Visually, everything is black and white, with a few hints of red, which is certainly pretty striking. On top of that, Apple Slash is scored by a chiptunes soundtrack that does its genre proud. To be sure, if you’re looking for something more substantial, Apple Slash isn’t it. But if you look at it as a teaser or a prelude for something bigger – which it hopefully is – it certainly seems like the first part of something that could become a truly distinctive experience.

So if you’ve never played one, or perhaps both games, then I think this collection is a no-brainer for sure. And even if you have, the upgrade discount path makes this collection a worthy addition to your growing PS5 library, and it’s sure to be the game that you pop up in when you’re trying to show off modern console technology to your friends and family. It’s a solid remaster of two excellent games, both of which are well worth playing through again.

Arietta of Spirits won’t wow you like some of the best Zelda-inspired games, but it’s still got some niceness at its core. That may not make it a classic, but it’s enough to make it fun enough while it lasts.

At the very least you’ve got to respect how much effort went into this game, and how much it asks of players. As I said up top, Ratalaika has been responsible for some of the laziest, low-effort visual novels imaginable. I’m not going to then complain when one of their visual novels swings hard in the exact opposite direction. There’s a tonne of content to be found here – all Angels with Scaly Wings asks is that you just be super into reading about kissing dragons to get the most out of it.

Dropping the ball on versus play aside, having this port available means a larger audience will be able to experience the joys I did those many years ago. My timeless strategy of locking down my opponent’s characters to 100 HP, keeping the opponent’s SP low while waiting to initiate one devastating union attack to end the match still works and I’ll continue to employ it until I collect all 300 cards in this version. I just hope that SNK will find it worthwhile to adjust the Versus play so that you can actually play against other humans and whatever deck they’ve assembled rather than facing a doppelganger deck with another person doling out the strategy.

Windjammers 2 is what a sequel should be. Updated visuals, added bonus games, and new characters, all without ruining the core game play. As I have said, Dotemu did a remarkable job with this release just as they have with their previous classic sequel efforts. If you are a fan of the original Neo Geo game, or if you want a fun game with a lot of challenge, than look no further than Windjammers 2. We may actually have a contender for 2022 Game Of the Year on our hands! I cannot recommend this game enough to every gamer out there, it is truly a super fun time!

At some point you have to assign proper value to your own time, because Extraction will not. There are too many good games out there that manage to do this better. If you are on PC, play GTFO instead. If you are only interested in GamePass games? Play Aliens: Fireteam Elite. Do you want tight Rainbow Six gameplay and tactics? Stick with Siege. There are no upsides to Extraction that outweigh the negatives here, and I cannot suggest it to anyone in its current state.

Yes, the jumps are floaty, but the whole thing feels dreamlike with its vividly coloured world, so it kind of fits together. Further, Castle on the Coast is, ultimately, a collectathon, so the objectives are secondary to bouncing around the world, picking up everything in sight – and the given the sheer number of collectibles to pick up, it’s pretty easy to sink a couple of hours into just grabbing everything in sight. And, again, it’s all for a good cause. Castle on the Coast may not be perfect, but its heart is in the right place. In this case, that’s enough.

Really, I shouldn’t be shocked that A Good Snowman is Hard to Build is so cute or so good at what it does. After all, it’s a loose sequel to A Monster’s Expedition – which also came to the Switch after being a mobile hit, and which was also utterly delightful. You don’t need to play one in order to understand the other, but if you want some adorable-but-challenging puzzle games, you should probably play this one. Or that one. Or, better yet, both.

If you loved the games back in the ‘90s, you may enjoy reliving your youth, but for everyone else, there are plenty of other more modern games worth your time and attention.

Suzerain is an outstanding political game that’s perfect for anyone who’s ever dreamed of drawing up their own budget or getting into no-win situations, and I loved every minute of it.

God of War was a masterpiece when it was released and raised the bar for what a game like it could be. It is one of the best games of that generation and sits somewhere in my top 10-20 best games of all time. This new PC port fires on all cylinders and elevates this already great game to further greatness. I experienced no issues with my entire playthrough, the game never crashed, I did not find any bugs or glitches, and the performance was always exactly what I expected out of the systems I played on. I cannot recommend both the game and the PC port highly enough.

Clearly, as 3D platformers go, The Smurfs – Mission Vileaf isn’t exactly going to make anyone forget Super Mario Odyssey. In fact, it’s not likely to make anyone forget New Super Lucky’s Tale. But if you – or, more likely, the young children in your life – are after a game that will provide a few hours of entertainment, you could certainly do a lot worse.

It’s a wisp of an idea that’s not even interesting enough to sustain the minimal game that’s here, and you’re couple of dollars and 20 minutes would be better spent on pretty much anything else.

The game gets the feeling of speed just right. That may not seem like much, but it’s harder than you think – I think back to (the very good) Horizon Chase Turbo, for example, and, as much as I loved it, it occasionally fell short in terms of making it feel like you were flying down the highway. Retro Highway doesn’t have that shortcoming; even when you crash, it really feels like you have some crazy momentum behind your rider bouncing down the highway. This is all basic stuff, I know, but Retro Highway excels at getting it right. Given it doesn’t try to do too much, that’s essential – and it’s why it makes easy to recommend picking it up.

While it would have been easy enough for Ubisoft to slap the Monopoly brand on a cheap collection of mini-games, instead they made an effort to give a wide range of boards and characters, and even added a story mode in case you want to play solo. You really should play Monopoly Madness with others, though. And that’s a recommendation, too, not just a statement of fact. It’s easy enough to pick up that almost anyone can play, while each match is both short and competitive enough that it’s the sort of thing that you’ll actually want to play it with others. It’s not Monopoly, to be sure – but in this case, that works surprisingly well.

If you don’t mind a horror game that doles out its frights at a snail’s pace, then you’ll find plenty here to enjoy.

Despite the near-constant action, it’s still a dull, repetitive shooter that wears out its welcome within a few minutes, and you’d be well-advised to skip it entirely.

To give A Day Without Me some credit – very, very limited credit – it’s got some interesting ideas. Putting your character in an empty neighbourhood and asking you to figure out what happened could’ve made for an engaging mystery. But that would’ve required the game being halfway decent or competent, which it’s not. No matter how intriguing the mystery at its core is, nothing can make up for the fact A Day Without Me fails so utterly at everything else, and that’s enough to make the game an easy skip.

It’s not exactly the funniest game you’ll ever play, but as your hero interacts with the world around her/him, you’ll constantly find that there’s a lot of care that went into making conversations as enjoyable as possible. Of course, everything about Loop Hero is focused on making it as enjoyable as possible, because it’s just a really enjoyable game. As i learned, whether you’re usually into these kinds of games or not, it doesn’t matter: Loop Hero is fun, and it’s sure to get you hooked.

Faraday Protocol does a couple of things well enough that it’s clearly not the worst game that has followed in Portal’s footsteps over the past decade-plus. But it also doesn’t do anything so well that you need to rush out and get it right now, so it’s really just for first-person puzzler fans only.

It’s a low-effort, forgettable visual novel that’s not worth the time or minimal money it’ll cost to pick it up, so you can safely skip over it without worrying you’re missing anything.

For a game that promises ninjas, Neptunia x SENRAN KAGURA: Ninja Wars is awfully short on actual opportunities for fighting. I know: that’s not why people usually play these games – the presence of Senran Kagura should have been a dead giveaway for that. But even so, as much as I generally loathe those games, I can still acknowledge they feature some decent action – and Neptunia x SENRAN KAGURA: Ninja Wars simply doesn’t, by any stretch of the imagination.

That phrase “kind of works” really applies to all of Demon Turf. It’s got some interesting ideas and interesting visuals, and you can see where the developers were going with it all – but the more you play, the more it all seems like it all only sort of hits the mark. Just about the only way that it’s fully on-target is in how well it feels like a 3D collectathon from the late ‘90s, but given there are plenty of games out there from that era – not to mention the past 20+ years – that you can choose from just as easily, Demon Turf feels like it’ll get lost in the crowd.

In other words (pun not intended), Word Forward is kind of lousy if you’re in the mood for a straight-up word game, but probably amazing if it’s a challenging puzzle game you’re after. It’s built around a concept that’s really easy to grasp but ridiculously hard to master, and if you want something you can sink dozens of hours into (or even just a couple of minutes at a time, many, many times), this is what you’re looking for.

As much as I’ve always liked the Danganronpa series, I can’t imagine wanting to sink endless amounts of time or money into such an empty, boring game. And given we’re talking about a series for which the word “boring” should never apply, that should tell you how much of a failure this game is.

Unlike a lot of re-releases where you have to say “It was good…for its time”, in this game’s case, you can say “It was good…and it’s still good.” That’s one heck of an accomplishment, and if you haven’t played this game before — or even if you have — it’s definitely worth seeking out.

It’s a short, simple game, but the developers clearly took the criticisms of the first game and worked to fix all those issues — which is definitely the kind of thing that deserves being acknowledged and rewarded.