Redout 2 is specifically designed for people who need to master every track – anyone who stops short of that probably won’t enjoy it too much. It’s meant for people who want racers to challenge them, so if that’s what you’re after, this is a game you need to play.

Overall, Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak is just more of what you already know and love from the game. It provides further functionality to existing weapons and some new monsters but makes sure not to change too much. For me, it took about 16 hours to complete the main questline of Sunbreak, but as usual, there are easily hundreds of hours to pump out of the content if you want to. Just don’t buy it until you’ve finished Rise’s main story.

It’s this awful technical performance that makes Autobahn Police Simulator 3 go from so bad it’s good – or, at least fun – to just plain bad. If the whole thing was just a collection of nonsense, then it would be easy to laugh at, assuming you bought it on sale. The fact that it can’t even do that reliably is what makes Autobahn Police Simulator 3 a game to avoid.

Playing Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, it becomes clear the series has continued to find new ways to be mediocre, even as they’ve evolved in some ways. It’s a so-so game from nearly ten years ago that now feels positively ancient, and you’re better off just ignoring its existence.

I couldn’t stop playing it, frustrating flaws notwithstanding. I don’t know whether that says more about me or about Guild of Dungeoneering’s design, but I can definitely say that it makes for a very addictive experience – albeit one you may hate and love in equal parts.

As I said up top, The Artful Escape may not sound like much on paper. Its individual pieces aren’t anything special. But mix them together, and you’ve got an amazing creation, and one of the best games of the year.

All of this adds up to a pretty good sequel – or, at least, it would if the game was in a finished state. Eventually, presumably, the developer will get around to fixing its game-breaking bug, and once that happens, then the game will deserve a much higher grade. For now, however, in its broken state, tht makes it impossible to recommend Star Wars – Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.

While the story is decent enough that it’s not hard to imagine it could’ve been much more memorable with better translation, in this state, it’s not really worth your time.

It’s a game that genuinely seems to want to help players understand what it’s like to be a gymnast. But just because the game has its heart in the right place, it doesn’t make it any more interesting. Great intentions are fine, but as Pro Gymnast Simulator shows, they don’t make for compelling gameplay.

Given the enduring popularity of Sonic over the years – even with a couple of missteps along the way – it seems like there are plenty of people who will value getting a chance to play these games with fresh eyes and from a different perspective. If you’re one of those people, then Sonic Origins absolutely makes it worthwhile to revisit these classics.

If you’re a Darkstalkers fan, you are definitely eating well if you purchase this compilation, hell as a puzzle fighter enthusiast I am ecstatic that I will be able to play the title on modern consoles and possibly on the go (via the Switch or the Steam Deck). It is also nice to have a legal way to own Cyberbots and marvel at the eccentricity that is Red Earth. While I have issues with the title curation, this is nonetheless a solid lineup. One can only hope that the licensing gods will grant us a Capcom Licensed Fighting Game Collection which will include their Marvel catalog, their JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3: Stardust Crusaders fighting game, Tatsunoko vs Capcom and dare I say…Rival Schools. Their resume is deep enough to have a couple more of these, but what we have here is a good start.

Mario Strikers: Battle League thankfully leans closer to original Strikers than Charged. While the changes to the gameplay does not necessarily shut out casual players, there’s some meat for those who want to take a more tactical approach. The game leans towards extensive online play, leaving more isolationist players a steeper hill to climb to unlock all the game has to offer. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to some drills so these online skirmishes won’t result in too lopsided defeats.

Obviously, if you’re okay with WarioWare-style minigames, then that may be a bonus for you. And if I could ignore my dislike of them, then there’s plenty about Card Shark to make it worth recommending – and even with those minigames, I’d still say it’s better than average. But unless you’re really fond of wiggling your thumbsticks around every few minutes, you may find the whole experience to not be as good as it could have been.

G-Darius is classic Arcade shooting action at it’s very best. Combining great gameplay with fantastic visuals and audio, you will have a blast even if you are not that big on horizontal shooters. Fans of the series will be right at home with the gameplay, while new players will get the hang of things very quickly. No matter where you stand, you will find a fun and challenging game that will keep you coming back for more. Out of all of the games in the Darius series, G-Darius might very well be one of the greatest. Other 3D incarnations would come to home consoles over the years, but they don’t come close to the original. It may not be a complete Darius Collection, but it certainly belongs in your library.

It’s hard not to feel the rush of nostalgia as Sonic and friends race through the Green Hill Zone – and I mean that in a good way. If you can ignore everything that came after these games – some good, lots of bad – and just focus on what’s here, it’s not hard to understand how these games became so iconic, and why Sega has spent so many years chasing after these same highs. The four games in Sonic Origins are clearly some of the best platformers the early ‘90s have to offer, and there are just enough tweaks and additions that even if you’ve given up on the series ever reaching these highs again, there’s still ample reason to revisit them one more time.

Overall, Mechanic Battle is fine – it’s not great, but it’s also not horrible. It may not let you live out your dreams of being a mechanic, but if you just want top-down racing, it’ll do.

The Quarry is a fantastic time but personally it’s a tough sell at $70 retail. I don’t see many replaying more than a couple times, and that’s really if you have connected enough with the story to go through again. The game could use some quality-of-life improvements like a scene skip once you complete the game, and overall this is a game for fans of this genre and those looking to have a unique experience that isn’t gameplay driven.

For years beat’em up fans petitioned to get the previously delisted Scott Pilgrim Vs The World a re-release. If these gamers knew that an even better title would be coming down the pipeline, I would dare say the furor would not have been as warranted. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is the game we thought had back then, but it’s actually real now. Licensed games are often seen by gamers as quick cash grabs for studios and IP owners, but this one is definitely the exception. So I would recommend get on this ASAP and find 5 people (hit me up if you know me, I wanna co-op) and go on this joyous romp in New York City!

As it stands, Pac-Man Museum+ is a solid selection of games from across Pac-Man’s history, but it could also certainly be larger and more comprehensive than it is. It feels more like a random selection of games than a “top hits” sort of thing, and the additional build your arcade feature isn’t particularly interesting. On the plus side, playing through on the Switch in both handheld and TV mode, I felt like the emulation for each title was pretty spot-on. I had seen reports of noticeable lag from a few people, but I never had any big issues with either mode of play. And yeah, it’s cheap enough and features enough good Pac-Man games that it’s sort of hard to not recommend it overall. While not super-impressive as a whole, I prefer this focused approach over another generic Namco collection.

Promesa is a slow-moving, boring game that never really explains why it exists, which makes it hard to care about any of it.

There’s a gulf between competent and enjoyable, and Jumanji: The Curse Returns comes nowhere close to crossing it. It may work, but before you’ve finished your first time playing it, you’ll be wishing there was something more than that to it.

If you’re after a game that captures the general vibe of that era’s 3D platformers, Kao the Kangaroo does an okay job. Every level gives you plenty of coins and baubles and collectibles to discover, which means that if you’re the type of person who wants to collect everything you can in one of these games, there’s plenty for you to do. Likewise, the levels are all pretty good sizes, so it feels like there’s a lot to explore, even if the levels are generally pretty linear. But these things are only enough to make Kao the Kangaroo feel like an average 3D platformer, not anything special. While that may hearken back to the series’ early days – and it makes this game a perfect continuation of what the series did back when it was a thing – it’s certainly not enough to make Kao the Kangaroo a game you need to play in 2022.

I’m not going to lie. I was terrible at Gravitar: Recharged, and I continued to be terrible at it no matter what I did. But if you’re the sort of person who craves a genuinely punishing experience and doesn’t mind putting in the hours, you absolutely need to give Gravitar: Recharged a try.

To be sure, you could critique Biomotor Unitron for not straying too far from its inspiration – and even if it borrows from Pokémon, it never comes close to matching it. But just as the ‘90s had room for second-tier competitors like Digimon, there’s no reason why Biomotor Unitron can’t exist as a fun curio today. It won’t make anyone forget Pokémon or wonder why Biomotor Unitron didn’t find more of a fanbase, but it’s fun enough that you’ll be able to enjoy it anyway.

I can’t help but shake the feeling, though, that it could have been done in a way that was interesting, or at least tolerable. Instead, The Magnificent Trufflepigs makes the prospect of spending a few hours in this world seem like a dreadful slog. The whole thing feels like it was tailor-made to win awards and win critical acclaim, but like the worst kind of awards bait, they forgot to make the game interesting enough to merit either.

Obviously, Unlock the Cat isn’t terrible, since it’s a functional game, and it works exactly like every other version of this basic puzzle works. But unless the only thing stopping you from playing Klotski puzzles was the general lack of cats, there’s really nothing here that’ll make it worth your while.

Obviously, if Mini Motorways is actually intended to be a subtle critique of how dystopian car-centred cities are, then it absolutely succeeds at that beyond any shadow of a doubt. More likely, though, Mini Motorways is simply an attempt to apply the Mini Metro formula to roads instead of subways. While it hits some of the same notes – and it would undoubtedly be much easier to embrace if it didn’t have such an insanely great predecessor to live up to – it’s simply not quite as good. That still means it’s better made than most other puzzle games, but if you’re hoping for the next Mini Metro, Mini Motorways isn’t quite it.

To be clear, it’s not like ten years has transformed Republique from a decent stealth game into an unsung classic. But they have given its message more relevancy, and given it a console whose controls are a perfect fit for the game – and that’s enough to make it well worth your while.