Five Dates basically has what I want from a game at this exact moment in time. There's no violence, no screaming, no heavy machinery, no building, no wandering around trying to find things. Instead, the focus is on creating relationships, whether or not they turn into friendship or dating or a lifelong love. The gameplay is easy to follow since it's all just making choices, and if you struggle with that you can even pause the choices so the game doesn't carry on without your input. I'm not going to lie, I was initially worried about how the quality of acting would be through the performers shooting themselves through an iPhone, but it's pretty darned good. Good enough for me to momentarily think someone may be my match, despite already having a wonderful match in the real world (I cannot emphasise how awkward this made me feel, but he found it amusing). There are a few things that I'd love to change if I could, but otherwise, I'm quite impressed at the feat of conceptualising, writing, shooting, producing, and developing a video game in eight months.

I’m settling on the score that I have because I can’t reward work that is this derivative. But despite the score I find this one an easy recommendation for certain players out there. Kaze is a genuinely well-made game and if you like Donkey Kong Country you’re going to like this one, if for no other reason than it’s something of a greatest hits of the best Donkey Kong Country levels. If we see a Kaze 2 (and I hope we will), and the developers show us a little of their own creative ideas in there, then we’ll be looking at some really high scores indeed.

I came into Lushfoil Photography Sim expecting to love it, and maybe that was a mistake. I do like it. I plan on returning to it for little escapes sometimes (emphasis on little). There is just something I love about taking a view that countless others have seen and putting your own twist on it; as it turns out, that feeling can also exist thanks to video games. Unfortunately, the camera controls never became intuitive, and accessibility around motion sickness is lacking. Lushfoil Photography Sim has a solid base, but I could never recommend it to someone without also pointing out the heavy negatives.

All my fears around whether or not Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly were completely unfounded. The game is warm, grounded in realism despite its fantasy world, with an amazing soundtrack and great drinks to learn about. It is a great compliment to a chilly, rainy day. The characters all have unique personalities so they sometimes clash, but they always figure it out in the end. It’s a wonderful, feel-good visual novel; I can honestly say I hope there is more to come. I’m sure there are more stories to tell. I’m 100 per cent sure the game did its original creator, who has since passed on, proud.

It firmly exists within the Ys series, and just as last year brought us that magnificent remake of Dragon Quest III, here’s an old-timey classic within the action JRPG genre for the people who appreciate it. Not everything needs to be deep and meaningful, and Felghana certainly isn’t that. But it’s easy to appreciate its place within one of the longest-running and most enduring JRPG properties of all time.

Puzzle Bobble Everybubble! is a good game, and it’s absolutely fine fare if you don’t already own a version of Taito’s venerable series. The new quirks don’t break anything fundamental, and that’s for the best in terms of maintaining series quality. At the same time, the new modes don’t add a lot.

Not many people might end up playing all the Legend of Heroes titles, but for those that are dedicated, this is an unparalleled epic experience, with each new entry adding more to the overall body of work. Reverie, here, is the culmination of so much that has come before and consequently it is enormously rewarding to play through.

In the end, Mega 39 does one, very special thing: it takes the incredible Hatsune Miku Project Diva Future Tone, and makes it portable. You can bellyache all you like about a relatively thin tracklist, but “relatively thin” to the ridiculous bloat of Future Tone isn’t really a fault. Not when what is in the pack is still more than any other rhythm game on the Switch, and with the optional DLC to come. Most importantly of all, however, is that Mega39 is a celebration of the world’s greatest digital idol, and a digital celebrity I truly care a great deal about. As such, it fills a major gap in something that I've wanted on my Switch since the day it released. I am now fully on board with the Nintendo Switch being the greatest console ever.

Games like Yoshi's Crafted World always get overlooked and quickly forgotten - they're not explosive enough, the graphics aren't realistic, and you can't make memes about how it's "destroying" you. But, this game is the perfect foil for all those other titles being produced, and while it's a different manifestation of quality, it's every bit the standard of any expensive, open-world blockbuster out there.

You could say that this Yomawari suffers a little from the diminishing returns of sequels. Each sequel feels less fresh and original than the previous one, and while stagnation might never quite set in (after all, there are a lot of properties that have dozens of titles), audiences start taking the qualities of what these games do well for granted. That being said, Yomawari: Lost In The Dark is such a fascinating, beautiful little horror game. With some smart mechanics, spot-on perfect pacing and atmosphere, and an intense, melancholy narrative this horror experience achieves something rare for video game horror: spooky good times that will make you think and even feel.

It’s odd that the fighting game about pokemon would turn out to be one of the better examples of a competitive fighting game, but the balance and mechanics of the game are just that; you’ll have a bit of fun with it if you play it casually, but the more seriously you take it, the greater the longevity that you’ll get out of it.

Dicefolk gets a lot right, and the developers clearly thought hard about how to take a fundamentally dice-based game, and make something that players could enjoy as a tactical roguelike, where randomness does not result in frustrating failures. However, Dicefolk is, ultimately, a pastiche with very little of its own creative identity, and I do think this is going to limit its audience to only the most hardcore Slay the Spire fans. But, then again, it’s not my job to worry about the commercial viability of a game. For those who simply cannot get enough of roguelikes, Dicefolk is yet another one for you to play.

Overall, Dynasty Warriors Origins is a big, explosive, and massively entertaining action game, and true to its title, a conscious effort by Koei Tecmo to get back to the qualities that so many people have enjoyed from the series over the years. Lu Bu is terrifying, Sun Shangxiang is history’s greatest tomboy, Zhuge Liang is brilliant, and watching all these stories play out with such energy is just utterly brilliant.

Chronicles of Teddy is a pretty cool game. The reward of discovery is well worth the trip, and with some tweaks here and there, Chronicles of Teddy could have been one of the best releases of 2016. As it stands, it is still a gorgeous title worthy of your time.

I wonder if the writing enamoured me so much that it hampered my enjoyment of the rest of the game. The combat and dungeon crawling is fine, above-average even, but it often felt like an impediment to Rise of the Third Power’s excellent story. Nevertheless, I had a great time with Stegosoft Games’ latest offering. The team's love for the JRPG genre is shining through, and their ability to spin a great narrative helps the work lift well beyond what you usually get from "RPG Maker"-like projects.

Until Dawn is a very, very fine game, with a quality, intriguing, and intelligent narrative rolled around the concept of player choice. It's also another example of why Sony is the best blockbuster publisher out there because it's happy to do stuff that breaks away from the safe conventions of expensive games.

New Pokémon Snap is a delight to play. It's bright, colourful, and overflowing with personality and while it does become a little too "grindy" for its own good, the core gameplay hasn't evolved much from the N64 original, and that's a very good thing indeed. Nintendo may have launched this in and around a lot of big blockbuster stuff (Returnal AND Resident Evil Village has been a big win for Sony over the last week), but then those games are so darned hardcore that New Pokémon Snap is exactly the antidote to them that I have needed.

The whole collection features a promising ten games from a sorely underlooked handheld console, all of which hold up well today. The collection doesn’t have the same sheer value for money that something like the SEGA Mega Drive Collection does, but you shouldn’t underestimate how well all of these handheld titles told up today. While Volume 1 does lean heavily into the fighting game genre, it’s SNK – you knew what you were getting into. I especially liked the way that the handheld ports simplified and distilled the core of each property, but not in a limiting way: I felt like I was getting the proper Metal Slug, KOF and Last Blade experiences, but simplified down to be more accessible for a newer player. With an excellent multiplayer mode and opportunities for replay value across the titles, Neo Geo Pocket Color Collection Vol. 1 is a welcome addition to the retro compilations across the Switch eShop.

I haven't been as conflicted about a rhythm game as I have Melody of Memory. On the one hand, the rhythm game action itself is wonderful and the music, across 140 tracks, is sublime. On the other hand, being forced to play through a truncated and baffling summary of the Kingdom Hearts narrative just to unlock those tracks has done little to enamour me to the series, and there are far, far too many little additions that distract from what the game does best (i.e. the rhythm action). The grand sum of it is that Melody of Memory is much more a game for existing fans of Kingdom Hearts than it needed to be, and once again Square Enix has struggled to fully capitalise on the rich opportunity that the Disney license provides them.

LittleBigPlanet 3 is not a perfect by any means, and since it is a platformer at heart it may not appeal to those who are not a fan of that particular genre. However, it is a well-designed game that lacks some polish but at the same time presents a world of possibilities.

This is a game with undeniable soul and an incredible amount of shine considering its budget. There’s very little that A Hat in Time can’t do as a classic platformer, and it really throws itself into creating a cute and cohesive universe for you to explore.

Stella Glow is influenced by traditional tactics games through and through, but Imageepoch’s distinctive contributions to the genre and glossy finish prove that it’s stellar on its own terms. It’s as if the company wrapped up its love for the industry in its masterwork and issued an open challenge to top it.

There have been a handful of Alien games over the years, but none have delivered an experience so close to the intent of the films as Isolation. With visuals authentic enough to have been ripped right from the movies and a terrifyingly intelligent monster as the primary antagonist, Alien: Isolation makes for a memorable experience, and clear proof that Colonial Marines was the fault of the developer and not the material.

So, again; fried chicken is awesome. Choc mint gelato is delicious. Combining the two is not the great experience that does justice to either flavour.

I do admire the developer's desire to maintain the arcade fighter tone and aesthetic in King of Fighters, and I'll forever be a fan of this series as long as they keep dropping Athena into it. The team at SNK are no doubt working on more limited budgets than the big guns, and with the absolute focus on esports in the fighting game space it's no surprise that they've made that a near-perfect experience, even as they've stripped almost everything else out of the game to make that happen. However, there's no way to paper over this; people who do like fighting games in single player or local multiplayer are going to be left feeling very cold, though. Colder than Kula, even. And that's disappointing.

Zen Studios is by far the most proficient developer of digital pinball out there. I don’t think there can be any debate about that. But the studio has utterly outdone itself with Pinball FX 2 VR, to the point where I can’t actually see myself playing pinball outside of VR going forward.

I don't want to take anything away from Sackboy: A Big Adventure. Platformers are one of the genres I am least inclined towards, and were it not part of a (fairly limited) launch range on the PlayStation 5, I might not have been inclined to play Sackboy at all. I am glad that I did, though, because for pure whimsy and quality level design it's a real challenge to Nintendo at its best in this genre, and that's no mean feat. Just don't go in expecting the same qualities that made the LittleBigPlanet series itself so beloved.

Trials Fusion is a worthy addition to the series, even if it isn't the complete package we were hoping for.