Back In 1995 – PS4 | Review

By John Hay
| 29th May 2019
| PS4, Review
| 0

Back in 1995 is an indie title that subverts the usual trend of Retro Pixel style titles. Instead, it opts for a recreation of time in gaming that let’s face it has not aged very well, the dreaded early 3D polygon Era. (Well it’s dreaded for me now because my eyes bloody hurt trying to play PS1 Era games)

Back in 1995 is set during some kind of apocalypse where the world is pretty empty apart from a few survivors that for some reason want you to do stupid stuff like run around turning on AC units. While you are running around doing these pointless tasks for absolutely no reason you have to contend with monsters that are roaming around for some reason. I think the game is supposed to be survival horror but it’s simple to survive and there is no horror (unless you include horrific character design)

The best example of this is what I class as the most common monster. Now, this thing is kinda like if you took Slimer from Ghostbusters, designed him very poorly and decided to make him comprise of jobbie (shit if you are not Scottish ). Now the jobbie monsters do nothing, you can literally just walk around them, to be honest, you can pretty much do this with ever so-called threat in the game rendering the whole thing pointless in my eyes. But despite this, you continue on your quest to reach the tower which is the whole point behind the game.

Graphically the game is emulating a time that did not look all that great and it kind of looks like a worse version of Alone in the dark (it doesn’t come close to resident evil) the voice acting which admittedly there isn’t much of, well its horrendous. That likely is a deliberate choice because it is emulating the Jill Sandwich era of gaming. But if you are going to do the whole bad VA thing then at least make it ironic or funny. This game does neither.

When you finish the game there is a new game plus but unless you are a trophy fiend you won’t want to bother. Let’s face it the people likely to buy this are here for one thing. The platinum. Yes it has one and yes it’s quick and easy considering who the publisher is. Going on a tangent a bit here but this whole platinum thing bursts my head. Take this game. It’s short easy and zero challenge and has a plat. Something like Shakedown Miami, it’s huge, has loads to do and its deemed too small for platinum, I just don’t get it. As it stands people literally buy any old Shovelware if it has an easy platinum trophy attached.

Final Impressions

Back in 1995 was an interesting game to try, sadly I just don’t think that era should be revisited. Pixel art is kinda timeless and classic games from that era still look good and modern pixel art games look just as good if not better. The same can’t be said for this Era so let’s leave things like tank controls and hideous polygons in the past. I found the game boring and really like I said you are only going to want this if you want an easy platinum trophy.

*Code kindly provided by the publisher for review*

Developer: Ratalaika Games / Publisher: Ratalaika Games
Release date: 22/05/2019
Platforms: PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One
Platform Reviewed: PS4 Pro