The Eternal Cylinder is quite sad yet somehow there is a delight in finding in the smaller moments: finding an egg and evolving are especially happy moments. It is complex yet simple, running from the big bad thing that constantly looms like the Sword of Damocles is easy enough, but exploring to find the way ahead isn't always completely straightforward. The opposite emotions make the game feel deeply fulfilling. It's not quite like anything else I've ever experienced, and I feel like it will haunt me (in the best way possible) for quite some time to come.

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.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure is one of those games that could only come from Japanese culture. There aren’t many other cultures that see an inherent spirit and soul in a mascot, and to most of the rest of us, mascots are tools to use for branding and marketing, or otherwise become famous because of their association with a product like a film or a game (hello Mario and Mickey Mouse). It’s rare that a mascot IS the product. But that’s what has happened with Hello Kitty. Before today, most Kitty games came across as a cheap effort to extract more cash from that lucrative product, but Hello Kitty Island Adventure is different. This is a genuinely worthwhile use of your time, and the fact that it’s also free of predatory microtransactions is the sweetener on top.

I do think that Ironcast has found itself the right home on the Nintendo Switch. In the way it plays, Ironcast benefits from spontaneous game play sessions which the Switch can provide due to its tablet mode.

Ultimately, Saviors of Sapphire Wings and Stranger of Sword City Revisited form a welcome package that’s sure to delight fans of dungeon crawlers. I like the way that Sapphire Wings’ moderate difficulty and focus on narrative serve as a good introduction before throwing players into the much more punishing Stranger of Sword City. I’m glad that Experience Inc.'s western partner, NISA, is seeing the value in releasing these niche games to a Western audience, and the added appeal of playing these games on-the-go is a plus for the genre. And speaking from a purely value-for-money perspective, you’re getting two full length, lengthy games for the price of one, and you’ll be happily dungeon crawling for weeks and weeks if you choose to pick this one up.

Perhaps Etrian Odyssey V is the swansong of a franchise that has been one of the few to make meaningful use of an approach to technology and gameplay that has now been obsoleted as Nintendo has retired the dual screen idea. If that’s the case, I’m not going to lie; I’m sad for the end of the end of the franchise, but at least in Etrian Odyssey V it went out on a real high note.

It's now in its 20th year, but Ace Combat 7 shows that there's plenty of life yet in the series. Neither pure arcade, nor hardcore simulation, it straddles the line it needs to offer both a sense of flight and fast, furious dogfight action, even as it tells a cinematic and genuinely enjoyable story.

It’s an interactive metaphor for grief, and all those strange, complex emotions that all seem get balled into one when you’re grieving. RiME is a beautiful game in so many ways, but this is what makes it truly special.

I loved the first Battle Academy, and while the sequel doesn't do much more than adding new maps and scenarios, that's more than enough. Slitherine already has the premier wargames on the iPad, and now it has one more.

Nordic Games recently acquired the rights to Titan Quest, and if this port is the publisher’s way of putting the feelers out to see if there’s commercial potential in the franchise, I hope it’s a success, because a return of Titan Quest would be welcome stuff indeed.

The Escapists has not only everything I want in a game, but also everything I want in a premium mobile title. One price gets you everything: dozens of hours of gameplay that includes sneaking, crafting, grinding, and the snazziest orange jumpsuits you'll ever see. The port is incredibly successful, with both control schemes working well and being easily interchangeable. To sum it up, I love it. I love it so much that I'm going to stop writing about it to continue playing some more — I'm eyeing HMP Iron Gate and think I can bust our in record time.

If you’re here for the fighting however, you’re in luck. King of Fighters 98 is one of the most robust 2D fighters ever made. Game balance is impeccable, and each character has a solid amount of offensive and defensive options to make them viable. Matches are decided entirely upon skill, so this game is best experienced with a few friends who are willing to learn the strategies and get good enough to compete. You’re sure to be playing this one for a long time.

It'd be easy to write off New Style Boutique 3: Styling Star if you're not interested in fashion or fashion games, but I'd recommend at least trying out the demo. If even someone as void of style as me found it as enjoyable as I did, you might just find your perfect fit.

If you haven't played many tower defence games in the past, this one is the best place to start, since it'll be the only tower defence game you need after that. Q-Games produces some of the most distinctive, charming, and beautiful games out there, and PixelJunk Monsters is the team's best work to date.

There's nothing really deep being said about Rio Reincarnation, nor the other two visual novels in this package. The trilogy really is a series of straightforward, light-hearted, comedic (without being subversive or satirical), charming and simple stories, backed up with some of the most gorgeous fan service art you'll find. Sometimes that's all you need, and Tsunako really is a genius in her field.

It's a brilliantly made example of golf and delight to play on every level. It's just a game that's also asking for a lot of patience at the rate of progress it offers.

If you take Radiant Tale – Fanfare! as professional-grade fanservice to simply have fun with, it’s difficult to be disappointed with it. After all, as I noted with Radiant Tale, this is one of Idea Factory’s more charming and enjoyable visual novels in recent years, and as the saying goes “a little is good, and more is better!”

Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 has a lot going for it. Thanks to the “Tales” feature it’s possibly the most accessible RoTK game to date, easing players in by giving them a clear set of targets to prioritise. Once you’re comfortable with that the depth of strategy and a staggering array of ways to play make for a deep experience with dozens upon dozens of historical play. I still find it odd that Koei Tecmo decided to remake this game, but ultimately I’m glad that it happened.

There’s not too much in the designs that you won’t have seen in just about every single platform game out there, so you get your requisite forest levels, ice levels, factory levels and so on – but it all hangs together well.

Wanderstop is phenomenal for many reasons, including its characters, world, gameplay, and message of mental health and hygiene. I feel deeply for Alta. I’m not frustrated by her inability to think differently, I empathise with it. Learning new thought patterns requires a lot of hard work for a long time, and the game is Alta’s journey to a new way of looking at life. Wanderstop is touching, sweet, funny, and soothing. Its gameplay is flawless. My only issue with it was a lack of working accessibility options, sometimes causing me pain when I could have been feeling a glowing, happy warmth instead.

Everything else about NEO is sublime, though. Once the introductory ten hours are pushed through and the game starts proper, it’s an efficient burst of energy and excitement, with one of the best soundtracks you’ll ever find in a game, one of the most explosive, dynamic combat systems you’ve played in a JRPG, and a colourful, energetic, and exciting celebration of Japanese youth culture and Shibuya itself. No doubt this will be the final roll of the dice for TWEWY as a franchise, and hopefully, it has done enough here to graduate from cult status.

At its core, Danganronpa is a melting pot of various philosophical puzzles that pulls together in such a way that it connected with me on a very deep, very real level. Without giving the ending away, the ultimate fate of all the characters (including Monokuma) left me more than a little shaken, and any game that's able to connect with me at that kind of primal level must be worth the investment.

Mega Man Legacy Collection is a solid collection of games that has a handful of technical issues that I understand being there, though my personal preference would have been to clean them up. The additional content and features do a great job of putting the bow on an already great package.

SEGA snookered itself a little with the original Puyo Puyo Tetris. The reality is that that game was so perfectly complete that whatever came next was going to feel slightly diminished because its core strength - the ingenious ability to combine two very different puzzlers in a cohesive manner - was no longer new and exciting. Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 does everything that original game did. It's every bit as charming, entertaining, and downright fun. The problem is, it doesn't have the same impact now, and if there is going to be a Puyo Puyo Tetris 3, the development team is going to need to come up with a new trick, else the prestige of the oddball crossover is going to start to fade.

A wonderful combination of good game design and enchanting aesthetic direction.

Gravity Rush 2 deserves to be one of Sony’s biggest games of the year. Even if you weren’t able to get into the first, give this one a go. The story’s self-contained enough that you’ll still be able to follow along, and in the effort to make the game more accessible to a wider audience, the overall experience is also more refined and there’s clearly a meatier budget backing it.

NHL 19 is not a perfect game - but for hockey fans it is pretty darned close.

Pokemon Sword & Shield is as close to a true reset for Pokemon as we've had. It's clear Game Freak wanted to get back to basics, and streamline the experience across the three main characteristics that makes Pokemon great - the collecting, the combat, and the catching. In all three areas Pokemon Sword offers vibrancy - solid pacing, superb balancing, and a joyful playfulness that makes the experience so appealing. The series needed that soft reset, and now Game Freak has the same outstanding basis and core to build on anew. Just as it did back when Pokemon Blue & Red so effectively captured my imagination 21 years ago.