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Earth Defense Force: World Brothers (PS5): COMPLETED!

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I’m a fan of the EDF games, with their Massive Ants and Massive Wasps and Massive Robots and Massive Space Ships. I was intrigued by this, Minecraft-y looking entry into the series, but the problem with EDF games is they cost money and don’t often drop to Super Cheap, so I never got round to buying it. And I still haven’t, because it appeared on PS+!

I thought the only real difference between this and the others in the series was the graphics, but actually, there’s a bigger change. You see, you don’t control just one person, you control a squad of four, swapping between them with the d-pad. Instead of collecting billions of weapons, of which you used to be able to wield two, each of your team has just one weapon. But! Because you have four of them, you essentially have four weapons, albeit they’re a bit trickier to swap between and some of them may get “killed”.

As you play through the game, you find and rescue more “brothers” and “sisters”, each of whom is a terrible stereotype of the country they supposedly represent. You can then use these in your squad, and each type has different attributes (like speed and armour) and a special skill (like being able to fly for a bit, having a dash-dodge move, or grenades) so choosing a good combination of both characters and weapons for your team is essential. Well, actually it doesn’t make a lot of difference most of the time and I tended to stick with a couple with long range and a couple with short range weapons.

The rest of the game is, broadly, same as it ever was only in Super Bright Colour Vision and with stupid hyperactive chat instead of the usual morose “we’re all gonna die”/weirdly upbeat “we are the valiant infantry” of the grey-brown entries in the series. You still have ants and spiders, you still have Hectors and Erginus, you still have tanks and a huge cargo robot you can ride, it’s just a bit more jolly and blocky. Also, it was really smooth with no slowdown, which is unusual for EDF but probably because this was the “simpler” game, and on a PS5.

As before, I played through the game with my daughter in co-op, which actually meant we had two squads of four! It’s a lot of fun, but we found it a bit short compared to the “proper” games, and I also missed the “collect all the green weapons crates and red armour crates” which don’t exist here. Well, the red ones just heal your team now. Still, can’t complain when we enjoyed it so much anyway, and it didn’t cost us anything to play.

Toem (PS5): COMPLETED!

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This looked like a lovely wee game when I saw it appear on the Switch eShop, so because I’m morally against paying full price for anything these days I put it on my wish list in the hope of a sale. And then, it appeared on PS+, saving me even more money!

It’s a unique looking, black and white 2D characters in a 3D world game with a hand-drawn style, which is why it originally stood out to me. For the most part, it’s an adventure-y puzzle game, wrapped around the premise of taking photos of stuff. The aim is to complete enough photo challenges in one area to unlock travel to the next one, eventually reaching the Toem and taking a photo of it. I won’t explain what a Toem is (or even how to pronounce it), but the reason for the black and white graphics become clear when you get there.

None of the photo requests are particularly challenging, and some require you to return to visited areas with new clothes and/or abilities you unlocked later (like being able to see ghosts or break blocks of ice), but it isn’t really a Metroidvania as most are optional.

Each area has a great collection of characters to meet and interact with, from the old guy who has lost a sock (and somehow you find two for him), to the ghost of a horse’s head who wants a photo of what they looked like when they were still alive, to the group of thugs who won’t let you join their gang until you’ve found all their graffiti. There’s also some shady organisation watching you for Reasons, and a number of shy monsters to look out for and somehow get snaps of.

It’s very silly, and probably counts as one of those “cosy” genre games with no timers, deaths, failures, peril or danger, but is really quite lovely.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 (PS5): COMPLETED!

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I’ve been eyeing this up for ages but it never really went cheap enough. Sure, I’m a fan of the series (although THPS3 is the best one), but I couldn’t bring myself to pay more than £20 for it. Then PS+ gave it away as a free rental, finally, so here we are.

It’s a remake of the first two THPS games, mostly as I remember them, only in much higher resolution and with some of the music missing because Licencing. It doesn’t feel quite the same in terms of speed and physics, and it lets you do things like revert and tweak lip/grind tricks which didn’t come into the series until later games, but it’s close enough. I had always played Pro Skater 2 much more than 1, so found running through that much quicker than the first game – plus I’d already got all the upgrades from the first game by then.

As (mostly) always, it’s great. It’s better than the previous “best of” remake from 2012 which had terrible reviews but I really liked. THPS3+4 now please and thanks.

Pile Up! Box by Box (PS5): COMPLETED!

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No, I have no idea why I downloaded this, but then I discovered it was multiplayer co-op so played through it with my family.

It’s a cute, relatively simple, platform puzzle game. Most of the puzzles relate to the height or distance you can jump, and manoeuvring or stacking objects (or your co-op partners) to reach buttons and switches and so on. There are springy things and floaty things, fans, fences you can burn, other characters you need to help, and a number of themed worlds to find items in.

I’m sure there are a hundred games not unlike this, and it reminded me a bit of the mechanics in games like Disney Universe or maybe even Skylanders, albeit in a more cubic and simple form, but it was fun in co-op. I suspect it’d be annoying in single player as there’s a lot more to-and-fro without any helpers, but we enjoyed it.

Moving Out (PS5): COMPLETED!

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This is one of those intentionally obstructive co-op arcade games like Overcooked, and it has a similar art style and sense of humour to that game too. But, it’s a lot easier and I (well, we – daughter was on controller 2) had more fun with it.

The aim is to clear a house of (mostly) furniture, by carrying it to the waiting lorry and packing it all in so it fits. Smaller items, like toasters and boxes, can be carried (and thrown) by a single player, but others (like sofas and fridges) require two people to carry as they’re so big or heavy, and these are impossible to move without both players turning into Paul and Barry Chuckle with full on to me, to you-ing.

Things are made trickier when you have buttons that open or close doors, you can’t get a L-shaped desk down a corridor, or actual ghosts are haunting the house you’re clearing. Then, just as the game has got as silly as you can think, of course you jet off into space because story-based-spoilers.

There are a lot of these sorts of games, but this is one of the good ones. And, it was “free” on PS+, so why not, eh?