Gamedec isn’t quite a masterpiece, but it’s a clever and noble attempt to do a non-combat RPG. The cyberpunk and noir themes will never get old, and the complex decision trees invite multiple play-throughs and approaches to the mystery. It’s certainly a game that shouldn’t be overlooked.

There are multiple endings, but you’ll breeze through everything that Perfect Gold has to offer in around five hours. The game doesn’t have anything particularly profound to say, but the combination of coming-of-age and romance does come across as sweet and wholesome. This might not be a game that you exactly remember, but the earnestness of it is charming and you’ll have a big smile on your face as you play.

Much like the Street Fighter collection before it, Capcom Fighting Collection is a truly stand-out effort to preserve not only the games that were included in the collection, but the artistry and stories behind them. You don’t even need to be a fan of the fighting genre to appreciate just how valuable this approach is to retro compilations… and the unfortunate downside to this effort is that it makes every other retro compilation seem so pedestrian by comparison.

There’s not much else I can say about St. Dinfna Hotel. If you’ve played horror games then you know what you’ll be getting from this one. If you haven’t played many horror games in the past then the clumsiness of the combat, and the lack of assistance through the puzzles, makes this a poor entry point to the genre. Indeed, if you’re not familiar with the classic horror titles St. Dinfna is in homage to, the entire experience is almost pointless. I do think the developers have talent and passion for the genre, and I hope that this is successful so they can get a second run at it. If they do, all they need is to have their own voice and the confidence to add to the genre, rather than parrot it, and I do think they have it within them to create something special.

There are a few minor further issues with the collection – the music is almost shockingly low resolution and difficult to hear, and the interface was clearly designed around touch input so the controller is a little clumsy, but those fade into the background quickly enough and are easy to ignore. What rises above and beyond for Sorcery! is the quality of the writing. My recommendation is to play this like you would read a good book. Forget the in-game music. Put on a pair of headphones with some meditative ambient sound (I like rain “music” myself) and lose yourself in the words. Do that, and the minor irritations along the way will feel rather irrelevant.

While you get classical fantasy with Tales of Aravorn: Seasons of the Wolf, you don’t get Tolkien. The best way to think about this game is that it’s a well-written Dungeons & Dragons home adventure, make for a group of players that enjoy interacting with one another as a major component of the roleplaying, and don’t mind their characters getting hot with one another. That is enjoyable, and the way that the game turned its budgetary limitations into a unique aesthetic and mechanical structure is inspired. Seasons of the Wolf might not be a masterpiece, but Winter Wolves have been entertaining people with exactly this kind of thing for 15 years, and if the team’s work weren’t good enough, this company wouldn’t have lasted anywhere near that long.

AI: The Somnium Files – nirvanA Initiative is an exceptional game that hits the same beats as the original, while introducing plenty of fun new characters and a winding, complex plot that is going to keep you second-guessing right to the end. If only we had more games that respected the intelligence of their players like this one does.

Birushana: Rising Flower of Genpei is a truly wonderful example of the visual novel genre, and I’m glad it god localised. It’s aesthetically beautiful (and not just because Shanao and Benkei can get hot-and-sweaty together). It’s also written with a deft touch and genuinely works as a piece of historical fiction. As someone who has actually asked Koei Tecmo about a Nioh or Samurai Warriors set during this conflict, just to give us a break from all the Sengoku era games, I’m over the moon that Idea Factory decided to weave their magic during this vibrant and exciting period of Japan’s history.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes exists for people that liked Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It takes the narrative and characters of the original tactics RPG and provides an “alternative history” take on events, and that was an inspired way to allow the game to be both familiar while telling its own story. For anyone that fell in love with the characters the first time around, this approach makes this take very hard to put down, no matter how frequently you play the Musou releases. My overwhelming impression of this game is that it exudes confidence. Koei Tecmo's team had a clear vision on how to turn everything that people loved about Fire Emblem: Three Houses and turn it into an action game, and with the exception of one new character that turns out to be a Jar Jar Binks-level misfire, they have delivered on that vision. Or, to put it simply: people loved Three Houses, and for all the reasons that they did love that game, they will also love Three Hopes.

If you’ve ever played a TMNT beat-em-up, you’ll get a lot out of Shredder’s Revenge, especially with additional players on hand. If you’ve never played a TMNT beat-em-up, Shredder’s Revenge would be an excellent place to start.

Once you push through the initial slog, Metal Max Xeno Reborn is a truly entertaining take on the apocalypse. The mixture of tank modifications and turn-based combat using those vehicles is something different for JRPGs, and it’s nice to have a game that acts as a foil to the aggressively dark apocalypses that plague this industry.

Spellforce III is, effectively, a throwback game, being both old-school RPG and old-school RTS, stuck on top of an old-school fantasy setting. The developers have done a remarkably good job of taking complex controls and making it work on a controller, and while the game isn’t particularly boundary-pushing, innovative, or stand-out, it is engrossing in the way that it combines genres so seamlessly and entertainingly.

Mr. Prepper could have a good bit of socio-political commentary to go with a kind of casual simulation structure that even the free-to-play Fallout Shelter largely proved to be a good time. Sadly, so many little things went wrong with it in delivery, and it’s hard to put a finger on just how it could fall over so badly in totality. Was it just that the team is inexperienced? Not confident enough in the vision to fully commit? Not sure how to integrate the gameplay and concept together? Whatever it was, Mr. Prepper is a better idea than execution.

Mario Strikers might come across as limited to some people, especially those that are only really going to get stuck into the single-player game. However, as a multiplayer experience, and whether you’re going to play locally or online, this thing excels in every way. It’s accessible, but also had a learning curve that more serious people will love. It’s laugh-out-loud hilarious for party sessions, while also having the feature set that it needs to get entire clubs to form around it. I can easily see this joining Smash Bros., Splatoon and Mario Kart as a standard part of any multiplayer rotation on the Switch. Most of all, though, this is a Mario Sports title that hasn’t lost the identity of the sport itself after implementing power-ups and Mario character specials. In this way, it stands apart from the Mario Tennis and Golf titles, and that’s a good thing.

The danger with coming up with something that is a clearly different creative vision is that you set expectations for what the rest of the game will be like. The art and concept of Pinku Cult are so compelling that the contrast with the incredibly mundane RPG mechanics and puzzles is all the more disappointing. This is a well-meaning but inconsistent experience. I hope the developers get a second shot, because there are more stories to tell here and I do think with a bit more experience they’d be able to build a game as strong as the concept.

Putting aside the poorly translated story and the subsequently sleazy theme the game takes on, there’s just nothing to The Future You’ve Been Dreaming Of. It’s a too-basic life simulation… and the fan service isn’t even that good. Unfortunately, this is a rare misfire for qureate on what should have been the development team’s home turf.

The game is my new obsession. It is charming, well-balanced, and calming; yes, I described an RPG as calming!

There’s almost no replay value to Card Shark, but that’s not a complaint. It’s a nice, compact and creative little experience that respects your time while also offering a complete experience. There is a cohesion between the art, setting, and period of history that it’s set that is compelling. Furthermore, the behaviour of the deeply corrupt nobility of the time that it depicts is surprisingly detailed. Backed by genuinely interesting minigames and a good – if stiff – challenge, publishing Card Shark has been another major win for Devolver Digital.

Ogre is a highly influential and important game, and on that basis, there might be some value in picking this title up for nostalgia’s sake. However, it is also one of the poorest board games on the Switch. The lack of decent AI, and multiplayer that’s only available offline, are issues that no strategic board game in 2022 is ever going to be able to overcome.

Pac-Man’s been through worse, like that Adam Sandler abomination I won’t mention again here. But it feels like gaming’s elder statesman deserves more recognition, and a better museum than this.

There really is nothing better, and now that it’s on PC I’m feeling joy all over again.

No doubt this will be a fringe Warriors title. Especially with a new Fire Emblem Warriors right around the corner. Touken Ranbu doesn’t have the pull in the rest of the world that it has in Japan and I’m not 100 per cent sure where the audience is for this game. However, if you go in with an open mind, you’ll find an excellent and surprisingly relevant Ruby Party narrative, backed up with some very confident action brawler design. Basically, any day there’s a new Warriors game to play is a good day, and today’s a very good day indeed.

For all I know I’m the only person left on the planet that cares about Snow Bros. and Toaplan’s legacy in single-screen platformers. Nonetheless, it is a bit of arcade history and this is preserving a property that was almost lost. I’ve had an absolute blast playing through this, the new levels are great, and now there’s an outside chance that there might be all-new Snow Bros. adventures on the horizon.

I understand the impulse to throw down a couple of bucks for a game that features pretty girls in swimwear. A bit of fan service can be fun and all that, and for a couple of dollars, you’re not going to expect a masterpiece. But for fan service to work, you’ve got to be a fan in the first place, and the complete lack of character and purpose in Beach Girls means that it doesn’t work as fan service either. The fact that even Steam isn’t getting laboured with stuff like Beach Girls, or Hentai Uni before it, suggests that Nintendo is perhaps being a little too open with its open platform.

Otoko Cross is horny, lewd, and excellent. Whether it works as a turn-on or not depends on your taste for incredibly pretty boys, but even if that’s not your thing, it is easy to appreciate the effort that went into the art, and the clean, vanilla nature of the arcade puzzle action. I don’t mean that as a criticism, either. Sometimes “vanilla” is exactly the flavour you want and vanilla Mahjong Solitaire is timeless good fun. More than anything else, though, in the endless tsunami of massive boobs and thunder thighs that makes up fan service orientated video games, I’ve genuinely enjoyed the opportunity to play something that is different. It’s not innovative, but it’s different, and, like I said earlier on in the review, my taste in art appreciates the different a great deal.

Vampire: The Masquerade Swansong is nonetheless a good attempt to capture the mechanical essence and purpose of the pen-and-paper game. The developers could have made a stat-heavy action thing, or followed a bunch of other games and thrown players into a generic open-world that barely resembles or is relevant to the base material. They didn’t, and the game is better for it. Swansong comes across as a timid vampire story – the kind of thing a first-time game master might right for a first-time tabletop group, but timid as it might be, you are left under no illusions that you’re playing a game of Vampire: The Masquerade.

There’s something about the title – The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story – that makes me think this one game may only be the beginning of something wonderful. Maybe the Shijima family has more mysteries? Maybe other families need Haruka and Eiji to solve their mysteries? Maybe I’m just so obsessed with the game I need more of it? Yeah, that last one sounds pretty plausible. But the game is basically foolproof (unless you mess up really, really badly, which in my experience isn’t terrible likely), it’s in the FMV genre, it’s a whodunnit, it plays like a novel reads… who doesn’t want more games like that?!

I’m obviously the target market for this game. I like trashy fanservicey things, and Seven Pirates H, by virtue of being one of the trashiest and most fanserviey things I’ve ever played, just happens to be a really good example of that. Everything within the game is well-crafted in service of this one particular goal, and the result is outrageous, ridiculous and fun. This is the finest example of raunch humour on the Switch.