Calling All Units doesn’t set out to do anything new, it’s pretty much an online only version of Need for Speed: Pursuit. The new mechanics of chasing down others online with a group of others is indeed fun, and for the most part the online does work. The story does nothing exciting whatsoever, but it does teach the new mechanics and how they work.

The lack of creative innovation from one Kairosoft title to another becomes exhausting if you play more than a few of them, and Magazine Mogul is an incredibly shallow experience. It's a pick-up-and-play delight, and it has an appealing theme, but where Game Dev Story is so well regarded because it established Kairosoft, Magazine Mogul is really starting to wear out the welcome. It's frustrating because all Kairosoft would need to do is throw caution to the wind and make just one serious simulation game with this set of production values and the company would completely reinvent itself for the better, I feel. The focus on unrelentingly casual experiences is nothing more than a game of rapidly diminishing returns for the company, and I just can't see even the most hardened Kairosoft fan caring about these new releases any longer.

Obliteracers introduces some interesting ideas, but between dead lobbies and limited local options, its multiplayer core falls a bit flat on PS4. With nothing else to pick up this slack, it ends up being a game that quickly loses steam.

The thing is, there's an enjoyable little game here. Strip the gimmicks, and you have a fun little paid title that could be beaten from start to finish in a few short hours. But instead, repetition drags down the lasting fun-factor and the comical satirical narrative of the game ends up self-refuting itself.

With time and patches, this could be a must play, but as it is I can only cautiously recommend RymdResa as a game with fascinating ideas and inconsistent execution.

It is worth noting that I gave Hidden Around the World’s predecessor, Hidden in my Paradise, a great score. But for some reason, Hidden Around the World resonates less with me. It’s cute. It’s fun while it lasts. But with the frustrating bugs and very little narrative, it is also easily forgettable. One major problem I’d like to forget is that the game didn’t improve on Hidden in my Paradise: the same issues persist, which were easier to overlook the first time around. When there are already problems, don’t just copy and paste them into another game. It’s just the same, and that doesn’t cut it for me.

This really is as no-frills as games come, and is priced to match.

Ultimately, it’s a little difficult to really understand what the developer was aiming for here. It seems more like it was a project from someone who was simply inspired by the entertainment value of stuff like Octodad than a game that is really looking to break out with its own identity. The potential’s there, but it’s all a little to raw for its own good.

Putty Squad is not a bad game, and with the relative lack of titles currently released on the PlayStation 4 it does fill something of a void. Still, platforming enthusiasts with PlayStation 4s do have access to Rayman Legends, rendering it rather pointless to grab Putty Squad unless you're an absolute genre purist.

There's also something to be said about the presentation. Combat plays out through an appealing Dragon Quest-like perspective. Environments are simple, but interesting. The music is often quite enjoyable. Justice Chronicles isn't by any means a classic game, but by Kemco's workmanlike approach to the genre, it's one of the more playable ones.

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

But I can't get over the fact that this is meant to be a survival game that doesn't create a convincing argument for being a survival game. And because it compromises its vision, How To Survive is a fun game, but little more than that.

Perhaps the most appropriate way to describe the Toy Soldiers HD experience in 2023 is “quaint”. Essentially, you’re playing a defunct and superseded genre, blended with ancient action mechanics, more than 10 years old. There has been no meaningful effort to do much more than upscale the visuals. Therefore, what you’ve got here is something that has its charms, but is archaic on every level. Toy Soldiers was never good enough to be a “classic”, so you don’t even get to enjoy the retro nostalgia that comes from early-era PS3/Xbox 360 games now. It’s just dated.

I might not be much of a Sonic fan, but I know that if Square Enix had done the equivalent of this to that Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection, I would have blown my top. I did give the lazy effort to bring the mobile ports of Dragon Quest 1 – 3 to Switch a piece of my mind, and I don’t see that SEGA’s done any better with the Game Gear games here. The good news is that if you’ve already got Sonic Origins, then you’ve got all the bits of Sonic Origins Plus worth playing.

If you've got the patience for a game that does absolutely nothing to encourage you to play it, then Chivalry's combat is nuanced enough to keep you interested for a while. But on the PlayStation 3 this looks and behaves very much like a budget game released on the console in its dying throes.

The fast-paced combat does make for a good time, do not get me wrong, but unless you're the most hardcore of fighting and NARUTO fans, this is a safe one to pass on.

I will forget about having Ember on my Switch within a few months of having being done with it now, I suspect. If you do play it, you'll be looking at around 20 hours of highly derivative, classic RPG action. You won't be annoyed by Ember and, played in short bursts, you won't be bored of it either. It has that pick-up-and-play quality.

The game looks fine, though obviously paired right down over what you can eke out of your PlayStation 5 version of the game. Just what kind of graphical performance you get seems to depend on your device. On the Apple TV, for example, the crowds seem to have been turned off, which lends games an odd energy and atmosphere; the sounds are still there but the chairs are empty. I call it "COVID-19 match mode", though, so for now it's actually timely. Also, the crowds are there when playing on higher-end iPhones. Whatever the case the animation is smooth and the range of camera angles are great. This is a good game of basketball and strikes a good balance between depth and accessibility. I just wish that 2K didn't use this as a bare-bones demo for the full console experience and gave us that season mode.

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.

Weeping Doll had a lot of potential, and it’s genuinely disappointing that it wasn’t able to follow through with it. This one you can’t chalk up as developer teething pains with VR; this game would be every bit as flawed, regardless of the platform it was on.

But it’s just not a great game and it doesn’t bring anything new or interesting to the genre. A character that we could get behind, some interesting level quirks, or some humour would have been enough. Instead, all Super Kiwi 64 trades on is the fact that it’s a nostalgic platformer for people that have fond memories of Banjo-Kazooie and are really that desperate for something new in that very specific genre to play. And people that don’t mind a vastly inferior experience just for that moment of nostalgic rush.

Levels+ is a completely forgettable game. It's got some gorgeous aesthetics, and functionally it's a refined, balanced, and perfectly competent Threes clone, but there is no longevity to the game whatsoever, and the lack of an online leaderboard for a game like this is downright amateur.

I’m 100 per cent certain the developers went into this with all the right intentions. They wanted to deliver a grisly and gratuitous homage to Sweeny Todd, and spin it into a casual business simulator for players. They’ve achieved that. I’m just not sure it was ever going to work as a concept. Things aren’t visceral when they’re rote and the Penny Dreadful heritage of the game doesn’t lend itself to particularly interesting themes over long periods of play. Finally, casual business simulators are light & fluffy for a good reason, while Ravenous Devils doesn’t do anywhere near enough to transgress and challenge that. It’s an earnest effort that a bit of market research might have advised against ever making.

This score is not reflective of the quality of the games (overall). I’m not going to be putting Alpine Ski down in a hurry, and I’ve been playing Qix for decades now, so I would never begrudge it being part of a Milestones collection. Most of the other titles are interesting as a curio. The quality of the ports for all of these titles great thanks to Hamster’s technology, but nonetheless, this is a woeful excuse for a compilation, and that’s particularly surprising given that it came from the same publisher that gave us the Space Invaders Invincible Collection. That was one of the very best retro collections. “Disappointing” doesn’t begin to describe what I feel about Taito Milestones.

Ixtona gave me exactly what I was expecting, and, ultimately, I didn’t regret the hours I spent with it.

Obviously I’m not the target audience, and sure there might be some kids that get a kick out of collecting figurines that resemble wizards and hot dog men, but I like to think the developer should have given a bit more credit to the target audience. The other LEGO games all manage to be child-friendly without being insulting to everyone else in the process.

The game plays perfectly fine, but it just shouldn't have been made this way.

It's laudable that, as a tiny indie production, the developer decided to get that right so that the game plays nicely, before worrying about anything else. Sadly, that "anything else" is also what elevates a game. Getting the core mechanics right is expected. Giving players a reason to care and to want to continue playing on is where success comes from and so, while I admire the Aussie spirit in taking on something this ambitious, it really is a game that could have done with a lot more resourcing.