Like a lot of of titles in this genre, Ark: Survival Evolved has a steep learning curve and requires quite the time - and possibly financial - investment. But once you get into the rhythm of it, the endless need to survive, set against the simple satisfaction of slowly building up your capacity to do so, makes this a game that could well turn into a hobby for you, all in itself.

GRIP is an enjoyable racing game that is constantly hampered by bare-bones presentation. The core driving is a lot of fun, but when races and battles aren’t presented in a fun manner then it relies on the gameplay to be constantly engaging. The gravity mechanics are certainly cool to see, but they aren’t exactly innovative or game changing enough to overcome the shortcomings after the initial allure wears off.

Tempered at the edges as it might be, Onee Chanbara Origin is still crass and skimpy, and an explicit work of nostalgic grindhouse for anyone that remembers that genre. Additionally, short as it may be, it's genuinely well-made for what it wants to be: a mindless action game. It's just that the tempering at the edges means that it's not as pure as something like School Girl/Zombie Hunter, and therefore won't replace it as the best trash grindhouse this generation has given us. What it is, though is more than enough to remind us that we may well get very little of that in the next generation, and to make no bones about it, that's very disappointing to me.

Once I’m actually playing, I have a ball with this, because it is, in a very real sense, a cultural phenomenon. Never has a game managed to get people to flock over to specific areas of town like birds to seed. People point to it being too simple as a game, but really the game bit is barely relevant. What is relevant is that this game has people out and about, socialising and exploring. There’s a group experience event going on with Pokemon Go, and it’s addictive to simply be part of the collective.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX will be one of Nintendo's most niche titles of 2020. With that being said, I fall squarely into the Venn diagram that makes the target demographic for this game, so I loved every second of it. As a fan of Pokémon, Mystery Dungeon roguelikes, and whimsical, light-hearted, and wholesome art styles, Rescue Team DX clicked with me on every level.

Eiyuu Senki is, of course, a very niche game, but it's a worthy one. Like Tears to Tiara 2 before it, it translates from adult entertainment into a "legitimate" game very well, on the strength of its strategy gameplay, and while you're not getting Shakespeare from the narrative, as long as you're able to enjoy these kinds of anime tropes, you're going to have a really good time with this one.

It doesn’t feel like it was made as a game to be enjoyed, it feels like it was a game that was made to be experienced.

Nothing about Trails Through Daybreak 2 dampens my enthusiasm for the series as a whole. I will be playing the next one the moment it’s available. This is one of the more disappointing Legend of Heroes titles, given that its biggest failing – the narrative – is typically what you want to play this series for – but even on a bad day The Legend of Heroes is a more interesting and entertaining vision and project than most JRPGs can aspire to be.

Screencheat is my favourite local multiplayer game on the PlayStation 4. It’s a nice, small, download that I’m going to leave sitting on the harddrive for whenever I have friends over, and while that might not happen on a weekly basis (I like my space, okay), each and every time I pull the game out, it’s going to more than validate its worth.

With Erica, Sony shows it's got something different up its sleeve, and its eye on the genre, both things I quite appreciate. The replay value is reasonable. I'll probably play at least once more to make all the opposite decisions. Erica is a solid addition to the FMV world, and I'm excited to see if the developer (FlavourWorks) continues with this genre in future games. The acting is solid, the companion app is a delight to use, and the story is intriguing.

There’s no denying that Marvelous can make a game, but to make a mech simulator of this calibre... That I didn't expect. I was pleasantly surprised and Daemon X Machina is proof of just how well Marvelous can execute on great ideas. With the Armored Core series currently on hold, the void of its absence can finally be filled with this highly customisable and equally story-driven experience.

The Marvelous Miss Take is so good because it’s a rare thing in games - it's a unique twist on an established formula. You're forced to think far more cleverly if you want to see success in this game than most stealth games, and it's the better for it.

Plasma Puncher is a gorgeous, difficult and sometimes frustrating game. The excellent production values are overshadowed by some minor technical inconsistencies, but while I could spend all day complaining about the small stuff, the real weakness is a lack of gameplay depth.

Rune Factory 5 plays things pretty conservatively, and it’s the better for it. It’s a comfort food kind of experience, and while this might cost it on store shelves given that it has been released at the tail end of so many excellent, intelligent, innovative, and big RPGs, it’s a game of simple delights and pleasant experiences. Sometimes, that’s enough.

More a series of small improvements than anything major, WWE 2K17 is a great deal of fun for wrestling fans.

I wish more horror games were like Layers of Fear 2. It's a mature and intelligent understanding of the deeper and more meaningful elements of horror, and while I can have as much fun as anyone creeping around a Resident Evil game and shooting the ugly monsters while being startled by the jump scares, it's something like this that I end up reflecting on well after I've finished playing, and this is the kind of game that I return to when I'm looking for an actual horror experience.

For all its early-stage failings, Exist Archive is an excellent game once it finds its groove. As long as you go in knowing what to expect and knowing it will get better eventually, it's a game I'd recommend to anyone who likes JRPGs.

Lost Sphear, as with I Am Setsuna before it, is a beautiful, heartfelt bit of classical Japanese videogame storytelling. It’s not a game that you should be playing for the gameplay in so much as it wraps nostalgia and some more modern ideas together in order to tell something that is both memorable and soulful. It’s a beautiful, emotive game and with it Tokyo RPG Factory has cemented itself as one of my favourite JRPG outfits going around.

It is disappointing to see a game like Metrico take so many wrong turns and squander so much promise. It becomes yet another example of a game burdened by creep, one that started with a simple premise that becomes buried by complexity.

The Game Bakers, the developer of Squids Odyssey, has created a game that largely misses everything that makes the RPG genre great. As such, it quickly becomes tedious, and while I do think it would work as a free iOS game as a time waster, it doesn't work as a sit down experience on a home console.

There's a lot of content in Blackguards, but memorable moments are few and far between. This is a game that feels like it has a lot of ambition, but it's held back sharply but budgetary constraints and, perhaps, an engine so unfamiliar to the development team that they couldn't compensate for its inherent flaws.

Football Manager 26 is for the diehards alone for this reason. It’s frustrating to deal with the bugs and UI changes, even if the core game remains basically the same. If you were to imagine this game without those issues, however, the new ideas and enhancements that are in the game are universally good and, whether it is just a matter of patches or waiting for Football Manager 27, there are very good reasons to get very enthusiastic about this series again.

The Vita version of this game is only the slightest touch beneath greatness, but there's a lot of competition out there for sports games, and being "portable" is not really an adequate excuse any longer for being significantly inferior to the home console version. Especially for a game that is as relatively simple as baseball.

You come to a visual novel for the narrative, of course, and Chaos;Head Noah does some exceptional things with its storytelling. Throwing such an unlikable protagonist at players seems like an outright risk in 2022, given that YA authors have somehow dominated the literature discourse to demand we must always sympathise with a heroic protagonist at all times else the story is problematic. Being willing to depict some pretty extreme scenarios that are designed to make the player uncomfortable is, equally, a risk in a world that has decided that all entertainment should be uplifting and positive. Chaos;Head is probably more transgressive now, in 2022, than it would have been back in 2008, and that only makes it more potent, and essential, as a work of art.

There’s so much raw content in this package that, as long as you’re a fan of the standard tactics JRPG formula, you won’t be able to help but get plenty of value out of this trilogy. And the standard tactics JRPG formula is so damn good that it’s timeless. Making Mercenaries Saga itself functionally timeless.

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.

Mothmen 1966 is a solid, albeit short (though there’s nothing wrong with that) game that successfully combines pulp fiction and video games. The next game in the series, set at a summer camp, is already planned; and I’m already counting the days until I can get my hands on it too.

It's quite unfortunate for the sake of the game that Utawarerumono just happens to come out in a rare period when there are a lot of tactics RPGs to choose between. Fire Emblem and Disgaea both have far higher profiles, and those respective games will get the bulk of the attention, but for something a little more beautiful than Disgaea, a little more humorous than Fire Emblem, and genuinely focused on the narrative, Utawarerumono is my pick of the bunch.