It's energetic, exciting, fast, and also highly technical. It's everything that a fighting game needs to develop a core of competitive players, and in that regard it's the best Dragon Ball game that has been produced in quite some time. But - and it's a big but - when I first saw this game in action I had hoped that the appeal of it would be broader than just to existing Dragon Ball fans, and the developers have really struggled in that regard. The game relies too heavily on you already loving the characters, and already understanding the logic and lore of the Dragon Ball universe, before it starts to open up and allow you to love it.

Ultimately, The Red Strings Club tries and succeeds to be deeply thought provoking. Whereas other sci-fi games can tell a great story and make the player fear for a hypothetical future, few have made me question my personal definitions on fate, ethics and humanity. Maybe it’s because The Red Strings Club isn’t weighed down by all the empowerment that traditional action sci-fi games wear on their sleeve. Maybe it’s because the writing is simply out of this world. Either way, I can imagine this game is something which sci-fi and narrative game fans alike have been waiting eons to see – so try it out for yourself and just try to come out unchanged.

The spirit of competition is alive and well here, because Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition is a complete game, which feels a little strange for me to type, because in some ways it took us two years longer to get here than it should have.

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.

As a game, Beholder is really well made. It has an interesting aesthetic, clever, challenging mechanics, and plenty of paths through the game. Its real struggle is in getting you to genuinely care about what’s going on, and it’s hard to get there; the gameplay too often makes it too clear that you need to make decisions that have little to do with your moral core.

SpellForce 3 is a great addition to the series. With an engaging storyline, interesting characters and gameplay mechanics it manages to straddle the line between genuine RPG and RTS better than most other attempts, which generally end up strongly weighted one way or another.

The bigger screen and better resolution of the Switch makes Of Mice And Sand the game it wanted to be. The extras added into this edition makes it the definitive version. It’s a very pleasant, enjoyable and entertaining little game, but its biggest problem is hard to get past; I wanted it to be far more memorable. It simply struggles to take its excellent foundations and turn it into something truly special.

All together, Azkend 2 is a perfectly workable and enjoyable match-3 game. If you’ve played quite a few of these in the past then you’re probably going to question whether you need even more of them, but then again, this is the first match-3 game of its kind on the Switch to date, so perhaps there’s an audience for it. It’s not going to be your game of the year, but you might just get a lot of play out of it.

The Nintendo Switch hardware itself is just perfect for Mouldy Toof’s endlessly entertaining vision.

Planetbase is good, and I’ll never complain about having more simulators to play on my PlayStation.

Fallen: A2P Protocol wants to be XCOM meets Mad Max, but the development team lacked the ability to truly understand either the apocalyptic setting that it borrows from Mad Max, or what XCOM does to work as a tactics game. Derivative and bereft of any meritorious ideas of its own, Fallen: A2P Protocol is the first really big disappointment of 2018, because in the hands of a mature, talented developer, that idea could have been brilliant.

What Tiny Metal, as a clone of Advance Wars, does unfortunately abstract things too far, to the point where there’s no real strategic depth left.

You’ll feel deflated – if not outright miserable – after playing it, but it’s also a truly masterful example of writing and storytelling, and it’s the kind of game that people should play, because it will prove to be genuinely challenging and, hopefully, encourage them to think a little more critically of the world around them.

This is one of the nastiest video games ever made.

Stikbold lacks any kind of narrative or gameplay substance to be a compelling single player game. Sadly, it’s all too simple to be an effective multiplayer title, either. It’s passingly fun.

The Coma doesn’t outstay its welcome, and tells its story over five or so hours. Sadly it’s just not frightening enough. The implications of the story it’s telling are terrifying, and certainly this will discourage anyone who thought they wanted to do a couple of years education in South Korea, so the themes that form the basis of game are potent. But where Creeping Terror had me gripped with its aesthetics and tension and never let go, The Coma is simply too inconsistent and clean to really work as a piece of horror.

For a game made by such a small team, Plague Road drips with genuine quality. Mechanically, it’s a tight, efficient roguelike that gets the core gameplay loop down perfectly, which means that it can be very hard to put down. Some misfires in how the game is themed and presentation let it down, however. It’s not quite as cohesive as I wanted it to be, and while the art style is tantalising, the game ultimately fails to build the lore and fiction that it needed to give it the depth it needed to be something truly special.

The fact that this is a terrible port on the Nintendo Switch only makes things worse. All I can hope for at this point is to have a developer show up with a vision, a way to turn the WWE series around and begin from scratch. Perhaps next year. The Nintendo Switch would be a perfect platform to start from scratch and create something truly magical that does the art of pro-wrestling the justice it deserves.

Sadly the limitations that it has leaves Tactical Mind as a game that only holds long term value as a local multiplayer experience.

Gorogoa is quaint, expressive and beautiful, delivering a lush narrative full of different potential interpretations carried by game mechanics which challenge players to think in unfamiliar and creative ways.

For what it is, Feral Fury is a lot of fun, building upon established arena shooter conventions with high production values and vibrant, kinetic gameplay. While I admit more could have been done with the game’s interesting story and setting, I found every other facet to be immediately enjoyable. If you don’t mind some things feeling like a retread of prior games, Feral Fury is a competent entry in a universally enjoyable genre.

It has all the presentational and gameplay elements it needs to be really great. But this developer's track record isn't there, so what we’ve got here is a game with a translation bad enough that it effectively breaks the game.

If you’re a fan of shooters and relish the challenge, Enter the Gungeon is absolutely at the top of its genre. This is a game with meaningful, complementary mechanics and a tight gameplay loop which will have you playing for days.

Overall, Omega Quintet is a game that good-naturedly tries to punch above its weight.

Hiragana Pixel Party is a game with an identity crisis – it’s too shallow to be a serious learning tool but it’s too serious about learning to be just fun. It’s on a console with more than a few proper rhythm games which feel more intuitive to play, and honestly you’ll pick up about as much Japanese from this game as you would while playing Project Diva with dual language subtitles on. I would have loved it to be more ambitious, and to find more ways to be a useful language acquisition tool, but as of now it’s only useful to players who want to learn just hiragana and katakana.

Road to the Olympics is a solid addition to Steep. Even if the story mode is lacking, the Olympic events and new Japan-based massif are more than enough to make this worth your time, especially with the PyeongChang games on the horizon. It might look like one of those weary licensed games of the PS1 and PS2 days, but fret not, because Road to the Olympics is the real deal.

This is one of the more unheralded Super Nintendo JRPGs, but the update is of a high quality, and while I don’t think it’s a classic example of the genre by any means, it is still a very enjoyable game. A clean, enjoyable combat system, plenty of enemies to fight, and a bit of exploration and puzzle solving on the side; this is the kind of classic JRPG experience that I’ll never get tired of.

It's Worms, and Team 17 has done a good job in restraining itself this time around so that the only gimmicks within the game genuinely add to it. What's important to note here is that the Nintendo Switch is absolutely perfect for Worms, and that fact alone makes this the best entry in the series in years.