Sure, it’s overly serious, and sure, my experience had a few blips along the way, but ultimately, it allowed Agent 47 to do his thing — and finish up this part of his story — in a way that felt true to this reborn version of the series. It may not be my favourite entry in the series, but it’s a good way to finish things off, and for that reason, it’s well worth your time.

There’s something awfully satisfying about getting in a groove and answering question after question, and S.U.M. – Slay Uncool Monsters is built around allowing you to do just that. It never gets in its own way, which is a bigger achievement than many games can ever muster. Sure, it’s basically designed for Grade 2 students learning their times tables — but when it comes to S.U.M. – Slay Uncool Monsters, that’s the sort of nostalgia I can get behind.

What makes all of this especially strange is that you get the sense Tin & Kuna could’ve been a fun game if it had stayed out of its own way. It’s a bright, colourful world filled with fun-looking characters, and the level-based gameplay means it’s the sort of platformer you can drop into and out of easily. What’s more, the levels are a good size and feature a good amount of variety in their island landscapes, so under different circumstances, I could totally imagine wanting to explore every bit of the game’s little world. If it had been less ambitious — or even just made it so that you weren’t expected to roll one ball with another ball — it’s easy to imagine how the game’s charm could have made it a sleeper hit. But instead, Tin & Kuna is built around the most frustrating mechanic imaginable, and it’s impossible to enjoy as a result. It may look like a happy 3D platformer, but dig just below the surface, and you’ll see that it’s nowhere near as fun as it could be.

It would be amazing if Electro Ride was secretly intended to be a critique or polemic or something. But that’s giving it way too much credit. Instead, it’s just a boring racing game that tries to cover up its significant flaws with some pretty lights and a cool soundtrack. No matter how cool Electro Ride tries to look, it can’t hide the fact that its tracks are dull and its cars can’t drive straight.

I constantly found my attention drifting as I tried focusing on where a specific square landed when a cube exploded, or guiding one cube towards another cube on a path across other cubes. Cubes, cubes, and more cubes, and at no time does the game threaten to become interesting.

It doesn’t try or claim to be anything more than a basic Metroidvania-style platformer, and it delivers that. It’s just..it’s so basic, and so forgettable, it’s hard to feel very enthusiastic about anything here. If you want a game you can play for 2 hours, see everything it has to offer, and then never think about it again, Micetopia will deliver that, but it’s hard not to think that you should want a little more out of what you’re playing.

Of course, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t every bit as addicted to Roundout by POWGI as I am every other word and puzzle game that Lightwood has released. It may not be my new favourite game, but it’s still a solid enough word game that I’ve sunk a substantial amount of time into it already, and I’m quite sure that I’ll be sinking many, many hours more into it as I try to 100% the remaining puzzles too. If you’re the kind of person who loves thinking up word combinations to pass the time, then this is sure to be right up your alley as well.

There’s enough good stuff present in Cloudbase Prime that it’s not hard to imagine how the game could be reworked into something significantly better with just a few tweaks, but as it stands, it’s feels more like a promising demo than a fully fleshed-out game.

It doesn’t take long for it to become apparent that Even the Ocean is much more ambitious than your standard platformer, to the point that it goes beyond one genre. Luckily, the game is more than able to pull off the genre-bending. There aren’t too many other visual novel-adventure-RPG-platformers out there that I can think of, but I can confidently state that Even the Ocean makes a pretty solid case for why there should be more of them.

This is definitely not a classic collection of Space Invaders Games, but a mash-up of classic and modern that is underwhelming. I really can’t recommend this release at full price, but it would be a good one to grab if on sale for Space Invaders Xtreme alone. Sadly, this is one “Classic Game Collection” that can be skipped.

As someone who owned the original, It brings joy to heart that this game is once again made available to those who want it and on a platform which is a bit more evergreen than consoles *cough cough PC cough cough*. I will say that there are other titles people could’ve been enjoying if they wanted an excellent beat’em up experience (such as Fight’N Rage and River City Girls). Now if you’ll excuse me I need to find the cash I need to buy the bevy of physical edition of this title from….you guessed it, Limited Run Games. Cause they can’t delist it if you own the disc/cartridge!

All in all, I think Super Meat Boy Forever is a really great follow-up to the original game by Team Meat, but also understand that the auto-run mechanic may take some getting used to. If you’re willing to spend more than an hour with it, running through a handful of early stages and tackling the first boss encounter, I think you’ll start to feel the rhythm of the game, and come to appreciate the puzzle approach to the way the level chunks are designed. It’s a really satisfying experience and one that shouldn’t be missed in the post-holiday game release slump.

As cute as the pug — and the game — may look, don’t be sucked into Double Pug Switch if you’re looking for a family-friendly platformer to play with kids. This game is as challenging as they come, so only pick it up if you’re in the mood to die a whole bunch.

Bizarrely, despite the toughness, what really sticks out in my mind when I think of GONNER2 isn’t the action, but rather how it looks. I’m pretty sure that “insane psychedelic fever dream” isn’t a genre or a style, but I can’t think of any other way to describe the visuals here. There are flying eyeballs and you enter new levels by being swallowed by worms and the colours are all over the rainbow and…it’s just craziness. It’s gorgeous, in its own way, but it’s still nuts to look at. For most people, though, I think the insane difficulty will be what they take away from GONNER2, not the insane visuals. Which means that if you’re looking for a platformer or a roguelike that will truly test your abilities, it’s most certainly worth your time.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy my time with Falcon Age. It certainly has its share of flaws, but it also features some pretty great moments, and on the whole the latter outweighs the former. Plus — and this can’t be overstated — you really do get attached to that falcon.

By any objective measure, it’s mediocre at best. But given how little I was expecting of the game going into it, mediocrity counts as a pretty major achievement.

On top of the decently-realized characters, the game looks almost hand drawn, and you can tell that the developer has affection for everything you see on the screen. None of that, of course, will be enough to interest anyone who’s put off by visual novels or extreme quirk. But if you can put up with both of those things, Syrup and the Ultimate Sweet is a pleasant way to pass an hour or so.

The underlying concept behind Her Majesty’s Ship is pretty good. As you may have guessed from the title, it’s a management game set on a ship in the British (or French, or Spanish, or Portuguese) navy in the 1700s. With that kind of setting, there should be plenty to do, whether it’s rationing stocks, swabbing the deck, flogging miscreants, or, of course, engaging in naval warfare with the other continental powers. In practice, however, the whole thing is a baffling mess.

Giraffe and Annika is definitely one of those games where the whole is greater than any of its individual parts. It doesn’t do anything incredibly well, yet, somehow, when you put it all together in a package like this, the end result is delightful.

Overall, I think there’s a lot to like when it comes to Cyberpunk 2077, which has been unfortunately marred by poor performance issues on a number of platforms, and some poor communication (along with some overpromising) on the part of the publisher. It’s clear that a lot of work went into putting this game together, and it’s unfortunate that it had to release in a state that feels a little unfinished. It’s still a game you can very much derive enjoyment from, even in its current state but your ability to overlook open-world bugs and performance issues is certainly going to factor in quite a bit.

It’s just a shame that the core gameplay here is so dull. Everything else in Bugsnax would make it a strong GOTY contender, but the sheer repetitiveness of the game’s main task drags it all down. Still, given how high the rest of the game flies, there’s only so far down it can go — and as it stands, that still means you’re left with one heck of a game.

Go in without any preconceived notions, and you should find yourself pleasantly surprised.

If you’re a fan of clickers, I guess Car Demolition Clicker counts as a good one? Can clickers even be judged by traditional standards of “good” and “bad”? You click a bunch of times, and the game doesn’t break. If that’s what you’re after, this delivers, and it has car explosions to boot.

While I wouldn’t say that Yumeutsutsu Re:Master is the greatest use of your time or money, I’m quite confident that if you’re a fan of the Nurse Love games, you’ll be a fan of this one, too.

I wouldn’t say it’s a case of style over substance, since there’s really quite a bit of substance here to sink your teeth into, but it nonetheless feels like the game needs a few tweaks here and there in order to live up to its ample potential.

I know that Visual novels aren’t the most demanding genre, but the good ones still reward you in some way, even if it’s just with an engaging story. The Language of Love doesn’t even have that, which means it’s very safe to skip it.