While Shadow Blade: Reload may not re-invent the platformer genre, it is both pretty to look at and fun to play. With multiple stages, collectables, difficulties, and challenges there’s more than enough ninja action to keep Kuro busy for a while.

It's hard to stay mad at Chocobo GP, though, even when you're hit with what feels like an endless barrage of magic. The game's just too bright and cheerful. Obviously, your mileage is going to depend on whether you're a fan of Chocobo. Not just Final Fantasy, but also this specific series of cute mascot characters. If you are, though, you couldn't ask for a more loving treatment. The expansive roster, the adorable presentation, and the quality kart racing mechanics will combine to give you something that you just might prefer over Mario Kart. The latter might be a bigger and tighter racing experience, but Chocobo GP has a killer weapon up its sleeve that makes all the difference: Chocobo.

I’m disappointed because of how good Radiohammer could have been. If it actually had a music library that didn’t sound like a set of royalty-free midi tracks off a dodgy website, I’d be much more willing to recommend it.

The concept was there, and I so badly wanted to enjoy it. Unfortunately, caring about the contrived cancer plotline would have only been possible if so much of my time wasn’t taken up by wondering how DigixArt has taken a great mobile game and made it somehow less accessible on a more powerful device.

It's a deliberately limited game, but it works well within its self-imposed restrictions to keep the focus on the party atmosphere from start through to finish, and while it won't be remembered as a classic game by any stretch of the imagination, this is a good one to have sitting on the PlayStation 4 hard drive for when friends are over.

For those who do understand their 4X genre, however, At The Gates will come across as a breath of fresh air. It's a ground-up rethink on how the genre can work, and what the 4X might look like as applied to the many cultures and civilizations out there that didn't have the imperialist intent that most 4X titles assume. For that, it's one of the most interesting strategy games I've played in years.

So this won’t be remembered as a particularly good remake, and it’s tragic, because by itself, outside of the shadow of the game it’s a remaster of, Secret of Mana has its charms.

It is a passable Smash Bros. clone, but to be honest, if you're that much of a fan of the Smash Bros. formula, surely you already have a Wii U.

There is plenty of fun to be had here with friends, but just make sure your expectations are in line with what you will be getting here. It is fun for a while, and well made for what it is, but for a game that relies so intensely on the multiplayer action, it's just not quite up there with the best in the genre.

I wanted to be more engaged in Samurai Defender. It takes place in one of my favourite periods of history, and we've got plenty of reference examples of games handling this era well - everything from Nioh and Samurai Warriors to Muramasa, Onimusha, Nobunaga's Ambition and Tenchu. All of those games or franchises offer enjoyable gameplay, but just as importantly, a sense of history and place to give the gameplay context. Samurai Defender looks like it should be more than it is, but never gets there, and feels overwhelmingly shallow as a consequence.

I was disappointed that The Lost Child failed so completely to do something meaningful with the Lovecraftian concept. In fact, the game has so completely missed the mark on that that it’s almost insulting that the developers used names like “Hastor” and “Cthulhu” to describe your foes, rather than replace them with more original monster names. Once I settled past that disappointment, though, I discovered that The Lost Child is also a game that so cleanly represents everything good about the dungeon crawler genre that I found it hard to put down. The fact that it’s the perfect introduction to the dungeon crawler genre also makes it the perfect first example on the new hardware.

For its escape-room premise, Stay’s narrative is surprisingly large in scope, and despite all its shortfalls the eerie atmosphere does linger with you as you play.

While I appreciate that MercurySteam wanted to do something different with the Castlevania franchise, I feel like the entire team, from director through to writer, through to the level designer has failed to grasp what makes Dracula such a wonderful character. It's not because he's a incredible force of evil. Dracula isn't a random monster; he's something more primal than that, and in failing to represent that, the developers have failed to do the Dracula story justice.

Playing Exile’s End involves a lot more aimless running around than it should. It’s frustrating because these are all problems that have been solved as the Metroidvania genre’s developed over the years. When it’s allowed to shine, it’s a wonderful game that almost rivals the original Metroid, I just wish it didn't spend so much time getting in its own way out of a commitment to dated ideas about difficulty.

The story as a whole is predictable and underwhelming. It treads a lot of well-worn horror cliches without really doing anything to stand out, and it tries to take you on an emotional journey without giving you a reason to care.

Those amusing bugs aside, Greedfall: The Dying World is an earnest project by one of the most earnest game developers out there. It’s a game that is trying hard to say something important about a topic that is of great importance, while structuring it into an RPG that builds on the truly interesting world and lore conceived in the original. Spiders remains the best of the B-tier European RPG developers, and that’s a compliment. Belonging outside of the big-budget blockbuster developers affords a creative freedom that Spiders has never been hesitant to embrace.

What I have a problem with is inconsistent narratives, and "gameplay" that has been so compartmentalised from the "story" that they may as well be in different products.

This tedium would be unacceptable in an action game, but Windbound is a survival game. In survival games, death is supposed to mean something. Loss of progress represents the stakes; repetition is the barrier of entry. For players ready to take that plunge, there are some far-and-few-between moments of Windbound which are exhilarating. There’s nothing quite like stalking down the player’s first Gorehorn or Gloomharrow and seeing the game’s possibilities open right up as a reward for some intrepid hunting skills. But that being said, it’s a kind of enjoyment which needs to be really scrapped for and earned, and for most people, I suspect Windbound is going to feel a little too much like work.

It’s really nice to have Alone in the Dark back in form. And for it to have its own identity. After being such a pioneer, this series has spent so long chasing the horror genre popular trends and trying to read the lowest common denominator that it became little more than a pale imitation of other good ideas. It’s genuinely nice to have something that heads in its own direction, and is comfortable in providing a taut atmosphere and a focus on a chilling narrative rather than visceral scares. You could call it “quaint,” but I like to think of it more like a game Stephen King would like to see rather than another cash-in from the Saw writers.

Whispering Willows is a scary, scary game in a beautiful, beautiful world.

You do also get to play around with photo modes and the like; Compile Heart play the fan service up to its maximum, and there are some little bonuses in there for people who already own the game on PlayStation 4. Really, though, there's not much to add above and beyond our review of the PlayStation 4 game; this is an almost surprisingly good port to Nintendo Switch, and thanks to those mobile roots it does feel like a game better suited for the comforts of a handheld than the "big screen" - the combat action lacks the sustained thrills for the big screen experience, but the dynamic twitch gameplay makes for the perfect commute killer.

It’s a beautiful, elegant genre, and, when it all clicks, it’s a timeless formula. Unfortunately, Operation Babel: New Tokyo Legacy just asks too much of its players.

In the tradition of Worms Forts it’s an intriguing base-building strategy game, and the real-time nature of it solves one of the bigger issues of Worms Forts: that it could be bogged down to almost stalemate, making games drag on for ages. That being said, the game does need a lot more than what it’s offering, and as with all indie games, I wonder about the wisdom of making the game so heavily reliant on multiplayer. When players have to wait around for however long just to get a game going, they’re just as likely to go and play something else instead.

On the one hand it's an genuinely entertaining dogfighting sim on the Nintendo 3DS - a genre so rare that its only competitor is its predecessor. On the other hand re-releasing the exact same game and selling gimmicky Amiibo miniatures unlocks as the major new addition is... well, it's not exactly adequate. This kind of feature would be a $5 DLC add-on elsewhere.

This score is not reflective of the quality of the games (overall). I’m not going to be putting Alpine Ski down in a hurry, and I’ve been playing Qix for decades now, so I would never begrudge it being part of a Milestones collection. Most of the other titles are interesting as a curio. The quality of the ports for all of these titles great thanks to Hamster’s technology, but nonetheless, this is a woeful excuse for a compilation, and that’s particularly surprising given that it came from the same publisher that gave us the Space Invaders Invincible Collection. That was one of the very best retro collections. “Disappointing” doesn’t begin to describe what I feel about Taito Milestones.

I love the classic Dragon Quest titles with a passion, but there is nothing that redeems these poor ports. They fail as an archive of classics, since the redesign fundamentally changes them. They fail as pieces of entertainment, because they're so ugly and poorly made. Finally, they fail as Dragon Quest, because Dragon Quest fans will be insulted by this trash being passed off as their memories.

It’s easy to dismiss Tsum Tsum Festival as being “just” a minigame collection, but there’s value in those – especially on the Nintendo Switch, which is built around the easy sharing of experiences but has, to date, had a relatively minimal application of that potential outside of Nintendo itself. With Christmas parties and the like coming up, there’s going to be plenty of opportunities to break this game out, and it’s one of those that kids can love… but then also holds the kind of nostalgic appeal to anyone who grew up with Disney (i.e. all of us) that allows them to enjoy it too. We don’t see Donald Duck in enough games any longer. I’m happy to have him here.

Call of Cthulhu is the Cthulhu RPG I never realized I needed in my life. From the moment the atmosphere shifted upon entry to Darkwater, I was hooked. The Cthulhu mythology is presented with obvious appreciation for the source material, crafting a story of cosmic horror and the cults being crazy enough to worship those beings. Aside from some difficulty with sneaking, the game makes the descent into madness... fun? Can one have fun when descending into madness?