What really impressed me about I Am Setsuna is the way that the various systems layered on top of one another to reinforce and complement the intense, powerful themes that sit at the core of the game.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven isn’t going to send a ripple through the video game community, but it was never intended to. As a simple little love letter to fans, it succeeds despite taking its faults and the lofty requisites to truly treasure it.

There’s one area where Hunter’s Legacy does really shine, though, and that’s in its presentation. The environments and enemies are all pretty simple and straightforward, but the sprite art gives everything a sense of life and vibrancy. Instead of taking the severely well-trodden path of “retro” pixel graphics, Hunter’s Legacy simply takes the beauty of 2D game art and runs with it. It’s admittedly rough around the edges; it’s an indie game that doesn’t have the pristine finish of better-funded 2D games, but that just adds to its charm, in my view.

The Slaughter - Act One successfully leaves me yearning for Act Two. The characters are dark yet witty, the locale gritty and unwelcoming. The time and place is one that I am fond of despite the crime and violence, and I do believe it was a faithfully reproduced as possible in the game.

I ended up having a lot of fun with Dex, though playing it through at the same time that I was reviewing The Technomancer was a bit unfortunate for it. In belonging to the same narrative genre as a game that will be right up there with my favourites this year, Dex’s pulpy and limited narrative was disappointing. Thankfully, as an RPG/platformer, it still largely works, and will certainly help you kill off a rainy weekend or two.

Despite its lack of content, SpiritSphere is still a blast for the first few rounds of play. If you’ve got friends who don’t have much time for a long haul multiplayer game, but still want some fast paced action, SpiritSphere has you covered. It’s an interesting look at how nostalgic and culturally significant footnotes in gaming can be remixed and re-appropriated into completely new experiences.

The team writes intelligent, worthy scenarios and narratives, and then they do the best they can to build gameplay to support that concept.

Monster Hunter Generations might not be a true sequel due to its similarities to Monster Hunter 4 and the many call backs to earlier games in the series. That being said, Generations does make some excellent design choices as it highlights everything that has made the series great, added some new mechanics to help keep things fresh and provides the biggest and best Monster Hunter experience yet.

Full Mojo Rampage isn’t exactly a genuine look at the mythology and aesthetic of voodoo, but the name drop of Baron Samedi and the other Loa lords is a nice touch. Still, it’s hard to imagine you’ll get much from this. Not when there are so many other great roguelikes out there.

It’s addictive, it’s charming in its retro design, and it absolutely has the “just one more go” thing about it that can turn a short play session into a marathon.

It remains utterly soulless, and a completely useless product.

Neither side of the game will exactly challenge your mastery over their respective genres, but the cutesy aesthetic, light sense of humour, and general balance of the game is spot on. This is something that’s easy to play in the background while watching television or a movie, and sometimes that’s all you’ll need or want.

Once I’m actually playing, I have a ball with this, because it is, in a very real sense, a cultural phenomenon. Never has a game managed to get people to flock over to specific areas of town like birds to seed. People point to it being too simple as a game, but really the game bit is barely relevant. What is relevant is that this game has people out and about, socialising and exploring. There’s a group experience event going on with Pokemon Go, and it’s addictive to simply be part of the collective.

Not a perfect game, but it is a very, very good one that does something the series has needed to do for quite some time: innovate.

Yes, it’s ironic that the game doesn’t feature any actual military conflict in being a wargame, but there is no game out there that better simulates the tone and structure of a conflict as this one has done with the Cold War… which just happens to be one of the most interesting periods in the history of political strategy.

Even with some of the issues that mean it might only be for JRPG fans – especially the dungeon crawling monotony, this is, nonetheless, yet another feather for the JRPG cap for the Nintendo 3DS, and represents yet another reason to settle in with your 3DS for dozens of hours of fantasy fun.

The game can be fun to play for a few hours here and there but repetitiveness filters through to the presentation, too, with reused music and visuals that become draining after a while.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness will probably not be remembered as one of the PlayStation 4’s finest. It’s greatly let down by technical issues with a camera that actively works against the game’s strengths: the epic sense of scale and the beautiful presentation. Dig beneath that, however, and you arrive at a game with an enjoyable narrative, fun characters, and a solid action JRPG combat system – all the stuff that’s actually important, in other words.

It was certainly compelling enough for me to want to finish the game. There are also plenty of challenges to help hone platforming skills which ultimately do help in finishing the regular levels. As a game that is clearly supposed to appease Mega Man fans who will likely never get a new game in the series ever again, it falls spectacularly short of their expectations, particularly those that assisted in the crowdfunding campaign.

Ultimately what sets Battle Cats apart from the many (many) similar games of similar depth and strategy is that hugely creative edge. This game gets to be the distinctive and memorable example of the genre because the artists had the sense to do something that makes no sense, but we end up looking forward to each new level just to see the insanity that it brings.

That being said though, this is not a fantastic game by any account and while there’s a little fun to be had in a frantic online match, there are much better ways to get your competitive shooter fix.

With a comprehensive tutorial system, Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the best fit game for people new to the genre to wrap their minds around it. Equally, for more experienced strategy fans, the superb balance that made the historical events the game is based on so fascinating also make for the near-perfect strategy game.

As a story-focused first-person adventure game, NERO is quite remarkable. It’s surreal, heartfelt, bittersweet, and thought-provoking, and that should have been more than enough to carry it without the need for shoehorned-in “gameplay”. As it is, it’s a very good game, but it would have been so much better if it hadn’t tried so hard to avoid the “walking simulator” criticism and just ran with its strengths.

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma is a game everyone absolutely must play. If you haven’t played the previous games in the series, drop everything and experience them.

I love the way Mario & Sonic at the Rio Olympic Games is presented. It’s a truly gorgeous game and matches with every expectation that I have for the atmosphere and aesthetics of the Rio Games. But this is an Olympics cash-in game, which means most events boil down to minigames, rather than fully-fleshed out games dedicated to a particular sport. A good half the events in here are games I would buy if they were built further into stand-alone takes on the sport, but in a package like this I’m basically done with them after playing them a couple of times each.

To call Asemblence an unorthodox game would be an understatement; it’s a game that throws convention off a cliff. I doubt many would find it fun, or even satisfying in a traditional sense, but it's a game that pushes the boundaries of what a game can be – that questions our most basic assumptions of the medium, and that is something we desperately need.

It's not the longest game, and doesn't offer anything that will be remembered as a classic game by any means, but the tense atmosphere, striking art style, and challenge, will surely help this game find itself a niche.

Effortlessly, it’s the best game that has been released on the Wii U, and, given the games to come, discounting Zelda as an NX launch title, it will be the best game that will ever be released on the Wii U.