I understand why the developers set Crown Wars: The Black Prince during the Hundred Years War. It’s a compelling era of European history and you inherently want to play it. It got me playing a game I otherwise would have glossed over because of the promise of its theme. The problem is that once you have someone’s attention this way, you need to deliver on what you’ve promised them. Crown Wars doesn’t quite get there and fails to fill the void with something memorable.

Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game is such a great idea, but it becomes way too apparent, far too quickly, that the developers either didn’t have the budget to fully explore their idea, or simply had no idea how to turn the great idea into a compelling game. It’ll leave such a warm impression on you, but once that’s worn off, the game sours more quickly than a poorly cooked rhubarb pie. Hobbits like that for some reason. I do not.

It's still a great looking game, and the core narrative is a fun, if underdone and derivative one. It's simply disappointing that this game had a reasonably large budget, and in the process it lost some of its identity and seems to be shoehorned into some very unnecessary and destructive mechanics. This game would have been far better off being made for a fraction of the budget by a small team willing to take real risks.

I'm sure there's something good at the core of Road Redemption, but over and over again the developers made some truly horrible decisions that let that core down. Coupled with an attempt to emulate the aesthetic of Mad Max without the slightest understanding on why Mad Max is such a revered series of films, Road Redemption comes across as a wild swing for glory that didn't even come close to connecting with the ball.

Empathy wants to be a narrative-first game, that much is clear. But the constant distractions, menial busywork, and tedious puzzles constantly distract from the pacing that’s so critical to a story like this, and the end result is something that doesn’t really work well as either a puzzle game or a narrative experience.

It's games like this that keep me interested in gaming; creative developers working on creative concepts and telling simple, effective stories in a manner that is only possible through an interactive medium.

Of course, it's also "just" another match-4 title, and perhaps that's why the developers didn't feel like putting the price up to something more appropriate to the size of the game. Lucky us, then; because while Swap This! is by no means going to end up on anyone's favourite games of all time lists, it's bright, pleasant, and perfect for those times that you do want a quick burst of puzzle action. And all for the cost of candy bar.

Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics is cynical. It has taken a safe, familiar genre, done absolutely nothing but the most straightforward, safe application of it, and thrown the Dark Crystal license over the top, but it has in no way tried to do anything interesting with Dark Crystal.

The environments are detailed and beautiful, replete with pops of colour. Unfortunately, navigating them through a haze of lag destroys your enjoyment quite quickly. Pathways are dotted with doors, and the slightest glance in their direction pops you into places that you don’t want to be.

The Weaponographist is a solid game to play if you're ever in the mood to dwindle a few minutes or hours off the boring day you're having. The pick-up-and-play quality, easy-to-understand nature and lightweight gameplay all come together to make The Weaponographist an easy recommend for everyone.

Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution is an admirable effort to find a way of introducing more characters and an all-new plot-line, while also in some ways going back to the fundamentals in terms of storytelling and structure. I do wish the Idea Factory people would give up on this action combat system when the turn-based approach was less obviously affected by the budget, but the usual gorgeous fanservice art and antics of the characters kept me smiling throughout.

One of the saving graces I found with Nindroids was the fact it, like some other recent portable LEGO games has been made more, well, portable friendly.

What you won't get is much personality or balance. The game undersells its "real people from history" basis; indeed, some of them I didn't even recognise at first. Their fighting styles are only vaguely reminscient of their real-world personalities, too, which is disappointing (aside from the special attacks, that are spot on). More critically, there are some characters with spammy attacks that make the game far too easy, and other characters that are next to useless. Given that the game already has a small roster, this doesn't do much to help its long term value.

Death end re;Quest: Code Z ends up being something of an archetypical JRPG for Idea Factory in one way, while the opposite of what we expect in the other. It’s far sharper and smarter than the over-the-top fan service suggests it will be. That’s the archetypical half. Meanwhile, the JRPG mechanics are competent and enjoyable, but very standard with little experimentation. That’s categorically not what we expect from Idea Factory. It’s usually a company that experiments with combat systems to its detriment. That being said, I’m not disappointed by this at all. We haven’t had a proper “Chocobo Dungeon” style roguelike in a long time. This scratches the itch and then, thanks to the exquisite horror art and theme, leaves a bloody scar behind.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness will probably not be remembered as one of the PlayStation 4’s finest. It’s greatly let down by technical issues with a camera that actively works against the game’s strengths: the epic sense of scale and the beautiful presentation. Dig beneath that, however, and you arrive at a game with an enjoyable narrative, fun characters, and a solid action JRPG combat system – all the stuff that’s actually important, in other words.

While I appreciate that multiplayer is always going to be the core of the Mario Tennis experience, the complete absence of any kind of single player meat to go with the local and online multiplayer is another blow against it.

There's a basis here to grow into something truly spectacular, but the first entry of open world One Piece hasn't delivered on its promise.

The theme could have been better explored and the rough edges on the control detract from the inherent fun of the puzzles. More than anything else, however, is that Attractio doesn't do anything to progress its genre.

It’s just a shame that the gameplay is so generic.

If Matchpoint Tennis had just thrown the occasional loss at me, or even let me fight back from behind at times, I would have spent so much more time playing the game. It’s unfortunate to think that here we have a tennis game that developers should be paying close attention to, because it gets so much right, and we know that won’t happen because one critical error means I have no choice but to score it the way I have. If, down the track, there’s a patch to improve the difficulty in an interesting way, then Matchpoint would be the best tennis game currently available, purely because the on-court gameplay actually gets it.

A game that offers a brutally dark theme and sheer precision with its atmospherics, combined with incredibly difficult, but incredibly well designed puzzles to overcome. The result is a visionary project that might not resonate with every player, but everyone should try it because if it does resonate, then it's going to be an unforgettable experience.

Risk is a touch limited and is a digital version of a game that has aged badly, though this version of the' game is more comprehensive than the Ubisoft Monopoly game.

Battle Fantasia has some ambition. Character variety is strong, and one or two characters are designed in such a way that spam attacks don't immediately overcome strategy, and are both fun to play with and against as a consequence. But there are too many negatives to encourage a purchase over other quality fighting games available now.

All that I Am Bread has achieved is to be a mildly frustrating but mildly attractive game that will disappoint any Kafka fan that is baited into giving it a go based on its title.

It’s difficult to conceive where the audience might be for this game. Players who already have the free-to-play version may as well just stick with that. Either you’re still playing it (and thus have likely finished just about everything and would simply be replaying through everything you’ve already done again), or you’ve stopped playing it and therefore you’re done with what Pokemon Rumble World offers.

I’d only recommend this one for a quick burst and a bit of fun, because it doesn’t offer anything substantial.

Princess Maker 3 is both funny and charming, and the core gameplay loop, limited as it is, is compelling if only because there are so many different endings to aim for that the game both encourages and rewards people that experiment with it. I'm often in the mood for simple but rewarding gameplay loops over stuff that is overly complex and exhausting, and I can see myself coming back to Princess Maker for quite some time to come.

It’s hard to review Cruel Bands Career without conflating the design’s very intentional dreadfulness with judgements of the game’s quality. It’s clear from just a few moments of play that this game wants to make the player feel bad. That’s the whole schtick. And it is wholly successful in doing so – it’s a fascinating case study for emotionally resonant mechanics and non-traditional game design. And while it’s interesting, it doesn’t have a whole lot to say beyond its cruel exterior. It’s not particularly insightful or rewarding. It’s just a mean-spirited joke at the expense of the player. And even if the joke is well crafted, you’ve got to ask yourself if you really want to be on the receiving end of it.

If you did have nostalgic love for Snow Bros 2, it would clearly hit you a little harder, though I do have to note that if it’s just the arcade game you want in a legal fashion it is part of the Amusement Arcade Toaplan app too – and there it’s a fair bit cheaper than Snow Bros 2 Special’s asking price too.

There’s one area where Hunter’s Legacy does really shine, though, and that’s in its presentation. The environments and enemies are all pretty simple and straightforward, but the sprite art gives everything a sense of life and vibrancy. Instead of taking the severely well-trodden path of “retro” pixel graphics, Hunter’s Legacy simply takes the beauty of 2D game art and runs with it. It’s admittedly rough around the edges; it’s an indie game that doesn’t have the pristine finish of better-funded 2D games, but that just adds to its charm, in my view.

Certainly it is aimed squarely at a niche audience, but anyone who can get past that weird cultural quirk that we have in the west where sexytimes are somehow meant to be completely inappropriate in games should find themselves having a grand old time here.

In fact, it’s almost like a tech demo where the development team has come up with a brilliant combat system and has released that as a commercial project in the hope that a publisher will take note and throw them the money they need to make a real game next.

Bladestorm has a unique flavour, and it's one that takes a while to really settle in. But, once you get into its rhythm it has just the right mix of history and fantasy elements so that it does respect to one of the most fascinating periods of historical conflict, while letting you have some fun with it too.

Even with the small enough growing pain in regards to the framerates, this tiny Janitor’s adventure is one worth having.

This game manages to mix some quite serious themes in with its plentiful fanservice and Compile Heart trademark sense of the ridiculous.

The misfortune here for Nintendo EAD is that party games need to be accessible and appealing to a mass audience, but 1-2-Switch settles for a very specific demographic and all but alienates the rest. For that reason, it’s not a purchase I would recommend; it would have been better as a "free" pack in so that people would get the chance to try it for themselves before deciding on whether it had any long-term longevity for them.

There are still some problems, as the platforming can feel awkwardly stiff at times and the game isn’t the prettiest of titles, but it’s a resounding triumph in teaching an important lesson. Those that finish Path of Motus will find themselves better for the journey and motivated to follow their dreams. That type of reward far surpasses the amount of fun a game can bring.

Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity doesn't merge its two genres as seamlessly as its recently localised sibling, but it’s still an exceptionally fresh curiosity buy. Though ultimately not quite as polished as either Ys or a main-series Touhou outing, the underlying gameplay is so clever it elevates the whole experience. The adoption of bullet-hell mechanics by classic genres continues to pay dividends.

Boiling things right down, Caligula asks a question that’s really quite dear to my heart: “what if Hatsune Miku gained sentience and convinced us all that we would be better off living in a universe with her as queen?” I must admit that, were it me, I’d end up as one of the “villains” in this game, as I’m quite on board with that; but joking aside, The Caligula Effect looks, on the surface, like a bit of B-grade nonsense for a console well out of the mainstream’s attention. The great irony about that is that it’s far more pertinent and relevant, and asks genuine questions, about a topic that is going to be a significant sociological discussion point for generations going forward.

I actually feel terrible that I haven’t enjoyed WitchSpring3 more. In isolation it has a lot going for it – I love pastel aesthetics, I love cute witches. I love the CG art. I really love alchemy JRPGs. Unfortunately, WitchSpring3 is a little too obviously a “mobile JRPG best practices” game, so a lot of its potential is let down by less-than-enthusiastic storytelling and a mechanical approach to gameplay systems that left me feeling very cold.

So, you need to be patient and committed to get much out of ELEX, but give it a chance, and there’s a soul in there that should grow on anyone who enjoys their RPGs. The distinctive setting, wonderful world and quest design, and scope of the narrative are all genuinely admirable, and play to Piranha Byte’s strengths as, along with Cyanide, the most prominent and creative B-grade RPG developer out there.

This is, effectively, an independent game from a small, creative team. And it’s a massive success at being that. It’s a deep JRPG mixed with both satire and humour, it’s something you haven’t seen before, and most importantly: it’s fun. Real, genuine fun.

Nightmare from the Deep is like a Romance paperback at a newsagency – a cheap title that will keep you entertained for an afternoon without trying to be more than it really is.

I left the game feeling frustrated more than anything else. With arbitrary, esoteric puzzles and a wildly inconsistent tone exacerbated by technical issues, I found it hard to get sucked into the game’s atmosphere. The clever plot twists and unique setting were all but drowned out by errant jokes about office politics.

So with New Star Manager you get poor on-field football action, and poor off-field management. Throw in the cheap "typical mobile game" aesthetics and design, and it's hard to understand who would want to play this. People who simply like football would go for FIFA. People who want a management simulator would go for the densely rewarding Football Manager. Both of which are already available on Switch.

People who come to it looking for a quality SHMUP are going to be disappointed. It's functional, but that's really not the point. The point is the fan service and pin-up aesthetic, and while Waifu Uncovered is limited there, as a cut-price hour or two of fun, as someone who enjoys anime and fan service, I had more fun with this than I should probably admit in public. Also, I really am genuinely impressed that eastasiasoft has paved the way for anime nudity on the Switch. There's hope for the Dee Dee visual novels to debut on console yet.

With that being said, Maid of Sker is still hugely entertaining, especially for people that are aware of the literary traditions that it's tapping into. As an aesthetic, it's probably a little nuanced and subtle for its own good (let's face it, the video game sector isn't big on rewarding nuance and subtlety), but it's great and distinctive. It's just disappointing that the development team struggled so hard in their efforts to make a compelling game to go with it.

Any single run through of Princess Maker 2 Regeneration is just a few short hours, making it very moreish, especially given that the sheer number of endings it is clearly designed around replay value. You’ll probably want to use some kind of guide to get all those endings, as the game does nothing to indicate how any of them are unlocked… but then again, perhaps the spirit of experimentation is what you’ll love most about this. As a stat-based simulation sandbox, there’s a lot of joy in this trip through Princess Maker nostalgia. But given how difficult it was to effectively modernise this classic, perhaps it is time for a new title in the series. The last one was released back in 2007, and there’s a lot of creative opportunity that this series is now leaving on the table.

The goodwill that it builds at the start does starts to suffer as you realise just how limited the spelling mechanic can be, and start to run into the rough edges around he platforming.

Above all else, Defunct sells itself on an exhilarating sense of speed matched with excellent level design and exploration. It’s rare to find a game where simply moving around is as fun as it is here. Of course the game’s short length might deter some, but it’s genuinely interesting to see a developer run with the idea of a momentum-based platformer and nail the core mechanics.

Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed is fun while it lasts. Though it is not for everyone, and though there is much more that could have been done to make the parody theme stronger, if you are willing to check your brain at the door, there is a good time to be had here.

The pacey, stylish, and colourful action, complemented with the neat strategy elements and interesting - albeit high-energy narrative, combine to make The Princess Guide quite unlike the other JRPGs out there.

Goblin Slayer is a perfectly adequate tactics JRPG that people who have nostalgia for the genre back on the PlayStation will have a particular fondness for. Mileage may be slightly better for the fans of the anime, but even then I think the big problem this game has is that it’s very superficial and shows very little interest in making any kind of statement or point. In other words, it plays exactly like an ‘anime tie-in’ game, and nothing more or less than that.

It’s a good game if you’re fully caught up with Gundam lore, but even casual fans might struggle to get along with this one.

Necropolis is best taken as a satire. It’s not perfect in that role, but it’s good fun nonetheless, and a healthy foil to the kind of experiences that have become so in-demand with the success of the Souls games. If you’re able to get the full complement of four players together, you’re in for some classically entertaining and self-aware dungeon crawling fun.

Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers biggest problem is that there are so many more memorable JRPGs available on Nintendo Switch. It's a sweet little entry-level game, and is refreshingly brief in length and scope. It also has a streamlined, nearly retro approach to its combat, and it has fun with its time travel theme. It might not be particularly profound, but it is sweet and cheerful and has a really good soul.

Hiragana Pixel Party is a game with an identity crisis – it’s too shallow to be a serious learning tool but it’s too serious about learning to be just fun. It’s on a console with more than a few proper rhythm games which feel more intuitive to play, and honestly you’ll pick up about as much Japanese from this game as you would while playing Project Diva with dual language subtitles on. I would have loved it to be more ambitious, and to find more ways to be a useful language acquisition tool, but as of now it’s only useful to players who want to learn just hiragana and katakana.

One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows is aimed firmly at the target audience of games such as Jump Force. It finds subtle ways to translate One Punch Man’s comical lore into gameplay but forgets to polish the central experience before padding it out with filler. There’s a respectable degree of fanservice here, but little to see for casual fans. The silver-lining is in the anime aesthetics, which make the game worth a second glance for those on the fence.

The console can do much better than Drive.Club Unlimited 2. This is just unacceptable.

In theory I would love a game like Fossil Fighters, but while I was willing to forgive the original on the Nintendo DS as a good-but-flawed new IP, by now the game should have a far more refined identity by now. There's still potential in Fossil Fighters, but the series needs to head back to the drawing board for a thorough rethink.

A resounding success as both an example of the genre and a homage to everything that makes it fun.

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.

Forged of Blood is ambitious well beyond its means, and it has so many systems at play at once that there are moments where, mechanically, they fall down. Thematically, however, it’s a gorgeous blend of complementary fantasy genres and approaches, and it's done differently. We need to see more original and different games being made, and it’s great to see something of this vision and presentation coming out of emerging game development nations like Indonesia.

So we’ve got a game that has zero respect for aesthetic traditions, gameplay that is no more than a shallow grind, and a game about Japanese demons that somehow fails to be interesting to a guy that has a library shelf filled with books about yokai, yurei, oni and the rest. What an intolerable disgrace this is to video games as an art form.

The House of the Dead is a classic and monumentally important video game. I didn’t even bat an eyelid when this popped up on the eShop. Even knowing that as a Forever Entertainment project it probably wasn’t going to be all that, my fierce loyalty to the brand caused me to buy this instantly. As I wrote in the introduction to this review, however, The House of the Dead Remake makes Uwe Boll’s film seem like a masterpiece by comparison. At least Boll had the good sense to put gratuitous B-genre exploitation nudity and unintentionally hilarious directing in his film. His film was a thing you could enjoy drunk. You play this game and you’ll just jump straight to the hangover.

The game is delightfully odd and will absolutely make you laugh at least a handful of times. Unfortunately, the overwhelming lack of care put into some stuff that modern developers really shouldn't be getting wrong is noticable.

Iro Hero ambitiously seeks to reinterpret polarity switching shooters. Baffling design choices render it alienating even to seasoned shoot ‘em up fans, however. The blueprint for a clever shooter is here and it’s possible the developers will rectify that base game with patches and updates, but the Iro Hero of today does not reflect that lofty potential.

While I do admire the attempt to give players the power fantasy of playing as a guy so utterly, brutally powerful that he can calmly walk through a bullet ballet, Gungrave G.O.R.E burns its goodwill far too quickly and from there it’s too exhausting to bother with.

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

I just didn’t expect it could be this bad. Dark Alliance is a functionally broken product. When enemies simply ignore you as you carve their health down to zero, when there’s so little to the game that that’s all you’re doing, and when the multiplayer experience is only superior because it’s a chance to share the misery with someone else, some passable graphics and one neat checkpointing system aren't anywhere near enough to redeem this game. This is the poorest handling of a license since Superman 64.

While this means in total the game offers 60 puzzles I felt while playing it that I could play the game for much longer. However the game's story been told in cut scenes throughout the game, and I don’t think that could have been presented as well with a longer game. Perhaps we can get more content in a sequel.

Kemco produces JRPGs on a budget that are designed to give people a momentary throwback to the 16-bit era of the genre, and while I don't expect anything mind blowing when I do go into these games, I find things this soulless and unimaginative very, very trying indeed.

As much fun as it is to play, the sad irony of Mugen Souls Z is that it is best played by people who hadn't experienced the original, but the only people that could possibly be interested in the game must have played the original.

The game doesn’t stand up especially well by itself, and the Remaster has only addressed the superficial issues with the DS original.

The next step for Big Ant would be to start capturing the nuances of the sport and convert excellent ball-to-ball action to give us the full match experience, when events that happened in the 10th over can impact on how bowlers, batters, and the crowd itself behave in the 40th. If Big Ant can get there, make it feel like tactics matter and results are less pre-determined and arbitrary, and then they will produce a cricket game that will finally move from the cusp to sit alongside EA, Sony and 2K’s sporting titles in offering something that truly understands and captures the spirit of the sport.

There’s also the problem of the game’s lore, which has signs of potential but is lacking in its execution.

Its simplistic combat and dull mission structures mean it quickly runs out of steam for anything other than quick bursts of play, and the Switch has plenty of games that can fill that need in a far more compelling way.

There are two endings to Theseus, though either way the game itself isn’t that long. It does tell the story it wanted to, though, and does so in a comprehensive enough way that I wasn’t left wondering. It’s a crafty little proof-of-concept and experiment in making VR work in the context of a third person adventure experience. It’s a little limited for what I ultimately want VR to deliver, but it’s worthwhile nonetheless.

MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death is a serviceable dungeon crawler that newcomers to the dungeon crawler craze can pour dozens of hours into. The appeal to genre veterans is going to be far lower due to the lack of a substantial plot and the underutilised battle system, but the game functions wonderfully as addictive comfort food.

Experience the game with the mindset of wanting to get lost in a virtual world, though, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by Hollow Realization’s hidden charms.

Jump Force fulfils its central purpose - anime fighting - splendidly. Instead of focusing on that brilliance, the developers piled disconnected features from other games on top. With better utilisation of fanservice and context for the characters present, this could have gone down as Bandai Namco's best outing in the category, but the love still shines through.

Ultimately, what makes Earthlock so essential is just how earnest it is in its love for classic JRPGs. It’s worth sitting through its more cumbersome features in order to appreciate the hard work that a team of people who clearly love the genre have sweated over to refine the game to the point where it’s not only a homage to the greats of old, but it adds just a little to what makes the genre so wonderful.

There's such a lack of polish and precision to Tears of Avia that it's difficult to blindly recommend. As a fan of the tactics JRPG genre, I did enjoy this, but it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that there weren't many other games out there with a similar ambition that are executed far better. I do think the team has a strong vision and I would very much anticipate a Tears of Avia 2 on the promise that they would have built on what the learned from the first game. With that being said, I do think this first outing is beyond a turnaround from patches - its thematic issues are too extended and in some areas the team need to return all the way back to the drawing board.

If your big point of difference is that you’re playing a blind girl, but the way you’ve structured the gameplay means that she doesn’t behave blind at all, then you’ve shot your game’s credibility in the foot before it even starts.

It's a short game and doesn't get everything perfect, but it's also quite unique and has a strong narrative to it. And I do love a game with a strong female lead. This is also a game that feels that it has been released a little early, and by that I mean Adr1ft badly needs to be a strong VR experience when PlayStation VR lands. Then it will truly will be a game that will stick with me for a long time to come.

Toren really is about its narrative, and that is arthouse gold. Like the finest of foreign cinema, this game challenges how the wisdom behind blockbuster design would dictate a game should be put together. It's constrained by budget and, perhaps, a lack in confidence to go all the way and risk complete innovation, but it's a beautiful, emotive, and powerful experience, and it's going to be one of my games of the year. If not one of my favourite games ever.

The Last of Us 2 epitomises everything about overly-produced, mass market-friendly content that many of us are becoming exhausted with. SWERY, knowing full well that his game will be castigated on Metacritic and widely mocked, has satirised every mainstream expectation of a video game in Deadly Premonition 2. There’s nothing that suggests that anything within this game is not an entirely deliberate, surrealistic subversion of expectations, and while Deadly Premonition 2 is not for everyone (and potentially offensive to some), games as an art form are better off having works like this to exist in parallel to mainstream entertainment.

Neptunia Virtual Stars is an intelligent, relevant, topical and timely satire. It does represent a new direction for the series, and is clearly an effort to find a way to stay relevant now that the jokes that previously provided the foundation for the series have lost their relevance. In doing so Idea Factory decided to experiment with the gameplay, and while that wasn't executed to a particularly fine degree, the heavier focus on narrative and the sheer energy of the whole package means that I found it impossible to remain disappointed by the game's rough edges. The rest of it was too much of a laugh-out-loud delight.

Not only is the lack of tutorial and unfamiliar gameplay going to scare off casual FPS fans, but the nature of the game as a large scale multiplayer experience will mean there’s not much point in playing if you can’t get a proper 16vs16 match going. If you like the idea of a historically accurate, hardcore WWI FPS, Verdun is going to be right up your alley. I’m just not sure if the PS4 port will be the best way to experience it.

In the end, Perfect Universe is a multiplayer party game that lets itself down by throwing mechanics at the player that are far too complex for their own good.

I’ll be committed to Train Sim World for quite some time, I suspect. Give me some DLC train routes through Asia (especially Japan), and I’ll be all the happier. Give me one or two routes of the Sydney network and I’ll buy them just to gloat to Sydney Trains that it is possible to deliver passengers to their stops without a three hour delay. I’m oddly proud of my virtual train driving skills.

Dodo Peak plays really nicely. I know the knee-jerk response to any mobile game-like “cute and charming arcade experience” is to assume it’s some kind of cheap shovelware, but Dodo Peak is precise, clean action, with well-designed levels that straddle the line between encouraging creativity among players and giving them a specific range of different puzzles and logical traps to overcome. It’s bright, cheery fun that people of all ages can enjoy, and is something well suited to the Nintendo Switch platform. You could go much, much worse than giving this a spin.

There’s so much to like about Inescapable. The concept is solid and the developers seem to have had the right intentions. The vision is there. It’s also horny as anything and why the heck not? We don’t really have a Danganronpa-like that made the obvious observation that a bunch of super-hot young adults, trapped in a kind of “paradise,” are almost certainly going to get it on. It’s just unfortunate that this is a 15-hour game that takes about 10 hours to start getting to the point, and from start to finish it’s simply not written well enough to demand the player sit through that.

What impressed me most about Submerged is that it never tries to be more than its concept. It set out to be a simple narrative-driven and emotional experience with a strong environmental message, and it achieves just that. With no unnecessary actions to distract those with limited attention spans it might be perceieved as "dull" by some, but in practice it's a reflective, mature, and artful work, and this here is where games should be going.

It’s probably just as well Sony gave this thing away for free with PSPlus memberships. It’s the only hope the game has of actually keeping an audience (because it’s a multiplayer-only game, it needs a large and sustained community). But if David Jaffe genuinely wants to make a transgressive game, next time he should pay some attention to how actual transgressive artists like Goichi Suda and Yoko Taro do it.

The appeal of Date Night Bowling is incredibly limited. It's for people that want to play a game with their romantic partner, and need something that both can enjoy equally, regardless of their gaming experience. At the same time, it's for those that don't want to become too competitive or heated. And both people also need to be old enough to enjoy the 80's and 90's vibes and aesthetics. It's inoffensive enough in fulfilling that very narrow role, but its concepts fall down badly when you're playing single-player, or with anyone other than your significant other. Throw in a dearth of depth and character, and even when you are playing it in its optimal environment, you're going to wish that you decided to take date night to a real bowling alley instead.

There’s a premise with a lot of potential in enigma, but it’s squandered on cliche characters, uneven pacing, and rough localisation.

Talk about a piece of media that can capably transport the player directly into the 1990s of ice hockey games, Old Time Hockey does exactly that. From the one-colour loading screens, to the sound effects, right down to the chosen font, Old Time Hockey is a fun yet flawed experience. In a time where many developers are looking back to the 1990s as inspiration for their games, Old Time Hockey stands out as one of the success stories.