From the second that I stepped into the game's world and into the first village that would become a base of operation for a few subsequent hours, I was hooked as wave after wave of nostalgia hit me.

Fairy Tail is pure comfort food for people who, like me, count the JRPG as the favourite genre. It lacks the subversive intelligence of a NieR: Automata or Final Fantasy VII Remake. It also lacks the rich refinement of a Persona 5 or the epic scope of a Trails of Cold Steel. Even in comparison to Gust's own titles, it lacks the rich character development of Atelier or the sheer beauty of Blue Reflection. But Fairy Tail has one thing in spades; it's joyous, and it's the right kind of frivolous. It's a celebration of an anime that I can only assume is both silly and fun in its own right and that works as the perfect promotion for Fairy Tail: I really want to watch the anime now. Fairy Tail isn't going to be on any of my game of the year lists, but not every release needs to be pitched at those lists to be well and truly worthwhile. Fairy Tail being the game that reminded me why I loved JRPGs in the first place is more than enough.

Relics of War may not play like other 4X games that you’re used to, but it treads a perfectly acceptable path of its own that fills the stomach, albeit not quite to satisfaction.

For its flaws Aragami is my kind of stealth game, and I had a good time with it. After spending a bit more time studying Japanese literature, and perhaps a couple of field trips to Japanese castles, graveyards and shrines to really understand how Japanese storytelling should look and feel, I really think an Aragami 2 could be something special.

If you’re going to play Farpoint, then be absolutely sure that you get the lightgun. It adds everything to the experience, making the game one of the most immersive and fundamentally enjoyable shooters that I’ve ever played.

Supporting a good, albeit simple narrative between the four protagonists, Croixleur Sigma provides a solid, fast-paced, three dimensional roguelike brawler experience.

It’s not high-octane or revolutionary fare by any means, but Swim Out has a quiet beauty that gives it more in common with chess than Tetris, and that sort of thing is hard to come by nowadays.

For such a bright, happy, cute game, the core of what Happy Birthdays tells us is both potent and important. This is a game about environmentalism, respect for the ecosystem, and it's a chance to watch the form that evolution takes in a palatable and enjoyable manner. Wada's most famous work, Harvest Moon, did a remarkable job of highlighting the life of a farmer to people who may have never comprehended what a country lifestyle might look like, so too has he made the basic idea of evolution accessible to people of all ages in Happy Birthdays. This game's predecessor was remarkable. This game itself is a remarkable evolution of that original vision.

There is a superb foundation here for what could become one truly special franchise.

So while SD Gundam G Generation Cross Days may not be for everyone, I would definitely recommend it to fans of the series and fans of turned based tactics. With all of the series and side stories available to play, not to mention the sheer number of available units, there is more than enough to keep you busy for a long while... and this is just the start. This one has a season pass, and the promise of adding even more suggests that this game may well become a hobby in its own right.

As a 15th anniversary celebration of an incredibly marginal series here in the west, but a far more popular one in Japan, the Touch Detective 3 + The Complete Case Files collection is just blindingly good value. Each game combines classically entertaining and surrealistically funny point-and-click mechanics with memorable characters and some delightfully eccentric moments. This is in so many ways a perfect example of the heart and soul of Japanese game development.

The Gap is in an intriguing and compelling idea. Unfortunately, it’s underdeveloped, and structured in a way that undermines something critical for any psychological thriller: if you’re not connected to an invested in the characters, then you’re not going to care about what they’re going through enough for it to chill you. The Gap also comes across as something that is badly trying to be analysed in intellectual terms, but fails to land on a distinctive theme that it can call its own. It’s great to see projects like this, from a games-as-art perspective, but it’s not one of the finest examples of that, either.

Like most movies of the thriller genre when you go and replay the game you will likely find things you missed and understand things a lot more but even if you play it only once it does a good job of explaining everything and has a very satisfying ending (regardless of which one you end up getting).

When I find that my complaints largely have to do with wishing there was more content in a game that is already perfectly sufficient, I know that I’ve had a good time. It feels strange to call Pac-Man World a “classic,” but the numbers don’t lie. The original game sold 1.5 million units, was well-received by critics and justified a number of sequels. Bandai Namco is most justified in trying this on to see if there’s room to revive the Pac-Man World property with new games, and based on the quality of this, I’d like to see what a new Pac-Man World looks like down the track.

Explicit narrative aside, I found Stranger of Sword City to be a real winner of a dungeon crawler.

While there are a lot of standard features for its genre, God Eater 3 is far from standard. Where once this was one of the genre's pretenders, sitting quietly on handheld consoles and developing a small, but dedicated audience, it now looks like Bandai Namco has a series that belongs with Toukiden and Monster Hunter at the very front of the stage.

Driveclub is a fun racing game that takes a little getting used to but lacks some of the options I would have expected from a modern racing game.

So it’s deliberately bad, then. And as a bit of irony, it’s so utterly delightful for that. I’d never recommend that someone looking for a genuine MMO or MMO-like experience actually play this - you’ve got Final Fantasy XIV for that - but for silly, ridiculous, self-deprecating humour, backed by gorgeous character and environment art, and a fast, fluid, and genuinely entertaining combat system, I’ve had such a good time with Cyberdimension Neptunia that I can’t help but love it.

Hexologic is beautiful in its zen minimalism. The soundtrack is gorgeously relaxing, the beautiful aesthetic makes wonderful use of crisp lines and white space to be the kind of thing I'd happily point design students to as a way of doing interfaces and modern chic properly. That beauty is backed up with an elegant, efficient, and clever logic foundation, and as a result it's all very classy and the kind of experience you can enjoy with a glass of good red wine. It's just disappointing that Hexologic didn't prove testing enough on the intellect to be a truly spectacular example of a puzzler.

I appreciate that multiplayer is a big deal in the Souls games, but this is the first time From Software has crafted a piece of DLC content that focuses almost entirely on that multiplayer experience, and I think this will fall flat with plenty of other Souls fans.

As with many classic board and card games, Uno isn’t perfect. It’s driven by luck, games tend to go overlong, and Ubisoft’s no-frills approach is workable, but workmanlike. Despite that, I do really enjoy the core game of Uno in short bursts, and for people who regularly play online with family and friends (and can thus do away with the occasionally irritating random players), this is a great, low-cost way to spend a Saturday evening together when separated by distance.

Excellent-sized rosters, and even with only two buttons available the developers have done a great job in making each of them feel distinct to play with. This is particularly important with King of Fighters, because you're choosing teams of three, and that melting pot of different combat styles and proficiencies is core to the KoF experience. R-2 manages to maintain that, and so playing around with the many characters to find your ideal set of three is still the big learning curve within the experience.

And now, remastered on the PlayStation 4, we’ve got the game Rogue always deserved to be.

All of this puts me in a difficult spot with Assetto Corsa Competizione. On the one hand, it’s my favourite racing experience, hands down. It just handles beautifully. On the other hand, from features to gameplay modes and with regards to almost everything that doesn’t specifically involve racing, Competizione is substantially behind its peers, making this a racing experience that only the most hardcore of hardcore racing fans will get much out of.

Both fans and newcomers to the series will have immense joy in fighting on this battlefield.

Volume deserves credit for being fresh and accessible, but after a couple of dozen levels or so, it starts to grow repetitive. It was easy to pick up the controller and play, but without a lot of new innovations and a middling storyline, it was also entirely too easy to take breaks and move onto something else.

Unfortunately enough time has passed since the last C&C game that I would have liked to see a few more risks taken, because I don't see the newer generation of RTS fans biting with this one.

Losing the online integration hurts, and because of this the Wii U version is the superior one by a significant margin, despite looking inferior.