If you’re a fan of OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes and you’re eager to experience it in another medium, then you may want to check it out. If you’re not, look elsewhere, because this is a strictly fans-only game.

Fallen Legion: Flames of Rebellion will appeal to a very specific type of player: someone who loves Vanillaware RPGs, and is eager to try out a game that isn’t afraid to try something new when it comes to controls. I’d be lying if I said that applied to me, but if it describes you, you should absolutely check this game out.

Admittedly, AER might have been a little more enjoyable if she’d had some clear purpose for flying around her world, or if the sights surrounding her were a little more breathtaking. I mean, they’re certainly not ugly, and there are points where you might even say that AER is stylish. But there’s nothing breathtaking, and if you go in hoping for that, you’ll be letdown. But if you go in looking for a game that won’t push you too hard, that’s perfect for when you just want to shut your brain off and float, then it’s hard to think of anything better. AER’s successes are somewhat modest, but that’s really all that they need to be to make it a game worth considering.

Unfortunately, like its predecessor, Midnight Shadows has all these great ideas, but it doesn’t seem to know what to do with them. The game still consists entirely of your on-screen characters very slowly walking around neighbourhoods, looking for clues and hiding whenever monsters come close. To be sure, there are worse things for a game to be than unsettling and spooky — especially if, obviously, we’re talking about a horror game. It’s just that it doesn’t take long before you wish that Yomawari: Midnight Shadows would deliver more than a creepy feeling, and, like its predecessor, it’s a wish that never quite pays off.

If Time Recoil truly represents 10tons’ Vita swansong — and they’re currently saying it is — then they’ve picked one heck of a high note to go out on. As far as I’m concerned, Time Recoil is the very best twin-stick shooter the handheld has to offer, and it’s well-worth checking out.

It’s neat to see the franchise trying something new, even if it doesn’t totally succeed. More importantly, none of the new stuff takes away from what makes Warriors games fun in the first place: you still get to single-handedly mow down enemy army after enemy army. No matter what else may have changed, that core fact remains the same in Dynasty Warriors 9 — and as long as that’s true, that’s really all that matters.

Demon Gaze wasn’t the kind of game that was so bad that it needed to be reinvented from the ground up, it was so average enough that a sequel could make slight improvements and still feel like progress. Luckily, Demon Gaze II does that: like the first game, it’s solid enough that you can play it without being too disappointed, but with the added bonus that things are a little bit better this time around.

There isn’t much else to say about Space Invaders Extreme, except playing it is a whole lot of simple fun, and will trigger your nostalgia greatly. It takes a formula that worked in the 1980s and added just enough spice to give today’s gamers a thrill. At $19.99, it may be a little expensive to some who have never heard of the series (or played it on previous last gen platforms). If you haven’t, I highly recommend playing the original game, then once you are accustomed, jump into Extreme with both feet and have a blast. For those who love the series already, this is a no brainer. Space Invaders Extreme is a must own for your Steam library!

I would suggest checking out Dissidia Final Fantasy NT if you’ve played the other Dissidia titles, but I’d temper your expectations when it comes to content. You’ll blow through the story mode quickly enough, and then you’ll just be left with a pretty sub-standard online experience that is definitely in need of some work. The stripped out RPG elements from the previous Dissidia titles really do this entry a disservice, and I think hewing too closely to NT’s arcade roots was a bad call. Still, I can’t help but feel there’s something worth playing here, even if it’s not the best Dissidia game to date.

While I get that the developers wanted to make Gunhouse more challenging, it feels like they did so at the expense of making it more fun. It feels like the whole game could’ve been drastically changed for the better just with that one small shift in how the game is played, so the fact they opted not to do that is kind of frustrating.

What makes it really frustrating is that The Sims 4 has so much potential to be great with so many customization options. The game even throws people like me a bone, allowing you to give your Sim clear motivations and emotions, and it tailors the gameplay around that. But, cruelly, it makes doing all those things a massive chore, meaning that unless you really, really like moving your cursor slowly around the screen, you’re not going to get much out of it.

I don’t often find myself interested in seeing where these games are going, but I’ll admit that this one got me hooked. Give it a chance (provided, obviously, you already have an interest in visual novels), and you’ll probably find yourself hooked too.

Mutant Football League really impressed me if you couldn’t tell. You know if you’ve read some of my previous reviews that I’m a big football fan, so I’m sure that plays a big role in this. I do think non-fans would have fun as well, just as arcade goers did in the late 90’s with NFL Blitz. Maybe it’s been too long since we have had anything other than Madden to please football fans, or maybe MFL is really just that good, either way I really like it and find myself going back to it over and over despite its vanilla modes at this point. Mutant Football League has character that I haven’t seen in a parody game in many years and look forward to what Digital Dreams has to come for the franchise.

Shadow of the Colossus was very worthy of a remake if only just to ensure that a new generation of PlayStation gamers have the opportunity to experience it. To spite a couple of minor camera and gameplay issues, Shadow of the Colossus is a highly recommended, magical and memorable journey for PS4 owners.

To be sure, nothing here is necessarily bad. Every aspect of the game is competently-made, if wholly uninspired. Antiquia Lost is totally functional, and you can get from beginning to end without the game ever breaking on you. But that leads to the bigger question of why you’d want to go from beginning to end. I get that some people just live to play retro RPGs, but I’d hope that even these people have better taste than to play something as forgettable as Antiquia Lost.

Super Hydorah isn’t really for me, since dying over and over again has never been my cup of tea. But it is for some people. So if you’re one of those people, and you’re into shmups, good news: here’s your new favourite game.

I again absolutely urge you to check out Monster Hunter: World if you have any passing interest in the series, or have been wondering what all the talk is about. It can be a difficult experience at first, but I definitely do not think it’s impenetrable to newcomers.

Overall Romancing SaGa 2 was a good game for its time, though the lack of an instruction manual for this version really hurts the enjoyment of it. After all the pros and cons are factored in, it really boils down to a very mediocre RPG.

Don’t get me wrong: as someone who was gaming in 1999, I totally see how this would have seemed groundbreaking at the time. However, just because it was good then doesn’t mean it’s still good today. Outcast: Second Contact feels like a product of its time, and like many other products of their times, it’s hard not to look at this game and think it probably should have stayed in the past.

Pretty much all of what worked for de Blob originally on the Wii still works, just to an even greater degree today. The vibrant graphics, the fun gameplay, the sense of humour — they all combined to make the game an underrated gem in the previous generation, and they’re all in full effect on current-gen systems, too.

One More Dungeon isn’t exactly a complex game. It’s a tough game, to be sure, and it doesn’t give you anything in the way of handholding before it sets you loose in the dungeon and expects you to figure things out on your own. But outside of the learning curve — which can be measured in minutes — there’s not much here that should surprise you if you’ve ever played some of those original FPSes. One More Dungeon offers some decent enough nostalgia for people pining for the early days of Doom, but otherwise, you shouldn’t go into this game expecting too much.

While there are lots of cases of newcomers need not apply when it comes to JRPG franchises, I’m hard-pressed to think of any where it works quite as well as it does here. Summon Night 6 is geared towards fans of the first five games, and seeing as the first four of those never made it across the Pacific, that should tell you everything you need to know.

Tokyo Tattoo Girls stretches the definition of what a “game” is, and not in a good way. The amount of content here would barely be acceptable for a free, browser-based Flash game; for a full-priced Vita release, it’s legitimately shameful.

It probably says as much about its competitors and peers as it does about Cursed Castilla itself that things like fairness and non-sucky controls are considered points in its favour. But given the state of retro-inspired gaming, that’s where we are. Cursed Castilla shows that it’s possible to recreate the vibe of 8- and 16-bit games without making those games feel like a chore to play, and for that, I’m incredibly grateful.

Sure, I could only bring myself to play School Girl/Zombie Hunter in small doses, and as I was playing all I could think about was how stupid the game was. But if you want mindless action that you won’t have to think about very deeply — and that you probably shouldn’t think about too deeply, for your own mental well-being — then this game will deliver that in spades.

Megaton Rainfall is the kind of superhero game I’ve always wanted to play, and even if it’s not perfect, it’s still an interesting step in the right direction for the genre as a whole.

As I said up top, there are certainly reasons to be wary of Hidden Agenda. It’s hard not to search a crime scene for clues with your unresponsive PlayLink app and come away wishing that you were just using a plain controller. But that’s more than outweighed by the fact that the game also does a better job of capturing what makes mystery novels so compelling than nearly anything else I’ve ever played. Hidden Agenda may not be perfect, but it knows how to keep you hooked right to the very end.

There are one or two areas where Dark Rose Valkyrie kinda-sorta stands out: it makes fast-forwarding through the battles, the explainer screens, and the dialogue a breeze, which is nice, because the game features far too much of all three. Unfortunately, the game is also lacking in enough areas that its positives are negated entirely. The camera is terrible; you may not have to use it that often, but when you do, you’ll probably curse its existence. Likewise, the main character has a weird habit of grunting when he runs. This may not sound like much, but when you hear grunts for a few minutes as you try to figure out where to go next, it gets more and more grating.