Between the mix of visual styles, characters, story, and the enjoyable exploration and combat, Alphadia is an RPG worth the visit, and I can only hope that Kemco brings more of its catalogue to the PC in the future.

It's the kind of game that can be played over extended periods of time, and all by itself it's going to encourage people to keep their Arcade subscriptions going, especially if they have a younger one in the house who won't want to lose all these levels and opportunities for play. It might not be as flashy as some of the other games released in the last week, but it might be the one that has the longest future ahead of it.

These are niche games, for sure, but they’re nicely designed and a good hit for people like me that are counting down to the next overseas trip.

GRID Autosport is a quality production, as you would expect from Codemasters when developing a racing game. It's just difficult to see the relevance of this game on console, when there are so many next gen racing games on the way.

The World Next Door isn't perfect, but is shows that Viz is - for now, at least - willing to take on a project that's a little different and oddball. Colourful, creative, and generally well designed, it's worth forgiving this particular title its teen B-tier narrative tropes.

The core action is still exciting and dynamic, with a layered combo system that ensures it's never quite a button masher. Throw in the series' infamously hyperbolic and satirical sexualisation, and you're still left with a good time. There are games that do genuine sexiness better, and there aren't many out there that have the wild, unbound entertainment value of Senran Kagura.

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.

As long as you’re patient, there’s a lot to enjoy in Gothic 2, from the quest structure, to the scope of the world, and detailed plot, the world is filled with secrets and discoveries to make. It is clear to this day that were Gothic 1 provided the vision, Gothic 2 is when Piranha Bytes really converted. To this day you could argue that this is the team’s finest work, and the closest it has ever come to climbing out of the “Eurojank” space to simply sit next to Bethesda, BioWare and Obsidian in the upper echelons of the genre (historically, at least).

I don’t know if Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion is going to turn me into a fan of these mecha games, but I certainly enjoyed the combat and design enough that I’m keen to check out some more to see if I do like something about the genre after all. Just be aware that the performance is pretty suspect at times. If you can handle that, then this is certainly an ambitious and entertaining sci-fi game for on the go.

Poncho is that kind of indie game you have saved as an .exe file somewhere in the depths of your computer. It's something you stumble upon and unravel at your leisure, but you keep finding out that it gets deeper as you go. It manages to be a puzzle platformer which transcends figuring out patterns and jumping on things, and while the basics need polish it's definitely a title which deserves your attention.

This new release of Gals' Fighters is, of course, a game with a very specific audience. You've got to really love your fighting games to get much long term value out of it. And yet, for something so "retro", Gals' Fighters feels incredibly modern, with few of the quirks and design flaws of yesteryear that you generally expect going in to an "old" game. Rather, this feels like something produced by a team that deliberately limited themselves as a creative challenge. You may not get long play sessions over extended periods of time from this one, but as a curiosity, it is fascinating... and so much cheaper on Nintendo Switch than trying to track down a physical copy for your actual Neo Geo Pocket Color.

NBA 2K20 is a fun game that has tweaked a handful of different modes, provided a better story than usual and modified the gameplay in a challenging new way that takes some getting used to.

Seraph on a whole is brilliant and refreshing in its design. Having the player be able to concentrate on movement while the AI handles the aiming is an inspired idea and I honestly hope to see more of in the future, while the organic approach to difficulty and movement makes for a game that is mesmerising and deeply engaging from start to finish.

For a game that is 13 years old, it's surprising how well the game holds up today. The game is enjoyable as the strategy is solid.

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.

When Evil Genius 2 gets it right, it gets it spectacularly right, and if you’re the type that can bury your brain into resource management while laughing at the deliberately cliched and over-the-top style of the game, you’ll have plenty of moments of fun taking over the world, one carved-out-of-mountain-rock room at at time. However, there’s still some rough edges here, and some game balancing that could have made it even more engaging, both for those who adore resource management and those who might just like the challenge of taking over the world with the help of a few shiny new doomsday devices.

LoveKami, for better or worse, is the kind of game that, for all its merits, is going to keep driving you back to its most overt elements; those giant cup sizes, and the costumes designed specifically to highlight them. That will put some people off immediately and irrecoverably. Others will come to the game entirely because that's what's on offer. In the case of both groups, there's an enjoyable reflection on a very Japanese way of thinking in the game that is going to be overlooked for interest in the fan service... but then I imagine that my efforts here of trying to intellectualise this game has been one giant exercise in futility.

Yo-Kai Watch continues to be a delightful mix of morality stories for children, nostalgia for what it's like to be a child in suburban Japan, humour and monster collecting. The series may well never hit the same notes of mainstream popularity as Pokemon, but the fact that Pokemon has got a very genuine competitor in this particular genre, finally, is hopefully a sign that will push both franchises forward into the future.

It is strong at establishing an atmospheric story, aided by outstanding graphics and a highly talented, very natural voice cast who know not to over-act. It falls short on some technical fronts (translation, some over-familiar tropes and cumbersome narrative viewpoints), but these do not decisively mar the enjoyable experience.

There’s not a lot of games like Gravity Heroes on the Switch, despite the console’s penchant for local multiplayer experiences. Most arena combat games on the system are throwaway in that they're great for chaotic fun, but lacking in true depth. Gravity Heroes bridges that gap, by offering a deep control scheme that takes time to master. The short campaign makes up for it in difficulty, and a Hard mode that is genuinely challenging. It’ll take a specific, patient playgroup for this to catch on, but I can see four friends who grew up on games like Metal Slug, absolutely loving this one.

The game itself is worth it, as Might & Magic: Duel of Champions is an outstanding collectible card game, but I do get more mileage out of the PC version.

The buggy nature of route markers, the lack of a serious crafting system, and the the underdeveloped protagonist are all issues with the game. But when I step back and examine the game as a whole, what stands out is the gameplay.

A few new wrinkles such as the team-up attacks and the really cool audio part of the presentation are quite welcome, and I think these superhero games lend themselves to the TT Games better than most genres due to the large number of unique skills. It's reliable fun, but we keep saying this - TT Games needs to start bringing some genuinely original new ways of looking at LEGO, or the scores will start to fall as people get very tired of doing the same thing over and over again.

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.

If you enjoy some online competitive play, this is a great way to get your fix. If you were already a fan of the Awesomenauts, then it is hard to recommend against this updated version.

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.

For anyone who came to Mario Golf to play golf, Super Rush is greatly lacking. I'll be willing to grit my teeth and buy the DLC if that's what it takes to get this game up to par, but Nintendo's going to need to at least double the number of courses to get it there, and at the time of writing there only seem to be four new courses on the roadmap (though they are, at least, going to be free). It's still not going to be enough to return Mario Golf to that pedestal that it once had on the N64 and Game Boy Color.

LocoRoco can be confusing, wearisome and infuriating at times, but it’s still impossible to stay mad at it for long. It’s a happy game without gratuitous conflict or drama, and its sheer optimism alone prevents its shortcomings from ruining the grand vision. It’s a game which just works, and without a doubt, the PS4 remaster is the best way to experience it.

Game developers, I am begging you. If you want to place your game within a literary or cinematic genre, then, by all means, do so, but understand what that genre is about, first. Cyberpunk is not an aesthetic with angry robots, neon colours and body modifications. Cyberpunk is a warning against alloying corporations and the political elite to take technology and leverage it for their gain over the good of humanity. If your game doesn’t have that message at its core, you’ve missed the point of the genre.

As an introduction to the Eurogame genre, or as something to play with more casual or younger board game fans, Raiders of the North Sea is an excellent example of how to do accessibility without being condescending, and the digital version that has been created here hits every note it needed to.

Is the new release Director’s Cut of game worth a purchase if you have the original? Probably not. But if you haven’t played this yet – and there are a lot of you out there – then do yourself a favour and check this one out. It’s right up there.

Teslagrad is a sound platforming title with enough puzzle elements backing it to keep the game interesting. These hooks are needed, because the story itself is effective but undercooked with the lack of any text or dialogue. Difficult, and even sometimes unfair, boss battles and checkpoints diminish what is otherwise an excellent game. I thoroughly enjoyed working through the levels and discovering hidden items along the way.

Ninja Village is so bright and charming it's impossible not to get drawn into playing yet another Kairosoft title, and then staring at the screen for hour upon hour. These things are always so perfectly low-pressure playable, that they're just that much easier to open up than the more complex and detailed city builders available on the Switch. That's not to say it's necessarily better, but when you need to simply chill out, there are few better that do it better than Kairosoft.

The Shrouded Isle is so razor-focused on its darkly original theme that it comes across as quite brave. This isn’t a necessarily uplifting or relaxing game. Nor is it particularly rewarding. It is, however, genuinely clever with how it works within an established genre, and it’s uncompromising in its vision. We need more games that are willing to do that.

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.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain does enough with modern technology to update the experience and make it both fresh and familiar, which is not an easy task. However, by adhering so closely to the source material and old school conventions, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain will inevitably rub some people the wrong way due to uneven difficulty and some unfair demises that seem harsh when compared to something like the Souls titles, which are renowned for their challenges but also for their fairness in teaching you how to play the game better.

Farm Frenzy Refreshed is by no means perfect. Indeed, it sits on the wrong side of the "casual gaming" spectrum whereby it becomes a grind for the sake of keeping players playing. And yet... I continue to enjoy Farm Frenzy, have done so for nearly a decade (if not longer now), and Refreshed has given me a rush of that all over again on the PlayStation.

When everything's working smoothly, Titan Quest is a very enjoyable game. It doesn't push any boundaries (it's more than a decade old now, after all), but it runs the classic Diablo formula well, with plenty of depth for character builds and a stunning world to explore.

I’m not the world’s biggest SHMUP fan, and I’m not great at the genre, so I struggled to get through Kamikaze Lassplanes. However, the entertaining visual novel side, along with some of the finest, most brazen fan service we’ve seen this side of Senran Kagura, kept me invested. This has been an interesting experiment. We probably won’t see another game quite like this for quite some time.

At its core, Democracy 3 is a mass of pretty spreadsheets that visualise an intimidating amount of data systems that are all linked to one another.

Granted, the worst of Zen Studios pinball tables is better than almost anything similar pinball games have managed, but there are better offerings for Pinball FX 2 than Guardians of the Galaxy as well.

Visually, the pixel art style works well enough, and it helps on the Switch not being that complex a title so load times are minimal. Because your foes only respond after your attacks, there’s always time to stop and plan out shots around how each orb’s power works – once you wrap your head around that – and so it’s a pretty easy drop-in-drop out kind of game. Not everything needs to be a 100+ hour epic, you know?

It’s the most enjoyable Kemco game I’ve played to date. More of this and fewer generic RPG Maker-like “retro” JRPGs and I will become a real fan for this company.

If the contents of each game’s track list don’t matter to you, then I would strongly suggest picking up the second game and skipping the first. The first game has infuriating random encounters, a weaker 4-character-party-system and simpler maps to explore – and while the second game’s 9-character-party and monster fusion systems don’t make the role-playing that much more meaningful, it’s still a smidge more engaging to play around with. Both games are much better in their standard Taiko game-modes however, and so I’d still recommend Drum ‘n’ Fun before either of these two – the party game mode in Drum ‘n’ Fun is a lot more complementary to the Taiko experience compared to the JRPGs in this collection. Combining the JRPG and Rhythm genres can make for some very engaging gameplay experiences, but Taiko Rhythmic Adventure 1+2 does not do it meaningfully enough to achieve any lasting appeal.

PBA Pro Bowling 2026 on the Nintendo Switch has an extremely short lifespan, thanks to the lack of multiplayer and just one meaningful single-player mode. The development team really have done a good job of capturing the sport, and it’s a substantial improvement on FarSight’s previous efforts, which were both dry and not quite nuanced enough to do the sport justice. This gets that right, but just imagine going to the bowling alley to play a game by yourself. It’s not half the experience without friends around, and that applies to both the real sport and the digital adaptation.

Now, the argument over game length is one that's endlessly debated, and I'm firmly in the camp that says that fun is fun, and I certainly had fun revisiting the world of my onigiri-chomping namesake for a brief while. I could certainly see plenty of others finding it less compelling, however, because beyond the visuals, so very little has changed in 35 years. Yikes. 35 years. Presumably, Prince Alex is now King Alex of Radaxian by now. I'd better get back to my throne. Dammit, did I just say that out loud?

World End Syndrome does more than enough as a visual novel - it's hard to put down, well written, and the art is gorgeous. I just hope people don't give up the first time, when the "bad ending" it mandatory. In hindsight it's a brilliant way to introduce the depth of choices that come after that scene, but it's the most poorly executed trick the game has up its sleeve.

There are games that deliver horror that’s confronting and often gory, but The Count Lucanor excelled at showing a different side of fear that other studios should take cues from.

A mixed offering, but one that could serve as a fantastic foundation for Coffee Addict Studio to build on in future games.

The story, cute as it is, is a very familiar one full of archetypal anime characters. The writing is clunky at times, and the overall presentation lacks polish. Not every game needs to push the boundaries of innovation or style, though, and for what it is, How to Fool a Liar King is a cute, charming romance that's easy to just relax with and enjoy.

Not every game needs to be innovative, however, to provide thoughtful entertainment, and Period: Cube most certainly provided me with that in good measure.

Frequently surprising, intense, and always sublime.

It's priced just right as an impulse purchase, and offers so much content that anyone who's ever enjoyed a tower defence game should get a kick out of it.

These small gripes aside, for the most part all five games in the The Jackbox Party Pack are a lot of fun in a party environment, and because just about everyone can join in without having access to a controller, this gets to be one of the best inexpensive local multiplayer games to have sitting on the PlayStation 4's hard drive for when friends come over for drinks.

The Bunker weaves a decent plot, is well cast, and certainly has its moments of intensity. This was a genre that people thought was dead and buried back in the early era of CD Roms, thanks to the inaccessibility of talented actors, cinematographers, and story writers leading to trash like Night Trap dominating the genre. What a difference a few decades make. If The Bunker is anything to go by, there might be a bright future for these experiences yet.

Doom 64 is an impressive port of the forgotten son of the series. Without a multiplayer mode it sits as one of the less essential shooters from the era, but as the first effort at bringing Doom into three dimensions, it's a valuable bit of series history, and to this day it plays very nicely indeed.

I’m sure others will (and already have) find meaning in Inside. There’ll be fascinating, insightful deconstructions and I look forward to reading them. There’s a wealth of praise for the game already. It’s clearly spoken to a lot of people, but it didn’t speak to me – except, perhaps, to berate me for not being smart enough to understand what it’s trying to say.

The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 is a fairly standard point and click game, but it is also a wonderfully written and fundamentally enjoyable adventure that will appeal to both genre veterans, and people simply looking to a good, clean, fun little title.

Wayward characterisation, however, Aegis is genuine fun, and a genuine twist on a very staid genre.

Spellspire is good enough to play for a few hours, good enough to talk about a bit, good enough to praise for the developers' understanding of game progression... but also easy enough to forget about in a week or two when something new and shiny comes along.

There's nothing wrong with Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games 2020. It's presented with verve and for such a large range of mini-games, the fact that there's no true dud in there is impressive in its own right. At the same time, it lacks the competitive edge of the "proper" Olympics title this year, and is a little too feature light for its own good as either a single player or local multiplayer experience. That makes it throwaway. Good fun, sure. Well made, absolutely. But throwaway nonetheless.

Hero Must Die has a lot going for it – a strong, immediately compelling theme, a lovely, melancholic aesthetic, and a simple elegance to its systems. Unfortunately, the development team really struggled to find a way to marry the form and function of the JRPG, and the narrative that the mechanics are meant to support. That conflict means that Hero Must Die is nowhere near as memorable and potent as it should be. As a retro-styled little indie JRPG it’s certainly made better than most, and it’s perfectly entertaining in its own way, but as a powerful experience that makes us muse on our mortality, it’s almost painful how far this one misses the mark.

I wish farm life in Harvest Moon 3D: The Lost Valley was more gratifying because its fundamental ideas are all there. With the franchise essentially split in two going forward, I encourage Natsume to continue its experimental ways, because it's likely that the other guys will churn out the most traditional experiences possible.

There is a lot to like about Loop8, and there’s the sense that the creative team put a lot of work into the symbolism and theming of it. They shot for the stars. Unfortunately, it fell slightly short, and while it’s interesting and different, it never lives up to the clear potential it had. But that’s also okay. At least they tried something different. Gaming wouldn’t be worth it if people didn’t take a creative risk every once in a while.

With no narrative, no variable AI, and no continuity to playing (there isn’t even basic statistic tracking like win-loss scores), as good as Kashido is – and I must emphasise that it really is a fascinating game well worth learning and playing – it fails in its basic task of actually helping people to actually experience and want to invest time into this game. No digital board game should lack online play. We’re all better off importing physically copies of Kashido and taking it along to chess club meetings to see if we can get them to give something different a spin.

I suspect that Forgotten Wars will be a single player only experience very quickly, and I'm just not willing to pay a premium for a solo player CCG.

Cube Tactics is quick and sometimes intense fun little game that is quite enjoyable to play for hours on end. Just one more level.

Spy Bros. is fun. It’s by no means a classic arcade title, but it’s the kind of thing that you can pick up and have fun with in short bursts of time, particularly in multiplayer. Some will find the “all-ages” revision to be appealing too, precisely because this is the kind of game that everyone in the family can play, and enjoy together. It won’t last you like some other great arcade games, but it’s also priced nicely as an impulse buy and a chance to discover (half) of one of the more obscure titles in Toaplan’s history.

Works because the game tickles our minds based on a time when our imaginations were their most fertile: childhood. I know my toys often waged large-scale war with one another all over the living room and this game captures that in its level and character design as well as the central narrative revolving around a young boy and his nightmares.

Primal Carnage: Extinction certainly sets itself apart from other online multiplayer shooters out there. With a few different modes and a couple of maps for each mode thrown in, there is some degree of fun to be had in the game. How long that fun lasts though is simply based on how much enjoyment a person can get out of online shooters in general, and just how much patience they have for balancing issues and mechanic design flaws.

Ultimately Anime Studio Simulator comes to the table a bit rough around the edges but presents a charming story of a group of friends making an anime. Scenes such as going to an anime shop for “research” and the long list of team visits to the café craft an embodiment of playfulness and silly fun, which is, ultimately, embracing what so many of us love about anime in the first place.

Tennis in the Face is indeed a fun and funny game, but is it worth paying for? Given the fact that it's a wholly unoriginal game that barely distinguishes itself from its (free) peers, I would say no. One suspects that, at some point, the developer will be better off releasing a free version.

Taken as a simple and cheap "solitaire" (i.e single player) game, Poisoft Thud Card is enjoyable, easy playing. I do say that as someone who spent many, many hours playing Hearts on my old Windows PCs over the years, though. I like time wasting card games. As such I'll probably keep coming back to Thud Card as long as I have my Switch. Or, at least, until a developer releases a Hearts game on the console.

The game itself is a quality take on the board game. It’s just unfortunate that there is such structural issues with Risk itself that it’s rapidly losing relevance, even in the board game scene.

Whereas the original Nidhogg was a wickedly fast and immediately loveable party game, Nidhogg 2 pushes the boundaries and arrives with mixed results. Its design choices inject some more strategy to the run-and-stab gameplay, but the increased complexity and love-it-or-hate-it art style makes it a harder game to recommend for casual players.

Penarium benefits from good level design and simple mechanics that are the definition of 'easy to learn but difficult to master.' The setting for the game is a devilishly entertaining one, and Penarium is challenging without feeling cheap, which makes it a great deal easier to be forgiving of the game's difficulty curve.

This is absolutely the kind of thing that should be supported and encouraged. I would just love to see what Roach Interactive could do given the budget and time to really do justice to such an important message.

As interesting and tactical as that combat system is, I couldn't get past the fact that Disciples: Liberation was asking 80 (or more) hours of a person's time with so little payoff. I just found the whole thing too relentlessly miserable to connect with. It's possible to create a dark setting and still have moments of warmth, beauty and joy. Tolkien understood that. Perhaps those that have been inspired by him should be more diligent students.

On the one hand it's an genuinely entertaining dogfighting sim on the Nintendo 3DS - a genre so rare that its only competitor is its predecessor. On the other hand re-releasing the exact same game and selling gimmicky Amiibo miniatures unlocks as the major new addition is... well, it's not exactly adequate. This kind of feature would be a $5 DLC add-on elsewhere.

It's not that Moons of Madness is without merit, but it does come across as a game where the development team never quite reached creative cohesion and weren't able to quite work out what they wanted to achieve with this game. From the butchering of Lovecraft's vision, to a scenic structure that feels too disjointed for its own good, to the over-reliance on cheap horror tricks like jump scares in the absence of true narrative and thematic depth, Moons of Madness is just a little too confused for its own good. It's an inoffensive way for sci-fi and horror fans to while away a few hours, but by no means a masterpiece.

Unmechanical: Extended is a beautiful game. The graphics and landscapes are simply stunning and the character has real heart, despite being a little helpless. It's a pity that it leaves the door open to questions about the quality of puzzles, however.

With a better localisation Richman 11 would be essential to people who enjoy digital board games. It’s not quite as good as Square Enix’s equivalent series, but, again, since Square Enix isn’t localising those, good on Softstar for stepping up. Unfortunately the poor localisation does mean that the game comes across as obtuse and will only be for people who have a lot of experience in this kind of experience, and the patience to learn this one’s quirks over several sessions.

Bringing together so many mechanical elements to the scope and vision of Rhythm Fighter required a much more visionary developer than the one that produced the game. That’s not to say it isn’t entertaining, and there is a lot to enjoy with the game, however, it is also true that the overall experience is messy and the team lost control over what they were trying to achieve, making for something far too clumsy and clunky for the kind of precision that it needed.

RONIN is over in around seven to eight hours but the lengthy design of the levels makes it feel a lot longer than that. When you’re locked in a stalemate with ten armed guards, jumping around the walls to avoid gunfire is more tiresome than engaging. RONIN is good for a few short levels in your spare time, but I can’t fathom playing it for a long session.

Ember is a fun little game, which sits nicely on mobile to help while away long commutes without pop-ups asking for you to spend money on in-app purchases every few minutes. On the other hand, if you've got an iPhone you've got access to Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, and if you've got an iPad there's also the Spiderweb Software titles. Sadly, Ember's a distant aspirant to those games.

The difficulty creates some unnecessary grinding, and finding materials to craft some spells is a pain, but short of these two aspects Sweet Lily Dreams is a well worthwhile adventure.

I admire what the developers were trying to do with Headliner. It might be under siege, but journalism continues to fulfill a critical role in society. A game that explores the many and varied tensions that media outlets need to juggle is one way to demystify the media for people who are, increasingly, told outright lies about what the media is and what it should do. Sadly Headliner’s lack of depth, subtlety and nuance undermines the point that it was driving at. That its core design principle is also so derivative of one of the most lauded “art games” of the last decade doesn’t help it, either.

What I have a problem with is inconsistent narratives, and "gameplay" that has been so compartmentalised from the "story" that they may as well be in different products.

Modern board game design greatly de-emphasises the importance of dice rolls in favour of systems that are more predictable and strategic, and I've got to say that I much prefer this brave new world of strategy over luck that we have in our board games now.

There's a good number of levels and the challenge is stiff enough that you'll be plugging at it for quite some time. Here Be Dragons is limited, though. It's not as funny as it wants to be, claiming to be a satire, but failing to satirise anything, and it's not nearly as strategic as it should be, since it's more like a puzzle game that just happens to have dice rolls to potentially screw everything up. It's enjoyable and the distinctive art style shows that the developers did want to achieve something unique, but Here Be Dragons needed a little more work on executing against the intent.

If you own a 3DS and somehow don't own either Smash or Kirby Triple Deluxe, Kirby Fighters Deluxe offers a passable platform-fighting game with an excellent sense of style.

If only that localisation didn't put a dampener on everything by making a full half of the game, and, critically, the context that gives the action purpose, so irritating to sit through. Please, developers. It's fine to have a broken English port for a game where the narrative isn't relevant, but when we're talking about RPGs, make the investment and hire a premium localisation outfit. It will lift your game, significantly. There are, apparently, console versions of Banner of the Maid set to come later. I hope on feedback the team does get a new localisation done, because fixing that issue will add a couple of stars to the score, effortlessly. Everything else about it is truly wonderful.

I'm left wondering just who would want to play Postal Redux. The game works, sure, but there are a lot of top-down isometric shooters that work. I understand the appeal in playing both transgressive and offensive games, but Postal isn't actually transgressive, since it has so little to say and while it clearly caused offence in the '90s, there are games that are much more capable of causing offence now if that's what you're looking for. Play Hotline Miami. Hotline Miami upset plenty of people. Postal, meanwhile... Postal in 2020 comes across as bland, and for a game (and series) that relies entirely on upsetting people, even when the gameplay is competent, for it to be "bland" is to make its very existence pointless.

If you are a long standing fan of Tetris and would like it on your 3DS then you probably already have one of the other Tetris games. But this one will likely have a more vibrant online community, so it might just be worth the re-purchase, even if the single player game doesn't offer anything new.

The problem McDroid has is that it really doesn’t offer anything that we haven’t actually experienced in a game before, and for a while now the consensus seems to be that people are bored with the tower defence genre.

I really would have enjoyed combat with more depth to it than this. Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul is a great way to learn about or remember the anime, and a variety of modes and collectibles add mileage to the game. At the end of the day however, it is also meant to be a fighting game, and the combat is simply too bland to really get the most out of the experience.

If you’ve never played Tomb Raider, then you can grab this and enjoy the ride. It still looks comparable to other modern titles on Switch 2. The action is also taut and, the first time through, exciting. The thing is, though: Tomb Raider just isn’t worth replaying that often. The best games – as works of art – delight over and over, no matter how familiar they become. With Tomb Raider, and so many other blockbusters over the last 15 years, familiarity just makes the lack of creative inspiration behind them and the slavish devotion to risk-free content delivery all the more apparent.

It's a good game, don't get me wrong. On an objective level it works, and there's a reason Fruit Ninja and other such games have been so popular over the years; they're a great deal of fun. The problem with Fire Fu is that it is just so very late to the party, that even an Asianophile like me struggles to get along with it over its genre ancestors, despite the Asian setting and theming.