Bright Memory: Infinite will also leave you wanting a lot more if you’re the kind of person who likes lengthy video games. I was able to finish it in just over two hours, and that was with me running into some challenges in the boss fights, which means a more competent player will be able to finish it in under two. Even as someone who liked the game, that’s a pretty tough value proposition. But if you’re just looking at it from the perspective of how much fun you’ll get out of those two hours, then Bright Memory: Infinite becomes a lot harder to beat. It crams everything it can think of into that short runtime and is dripping with style for every second of it. I can see why it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it certainly is mine.

Stray didn’t want to tell an epic tale spanning oceans, it didn’t need towering bosses with glowing weak points to create the greatest tension. What it did do was weave a tale that the smallest creature can make the biggest difference and that despite our seat as the apex species, that perch is ever precarious, there’s always something ready to take the spot and life will continue. It’s certainly something that we need to be reminded of periodically.

It’s clearly a game worth investigating if you’re fond of farming sims that ask you to keep lots of plates spinning at any given moment. But truthfully, it doesn’t do anything for me.

All in all, though, the two games are highly enjoyable. I don’t know if KLONOA Phantasy Reverie Series is going to be the game that finally gives Klonoa the audience it deserves. But if there’s any justice in the world, it will be.

It feels as if the developers wanted to make a different, more interesting game, but couldn’t figure out what they wanted to do with it, so instead they turned it into a sequel for a game that wasn’t particularly good or memorable in the first place. You’re left with the feeling that they didn’t really care about Freddy Spaghetti 2 – and really, neither should you.

The three games here are tried, tested, and proven, and if you want the best the Jackbox series has to offer, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with anything better.

Overall, I thought Escape Academy was a great game, and does what it wants to serve you very well. The puzzle design is excellent and the wide array of environments keeps things fresh. The only complaint I could give is saying I wish there we more, but the quality of what is here makes it hard to complain.

Matchpoint – Tennis Championships is great if you want tennis, and nothing but tennis. It’ll give you ample opportunity to play match after match, and it never bogs you down in the extraneous nonsense that seems to plague most sports games. But if you want to do literally anything more than that, you might find your attention wavers long before you come close to finishing your career.

Unless you really enjoy half-finished stories, Paratopic never really builds on its great aesthetic to be a game worth playing. It may aspire to bring you back to the late ‘90s, but given how disjointed it all feels, it never achieves its goal.

At the very least, if you’re into simulating menial blue collar jobs, you could certainly do a lot worse than this.

The real draw in Neon White is the action – the pure, unfiltered, adrenaline-pumping action that feels like it brings together the best thing about games like Devil May Cry or Ghostrunner or Mirror’s Edge or Sonic or whatever else you play when you want to go as fast as possible while slicing and shooting through every single enemy in your way. It’s a pretty exceptional game, and it’s unlike anything else out there.

I found myself fairly engrossed with Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, and would argue it’s the best of the Omega Force/Nintendo collaborations so far. It runs really well in both handheld and TV mode (certainly far better than Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity) and the combat is propelled to another, more interesting level when you start utilizing the ability to command your various units as objectives appear. So even if you’ve not played through a single musou game before, I think Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes would make a pretty great impression for brand new players, while also breathing some fresh air into the formula for returning fans.

Sixty Words is a decent choice if you’re a fan of word searches and you want something different. It won’t take you more than a few hours to finish every puzzle, but during that time, it’ll serve as a pleasant enough diversion.

Haven Park isn’t going to make you forget its influences – and you should definitely play those other games before playing this one, since they’re both much better – but it’s still enjoyable enough that if you’ve got a few hours to spare and want to play something charming and wholesome, it’ll do the trick.

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.