Octopath Traveler is a beautiful game that somehow never gets tired. It has a labyrinthine plot that bravely attempts to give eight characters the same scope and development as eight sole protagonists would get in lesser games. It’s also a game that bravely makes the story all about those characters, with the world, harsh as it can be, almost secondary to the insular unit and their individual arcs. That sheer ambition is all the more impressive because Octopath Traveller uses sprites. Little 2D characters made up of even littler squares. People need to play this game if only to realise that not everything spectacular needs to be photo-real.

Its striking monochrome art style and juxtaposition of atmospheric peacefulness with wince-inducing violence lends to a dreamlike quality that is utterly entrancing. The first few hours of this game had me terrified, wondering how the environment was going to turn against me in ever more creative and depraved ways. I loved the graphics and music which still manage to feel unique despite the game’s age. For the puzzles and atmosphere alone, Limbo is worth a try. Once the ordeal is over however, I found myself wishing for a larger narrative to delve into, or a deeper exploration of themes that the game teased but never fully committed to.

The game itself is a noble effort, sure, but ultimately far too ambitious to achieve what it’s really looking to achieve. The end result is the death knell for horror games; it’s just not intense or frightening enough.

Sadly, I can't imagine a single scenario that I would actually want to play Awkward with anyone. None of the questions I came across are either things I want to learn about a friend in a party setting, or they're things I already know and, whether I agree with them or not, I just don't find the subject matter amusing.

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.

Groove Coaster, to me, isn't a game about precision and perfection, like most rhythm games. It's a game about letting your senses get overwhelmed, and enjoying the music through sight and touch as much as by hearing it; the "game" is just one means of bringing that about. More than anything else, Groove Coaster is a game about losing yourself in the music, and that's something it achieves perfectly.

Shining Resonance Refrain might not be a classic example of the genre, but it gets the most important components of the genre right – the characters and the storytelling – and backs it up with some gorgeous art and a perfectly competent combat system.

Mushroom Wars 2 is the ideal casual strategy game. It has the potential to be much more than it is – the lack of a story to go with the gorgeous characters and art design is unforgivable – but nonetheless this is the perfect example of how to make something simple and elegant, while leaving just enough in there for people to feel like their strategic brain muscles are being flexed. As I said at the outset, Mushroom Wars 2 is a delight.

While the Nintendo Switch version of the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy may not look quite as dazzling as its counterparts, there’s no denying that it’s bolstered by being available on a portable system.

The Crew 2 really isn’t all that engaging. Sure, The Crew 2 can be recommended as an arcade game that controls well for casual racing fans, but those updates are going to have to be really good in order to give this title longevity.

Koihime Enbu RyoRaiRai is going to be one very niche fighting game on the PlayStation 4. Very few people in the west will care about the extended franchise that it comes from, being adult visual novels, and those that are fans enough of Koihime Musou have been able to buy the previous version of Koihimi Enbu on PC. I hope some people discover it though, because there really is a good little fighting game in there.

Hexologic is beautiful in its zen minimalism. The soundtrack is gorgeously relaxing, the beautiful aesthetic makes wonderful use of crisp lines and white space to be the kind of thing I'd happily point design students to as a way of doing interfaces and modern chic properly. That beauty is backed up with an elegant, efficient, and clever logic foundation, and as a result it's all very classy and the kind of experience you can enjoy with a glass of good red wine. It's just disappointing that Hexologic didn't prove testing enough on the intellect to be a truly spectacular example of a puzzler.

But the thing which makes Anima: Gate of Memories work is that despite the individual failings of nearly every part of the game, the finished package is coherent.

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.

The purity and simplicity of what drives this game is appealing, and even refreshing, and the perfect thing for a lazy Sunday afternoon, when you just need to clear your head.

I would have liked more context to the action, better realised characters, and more involved levels. And, of course, some kind of single player experience. But, for what it is, as a no-frills Overwatch clone, Paladins gets the job done. It’s a game I’ll likely be playing for quite some time to come, because it certainly scratches a very specific itch.

Lanota has the distinction of being the most interesting rhythm experience on the Nintendo Switch by virtue of that unique and clever gameplay mechanic. It lets itself down a little compared to the many other rhythm games on the console by having too much music at odds with the theme and aesthetics that are carried through the presentation, and that inconsistency is disappointing. It's still delightful, but perhaps a game that would have been better off in the hands of developers with a greater capacity for music curation.

Lumines is at its best when it's pure immersion, no frills. Throw on a really good headset, turn the volume right up, load up a playlist of your favourite music, and melt deep into the beats, thudding rhythm, and hypnotic colours. Lumines is a puzzle game, but the action becomes so driven by feeling and rhythm that it's not really fair to call it something so simple; at it's best Lumines is a game you don't think about. It's a game you feel. And Lumines is so perfectly good at that all the developers needed to do with Lumines Remastered is stick the exact same game on Nintendo Switch.

While the latest package of Ikaruga isn’t quite the grand celebration it should be for a classic title, Treasure’s shooter has aged fantastically well. The puzzle-like shooting is just as thrilling and demanding as it was back in 2002, and it’s sure to challenge any fan of shooters. Ikaruga’s themes of polarity help it stand out from the bullet hell crowd, and make it one of the finest shoot ‘em ups that can be purchased on Switch.

The real strength of Gray Dawn lies far from its decent controls, its ability to run economically on a PC whilst looking amazing, and its employment of psychological horror tropes to get your heart rate up. The proof is all in the Christianity-flavoured pudding. I have never played any other game quite like this which uses all the trappings of religion in a way that subverts our everyday conceptions of it.

Once again Dontnod has crafted a world ripe to explore, as it is set three years after the events of Life is Strange and still within Oregon the world is full of references to the original game, even within this brief pre-release teaser. Fans of the series will play this and find themselves completely relieved of any lingering concerns that they may have had that Max and Chloe are no longer the focus of the series, with Captain Spirit proving the Life is Strange universe - and Dontnod's on mastery over this kind of storytelling - is bigger then just the original protagonists.

It’s genuinely sad to see NinjaKiwi like this. I wonder if the studio’s founders realised that, ten years down the line, they’d have an international company gouging players for microtransaction money, and re-releasing empty husks of old games onto the Switch for the chance at even more revenue.

As far as pure entertainment goes, it's hard to look past Sushi Striker. The manic energy and silly sense of humour combine with match-3 gameplay that is far more nuanced than is the norm for the genre, and while I could take a hard pass on the way it appropriates some of the more irritating features of the free-to-play trends that dominate puzzle games, for the most part Sushi Striker is an end-to-end delight that probably didn't deserve to be localised at all, but I'm glad it has been.

This is one hell of a journey.

Iro Hero ambitiously seeks to reinterpret polarity switching shooters. Baffling design choices render it alienating even to seasoned shoot ‘em up fans, however. The blueprint for a clever shooter is here and it’s possible the developers will rectify that base game with patches and updates, but the Iro Hero of today does not reflect that lofty potential.

I’m so delighted to say that Lust For Darkness is the real deal. The fact that I can compare it to one of the greatest erotic thrillers of all time in Eyes Wide Shut, and not break down laughing, is in itself is a great credit to the developers. The game lacks the sheer mastery and refinement that Stanley Kubrick had over his canvas, but this is still leagues ahead of the clumsy, overly-simple idea of “horror” that most game developers aspire to.

Vampyr is the vampire story that I’ve waited for many, many years for. As a fan of Anne Rice and the deeper tales around vampires – and as a fan of stories that are focused on moral conflict and consequence, Dontnod have crafted something that feels custom-designed for me.

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.