In just about every way, Reynatis is a game that tries to reach well beyond what the team was perhaps capable of achieving. Which raises an interesting question: What to score it? I, personally would rather play something like this than the 99 per cent of games out there that copy off the “best practices” template of what has come before. Of course they’re more refined then Reynatis! But they’re just iterating on what already worked. Reynatis is a wild, chaotic mess that frequently loses sight of itself, but that’s the consequence of reaching for something different. Sometimes when people try this the ideas just don’t pan out as hoped. Reynatis is still very playable and the core gameplay is genuinely enjoyable. It might consistently fail to meet its lofty ambitions, but at least it tries, and as a work of art there is value in exploring what it does try to do.

The long and short of it is that Worms Armageddon is a classic, both within the Worms series and multiplayer gaming in general. While today it might seem a little barebones in terms of content, and the online multiplayer features are far too limited for a game that relies entirely on the multiplayer experience, as far as the playability goes it’s still off the charts, and one of the best games you can treat yourself to.

The Hokkaido Serial Murder Case: The Okhotsk Disappearance is a game I would recommend any ADV fan to try out, but even with the Yuji Horii pedigree, it needed more TLC on the localisation and marketing for it to truly make waves outside of Japan.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is the perfect Legend of Zelda game. Where Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom took the series in new directions, to the point that they're barely related to what came before them, Zelda’s first outing as a protagonist feels like it fits seamlessly in with the traditions of Ocarina of Time, Link’s Awakening and Link to the Past. Not only that, but Nintendo has built a gameplay system that is more whimsical and creative than any of those previous titles, making this a more complete and fully realised vision of what the series has always wanted to be. I desperately hope that this wasn’t just a one-off experiment, and The Legend of Link is here to stay.

It’s not that it needed to be longer, as it would outstay its welcome and short games are 100% fine by me, but perhaps some adjustable upwards difficulty, or breaking out the mini-games into their own unlocked sections – while they’re quite derivative, they’re well realised for the most part — or a way to encourage just a few more puzzle variant solves wouldn’t have gone astray here too.

I cannot say enough good things about Caravan SandWitch. It is a top-tier chill game. You can tell the instant Sauge steps foot on Cigalo: it’s especially calm for a post-apocalyptic planet, save for a massive storm brewing far out. The very few elements that didn’t work in my favour aren’t enough to even consider lowering my score for the game. That yellow van is instantly iconic the second you lay eyes on any visual of it. Caravan SandWitch has simple controls, colourful graphics, and oddly enough no sense of pending doom (despite Cigalo being on the edge of extinction.)

Antstream has won awards like “Heritage in Games” at the TIGA awards, and that best describes the quality of this platform. It’s a preservation library that gives players to play things that they would simply never come across, much less find a way to play. It might not be the “greatest hits” platform, yes, but if spending an afternoon wading through a library of obscure titles and trying things that alternate between happy discovery and dismal waste of time sounds like fun, then Antstream is probably something you’ll enjoy.

Tsunako’s art is, as always, gorgeous. The game’s a joy to play and hard to put down. It introduces some new (great) characters to the fiction while also giving me more time with Tohka. None of this is something to complain about. And the fact that it has finally been localised now suggests that perhaps, just perhaps, Idea Factory isn’t done with the series yet.

It’s not a game with a deep and rich narrative. Nor is deep in any particular sense. That’s not a criticism, it’s just that there’s not much to analyse based on how I usually focus on in my reviews. The game’s core quality is that it’s a whimsical, creative playground of ideas. We do need more of that in video games, and while the art style and overapplication of branding does deserve some reflection for what it implies about the relationship between video games, marketing teams, consumers and the idea that this is meant to be an art form, what is undeniable is that Astro Bot is worth every second you put into it.

Castlevania does seem to be a fading name in video games. Prior to Haunted Castle Revisited the last new Castlevania game was more than a decade ago now, and it was the dismal work that MercurySteam did on the series with Lord of Shadows. Castlevania Dominus Collection may well represent the last hurrah for a once powerful name in video games, but at least it reminds us of just how good this series could be.

Space Marine 2 is a game that will appeal to just about anyone who likes action games. This thing is fast, very furious, and intense. It doesn’t give you long to breathe between throwing more hordes at you, and thanks to that single-minded ferocity, in both single-player and multiplayer it’s a hoot. I don’t think it does a particularly great job of capturing the spirit and intent of the tabletop game and lore, but then again, whenever I was playing I was also having too much fun to care.

Visually, the pixel art style works well enough, and it helps on the Switch not being that complex a title so load times are minimal. Because your foes only respond after your attacks, there’s always time to stop and plan out shots around how each orb’s power works – once you wrap your head around that – and so it’s a pretty easy drop-in-drop out kind of game. Not everything needs to be a 100+ hour epic, you know?

The problem with Kairosoft games is that they’re inevitably good fun and even compulsive for a while. Once you sit down to one fresh you’re inevitably going to get hooked for a while, be that a few days or a few weeks. But soon after you’ll put it down and completely forget about it. You’ll come across it at random a few years later and then get very briefly hooked again, but again you’ll soon get tired of it. Kairosoft games are pure consumption, no meat, and while they’re fun – and this game is fun too (I hate coming across as overly critical of Kairosoft!) they are junk, and Doraemon deserved better.

As far as independent visual novels go, Celestia: Chain of Fate lands in that growing middle tier of visual novel. Sure it might not have the production values of an Otomate production, or even last week’s Famicom Detective Club by Nintendo. As with all genre’s there’s an A-tier, and Celestia isn’t quite there. Yet it punches far above the typical “indie” visual novel, too, thanks to its absolutely gorgeous art, the complexity of the branching narrative, and… well, the kind of writing that does make you want to see the inevitable CG when the very pretty girl and very, very pretty boys start smooshing lips and bodies together. Celestia is a very believable bit of fantasy romance, which is the point, and it’s one VN fans shouldn’t overlook, despite 2024 being quite a year for the genre.

It’s a bigger game than I was expecting. At around 50-60 hours at a reasonable pace, working through everything, it’s by far the largest Mana game ever produced. The fact that it doesn’t stop being a highly playable joy from the start right through to the end should be a good indication of just how beloved this one is set to become – it may even just unseat Secret of Mana itself. Visions of Mana might not be quite so genre-refining as that classic, but otherwise, this is the perfect representation of what Mana has always meant to represent.

To say anything else about Emio would be doing you all a disservice, as it’s a winding, twisting mystery that is best enjoyed unspoiled. If you did play the remakes of the first two Famicom Detective Club titles then you’ll get more of the same here, just with modern standards of writing. That alone makes it a much stronger experience, because the narrative in this thing is incredible.

Bakeru is a warm, delightful thing and one of the best non-Nintendo platformers that I’ve ever played. Admittedly I’m partial to it given that I love roaming Japan for all its little regional quirks and specialties, and I loved discovering the developer’s interpretations of them here, but even if you’re not attuned to the game’s cultural resonance, its relentless joy will surely prove infectious.

The good news is that now that Big Ant has nailed the look, feel and atmosphere of tennis and delivered a take on the sport that is genuinely impressive, there’s only really one thing left for them to focus on for ongoing updates and iterations. Far be it for me to ever suggest that AI is an easy part of game development, but if the Big Ant team can access enough historical records of how the professionals have constructed their games, understand where they target their shots, under what conditions, and where their games break down, then that massive roster, coupled with personality-based AI, would put Big Ant so far ahead of the competition that there’s no catching up. It’s a big data exercise, and it would be so especially worth it for the sport of tennis.

I admire a game that is willing to take a risk, and certainly trolling the people who believe that games should be mindless content that doesn’t challenge their intelligence with a “political idea,” is a creative risk I can admire. But beyond the initial amusement that I took from knowing that somewhere out there someone is absolutely fuming about this game on a forum or in a tweet, there’s actually very little intelligence in Dustborn. It’s also an experience that is so culturally specific that it probably shouldn’t have been a global release.

The original White Day is one of my favourite horror games. It’s clumsy and clunky, but it had the right energy and really had a lot of creative ideas going for it. I am disappointed that White Day 2 is relatively unambitious and struggles to have its own identity. It’s still an awful lot of fun and I much prefer it to the big action “horror” games that want to be action shooters with ugly monsters. While I found White Day 2 to be an admirable commitment to a more classical form of horror, I was just hoping for something with a little more impact behind it.

It’s very good that the Switch has Ticket To Ride, as it is a lovely, inoffensive, easy-playing board game. It’s as accessible as something like Risk, Monopoly, or Catan, but less luck-based and therefore far less frustrating than those other games. Marmalade is a highly competent developer and while the presentation of the game isn’t the most inspired, this is still going to be heavily in the rotation for multiplayer fun if your group has any interest in board games at all.

I can’t help but feel Rockstar’s classic videogame nasty, Manhunt, was a better attempt at critiquing the voyeuristic quality of reality television. It pre-dated reality TV as a genre, so it’s not explicitly about the subject, but the savage grimness in the way it turned snuff film production into entertainment certainly had something harrowingly poignant to say about what we, as people, will find entertaining to watch. The Crush House, meanwhile, is bright and fruity, and the sinister element that is meant to carry the subversion seems to be something more akin to something like “tee hee, we know this is a bit problematic, but we sure love reality TV anyway.” It makes sense that this is where the developers would land. We all know that reality TV should be critiqued even as we all have at least one example of it that we can’t help but watch. The developers have also made a genuinely entertaining game out of it. It would be ridiculous to criticise candy for being good at being candy. I think I’m just surprised that it didn’t have more substance because it seemed like it had all the potential in the world to be a grand dessert.

It’s amazing that a visual novel of the prestige and impact of Fate/Stay Night would be released almost without fanfare, but that’s what’s happened with this. I’m not sure we were even made aware of its impending release until a day or two before it landed. It’s the latest chapter in a game that has a long history of being a massively influential success despite the best efforts of everyone managing it. And I would argue that this tells you more about its raw quality than anything else.

I don’t have much else to say about Hakuoki on the Switch that I didn’t say in my review of the game all the way back on the PlayStation 3. It was wonderful then, it remains wonderful now, and thanks to the quality of the OLED screen the all-important art feels like it’s getting better with age. Hakuoki is like a fine wine and will forever remain worthwhile, no matter how many times it gets bundled up for a re-release.

Niche sports are difficult. Sports are always complex, demanding things to code, and everyone expects their favourite sport to get the FIFA treatment. That level of experience is just not possible with an audience as limited as Pickleball is. However, it’s not unreasonable to expect the game to at least try to look and feel like the real sport. PPA Pickleball Tour 2025 doesn’t even come close.

It’s impossible to experience everything that Natsu-Mon has to offer in a single play-through – much like how it’s impossible to get everything done that you want to over a summer. They’re always over too quickly. But then the very best way to play is to put Natsu-Mon down for quite some time afterward and let that one run through the game be your memory of it. This is something to be experienced, not played, and as far as emergent narratives are concerned, this is the best example of that I’ve seen in many, many years.

The New Denpa Men is a throwaway free-to-play game, but it’s not a bad time by any means and you’ll have a smile on your face while you play. Do I wish that Genius Sonority went the other way with Denpa Men and gunned for something of the scope of Dragon Quest proper? Yes, absolutely, and I think the inherent quirkiness of the series could work at full scale. But do I regret playing this? Not at all.

Cygni: All Guns Blazing is a SHMUP with some seriously high production values behind it. For a genre that is usually quite niche, seeing something that pitches higher like this is impressive. It’s not always perfect – the budget spent on the cut scenes was a noble idea that ultimately misfired – but once you’re into the thick of the swirling maelstrom of activity, it’s hard to be disappointed with what the developers have achieved.