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.

Regardless of my particular talent, I’m having a blast with Planet Coaster 2. It’s certainly on track to eclipse its predecessor, and will no doubt build on lessons learned to become a better-rounded and more feature-rich game in future. While there will inevitably be a deluge of DLC to boost the game’s ride options and customisation, they will simply be decorations on an already-sweet cake.

It’s a shame that the weirdest thing about Weird West is how boring it can often be.

SUMMERHOUSE is not for everyone. It was for me.

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.

For a game that largely revolves around hunting goons and swinging a sword, Rise of the Ronin presents a surprisingly layered and compelling story, one based carefully on real-life history. There’s a real sense of drama and cinema brought to the game’s depiction of the late Edo period, with each quest drawing you further into its tale.

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.

En Garde! is a perfect little capsule of engaging action, a well-refined aesthetic, and appealing characters. Like an expert duelist, it doesn’t waste a single strike.

The Crew Motorfest is a strong, kitchen-sink arcade racer that executes evocative racing and car culture experiences without actually requiring the level of pressure, know-how, or commitment to fully enjoy them. The feeling of being able to quickly and easily jump in and enjoy the sights, sounds, and different flavours of vehicular action is a boon all on its own.

Essentially, Midnight Fight Express’s approach to enemy behaviour echoes the approach of challenging retro arcade brawlers, but its more grounded fighting mechanics don’t feel suitable for the pace. And it’s this off-kilter balance between your character’s own ability, the effectiveness of environmental weapons, and the aggressiveness of the enemies that is ultimately to the detriment of its longer-term gratification.

Whether it’s using a power pole as a slingshot, launching unwilling citizens into space, or just messing around with rocket physics, Tentacular stretches your mind as much as it stretches the capabilities of VR. It is not necessarily the most novel experience in the now-mature genre of VR games, but it does an effective job of weaving together a cohesive, coherent, and transformative experience for players, pairing a solid yet minimalist narrative together with satisfying and balanced logic puzzles.

Even moments spent floating quietly outside each uniquely designed station, tomb, or cave can be beautiful, as the starscape shifts in the nether and violins swoon softly through your headphones. Opus: Echo of Starsong is a very particular kind of game, but when you give your time to it fully, it’s a rewarding and wonderful experience.

While it’s content to build on the past, rather than completely innovate the cosy sim genre, Fae Farm establishes firm foundations, and presents a neat twist on familiar gameplay.

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.

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.

In The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo says the iconic line, “Never tell me the odds.” In a year where we’ve all been waiting for a standout game to rise up, I feel like – at least for now, and without anyone saying it out loud – Star Wars Outlaws has beaten the odds.

There are certain elements I wish Nobody Wants to Die implemented better. At times, the narrative leans too heavily into the obvious, and the dead wife trope needs to go. But on the whole, it presents a relatively novel exploration of a transhumanist, capitalist future, and uses incredibly strong performances and ideas to flesh out its shiny, fascinating world. It’s a game with important things to say, and it explores them fully as its core investigation unfolds.

Perhaps most of all, it succeeds in realising the ideology at its core, through gameplay. Adaptation and growth is the cycle at the heart of Wild Hearts. As your Hunter places each Karakuri, they embody the innovation of humanity adapting to the natural world. In every clash with the Kemono, humanity meets the ferocity of nature head-on, to survive and prosper... Wild Hearts has undeniably proven its right to survive, and carved out a place in the high echelons of the monster-hunting genre.

Minimalism breeds great impact in this adventure, with a sparse narrative approach allowing the game’s inner mystery to grow deeply as the corners of its story darken. Its lack of interactivity renders players largely as passive observers of an unfolding tale, but this powerlessness arguably strengthens Varney Lake. As summer dies, you can only watch in horror as each story beat unfurls.

Eternights deftly captures the essence of growing up, as told through the motions of an action-packed JRPG. Through its storyline and dialogue, the game manages to weave life into this classic genre with the aid of modern-day meme jokes and ‘anime humour’. Its simple but effective combat system, and a smattering of puzzles and mini-games, are entertaining enough to keep you hooked as you watch the plot unfold. Eternights showcases a level of complexity and refinement that is impressive, especially for Studio Sai’s debut title.

On top of the mountain, you can gaze at your lands and behold their beauty. But if you’re looking for a greater reward, or a reason to strive further towards the horizon, Blockbuster Inc. won’t quite satisfy your deepest desires. With hearty sim gameplay that still provides plenty of hours of rewarding complexity, it remains a fantastic spiritual successor to The Movies – but it does feel like it should comprise higher mountains to climb.

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.

You can easily blast through the game’s story mode in around 2 hours, and leave plenty of undiscovered goodness behind, but take the time to embrace its strangeness, and you’ll find mounds of surprising, technical depth in your journey. Strange, ridiculous, and occasionally very ugly, WarioWare: Move It! is exactly the kind of weird game it needs to be – and then some...Long live WarioWare, in all its compelling absurdity.

A Little to the Left is just delightful. And that’s all that really needs to be said about it.

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.

If you’re going to play Epic Mickey in 2024 – and you should – this is the definitive way to play the games. Clever tweaks here and there have significantly enhanced the original game, improving it across multiple aspects, without sacrificing the originality and uniqueness of its narrative. This is a chance to re-appreciate one of the best Wii exclusive games in a whole new format.

In that marriage of substance, style, and strangeness, it’s a thoroughly engaging experience – one that I blasted through in just a few days, barely in control of my need to keep forging on. It’s moreish and brilliant that way, even when it’s off-puttingly bizarre. Strong stylistic choices, and a bundle of gameplay mechanics mashed together in surprising fashion make this a very strong adventure, destined to be weirdo favourite. As one of the weirdos in question, Promise Mascot Agency was absolutely for me.

Harmony: The Fall of Reverie near-expertly combines rich storytelling and detailed decision making to create an epic tale of worlds colliding. Behind the beautiful exterior, there’s a fully actualised universe with exciting mechanics, compelling story arcs and characters truly worthy of your emotional investment. If you put in the work, it’s an experience unlike any other.