The creators of Nex Machina and Super Stardust release a new arcade style actioner, but is it up to the same quality as their previous games

Nice visual design and a typically good soundtrack; The basic concepts are good and the boss battles very intense

Everything feels either underveloped or overdesigned, especially the fiddly controls and platforming; Dash attack is frustrating to use; Extremely short, with no extra modes

Still, this is a fine Housemarque game, and a decent shooter on its own merits. There's a personality and character to the developer's games that you can't find anywhere else, and given how Sony's moving away from its former indie darlings (the arrival of Matterfall, a PS4 exclusive, has been met...

Just weeks after it wowed gamers with Nex Machina, Housemarque is back with Matterfall, and Ben is on hand, catching mitt at the ready.

Challenging gameplay puts some neat strategic twists on bullet hell; Polished presentation and great music

Lack of imagination and boss fight slogs suck a lot of replay appeal out; Crucial Strike move badly needs a countdown indicator

Matterfall is another game in developer Housemarque's particle-effect-heavy catalog. Drenched in neon and engulfed in a thumping techno soundtrack, it posits itself as a game for those interested in tackling challenging side-scrolling action and chasing high scores.

Strike is a great addition to Housemarque's suite of mechanics; Riveting soundtrack meshes perfectly with the chaos on screen; Captivating presentation replete with sci-fi flourishes and impressive particle effects

Long load times interrupt the live-die-repeat style of play; Fails to use tried-and-tested mechanics in meaningful ways; Stiff controls don't mesh well with challenges built to test your agility; The important dash ability feels unreliable without a proper cooldown indicator

Buy Matterfall For the most part, Housemarque sticks to its shooter wheelhouse, and the results have been excellent. Resogun , Super Stardust HD , and the newly released Nex Machina are classics at this point due to their spins on classic shooter games.

succeeds in adapting Housemarque's trademark style of fast, action-packed, arcadey action to the 2D platformer genre, but it feels like a puzzle half solved. There's virtually no content here after you finish its exceptionally short campaign, outside of some harder difficulty modes and a global...

Despite developing some of the most revered titles on the PS4, I'd actually never played a title from Finnish developer Housemarque before Matterfall ; although the universally high review scores for their recent output certainly piqued my interest, in all honesty the shoot-em-up bullet hell genre...

Mega bytes Its whole loop errs on the side of challenging (especially if you jack it up to hard mode), but it's all very forgiving. Checkpoints restore health and strikes give off a sort of aura when they activate, so you don't need to use an exact science when rushing into a situation -- this is...

It's another gorgeous shooter from Housemarque.

As with Nintendo, Sony has been at the forefront of producing great console-exclusive titles that rank among the best in the business, and one only needs to take a glance at Uncharted, Ratchet and Clank, or Heavy Rain to see what we mean by that.