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Spider-Man Miles Morales (PS5) – Completed Review

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The showcase for the PS5 release does not disappoint, it is an action-packed adventure with lots and lots of web slinging fun. The main caompaign is much shorter at just over 3 hours but there is enough side content in the game to keep you busy zipping around the map completing side quests, clearing out hideouts, collecting various items from postcards to sound samples.

Playing as Miles, you get to enjoy using his bio-electric powers to hulk-smash and dash around pulverising enemies. There is a large skill tree to unlock which will give you new moves but be warned to complete it you will need to play new game+ and level up enough to gain skill points. You will also need to collect tokens to unlock gadgets and new suits. The best suit in the game however you do not get unitl you have completed the game and start new game + to play a new side quest. Even if you do not want to play the main campaign again make sure you start new game + to ulock this suit. Trust me it is Puurfect!

The story and characters in the game are very good, from Ganke your sidekick buddy, Uncle Aaron who has some hidden secrets and Phin your very close friend who is trying to find a solution to rid the city of Roxxon, a greed-hungry corporation who will stop at nothing to make money. There also some nice cameo's from Peter Parker and others throughout the game.

It had a hefty price tag on release but now can be picked up for around £25 second-hand and for that amount you will certainly enjoy the experience. Make sure you wait around after the credits to see a small scene which shows where the series is going next.


Spider-Man Miles Morales (PS5) – Completed Review

Posted on Written by

The showcase for the PS5 release does not disappoint, it is an action-packed adventure with lots and lots of web slinging fun. The main caompaign is much shorter at just over 3 hours but there is enough side content in the game to keep you busy zipping around the map completing side quests, clearing out hideouts, collecting various items from postcards to sound samples.

Playing as Miles, you get to enjoy using his bio-electric powers to hulk-smash and dash around pulverising enemies. There is a large skill tree to unlock which will give you new moves but be warned to complete it you will need to play new game+ and level up enough to gain skill points. You will also need to collect tokens to unlock gadgets and new suits. The best suit in the game however you do not get unitl you have completed the game and start new game + to play a new side quest. Even if you do not want to play the main campaign again make sure you start new game + to ulock this suit. Trust me it is Puurfect!

The story and characters in the game are very good, from Ganke your sidekick buddy, Uncle Aaron who has some hidden secrets and Phin your very close friend who is trying to find a solution to rid the city of Roxxon, a greed-hungry corporation who will stop at nothing to make money. There also some nice cameo's from Peter Parker and others throughout the game.

It had a hefty price tag on release but now can be picked up for around £25 second-hand and for that amount you will certainly enjoy the experience. Make sure you wait around after the credits to see a small scene which shows where the series is going next.


Wuppo (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I’d seen Wuppo on the eShop a few times and it looked like the sort of game I’d want to play – silly, nonsensical stuff. It reminded me a bit of Pikuniku, although is obviously very different, and then it was incredibly cheap so I folded and here we are.

The story is (and apologies for getting lost in advance) that you are a Wum – a sort of blob creature – who lives in a hotel called The Wumhouse. In the world are are two other sentient native species, and another who were warlike and wiped out ages ago (or were they?). And now there are some space aliens who look like lions. Because you’re very messy with ice cream, you’re kicked out of the Wumhouse and so begins an adventure where you meet characters from these species, fight them, visit an underground city, come across massive bosses like a giant eel and a huge ice cream, and discover more about what you have to do through old filmstrips you play on projectors.

And play volleyball, deliver newspapers by shooting them into peoples’ faces, visit a theme park, paint a picture, and discover a face in the sky who likes to eat mud. It’s all woven together, sort of, into something mostly coherent but utterly absurd, where you end up having to save the world.

It plays out mostly as a platformer, with your bouncy little blob able to jump, and double jump, and with the right item shoot gel in the direction of the right stick in order to kill things. Quickly, you realise that the game itself isn’t the only weird thing here, as the controls are too. For example, to get into the inventory you press a direction on the d-pad rather than press +. To jump, you’d expect a face button but as this may conflict with the right stick aiming, a shoulder button is used instead – only it’s on the left, not the right like in other games where this is an issue. Both these things felt wrong for the entire duration of the game and I never got used to them. Giving items is also needlessly fiddly, as is buying things and selecting items from the inventory.

In order to progress you’re not really given enough information as to what to do, which when coupled with being given “quests” which seem to have no use or bearing on the plot (but you don’t know this at the time), it can be tricky figuring out what to do or where to go next. Also, there’s the problem of “is that platform just out of reach and I need an item or different route, or am I just mistiming my jump, or is it even a platform at all”, which is frustrating.

So while I did love the world, and the art style, and how quirky and ridiculous it all is, too many small problems in Wuppo stop me from fully recommending it. For cheaps though? You can do a lot worse.

Alwa’s Legacy (Switch): COMPLETED!

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After enjoying Alwa’s Awakening so much, and it was actually Alwa’s Legacy I’d originally intended to play until I realised Awakening came first and, well, existed, of course I was going to jump right into Legacy afterwards.

It is, basically, more of the same. You’re still Zoe, you still have a magic staff, and you can still use your three powers – shoot a lightning bolt, create a block and create a bubble. This time, however, the graphics are all 16-bit in style rather than 8, and you get additional abilities too.

Once obtained, you can air-dash (a bit like how you do in Celeste), warp through some walls, breath longer underwater, and upgrade the number of health segments you have. The way you upgrade your original powers is different too – previously you just found items to do that, but now you spend the orbs you collect on improvements – most of which are new to this game. You can also remove the upgrades too, allowing you to re-spend the orbs on different upgrades, meaning if you don’t need one for a bit you can make use of another. There are also a few tweaks to the controls to accommodate more skills and to make use of the fact 16-bit machines had more buttons!

The plot isn’t much different to before – beat four bosses then take down Vicar. Each boss has its own area with different gimmicks: Two of the cleverer ones include one where you can raise and lower the water level to open up paths or solve puzzles, and the other lets you swap between past and future versions of the “dungeon”, making vines grow or lasers disappear.

I found Legacy’s enemies, especially the bosses, much much easier than those in Awakening, but found the puzzles and “how do I get to X” issues much less obvious than before. Completing it 100% was a bit harder too as hidden areas were much more hidden and there’s no controller rumble to alert you to them – although there is an item late on that warns you there’s a secret in a room, but not where in the room! Overall, though, the improvements and other changes made this more enjoyable than the original game, which I’d already thought was great. Alwa’s Legacy is not in the same league as Super Metroid or Hollow Knight, but it’s still a great Metroidvania and definitely worth picking up.

Star Trek Online (PS5): COMPLETED!

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As it turns out, it is possible to complete Star Trek Online, and it’s possible to do it without paying any money at all. Because that’s what I did.

I know that for many people, the game here is all the endgame content, playing with others, doing the same missions over and over and collecting all the ships and stuff. That’s not for me. I reached the cap of level 65, then finished all the single play missions remaining, and that’s it. And it was mostly OK?

I’m still baffled how buggy it is, especially since some of the bugs I came across were there and reported on the official forums three or four years ago, and how clunky it all is. The menus are unwieldy and the menu navigation controls clearly suffer from controller rather than mouse use. The animations are PS2 level woodeness, characters randomly stand on chairs and tables (or sometimes, inside walls, doors or furniture), and getting stuck inside asteroids or rocky outcrops in caves is such a frequent issue that rather than fix it, they included a “warp somewhere nearby” option in the menu called “I am stuck”.

It’s repetitive. It’s broken. It’s ugly. And, although this isn’t the game’s fault, it doesn’t even fit into the Star Trek universe any more. But I enjoyed it enough to spend what is probably 125+ hours on it so I suppose it must have done something right?