Buffet Boss (PS4) Review

 

Buffet Boss is a Tycoon Game, similar to the many Tycoon maps in Fortnite Creative and I am sure you can also find plenty of Browser- and Shovelware games with the same concept.

You work in a restaurant as a waiter and you have to rise through the ranks till the management or owner position. You collect dirty dishes from the tables, bring them to the cleaners, hand the cleaned ones out to the customers and later on also participate in the creation of the meals. Buffet Boss is all about collecting money and investing it into upgrades of your character and workstations or the purchase of additional stations inside the restaurant. This cycle keeps repeating till there is nothing left to do.

Buffet Boss can’t hide its Mobile Origins. The Visuals are disturbingly ugly. For a PS4 game, it’s quite embarrassing. Every character is a coloured faceless mannequin in this game and the restaurant interior is either not present or as simple as it gets. This isn’t even a budget issue, but probably laziness on the side of the developers. Even a low-budget basic console game should look significantly better than this.

You can also see the mobile aspect in the gameplay. You practically only have to move your character around. He and the workers you can hire automatically pick up the objects and money in the game. Even upgrades don’t require a button press. You just have to walk over the upgrade symbol and you will automatically invest in it after a few seconds. They didn’t even try to do anything besides a lazy 1:1 copy of the mobile version.

The gameplay loop is therefore very simple, but does provide some enjoyment. It’s somewhat satisfying to see your restaurant progressively improving and you often just want to get 1-2 more upgrades before you stop playing. Unfortunately, that only lasts for around 90 minutes. After that  point, you will have unlocked everything there is in the free area of the default restaurant. The only reason to keep playing would be to earn more money for the sake of it without the possibility of additional upgrades or any kind of variety.

The PS4 version of Buffet Boss, same as the mobile version, is F2P. You can buy 3 additional DLC areas for 3 Euro each or a complete edition for 8 Euro. From the videos I have seen, the DLC areas actually don’t look all that great and only minimally different than the base restaurant in the free portion of the game. Interestingly enough, the Xbox One and Nintendo Switch versions of Buffet Boss are not free and cost 5 Euro instead. This is certainly a bizarre pricing strategy.

Buffet Boss features 22 Trophies, including 1 Platinum and 7 Gold Trophies. All the trophies are very easy to unlock and you will get them within 1-2 hours at most. For Trophy Hunters the game can be strongly recommended.

 

Result:

Buffet Boss is a game that’s not so easy to judge. On the one hand, it looks disturbingly ugly and it also can’t hide its mobile origins in the simplified gameplay either. On the other hand, the gameplay loop, despite its simplicity, is somewhat satisfying and motivates you to progress. That is till you will suddenly reach the end of the upgrade cycle after less than 2 hours. In its entirety, Buffet Boss is certainly not a good game, but it might be worth a look to players who are not afraid of mobile visuals and gameplay due to its F2P status.

 

4/10

Warface Breakout (PS4) Retrospective Review

 

‘Warface Breakout’ was a Tactical Shooter Spinoff Game for the ‘Warface’ franchise. Same as the main Warface game it is also a FPS. Breakout released in March 2020 exclusively for console on PS4 and Xbox One. While the main Warface Game also had, for example, a ‘Plant the Bomb’ Gamemode (aka a Counter Strike Gamemode), it additionally featured many other modes like Team Deathmatch, Free for All, Domination, Battle Royale or the PVE based Special Operations. Breakout instead was, according to the developers, specifically optimized for Controller play and tactical gameplay.

You have to keep in mind that at the time there was less competition for Tactical Shooter Games on Console and there wasn’t really anything like a Console version of Counter Strike. Admittedly, there were PS3/Xbox 360 ports of CSGO, but those hadn’t been supported for many years at that point.

Due to the Console focus, Breakout did not release on PC and it also didn’t get a port for Nintendo Switch, which the original Warface had. I assume this was due to the weaker Switch 1 hardware requiring more time to do a competent port of a multi-platform game.

Breakout received 4 Seasons of Live-Service Support between summer 2020 and summer 2021. After this Breakout was due to lacking player numbers put into maintenance mode for another 3 years before it finally shutdown in April 2024. At least they didn’t immediately shut it down and still gave it a couple more years. That being said, between 2022 and 2024 the servers were so dead that you could often queue for 30 minutes without finding enough players for a lobby. You could say that they finally put it out of its misery at that point.

While I have seen some people praise the focus on the Plant the Bomb Gamemode in Warface Breakout, it also came with a big downside: Lack of content. The game released with only one gamemode and two versions of it. The regular Plant the Bomb Gamemode explains itself (One team has to plant and detonate a bomb; the other team has to prevent it. Teams switch at the half point and you can alternatively also take out all enemy players before the bomb has been planted). The hardcore version increased the amount of rounds per match, the money being earned per round and enabled Team-Kills. So essentially there was only a single gamemode and 5 maps for the first 3 months in Warface Breakout. Asking people to pay 20 Euro (the regular price of Breakout) for this limited amount of content, if you could get 5 times the amount of content in the regular Warface completely for free, was a very tough sell.

Warface Breakout did add Team Deathmatch as a second regular gamemode and time limited modes like Gungame or Domination during their live-service. They also released Slum Districts and Outskirts as additional maps during Season 2 and 3, which brought the total map-pool to 7. You could give credit that all those 7 maps were actually Breakout Originals and not just ported over from the main Warface game, but it honestly would have made much more sense to just port some of those over to get the number of maps to at least double digits. The maps were all decently designed, but the live-service over those 4 seasons was ultimately too lacking to save Breakout from a rough start.  

Another big problem with the launch version of Warface Breakout were the massive framedrops in the first couple of months. Players got these performance issues at seemingly random times and regardless if the players were using base PS4 and Xbox One’s, the more powerful PS4 Pro and Xbox One X models or even the later released next-gen consoles. It took the developers way too long to fix those issues in Breakout. Once they did, large parts of the playerbase had already moved on.

The main reason why Breakout released as a buy to play game was that it, in contrast to the main Warface Game, was supposed to have no P2W elements. In regular Warface you could buy ridiculously overpowered weapons and armour for real money, which gave massive advantages and were the worst aspect of that game for sure. Breakout delivered in that regard. There were no P2W weapons or items at all in Breakout. While you can’t directly blame Breakout for it, but this constellation still rubbed me the wrong way. The plant the Bomb gamemode was also in Warface, so you were essentially paying the developers for not actively having P2W elements ingame. Paying money not to get ripped off is just not a good feeling for players. Had they released Breakout without the Warface brand recognition, then it might have been perceived differently. Despite the asking price, Breakout was also selling additional cosmetics in the shop. A practice that has become commen nowadays, but used to be frowned upon.

Let’s also take a minute to talk about the Gameplay in Warface Breakout. Breakout did some adjustments, but at the core this was still very much Warface. Movement got nerfed to create a more tactical approach. The movement speed overall was reduced, the slide function was completely removed and recoil was increased on all weapons to force players to take their time with aiming. Positioning therefore took a bigger emphasis in Breakout than it did in main Warface, where your movement and equipment played a bigger role. These adjustments were overall decent, but not really enough to give Breakout a strong own identity. It very much still felt like Warface, a game that in 2020 was already quite dated feeling, if you consider that it originally released in 2012 with only small adjustments over time. Breakout overall played well, but it’s also fair to say that it didn’t really set the world on fire.

The same could be said about the Visuals. Breakout might have looked minimally better than the original Warface, but it did look quite dated in comparison to other games released between 2020 and 2024. I can’t blame anybody for looking at the graphics and gameplay and having doubts about spending money on Breakout, if you consider the more modern looking free games it was competing with.

 

Result:

Warface Breakout ultimately ended up being a good, but not great, game. It unfortunately didn’t start that way. The idea for a more tactical Warface Spin-off game might have been commendable, but the execution at launch left too much to be desired. Lack of content, massive performance issues and an asking price in a competitive market derailed the start of Breakout. The game noticeably improved with additional content and performance fixes. Even with a good launch it would have probably been an uphill battle, but with the bad launch the game robbed itself of any chance of success. The improvements came too late and the live-service might have helped, but was overall nothing impressive. Despite the nasty P2W issues, there was simply not enough incentive for people to prioritize Breakout over the much more content rich, free main Warface game.

 

6.5/10

Ecchi Crush (PS4) Review

 

Ecchi Crush is a Match 3 Game with a picture unlocking twist from Yabai Games, who are also the developers of ‘Ecchi Secrets’ (a Qix clone, similar to Xposed Reloaded and Celebrities/Cuties Hacked) and many other Ecchi Games on Nintendo Switch. They recently also released the picture puzzle game ‘Splash of Color’ (which I have recently reviewed).

Ecchi Crush mostly plays like a classic Match 3 Game. In case you don’t know what that is: You have a board of randomly positioned coloured gems and you can alter the position of one Gem per round upwards, downwards or sideways. If at least 3 gems are connected either sideways or upwards, then they combine and give the player points. The remaining gems will fall down in their place. Cross combinations are not possible. The idea is to form as many and as powerful combinations as possible with the least amount of turns. If you combine, for example, 4 gems in a row instead of 3, then you will get a Super Gem, that upon its next combination can destroy an entire row horizontally or vertically. The most famous Match 3 game is ‘Candy Crush’, which has unleashed a wave of hundreds of clone games, that have released since.

The twist of Ecchi Crush is that you don’t play for a high score, but instead you try to unveil a background image during the course of the match. Every gem position needs to be included at least once in a combination to unlock the image. That background image is part of a larger picture. You need to unlock a couple of these background images to unlock one bigger picture.

As the ‘Ecchi’ name implies, the game features pictures of anime women, which were AI generated, like a lot of F2P Puzzle Games do. As always, whether this affects your enjoyment of the game is up to personal preference.

The base game of Ecchi Crush only contains a single bigger picture on the easiest difficulty. You can buy an additional 2 hard and 4 medium pictures for 2,50 Dollars each. They are also available in a Complete Edition for 14 Dollars, which only saves 1 Dollar and isn’t even really complete. There is an additional 8^th picture only available for owners of the Ecchi Crush and Cyberage Complete Editions bundle or the Ecchi Crush and Ecchi Secrets Complete Editions bundle for 25 and 30 Dollars respectively. I would never consider buying any of that stuff, but that is certainly a nasty move by Yabai Games.

Ecchi Crush features a pretty easy Trophy list, including 1 Platinum and 11 Gold Trophies. The only trophy that doesn’t practically unlock itself is that for finishing a match in under 2 minutes, but it should unlock after a few tries as well. For Trophy Hunters the game can therefore be strongly recommended.

 

Result:

Ecchi Crush is an okay Match 3 Game, which severely lacks in content in the base game. Once you unlock the bigger puzzle picture, there isn’t much replay value besides playing the same one over and over again. Unlocking a background image is the only interesting or halfway unique element of the game, otherwise Ecchi Crush is as basic of a Match 3 game as it gets.

 

4.5/10

Splash of Color (PS4) Review

 

Another week, another F2P Puzzle Game arrives in the Playstation Store. Splash of Color is a game by Yabai Games, who recently also published Ecchi Crush (a Match 3 Game) and Ecchi Secrets (a Qix Clone).

Splash of Color, however, has a little bit of a twist. It is neither your classic Picture Puzzle Game, like HIQ Ace or AAA Dynamic Scenes for example, where you simply put one of a handful of picture pieces in the right spots, nor is it a Slide Puzzle Game, like Avatar Island or Slide N’ Go, where you have to rotate picture pieces till they are all in the right order. In Splash of Color you have to switch places between any 2 picture pieces till they are all in the right place, no rotation necessary. It seems like a mix of both and therefore makes Splash of Color stand out a bit from the other Puzzle Games.

The upside is that it is less headache-inducing than the sometimes quite complex slide puzzles. The downside, however, is also that it removes a lot of the challenge and can be solved quite easily. You are unlikely to take more than a few minutes even for the bigger pictures, which can of course harm the replay value and longevity of the game.

Splash of Color features 8 pictures for free, which is a bit more than average for F2P Puzzle Games. Like a lot of other Picture Puzzle Games on the Playstation Store, it seemingly used AI to design or at least help in the creation of the puzzle images. For some users, this might be a dealbreaker, but it is ultimately up to personal preference, if it affects you.

An additional 11 DLC packs with pictures can be bought for 2 Euro each. Alternatively, you could get the ‘wonderful edition’ for 9 Euro, which features 80 paid pictures, or the ‘complete edition’ for 20 Euro, which grants you access to 176 extra pictures. 

Splash of Color features a quick and easy trophy list, including a Platinum Trophy and 11 Gold Trophies. The game can be highly recommended for Trophy Hunters.

 

Result:

Splash of Color offers a unique take on the Puzzle Picture genre. It plays a lot like the rotation based Puzzle Picture games, but without the need for an actual rotation. While it might therefore not be as challenging, it is a more relaxing experience instead. That being said, you’re unlikely to play it for more than a few minutes. It’s a totally fine experience for what it offers, but nothing special in the grand scheme of things.

 

6/10

Diamond Painting ASMR (PS4) Review

 

Diamond Painting ASMR is, as the name suggests, a Diamond Painting Videogame. It is part of the seemingly endless wave of F2P Games by Qubic Games, who, after the Nintendo Switch, are now also invading the Playstation Store.

Diamond Painting in real life is mostly a mix of painting by numbers, but with stitches. There are no real diamonds being used, but instead small colored stones are being put into a position to later on create one big picture.

The game recreates this pretty faithfully, but it doesn’t do anything with it. You don’t get to choose which coloured stones you want to place and where. The game just auto-selects everything for you. It chooses the colours and tells you exactly where you are allowed to place them by big blinking numbers. You can switch up the order of the colours you place, but that ultimately doesn’t change anything. You don’t even get to press a button. You just hover the analogstick over the blinking positions and the diamonds place themselves. This becomes really boring after a few minutes.

The only thing the player really gets to decide is, if he wants to place 1, or 3 horizontal or 3 vertical diamonds at a time. This however is also pointless since the registration for the 3 diamond blocks usually took much longer time than just quickly placing solo diamonds. Everything but the single diamond is in most situations senseless, unless you actively want to waste time. The registration for single diamonds is also not always perfect. You sometimes think you hit the right spot, but you than have to backtrack because the game didn’t register it.

Another game from Qubic Games called Coloring Book also is a painting videogame. It’s by no means a great game, but it at least allows you to choose your own colours and where you want to place them. You can see how the ideal picture would look like, but than you actually get to play and make your own choices. In Diamond Painting the game isn’t just holding your hand, but moving every of your fingers and you just get to decide whether you obey or quit the game. The complete lack of freedom makes a big difference.

There are apparently over 900 different pictures in 16 categories available on Diamond Painting. All of them are technically available for free, but the game is gatekeeping you. Pictures require the use of 1-5 stars to play and you only get 1/5 stars regenerated every hour, so that your playtime is totally gatekeeped. You can of course pay real money to get more stars so you can play all the time… A pretty pathetic system, which thankfully can be outsmarted. If you just move the system clock of your Playstation 5 hours ahead, you will regain your 5 stars and you can repeat this infinitely. A game, that doesn’t respect you or your time, certainly doesn’t deserve your respect either.

Diamond Painting features 20 Playstation Trophies including 1 Platinum. Trophies are all super easy to unlock, but the repetitive and unexciting gameplay will quickly get very boring. The Platinum should take around 3-4 hours to unlock.

 

Result:

Diamond Painting ASMR is not shovelware or as bad as the the abysmal Real Cake Maker, but it is still a bad game. The game may be a faithful recreation of the Diamond Painting activity, but that just doesn’t translate well into a videogame. Diamond Painting pretty much plays itself and gets boring very quickly.

 

3/10