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.

The environments are detailed and beautiful, replete with pops of colour. Unfortunately, navigating them through a haze of lag destroys your enjoyment quite quickly. Pathways are dotted with doors, and the slightest glance in their direction pops you into places that you don’t want to be.

Sorcery Saga is a solid roguelike with a big heart, lots of content and a hefty challenge, but its repetitive gameplay and occasionally hostile design choices makes it a niche pick.

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.

This absolute travesty was the maiden game by Big Deez Productions. It’s never a nice feeling to be this critical about something, because people did put hard work and passion into it, and as a critic I feel like I’m being cruel to say that something is completely irredeemable. But what Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is: irredeemable. This is 2018’s most cuttingly unpleasant game to play. And I'm one of those that played Agony.

Musynx is as no-frills as rhythm games get. That's not necessarily a criticism, because the music - the most important feature of the genre - is a stand-out delight. I will play this one a lot more than I play DJ Max or Superbeat Xonic, for example. And yet, while the promise of plenty of DLC music to come is exciting, Musynx also lets itself down by being far too easy, and limited in features, to hit those high notes as one of the best examples of the genre.

That standout map is Egypt. It’s a complex arena, with wide desert fields interspersed with columns and trenches that really open up your tactical toolset.

Azure Reflections has plenty of challenge to offer the hardcore bullet hell fiends, but with its relative approachability and level of polish, it's also a great introduction to the world of Touhou shooters.

The high degree of simplification seems unnecessary when the studio has successfully pulled off both technical and stylish input modes in the past. The roster, in its non-DLC state at least, is also wildly lopsided towards BlazBlue. It doesn’t have the staying power of the top-tier games of the genre, but it’s still a blast to see these fantasy crossovers play out with friends, so it more than evens out.

This is the kind of game I can sit down to and play for an entire evening without realising how much time was slipping. It's always "just one more turn," or "just one more battle", and even after all these years of playing Koei's strategy and action games set through the Sengoku period, and reading books about it, I'm always impressed that Koei Tecmo manages to teach me something new each time it releases something in the franchise.

The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker’s hook, for me, remains the need to take over as a psychiatrist. It’s not as easy as sitting comfortably and saying things like, “and how does that make you feel?” As Doctor Dekker’s replacement you are toeing the line between your patients’ sanity and insanity, having to decipher clues in their personality or stories to gain insight into what to ask. The supernatural, Cthulhu-centric story behind the game is also a shining point that has led me to finally break my hesitancy to read Lovecraft. Your own sanity comes into question.

The very best examples of nostalgic homages are those that add something in the process. Goichi Suda's grindhouse-toned games, for example, add all kinds of stylistic features that help to build on the thematic basis. Milanoir isn't that game. It's slavishly devoted to something very obscure and doesn't do enough to appeal to people who don't know the base material. But that's not to say it's a poor game. Its energy and ballsy attitude is engrossing all in itself.

I can't for the life of me understand why the developers, who put such an earnest effort into recreating a true vision of the Judeo-Christian hell, would let some arbitrary need for gameplay let their work down.