RUNNER Overview (PS5) | Push Sq.

Iconic 80s anime Akira serves because the inspiration for RUNNER, a breakneck sci-fi arcade shooter which arguably tries to do an excessive amount of. As a smuggler in an aggressively hostile world, you need to outrun robo-cops by way of seven dynamically generated phases, dual-wielding pistols whilst you challenge slightly justice all your personal. Cowboy Bebop’s Steve Blum stars in vibrant cutscene interludes, whereas the sport is bundled with a free visible novel that fleshes out the story – in addition to a soundtrack visualiser, with full PSVR2 compatibility.

It’s a cool bundle, then, however the precise sport throws far an excessive amount of at you from the beginning – introducing a dizzying array of techniques and mechanics in an awesome “rub your stomach, pat your head” vogue. Along with wielding your weapons, you may as well launch missiles, lob grenades, choose completely different firing types, steer your bike, and generate a cyber-sword, which you should utilize to deflect enemy projectiles. It’s a dizzying quantity of stuff, and we nonetheless discover ourselves urgent the unsuitable buttons even after a number of hours of play.

To make issues worse, the sport is punishing, to the purpose the place we swiftly realised we weren’t going to get very far with out turning invincibility on. You will discover a circulation with follow, however the ranges are extraordinarily lengthy, and whereas there are beneficiant checkpoints, we discovered ourselves feeling bodily exasperated at instances. We’re in all probability simply not minimize out for the runner way of life, however there are some actually brutal design choices, like when wielding a weapon together with your left hand you possibly can solely steer with the proper thumbstick; there’s a car you possibly can unlock which lets you steer whereas holding your weapons, however you’ll must wrap your head across the system as it’s earlier than you get there.

Along with the synth-driven metropolis pop soundtrack, the neon punk aesthetic appears to be like very nice in 4K in PSVR2, and whereas the colourful colors might result in complications, we just like the chaotic, virtually violent nature of the presentation. However in the end, we discovered ourselves tiring of the overly lengthy ranges pretty rapidly, and so the title lacks that sense of replayability that’s so basic to actually nice arcade releases.