Gothic 1 Remake PS5 Review 7.5/10 "A Throwback in the Truest Sense of the Word"

Gothic 1 Remake Review – A Gritty, Grubby Triumph with Proper Old‑School Bite

Bugs, Quirks and the Lack of Hand‑Holding

I’ve had many a dalliance with the Gothic series over the years, most recently in 2024, when Gothic 2 was released on Switch. Piranha Bytes very much had their own approach and vibe to their creations, and I was gutted when they closed their doors last year, having given us the Gothic, Risen and Elex series of games. Titles that were definitely flawed, but also idiosyncratic and rich with a dry sense of European humour as well as being unique, memorable experiences for better or worse.

I heard of this Gothic remake a couple of years ago, and I have been yearning for it ever since, and reviewing and scoring this game was oddly difficult because…well, it kind of does what you want/expect a Gothic game to do. Still, there are some design issues and other aspects that are lacking. That said, I fully appreciate that there is a large chunk of fans of the original out there that will embrace this and see it as a genuine GOTY, and I completely understand that viewpoint.

The original Gothic was released in 2001 on PC and is set in and around a penal colony that is under a magic barrier. Nothing living can escape the barrier, and the folks who live within it have split into various groups with their own ways and goals. The remake reflects this main plotline whilst breaking away in terms of the various side quests and its own twists on the design of the original. 

Hollowbody – Rich's Rapid PS5 Review: "British Survival Horror Done Right" #survivalhorror

Hollowbody – The One‑Man Horror Project That Deserves Your Attention

Where Retro Survival Horror Meets Modern Indie Spirit

Hollowbody is a one‑man survival horror project with big Silent Hill energy — atmospheric, tense and proudly British. 

In this Rapid Review, Rich dives into its eerie world, clever design choices and the rough edges that come with a solo‑dev passion project. Is it worth your time? 

Let’s find out. If you love indie horror, retro vibes and games made with pure graft, this one’s for you.

Pengilo PS5 Review 6.5/10 "A Pleasant Penguin Physics Puzzler" 🐧

Pengilo: A Simple Slice of Penguin‑Tossing Puzzle Zen

Verdict: Fun, Floaty, but Not Quite Stand‑Out

A simple and accessible physics-based game from developer Double Mizzlee and publisher Eastasiasoft, Pengilo is a single-screen puzzle title with fifty stages of circular penguin-chucking action.

A bright and colourful entry in the genre presented in 2D, Pengilo tasks the player with tossing a penguin into the air, collecting stars and keys to unlock the door in order to exit each stage.

A budget title that currently costs under a fiver, Pengilo only allows you to take control of your penguin for a follow-up directional shove after a single bounce; this means that you have to be accurate if you don’t want to fall off the screen, resulting in a retry of the stage. 

GluMe PS5 Review 8/10 "Let’s Stick Together"

GluMe Review – A Charming, Cartoonish Sokoban Puzzle Challenge

Sticky Mechanics, Bright Presentation and 80 Fiendish Single‑Screen Stages

A sliding puzzle game in the Sokoban style. GluMe casts you in the role of a cartoonish blob who must move around the single-screen stages collecting gems by sticking to other blobs in the correct sequence. A single miscalculation means that you won’t be able to complete the stage – which can be but a few seconds long if you know the route! – and requires a restart. 

I found the whole approach of GluMe quite appealing. There’s a heavy sense of cartoonishness with the animated blobs having large eyes and gently bouncing around. The chiptune music by Liniker Nasciento is absolutely a perfect match for the breeziness of gameplay and keeps things bright and light to match the visuals.

Rugrats: Retro Rewind Collection Brings A Dose Of 90s Nostalgia to PS5 👶🍼

Rugrats Retro Rewind Collection PS5 Gameplay – 90s Nickelodeon Revival

Tommy, Chuckie and the Gang Cause Some PS5 Mayhem

Rich steps back into the playpen! This Rugrats Retro Rewind PS5 gameplay video dives into the nostalgic chaos of Tommy, Chuckie, Angelica and the whole gang as they return in a modern reimagining of the classic Nickelodeon world. Expect retro‑styled fun, colourful levels, and plenty of 90s vibes as we explore missions, mini‑games, and all the mischief the Rugrats are famous for.

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss PS5 Review by Regan 7/10 🐙 @PlayCthulhuCA #IndieGame #GameDev

Step into the shoes of Noah, an Ancile field agent, as you explore a deserted deep-sea mining station in 2053. Tasked with unravelling the fate of a missing crew, you'll be challenged by intricate puzzles and an atmosphere thick with mystery. 

This immersive experience sets the stage for a gripping adventure that will keep you guessing until the very end.

The Bearer & The Last Flame Gameplay – An Indie Soulslike RPG ⚔️🔥 @darkreaperstdio #IndieGame #GameDev

Rich steps into the haunting, atmospheric world of The Bearer & The Last Flame, a brutal and beautifully crafted indie action‑RPG with clear Soulslike DNA. In this gameplay video, we dive into the opening areas, test out the combat flow, and soak in the moody world that’s already turning heads on Steam.

Crime Simulator PS5 Review 6/10 *A Game That Almost Stole My Heart* 🦹 @ULTGames #IndieGame #GameDev

Back in 2024, I covered Thief Simulator 2 and whilst I had a lot of fun with, it was very clearly rough around the edges and needed refining. Fast-forward to 2026, and the newest release from Polish studio CookieDev has made its way to consoles, and it is a game that is frustratingly short of being a really unique gem in the stealth-thievery genre but has too many issues to really be a recommended title.

The game – a first-person affair - begins with your character locked up in prison and being bailed out to quite a princely sum by a mysterious cabal of insalubrious individuals that intend to make you steal and earn your way through your debt. 

Beginning in an abandoned warehouse, you only have a PC, a box to send over your stolen goods, and a wall chart to pan out your next nick-fest. There is only one neighbourhood available at the start, with you and your team – up to four players online – needing to rack up some earnings (via a percentage cut from what you steal, which gets higher dependent on the difficulty) in order to unlock heists and other areas to pillage.

The Rogue Prince of Persia PS5 Gameplay – Physical Edition First Look! ⚔️🎮

Rich steps into the sands once more with The Rogue Prince of Persia –Physical Edition on PS5!

Watch as the legendary Prince returns in this fast‑paced, roguelite adventure packed with fluid combat, wall‑running acrobatics, and stunning hand‑drawn visuals. This gameplay showcase dives into the console edition — exploring early levels, upgrades, and the new physical release that fans have been waiting for.

Dragonkin The Banished PS5 Review 7/10 "A Solid, If Generic ARPG That Runs Fantastically" 🐲⚔️ @Eko_Software @DragonkinGame #IndieGame #GameDev

A new ARPG from EKO Software, Dragonkin The Banished has a lot going for it in terms of the smooth visuals, intriguing world, city-developing aspect, and dragon-centric story, but fails to stand out from a crowded genre in a meaningful way, and results in a game that makes you wish it had something else up its sleeve – or a little more character – to really leave a mark.

Choosing from a pool of heroes, you (and up to one other player locally, or up to three more if playing online) are challenged with defeating a world being overcome with the corruption of banished dragons. Beginning in the one remaining city as yet untouched by corruption, you start your quest. 

A game full of various options to customise your experience in terms of accessibility and camera zoom – you can choose whether to be closer to the action, or see more of the landscape – it’s here you’ll get to grips with the games mechanics and systems. 

Dragonkin The Banished features a hexagonal upgrade system in which you can put tiles together to boost your powers, not to mention those of your wyrmling; a small dragon that accompanies you on your quest and primarily features elemental powers in a bid to aid your combat finesse, these can eventually be armoured and powered up alongside you. The city also gains its own experience points as you explore in your journey and you’ll find new areas such as stores and features cropping up with each level. 

WWE2K26 PS5 Review 7/10 “Core Gameplay and GM Mode Save The Stagnation Issues” 🤼‍♂️

I always brace myself whenever I’m about to play a new WWE 2K game after years of ‘two steps forward, one step back’ for over a decade in the 2010’s. I’m always nervous, 2K have been on a good run for the last few years, there have been improvements and 2K have been taking what they have and building onto it instead of taking things out... to then only put them back in years later and claim its a new feature. 

So, when I booted up WWE 2K26 I wondered if, just like The Undertaker at WrestleMania 30 was the streak about to end? I can thankfully report that, no it hasn't...but it has run into a bit of stagnation. 

The core game is solid but I would say this edition doesn't feel like the jump that previous years have had, and a few new issues have been brought into play.

Mindseye PS5 Review 4/10 [POST 2026 UPDATE 7] "Not quite as catastrophic as you might have heard" 👁️

Here are the first ten minutes of Mindseye.

After a slick cinematic establishing our hero, Jacob Diaz, you begin a new job at a sprawling military-tech corporation. Your superior takes you on a guided tour of the pristine facility in a small buggy, explaining the company’s grand ambitions.

You can absolutely floor this buggy and plough into every NPC in sight.

It’s like the parking garage in Dead Rising, bodies ragdolling across the place, your buggy skidding over their motionless corpses. No one meaningfully reacts to this. They don’t move out of the way, and aside from a few yelps they don't say anything.

At one point I flipped the vehicle completely. My boss, still seated beside me, calmly continued her monologue while Jacob nodded along, upside down, as if this were standard onboarding procedure.

This was the most fun I had playing Mindseye.

The Cabin Factory PS5 Review 9.5/10 "A beautifully designed bite-sized horror that’s a must play for fans of the genre" 🛖 @ICS_indie #IndieGame #GameDev

As long time readers will know, I’m a (blood) sucker for short horror games. I love settling down and knowing I’ll be watching the credits roll in an hour or two and will get a short blast of unsettling thrills. Combine that with the fact that The Cabin Factory costs less than half a pint of lager, and we are very much onto a winner.

I’m purposely not going into the game that much here as discovering it is where a lot of the fun lies, all you need to know is that this is a first-person 3D horror game in which you play an older lady that begins The Cabin Factory in a lift en route to the huge aeroplane hangar-like room in which she will be performing her job…checking if cabins that roll up on a conveyor belt are haunted or not. There are two buttons marked ‘danger’ and ‘clear’, and if you get eight cabins correct on the trot – you finish the game, it really is that simple.

Disco Simulator PS5 Review 7.5/10 "Can people please stop spewing on the dance floor?" 🕺🪩💃 @GamesIncubator #IndieGame #GameDev

As someone who has a partner that grew up on The Sims games, I quite fancied the idea of settling down of an evening and spending a few sessions with Disco Simulator, a game in which you run your own nightclub (I do really feel that this should have been called Nightclub Simulator, by the way, but it looks like that name was already taken). 

The game begins with a brisk tutorial that lays out the setting, you begin each scenario with certain goals in mind – reaching a certain amount of cash, hitting certain metrics etc. – and from there, you pretty much get free reign of how to run your club, from naming it through to shaking cocktails, unclogging toilets, checking tickets for entry, and ensuring that the power stays on – or will you delegate all this nonsense to your ever-growing team of staff?

Crisol: Theatre of Idols PS5 Review 8.5/10 “A Bloody Good Start for Vermila Studio” 🪆🩸 @CrisolGame @VermilaStudios #IndieGame #GameDev

When viewing the trailer for Crisol: Theatre of Idols it was immediately obvious where a lot of inspiration had come from it. looked like a mix of Bioshock and Resident Evil, which are two of my favourite game series, so I was very excited to see whether it could live up to its lofty inspirations, or would it be a pale imitation? 

Especially as this is the first game by the studio. I think they hit it out of the park, a slam dunk, a hole in one.. and that's all the sports metaphors I know. For a first outing I think it’s fantastic. Crisol knows what it wants to achieve, it is a love letter to the horror games that inspired it, and whilst it may not reinvent the horror game wheel, it has wonderful art design and a cool new mechanic that makes the game a delight to play.

Trust GXT 498P Forta Gaming Headset For PS5 ¬ Review By Britt 🎧 @TrustGaming #GXTrust

Trust have released a line of headsets licensed for PS5 in a range of colours (Nova Pink, Midnight Black, white, and Starlight Blue) that are available now!

We were sent the Nova Pink edition, which is a bright and vibrant colour that is definitely more a hot pink than baby pink. Well packaged and easy to set up, the Forta headset has a detachable mic arm and a universal 3.5mm cable that is soft, braided (thank the lord, much more practical than some stiff, plasticky cables I’ve encountered in the past), and also detachable - much preferred to hard-wired cables that can get yanked and require full unit replacements in such situations. I always find it comforting to know that cables can be replaced with my accessories, should the worst happen.

Romeo is a Dead Man PS5 Review 7/10 "As far as I’m concerned, playing Romeo is a Dead Man makes you cool" ⚔️🩸 @romeoisadeadman @Grasshopper_EN @suda_51 #IndieGame #GameDev

It’s really very straightforward.

You play as Romeo, a young sheriff’s deputy who discovers a body lying in the middle of a deserted road. He investigates and is attacked by a monster that horrifically disfigures him. On the verge of death, his grandfather appears in a time machine and saves his life with the Dead Gear, trapping him between life and death and shattering the space-time continuum.

Now Romeo is a cyborg agent of the FBI's Space-Time Police, living in a spaceship, assisted by his katsu curry loving mother, zombie-farming little sister, a human with a cat head (or possibly a cat with a human body), his time-travelling grandfather (now a talking patch on the back of his sweet jacket), and a mission to journey across interdimensional parallel universe taking out evil version of his one true love, Juliet.

Y’know, one of those stories.

Nioh 3 BASE PS5 Gameplay [FPS MODE] – Early Combat, Skills & Fights ⚔️ 🥷 @nioh_game

Rich steps into the brutal world of Nioh 3 as we dive into fresh PS5 gameplay on a base PS5. Expect fast‑paced combat, punishing enemies, slick weapon transitions, and that signature Team Ninja intensity. This is raw gameplay captured directly on PlayStation 5— with commentary and pure action. If you’re into Soulslikes, samurai combat, or you just want to see how Nioh 3 performs on PS5, you’re in the right place. Grab a brew and enjoy the chaos.

Carmageddon Rogue Shift PS5 Review 7.5/10 *Almost thirty years on, the Eagle revs again!* 🛻☠️ @playcarmageddon #IndieGame #GameDev

I’m very familiar with the Carmageddon franchise, the original was something incredibly unique in both its gameplay and style back upon its initial release in 1997, and the follow ups (Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now (1998), Carmageddon TDR (2000), and Carmageddon: Reincarnation (2015) tried to modernise the experience visually whilst retaining the same mechanics as the original, which didn’t set the gaming world alight, although those early games still had their fans. 

This newest entry - developed by 34Big Things, the minds behind the Redout series – takes things in a different direction, and whilst I can imagine it will annoy purists, whilst there are still issues, this feels like the right approach for the series at the moment, making it a more focused, linear experience as opposed to the sprawling, slightly clunky vibes of the more recent entries.

Set in 2050, the world is... well, it’s completely buggered, quite frankly. Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland – natch – your character enters the ‘Carmageddon’ in a bid to win their freedom. The narrative is handled by graphic novel-esque cutscenes and adds to the larger-than-life feel of the whole setup and are brisk in their approach to allow players to get a quick understanding of the basic premise before getting into the meat of the game proper, the violent racing.

Static Dread: The Lighthouse PS5 Review 9/10 “Shining a light on Lovecraftian Horror” 🗼🐙 @StaticDreadGame #IndieGame #GameDev

I don’t think a game has ever come along at the right time for me more than this one. Last year I got hips deep into Arkham Horror: The Card Game, which - like Static Dread - draws from the works of one Mr H. P. Lovecraft. I got really into both his works and the lore of the world he created which meant whilst playing this title I not only got the references, but that I had a better understanding of what Static Dread: The Lighthouse was going for, that fear and dread play a larger role than outright scares. Some scares do crop up in the game, but it is the complete, unsettling dread creeping over you that is the real horror.