024 · $89.59 CAD via EB Games

Key art for Astro Bot on PS5
Astro Bot. Photo: PlayStation Store

The Setup

Astro Bot took home the Game Awards’ Game of the Year trophy for 2024, and it did so as a pure, joyful 3D platformer built from the ground up to show off exactly what the PS5 and DualSense controller can do, level by inventive level.

The Review

I bought the physical copy on launch week alongside the limited edition controller and digital deluxe upgrade covered elsewhere in this series, and the game more than justified going all-in on day one. Every level introduces a new mechanic, gadget, or gimmick tied specifically to the DualSense’s haptics and adaptive triggers, and rather than the usual pattern of a few standout ideas stretched across a whole game, Astro Bot keeps generating fresh ideas at a pace that rarely lets up across its full runtime.

This has been widely compared to the best Mario platformers of the current era, and having played through it, that comparison holds up: tight controls, generous but fair difficulty curve, and a level of craft and polish in every individual level that most platformers, even good ones, do not sustain for an entire game.

What I Liked

  • Constant stream of fresh ideas and mechanics, level after level
  • Some of the best use of DualSense haptics and adaptive triggers in any PS5 game
  • Tight, satisfying platforming controls
  • Genuinely joyful tone throughout

What I Didn’t

  • As a mascot platformer, it will always have a lower ceiling of mainstream attention than bigger franchise names, despite deserving comparison to the best of them
  • Some players may find the difficulty curve too gentle if they want a harder platforming challenge

The Verdict

Rating: 5/5

This is the rare full-price game that consistently gets recommended as worth buying at launch rather than waiting for a sale, and having played it, I agree completely.

Where to Buy

PowerWash Simulator: Alice’s Adventures Special Pack, Wonderland Gets the Deep Clean

DLC Review · Purchased August 31, 2024 · $12.31 CAD via PSN

Key art for PowerWash Simulator: Alice's Adventures Special Pack
PowerWash Simulator: Alice’s Adventures Special Pack. Photo: Steam

The Setup

Listed in my own records simply as “Alice in Wonderland,” this is officially PowerWash Simulator’s Alice’s Adventures crossover pack, sending you through a grime-covered version of Wonderland armed with nothing but a pressure washer.

The Review

Consistent with every other entry in this crossover line, the whimsical, slightly surreal aesthetic of Alice in Wonderland translates well into the game’s cleaning-focused gameplay loop, and the level design leans into the property’s most recognizable imagery in ways that reward familiarity with the source material without requiring it. By this point in the year, having bought several of these packs already, the consistency of quality across the whole line had become its own kind of reassurance, I no longer hesitated before buying a new one.

What I Liked

  • Whimsical, well-realized Wonderland-themed levels
  • Consistent quality with the rest of the crossover line
  • Low price, low risk

What I Didn’t

  • Same short-runtime tradeoff as every pack in the series
  • Nothing here breaks new ground for the format at this point in the line’s history

The Verdict

Rating: 4/5

On brand with the rest of this DLC line’s reliably good value. By this point in the year, PowerWash Simulator’s crossover team had fully earned my trust to just buy on release.

Where to Buy

Life is Strange Remastered Collection: The Right Way to Catch Up Before Double Exposure

Game Review · Purchased August 31, 2024 · $29.95 CAD via PSN

Key art for the Life is Strange Remastered Collection
Life is Strange Remastered Collection. Photo: PlayStation Store

The Setup

This collection bundles remastered versions of the original Life is Strange and its prequel, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, cleaning up visuals, animations, and lip sync from the original last-generation releases, timed ahead of Double Exposure’s launch later the same year.

The Review

I picked this up specifically to refresh my memory before Double Exposure, and it turned out to be exactly the right call. The visual and technical upgrades are meaningful without changing the fundamental experience that made these games resonate in the first place: strong, grounded character writing, a distinctive time-rewind mechanic that the original built its entire narrative structure around, and a willingness to sit with difficult, real emotional material that set the series apart from a lot of its contemporaries when it first launched.

For anyone who only played these on previous-generation hardware, or never played them at all, this remains the definitive way to experience the story that everything else in the franchise, Double Exposure included, builds on.

What I Liked

  • Two well-regarded narrative games bundled for well under $30
  • Meaningful visual and technical improvements over the originals
  • Essential context before playing Double Exposure
  • Strong, still-resonant character writing years later

What I Didn’t

  • If you already own and have played the originals extensively, the remaster alone may not feel like a necessary re-buy
  • Core gameplay remains simple by modern standards, this is a narrative experience first

The Verdict

Rating: 4/5

Especially as a lead-in to Double Exposure, this is a strong deal: two well-regarded narrative games, cleaned up and modernized, for under $30.

Where to Buy

The Tremortusk: The Biggest Build of My Year, Piece for Piece

Toys & Collectibles Review · Purchased May 27, 2024 · $782.99 CAD via Vonado

A large brick-built model of a Tremortusk, the armoured four-legged machine from Horizon Forbidden West
A comparable large-scale Tremortusk build. Photo: MOC Brick Store

Some builds test your patience. This one tested my table space, my wrists, and eventually my patience too, in that order.

The Background

Like the Thunder Claw covered earlier in this series, the Tremortusk is an unofficial fan design rather than a licensed LEGO product, this one modeled after the massive armoured machine from Horizon Forbidden West. The specific design lineage traces back to well-known MOC creators in the Horizon fan-building space (versions of this build by designers like Kaelfros are widely recognized within that community), running into the thousands of pieces in its larger configurations, making it one of the most ambitious machine builds the compatible-brick space has produced for this franchise.

Purchased the same day as the Ghost and Star Wars Hangar, this was the most expensive single item in that particular haul, and by piece count, arguably the most demanding build in my entire 2024 collection.

Living With It

This is not a build you sit down and finish in one sitting, or realistically even one day. The Tremortusk’s four-legged stance, articulated tusks, and heavily plated shell require careful, methodical assembly, and I found it genuinely benefited from being broken into several shorter sessions rather than one marathon attempt, both for focus and for hand fatigue with a build this dense.

The payoff for that time investment is real. Once complete, the sheer scale and weight of the finished model communicates the source creature’s intimidating presence in a way smaller builds simply cannot. Leg joints held their pose under the model’s considerable weight without sagging, which speaks well of the engineering behind the design even though it is an unofficial, fan-originated build rather than a professionally tested LEGO Group product.

If I am being fully honest, this is the one build in my whole collection where I would genuinely recommend clearing your schedule before starting rather than assuming you can knock it out over a single weekend the way I did with some of the other large sets in this series.

What I Liked

  • The single most impressive and imposing finished build in my entire collection
  • Strong structural engineering, held its pose under real weight without sagging
  • Genuinely challenging and rewarding build process for anyone who enjoys the assembly itself
  • A machine design that has no official LEGO equivalent at any scale

What I Didn’t

  • A serious time commitment, realistically multiple sessions rather than a single weekend
  • Physically demanding to assemble given the sheer part density
  • Among the most expensive single items in my entire 2024 spending

The Value Verdict

Rating: 5/5

If you love Horizon and want a genuine display centrepiece, this delivers more presence and engineering ambition than anything else in my collection. Just go in with realistic expectations about the time commitment, this is not a weekend project, it is closer to a small ongoing hobby of its own for however many sessions it takes you.

Where to Buy

Memorrha: A Small, Moody Game That Punches Well Above Its Price

Game Review · Purchased May 5, 2024 · $12.09 CAD via PSN

Key art for Memorrha, a moody puzzle-adventure game
Memorrha. Photo: Steam

The Setup

Memorrha is a quiet, atmospheric puzzle-adventure about piecing a broken world back together, built around environmental storytelling rather than dialogue or exposition, in the same general lineage as games like Gris or Rime.

The Review

At just over twelve dollars, this was one of the smallest financial commitments in my entire year, and it delivered a genuinely distinct mood and visual identity that a lot of much more expensive games never manage. The puzzle design is not the deepest or most challenging in the genre, but that was never really the point, the game is more interested in atmosphere, sound design, and the slow reveal of its world than in testing your problem-solving skills.

Games like this live or die on whether the specific mood they are chasing lands for you personally, and this one landed for me: a short, contemplative experience that felt worth the handful of hours it asked for.

What I Liked

  • Distinct, moody atmosphere and art direction
  • Strong environmental storytelling with minimal reliance on dialogue
  • Extremely low financial risk given the price
  • A satisfying handful of hours rather than an overstuffed runtime

What I Didn’t

  • Puzzle design is fairly light, not a game for anyone wanting a real mechanical challenge
  • The mood-first approach will not land for players who want a stronger narrative throughline

The Verdict

Rating: 4/5

A small, low-risk purchase that delivers a genuinely distinct atmosphere you do not get from bigger-budget titles. Easy to recommend at this price specifically.

Where to Buy

PowerWash Simulator: Warhammer 40,000 Special Pack, The Crossover Nobody Expected to Work This Well

DLC Review · Purchased March 11, 2024 · $12.31 CAD via PSN

Key art for PowerWash Simulator: Warhammer 40,000 Special Pack
PowerWash Simulator: Warhammer 40,000 Special Pack. Photo: Steam

The Setup

On paper, this is the strangest pairing in PowerWash Simulator’s entire crossover catalogue: the grim, ultra-serious tone of Warhammer 40,000 meets a game about cheerfully spraying grime off objects with a pressure washer.

The Review

That tonal mismatch is exactly why this became one of the most talked-about packs in the game’s community. Cleaning centuries of grime and battle damage off Space Marines, Titans, and other iconic 40K hardware, rendered in PowerWash Simulator’s cheerful, low-stakes visual language, creates a genuinely funny contrast that the developers clearly leaned into rather than shying away from. It helps that the underlying level design and attention to the source material’s iconography is just as careful here as in the more conventionally “fun” crossovers like SpongeBob or Back to the Future.

What I Liked

  • A genuinely inspired, funny tonal mismatch that works better than it has any right to
  • Strong attention to Warhammer 40K’s distinctive iconography
  • One of the most talked-about packs in the whole crossover line for good reason

What I Didn’t

  • The joke and appeal depend heavily on knowing Warhammer 40K’s tone well enough to appreciate the contrast
  • Same short runtime as every pack in this series

The Verdict

Rating: 5/5

Genuinely one of the standout packs in the whole PowerWash Simulator crossover line, and easily my favourite of the five I bought this year specifically because the concept should not work and absolutely does.

Where to Buy

Jurassic World Aftermath Collection: Tense, Stylish, and a Little Too Short

DLC Review · Purchased February 16, 2024 · $17.91 CAD via PSN

Key art for Jurassic World Aftermath Collection
Jurassic World Aftermath Collection. Photo: PlayStation Store

The Setup

A stealth-adventure VR experience set in a dinosaur-infested Jurassic Park facility, distinguished by a cel-shaded, comic-book art style rather than attempting photorealism, bundling both included episodes into one collection.

The Review

The art direction is genuinely the standout feature here: sneaking around a facility while avoiding raptors hits differently when the whole world looks like it stepped out of a graphic novel, and it holds up better over the course of the game than a more realistic art style might have on comparable hardware. Tension-building is well handled throughout, with a strong sense of danger even though the actual dinosaur encounters are more about evasion than direct confrontation. Where reviews (and my own experience) landed more critical was pacing across the back half of both included episodes, where the core stealth loop starts to feel a bit repetitive before the credits roll.

What I Liked

  • Distinctive, well-executed cel-shaded art style
  • Genuinely tense stealth gameplay in the front half
  • Both episodes bundled together for a reasonable price

What I Didn’t

  • Gameplay loop wears thin by the later stages
  • Overall runtime is on the shorter side even with both episodes included

The Verdict

Rating: 3/5

Reasonable at this price for a good tension-building VR experience, just do not expect a long campaign or a lot of mechanical variety across the runtime.

Where to Buy

PowerWash Simulator: SpongeBob SquarePants Pack, The Most Charming of the Bunch

DLC Review · Purchased February 3, 2024 · $12.31 CAD via PSN

Key art for PowerWash Simulator: SpongeBob SquarePants Special Pack
PowerWash Simulator: SpongeBob SquarePants Special Pack. Photo: Steam

The Setup

Bought one day after the Back to the Future pack, this crossover sends you scrubbing down Bikini Bottom locations, the Krusty Krab included, using the same core PowerWash Simulator gameplay loop.

The Review

Of the five PowerWash crossover packs in my 2024 haul, this is the one I would call the most charming purely on aesthetic fit: SpongeBob’s exaggerated, colourful art style translates into the game’s cleaning mechanics in a way that feels almost purpose-built for it, grime and grease disappearing off cartoonishly oversized objects with the same satisfying visual payoff the base game is built around. The attention to specific, recognizable Bikini Bottom locations shows the same level of care the Back to the Future pack demonstrated a day earlier.

What I Liked

  • Aesthetic and gameplay loop fit together unusually well
  • Recognizable, well-realized Bikini Bottom locations
  • Consistent quality with the rest of the crossover line

What I Didn’t

  • Same short-content-for-the-price tradeoff as every other pack in this line
  • Appeal is entirely tied to fondness for the source material

The Verdict

Rating: 4/5

Cheap, short, and well made, consistent with everything else in this DLC line, and a personal favourite among the five packs I bought this year specifically for how well the visual style fits the gameplay.

Where to Buy

PowerWash Simulator: Back to the Future Special Pack, The One That Started My Crossover Addiction

DLC Review · Purchased February 2, 2024 · $12.31 CAD via PSN

Key art for PowerWash Simulator: Back to the Future Special Pack
PowerWash Simulator: Back to the Future Special Pack. Photo: Steam

The Setup

The first of five separate PowerWash Simulator crossover packs I bought across 2024, this one lets you scrub down the DeLorean and other Back to the Future locations using the base game’s signature power-washing gameplay loop.

The Review

PowerWash Simulator’s crossover packs have become a genuine phenomenon within the game’s community specifically because they are so consistently well produced: a handful of new levels built tightly around the licensed property, recognizable music cues and voice work where licensing allows, and level design that clearly understands what made each specific piece of media memorable in the first place. The Back to the Future pack nails the small details, cleaning grime off the DeLorean’s iconic panel lines feels specifically satisfying in a way a generic vehicle would not.

What I Liked

  • Faithful, detail-oriented level design
  • Short but genuinely well-crafted content
  • Strong recognizable music and audio cues

What I Didn’t

  • Very short additional playtime for the price if you are not already invested in the base game
  • A pack you either want specifically for the license or can easily skip

The Verdict

Rating: 4/5

If you already own the base game and like the property, these packs are short but polished, which turned out to be the norm across every single one I bought this year.

Where to Buy

Dead Island 2 Expansion Pass: Solid Extra Content, Not Essential Content

DLC Review · Purchased January 16, 2024 · $32.92 CAD via PSN

Key art for the Dead Island 2 Expansion Pass
Dead Island 2 Expansion Pass. Photo: PlayStation Store

The Setup

The expansion pass covers Dead Island 2’s story-focused post-launch DLC, HAUS and SoLA, each a self-contained side story with new areas rather than extensions of the main campaign itself.

The Review

Both expansions deliver more of what the base game (reviewed separately in this series) does well: weighty, gory melee combat and a strong sense of place, this time in more contained, bespoke environments than the open-world districts of the main game. HAUS in particular leans into a stranger, more surreal art-house setting than the base game ever attempts, which was a genuinely interesting swing even if the actual mission content within it was fairly short. Community and critical reception on both expansions has landed in similar territory: fine, enjoyable extra content, but nothing either expansion does feels essential to the core Dead Island 2 experience.

What I Liked

  • Distinct, well-realized bonus environments
  • Consistent combat quality with the base game
  • HAUS specifically takes an interesting stylistic swing

What I Didn’t

  • Neither expansion feels essential
  • Each runs shorter than the price might suggest on its own outside the bundle

The Verdict

Rating: 3/5

Only makes sense if you are already committed to playing through both expansions specifically. On their own, this is a modest value add rather than a must-buy, and it makes far more financial sense bundled into the Deluxe Edition than purchased separately after the fact.

Where to Buy