The game’s difficulty level also strays on the balanced side for most Neo Geo titles. It’s definitely hard, but with enough dexterity all enemy and boss attack patterns can be avoided in some way. Its gameplay is easy to understand, and it’s a lot more fun when shared. An average run from beginning to end will put you at roughly two hours, but the game’s branching paths and overall energetic pace mean that this is a title you’ll want to come back to over and over again.

Now keep in mind, this is a port of the original Wii U title. if you already have it, there probably is not enough here to warrant coming back for more unless you want split screen cooperation, higher resolution or achievements. That being said, if you missed LEGO City Undercover the first time around and enjoy this unique brand of adventure gaming, know that this release is one of the most entertaining and original LEGO games in quite some time.

Familiar and fun proves to be just as great.

Get past the crashes and the tonal inconsistency, and Always Sometimes Monsters has a moving and thought-provoking story to tell. It’s rough and unpleasant, but empathetic and human at the same time. It’s a game about surviving under a capitalist system that doesn’t care about you, and about what happens when people fall through the cracks.

I loved the game when I played it as a freebie on PlayStation Plus ages ago. I love it even more on my shiny, powerful, PlayStation 4.

Sony's sitting on an incredible base and foundation. The series could do something about offering more casual baseball fans something to enjoy on their own terms, but that applies to all AAA-blockbuster sports games, and MLB The Show has the decided advantage of being a sport that's actually enjoyable.

Metrocide is carried by some intelligent game mechanics which really evokes the setting and makes the player feel like they are a professional contract killer.

Warp Shift is a puzzle game that is joyful in its accessibility and expansive in its complexity.

Don’t let the small character roster fool you – Waku Waku 7 was one of the best fighting games on the Neo Geo, and western Switch owners are lucky to have the chance to try this one out. The game’s pastel colour scheme and gently paced gameplay is a breath of fresh air compared to the tournament minded design of King of Fighters or World Heroes Perfect. Fans of fighting games would be giving themselves a disservice to overlook Waku Waku 7.

I imagine the target audience is less the philosophical and the obsessive, but rather the more casual JRPG fan looking for a light way to spend their spare time. As with most Falcom games, the game feel is straightforward and kinetic, paired with a vanilla aesthetic that’s more inoffensive than groundbreaking. I can’t fault a game for not being ambitious enough when it’s following a tried and true formula and does it without any perceivable blemishes at all.

For a game whose lead protagonist is a girl with the ability to summon cheese sandwiches, Alluna and Brie is genuinely impressive project. It's a full featured blend of JRPG and visual novel thanks to its time management and minigames, the art nails the humorous fan service brief, and the narrative, while shallow, is rife with an excellent sense of Australian humour.

If you’re okay with the lack of customisation options in the main game, then Project Nimbus will be a more than competent mecha game to tide you over until the release of Daemon X Machina. GameCrafterTeam have poured the entire team's love and effort into this aerial action game, and the love for the source material really shows.

Overall, however, the roster of events is good and varied, and there are more to come.

If nothing else there is genuinely nothing else quite like Ambition of the Slime, and the concept of actually leading weak, largely defenceless units into battle is such a clever way to flip the tactics RPG on its head that it’s well worth looking into for fans of the genre, purely as a curiosity if nothing else.

Song of Memories does have an excellent combat system and lite JRPG mechanics. It also has its moments where it's genuinely amusing, and the contrast between the monster story and the fan service-rich romance is... eclectic. It's a difficult game to really pin down, but for those that can let the oddity of it all wash over them, it can also be an surprisingly difficult game to put down.

Despite the issues with balance, juvenile moments in the writing, and the occasional bug that suggested the ambition of the game slightly overextended its budget, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is the best video game entry in this particular franchise.

The presentation in general is great, and the challenge level is oddly compelling. This is a difficult game to put down.

People who come to it looking for a quality SHMUP are going to be disappointed. It's functional, but that's really not the point. The point is the fan service and pin-up aesthetic, and while Waifu Uncovered is limited there, as a cut-price hour or two of fun, as someone who enjoys anime and fan service, I had more fun with this than I should probably admit in public. Also, I really am genuinely impressed that eastasiasoft has paved the way for anime nudity on the Switch. There's hope for the Dee Dee visual novels to debut on console yet.

As a first effort out it's genuinely impressive, offering a clean and enjoyable combat system that can also be used to introduce new players to the joy of modern 2D fighters. I firmly believe there's a role for fighters like that in the market, and Blade Strangers is a very fine first effort indeed.

Superstar Saga is still a great adventure on the 3DS. It’s not in the range of Metroid: Samus Returns in terms of recreating a classic from the ground up, but it may be enough to satisfy fans of the series that may have been turned off by recent, weaker efforts such as Dream Team and Paper Jam.

Slain: Back from Hell is a unique fish in a sea of pixel-art platforming throwbacks. The level design for the most part is well-done. The difficulty suits the atmosphere created by the music and art style.

The game does not explain the events of the first game at all, and yet there is also some expected knowledge of the first game coming into this sequel to completely understand what’s going on. Do your research so you catch yourself up going in, though, and you're in for a really well-written and vibrant adventure game. One that's let down a little by obtuse puzzle design, but is otherwise highly engaging on every level.

The Church in the Darkness has much more value as an idea and as a story creation tool than it has as a game.

The Heroic Legend of Eagarlnia is off to an excellent start and is another pitch-perfect example of why Chinese game development is so exciting to me right now. However - and this applies to far too many developers out of China right now - hire better localisers. Perhaps there just aren't many of them around right now and the problem is that the local games industry needs to scramble to catch up with its rapid opening to global game publishing. Perhaps it is just something that isn't traditionally part of game development budgets there. Whatever the reason, at some point Chinese developers are going to realise just how large the global audience could be if they could properly understand their games. At that point, between China, Japan, and the smaller (but potent in their own right) development scenes in Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and others, the "Asian aesthetic" and storytelling traditions are going to hit an all-new renaissance.

Amid the Ruins did do a nice job in setting up a finale.

This is a game for genre fans only (and by that I do mean fans of both visual novels and tactics RPGs). For those people the game will slowly but surely hook its charms in until they come to see it as something quite brilliant for all its flaws.

With all that said, this is an incredibly niche sport. It’s impressive that as much effort is put into doing it justice as Cyanide puts into the Tour de France. The developers get better at it, year after year, and that’s an encouraging sign too. I hope they’re profitable enough to continue with the series, because you can’t help but believe that they’re right on the cusp of this series hitting the A-tier of sporting properties.

Toybox Turbos is a good game for beginners and newcomers to racing games. It presents an easy learning curve, but later levels can be a little more challenging. It's a lot of fun to play and in ways it may remind players of the Micro Machines toys and video games from the past.