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.

The problem with the package is that it’s difficult to argue that any of the games in it a bona fide classics.

What I’m saying is that I’m not entirely sure who is going to enjoy Curse of the Sea Rats. I do know that there’s going to be an audience out there for it, because while it has several issues it also has many redeeming qualities. However, when it’s one of a few million Metroidvanias that are already on the Switch, I fear that Sea Rats will struggle to find that audience, despite being a clear passion project from everyone involved.

So did the third episode of Minecraft Story Mode set a good precedent for the remainder of the series? Absolutely. Did it clear the bad taste left behind by episode two? Absolutely not. It makes me hopeful for episodes four and five to continue the upswing, but I’m hesitant to believe it will.

Castlevania Anniversary Collection is an excellent, high quality retro collection. It is of a collection where too many of the games don't hold enough value beyond their nostalgia, and it's lacking titles I would have considered to be key. However, with a great set of features, and plenty of classic dark fantasy platforming, this package is a useful reminder of just how prestigious the entire franchise really is.

Sker Ritual would have been easier to get along with if it had its own identity. It plays well and is genuinely entertaining, but if the developers are going to treat their work as a totally transient effort to exploit and leap on the money train, then I’m going to treat the game in-kind. The creative vision behind this game is so shallow and unformed that the game will be forgotten in a few years.

Even if you love The Last Of Us 2. Even if you think it’s the Citizen Kane of video games. Even if you think that Shakespeare himself would have thrown in the towel after seeing this game, realising he could never compete with it as a storyteller, you must surely realise that a game that is four years old and is readily available on your current console doesn’t need the remaster. Surely you understand that this is a ridiculous excess, done purely to milk revenue out of fans, and that it’s particularly frustrating given that Sony is sitting on dozens of incredible properties. That it would rather leave all of them on ice and inaccessible to release this indulgence just isn’t acceptable.

While it could be considered short, there is a creativity to its puzzle design that does make it quite appealing, and so it's worth the investment - especially for people that use their 3DS for killing time and public transport.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy plays flawlessly. It’s impossible to criticise the level design, the basic mechanics, or indeed anything that involves pressing buttons. Naughty Dog is simply a developer of such quality that it’s not going to make mistakes there. But I like my games to have narrative, and I like games that get me thinking. I like my games to have purpose, and I find The Lost Legacy to be a very purposeless game. It’s fun, I enjoyed my time with it. I doubt I’ll ever feel inspired to play it again, much less remember it.

The presentation is enjoyable and the puzzles and discovery of new powers are genuinely exciting. If you can look past repetitive combat and backtracking and are willing to live with a few technical hiccups along the way, Song of the Deep is enjoyable but flawed, with some unrealised potential around the narrative meaning it was a missed opportunity.

First Light works because it trims off the fat, leaving behind an engaging story and breakneck gameplay that will appeal both to returning patrons and first-time customers.

To be frank, here, I don’t think enough was done to make Planet Coaster 2 enough of a sequel. Adding water parks and slides, and more rides in general, were all perfectly rational ways to expand on the Planet Coaster experience, but we’re in an era now where DLC is getting Game of the Year nominations, and I do think that this feels more like a massive DLC drop at 50% of the price of a base game than a new, full-priced game. And as fun as the emerging “Frontier Simulation” formula is I also can’t help but wish that the developers would challenge themselves to try and create an actual simulator at some point. Make something with teeth, folks! You might be surprised just how invested your players get when their decisions have consequences for their parks, too.

Pixel Heroes is some good old classic dungeon crawling action. The lack of narrative context makes it a tough, but not necessarily rewarding game, but putting that aside, the endless gameplay loop is simple and clean, and there's a fun combat system to make it all worth at least a little of your time.

As a big-time Shantae fan, I’ve loved having the opportunity to fill in the gap for the game in the seies that we very nearly didn’t get. It’s more a curiosity than something essential – more recent titles in the series are definitely better, but if this continues to breathe life into the series, then I’m all for it.

World End Economica is written with great technique, and across the course of the trilogy it forms a true epic in structure and tone. It's really unfortunate that for a game with a lot to say it doesn't end up saying much, and I was left desperate for a character I could truly like as I played, but the strong, creative vision make this a visual novel that fans of good storytelling should add to their "to-do" lists.

There are two endings to Theseus, though either way the game itself isn’t that long. It does tell the story it wanted to, though, and does so in a comprehensive enough way that I wasn’t left wondering. It’s a crafty little proof-of-concept and experiment in making VR work in the context of a third person adventure experience. It’s a little limited for what I ultimately want VR to deliver, but it’s worthwhile nonetheless.

Adventure Time: Finn & Jake Investigations is eventually a Sherlock Holmes game with an Adventure Time skin and dialect (Algabraic!”), but that is quite okay by me. The finnicky issues that arose did little to take away from how whimsical the game is. The story? Great. The graphics? Great? The sound? Mathematical!

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.

Piranha Bytes has, throughout its history, been really quite effective at capturing an “X-factor” that elevates its games to be something more than the sum of its parts. These are games made by people that love RPGs, for people that love RPGs, and while they’re not of the same scope or refined as something that comes from a BioWare or Bethesda, they are made by people who have clearly played so many sessions of Dungeons & Dragons. They know how to keep an RPG fan playing on, and Risen is an excellent example of that. I’m very glad it had a release on Nintendo Switch, finally got to play it (even if I needed to source it from overseas).

In just about every way, Reynatis is a game that tries to reach well beyond what the team was perhaps capable of achieving. Which raises an interesting question: What to score it? I, personally would rather play something like this than the 99 per cent of games out there that copy off the “best practices” template of what has come before. Of course they’re more refined then Reynatis! But they’re just iterating on what already worked. Reynatis is a wild, chaotic mess that frequently loses sight of itself, but that’s the consequence of reaching for something different. Sometimes when people try this the ideas just don’t pan out as hoped. Reynatis is still very playable and the core gameplay is genuinely enjoyable. It might consistently fail to meet its lofty ambitions, but at least it tries, and as a work of art there is value in exploring what it does try to do.

Fans of the series looking for new songs to dance to will no doubt enjoy what is still a technically solid and fun game, but with so little new to offer other than modes that basically dress up the same core content in new modes, I worry that fan reception may begin to dry up.

The game is evolving, which is a great thing for a title like this that has some MMO elements and will live or die with the kind of online community it can put together. More often than not, I enjoyed my time with Kingdom Wars 2: Battles. It has some rough edges and there is clearly room to improve, but what is there has more innovation than the first hour or two with the title might suggest and I found myself having more fun with it than I have with most other RTS games of late.

For the most part though, Yoku’s Island Express is a lot of wholesome, whimsical fun. It manages to make the hybrid of two disparate genres work in some inspired ways, and the result is a unique game full of surprises that is sure to delight players. The only flaw is when the mechanics outweigh their welcome and stop feeling unique – the moments where Yoku is just a pinball game, or just a Metroidvania, are generally the weakest.

Donkey Kong Adventure feels like a lick of fresh paint on the same experiences that were provided during Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Whilst the inclusion of Donkey Kong changes the way that you strategise; Donkey Kong Adventure is rather predictable and I did get fatigued with it by the second world.

By providing a serviceable story as a driving force and then honing in on meaningful character interactions, Millennium Twilight becomes essential for Reki Kawahara fans. Those unfamiliar with both properties may occasionally find themselves occasionally mystified by plot points and fanservice alike, but hopefully this game will serve as a gateway drug.

Xblaze didn't have the same emotional impact on me as games like Hakuōki have, and I wasn't as invested in the narrative as I was with Danganronpa, but anyone who has played a BlazBlue game knows that the writers behind the series are quality, and confident enough in their craft to put more energy into the plot than most fighting games get. As an extension of that confidence, Xblaze is a worthwhile experience indeed.

Darksiders Genesis gets a lot right. It has plenty of personality and a dynamic, engaging action system. Its only real problem is that it has tackled a thematic challenge that it can't deliver - hell should not be dull, empty or repetitive, and yet this game fails on all fronts there. It's not entirely the developer's fault, in the sense that if they showed a truly creative vision of hell it would either offend or be too surreal for the kind of mainstream audience that it's pitched at, but perhaps developers need to better consider where they're setting their games in that case.

Between a battle system unlike anything I’ve seen before and a story that pushes the boundaries of comedy, Akiba’s Trip has plenty of personality going for it. Expanding on the world of Akihabara itself would have elevated the experience into a truly classic one, but as is, fans of niche experiences still ought to take this trip.