It’s not perfect, and it will frustrate many, but it’s a quality, solid effort nonetheless.

A fantastic game. I've played a lot of games that emulate the design of Castlevania to varying degrees of success, but few that do this good a job of engaging with the theme 's that underpin that series. In doing so, Momodora carves its own special niche within the Metroidvania world.

The Escapists has not only everything I want in a game, but also everything I want in a premium mobile title. One price gets you everything: dozens of hours of gameplay that includes sneaking, crafting, grinding, and the snazziest orange jumpsuits you'll ever see. The port is incredibly successful, with both control schemes working well and being easily interchangeable. To sum it up, I love it. I love it so much that I'm going to stop writing about it to continue playing some more — I'm eyeing HMP Iron Gate and think I can bust our in record time.

The story was familiar yet contained enough freshness to make it interesting, the hand-painted backgrounds were drool-worthy, the puzzles were a good balance on the fun-challenging scale, and whenever I was in a pinch there was a cat to help me out.

FAST Racing RMX feels like a modernised F-Zero in every regard. Its gameplay feels fluid and engaging, and the track design is arguably better than any other game of its kind. Casual players will enjoy the opportunity to race with friends or online, while hardcore genre fans will have some hefty challenges to speed through. Shin’en Multimedia has outdone itself with this one, and Nintendo should be proud to have the small but talented studio developing for its system - it’s a game which will feel right at home on any Switch console.

More than anything else, though, what I love about Miss Fisher is the way that the game really represents a very Australian sense of storytelling and aesthetics. As long-time readers know, I often talk about how I’d like for Australia (and other markets around the world) to develop a unique identity in game production, distinct from the US, much like Japan has. This game is an example of that. It’s got that droll sense of humour that we do so well, and the art captures old Melbourne perfectly. If this game helps people discover the Miss Fisher novels and TV series, then so much the better, because they are a bit of a cultural icon that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough.

That’s a shame, because there’s a lot of potential in the Psychonauts universe for a fantastic VR game – this much is apparent even to me, despite having never played the original game. The quirky characters and outlandish locations are just begging to be explored with the kind of immersiveness that VR offers, but Rhombus of Ruin isn’t that game. If anything, it’s a game that makes me want to finally check out Psychonauts itself, but that’s due as much to what this game fails to deliver as to what it succeeds in.

Where Shards of Darkness excels is when it gets you to think dynamically and to pare off all the extraneous technicalities, when hiding and slashing and scheming becomes second nature after you’re forced to hone your skills by being thrown for a loop once you think you know it all. This is a game that you need to sink more than just a handful of hours into in order to really appreciate but in my opinion, the reward is well worth it - the feeling of nailing a multi-target assassination with some high-octane traps before ziplining away and cackling was indescribable, and made much more meaningful by the fact that a few hours ago I was struggling to find my own ass in the dark.

Super Bomberman R makes a great party game if you have your hands on some extra Joy-Cons or Pro controllers, and playing with up to eight of your friends or at a party can be one hell of a time. The online options are also there if you want to play with friends or with strangers around the world. The boss battles even manage to make the single player game worth playing though, and that's almost unprecedented for the series. It's games like this that show the Switch is more than just a Zelda machine.

A simply beautiful example of minimalistic elegance and functionality, refined to a near perfect degree.

It deserves to be noticed too; it’s not the greatest ‘Monster Hunter’ game out there, but it is gorgeous and has a lot of interesting, unique ideas going for it.

Thanks to a deep narrative, exquisite morality mechanics that make every decision equally weighty and meaningful, and sublime characters, inXile has given the game a genuine shot of living up to the legacy of one of the greatest games of all time.

I could perhaps recommend this game to those looking for a crushingly difficult dual stick shooting game. It’s humorous at times and it does have some personality to it. It is the kind of game that could be brilliant with a few tweaks here and there, but presented as it, I do find it difficult to recommend to most people.

Whether it released in 2017 or 1989, Warlock’s Tower would be a timeless classic. It explores rudimentary puzzle elements everyone should be familiar with and, armed with a deep understanding of why they work, introduces a meaningful wrinkle. In a game industry that often relies on deceptively shallow open worlds and filler for the sake of content to market, sometimes we need to take a step back and recognise that one grainy little monochrome screen can hold volumes.

With great music, satisfying gameplay and a lot of replay value, Chime Sharp is definitely a puzzler worth your time. It’s a colourful journey through a world of vibrant melodies, with a degree of challenge sure to test even the most seasoned of genre fans. Whether you’re looking for short bursts of play or an afternoon of high-score hunting, Chime Sharp is not to be missed.

hat is important to any great visual novel is that it has great writing, and the Danganronpa games are by turns hilarious, reflective, intense and jovial, the characters are all unique and interesting, and the twists and turns are often startling. Visual novels just don’t get better than these.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has taken over A Link to the Past as my favourite game in the entire Zelda series. Therefore, Breath of the Wild has become what I consider to be the greatest game I have ever played. It does not have the narrative depth of other games reviewed on this site, but it is the first open-world game since the original Legend of Zelda that successfully tells the player to take it at their own pace (without feeling like you should be doing something else).

What could have been something lasting, something real, is instead a two dimensional narrative which brandishes plot twists and visual trickery to camouflage a lack of rich storytelling. Nonetheless, I would still highly recommend Stories Untold to writers and game developers: there are ideas in the first few episodes which are fascinating, and I’m dying to see where No Code’s metafictive experimentation might take the text adventure genre.

These are really minor complaints, though, when stacked against the fact that Atelier Firis took me back to the innocence and joy in those Arland games that got me interested in the series in the first place. Most importantly, given that this is the first time that he’s helmed the creative side of an Atelier title, Shinichi Yoshiike has proven himself to be a confident and safe pair of hands to shape the series into the future. As such, I expect that this series will continue to remain my favourite among the more traditional JRPG franchises out there.

The gameplay loops that New Frontier Days offers are addictive and it's easy to get dragged into watching the town build over a period of hours, but the $13 or so that the game asks upfront is about $11 more than I've ever been suckered into paying for one of these games when they're free-to-play on mobile (I got a little too hooked and enthusiastic on Sim City BuildIt once, so sue me).

Sadly, I found later levels lost a lot of the game's early steam, as too much of the old "pixel perfect" platforming starts to creep in.

This really is as no-frills as games come, and is priced to match.

That gorgeous big screen makes for an incredible display of the game's endless winter, and if you're in the mood for the big television experience, you need only dock the console once you're back at home. The added benefit is that the game doesn't tax the Switch's battery anywhere near as badly as games like Zelda does, and I've been able to use the game to make train trips absolutely bearable with a good pair of headphones, for both the trip and the return.

Put simply, NieR: Automata is the greatest game ever made. It’s not just that it is the deepest and most narratively potent game ever developed - and it is a truly deep narrative experience - but more than that, Yoko Taro has finally found perhaps the developer on the planet capable of doing his visionary work justice. This game is a true, genuine work of art, and anyone who wants to prove that gaming does possess an equivalent to the greatest novels, operas, theatre plays, or paintings, now has that very game to point to. Yoko Taro is gaming’s Shakespeare, Da Vinci, and Welles, all rolled into one.

The misfortune here for Nintendo EAD is that party games need to be accessible and appealing to a mass audience, but 1-2-Switch settles for a very specific demographic and all but alienates the rest. For that reason, it’s not a purchase I would recommend; it would have been better as a "free" pack in so that people would get the chance to try it for themselves before deciding on whether it had any long-term longevity for them.

This is an exceptional port of a hugely underrated game. The character art is one of the most critical features in the game, and on the much larger PC screen the art is vibrant, detailed, and attractive. This alone really makes Monster Monpiece’s PC port the definitive version. Hopefully this is not the last we see of Compile Heart producing CCGs.

It’s still the same cosy time and resource management simulation we fell in love with decades ago, but Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns stands out from the pack in understated ways. Its gentle but omnipresent plot functions in tandem with a broader perspective of agriculture to serve up one of the more distinct entries in this long-running franchise.

Unlike Nintendo's Mini NES retro console that was released last year, this is a more difficult package to recommend to people that didn’t grow up playing the games. I don’t think there’s been a better effort to archive the games on the Atari 2600 and bring them to modern players, but I just don’t think the people used to complex worlds, storytelling and gameplay that we have today will understand the value of these older games. But older players may well get a kick out of playing Basic Math again, to remind them of just how hard it was to act out excitement on that Christmas day when their parents thought they had found the perfect gift.