The fate of the world depends on your grace. So pick up your tiny pink blobs, listen out for that tempting beat, and put your best foot forward. With the music flowing, and the world on your back, Tempopo is a charming little experience.

For Bleach fans, Rebirth of Souls is a fun little treat – and while it’s not the most polished experience, there’s still a lot to love about how it shoots for the moon.

As a smorgasbord of new content, headlined by new, handy small business features that open up the possibilities for making money and monetising your Sims’ favourite activities, The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies still feels rich with potential. It won’t completely overhaul your gameplay experience, but it adds in a bunch of neat touches to make the experience of running a business fresh and exciting all over again.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is a game that unabashedly demands you meet it on its level, which I do find somewhat admirable. I just constantly found it to be a miserable slog to engage with, where everything was ten times more overblown than it had any business being. There’s a fascinating sandbox deep down within it, but digging through the mountain of muck to appreciate it was simply more than I could stand most of the time.

Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind is a sincere, often enjoyable game that will give long-time Power Rangers fans a pleasant burst of nostalgia. It cares about the franchise, and it nails the looks, the sounds, and the vibes of the series. As a beat-em-up, it’s serviceable – intermittently fun, if undercooked – but any fans starved for a halfway decent game that “gets” why Power Rangers has endured, could certainly do a lot worse.

In its approach to campaign integration, Sparking! Zero is much weaker. While it presents strong ideas in having branching story pathways, the narrative’s varying quality and beige storytelling is a letdown. The flash and style of individual battles may be enough to dazzle you, but those looking for anything deeper will need to dive further back into Dragon Ball‘s video game past to find it.

Let go of your inhibitions, and Funko Fusion can be a real blast. Like a magic trick, you shouldn’t look too closely, though. Sometimes a game can be fun without being good, and Funko Fusion fits that description quite nicely.

It simultaneously tries to be as ‘mature’ as possible through constant depictions of excessive brutality while also being stubbornly unwilling to engage with its source material beyond the aspects most problematically aimed at 12 year olds. It is in the most basic of senses very fun, and I will be coming back to it again when new Operations missions drop for free over the next year. Its combat loop is exhilarating and its visual splendor immaculate. Its entire package just sits in such tonal disharmony within itself and worse so still when compared to other recent 40k video games...Perhaps ironically that makes Space Marine 2 the truest and most immersive satire of fascism in gaming yet though. Just a whole lot of hollow sound and fury.

Visions of Mana isn’t necessarily breaking the mold, but it’s a good time if you’re keen to rollick around an assortment of biomes, smashing monsters with big ol’ swords and delving deep into the class system. While I don’t necessarily see myself undertaking another playthrough of the game, I do think that fans of the series will enjoy what’s in store. Just brace yourself for the inevitable “grizzly” cry to get stuck in your head.

Pepper Grinder is a great game, I just deeply hated the experience of playing it on Xbox. On PC, it felt great. I’ve heard very good things about it on Switch. Your experience might vary, you might like the extra grinding frustration of the Xbox experience. Whether you play it or not, though, you should seek out the soundtrack and listen to it, and then look at all of the art, because it is an experience to be savoured.

It’s in these interactions that Lovestruck makes the most difference. As mentioned, it’s not a particularly robust expansion pack, and it doesn’t introduce mechanics that should be considered outright “new.” Rather, it expands on existing features and provides new possibilities, allowing you to live out dramatic new tales, complete with racy, steamy, complex romances.

This game is absolutely “for” certain people – speedrunners who enjoy a good challenge, competitive online gamers, or those looking to indulge their nostalgia – but fitting none of these categories, I found myself wanting more from Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. Despite a moreish opening loop of mini-games, it’s not long before the game’s lower depths are plumbed.

On the pure charm of Sushi Bot, and his tiny little reactions, Rolling Hills is bright and breezy to play. For those familiar with Diner Dash, there is also elements of nostalgia in the sushi delivery process. A sense of repetition and a slower pace does mean Rolling Hills isn’t particularly gripping or challenging after hours of gameplay – but regardless, there’s plenty of fun and comfort to be found in this light-hearted sim.

It’s hard to deny that the minute-to-minute gameplay is just a whole lot of fun. The varied mechanics of each class, and the deep bench of weapon customisation, will offer something to keep the wheel spinning. If nothing else, that the game is free helps clear the hurdle of getting your mates to drop in – especially in the face of Call of Duty’s premium price tag – even if only for a month or two.

It’s a game made for people who already love cats, and it’s probably not going to convert your one uncle who’s a bit weird about how much he hates them (you know the one). But if you love your weird little guys, here’s a game made by people who clearly love them, too.

While the game feels like a filler episode, particularly as you trample through the same patches of deserts and other terrains, completing similar quests with similar goals, it remains a pleasant experience, thanks to its stylistic touches. It might not be a perfect adaptation of Sand Land, but for those who wish to inhabit its world and expand the tale of the iconic manga, it’s a fine road trip that brims with enough style and personality to paper over its biggest flaws.

I truly loved the first two-thirds of Tales of Kenzera: ZAU and it saddens me that I felt the opposite for the remainder of it.

I don’t see myself sticking out hours upon hours of further gameplay, but the handful of salty, vinegary chips that make up the foundations of Skull and Bones have kept me well sated for the past two weeks – and I can’t deny I’ve found myself thinking about the game even when I’m not logged in.

It’s not overtly ambitious and there are very safe choices in its approach, but Mario vs. Donkey Kong is still a lovely time – and provides relief in a storm of more complex and frustrating puzzlers. It’s certainly a product of its era, but it works wonderfully well as a callback to simpler times.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League feels like it was designed as a single-player narrative adventure, with plenty of love and care devoted to its killer story (which should rightfully be considered among the best DC adaptations), before it was transformed into something else entirely. In individual parts, it shines incredibly brightly and there are strong, clever choices in the game’s narrative – but like Frankenstein’s Monster, the way it’s put together means it doesn’t quite realise its true potential.

While its best ideas are held back by its lack of refinement, the adventure remains surprisingly compelling, even as you’re wasting hours away on levelling up your favourite monsters, and experimenting with battle tactics. It doesn’t quite live up to its competitors in the monster-catching genre, but it’s certainly a memorable game, and one defined by its devotion to being fun, silly, and wonderfully weird.

Despite some initial misgivings and a few frustrations, there’s a lot to latch onto and love here. Though the battle system is in need of some heavy tuning, frustrations can mostly be mitigated with accessibility options, and the game that ultimately comes together is more than the sum of its parts. It might buckle under its own weight at times, but Knuckle Sandwich is an endearing and wild ride worth going on.

For the grown-up Bluey fans in our household – one who has spent their entire career covering video games, and one who has barely touched a game from the last thirty years – there are as many obvious shortcomings in Bluey: The Videogame as there are charming callbacks. But to the six- and four-year-old, even though there were frustrations, none of that really seemed to matter in the end. Sometimes the bugs and glitches even served as a spark to imagine some logical in-world reason for the mishaps. Is it magic? Is it actually a hidden secret?

These small issues add up to sour the experience – especially given the lengths the game goes to presenting itself as the definitive rally package. They feel like a further indictment on the numerous crude contexts that surround the centre of EA Sports WRC’s fantastic rally experience. It’s a shame, because when you’re behind the wheel, absolutely sending it at 150km/h on the narrowest road you’ve ever seen in your life, it feels like nothing else matters.

My experience with Saltsea Chronicles was a very conflicted one. It’s unlike anything I’ve played before and I appreciated its genuine uniqueness. It boasts an intricately crafted world with an intriguing investigative system, colourful characters and seemingly endless choices. But as much as I liked the narrative conceit, the way it unfolded felt long-winded in a way that struggled to keep a firm hold of my attention.

Reviewing a game from a solo developer, especially one with so much obvious love and care poured into it can be difficult. As a calling card for Koźmiński, World of Horror is astonishing – a stunning achievement, an incredible piece of work. As a game? It’s not bad. World of Horror will impress you more than it scares you, but it really is very impressive, at least. For all its faults, fans of Junji Ito would be hard pressed to find a more loving homage.

Getting into the groove and feeling the rhythm with your whole body is brain-tickling. It’s an absolute joy. With my arms burning, Break Free complete, I felt like I’d accomplished something. While the other game modes in Samba de Amigo: Party Central are slightly less compelling, in that many are routine and eventually devolve to repetition, on the strength of StreamiGo!, this spin-off is a strong entry in the rhythm game genre.

It’s a great escape to the ‘wild west’ countryside, but one without significant bells and whistles.

There’s a kind of scrappy, desperate feeling to a firefight in Jagged Alliance 3. Hits to the arms reduce accuracy, and damage to the legs impedes movement. Cover can be destroyed. Losing line-of-sight allows your merc to re-enter Sneak Mode and return to surprise the enemy. Saving a couple of AP to drop into a prone position at the end of a turn can be the difference between seeing the next turn or bleeding out. Yet, despite all this tactical granularity, the successful play is often a matter of running around the cover the enemy is hiding behind and shooting them in the back. Assuming you don’t miss, of course.

Viewfinder is a short and sharp exploration of a strong concept that builds an unimposing space to play with those ideas, and fosters a mild, continual hum of gratification as you go on that journey. A pleasant exercise in gently massaging your brain synapses, it’s like a brisk refreshment that leaves you feeling slightly more satisfied when you’re done.

Oxenfree 2 is an easy recommendation if you loved the first game as much as I did. While the original is definitely my preference between the two, the sequel expands the series’ lore and is packed full of callbacks, while also featuring a lot of the quirks that made the first so interesting. Oxenfree 2 is, fundamentally, more of a good thing.

This is not the WWE 2K rival many assumed it would be. Instead, like its real-life counterpart, AEW: Fight Forever aims for something different. At times, it feels wild and cheesy, and strange art choices make it an uncanny experience. But equally, it embraces this cheese, elevating its action and storytelling with a welcome silliness. Confidence is key – and AEW: Fight Forever just about gets away with being the quirky, odd duck in the world of serious wrestling games.

As much as it inspires fun, the larger your theme park ambitions grow, the more Park Beyond throws extreme roadblocks in your way. There is still hope it finds a more wholesome balance in the future, but for now, the quest for the perfect park feels unfairly locked away.

Iko must ultimately say goodbye to Coco and his new friends, perhaps before he’s really ready to – and that’s okay, because he can always look back on the memories he made with them if he ever feels hopeless or lonely. While it seems like the game is geared more towards younger players making their first foray into some difficult topics, it’s still an overall enjoyable venture into a world that feels like a warm hug of reassurance.

In the end, the combat designers of Miasma Chronicles may well have let loose the frogs of war. It’s just a shame the writers croaked it.

There is a sense of more hiding beneath the surface of Redfall; and an urge to find it is what pushes you onward through endless vampire skirmishes. But while pieces of promised treasure are sprinkled throughout, Redfall never shines quite as brightly as it should.

As a feat of technical artistry, it’s impressive, sleek, and often breathtaking. But as you’re dangling off a cliff edge, taking a breather from endless, repetitive mountain climbing, you’ll find yourself wondering whether novelty is really enough to justify such a loosely-tied journey. While the experience is impressive in fits and starts, Horizon Call of the Mountain ultimately feels like a puzzle with several pieces missing.

Taken as a leisurely journey where the goal isn’t the be-all and end-all, Tchia can be a very pleasant getaway into a playground of delightful sights, sounds, and toys to play with. As a series of quests, it can feel ordinary. But as an escape to another place, it can be wondrous.

The Settlers: New Allies feels confused by its own identity. Is it a live service game? Is it a homage to the great RTS games of the past? Is it The Settlers, or a lesser Age of Empires? The answers seem to dance away the longer you play, and the further your settlements grow. While it houses a gorgeous world that actively encourages you to keep exploring, placing roads, and looking after your flock, a lack of depth and identity makes New Allies feel like a muddled experiment.

Overall, Valiant Hearts: Coming Home doesn’t have quite the same devastating impact as The Great War first did. Maybe that’s down to the effects of a sequel. Or maybe it’s due to the smaller, bite-sized format it’s seemingly designed around. But who says emotional narrative games can’t be short-burst experiences? The heart of Valiant Hearts is still here, and I’m glad these characters and this style of historical storytelling live on to fight another day. Just don’t ask me to fetch another potato, or dodge another artillery shell.

Snappy dialogue brings the occasional laugh, and the experience remains pleasant enough throughout its entire runtime – but a devotion to the past, and a seeming lack of interesting ideas means The Cosmic Shake simply slides off the brain, like a passing thought.

There’s a solid game at the heart of Black Iron Prison, but every opportunity the game gets to subvert expectations or do something new is instead a moment of deferral to one of Callisto’s many inspirations. It’s nice to see Callisto try to be a new brew, synthesised from many parts, but an entirely new vision would have stuck around in the bloodstream a little longer.

There’s always more blood on the horizon, making Gungrave G.O.R.E. feel like a break-neck romp with little room to move or breathe along the way. While dotted with moments of joy and violent freedom, the action of the game quickly devolves to repetition – making it a largely enjoyable romp, but one that only rarely makes a meaningful impact.

Overwatch 2 delivers high-octane multiplayer gameplay and a wholly improved version of the much-loved hero shooter. Now that the dust has settled, it’s becoming clear that despite a number of teething issues, the game manages to do what many sequels struggle to; build upon a successful game, and make it even better.

In attempting to recapture Zelda-era nostalgia, Airoheart is mostly successful. Its potential shines through pieces of the game’s many dungeons, gorgeously-rendered pixel lands, exploration loops, and clever puzzles. But Airoheart is very much held back by a lack of refinement and finesse, and largely stands in the shadow of its predecessors and everything that’s come before.

As someone who has been clamouring for JoJo games to come to PC and non-Japanese markets, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle R feels held back not by the failings of its design, but the support of its fundamental features. With any luck, these issues are just the growing pains before greater days.

The visual spectacle, creative setting and mechanical intrigue of Steelrising are never quite able to justify its shortcomings in challenge and consistency. It’s an inspiring experience that I had a good time with more often than not, but it certainly pales if you’re already familiar with the paragons of the genre. That said, rubbing elbows with French revolutionaries made for an entertaining interlude between bouts of robot vs. robot combat, and I can’t deny how glad I was to experience that.

This franchise certainly hasn’t enjoyed the longevity of its nearest character platforming rivals – Crash Bandicoot, namely – but revisiting the original entry is certainly an illuminating and nostalgic experience. It’s a colourful reminder of simpler times.

There’s hope that the technical issues with The Sims 4: High School Years will be resolved, but frustrations abound during the launch window. The pack goes a long way towards defining the teen experience in digital form, but there are a few pimples to be popped before it can be considered truly worthwhile.

Bear and Breakfast is a unique management sim with memorable characters. Roleplaying as a bear who flips abandoned old B&Bs is unexpectedly entertaining. The dark, existential humour somehow manages to make a depressed turkey feel relatable. But I suspect the game will be much more enjoyable to play once the kinks have eventually been ironed out.

Madison loses itself to out-of-place flights of fancy during its middle periods, allowing you to time-travel as you solve a series of colour-coded painting puzzles that do little to advance the overall plot of the game, and feel more like placeholders than real, mechanically or thematically-relevant puzzles. It says a lot about the audio and visual design of the game that this lack of self-control doesn’t actually impact the experience too much. That said, if you’re the kind of person who gets easily hung up on inventory puzzles, Madison may test your patience as much as it tests your nerves.

The fumble at the end is largely a disappointment because of everything that comes before it – a ripe setup, deliciously-built tension, and plenty of creepiness. Mothmen 1966 starts off with an excellent pace, beautifully told in both dialogue and visuals with characters that feel real, but the lack of satisfying pay-off and the slow devolution of the game’s plot leaves you wanting much, much more by the end.

As a mobile-first game designed to be played every day, there’s a potential future in new updates, recipes, and daily ingredients – but for now, it’s a dish best served with tempered expectations. While it’s an excellent iteration of the classic Cooking Mama recipe, it’ll probably take some time in the oven before becoming fully-flavoured.

Diablo Immortal is built to keep going forever and sustain your interest the whole time. Whether it be the voice acted story, grinding for new loot, levelling your Battle Pass, competing in seasonal leaderboards, hanging with friends, or representing your chosen faction, you will probably be like me; hunched over, trying to stay warm playing this game until hell freezes over – and trying to wrap my head about how it could have possibly all come together.

Perhaps there’s some sort of allegorical tale that evaded my attention. There are hints at some deeper mysteries in the progress through different environments, the area you return to between levels, and the recurring motifs, the various symbols that greet your successes. But if Silt has anything to say beyond ‘You might dig this moody atmosphere’ then it was lost on me. Some of its scenes, however, will stay with me for a long time to come.

Card Shark doesn’t quite live up to the full promise of its concept, but it has a few good tricks up its sleeve.

The game ends by imploring players to donate to gibbon conservation, and by condemning the social media fuelled obsession with gibbons as exotic pets. The true goal of the game – raising the plight of the gibbon as one of the most endangered primate species in the world – is admirable and touching. If anything, the simplicity in the game’s design only serves to stop this key message from being crowded out.

Conan Chop Chop, like any good roguelite rewards your playtime and marks your progress by increasing the amount of variety you encounter each time you play. It’s cheery, lighthearted entertainment, but the focus on local multiplayer comes with the loss of a stronger game for solo players, where it’s a lot easier to think about the missed opportunities and strange restrictions contained within its bright facade.

Despite being an undeniably beautiful piece of work, its identity as a weapon combat game lacks edge. I’m glad I stuck with it until the end – some of the late-game setpieces are certainly a sight to behold – but I left Trek to Yomi in a hungry search for something else that would give me the inherent satisfaction that comes from feeling the impact and hearing the sound of crossing blades.

The stories in Citizen Sleeper are worth hearing, but the fairly sparse and restrictive mechanics underpinning the game begin to buckle under the demands of that storytelling. More complications resulting from task categories may have expanded the possibilities here, but despite this, Citizen Sleeper remains a great cyberpunk diorama, and it’s well worth uncovering all its little details.

Stranger of Paradise is a game where you revel in the ridiculousness of watching a grown man look character development in the face, call ‘bullshit’, and walk away with his airpods in. But you can also revel in the mindless enjoyment of hacking waves of classic Final Fantasy monsters apart and watching loot roll in, as well as the bittersweet content of acknowledging its flaws, and taking the end result for what it is.

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition feels like an acceptable collection for a new generation, but it also serves as a reminder about the importance of being able to preserve video games as they originally were. Hold onto those CDs if you have them.

Ghostwire: Tokyo’s open world city is beautiful, and its world-building, environment and creature designs are also excellent. But even with a sensible runtime and a brisk plot, the game spends too much time engaging you in repeating, unchanging, and unexciting activities. It’s the terrible and taxing curse of open world monotony, plaguing a piece of work that otherwise has so many unique and original ideas.

What’s important is that King of Fighters remains an exciting fighting game in XV. Visual style aside, the roster continues to be full of varied characters with interesting movesets, and the underlying mechanics make its matches fast-paced, explosive, and great to watch or play.

Dying Light 2 has a strong, if restrictive start and manages to pull you into an intriguing mystery that grows into a satisfying finale, with an engaging gameplay loop. However, the game also vastly overstays its welcome. With an overly drawn-out narrative and an irritating main character, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth by the time the credits roll.

The reverence for Asian martial arts films of all kinds is evident in Sifu. But in mixing ‘of all kinds’ together, it diminishes the individual identities of each. Just like martial arts films are more than a select sequence of fight scenes, culture is more than a cool aesthetic. Sifu uses homage to include everything, say nothing, and is ultimately just vexing.

The act of embodying a Rainbow Six operator feels great, but once you leave the world of Extraction, it’s very hard to muster up the enthusiasm to go back in. Sure, there’s an endless cycle of parasitic aliens invading, but I know that no matter how much time I put in, the reward for doing a good job is just going to be more work to do.

While it remains a fun game, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond works better as a reminder of how far Pokemon games have come.

The small variety of activities and a lack of focus on personal enrichment holds the game back from feeling like a complete Big Brain Academy experience. Multiplayer mode is a stressful joy, and conquering challenges is satisfying, but the excitement and stimulation of Brain vs. Brain doesn’t last long.

Thematic inconsistencies aside, Grow has its heart in the right place. It’s a constant delight and a calming place to visit. Ultimately, it may be little more than a glorified checklist of chores, but as you venture outside to “find work” once more, sometimes labour is indistinguishable from leisure.