I truly love West of Loathing. It's charming, silly, fun and, most surprisingly, offers genuinely engaging combat and questing. This made it easy to play until my Nintendo Switch battery was running flat over, and then have me itching to play again while the battery was charging. And it did convince me to start playing Kingdoms of Loathing again. I guess I'm never going to get away from these nonsense stick figures.

If you haven't played many tower defence games in the past, this one is the best place to start, since it'll be the only tower defence game you need after that. Q-Games produces some of the most distinctive, charming, and beautiful games out there, and PixelJunk Monsters is the team's best work to date.

The most impressive thing about Street Fighter is just how playable it is to this day (at least, from Street Fighter II onwards).

It’s the combination of well designed levels, hauntingly picturesque visuals and a consistent overarching tone which make this game hard to put down. I admire the developers’ ability to keep the player fixated on a pensive mindset, so that regardless of how difficult the levels become, they always have something deep to ponder on as they repeat each level until the correct button timings are ingrained into their fingers.

For the most part though, Yoku’s Island Express is a lot of wholesome, whimsical fun. It manages to make the hybrid of two disparate genres work in some inspired ways, and the result is a unique game full of surprises that is sure to delight players. The only flaw is when the mechanics outweigh their welcome and stop feeling unique – the moments where Yoku is just a pinball game, or just a Metroidvania, are generally the weakest.

Many will say that Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 isn’t as great as the first collection. While the first seems to have had a bit more attention to detail in it, this collection is still a great way to explore the Mega Man games of yesteryear. I am crossing all of my body parts hoping that we see a third collection containing the likes of the Game Boy games, Mega Man & Bass and Wily Wars, as I have enjoyed every minute of Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, despite missing a few key features found in the first collection.

The Mega Man Legacy Collection on the Switch is the best I’ve played yet. With extra challenges, a rewind feature and some of the best emulation of the Nintendo Entertainment System I’ve seen. This is a must-have collection for sure.

For such a bright, happy, cute game, the core of what Happy Birthdays tells us is both potent and important. This is a game about environmentalism, respect for the ecosystem, and it's a chance to watch the form that evolution takes in a palatable and enjoyable manner. Wada's most famous work, Harvest Moon, did a remarkable job of highlighting the life of a farmer to people who may have never comprehended what a country lifestyle might look like, so too has he made the basic idea of evolution accessible to people of all ages in Happy Birthdays. This game's predecessor was remarkable. This game itself is a remarkable evolution of that original vision.

In the end the problem with the Fairune Collection comes from the fact the series is a short lived one and yet it still took its time to find its stride. The most recent game, Fairune 2, should have been the foundation and the first title, but as it is, it's the only one that feels complete, with the rest of this collection being more akin to proof of concepts or tech demos.

This game is undoubtedly a dream on the Switch.

This remaster really needed the novelty of the Nintendo Switch handheld portability to provide the definite hook to justify a re-purchase.

Despite those small issues, I can see this game developing a strong core audience that will play it for quite some time to come. It's simply too groovy, colourful, and cheerful to resist.

The collection of games itself is just such incredible value, covering off such a broad range of SEGA's history when it was at its very finest, that anyone missing out on this is doing themselves a real disservice. Heck, for the three Phantasy Star games in there alone I would instantly recommend this package. That series was every bit as good as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest back in the day.

Even if you can overlook the troublesome philosophies that permeate Detroit, you still won’t find much interesting here. The story loses a lot of its charm once it goes from dealing with day-to-day android life to trying to tell a huge event that will change the shape of civilization. It falls into a common trap of video game writing, as it forces the player into life or death situations constantly. These mostly fall flat and players are left with a game that really doesn’t have much to say that wasn’t already incredibly obvious from the start.

It's not exactly the first science fiction game to bring up the humanity of AI, but its exploration of that is more thoughtful than most. At the same time, it's an edge-of-your-seat thriller full of charming characters, brought to life with gorgeous portraits and artwork. So long as you've played Steins;Gate before it, Steins;Gate 0 is a game you don't want to miss.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey transcends the standard dungeon crawler. Posing innumerable questions about reality while using the dungeons themselves to full effect, it will keep players thinking even when slaying demons. Redux is not some grandiose HD reimagining with a bloated budget but an insightful expansion to a masterpiece’s original vision.

Asemblance was bottled lightning. Oversight was never going to be able to recreate that, but it comes as close as it possibly can.

Super Mega Baseball 2 is an accessible, arcade-style game anyone can enjoy. I hadn’t enjoyed a baseball game myself in a long time, and I tied it to simply not being able to hit the ball while batting. Super Mega Baseball 2 pretty much fixes everything I didn’t like about modern baseball games.

For people who didn't play through the DLC on the Wii U version, or want a portable version of Hyrule Warriors that doesn't feel like a one massive compromise after another, Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition is essential.

Conan Exiles is enjoyable enough, but it does reveal some fundamental weaknesses in the survival genre; it’s not one that can be tuned effectively to storytelling, and that means that if you’re using a storytelling property, such as Conan, you’re going to need to exhibit a great deal over control to bring the necessary focus into the experience, and unfortunately the developers weren’t able to quite get there with Conan Exiles.

This is a game which taught me to love the feeling of being lost, and I’m sure it’s one I will return to for a long time.

If I had to sum everything up in one thought, it would be to stop what you’re doing and dive into the Deadfire archipelago. With brilliant storytelling, character development, places to see and many ways in order to do what is needed, there’s no shortage of adventure to be had. Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is a fantastic experience and honestly should be a must for any admirers or lovers of the RPG genre.

The teams behind these Warriors games are also clearly comfortable with the Nintendo Switch as a piece of hardware, and One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 might be three years old now, but the Switch “ultimate edition” really is the ultimate edition.

An interesting, albeit incredibly hard, journey. It's a game made for people who are willing to play and replay the same levels over and over again because they simply won't let it beat them, and while that might be a niche audience today, it's hard to argue that Cast of the Seven Godsends doesn't do it in style.

Hello Kitty Kruisers isn't a great game from an adult's perspective, and that's a bit of a wasted opportunity as there are plenty of adult Kitty fans out there. But where most games made for children are brutally bad, I don't think Kruisers is that. In fact, I think the developers have cleverly stripped back the elements of a kart racer that children struggle with, while leaving the elements that they're inclined to enjoy. And for parents that are dragged into playing this with their kids, just think; soon enough they'll graduate to Mario Kart.

There is no respect from the developer in this game. Not for the genres, nor for the time that the game asks of its players. There is no greater insult that an artist can direct at their audience.

It really is little more than a direct port of a really wonderful game, with only the most superficial of enhancements. That being said, Dragon’s Crown Pro is a direct port of a really wonderful game, and it’s still the most sublime, brilliant fun, and it only gets better the more people you share it with.

Time After Time had me on the edge of my seat—it wasn't just the novelty of hearing English swears transliterated in Japanese dialogue. This is a game with so much to say, and such a creative way of saying it, that I couldn't put it down.