Sadly, I found later levels lost a lot of the game's early steam, as too much of the old "pixel perfect" platforming starts to creep in.

Sea of Stars deserves to be played, and almost everyone who does play it will enjoy it. It’s a JRPG made for JRPG fans by people who truly love the genre. There’s even something admirable about how steadfast it is in being a classical homage. The sad reality is that most pastiches that lack the self-awareness to break free of being pale homages are doomed to fade while the classic works they ape remain eternally relevant, but for now, in 2023, if you’ve got some time to spare you could do far worse than Sea of Stars.

Even if you love The Last Of Us 2. Even if you think it’s the Citizen Kane of video games. Even if you think that Shakespeare himself would have thrown in the towel after seeing this game, realising he could never compete with it as a storyteller, you must surely realise that a game that is four years old and is readily available on your current console doesn’t need the remaster. Surely you understand that this is a ridiculous excess, done purely to milk revenue out of fans, and that it’s particularly frustrating given that Sony is sitting on dozens of incredible properties. That it would rather leave all of them on ice and inaccessible to release this indulgence just isn’t acceptable.

The creative team needs to find writers willing to back up the narrative context with a story that has meat, and the gameplay designers need to dare do things differently to what has come before. Horizon is a remarkably refined and technically brilliant game, but Guerrilla has yet to prove that it can take that next step and produce a genuine classic.

Another decent, if unspectacular effort from Nintendo. The series needs better balancing if skill is to ever become a factor again and the single player mode may be a total slog, but Mario Kart is still a hit where it always mattered: with friends.

I left Metroid Dread feeling quite conflicted about it. On the one hand, I do think it is fundamentally well designed, and the main gameplay element - the robot stalkers - are woven into the Metroid formula beautifully. On the other hand, that Metroid formula is getting long in the tooth and Dread doesn't do nearly enough to revitalise it. Dread is fine. It's not just nearly memorable enough for a game that fans have been waiting so many years for now.

To be clear, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is good fun. The presentation is spot on, and it’s an example of how nostalgia can be traded on in a way that is fun, rather than desperate. But as a video game, it’s yet another example of how the AAA blockbuster end of the market is totally incapable of breaking away from the overly safe and familiar, and the inflexibility of these “video game design best practices” means that no property is allowed an identity of its own anymore. Every gameplay feature, character, environment, item and puzzle needs to be the exact clone of the successful examples we’ve seen before and in the end, even punching Nazis starts to feel too rote for the joy that it should provide.

Finnish studio Housemarque have produced in Nex Machina another game to sit alongside its well-received titles of Alienation and Resogun, and that showcases the serious pedigree it has built since their start in the early nineties with Stardust. It is a rush of colour that delivers a satisfying experience that’ll steal your calm and let you imagine a future where the robots don’t wipe us all out.

Injustice 2 is a very solid fighting game that has not changed a whole lot mechanically from the last offering. Visually it is a step forward, but the narrative is a step back. I cannot entirely share the feeling that this is going to be a title that is meant to milk out additional money via a combination of microtransactions and DLC, which is a bit of a turnoff, but the variety of modes and quality roster do help to take the sting out of that, because there is already so much content available.

Which brings me back to that question: what is the point of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, really? Sure, Lost Legacy is a wildly enjoyable adventure in classic Uncharted style, and even Uncharted 4, for all my complaints about it, is a game a lot of people clearly loved, and they'll love it again here. But when the only thing these "remasters" have over the PS4 originals that you can already play on PS5 are modest technical upgrades whose practical and aesthetic improvements are marginal at best, what purpose do they actually serve? When even someone who's never played either game before and is breaking in their brand new console and can get an identical experience for half the price by just buying the existing PS4 bundle, what is this Legacy of Thieves Collection other than a half-step in a pointless technical arms race and a chance to cynically sell some unnecessary version upgrades? We would all be served better if Sony focused on bringing us some of the incredible games that aren't readily available on the console already.

Saros is a good game, and I need to be clear about that. The sheer speed and kinetic energy of the combat, the visual design, and the moreish nature of the roguelike loop come together to make something that is, by any objective measure, well-made and something that consumers clearly like to play. But on the other side of the coin, I really can’t stand Saros because I look at it and all I see is the cynical Sony studio formula slapped over the top of what was, a half-decade ago, a pretty fine game. In fact, I think I’ll dust Returnal off for a replay.

Super Mega Baseball 3 feels like the baseball games I used to love from a few generations ago. Liberated of the "depth" of modern sports games, there's an efficiency to the action that is appealing, and the gameplay modes that it does offer are all compelling. On the pitch, the difficulty curve is perfectly tuned, and while the game doesn't innovate and is ultimately destined to be the kind of thing that you pick up for short bursts of play at a time in multiplayer, the accessibility makes this one so much more appropriate for that than most other sports games out there. It's good, honest and clean entertainment, and that's something a lot of sports game developers have lost sight of in their efforts to monetise every moment of their content.

There are a few minor further issues with the collection – the music is almost shockingly low resolution and difficult to hear, and the interface was clearly designed around touch input so the controller is a little clumsy, but those fade into the background quickly enough and are easy to ignore. What rises above and beyond for Sorcery! is the quality of the writing. My recommendation is to play this like you would read a good book. Forget the in-game music. Put on a pair of headphones with some meditative ambient sound (I like rain “music” myself) and lose yourself in the words. Do that, and the minor irritations along the way will feel rather irrelevant.

Ghost of Yotei achieves what it set out to, in that it wanted to take what makes Ghost of Tsushima so popular (the visual engine, the combat, Sucker Punch’s open worlds) and transport it to a “barely settled” location where they could give us a rip-roaring, all-American Wild West story. So… good on them for achieving that, I guess. But, as I brace for the inevitable comment moderation job ahead, I gotta be honest and say I just didn’t care for any of it. Or the way it capitalises on the Japanese/Ainu setting rather than tries to work with it.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is a game that really struggles to find the new voice that Resident Evil so needs as a franchise. It’s incredibly well designed and executed, and you’re not going to find a game that does VR better than this one. But it’s a confused game, sending out all kinds of mixed messages that suggest the development team - and especially the writers - have a better idea of what makes for horrific imagery than they do of horror as a storytelling genre. As a real fan of horror, and someone who has studied it for years, this is what doesn’t sit so well with me.

With Armored Core VI, FromSoftware has demonstrated, yet again, that it has few peers when it comes to intelligent and thought-provoking action. You’ll need to be faster on the draw and quicker with the reactions to survive this game’s bullet ballet-like approach, but you’ll also need to be smart and precise, and there’s elegance to complement with the visceral sound of metal rending. Sadly, that’s all FromSoftware has delivered this time around, and for a company that has mastered the ability to give truly memorable context to its worlds, characters, and battles, the shallow hollowness of this experience is truly disappointing.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't highlight that this game wants you to keep investing in it; the dreaded loot boxes and other monetisation models are present in the game, and are proving to be quite controversial. In fairness, the game does almost get to the point where, like in mobile free-to-play games, you'll feel an urge to spend real money just to speed progress up a little. That said, while that kind of grinding isn't really acceptable for a premium-priced game, the loot boxes are just on the side of "optional enough that you can still have a blast without investing in them.

People will be talking about the first two Doom games for decades more – those two games may well be remembered as true classics of the gaming medium a century down the track. This Doom won’t. This new Doom is terrible...Like the greedy organisation that unleashes hell on Mars, this is the product of exploitation; the developers at ID Software and Bethesda are playing with fire in treating a property as valuable as Doom this way.

Monster Train does indeed deserve to be noticed; it's the epitome of something that is better than it looks. Underneath that blandly homogenised aesthetic and equally bland promise of yet more roguelike lies a game that offers players some deep, invigorating, challenging and rewarding turn-based strategy. You may well find this one very difficult to put down.

The Witcher 3 tells an excellent story and offers a massive, epic adventure, but the compromises made to this Switch version mean that this is a (significantly) lesser version of one of the most respected blockbusters out there. In doing that, a little of the magic and prestige behind The Witcher itself has been scrubbed away.

Two Point Hospital is wildly entertaining, with a great sense of humour and production values that pop with light-hearted, satirical style. It's worth playing through if for no other reason than to see what zany diseases and treatments you'll need to deal with next. It's just odd that for a game with such strong nostalgia for Theme Hospital it would neglect to recreate the challenge that was such a feature of those early-era simulators. Still, that's me showing my age, I know, and I can't imagine anyone failing to come out of Two Point Hospital with a giant smile on their face. If nothing else... it's a great cure for boredom (okay, I'm sorry, really. In my defence, I did resist getting that stupid joke out until right at the end).

Mind you, apparent lack of confidence aside, Rogue Legacy is still an essential game, and it's good to see the roguelike still getting so much traction, because it is a wonderful, versatile and ultimately entertaining RPG sub-genre.

Still, the beautifully crafted world teaming with life and and almost never-ending sequence of quests is an alluring hook to keep players coming back, in the same way that it doesn't seem to matter how empty a Hollywood blockbuster is, so long as the explosions get bigger and better every time, the audiences will keep flocking back to them.

Digital Eclipse is onto something special with its “interactive documentary” approach overall. Atari 50 has become the standard against which all retro compilations should be judged. Additionally, I appreciate the intent and effort that went into Tetris Forever a great deal. I just hate, so much, how licensing has let everyone involved with this effort down.

I was absolutely wowed by this game the first time I played it through because I was paying so much attention to the cut scenes and redesigned Lara Croft was a joy to behold...But having had a year to sit and consider the game's broader meaning, the second time around the game's flaws are all the more apparent.

A handful of technical hiccups mixed with an aggressive monetisation strategy could very well leave a questionable taste in peoples' mouths.

Has F1 2018 done enough to render last year’s (excellent) title redundant? Probably not. But if it has been a few years since your last F1, absolutely give this one a go. The racing market is a crowded one, but F1 is pure racing, and the sport doesn’t get much more exciting, or strategic, than this one.

Ticket to Earth is not a book by Sartre. One need not spend too much time assessing it in depth. However, the player is clearly not going to suffer the dreaded death by PowerPoint; the theme of the rich and powerful exploiting everybody else creates enough interest (and, sadly, relevance) to lift Ticket to Earth into more than just another tile based mobile game. It even meant yours noobishly had no problems whatsoever going through the grind required to upgrade my character to a level I could actually make progress with. I needed to know what’s going to happen!

Newcomers will like Persona 4 Arena Ultimax for being the most complete edition of the game.

Releasing another version of this game doesn’t feel like it adds anything to the Pokemon franchise as a whole, and just makes me want a new Pokemon game on my Switch all the more. It’s still a very, very fine game, but as a product release, this one is quite disappointing from Nintendo.

I found this to be a visually interesting, dynamic game, but not an especially engaging one.

Jokes aside, the lack of personality in Project Highrise hurts it. You stop caring about whether tenants move in and out, or what happens to them while they stay. And then the whole game becomes an exercise in figuring out ways to exploit it to make it even easier for you. Which sounds harsh, I know, and I don't mean to be, because overall it is an admirable and mechanically sound simulator. It's just that for a genre that was in danger of fading to real obscurity, the renaissance that it has had over the last five years ago has left Project Highrise with a lot of catching up to do.

What The Golf? is by no means a bad game - it's actually highly entertaining - but while the developers have done everything that they can with it, at some point hitting anything but a golf ball around a golf course loses its lustre as a joke. It'll only take you a couple of hours to work through everything in What The Golf?, and you'll have a generally good time as you do, but I can't see this being a game that you ever return to.

Destiny 2 Forsaken is a whole new game, a whole lot of game, but it’s also the exact same game. It's "fun" – Destiny always was – but it's a loop of endlessly increasing numbers and loot and numbers and loot and more numbers and not enough numbers and I just don't know why I'm doing it anymore.

Devil Survivor 2 is not even close to Atlus’ finest moment, but it is a very fine game nonetheless. It does a good job of offering a narrative with thematic depth, and mixes in well with some deep character development and monster fusing mechanics. If it wasn’t for the generally uninspired effort to pull the game into shape from a visual perspective, it would be in the running to be one of the better examples of the genre on a console loaded with them.

It’s quite the joy to play, and it is by no means the only "retro" experience that displays limitations that become more apparent with age. For the modest price being asked of players with this Switch release, it’s a great opportunity for a hit of nostalgia. As I said at the top of the review, however, it's not quite the timeless experience that its immediate peer is.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy plays flawlessly. It’s impossible to criticise the level design, the basic mechanics, or indeed anything that involves pressing buttons. Naughty Dog is simply a developer of such quality that it’s not going to make mistakes there. But I like my games to have narrative, and I like games that get me thinking. I like my games to have purpose, and I find The Lost Legacy to be a very purposeless game. It’s fun, I enjoyed my time with it. I doubt I’ll ever feel inspired to play it again, much less remember it.

Releasing another version of this game doesn’t feel like it adds anything to the Pokemon franchise as a whole, and just makes me want a new Pokemon game on my Switch all the more. It’s still a very, very fine game, but as a product release, this one is quite disappointing from Nintendo.

FIFA 18 is not the video game manifestation of the beautiful game I would have liked it to be, but as general entertainment, it is still pretty good. It is the equivalent of watching a silly comedy: anyone can do it for hours and hours, and although they won’t come out better people for it they will not feel like they completely wasted their time. Yours truly likes FIFA 18’s tactical leanings in particular, but I don’t think real life football needs to worry about the virtual outdoing the real yet. At least not till FIFA’s 2018 World Cup edition.

And so, at the end of nearly 5,500 words of review, everything that I’ve written leaves me in a conundrum. On the one hand, just with The Last Of Us 2, I found the moment-to-moment gameplay of Ghost of Tsushima to be excellent and massively entertaining, if a little derivative at this point in time – the open world genre as a whole does need some new ideas. Tsushima doesn’t do anything that will surprise you if you’ve played any of Sony’s other first party games in recent years, but it does it all in a way that’s as refined and sharp as a samurai’s blade, and that is fundamentally enjoyable. I can’t stress that enough – this game is fundamentally enjoyable. However, as much as I had issues with The Last Of Us 2’s narrative, it was an American story told by Americans, and it had a thematic and tonal resonance as such. It was consistent and uncompromised. Ghost of Tsushima by contrast is a wild misfire with every narrative element it attempts, and it boils down to this: Sucker Punch decided to do a historical epic inspired by Kurosawa… and produced something that fails as both history and as a pastiche of Kurosawa. There are going to be a lot of people that love this game, but I don’t think that should be overlooked, nor dismissed as irrelevant to the quality of this both as artwork and entertainment product.

Overall Super Mega Baseball 4 is immensely disappointing and an unworthy successor to its predecessor. SMB 3 was a genuinely fun and clean playing arcade baseball game, and never needed to be more than that. Now, though, it seems like the series is being positioned as a viable alternative to the MLB license. The new game modes, efforts to bring real-world names into the fold, and aesthetic shifts all seem to be designed to pivot Super Mega Baseball to become something to take more seriously and commit more time to. You know, like MLB The Show. Unfortunately, these new additions are directly at odds with arcade good times and now, thanks to the influence of EA in all likelihood, we’ve been dumped with a series experiencing an identity crisis.

The level of storytelling once it makes it past the more clunky moments makes the whole experience worthwhile. The conclusion itself made me forgive the game for all the awkward moments that came before it. And, after playing through all five chapters in quick succession, I can guarantee that that is the best way to appreciate the overall narrative.

Obviously compared to the PC game, World of Tanks on the iPad is not as beautiful, but it holds up well, and on my third generation device I got a lovely sense of fighting over classic military settings.

Like its predecessor and its DLC, Monument Valley 2 is a short game (say, two hours?). Personally, I do not consider this a disadvantage; on the contrary, I like games that do not pull their punches. I do not need time fillers, thank you very much; I plan on only living once but making the most of that opportunity. Monument Valley 2 certainly deserves a spot in my short but rich life.

But as someone who deeply cares about narrative in game, it's immensely frustrating to see the money that Activition is clearly throwing at the narrative not bearing fruit.

After many hours spent with FIFA 19, I can confidently say it is a really good game - probably the best in the series. The biggest concern for those trying to decide whether to buy or not is how much the minor incremental increases of the FIFA 18 release really matter.

Its striking monochrome art style and juxtaposition of atmospheric peacefulness with wince-inducing violence lends to a dreamlike quality that is utterly entrancing. The first few hours of this game had me terrified, wondering how the environment was going to turn against me in ever more creative and depraved ways. I loved the graphics and music which still manage to feel unique despite the game’s age. For the puzzles and atmosphere alone, Limbo is worth a try. Once the ordeal is over however, I found myself wishing for a larger narrative to delve into, or a deeper exploration of themes that the game teased but never fully committed to.

It may seem like I’m being extremely harsh on The Frozen Wilds, but it needed to offer something new. Guerrilla Games has made an excellent world with some very interesting lore behind it, and I am definitely keen for a sequel, but at the end of the day, unless you are a huge fan, and really want to know more about the Banuk tribe, there’s no real point to this DLC.

It’s not that it needed to be longer, as it would outstay its welcome and short games are 100% fine by me, but perhaps some adjustable upwards difficulty, or breaking out the mini-games into their own unlocked sections – while they’re quite derivative, they’re well realised for the most part — or a way to encourage just a few more puzzle variant solves wouldn’t have gone astray here too.

Buried Stars could have been a 5/5 game, easily. Unfortunately, the narrative thought behind the game really relied on me having a personal interest in the characters and their plight, and thanks to the inelegant and overly literal localisation, it became impossible to see them as anything but constructs and narrative tools. Buried Stars is still good enough to work as an academic thought exercise, but I do wish I understood Korean, so I could play the game the way it should be.

While Bardbarian's gameplay isn't innovative, it's tight enough to warrant your attention. The game would have been far more enjoyable as a shorter, five hour title but as is, getting the upgrades needed for progression can take twice that long, and that's more patience than a lot of casual gamers should be required to have.

For the most part though, Yoku’s Island Express is a lot of wholesome, whimsical fun. It manages to make the hybrid of two disparate genres work in some inspired ways, and the result is a unique game full of surprises that is sure to delight players. The only flaw is when the mechanics outweigh their welcome and stop feeling unique – the moments where Yoku is just a pinball game, or just a Metroidvania, are generally the weakest.

I'm just glad that by JRPG standards Celceta is reasonably focused, allowing me to complete it and move on to the next game, neither having been bored nor especially inspired.

All solid improvements over an already very good game that fans of the series will no doubt enjoy, but aside from the very generous (and not before time) inclusion of women, this one doesn't offer anything to be blown away by.

We have a very strong contender for one of the best exclusive games in the Wii U library. It is sadly held back by minor control issues, but those issues are easy to overlook due to the sheer fun that you will get out of the gameplay.

Horizon Chase Turbo does a good job of creating a sense of speed, and emulating the look and feel of Out Run. Where it falls down is in replacing the timer mechanics of Out Run, which made for a frustrating but ultimately exciting and tense arcade game, with a more typical racing track structure. It plays fine, but with none of the intensity, nor sense of reward, of the game it pulls almost all of its inspiration from.

Donkey Kong Adventure feels like a lick of fresh paint on the same experiences that were provided during Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Whilst the inclusion of Donkey Kong changes the way that you strategise; Donkey Kong Adventure is rather predictable and I did get fatigued with it by the second world.

It might be irritating that there aren't enough licensed teams, but I do think the football purists will prefer the on-the-pitch action of this game.

Building on Mimimi Games' success with Shadow Tactics, Desperados III is mature, confident gameplay design, and while it might not look like an AAA-blockbuster, it certainly has the level of refinement and quality that is a rare thing indeed. It could have been a little more in places, but it's a solid, intelligent depiction of a beloved part of America's narrative heritage and aesthetic, with some excellent and creative tactical puzzles to sort through along the way.

While Astebreed may be short in length, it more than makes up for it with its anime styled storytelling and quality, fast, furious action. It's another classy little indie game on the PlayStation 4 that further enhances the console's value.

You know what you’re getting from it, but by the end of it, if you play enough games in this genre, you will probably be itching to play something a little more creative.

Shooters do not offer the type of storyline depth, character customisation or lengthy gameplay we have become accustomed to in today's video games, but R-Type Dimensions proves that there is still a place for the genre if it is handled the right way. R-Type Dimensions has been handled in just that fashion, providing fun bursts of action with enough modes and variety to make the entire package worthwhile.

Salt and Sanctuary is a solid homage to its blatant source of inspiration. It doesn't supplant its predecessors, but it does an admirable job nonetheless, and offers players a moody, intricate, and fundamentally enjoyable dark fantasy experience.

That aside, Asmodee continues to demonstrate why it is the best digital board game developer going around. Gloomhaven itself is a little insular compared to the likes of Game of Thrones, Arkham Horror, Ticket to Ride, Pathfinder and Lord of the Rings, so I suspect it will appeal to a narrower band of players than some of Asmodee's other adaptations, but the faithful quality of that adaptation and the stellar production values make it an easy sell to existing Gloomhaven fans, and the ideal way to those that were intimidated by the size (and cost) of the box when they've seen it in their local game store to give it a go in the first place.

Vectronom is well made and attractive. It's got a strong sense of minimalist style, and as difficult as it is, it's also entirely fair, and once you've learned its rules and behaviour, it becomes comfortable, albeit difficult, to play. At the same time, this game crystalises some issues with how rhythm games as a whole handle music, and while its various stages are well designed enough, there's nothing truly memorable in there. It's an indie game that wears its heart on its sleeve, but unfortunately also struggles to stand out as anything but a textbook example of an indie title.

Although Spyro the Dragon and its subsequent two sequels haven’t aged as well as one would hope, Toys for Bob has done a good effort to put out a remaster that does the nostalgia justice. Control and design issues were part and parcel to 3D platformers from the era, but while can't be celebrated except when viewed through an incredibly thick pair of rose-tinted glasses, the overall series remains charming, delightful, and well worth checking out for interest's sake, if nothing else.

Seeing as the game is free to play however, if you have any interest in the genre at all, there is no reason not to give Duelyst a try and see if its distinctive stylings suit you or not.

Fundamentally, though, MLB the Show 23 is a good game. MLB the Show 22 was a good game. Adding the Negro Leagues mode was noble from Sony (and no doubt the kind of goodwill-generating progressive addition that will keep the licensor happy with how Sony is treating the IP). However, the misstep with the World Baseball League and a complete unwillingness to build on any mode but the awful Diamond Dynasty also make this year’s The Show unacceptable. If you missed last year’s iteration, then you can add a couple of stars to this score, because for you, it won’t be one of the most cynical annual iterations that we’ve seen in sports games for quite some time. For the rest of us, though. No. Not good enough.

The Golden Realms Expansion does not reinvent the Age of Wonders III wheel, but it does an excellent job of adding content to an already fun title that already had lots of replay value. With that being said, it would have been nice to see the expansion address one of the real issues I had with the first game - the limited combat variety for a feature that is meant to be the game's real point of differentiation.

It's that sense of humour that helps Victor Vran to step out of the shadow of its genre namesake. It's a fully feature-rich example of the Diablo clone, is well balanced so that it never becomes tiresome to play, and offers plenty of shiny loot. The gameplay itself might not be breaking down any boundaries, but between this and Titan Quest, the Nintendo Switch is not lacking for quality horde slaughtering action.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is an objectively well-made product that is perfectly playable and it’s both empowering and entertaining. But it’s also nothing more than a product, finely tuned for passive consumption, right off the content mill.

So there are some neat little features to the newest Mega Man. However, while it's the kind of game that series fans should enjoy, there just isn’t enough to bring it to a new audience.

An odd package. It has got the finest game of all in the series in it, but that's backed up with reminders for why I'm fallen out of love with the franchise with the way it has progressed.

Superstar Saga is still a great adventure on the 3DS. It’s not in the range of Metroid: Samus Returns in terms of recreating a classic from the ground up, but it may be enough to satisfy fans of the series that may have been turned off by recent, weaker efforts such as Dream Team and Paper Jam.

Trackmania: Turbo is a beautiful game that tries to set itself apart from the pack. It's definitely better than most, and it’s clear that Nadeo have become rather accustomed to making these games. As the first TrackMania to make its way onto the PlayStation 4, I do recommend it if it is your genre of choice. But note that, thanks to the uninteresting campaign track designs, how long the game can hold your attention for is definitely proportionate to how much time you might be willing to pour into the track editor.

Hunt could have been so much more. As a hypothetical single player game, in which you carefully research a mark as you make your way through a deep south Gothic nightmare towards the final, hellish, confrontation, Hunt could have been something truly special. But commercial reality won't allow for that. Multiplayer shooters and content-driven live services are where the money's at, and in chasing the money Crytek has produced something that's a whole lot of fun to play, but ultimately shallow, vapid, and a complete waste of all the effort that went into the theme and design of the thing.

Once you wrap your mind around this added layer of complexity, it makes the Ardennes Assault experience both fun and challenging.

I hope the next Ace Attorney game has more structure in its overarching narrative and the developers actually have the cases flow naturally from one to the next. Even with its flaws, Spirit of Justice is good fun, through, and another quality example of a narrative from the ever-growing stable of visual novels we are now getting translated into English.

Dungeon Encounters is deceptive engaging. What seems at first to be a no-frills dungeon crawler, sliced back to its very minimum eventually reveals itself to be quite the clever little project. It provides the very basic foundation needed for a JRPG, and then gets out of the way, letting the player write their own story and fill in the metaphoric (and literal) blanks in their own way. That makes it an oddly cathartic experience.

Platformer purists are going to love Berserk Boy. As a blended homage to just about everything they have ever loved about the genre, the effort that has gone into meticulously recreating the best qualities of the genre is truly impressive. It’s just disappointing that the game, while drawn nicely and supported by an excellent soundtrack, ends up ringing hollow because the developers forgot to give it an identity that extends beyond the franchises that it celebrates.

That issue aside, Superbeat: Xonic is a vibrant, slick and well-produced rhythm game that, while minimalist, has a clear identity of its own. On the PlayStation Vita there is already plenty of good quality rhythm games, but this one sits in the with them nicely.

The point here is that even I can enjoy this game, and I am most certainly not the target market for Marvel. What Firaxis has done is truly impressive, in taking a property that is known for big, dumb action and turning it into a genuinely interesting and furious tactics RPG. Those who are still convinced that Marvel stories are worthwhile will probably enjoy the story and application of characters, too. This means that this is going to be even more worthwhile for them. However, I do think that everyone, regardless of how invested you are in Disney’s content goldmine, will find something to appreciate about this one.

Castlevania Anniversary Collection is an excellent, high quality retro collection. It is of a collection where too many of the games don't hold enough value beyond their nostalgia, and it's lacking titles I would have considered to be key. However, with a great set of features, and plenty of classic dark fantasy platforming, this package is a useful reminder of just how prestigious the entire franchise really is.

Littlewood is charming and bright, and wears its “indie spirit” on its sleeve. The developer has created something highly playable that also acts as a lovely homage to the Harvest Moon tradition. By all accounts, Littlewood has been a commercial success, too, on its prior release on PC. That success is deservedly so, but hopefully the developer can invest some of that into some refinements for whatever their next project is, but there’s more ambition in Littlewood than the scope of the budget allowed.

What could have been something lasting, something real, is instead a two dimensional narrative which brandishes plot twists and visual trickery to camouflage a lack of rich storytelling. Nonetheless, I would still highly recommend Stories Untold to writers and game developers: there are ideas in the first few episodes which are fascinating, and I’m dying to see where No Code’s metafictive experimentation might take the text adventure genre.

It’s a shame that the plot turns what could have been an interesting, critical title into one that’s simply yet another serviceable AAA game for mass consumption. Did Ubisoft have something interesting to say about extremism and violence? Probably not, but maybe embracing parallels with current events would have made this production seem less like a backyard rodeo.

I do say my criticisms with a grain of salt; I have definitely under-appreciated many roguelikes in the past, only for them to "click" much further down the track on a repeat play. At this point, I feel like I get the gist of where Nowhere Prophet is going, and I think for genre fans who grow weary of the old mainstays of Into the Breach, Slay the Spire and FTL, there is a familiar compulsion to the way Nowhere Prophet’s systems are constructed, even if they often pale in comparison to games which came before. If there’s anything to be learned from Nowhere Prophet, it’s that a successful rogue-lite is like intricately designed lightning in a bottle, and no amount of mechanics which look good on paper can recreate a truly well-planned experience.

Ultimately if Ubisoft can work out the kinks that were to be expected from a first excursion, Immortals has real potential to become another marquee property for the company. Expected DLC will take players to Asia as a brand-new character, which could potentially be an inkling that Ubisoft plans on exploring many other mythologies yet. The biggest challenge that the company will face is finding a way to bring out a distinctive personality on the mechanical side of Immortals, because as it currently stands it most certainly feels like a case of “throwing everything at the dartboard to see what sticks," and Ubisoft is cribbing a lot from games that are already excellent.

On the one hand SteamWorld Quest is a frustrating experience. Image & Form really needs to track down some writers that can weave tales into its intriguing and impeccably-designed SteamWorld universe. There's so much potential there that it's becoming tiring waiting for the team to tap into it. At the same time, SteamWorld Quest is also a delight to play, with a well-developed card-based combat system, gorgeous art and production values, and elegant gameplay structures. It's a game (and franchise) that wears its indie credentials on its sleeve, and it's hard to be too disappointed by its flaws for that reason.

The use of the gamepad is by far the most enjoyable aspect of Affordable Space Adventures. In fact, it's so well done that it's close to being the best use of the gamepad on the Wii U so far. Sadly the game is held back by some serious game design choices, and while it's still playable, it's just not the kind of game that deserves to be remembered as a classic.

Tyranny is an excellent RPG experience that has many of the hallmarks of great classic role-playing games while still making plenty of smart choices to modernise the experience for today's audience. Refined systems and a story where choices can often have some real consequence made my time with Tyranny rewarding, despite a disappointingly abrupt ending that left me wanting for more.

Even with SpellForce 3: Soul Harvest releasing so close to SpellForce 3, it’s worth it. The new storyline alone alongside the well crafted systems for both the RPG explorations and the RTS building of armies makes for a good time for both new and old fans alike.

With the likes of Bravely Default, Fire Emblem and Etrian Odyssey IV already being readily available on the console, Untold is more of a curiosity; a remake of a game that people can already play on the console that plays classically well, but ultimately feels a little limited for any but the faithful.

The biggest problem with Gunman Clive 2 is that for all the attempts to expand on the original game's formula, it remains a very limited game. It's not just that it's over quickly, but it doesn't do anything to really make it something memorable. It's fun, it's not much more than that, but that might well be enough to give it a go.

OkunoKA is exceptionally serviceable to the hardcore-platforming brand, and there’s not a whole lot for me to say beyond that.

The Sly Trilogy is still a very good collection and if you can ignore the slight issues with the compressed videos and sound, you will have a wonderful time.

Whether it's a game that the hardcore will enjoy over the long term depends entirely on how much of a community springs up around that well-designed, but limited, online multiplayer.

While Metro Exodus doesn’t do anything wrong as a blockbuster shooter, where the original titles were original and refreshing, Exodus is yet another in a ever-deepening pile, and the Metro franchise deserved better than to be exhausting.