Aliens Review (PS5) – The Worst PS5 Exclusive To Date

Shallow, uninteresting and with virtual no personality, Aliens from Sabec is one extra-terrestrial you’ll want to send home as soon as possible. The Finger Guns review.

I thought it might have been different. I thought maybe with the added power of the PS5, Sabec might be able to break their streak of making poor games for PlayStation consoles. Darts, Checkers, Fight, Table Tennis, Air Hockey, Hunt, Golf, Chess, Sniper, Bowling – At best they’re below average experiences. At worst, they’re mechanically broken and completely devoid of enjoyment. Their latest game – Aliens – doesn’t break that trend. While it’s the most mechanically complicated game they’ve produced, it’s a pale imitation of a much better product.

Unfortunately, Aliens has nothing to do with the iconic James Cameron movie with which it shares its name. It’s not even stylistically similar. Instead, this game is a low effort attempt to emulate the Zombies modes from the Call of Duty series. Unfortunately, it lacks all the character, tension and technical proficiency of the AAA shooter.

Aliens comes with 3 maps – a temple, a swamp like area called “hollow grounds” and a space station. Each map can be played at 3 difficulty settings that make the game progressively more difficult. This difficulty setting determines how long each match of the game can go and how difficult to kill the extra-terrestrial invaders are. On Rookie, you have to survive 3 rounds, each of which gets more challenging against Aliens that are reasonably easy to kill. On Demon difficulty, the highest there is, you’re tested against 5 rounds of foes which take a real beating before they fall.

You begin each run at Aliens with a pistol and a small supply of ammo. Throughout each level are weapons and ammunition which can be picked up and added to a weapon wheel with which to shoot the invading force with. The enemies come in a hand full of variants, each of which has their own abilities. There’s a standard grunt that runs at you and swipes, an enemy that I believe is supposed to be semi-invisible but stands out like a sore thumb, bloated enemies that explode when shot, hivebrain styled enemies that damage the player if they get close and a few others. The aim of each run is to get as much weaponry and ammo as possible and kill every alien that is spawned in the map.

That is, of course, if your patience with Aliens lasts longer than your health bar. I knew I was in for trouble when I started my first match on Temple and I was spawned in a second before the actual map was. I watched as the buildings and detailing popped in to existence before my eyes. This happens on every match and on every map. It doesn’t just happen at the start of the match either. The draw distance on this game is atrocious by PS5 standards. On a next-gen console, we should not be seeing the details pop on to the buildings as we approach them but that’s exactly what we have here.

Aliens PS5 review

The Aliens themselves just spawn into existence too. Unlike Call of Duty Zombies where the undead clamber their way in through entries or windows, this other worldly force just blinks into existence from a few zones on the map. From here, they have a single tactic – swarm towards the player. Even with a series of different abilities, the AI for all the foes in this game are singularly minded – race towards the player and attack when they get close. This is some of the dumbest AI I’ve ever seen too. The bigger enemies will throw the occasional fireball at the player as they stream forward, regardless if there’s a horde of alien allies in front of them. It’s not uncommon to see a wave of enemies take themselves out.

There’s no alignment between the capabilities of the AI controller Aliens and the level design either. In the space station level, there are elevated pipes which can be climbed upon – but the aliens can’t get there. You’ll see the enemies walk as close as they can to the player and then stop because they can’t come any closer. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Even when you’re not able to cheese it, the enemies will bottleneck themselves in doorways which mean that if you pick the right spot with the right gun, you can clear out 3 waves of enemies without taking a step.

To give Aliens some credit, the weaponry and alien models are great. The art style is aligned and they’re quite detailed creations. Although, I’m not going to credit the developers of this game, Sabec, with this. I’m going to credit Maksim Bugrimov, the person who sold the weapons and aliens on the Unity Asset Store. And I’ll credit Sandro T who was the creator of the Temple and Hollow Grounds map and is giving them away for free on the Asset Store. I’ve stopped short of calling Sabec’s games “asset flips” in the past but this time, there’s no denying that this is exactly what Aliens is. It’s a collection of store bought assets (some of which are free) which are then sold for a profit. This is one of the grossest practices in the video game industry.

There’s been no care taken in the creation of Aliens and you can tell it’s just a collection of assets slapped together without much thought for artistry or player enjoyment. There’s invisible walls everywhere. The weapon sounds are all tinny, making the guns sound like toy weapons you can win at the travelling fair. The game hard crashed on my PS5 after defeating the final wave and boss of a run on the Demon difficulty. Twice. Livid. There’s no music or ambient noise in the game unless you’re being attacked. When you do get jumped, a generic rock track is played (I’d put money on it being from some free online source) that quickly becomes tiresome.

Aliens released as a PS5 exclusive but doesn’t make use of the platforms exclusive features. The DualSense might as well be a DualShock for all the extra use it is. The visuals are sub par at best, even compared to last generation games. Finally, there’s load screens – albeit short – on a console that is capable of generating huge chunks of open world games instantly. Frankly, it could have been a PS4 game.


A pale imitation of Call of Duty’s Zombies mode, Aliens is an asset flip, pure and simple. There’s no purpose or intention to the design of this game. It’s a collection of Unity store assets that have been slapped together with no artistic intent or thought for the player’s enjoyment. It’s functional but it’s an abject failure in every other regard.

Aliens is available now on the PS5.

Developer: Sabec Interactive
Publisher: Sabec Interactive

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, a copy of the game was purchased. For our full review policy, please go here.

If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.

Make sure to follow Finger Guns on our social channels –TwitterFacebookTwitchSpotify or Apple Podcasts – to keep up to date on our news, reviews and features.

Darts Review (PS4) – More Bull***t Than Bullseye

This shoddy, glib Darts game is an affront to the game it mimics. The Finger Guns Review.

This is it. This is the last game from Sabec that I ever review. Having spent this past year buying and then reviewing their substandard releases, Darts will be the last. This game is the straw that breaks this particular camel’s back. The lack of care for the subject matter demonstrated here, devoid of even a glimmer of game design intelligence, is breath-taking. Needless to say, this will not be a positive review.

Darts has never been an easy sport to replicate in a video game. The complexity of darts – the power, the angle, the flight, the accuracy – is hard to translate for a video game in a way that’s satisfying. So much so that there hasn’t been a home console version of Darts for almost a decade, the last games being PDC World Championship Darts and Top Darts on the PS3. That’s not to say darts games haven’t been made. There are hundreds of mobile phone games for the sport, most of these are terrible. Instead, this sport has found itself become a popular mini-game in many other games, most recently Persona 5 Royale, Watch Dogs Legion and Final Fantasy VII Remake. As little diversions, these mini-games have worked well – but no one has taken on the task of creating a full game dedicated to Darts. That’s for good reason. It’s a tough genre to nail. The question has to be asked if Sabec thought that they could genuinely create a decent darts game and failed spectacularly or whether they saw a gap in the market and decided to pump out a substandard game to sell a few copies to fans of the popular pub game. I suspect it’s the latter.

Darts Sabec

Sabec’s Darts begins with its most pleasant moment. That camera pans around a virtual play room complete with pool table and, of course, a darts board when funky jazz plays. This leads to the game’s main menu which consists of 2 options; 1 player or 2 player. As you might expect, 1 player is against an AI opponent while 2 player is local, pass the controller play. There’s no difficulty options, no tutorial, no menu options for music or sound levels, no explanation of how to play (this game presumes you know how to play Darts – not that it’ll matter) or even what that controls are. It feels like a game jam game that has ran out of time and had this 2 option menu slapped on its front.

Then you start a match. The aim should be the first to reach 0, ending on a double, where both players start with a score of 501. Each player has 15 rounds of 3 darts in order to do so. Instead, the aim simply becomes ‘hit the board’. This is because Sabec’s Darts has the most baffling and unintuitive control scheme I’ve ever seen in a darts game. A dart spawns and each one is randomly angled in a different way. You then get to move this dart around the screen to try and align the angle so that it might hit where you want it too. There’s no guide or aide to show in which direction that dart might fly. Instead, you’ve got to guestimate the flight on the angle to the board. This isn’t helped by a mild sway on the dart.

Darts PS4

Although, you might not want to bother. When you pull the Dualshock trigger button, the dart starts to tip up and down. I imagine this was Sabec’s attempt to replicate the throwing motion of the dart but here, it remains stationary and just bobs up and down. Coupled with the mild sway, this makes it nearly impossible to fire off the dart in an accurate way. This is compounded by the dart letting flight once you let go of the trigger which means it’s not immediate or an accurate way to throw. I’ve played this game for far longer than my patience with this system lasted and not a single dart landed where I wanted it too. Not a one.

“Wait Sean” I hear you cry, “If you can’t accurately throw a dart, how are you expected to finish a match on a double?”. I wouldn’t worry about that. Despite playing more than 20 games, I’ve only been in a position to finish a match once and that was a total fluke (attempting to aim for treble 20 and hitting treble 19 multiple times). I won the match but only because the AI was still 100+ behind me. The AI has never finished a match once and even the computer controlled opponent has trouble hitting the board in about a third of its throws.

A trend with Sabec games, Darts has absolutely no atmosphere. During play, there’s no music and limited sound effects. Hit a double or triple and you’re treated to a beep that’s about as annoying as the noise made when activating sticky keys on a windows PC. There is some customisation available with a range of colourful dart flights and changeable colour schemes for the board but it’s quite literally only surface deep.

Darts Review PS4

The lack of any types of modes is glaringly obvious too. I guess if the game was playable in any type of state other than randomly throwing darts at a board and hoping they score, I’d have like to have seen killer darts, Halve it, Cricket, Fives or customisable starting scores for quicker games. Instead, it’s limited to an unplayable 501 version only.

It’s telling that the many darts mini-games that can be found in other bigger titles are far more enjoyable than Sabec’s Darts in every sense. At no point in this game did the control scheme make sense or feel fun. If Sabec had renamed this game “Drunken Darts Simulator” and it had not taken itself so seriously, this could have been a short lived laugh for some YouTubers to make a video of. Instead, it demonstrates a complete lack of respect for Darts as a sport and feels like a few darts assets thrown together in an attempt to call itself a game. This game misses the mark by miles.


The sport of Darts deserved better than this. Better described as a virtually unplayable mess with a darts façade rather than a darts game, I wouldn’t even recommend this title to my worst enemy.

Darts is available now on PS4 (review platform) and Nintendo Switch.

Developer: Sabec Interactive
Publisher: Sabec Interactive

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, a copy of the game was purchased. For our full review policy, please go here.

If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.

Make sure to follow Finger Guns on our social channels –TwitterFacebookTwitchSpotify or Apple Podcasts – to keep up to date on our news, reviews and features.

Checkers Review (PS4) – A Zugzwang

Sabec continue their unenviable streak of poor console games with Checkers, a shallow and uninspired recreation of the classic game. The Finger Guns review.

Some famous person once said “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”. I’d go ahead and Google who that overused cliché is attributed to but honestly, that search would likely take longer than my enjoyment of Sabec’s Checkers lasted. That quote does seem apt however as another month arrives and I’m here reviewing another of Sabec’s games (this being my 11th review for their games), hoping beyond hope that this might finally be a game worth playing. Alas. I should start filling in the admission forms for the closest mental health facility. I must be out of my mind.

Checkers PS4 Review

Much like all of Sabec’s games, Checkers is exactly what the title suggests. It’s a virtual recreation of the classic table top game. The game is played from over head with a look down onto the chequered board. A cursor is used to move the pieces around with the trigger buttons used to pick up and place the Checkers. Playable in one player against an AI or local 2 player, this game follows the standard rules for the classic game; the aim is to capture all the opponents pieces which can move one diagonal pieces at a time, if you can take a piece, you have too, etc.

Most of the assets in Checkers are reused from Sabec’s Chess. The game is played in a 3D location on a table with a candle and a bell on it and it’s simply rotated 180 degrees for this game. The background has also been changed from a pleasant looking library to a boring brown wall. The customisation is as limited in Checkers as it was in Chess. In fact, it’s exactly the same. The chess boards from the previous game are the only ones selectable. There’s a few variants of boards to choose from but the colour settings remain the same – black and white chequers. There’s a bit more variety in the Checkers pieces which can be changed to a variety of opposing colours – black and red, green and purple and more.

Checkers PS4 Review 2

Unfortunately, that’s where the skin deep customisation and depth of play ends. There’s no career mode, no player choices, no difficulty settings, no tutorial, no progression of any kind or any depth of any kind. There’s a single game mode with a single set of rules and that’s it.

That’s the core issue with Sabec’s Checkers – it doesn’t do anything you can’t do with an actual checkers set. In fact, it’s less enjoyable to play because the control scheme isn’t as intuitive as simply picking up pieces and moving them. With a normal checkers set, that you can pick up for just a few pounds online, you can play suicide checkers, flying kings or any other variation on the standard rules. With this Checkers video game, it’s locked to the standard 8 x 8 board and the standard rules.

That wouldn’t be so bad if the game was challenging in any way. Unfortunately, the AI in Sabec’s Checkers is appalling. I don’t consider myself to be a particularly good Checkers player but it took me only 5 games, my first 5 games, to unlock the PlayStation trophy for winning 5 matches in a row. The AI doesn’t seem to have any tactical nous, making suicide moves which make no logical sense. It almost feels random. It was much harder to actually lose a game (something else you need to do 5 times to unlock trophies) on purpose because the AI would move into ridiculous places that would force you to take their pieces according to the rules.

Checkers PS4 Review 4

Checkers lacks any kind of ambiance either. There’s no music to speak off and the sound effects are all straight out of a stock sound effect pack. Lose a match and you’re treated to the Price is Right failure horn. The clack as you select and move pieces manage to become grating very quickly. It’s simply not a pleasant experience to play.

Much like Sabec’s other titles, the biggest sin of Checkers is a lack of ambition or a vision for something better. It’s another exact replication of the rules of a game that already exists but in a way that’s worse than the physical, real world version. For the price, 3 times the cost of a travel Checkers board with pieces, you’d expect something more than a 3D environment to play just a single mode in. Hell, Battle Chess is more than 30 years old and even that understand the need to evolve board games beyond the board for a video game. Another missed opportunity.

In Checkers, a Zugzwang is a situation in which the obligation to make a move in one’s turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage. I recommend against putting yourself in one by buying Sabec’s virtual version of Checkers. It’s functional, sure, but the AI opponents are atrocious, the game lacks any personality and it’d more fun to simply play a table top version.

Checkers is available now on PS4 (review platform) and Nintendo Switch.

Developer: Sabec Interactive
Publisher: Sabec Interactive

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, a copy of the game was purchased. For our full review policy, please go here.

If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.

Make sure to follow Finger Guns on our social channels –TwitterFacebookTwitchSpotify or Apple Podcasts – to keep up to date on our news, reviews and features.

Fight Review (PS4) – Down For The Count

A bare bones brawler that lacks anything resembling enjoyable game play, Fight is another flaccid jab by Sabec. The Finger Guns Review.

I should have known that Fight was a game from Sabec Interactive simply by the name. At this point, it’s their modus operandi. All of their games have names that would make Ronseal proud. They do exactly what they say on the tin. Golf, Chess, Bowling, Hunt, Table Tennis, Air Hockey – the list goes on and for whatever inexplicable reason, my kids seem drawn to them. The fault lies at my feet for buying Fight though. I had a few quid left in my PSN wallet and the key art for this game hints at something deeper. I bought it on a whim. I should have known better.

Fight is a 1 vs 1 fighting game in the same vein as Mortal Kombat. Each combatant starts at either side of the screen and it’s the first to beat all of the health out of the other’s life bar by landing blows on their opponent who wins. Every match is a first to 2/best of 3 set up, like you might be accustomed to. Don’t allow my comparison to Mortal Kombat to raise your expectations however. Outside of the structure and tone, this game isn’t a patch on NetherRealm’s games. Fight couldn’t last a round in the ring with any of its peers.

On first impressions, I certainly thought Fight would finally be a Sabec game I could enjoy. It begins with a pumping industrial soundtrack and that same enticing key art behind a slick looking menu. My hopes rose again when I clicked through to Arcade mode – a match against a CPU opponent – and was greeted by a roster of fighters 15 strong. Each fighter has a differing visual appeal but a handful look like pound shop versions of existing characters, one in particular looking like an off-brand Raiden – but I was still hopeful. Those first impressions were punched in the face and kneed in the groin the second I entered my first fight.

Fight Review PS4

Each combatant in Fight has 6 attacks – a straight punch, another straight punch that looks identical to the first, a high kick, a mid-kick while stood and while crouched, an uppercut and a low kick. Holding L2 or R2 while moving left and right triggers a quick little shimmy too. There’s no jumping here so no aerial versions of any of the attacks. This wouldn’t be the first time a game kept fighters grounded so that’s not so much of a deal breaker.

There is however 2 massive missing components. The first is any type of block. There is no way to block an incoming attack in Fight and it’s quite incredible what a turgid mess this turns the game into. Instead of timing attacks or having any strategy, the game turns into a button masher with no strategy as each attack interrupts the stiff and frankly poor attack animations from your opponent or vice versa. This isn’t nuanced fighting with minimal inputs like Divekick. It’s just a slapping match with a singular tactic – press random buttons and hope the hit lands.

Fight Review Sabec

The second missing component is combos or special moves. The 6 moves listed above are the only 6 moves in the game and there’s only one attack – the straight punch – which will combine with itself to form a flowing attack of 3 jabs. Everything else is just a singular attack manoeuvre which has no follow up. What’s more, those 6 moves are the same for every single fighter in Fight. Every single one of the 15 combatants have the same move list, animated in exactly the same way. Having 15 fighters in a game is completely pointless if they all play in exactly the same way.

The more you play Fight, the more you start to see flaws. The versus mode which should be player vs player doesn’t require a second controller to access, so it’s perfectly feasible to play the game against a non-responsive player 2 that doesn’t exist (I actually thought it was mandatory for local  multiplayer games to include 2 player access to pass certification but obviously not). Why exactly you’d want to play against a non-existent human  beyond quickly unlocking the poultry trophy list (there’s no Plat here) is anyone’s guess.

Fight Review

In total there’s 4 modes in Fight and they’re all skin deep. The Arcade mode, as previously mentioned, is a single match player vs CPU match. This can be played in 3 difficulties – Easy to Hard – but changing this doesn’t actually change the way the CPU behaves. Instead, it increases the damage they do per hit they land on the player. Without a block button, the Hard mode is a crapshoot. There’s a training mode too where both player and AI opponent have infinite health which, in theory, should allow the player to practice their moves. This mode is entirely redundant because there’s only 6 moves in the game, there’s only 1 combo and no specials to learn.

The final mode is called Survival. Here you fight through randomly selected brawlers from the Fight roster which increase in difficulty with each victory. At least in theory. In practice, it doesn’t feel like the difficulty increases at all. I managed to get to 21 victories before I got bored and exited the mode.

Fight Review

The reason I was able to rack up so many victories is because there feels like there has been little to no effort made to make Fight an enjoyable and balanced fighting game. That punching combo – literally the only one in the game – is basically a sure fire way to victory in every fight. I sat there barely paying attention to the screen, even reading through Twitter, while repeatedly pressing X and managed to pick up 5 wins.

You’re probably thinking “surely there has to be a silver lining to all of this?”. Well, there are a few positives. The 5 stages, while they look like knock off versions of popular arena’s from other games, are easy on the eye. They have some pretty impressive lighting effects that highlight the bristling muscles on some of the characters. There’s also a nice blood splatter effect that spurts from landed punches and leaves some sanguine on the ground during the match. The few fighters that do feel original have an impressive aesthetics too. None of these factors make Fight any more pleasurable to play however.


Fight is one of, if not the single worst fighting game on PlayStation 4. A few saving graces mean there’s maybe an hour of car crash entertainment here but beyond that, this game is a pale imitation of the classics in the genre. It either demonstrates a severe lack of understanding of the design tenets that make for a fun and competitive fighting game or that Sabec just didn’t care enough to implement them. I’d prefer to get punched in the face than play this game again.

Fight is available now on PlayStation 4 (reviewed on a base PS4) and Nintendo Switch.

Developer: Sabec Interactive
Publisher: Sabec Interactive

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, a copy of the game was purchased. For our full review policy, please go here.

If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.

Make sure to follow Finger Guns on our social channels –TwitterFacebookTwitchSpotify or Apple Podcasts – to keep up to date on our news, reviews and features.

Table Tennis (PS4) Review – Swerve This One

With physics that takes a lot of getting used to, Sabec’s Table Tennis is a substandard attempt to replicate the real world sport. The Finger Guns Review.

I’m almost impressed with the persistence and relative consistency of Sabec’s output on PS4 at this point. I’ve now reviewed 9 of their games that have launched on Sony’s console in the past few months. Their games all have a few things in common; they all have very self explanatory names – Spot The Difference, Chess, Air Hockey, Golf etc. They’re all developed in Unity. They’ve all been priced in that “ah, go on then, what’s the worst that could happen” price range. Finally, they’ve all lacked quality design direction and/or content. I don’t know why I expected this to be any different with their newest game, Table Tennis. Yup. It’s another stinker.

Like many of Sabec’s recent releases, Table Tennis is outdone by its ambition. Making a functional and fun virtual version of this sport is something not many developers have ever taken on. It’s a sport with a huge number of intricacies – spin, flight, power, loop, back hands and forehands – and even the games that utilised motion control’s like PlayStation Move and VR struggle to get all of this right. An attempt to replicate Table Tennis using nothing but a thumb stick on a Dualshock 4 controller? It was doomed to failure right from the start.

Table Tennis Sabec 12

What we’re left with is a weird version of 3D Pong that adds swerve to the ball irregularly. With a view down the table, the player is able to move their disembodied Table Tennis bat left and right in an arc and half way up the table. The aim of course is to prevent the ball bouncing on your side of the table more than one or once and then off the table while attempting to score a point in the same way on the opposite end. The winner is the side who wins 11 points and is clear of their opponent by 2. Doing so is a bit of a crap shoot however.

That’s because the physics employed in Sabec’s Table Tennis is erratic and unlike anything in the real world game. It’s almost incomprehensible but I’ll try and explain it; rather than adding spin by moving the bat when hitting the ball or changing its angle, it is instead added by what part of the bat the ball hits. It’s like the surface of the bat is actually a dome. You can also add a bit more welly by pressing either L2 or R2 which kind of flicks the bat but it doesn’t really do anything more than simply getting the bat in the way.

Because the flight of the ball is so unpredictable – from both your own shots and your opponents – matches in Table Tennis degenerate into just trying to get in the way of the ball. Even when you think you’re got this sorted, random spin that you can’t predict sends the ball spinning away from your bat. The movement of the bat is so unresponsive that by the time the spin is effective because the ball has hit the table, it’s too late to adjust. It’d be infuriating if it wasn’t so expected at this point.

For reasons unknown, these games of Table Tennis are played in the various rooms of a school. A gym and school hall I can understand. Even a food hall I can get behind – I used to play in my school’s canteen back in the day. But a corridor? A geography class? A computer lab? All I can think of is that these were available assets online that Sabec have either bought or thrown together because there’s really no reason to have some of these selectable rooms in this game. It’s nonsensical.

What’s even weirder is that dispute having a variety of rooms to select in which to play, they all have exactly the same ambience – no music but with a soundtrack of crickets playing in the background. The very same soundtrack you’ll find in Sabec’s Hunt. There’s menu music in this game at least.

As for options, Table Tennis has one single player mode and a 2 player mode. In single player it’s a straight match to 11 against an AI with 3 varying degrees of difficulty that get progressively less error prone rather than more difficult. In 2 player, you’re shown a split screen with each player getting a view from their end of the table. The multiplayer is Table Tennis’ saving grace. Because both players are wrestling the insane physics in this game, it’s silly fun for half an hour before the charm wears off.

Table Tennis Sabec 2

Sabec have once again bitten off more than they can chew. Table Tennis is a sport that’s incredibly difficult to recreate in a video game and they should be commended for at least trying. However their effort is not enough to elevate this game above anything other than a tech demo that should never have made it past the prototype phase of development.


Erratic physics, sluggish controls and a lack of any meaningful game modes means that while Sabec’s Table Tennis might look like the great sport of ping pong, it doesn’t play anything like it.

2/10

Table Tennis is available now on PS4 (review platform) and Nintendo Switch.

Developer: Sabec Interactive
Publisher: Sabec Interactive

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, a copy of the game was purchased. For our full review policy, please go here.

If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.

Make sure to follow Finger Guns on our social channels –TwitterFacebookTwitchSpotify or Apple Podcasts – to keep up to date on our news, reviews and features.

Spot The Difference (PS4) Review – A Classic Comes to Console

There I was, scrolling through the PSN Store when I spotted something that piqued my interest and I immediately got excited. That thing was ‘Spot The Difference’ from Sabec Interactive. I can almost hear the confusion radiating off the screen as I write that so let me explain. A decade ago, I used to spend far too much time in pubs and in between the drinking and frivolity, my friends and I would play on a pub quiz machine. It was one of those pub quiz machines that cost £1 to play but offered you the chance to win £20 if you did well enough in any of its games. Our regular favourites were “Pints Make Prizes”, “Bullseye” and “Spot The Difference”. My friends and I got so good at the latter game that we’d regularly take that £20 jackpot out of the machine. Sabec’s version of Spot The Difference isn’t the same version, but it’s close enough. The logo is the same colour scheme and the mechanics are the same. It’s a shame that there’s not really a massive amount of content here.

Spot The Difference Review 1

If you’ve ever played any type of Spot The Difference, whether it be in a magazine or in a video game, the set up is the same here. 2 images are side by side and you’ve got to find the differences between them. In this game, there are 4 differences between the 2 images in each round and using the cursors moved with the Dualshock 4 thumbstick, you’ve got to hover over then click on them. You’ve got a limited amount of time to find all 4 differences but if you do so, you’re onto the next image with a fresh timer. Each difference you find adds to your score and once you’ve finally failed to find all the differences on an image, your cumulative score is added to the leaderboard. Unlike the pub quiz machine version, wrong guesses don’t reduce your time limit. It instead reduces your score. This is a formula that’s older than I am but it still works and it isn’t revolutionized here.

There’s some nice touches in Sabec’s Spot The Difference too that make it both accessible and good clean family fun. This is a port of the “Ultimate Edition” that was released on the Nintendo Switch back in 2018, itself a port of the original mobile game, but with one difference – it now allows 2 player. With a second controller, a second cursor is added to the screen and you can both spot those differences together. It’s co-op play with both players looking for the same 4 differences. It’s a shame that Sabec didn’t push further and include  competitive modes here but playing this with my wife and kids, while all of our broods scream “below the grapes!” was quite fun.

Spot The Difference Review 1

There’s a very gentle difficulty curve in Spot The Difference. A little too gentle. The first few are always really easy then things slowly get more difficult and more challenging images are used. Differences get smaller and more obscure. Images get far more busy or repetitive.

The biggest issue that Spot The Difference faces is that there’s really not enough content. Within an hour, you’ll have seen all of the images over and over and there’re only a few differences per image. My wife and I became experts at the game, quadrupling the existing game’s high score before we gave up through boredom, not because we’re eagle eye’d but because we’d played the game for long enough to see all of the images and all of the differences. It’s a massive shame that there’s not many images or content.

Unlike some of Sabec’s recent output, Spot The Difference has some ambiance to it. There’s music and cheesy yet appropriate sound effects for correct and failed clicks. The UI is immediately intuitive and it’s very easy to play.

There are a few things that needed tidying up though – the accuracy required for finding the differences can be wildly different. One difference needs a click in the general vicinity of what’s missing/difference, others need what feels like pin point accuracy. There’s also some laughable overlaying that stands out like a sore thumb. One image of jelly babies, has a fake jelly baby in the centre that looks like it was painted on with the spray can option in Microsoft Paint. Some of the differences in the images are almost hilariously obvious too – a diamond on a playing card that’s magnified just plain looks poor and stands out immediately.

Spot The Difference Review 1

I’ve played a lot of Sabec’s recent output on PlayStation 4 and Spot The Difference is probably the most proficient and fun to play game of them all. I stop short of calling it ‘good’ though because there are other games that have these exact same mechanics but with more content, better implemented systems and for less than half the price of this game on mobile. Some might argue that having a 2 player mode makes this version worth it but I’ll be honest, I’ve never played a Spot The Difference game alone – it has always been with friends and family – and it has always worked via touch screens. Still, if the only format you have available to you is a PS4 and you’re desperate to play a game of Spot The Difference, there’s a few hours of good clean fun to be had here. 


A console version of a classic pub quiz machine game, Sabec’s Spot The Difference is fun to play as a group and intuitive enough for a toddler to pick up. Unfortunately, a lack of content means that within a few hours, the images have repeated so often that there’s no more differences to find. There’s much better versions of this concept elsewhere and for a much smaller entry price. 

4/10

Spot The Difference is available now on the PS4.

Developer: Sabec Interactive
Publisher: Sabec Interactive

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, a copy of the game was purchased. For our full review policy, please go here.

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Air Hockey (PS4) Review – A Real Puck Up

When you think about the effect that the arcade classic Air Hockey has had on the video game industry, it’s pretty profound. Pong, the great granddaddy of all home video games, was a take on Air Hockey. Breakout was a variation on it. There have been hundreds of video game versions of the beloved 2 player game since the 70’s, some of which aim for realism, others that use the video game medium to take the opportunity to evolve the game into something new. Sabec’s Air Hockey attempts the former, but fails spectacularly.

Sabec’s Air Hockey is a virtual recreation of the arcade game. With the right thumbstick you control your paddle and attempt to knock the puck into the hole on your opponent’s side of the table as they attempt to do the same to you. Whomever scores 7 first wins the game.

Air Hockey can be played in 1 player against an AI or in 2 player local versus mode. The AI in the game has 3 different difficulty settings – listed as 1 to 3, 1 being the easiest and 3 bring the most difficult. The game is played in a large 3D room in what looks like an arcade and the table is 3D too. So far, so good.

The biggest issue that this version of Air Hockey faces is with the control input. Because it’s going for a realistic approach, it needs an input that makes it easy to move across the table quickly like you would in real life. That’s not something that can be achieved with a thumb stick. Smacking the puck in this game never feels natural because you never really feel in control of the movement – touch screens and mouse controls have been able to achieve this in other games but a thumb stick really had no chance. I’d have ever preferred the use of the DualShock 4 touchpad than the method that’s employed here. The paddle movement speed is really sluggish which compounds this issue tenfold.

The second issue is that within 30 seconds of starting Sabec’s Air Hockey, you’ve seen everything this game has to offer. There’s one table in one location with an AI that simply gets faster rather than more difficult when played at higher levels. Play a single match and you’ve covered every piece of content in the game. When there are many titles out there for half the price of this game that are revolutionising what Air Hockey can be in a video game with new mechanics and rules, it’s really disappointing to see this game be so featureless. 

Lastly, Sabec’s Air Hockey lacks any personality whatsoever. There’s no music or ambiance at all. There’s a single sound for when a paddle hits a puck and when a puck hits the table sides and while these sounds are comparable to their real world counterparts, they’re flat and of a single pitch. Within a single match, they’ll become annoyingly repetitive.

Credit where it’s due – Sabec’s Air Hockey is functional. There have been obvious steps made to try and make this game playable. The puck is followed by a yellow tail which grows with the speed of the puck to help the game be more accessible. 

The issue is these steps fail. Sabec’s Air Hockey isn’t fun to play in either single or 2 payer and this is the bare amount of content require to call this “a game” at all. After playing a game with my wife on the 2 player verses mode to test the camera angles (2 of the 3 are completely useless in multiplayer), she won and then said “Is that it?”. What’s contained here isn’t even enough to be considered a mini-game. It’s more a functional tech-demo that needs much more content to command the price that it demands.


A shallow and featureless package, Air Hockey is a game that wrestles with its control method and loses. It lacks any personality and within a few seconds, you’ll have seen everything this game has to offer. Compared to many of the other Air Hockey games available today, or from history, Sabec’s effort is a spectacular own goal.

1/10

Air Hockey is available now on PS4 (review platform) and Nintendo Switch.

Developer: Sabec Interactive
Publisher: Sabec Interactive

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, a copy of the game was purchased. For our full review policy, please go here.

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Hunt (PS4) Review – Bearly Worth Playing

Ah, the thrill of the hunt. Finding tracks or evidence of your prey. Stalking your target, making sure to stay down wind to ensure they don’t smell you. Setting your sights. Adjusting for wind and distance. Holding your breath to steady your aim and pulling the trigger. There have been a number of video games that have had an admirable go at replicating the nuances of hunting – Hunting Simulator 2 being the latest – and have included many or all of these things. You won’t however find any of these details in Sabec’s Hunt on PS4. Another in a long line of shallow and poorly designed games, Hunt feels nothing like a hunting game.

Described as a “sandbox hunting simulator game”, Hunt is a low-poly open world shooter. Upon choosing you’re desired weaponry – a sniper rifle (the exact same one from Sabec’s Sniper) or a semi-automatic machine gun to begin with – and selecting what time of day you want to hunt in – Either day or night – you’re spawned on a beach. This beach is almost identical in the one you’ll find in Sabec’s Sniper too, just without the bunkers and wreckage of war.

The aim of each run at Hunt is to shoot as many of the animals inhabiting this admittedly large and varied low-poly area within 15 minutes as you can. Depending on what time of day you’ve chosen, you’ll come across a slightly different set of animals. In the day, moose, deer, rabbits, boars and bears are knocking about. During the night, the bears are replaced with wolves. Each animal you kill awards you with points and the after 15 minuets, your combined score will be added to a scoreboard. It’s a basic game play loop that’s immediately accessible but quickly loses its shine.

That’s because the world, the mechanics and the animals you’re stalking are so poorly put together. Let’s start with the game world. At first glance, the low-poly blocky world seems very appealing. It’s either bright and inviting or dark and foreboding depending on what time of day you choose. At closer inspection though, that sheen quickly wears off. Plants float above the ground. Tree branches can be seen jutting out of rocks. There’s baron areas and overly busy areas. There’s also one of my biggest bugbears in video gaming – invisible walls. It’s 2020, not 1995. If you can’t design your environment in a way to keep the player in the area you want them in without resorting to invisible walls, it’s time to stop.

Then there’s the animals. Again, on the surface they look charming. There’s some random generation in Hunt which puts different animal shapes and sizes into the game map each time you play too. On one play, you’ll see rabbits and deer, in another you might see a plethora of moose knocking around. It’s their behaviour that’s the issue here. There’s one animation for each species and they repeat ad infinitum. These aren’t natural animations either. The deer look like they’re trying to bit their own tail, for example. The AI is both completely unpredictable and incredibly stupid too. Sometimes you’ll walk into an area and see every animal sprint away over hills at the other end of a valley. Other times, they’ll simply stand there while you walk up to them and get within touching distance without reacting. When they do react they will run away but often, they’ll run directly into things. On one run at Hunt, I walked over the crest of a hill to see 3 deer and a moose all running into one of those invisible walls. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

Talking of shooting, Hunt is incredibly basic in this regard. There’s no wind to account for. No bullet drop for distance. There isn’t even reloading. It’s simply point and click shooting that’s really not up to scratch compared to its peers, especially when it’s described by the developers as a “hunting simulator”. Some of the animals will attack if they see you and much like in Sabec’s Sniper, you don’t get an opportunity to fight back. If a predator sees you, it’s basically ‘game over’.

Then there’s the audio. There’s a constant ambient nature recording playing in the background as you play Hunt but unfortunately, it feels flat. Rather than increasing the immersion to make it feel like you’re playing in a real forest, it sounds like you’ve left the window open and there’s a bird chirping outside. It also changes on a whim between 2 ambient recordings that certainly needed to be mixed together to ease the transition. The weapon sounds are awful too. They’re unrealistic and tinny, like a toy gun won at a funfair. When animals run away, the sound of their limbs on the floor sounds like it was lifted from a cartoon, like Jerry running from Tom. Lastly, when you do land a killing shot on an animal, the sounds they make are almost comedic “yawp”. I’ve cracked up laughing over it a few times as the animal has rag-dolled to the ground.

And that really is my biggest bugbear with Hunt – there’s no real purpose for shooting these animals other than score chasing and the process of a hunt just isn’t here. There’s no tracks to follow or any real indication of which way animals might be. You simply wonder around hoping to see something to shoot and then shoot it. +150 points. I’ve managed some decent scores in this game and it always feels simply odd to wipe out a whole swathe of wildlife, leaving their bodies where they drop, just to try and get on a leader board (which is offline with made up scores only, by the way. There’s no online leader board here). This isn’t trophy hunting. It’s a shooting gallery with animal shaped targets.


Described as a “sandbox hunting simulator”, Sabec’s Hunt is anything but. A poorly crafted open world, shallow shooting mechanics, bizarre AI reactions and very little incentive to play the game beyond a few runs, Hunt is the worst hunting game on PS4 by a country mile.

2/10

Hunt is available now on PS4 (review platform) and Nintendo Switch.

Developer: Sabec Interactive
Publisher: Sabec Interactive

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, a copy of the game was purchased. For our full review policy, please go here.

If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.

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Golf (PS4) Review – A Real Triple-Bogey

The famous saying goes that Golf is a good walk spoiled”. That’s a sentiment I agree with. I find the sport boring. The exception to that is golfing video games. I actually quite like a golf video game. Like physics puzzles about negating wind effects, gauging power against slopes and selecting the right tool for the job, I find putting a virtual ball in a virtual hole interesting. Far more so than doing it in an actual field. That was until I played Sabec’s Golf on PS4.

I should have known this Golf game wouldn’t have been on par with the rest of the golfing games out there. I’ve reviewed 4 games by Sabec over the past few months – ChessSniperBowling and Snakes & Ladders – and all of them have been glitchy, shallow or uninspired. Golf shares a lot of those same qualities. It is at least a stable game. I’ve not experienced any crashes with Golf, unlike the others.

Sabec’s Golf is a low-poly, simplistic golfing game. Using the direction arrow on screen, you point in the direction of the hole, indicated by a red pillar of light in the distance and by a small arrow next to your golfer. With a choice of 4 different clubs – Driver, Iron, Wood and Putter – each of which offers progressively less power per stroke, you hold down L2/R2 which fills a power bar on screen. The amount of power in the gauge when you release the trigger button directs the power of the stroke. You can change where on its surface you hit the ball to have different effects on the angle the ball will travel. Put the ball in the “hole” and you move onto the next one (more on this in a second).

There’s a single 18 hole course in “Golf” that can be played in 1 or 2 player. Presented in chunky polygonal shapes with solid colours and no texture, the course is incredibly difficult to read. Because there’s no detail to any of the surfaces aside from different colours for the rough, fairway and green, and because there’s very rudimentary lighting, it’s almost impossible to see slopes or changes in shapes on the land. The most challenging this game becomes is when crossing streams (again, presented by static blue triangles). Hit your ball into the drink and you’ll be penalised a shot. There’s no interesting holes here, even considering the water. It’s the most straightforward and boring in-game golf course I’ve every tee’d off on.

The sections of the course – the green, bunkers etc – do have an influence on the momentum of the ball but they don’t act in any realistic way. The yellow bunkers, for example, slow down the ball but they don’t require a chip to get out of the sand. It isn’t sand. It’s just a sticky yellow series of triangles. The rough, acting unlike like the real world counterpart, is quite bouncy and hilly. Land here and you’ll often overshoot by hundreds of feet. There’s no weather or wind to account for here either.

Despite there being very little to affect the accuracy of your shots, the physics in Golf are simply incomprehensible. Balls will stop at the top of hills without rolling back down like they’re covered in glue one moment and in others, a measured shot will just keep going and going and going like you’ve just hit a superball. There’s no rhyme or rhythm to the way the ball acts. Half the challenge of Sabec’s golf is wrestling the entirely unrealistic and unpredictable way the ball moves.

Of course there’s a few glitches in “Golf”. In one instance, I managed to get my ball stuck in a tree. A few shots did manage to dislodge it so I could finish the hole at +5 over par. The camera has had a few fits when travelling behind the ball too as if struggling to keep up with it and then over shooting.

Finally I need to mention the “holes”. These aren’t actually holes. They’re black pucks under the flags that sticks up from the ground. In order to “Putt” you simply have to touch this black surface. It doesn’t matter how fast the ball is travelling when it does so – it could have been thwacked at full pelt – but it’ll count as a putt so long as you simply touch it. There’s no need to measure your putting shots here. It’s totally unnecessary.

I’ve struggled to find a single positive thing to say about Sabec’s Golf but I did find one nice touch, a single beacon of quality in an otherwise dire experience – the animation. Despite the golfers appearing as if they’re made of Duplo, there’s different animations for hitting the ball depending on how much power you put into the shot. Put all the power into it and the golfer will animate such an action. Reign it in and they’ll step in to take a smaller swing. I’m sure the fact that the animation of a golf swing being the only positive I can find is enough commentary to tell you how I feel about it.

Much like the rest of the Sabec’s recent output, Golf is a basic, ugly, featureless, technically frustrating and thoroughly amateurish experience. Compared to every golfing game available on the PS4 and beyond – Golf With Your FriendsBarry Bradford, The Golf Club, Dangerous Golf, Everybody’s Golf and the PGA Tour Games – this is easily the worst. If “Golf is a good walk spoiled” then Sabec’s Golf is “a good relax on a couch spoiled”.


If you’re looking for a cheap golf game, there’s much better games that can be picked up for less than this. It’s almost impossible to recommend Sabec’s Golf, a game with a single course, frustrating physics, a low-poly environment that’s difficult to read and a distinct lack of personality. This game is a hole in 1/10.

1/10

Golf is available now on PS4 (reviewed on base PS4) and Nintendo Switch.

Developer: Sabec Interactive
Publisher: Sabec Interactive

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, a copy of the game was purchased. For our full review policy, please go here.

If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.

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Chess (PS4) Review – Apawning

The PS4 is no stranger to virtual Chess adaptations. During its life span we’ve seen the release of the hyped up version of Pure Chess, played against the Grim Reaper in 4K on Chess Ultra and enjoyed the charismatic stylings of Silver Star Chess. The past 6 years have been kind to the favourite tabletop strategy game. Sabec’s addition to this genre, simply titled “Chess”, is one you can skip. It brings absolutely nothing new to the table. 

Chess

Talking of tables, that’s the one interesting aspect of “Chess”. The board here is placed on a table in a Renaissance-esque library that you see at the back of the menu screen, complete with classical backing track. None of this is visible during an actual game of chess but hey, an effort was made to give this game some character.

Playable in both 2 and single player, the latter against 4 different difficulty levels – Easy, Medium, Hard and Master – Chess follows the standard, universally accepted rules for the game. This game passes the low bar of acceptability as a digital recreation of a table top game by using the correct rules.

If I would have to explain the rules of Chess to you in this review, this game wouldn’t be for you. That’s because there’s no training mode or list of the rules the game uses. This game presumes you know how to play chess before you’ve downloaded it and makes no attempt to teach you. While that’s not necessarily an issue, other video game adaptations have introductions and tutorials which make this game look threadbare in comparison. 

That’s something that’s true for much of “Chess” when it’s laid out next to it’s compares. This game has 1 mode that can be played in single or 2 player. There’s no tournaments, no unlockable chess sets, no character portraits, no variety of locations and no levelling or progression metrics. You can’t even spin the board when playing in 2 player. The deepest the customisation gets in this game is a selection of 4 different boards which can be cycled at any point during play.

The game play is a little lackluster too. I know that’s an odd thing to say about a game that digitally recreates Chess but hear me out. When you want to move a piece, you have to hold L2 or R2 over the piece and then move it to any of the green grid sections on the board that represent available moves. Releasing L2 or R2 drops the piece in the space it’s above so long as it’s green. Each and every time you grab a piece, the game stutters. It’s a small freeze, just a half second stumble, but that’s long enough to drop your piece in the wrong location if you’ve moved quickly. It would have made much more sense to have a “press button to pick up, press button to put down” solution here rather than the control option that was chosen. The same stutter happens whenever the AI opponent takes a turn (incidentally far more severe the more difficult your opponent level). Thankfully there’s no adverse effects when it happens here, other than being a little annoying.

There’s a few questionable design decisions in this version of Chess too. During an AI opponents turn, you dont actually see the chess pieces move. Instead you see a grid space highlighted red to indicate what piece moved to where. Peraonally, I much prefer to see the chess pieces move during play or to at least have a log of what happened on the screen. If a castle just took my Queen, I’d like to see that or read that it has happened.

Visually, “Chess” is neither pretty nor is it ugly. It’s simply pedestrian and uninspired. While other games that digitally recreated Chess pushed the boundaries of what that might look like, here the models are simply…fine. These do little to give the game any atmosphere which is almost entirely silent apart from little ditties that play during Check and Checkmate situations.

Chess adaptations on gaming consoles is a niche and one that is already well served. Sabec’s release provides no new innovation and shows no glimmer of creativity. It’s a stuttering also-ran that’s the worst digital recreation of Chess on consoles.


With better, more functional games already in existence and more exciting ones on the horizon (hello Dungeon Chess and Auto-Chess), it’s incredibly difficult to recommend Sabec’s version of Chess to anyone. Checkmate? There’s no way out for this one.

3/10

Chess is available now on PS4 (review version) and Nintendo Switch.

Developer: Sabec Interactive
Publisher: Sabec Interactive

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, a copy of the game was purchased. For our full review policy, please go here.

If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.

Make sure to follow Finger Guns on our social channels –TwitterFacebookTwitchSpotify or Apple Podcasts – to keep up to date on our news, reviews and features.