In contrast to its beautifully elegant and minimalist cousin, Proteus, which I referred to at the start, Rememoried is hauntingly beautiful and has a far greater depth of emotional substance. But it is begging us, as players, a little to hard to embrace it and recognise its genius.

It constantly reminds you that you’re not playing Portal by highlighting all the ways that it falls short of Valve’s beloved puzzler. ChromaGun came at the king, and it missed.

What Need for Speed has done spectacularly is put the focus on the car. In every opportunity possible the game showcases these machines, almost fetishising them. And that’s great, but in achieving this, Need for Speed has left behind what makes players stay for these games. Not matter how great my car is, if I’m not driving down interesting streets, or being able to compete in diverse challenges, then slowly the thrill of the car will fade.

For what it is, Feral Fury is a lot of fun, building upon established arena shooter conventions with high production values and vibrant, kinetic gameplay. While I admit more could have been done with the game’s interesting story and setting, I found every other facet to be immediately enjoyable. If you don’t mind some things feeling like a retread of prior games, Feral Fury is a competent entry in a universally enjoyable genre.

No matter how strong the writing is, or what it makes you feel, it’s ruined by those final few minutes at the end of the game. It felt as if the whole experience, whilst rather short, left me in an inconsequential role, like I was simply listening to an argument between two people in an elevator.

Kerbal Space Program is a fantastic game but one that you should play on PC. I can forgive some of the control issues because of the limitations of the platform but we’ve seen other developers do intuitive controls for games designed initially for PC like Divinity: Original Sin and even Blizzard’s Diablo III. Imagine buying a great physics text book but only being able to read it while using oven mitts to turn the pages. That is Kerbal Space Program on PlayStation 4.

I just hope that F1 2015 has an engine for the new generation of consoles and puts the series back on track.

I'm left with the exact same impression with Shadows of New York as I was with Coteries of New York from earlier this year. This development team has talent, writes a quality visual novel, understands the aesthetics and tone of Vampire: The Masquerade, and you get the feeling that they can achieve some incredible things with the property. To get there, though, they need to graduate from writing a pen-and-paper RPG to something more literary, because unfortunately for them, in deciding to joust with exceptionally complex, challenging subjects like they have with Shadows of New York, they're being unseated far too often by a lack of insight and complex analysis, leaving their work feeling a touch too shallow for its own good.

As a milestone celebration, 200% Mixed Juice can often feel like one big in-joke which players will need prior knowledge of the developer’s previous games to properly appreciate. That being said however, there’s a distinct joy in the game’s design and the celebratory nature of the game’s development seeps through its design to bring about a lighthearted and engaging experience.

Battle Grounds isn’t going to convert anyone who sees beat ‘em ups as mindless entertainment. Yet even when its ideas are half-baked in execution, the overwhelming style and ambition here make for one of the genre’s more memorable entries in recent years.

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.

Saturday Morning RPG is enjoyable. It's a clean, cheap, pleasant RPG for people who either grew up in the 80s, or have developed an appreciation for what passed as entertainment back then. Either way, the heavy reliance on nostalgia does wear thin and lose its comedic appeal, and from there you're only left with a workable, but very limited, turn based combat system, and not much more.

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.

Adventures of Pip is a solid platformer with a clever little gameplay mechanic, but ultimately doesn't do all that much with it. That being said, away from the mechanics, it was also good to see one of these retro-themed platformers do something more with the art style than simply have it as window-dressing. Adventures of Pip actually turns pixels into part of the gameplay, and that's neat.

It’s hard to develop your own voice until you understand how other artists find theirs. While I ultimately find Dark Deity to be uninspired and certainly won’t be replaying it every year or so, as I do Fire Emblem, I also hope that this developer produces another tactics JRPG. I would buy that in a heartbeat, because I am quite certain that with a bit more experience as a team of artists, not only will this developer find its own voice, but it will start to build on everything that made those GBA Fire Emblem titles great. That – the promise of some kind of “Fire Emblem Plus” – is some exciting promise indeed.

It's unfortunate that the action is too pacy for the Switch controls and there wasn't more attention paid to strategic depth, balance, and how the games various systems would interact with one another, because Golem Gates had all the potential to be something truly amazing.

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.

This isn’t an exceptionally long game and doesn’t feature branching pathways or character selection like other Neo Geo games do, but it has deceptively simple mechanics that will have you playing over and over in an attempt to beat entire levels on one life. Players willing to look past the poor spritework and short runtime will find a fun arcade gallery shooter which otherwise might have been lost to history.

It’s a game about what could have been, both from the protagonist’s perspective and also from the player’s point of view. The Crow’s Eye shone when it came to dealing with suspense and psychological distress. I only wish that it’d played more to its strengths in the end.

The biggest issue is not that the development set their sights incredibly high, but simply that this kind of game is a mammoth project, and there is simply no way that a limited budget can pull off something of the standard of, say, Skyrim. Risen 3 is a raw, entertaining experience that lacks polish but offers substance.

Ultimately, I’m probably expecting a bit much for a three-hour visual novel, based on a pen-and-paper tabletop game, to engage with a subject on a meaningful and nuanced level. The developers have succeeded in doing the Werewolf: The Apocalypse property justice, and the game’s presentation is distinct, interesting, and often brilliant. However, there are so many high quality visual novels that do have the thematic depth and quality, and are written in such a way that they don’t come across as condescending. Heck, there’s another werewolf story that does all of the above on the Nintendo Switch in Raging Loop, but does it better, so there's a direct alternative available. That being said, I’d love for this developer to get another shot at the Werewolf: The Apocalypse property, and for them to handle the writing with that little bit more maturity that would elevate it and make it something special.

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.

In the end the problem with the Fairune Collection comes from the fact the series is a short lived one and yet it still took its time to find its stride. The most recent game, Fairune 2, should have been the foundation and the first title, but as it is, it's the only one that feels complete, with the rest of this collection being more akin to proof of concepts or tech demos.

Her Love in the Force is fine. If you're comfortable with the themes, then there's a lot of raw content to work through, and if you do find the boys appealing then you'll get to spend a lot of time with them. On the other hand, there's nothing inspiring about what Her Love in the Force offers, it's not a particularly attractive game on the eye, and the narrative really struggles to make these men interesting enough to want to romance. You know an otome game is in trouble when you don't have a favourite boy, and perhaps Her Love in the Force should have been left back in 2014.

I’d like to see another Fight of Gods, with improved development competence, but is still happy to be an absurd, irreverent bit of fun. We need those games too, else what would we have to play by the time we got to the second bottle of wine?

What Tiny Metal, as a clone of Advance Wars, does unfortunately abstract things too far, to the point where there’s no real strategic depth left.

MazM: The Phantom of the Opera is what I would like to see more of in video games; it's a genuine effort to engage with a more meaningful side of art. It's less pop culture, easy content as it is an adaptation of a masterpiece of the gothic literature genre. The developer succeeded in capturing the aesthetics and generally representing the story, but there have been some big compromises made to hammer this nail into place, and the gamey elements and technical proficiency are just not there. Not for the Switch version, at any rate. As a Phantom of the Opera fan, I do highly recommend like-minded fans check this out, as it is a curiosity, but if you're going into this looking for a game... you'd be better off picking up a copy of the film adaptation of the musical.

Over and over again some truly baffling decisions let it down, and while the scenarios justify the asking price in themselves, for any of us that prefer the sandbox mode of the simulations that we play, Townsmen is a complete misfire.

Still, if you are that much into fanservice art, you'll get some panty shots and big, bouncy boobs to admire, and that might just be enough for you to overlook the issues this game has with plot and characterisation. That's not me being sarcastic - there is something there for people who enjoy digital pin-up art in video game form. It's just not enough to elevate the entire game in comparison to its peers.

The Monty Mole Collection isn’t extremely expensive, and that’s perhaps its saving grace, because examining its fare won’t set you back a lot. But in the shadow of far superior collections that genuinely pay homage to why retro gaming is so important to not only be preserved but played, this is definitely second-rate. Monty may or may not be innocent, but he deserved better than this.

This won't be a game that will appeal to everyone and I have the feeling that it may well scare off (yep, pun intended) a fair few people with production values that are below standard, even by indie standards.

Mark McMorris Infinite Air is not going to appeal to more casual snowboarding fans, and unfortunately I would include myself in that category. If you are looking for a game that you can pick up easily and pull off some crazy looking tricks, you might want to look elsewhere. However, with properly aligned expectations and a willingness to sink some time into learning the game's mechanics, you can get a lot out of this one.

King Arthur: Knight’s Tale is a high-quality tactical RPG, mechanically, but that’s overshadowed by an dismal narrative, setting and characterisation. At no point does anything in this game suggest that the developers had the slightest interest in doing the Arthurian legends justice (or even respect). This is the end result of the entire industry being motivated around content rather than artistic integrity. King Arthur: Knight’s Tale sure has a lot of best-practice dark fantasy, as the developers chase after all the financial success that other dark fantasy content products have received. If only anyone who worked at the development studio actually picked up Le Morte d’Arthur and learned something about what they were “adapting” to video game form first. They may have realised what a mistake they were making with this game then.

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.

The Deathtrap Dungeon Trilogy is still fun, in the sense that gamebooks are good fun, and the development team haven't broken anything in the fundamentals. But this is also a deeply uninspired effort, and the Nintendo Switch has such good, innovative adaptations of gamebooks already that it's hard to see where the appeal of this package is. The really hardcore traditionalists would rather read a proper adaptation of the books. More casual fans would have wanted more done with them. The presentation is pedestrian, and the gameplay basic. It's genuinely difficult to imagine who would get much value out of this package.

I don’t have strong feelings for Eternal Radiance. It’s got no egregious flaws, and boasts a lengthy quest and a combat loop sure to keep players satisfied. As a bare-bones, back-to-basics look at the action-JRPG, it’s fine. It’s just that on the Switch there are so many available games that take a more interesting look at the JRPG formula, whether it has to do with narrative or gameplay or visual aesthetic, and that makes Eternal Radiance seem woefully bland by comparison. Reading the situation generously, it does feel like the game’s simplicity comes down to the developer’s affection of JRPG tropes, rather than a lack of creativity or ambition. But it's still a quality that holds the overall experience back. The finished product is fine, and quite nice to look at, but it is something that makes me want to play something else instead.

It saddens me to say that League of Evil is just a simple platformer game and not much more. On a platform which doesn’t have a port of Super Meat Boy, League of Evil fills its niche serviceably – but it’s not a glowing example of its genre and it’s not something I can recommend easily unless you absolutely must have a platformer on your system. And even then you've got Shantae and Shovel Knight sitting there waiting to be played instead.

There’s still a case to be made for Hyperide VR – especially its potential to become something worth more of your time. It has some tense, entertaining moments that may catch you off guard. It may leave you wanting more, for better or worse, due to some mechanics that are interesting but not fully realised. And it’s cheap. But it’s by no means a classic.

There's nothing inherently wrong with Crush Your Enemies. It's presented nicely, has some nice, clean mechanics and is cleverly designed to be playable in short bursts of time. But it's also a strategy game that struggles to encourage players to be strategic, and its best feature, the multiplayer, is dead on release. A complete misfire in making the humour relient on stereotypes that grew old a thousand comedic games ago also doesn't help in giving Crush Your Enemies anything but a brief moment of forgettable fun.

So perhaps the "Amazing" in the title isn't really warranted, but it has to be emphasised: there's nothing actually wrong with Amazing Brick Breaker. It works, and if you're going to buy it, then you're going to get exactly what you're buying. Most importantly of all, though, this is one of those rare games where I don't feel somehow guilty if I can't get to 1,000 words in my review. It really is a relief to be able to go lazy on reviews occasionally, and this one really doesn't warrant anything but a quick footnote on what we usually cover on DDNet.

Hellboy: Web of Wyrd looks the part. It’s a gorgeous game and I was really hoping that it would deliver the vision for the character and comic in the same way that it captured the aesthetics. Sadly, instead, we got a stodgy roguelike that largely misses the point of what either Hellboy or the roguelike should offer. Equally sadly, we continue to wait for a truly great Hellboy game.

I'm legitimately upset that I didn't enjoy I Saw Black Clouds more. It seemed to have so much promise. There were glimmers of hope – I really enjoyed the classic ghost story until that was yanked into another direction, one that I still don't think makes a whole lot of sense. Unfortunately, the entire story seems too far-fetched, minus the supernatural aspect of all things. As far as I can tell, there's only one general direction it ever takes in the end, although I remain hopeful for those other endings. The biggest problem with the game is that choices are literally the entirety of gameplay but they don't seem to matter half the time anyway, so the entire thing feels like an exercise in futility. And all that nonsense and non-decisions really dragged it down.

There is plenty of fun to be had here with friends, but just make sure your expectations are in line with what you will be getting here. It is fun for a while, and well made for what it is, but for a game that relies so intensely on the multiplayer action, it's just not quite up there with the best in the genre.

I was hoping for more from Zengeon. “Chinese Diablo” or “Hades but Asian” are keywords that should have translated into one of my favourite games of the year. Unfortunately, while the effort on the part of the developers is clear for all to see, and the aesthetics are there, Zengeon otherwise struggles to meet the highs of its peers. It is a perfectly workable game, and I could easily see a better-resourced sequel from this team delivering, but as it stands, this is a touch too shallow and mundane for its own good.

The concept of Panty Party is hilarious, though once you move past making jokes about finally getting your hands on Hatsune Miku's underwear, the humour of the game doesn't exactly sustain itself either.

Spacebase Startopia is not completely without merit, but it does lack in charm and depth, and simulators need one or the other (and preferably both) else they're in big trouble. With that being said there is a very specific audience for this game; it works as a competitive simulator where you learn the perfect order for doing things and then execute on that to cruise through to easy victories. In almost any other context, however, Spacebase Startopia lacks the creative whimsy and data-driven depth that we usually expect from a great simulator.

Warsaw is an interesting concept which does do quite a few things right, but its inconsistency of vision prevents it from achieving the same greatness as the games it was clearly inspired by. Pixelated Milk are at their best when they are holding players in the desperate struggle for survival, where each tactical decision matters a great deal between life and death. But it takes real concentration on the player’s part to make these systems work, compounded by UI issues on the Switch which only further exhaust players. There are plenty of games which set out to do things similar to what Warsaw does, but more effectively.

The biggest issue with Guild of Dungeoneering is that the gameplay never really evolves. Your deck of cards does grow and you'll get new and better cards, but the overall experience in hour two really is not all that different from hour ten.

The presentation is charming and the power ups are fun to use. The problem is, of course, that it's not necessarily a game that you're going to want to play on consoles.

It has a style of play that allows it to be incredibly challenging if you are going for as many stars as quickly as possible, but it also allows you to feed Om Nom and move on to the next level - handy for younger players.

It may sound like I’m being harsh on Ginger, but as I played through its many levels I felt the game struggled to live up to its influences where it might have been better off trying something new. Judging by the animations, the level design and the slowdown the game occasionally experiences, Drakhar Studios were held back by resources and production time, and so couldn’t deliver a polished experience.

Rise Eterna is not terrible by any means. It's a perfectly playable effort to emulate Fire Emblem. But it's also incredibly shallow, lacks character and meaningful narrative, and misfires in several critical areas with the gameplay. On the other hand, since Nintendo and Intelligent Systems are showing no haste in announcing a new Fire Emblem, I guess we've got to take what we can get.

Of course, Red White Yellow is a micro-scale project by a developer, being sold at a minimal price. It feels almost cruel to be critical of it, but this game does have flaws that undermine its very premise, and while it's a technically proficient little puzzler, there's already a much better-realised effort that pitches in this space, called Akihabara: Feel The Rhythm. That is, of course, if you're not going to simply buy Lumines.

The basic mechanics are all there, and though the game features bigheaded anime-like characters and super shots and the like, it has got a focus on the three key techniques of beach volleyball; a need to time ball strikes well, a need to position spikes as close to the net as possible, and the need to be able to hit gaps in the court with those spikes...It’s not perfect, of course. There’s very little content beyond playing teams of increasing difficulty, and earning points to level up your own characters.

The problem that Total Wars: Battles faces is that it is just far too aggressive in demanding players cough over real money or be content with a snail’s crawl of a game. And this, it’s difficult to keep the momentum going after those spectacular early impressions.

AdVenture Capitalist absolutely achieves what it sets out to achieve, and in principle, I actually think that people should play it, because the messaging that it’s putting forth is important, both as a reflection of the video game industry, and capitalism as a whole. But on the other hand we had everything that we needed from this genre with the original Cow Clicker, and I sincerely do not understand where the value is in having this on console.

Mr. Prepper could have a good bit of socio-political commentary to go with a kind of casual simulation structure that even the free-to-play Fallout Shelter largely proved to be a good time. Sadly, so many little things went wrong with it in delivery, and it’s hard to put a finger on just how it could fall over so badly in totality. Was it just that the team is inexperienced? Not confident enough in the vision to fully commit? Not sure how to integrate the gameplay and concept together? Whatever it was, Mr. Prepper is a better idea than execution.

I am torn on it because I absolutely loved some of the things that were done, but also came away with the distinct impression that there simply should have been more. More conversation, more depth to the existing mechanics or additional systems that come into play over time, more variety in puzzles and more game in general. I generally enjoyed my time with Armikrog, but came away with the unshakeable feeling that it also missed several opportunities to be a better, more memorable game.

Gothic is getting a full remake, which will release in 2024. I actually expect that to be good, because the developers can use the modern tools they have to modernise and restore the original vision of the game. Unfortunately, though, that’s the final nail in the coffin for the original. Unless you have a very academic reason for wanting to play an artefact of B-tier game design from the early turn of the century, there’s just no reason to play this port.

Mad Games Tycoon is a noble attempt to do something really cool. As someone who loves tycoon simulators, and loves video games, the dream is very much there to have something more serious and deep to replace Game Dev Tycoon. Unfortunately Mad Games Tycoon also struggles to give you a genuine sense of ownership over what you're doing. A very pedestrian presentation, and a sense that you're being pushed to play in a specific way is very antithetical to how the overwhelming bulk of the real world games industry works.

Knee Deep isn’t a terrible game, nor is it as ground-breaking as it wants to be. It definitely gives a unique spin on the interactive drama genre, and it does tell a somewhat dark, noir inspired tale. Folks who approach this as anything other than a slightly more interactive Visual Novel are going to be disappointed, though, and given that it was more pitched towards adventure game fans, I think there might be a few people that are disappointed with their purchase here.

The Charming Empire does a great job of introducing players to the Taishō period; a period that we rarely learn much about in the west. As a period piece it does a decent enough job, but there are so many gorgeous visual novels out there now that the pedestrian presentation really hurts the romance and storytelling of it all.

Vambrace: Cold Soul is by no means a bad game. It's far too derivative and simple to reach the same league as Darkest Dungeon as a classic, but it's an enjoyable time waster, with superb production values and neat, clean, classical turn based combat action. The best way to play the game is probably on the Nintendo Switch, too, since it's the kind of background noise that works while you've got the sport or a movie on TV.

However you slice it, you’re ultimately getting a slavish homage to the early-era Pokémon games, but one that can’t get anywhere near their quality. Coromon is let down by having even fewer monsters to collect than the very first Pokémon, and some amateurish production values and gameplay design that Game Freak, for all its faults with the presentation of its own games, would never let happen. It’s still fun, because it’s so akin to Pokémon that of course it’s fun, but Coromon’s immediate rival, Nexomon (also available on Switch), actually tries to subvert some of the expectations of the genre, and comes off as the most interesting work as a consequence.

Games these days are rarely “finished”, but I’m not 100% certain that a smaller niche title like Speedball will see much in the way of post-release content and patching. If it does, it could evolve into a nice little game for those who fondly remember the original – but as always, I can only review what’s in front of me, and at launch, there’s just not enough of Speedball to make it a particularly compelling prospect at full game price.

Ogre is a highly influential and important game, and on that basis, there might be some value in picking this title up for nostalgia’s sake. However, it is also one of the poorest board games on the Switch. The lack of decent AI, and multiplayer that’s only available offline, are issues that no strategic board game in 2022 is ever going to be able to overcome.

Because the developers were so inept at resolving this tension, I lost interest in Mouse: P.I. For Hire within the first level, and each subsequent stage found me disliking it more and more. It’s a competently and even entertainingly made game, but a dismally cynical work of art, and it never manages to shake the impression that the only reason that it looks the way it does is that the marketing team thought that it would be a good way to “stand out” and shift units.

I respect the developer for what he has done in creating a game to help heal himself. I identify far more than I ever could have expected; Drowning seems to take my thoughts and put them right into the character's head. It's eerie. Accurate. Emotional. Unfortunately, it's also poorly planned, poorly placed, and in some parts, questionably written. There are also graphic choices that remove you from the immersion in emotion that I expected while playing, and sadly, the decent narrative doesn't make up for these glaring issues.

If you do remember having good times with Glover back when it was a quirky alternative, then you may well have fun blasting through it again. Anyone else picking it up today for the first time is going to see nothing but a very B-tier platformer that lacks the charisma and creativity that once helped to elevate it over so many of its peers.

Unfortunately the game’s a bit of a mess, with baffling AI at times (especially from your partner, who loves getting herself in trouble), and the freeze time mechanic having the habit of failing in the heat of something significant going on. The plot also ends up being a bit of a fizzer, making this a noble, though ultimately futile, effort in the stealth genre.

One Strike is mildly fun, but woefully ill equipped to provide any long term value.

If the developer spent more time with this game, it could have been something great but it feels rushed.

I rarely write reviews this brief, but there's really not much else that can be said about A Street Cat's Tale. There was plenty of potential here to give players a grand adventure and a chance to see the world from the eyes of a cat. It could have also been an opportunity to explore just how poorly humanity can treat animals. Sadly, the game doesn't deal with any of that and there's simply nothing to sink your teeth into with this game as a consequence.

While Episode 2: Assembly Required does build on some of the building blocks (ha) from the first episode, it is mostly a step down in terms of quality as well as quantity. I worry that the speed at which the episode was pushed out resulted in some graphical glitches that are not what you expect from a Telltale Games title. It was a solid effort, but mostly just a waste of time.

Despite the original PlayStation 3 version of Borderlands 2 ending up with an aggregate score of 91 per cent on Metacritic. It’s hard to recommend this PlayStation VR release. It does contain all of what made Borderlands 2 a delightful game, but it's the inferior version, trading comfortable controls, co-op and DLC for the marginal thrill of having a 360-degree perspective on the world.

I generally like the “filler” titles in the Dragon Quest franchise. Dragon Quest Treasures was a delight, as was Builders, as was the VR game that I played in an arcade in Japan. This is a versatile property and most of the developers that work on it clearly enjoy what they’re doing. But Strash is different. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth as it comes across as cynical, and derivative to everything but Dragon Quest. Most egregious of all is that somehow, despite being based on a well-regarded Dragon Quest anime, it genuinely seems like the developers failed to understand what makes Dragon Quest a uniquely special property. If they did understand it, they comprehensively failed to articulate it. I’m genuinely disappointed, but, on the plus side, I fully expect that the upcoming Dragon Quest Monsters game will completely right the ship. The great thing about this series is that even in its lowest moments, it never takes long to bounce back.

RollerCoaster Tycoon: Adventures is pleasant on the eyes, but is in every other way a disappointment. It's a shallow grind, which challenges none of the player's management skills, and comes across more as an opportunity to simply decorate a theme park.

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

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.

It fails to demonstrate any inquisitive or creative spirit, which is what makes indie games innovative, vibrant and, ultimately, worth playing.

It’s hard to be a solo developer, or a small team collaborating on a visual novel. It can be intimidatingly expensive, high risk, and potentially low reward. I can certainly appreciate the desire to just get something out there even if there are massive corners to cut. Unfortunately, while I can get a sense of the kind of story that the developers wanted to tell, this was the kind of horror that needed to be deep in atmosphere and intensity, and unfortunately, everything about the presentation of Scarlett Snowfall undermined the vision.

Caveman Warriors is a competent platformer weighed down by the problems of a game which wants to be Metal Slug, and Trine, and Joe & Mac, but hasn’t synthesised a unique mechanic or gameplay loop to set itself apart.

Unfortunately Gunma's Ambition's joke only sustains it through the one play-through. There's no real reason to aim for a better completion time, and the gameplay is far too shallow to sustain the concept beyond the joke. It's a great joke, don't get me wrong, but given how specific it is to the Japanese culture, and given how little the game has going for it beyond that, I can't think of a more esoteric experience that I've had on the Nintendo Switch to date.

I can't help but think to myself that there are so many more interesting board games that I'd much rather have on my Switch than a serviceable version of Catan.

All in all, Daylight was a bit of a disappointment. Let it be said that it's utterly terrifying and will likely scare even the hardiest of players, but ultimately the experience feels a little shallow.

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.

It's actually refreshing playing a game that doesn't try to be expansive, and instead focuses on neat, high quality gameplay loops.

TroubleDays is fine, all said. It’s a fairly brief romance visual novel with a really gorgeous character model and pinup-worthy key art. Narrative and characterisation is all over the place in the attempted service of humour, and the cheap localisation is distracting at times, but let’s face it, if you’re going to play TroubleDays it’s for one particular reason and, lack of nudity aside, you’re not going to be disappointed in what you get back out of it.

Looking back on this review, I’m actually a bit depressed that the highlight of the game (for me, at least) was simply how good Ryse looked. It’s obvious that Crytek is capable of so much more, but Ryse simply borrows the best that a few franchises has to offer, and instead chooses to cobble them together quite lazily with a few superfluous mechanics thrown in for good measure, rather than refining and building upon the core game.

That being said though, this is not a fantastic game by any account and while there’s a little fun to be had in a frantic online match, there are much better ways to get your competitive shooter fix.

The control system is also too limited. There are no advanced playmaking tactics, and no way to have an individual pull fakes or dummies in order to skip past an opposition tackle. Rugby Nations 16 behaves like a sports game from the PlayStation One/ Nintendo 64 era of gaming, where you'd have a full 3D field to play on, but beyond basic pass commands you weren't able to do much with it.

I really wanted to like Skully because it falls neatly into a genre I have fond memories for – I’ve played more Marble Blast on old iMacs than I’d like to admit – but Skully very rarely succeeds at being the frenetic action platformer that it wants to be. Lacklustre level design and an inconsistent difficulty curve, matched with a meandering and confusing story, make this a hard sell for just about anyone. It’ll take a lot of patience to enjoy this one, even if you are a seasoned fan of 3D platformers.

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’m disappointed because of how good Radiohammer could have been. If it actually had a music library that didn’t sound like a set of royalty-free midi tracks off a dodgy website, I’d be much more willing to recommend it.

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.

One would hope that IllFonic's past struggles would lead to it delivering more polished games in the future, but Hunting Grounds has many of the same problems that Friday the 13th launched with. Returning players will feel the same sense of déjà vu they would upon watching a disappointing movie sequel... and to be blunt that's something that Predator fans know all too well at this point.

King Oddball should appeal to players who are looking for that next Angry Birds fix. The presentation and length are quite threadbare, but the physics engine and addictive qualities hold up well enough to make it worth a go.

Match-3 games are dime a dozen, so it’s hard for any of them to really stand out. Boost Beast is another example of that. It’s adorable and cute, but with well over 200 levels, the grind becomes real and tiring with three quarters of the game still to go.