Obviously, your own mileage will vary. If you're into arcade stuff, No Stick Shooter will excite. If your persona is after a game to clear your mind of the latest 150 hours plus of a JRPG turn based saga, No Stick Shooter will delight. And if you’re simply wondering where you fall on the arcade spectrum these days, No Stick Shooter will give a better start.

A love letter for fans, a final send-off for some beloved characters and fitting conclusions to endearing storylines. The likeable characters kept me interested and never left me feeling as though the development team had gone to the same well too many times, despite some reused locations and bosses. If you are okay with a considerable shift in overall gameplay, exchanging actual exploration on world maps for doorways leading to more focused events, then Trails in the Sky the 3rd is going to be highly satisfying.

The main point here is that Nippon Ichi has done a spot-on job with Disgaea 5 in porting it to the Nintendo Switch. This is one of the best tactics JRPGs you can play. It’ll last you a long time, become more rewarding the more time that you put into it, and runs just perfectly on the Switch’s hardware. You could not ask for a better portable game than this.

Let's take a step back and examine Block'hood from a distance: it's a city-building game with charming retro-styled graphics. With every step closer, with every minute longer played, the end goal becomes increasingly clear: showcasing the pressure our precious planet is currently under due to increasing human demands and decreasing natural resources. In general, I think humans know what's coming. It's the reason those huge blockbusters films about disasters do so well: no matter where we are from, what language we speak, we know that we are pushing the planet too far and possibly past the point of no return. We're scared. So some people fight it (science!) and other prefer to flee (and pretend the threat isn't there), but we're all watching and waiting. Block'hood means I no longer have to wait. I know where the world is going. And I think I'd like to get off the ride now.

This combat system is a lot of fun. Each character does have distinct abilities and a role in the battlefield, and the action is fast enough that you’ll need to think quickly as you play. The crowning achievement of combat is the super attacks that you work towards (usually in time for the boss battles).

For all its mechanical competency, The Surge feels as mechanical as its enemies through most of the experience. No where near enough was done with the science fiction theme, and after catching my attention with an intriguing set up, the game then lost me with a generally dull plot that it was never quite able to claw back.

Not every game needs to be innovative, however, to provide thoughtful entertainment, and Period: Cube most certainly provided me with that in good measure.

A mixed offering, but one that could serve as a fantastic foundation for Coffee Addict Studio to build on in future games.

A new NBA arcade game will always be something to get excited about. Many of us have fond memories of dropping coins into those arcade cabinets back in the day. A game that can capture that raw sense of fun, while modernising the more archaic elements would instantly become one of the most entertaining games of the year. I’m sure the developers went into NBA Playgrounds with the most noble of intentions, but this game is not the NBA I remembered. This game is one that young me would never have considered to be worth my allowance.

This is the kind of indie game that hurts to review, because the intent to do something fun is clearly there, but it’s just not a good game at all.

Once I pushed past the odd tone and approach to the game, though, I had a really good time with this one. It’s not a classic by any means, but it’s different, interesting, and often quite clever. This is a developer with a bright future.

What Flinthook does do well is keep the variety of enemies, rooms, and environments strong from start to finish, and, generally speaking, the difficulty curve is reasonable. There’s always the risk that random elements means a game will take massive momentary spikes in difficulty when you get unlucky and the algorithms work against you. Flinthook avoids that, and progress through the game does feel good, but it struggles to be compelling.

The level design is generally good, albeit quite generic. It’s not like Butcher has many surprises for the players, but the action flows nicely and the game knows how to be punishing without feeling unfair. All in all, it's a generally smooth game let down by its idea of scale.

Plasma Puncher is a gorgeous, difficult and sometimes frustrating game. The excellent production values are overshadowed by some minor technical inconsistencies, but while I could spend all day complaining about the small stuff, the real weakness is a lack of gameplay depth.

Dawn of War III feels like a little bit of every other game that the franchise has churned out so far, but whether or not it will stand the test of time is uncertain; I’m already having trouble pinpointing anything particularly memorable about the campaign that doesn’t involve particular factions having really cool units. Being a fan, I probably hold this game a little closer to my heart than others will. Perhaps those keeping it at arm’s-length will be far enough away to not notice the imperfections.

Even with something as pedestrian and well-canvassed as arena mode DLC, Yoko Taro found a way to do what he does best: question our fundamental understandings of things we tend to just take for granted, and tear at the fabric of the circular logic that holds those things together. Arena modes are the purest form of the idea that combat is the pinnacle of fun in games, so Taro made an arena mode that undermines that very foundation. The best part, though, is what comes after you’ve finished all three colosseums (and no, I’m not talking about the well-publicised CEO boss fight). The arenas represent maybe three quarters of the DLC, and thought-provoking as they are, they’re not a patch on the final chapter. I’ll leave it at that, because it’s best discovered with as little prior knowledge as possible, but suffice to say that 3C3C1D119440927 is a lot, lot more than just an arena mode with some costumes attached. It's an insightful look at the very nature of arena modes and games' general obsession with violence, and the perfect epilogue to the greatest game ever made.

It’s a beautiful, elegant genre, and, when it all clicks, it’s a timeless formula. Unfortunately, Operation Babel: New Tokyo Legacy just asks too much of its players.

Syberia 3 feels like a game that was made because everyone involved in the project felt an obligation to make it. It has its moments, and as a fan it’s great to see Sokal’s work reach a proper conclusion, but it’s also difficult to see how this game will find an audience; even among existing fans of Syberia, tastes change over 13 years, and it’s hard to see how this game has done anything to encourage people back for one more spin with Kate Walker.

Properly articulating what Birthdays means to me is difficult. It is the embodiment of the pure joy of gaming, where I can sit down and simply immerse myself within this space without feeling pressure or tension. There’s nothing to “win,” but everything to enjoy while, at the same time, the game is pointing out, in its very innocent and heartfelt way, a very simple but so important environmental message. To Yasuhiro Wada, the environment itself has always been the real protagonist of his games, and Birthdays The Beginning is the ultimate realisation of that philosophy.

Late Shift is definitely a step in the right direction for choose-your-own-adventure film-games. Consider this: when reviewing a game or a film, we often look at content, characters, and (voice) acting. Late Shift stands up to each of these elements on its own to a certain degree. Some of the content verged on deep but never quite made it, the characters were solidly average, and the acting was surprising, in the best way.

I’ve rarely been as delighted in simply immersing myself into a game as I’ve been with GNOG.

I strongly expect that this game will be used for years to come as a ‘textbook’ case to educate developers about how to compose a story by not resorting to screeds of text or long loops of audio (in the form of simulated manuscripts, letters, voice recordings etc.); almost tauntingly, in one story, the letter-being-read crutch is used, but subverted ingeniously through the gameplay.

The Fame & Strategy Expansion Pack for Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII adds even more depth to the game’s systems, and brings the game to the Xbox One for the first time as well. If you missed the original release of Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII, then this is obviously the way to go, and I do think that diehards will also find enough of worth in the expansion as well to justify the purchase.

Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is both an amazing nostalgic trip to an older generation of gaming as well as a breath of fresh air with its fast paced and solid combat mechanics. It's rare for a developer to take martial arts and really try and do the philosophy and flow of them justice in a game, and for that Shiness is a most welcome addition to the RPG library.

Frequently surprising, intense, and always sublime.

For all the beauty and the brains behind Expeditions: Viking, the one gripe of mine that chips away at its score is the bugginess.

Chaos Code just doesn't offer anything.

MechRunner might work as a mobile game. With some fixes to hit detection, it could be a mildly enjoyable way of wasting a few moments while you wait for a bus. But when I settle in and get comfy for some gaming at home, I want something that’s going to hold my attention for more than five minutes, and MechRunner barely manages even that.