I know I've said this at least a dozen times now, but I do think Shantae deserves better than the platformer genre. She's just too good of a character to waste on a genre that doesn't really do narrative. Give her an RPG or something, WayForward. In the meantime, though, while this might not be the biggest release of the year, it's certainly a worthwhile celebration of one of the most niche - but loved - platformer heroes out there.

The big question we need to answer here is whether they're worth another dip? If you've missed the Mysterious trilogy so far (perhaps you're a newer fan due to Ryza), then absolutely. If you are an Atelier fan, then having Firis and Sophie on the Switch for the first time is a nice deal, and the photo mode and art books, in particular, are a bonus worth playing with. These are all genuine five-star games and that needs to be remembered... though its also worth remembering that these are all JRPGs, with time commitments to match, and we're being inundated with those this year. That's the only possible dampener for what is otherwise an excellent collection of wonderful games.

NieR is a remarkable piece of art, and this remaster touches up the issues people had with the original without compromising what made it such an impactful work. It’s going to be interesting to see if people give it the look that it deserves this time around, because this really is the greatest game of all time, and has always deserved more than “cult” status."

I've had fun playing this game again. It goes to show the strength of the material that Ravensword is based on that a low-budget, massively stripped-down take on the formula can still be enjoyable. I have fond memories of playing this through on my iPad over my Christmas holiday back in 2012, and there was a rush of nostalgia from doing so again on the Switch. However, the lesson that developers really should take from this is that it doesn't matter how technically impressive a game is if you can't deliver something memorable from the artistic side of things. Without a great narrative, interesting design elements, creative gameplay or similar, your game is dated the moment it has been released, and as a result every time you try to re-release it on new consoles and devices, you're going to experience diminishing returns and an increasingly tarnished legacy.

Livestream is on the cusp of being something really special. It has the right setting, the right concept, the right character designs and the right themes to give players something special. Unfortunately, the execution's a little off, and while the game is a lot of fun, it doesn't say as much as some of the greats in the genre do. It is, ultimately, just an entertaining and fanservicey horror game with some enjoyable puzzles to throw at the player. There's nothing wrong with that, and I must emphasise that this game is hugely entertaining. It's just unfortunate that it's too shallow to be remembered as one of the greats.

There’s not a lot of games like Gravity Heroes on the Switch, despite the console’s penchant for local multiplayer experiences. Most arena combat games on the system are throwaway in that they're great for chaotic fun, but lacking in true depth. Gravity Heroes bridges that gap, by offering a deep control scheme that takes time to master. The short campaign makes up for it in difficulty, and a Hard mode that is genuinely challenging. It’ll take a specific, patient playgroup for this to catch on, but I can see four friends who grew up on games like Metal Slug, absolutely loving this one.

The biggest pity is that the developers were so modest in their scope. Perhaps this little experiment is just to test the waters and get some money together for a more ambitious second project. I hope so, because Toree 3D has a lot of potential to be a more full-featured homage to B-tier platformers. As it stands here, though, it's a moment or two of fun. Nothing more, nothing less.

Even more than Monopoly, The Game of Life is a board game from a bygone era. Once upon a time, the nice, meandering journey through suburban life and expectations thereof that the game depicted was considered a representation of a happy, wholesome life experience, but in 2021 lionising that seems incredibly passe. Sticking a "2" next to the title while not doing much to address this dissonance doesn't paper over the fact that very few people actually want to play The Game of Life these days.

SaGa Frontier is a frivolous and irreverent little JRPG that eschews grand narratives and philosophies to instead focus on a charming sequence of absurd juxtapositions, genuine humour, and playfulness. It's a well-made game, and the effective, challenging and entertaining combat system stands as proof of that. It's just that it's also nothing like most other Square Enix JRPGs, because the developers clearly wanted to deliver something that defied the expectations of the JRPG genre. SaGa Frontier was such a resounding success at that that it has become a "cult classic" and while this will never appeal to the mainstream, hopefully it will find itself a new audience through this remaster.

There are moments where Fata Morgana becomes very uncomfortable to witness, and a little like when I played Saya no Uta, I did need to put it down from time to time. This game is nowhere near as explicit or extreme as that one, but thematically it is, if anything, more demanding of the player. It's a little like how the real Grimm brothers fairy tales are deeply uncomfortable to read, though it's certainly not of the extreme, overt violence of a Marquis de Sade novel. If you want to see how a visual novel could be elevated to something approaching "high art," you owe it to yourself to play The House in Fata Morgana. The fact that the Switch release comes with even more stories and features as a "complete" edition just makes it all the more essential.

Cyberpunk is a demanding genre, and Synergia is a better effort at it than we generally see. It's willing to tackle difficult moral questions, it shows genuine distress at the class systems and the hubris of corporations, and it's science fiction without being gratuitous about it. I can think of a certain big-budget blockbuster "cyberpunk" game that doesn't even come close to understanding the genre as well as this humble visual novel, and that's saying something.

There's a lot I want to like about Legends of Talia. A fantasy-themed visual novel that isn't an isekai is almost refreshing, and a morally conflicted, exhausted "hero" at the centre of the story is a nice idea. Unfortunately, this game is trying to do too much with too little, and in the end, it doesn't achieve much of anything. You can't achieve an epic narrative arc, culminating in an earth-shattering battle with a dragon, in a two-hour visual novel. The developers should have considered something a little more modest in scope and built up to this if they wanted to make this protagonist and setting really hit home.

Clea 2 is a confident step forward for a developer that has an original, interesting idea and set about turning it into something playable. It might lack the intensity of some of the horror games that it resembles, but its quiet moodiness and subtle challenges make it an interesting curiosity for those with a few hours to spare.

There are plenty of puzzles to work through of varying degrees of difficulty, and then there are daily puzzles to encourage you to log in each day. As with every mobile puzzle game, you earn experience points and "titles" as you play, which don't have any impact on the game whatsoever, but it's fun to see numbers going up. The real problem with Sudoku Simple+ is just how efficient it really is. Minimalistic elegance is fine, but this game doesn't even have a title screen, and the menu is just a block of text. Perhaps it's not a big issue for Sudoku, but there is a point where "no-frills" step into the realm of being just plain cheap.

The Apple Arcade version also includes online play with random match-ups, and these are great fun if you can't get a group of friends together but still want to test your music knowledge. SongPop Party might be a no-frills trivia game, but then that's all it needs to be, too. This is all about the music, and there's so much of that that it's not going to outstay its welcome any time soon.

It's the kind of game that can be played over extended periods of time, and all by itself it's going to encourage people to keep their Arcade subscriptions going, especially if they have a younger one in the house who won't want to lose all these levels and opportunities for play. It might not be as flashy as some of the other games released in the last week, but it might be the one that has the longest future ahead of it.

You've got to hand it to eastasiasoft for finding and bringing these fun little fanservicey games to the Switch. Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire brings the fan service in spades, but it also plays a really good game of Mahjong Solitaire, and while the Switch has plenty of Mahjong Solitare titles already, none of the others have the pin-up aesthetic going for them. For just a couple of dollars, you can't go wrong here.

What saves it is the fun - if silly - story that is unlocked by completing "puzzles," the personality of the cats and characters, and the really gorgeous art style. I would never pay for something like this, but in the context of the thirty other games that got released on to the Apple Arcade in one go, I'm glad it's there as a relaxing time-waster.

Gameloft has made the game pleasant to look at, with a pixel art aesthetic that bubbles along with colour and verve. Unfortunately, it's impossible to hide that this is based on an incredibly old game, and we've certainly seen similar efforts that offer more of everything, including the all-important random events to experience on the journey. The thrill of exploring the unknown does wear away when, after just a couple of outings, you're now experiencing the thrill of the far-too-familiar events and occurrences. Still, the educational heart of the game is still there (the lives of these intrepid folks and the little pockets of civilisation along the road are a fascinating bit of history), and Gameloft has done a good job in bringing appropriate sensitivities into the game to make it something to give to the kids to play today.

The world is beautiful to explore, and apparently, it was created by building actual dioramas of the various environments and then scanning them into digital data. It's the perfect way to capture the isometric perspective of those PlayStation 1-era Final Fantasies, while also ensuring that it looks modern and a deliberate homage to those classic games of yesteryear. On every level, Fantasian is aware of itself, and also confident that there are still people out there that love the classic qualities of older JRPGs in such a way that they can deliver. It's a confidence that I certainly believe that the team behind this game has every right to hold.

I genuinely love Balan Wonderworld because it caught me at just the right moment to indulge its whimsy. I don't for a second think it's a great game or platformer, but then I also just don't care. It offers something much more viscerally engaging; raw creative energy, and I would rather a hundred games fall flat like this one has and at least give me something different than play yet another highly refined copy of something I've already played a hundred times. Sometimes, just sometimes, raw creativity is enough in itself.

There's all the usual Taiko charm in there, from the expansive range of silly costumes to dress your character in, to the explosion of bouncy energy in the background whenever you get on a roll. There's even online play, though I wasn't able to get a match going in my testing time (perhaps it's not the most popular of the 30 game drop to work through). I'm sure it'll catch an audience though. It is, after all, Taiko the Drum. That's a level of charm that is difficult to resist.

The game looks fine, though obviously paired right down over what you can eke out of your PlayStation 5 version of the game. Just what kind of graphical performance you get seems to depend on your device. On the Apple TV, for example, the crowds seem to have been turned off, which lends games an odd energy and atmosphere; the sounds are still there but the chairs are empty. I call it "COVID-19 match mode", though, so for now it's actually timely. Also, the crowds are there when playing on higher-end iPhones. Whatever the case the animation is smooth and the range of camera angles are great. This is a good game of basketball and strikes a good balance between depth and accessibility. I just wish that 2K didn't use this as a bare-bones demo for the full console experience and gave us that season mode.

Mixing, matching, levelling up, and forming strategies across such a massive, Pokemon-like range of monsters to collect and turn into special abilities gives World of Demons a level of depth and strategy that you would never expect at first, given how fast and fluid it is. Factor in the ukiyo-e-inspired art (which, no doubt, will be compared to Okami, but is much more appropriate to this game, given the narrative and visual arts traditions that Hyakki Yagyo belongs to), and a soundtrack that is heavy on the traditional Japanese instruments, and World of Demons is clearly a case of PlatinumGames looking to celebrate traditional Japanese culture and the arts. That is actually something that PlatinumGames hasn't done before, but the aesthetics, theme, tone, and quality of action here suits the developer perfectly, so, more of this in the future, please.

MazM: The Phantom of the Opera is what I would like to see more of in video games; it's a genuine effort to engage with a more meaningful side of art. It's less pop culture, easy content as it is an adaptation of a masterpiece of the gothic literature genre. The developer succeeded in capturing the aesthetics and generally representing the story, but there have been some big compromises made to hammer this nail into place, and the gamey elements and technical proficiency are just not there. Not for the Switch version, at any rate. As a Phantom of the Opera fan, I do highly recommend like-minded fans check this out, as it is a curiosity, but if you're going into this looking for a game... you'd be better off picking up a copy of the film adaptation of the musical.

When Evil Genius 2 gets it right, it gets it spectacularly right, and if you’re the type that can bury your brain into resource management while laughing at the deliberately cliched and over-the-top style of the game, you’ll have plenty of moments of fun taking over the world, one carved-out-of-mountain-rock room at at time. However, there’s still some rough edges here, and some game balancing that could have made it even more engaging, both for those who adore resource management and those who might just like the challenge of taking over the world with the help of a few shiny new doomsday devices.

Even if I could forgive the presentation and bugs, though, the reality is that is a gacha game without the real money involved, and to me, that's a bit like playing a video game version of a poker machine. The moment you take the excitement of real money being part of the experience is also the moment that you realise that these "games" are pathetic, and indeed the polar opposite of entertainment.

It's a brilliantly made example of golf and delight to play on every level. It's just a game that's also asking for a lot of patience at the rate of progress it offers.