Perish is a solid FPS roguelike with tons of replayability, often giving off a DOOM-vibe that pushes you to the limits of your own sanity.

Yomawari: Midnight Shadows is a worthy successor to one of my favourite horror games and an unforgettable experience that is marred with a few annoyances.

Golden Lap is an addictive racing sim that has plenty of strategical elements for such a stripped back experience, making it fun to play.

Intuitive controls, excellent pacing, a smart script and sublime visuals mean there is much fun to be had here. If this is the last time we get to control Ratchet and his robot buddy, then it’s a rock-solid way to go out.

Beyond appearances, there’s not much that’s new or any more interesting than we’ve seen before – although Freedom Cry does hint at greater things to come. Recommended, but not truly essential.

Fracked is the most stylish and exhilarating VR experience of 2021 – and may even be the best implemented shooter I have experienced on the Sony headset.

Spider Solitaire F is a polished game with relaxing music that has been great to dip into for a few minutes each day. If you’ve wanted a nice traditional card game on the Switch, this is definitely worth it.

In a time of games that stretch into the tens of hours, it’s nice to have a game full of short gameplay bursts designed to be replayed over and over, Blowout Blast is a wonderful little distraction.

Atelier Ryza 3: The Alchemist of the End and the Secret Key is a wonderful sequel with great pacing, but the Switch version does have issues.

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores offers more of the same with some new ideas, yet it's still well worth playing, and looks gorgeous.

While I wouldn't call Saints Row IV: Re-elected "essential", it's absolutely worth a look if you like your fun loud and just a little bit irreverent.

Clever, different, but sadly all too brief. Moss might not be the singular game to justify the purchase of a PlayStation VR, but it is one of a growing number of PSVR releases that build up a decent list of reasons to pick one up.

Bad Apple Wars is yet another interesting otome game from Otomate that manages to stand out from their other releases really well but one that has a terrible font that annoyed me constantly.

The Switch port is fantastic but I feel like they could’ve done slightly more. The big omission for me is the lack of HD rumble.

Warlords of New York proves to be an enticing and rewarding addition to one of last year's best shooters, and is certainly worth a return trip to Manhattan.

The Shattering is a tough story to follow and has some uncomfortable moments, but it’s an impressive spectacle at times and has a few tricks up its sleeve.

A great slice of frantic cooking fun with a simple premise that is built upon with several layers of depth. While it can be played in single player, the real fun comes from playing with others due to the screams that occur when everything inevitably sets on fire.

While Dying Light 2 may not feel like a massive step up, it's still tons of fun, and the story is a powerful and engaging one, vastly improved from the original.

While the ideas aren’t all perfect, it’s still a marvellous and unique precision puzzle platformer when it focuses its ideas.

Eternal Threads has a fantastic idea that's well-executed, with some great story beats and characters you can't help but like.

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is a great remastering of a genuinely superb game, and will raise a smile in fans and new players alike.

Terraria on Vita is a joy to play and just different enough from everything else to stand out.

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is a wonderful throwback to tactical RPGs of old, featuring tons of customisation and strategical options to play around with.

Ikai does a great job of incorporating Japanese folklore into a claustrophobic psychological horror, with some smart puzzles throughout.

Having a couple more categories on offer after buying the app in the first place would have been nice, but the selection that is available isn’t terrible. Just make sure you’re not playing with the same people over and over, or you may find the same words cropping up again and again.

Dragon Quest Builders is a crafting game that's a joy to play even all these years later, and it runs brilliantly on both PC and Steam Deck.

Easily the best game the Rabbids have ever been in and quite possibly Mario’s best non-Nintendo spin-off.

Limitations of the tech notwithstanding, Peaky Blinders: The King's Ransom is a great adventure game filled with iconic characters and absolutely seething with atmosphere. [Meta Quest 2]

There's a charming aesthetic to The Stretchers, bright and colourful and aimed squarely at kids, but the slapstick, ragdoll humour will appeal to grown-ups too.

Park Beyond may lack a bit of meat on its bones, but it's a mostly stress-free park building experience nonetheless.

New Tales from the Borderlands is a worthy successor to Telltale's magnum opus, with great writing and an engaging story.

Obsidian’s modern masterpiece is less shiny on console, but still a sprawling RPG worth exploring.

The problems that plagued the original 2010 launch have been all but completely eradicated, and A Realm Reborn has the potential to be a truly stunning MMORPG. While the early quests are too simple, too undemanding and too familiar for RPG veterans, they do serve as a fine entry point to help acclimatise you to the world.

Destroy All Humans 2! - Reprobed is a chaos-induced joyride through various cities on Earth, using plenty of weapons to get the job done. Some of the humour feels outdated, but there's no denying the fun to be had causing tons of destruction.

Bright and beautiful, frenetic and challenging – it’s a wonderful puzzle game that works brilliantly on the PS Vita. There’s not a lot of content, though, and once you get bored of trying to climb the leaderboards you’re unlikely to go back for a blast of the puzzle mode more than once or twice.

While Pode can be frustrating in it’s lack of communication it is a rather beautiful thing when experienced with others.

If you have the time, Nobunaga’s Ambition is a rewarding and immersive experience; you’ll be bathing in its wealth of options and historical depth for months.

This anthology is worth picking up for Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix alone – the other items herein are delicious cherries on top of a massive sundae of RPG goodness, sprinkled with Disney magic.

Jammed full of the nuts-out, irreverent humour that has come to be synonymous with the brand, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel firmly refuses to fix what ain’t broke and delivers what arguably amounts to a feature-length expansion to Borderlands 2, but still manages to be utterly engrossing at the same time. Looting, laughing and butt-slamming your way across the moon couldn’t be more fun.

Adding plenty of new content and lore to enhance the story of the original game, Subject 2923 is an excellent expansion for Remnant: From the Ashes.

The Jackbox Party Pack 7 features a wide range of games, bringing highly accessible fun to the masses with each funny and addictive inclusion.

Crucially, it also offers great value, with a ton to see and do and some well-worked cross platform opportunities.

The story is interesting and moderately compelling, and lasts a decent amount of time to boot. The missions can feel a little bit easy and overly repetitive, but when you’re just playing it in 30 – 60 minute chunks, it doesn’t feel as bad as it otherwise might.

A fun and surprisingly deep city-builder.

PGA Tour 2K21 is a lot of fun to play, with the best gameplay in a golf game to date. The courses look beautiful, and the presentation is on point as well. Whilst the career mode is quite basic, it never ruins the enjoyment of the game.

Like Left 4 Dead before it, Evolve is a game that feels slightly under-nourished at times, but which takes the crummy old co-op FPS wheel and totally re-invents it.

Another Code: Recollection features two great games in one package, featuring a deep and well-written story, and some excellent puzzles.

Salvation is the strongest of the four DLC packs and is a high note for Treyarch to go out on for this instalment of Call of Duty.

The Banished Vault is an intricately designed strategy with plenty of layers, however, there's a truly satisfying gameplay loop at its core.

It’s creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky. It’s altogether ooky, just let Fireproof Games’ give you the willies.

Deemo is a worthy addition to the Vita’s growing collection of music games.

Nexomon: Extinction is a fun monster collecting game, with great writing, that ultimately struggles to differentiate itself much from its peers.

Anomaly Agent is a genre-bending, time-twisting, gun-toting, knuckle-crackin’ badass of a game, waiting to chuck you around and leave you breathless on the floor, ready for round two.

More of what Shovel Knight fans love, and a superb entry point for people new to the series, Spectre of Torment is a great take on modernised nostalgia.

Lords of the Fallen is an enjoyable, challenging game, and the aesthetics are out of this world, but it suffers at times from a lack of focus.

Put simply, it’s old school platforming done right, a wonderful alternative to Mario that is definitely worth adding to any Wii U owners’ collection.

Mr. Driller Drill Land is an easy to learn but hard to master arcade puzzler that has brilliant music, responsive controls, and a ton of personality.

Stormblood is the perfect expansion for Final Fantasy XIV players who want something new and refreshing. With gorgeous visuals, new areas to explore and an immersive questline, it’s something players won’t want to miss.

Sparkle 2 is a simple yet effective time waster that offers plenty of hours of fun before it inevitably starts to feel a bit repetitious.

Pacer is an adrenaline-fuelled racer with tons of replayability, and plenty of customisation options to make each win count.

Visual shortcomings and questionable first impressions aside, Foul Play is a cheery, bright-eyed, delightful roaming beat-em-up that, through superior, fluid and engrossing combat mechanics, has arguably swiped the crown of Beat-’em-up King right off of Castle Crashers' head.

This is a nice showcase for how a mobile game should be ported to the Switch. It includes all the content and supports all input methods. If you enjoy horror jump scare like movies and puzzle games, this is a no brainer purchase. It is accessible and has tweaks to make it better for different kinds of gamers.

Period Cube is a good otome visual novel with great visuals, interesting characters, and nice music but one with a derivative and cheesy story that let it down.

Impossible to dislike thanks to superb combat and great characters. 80s inspired gaming never felt so good.

The changes to the running game are infuriating at first but really become great once you’re accustomed to them, and the passing game, although not as prominent compared to previous years, is still great fun.

Industria takes inspiration from title like Bioshock and Half-Life, featuring a fantastic story with some decent gunplay and puzzles as well.

WRC Generations is a solid effort that ends KT Racing's time at the helm, acting as a greatest hits for the series. It may not offer tons of content or any substantial additions, but the controls are tight, and it looks the best it's ever looked before.

With Earth Defense Force 6 the voice acting is hilarious, there's some cheesy dialogue, loads of shouting, chanting and singing, and a vibe that doesn’t take itself seriously at all. It is brilliant.

Skylanders may be facing tougher competition this year, but with Superchargers it’s stepped up its game to match.

Hacktag is a wonderful experience and a fine example of how asymmetry in gameplay design can create an interesting dynamic of teamwork. It’s a unique spin on co-op games that is worth you and your friends’ time.

I’ll mention that this soundtrack is worth the price of admission itself but the story is fantastic and this is no doubt an experience you will remember.

Chronique des Silencieux is a wonderful detective game that never ever holds your hand, and if that sounds ideal to you then give it a look.

Equal parts unique experience and familiar homage, Massive Chalice provides humour, challenging strategy and a genuinely interesting base management system, and handles all of its various elements with confidence and aplomb.

Rainbow Billy is a positive and colourful adventure from start to finish, but the lack of challenge prevents it from reaching its full potential.

Tokyo Dark blends visual novel with point and click to create a terrifically dark story, filled with mystery. With eleven endings and so many choices to make, it goes well beyond the four hours of that first playthrough.

Tell Me Why deals with some sensitive subjects with respect and sensitivity, making the story both gripping and powerful in ways they've never done before.

A reasonable, lengthy but frustrating single player campaign paves the way for a compelling multiplayer experience the likes of which you’ve never seen before – visually speaking, anyway.

If you can take the difficulty on the chin, you'll experience a broad range of top-notch puzzles, that are well-executed and overlaid with a cheeky, playful tone. Rolling a ball around around a level shouldn't be this much fun.

It’s all silly and over the top, full of daft enemies and exaggerated characters, and it positively screams “I am a game! Have fun with me!” Sometimes, though, that’s exactly what you want.

Feels like a real return to form, with well-designed and vibrant environments matched with varied, exciting challenges throughout.

There's little else to say about Monster Truck Championship since October, but the visuals and performance have definitely been improved.

AI issues aside, Slightly Mad Studios has put together an astoundingly deep racing simulator with an enormous amount of content.

Hatsune Miku Project Mirai DX is an extremely cute and fun version of our favourite vocaloid’s rhythm game for 3DS.

Sabotage is a good introduction to the DLC schedule for Infinite Warfare, with some solid multiplayer maps and a very strong Zombies outing.

It never makes you feel like you have to spend money, it gives you plenty of things to do and, while there’s a point where it would seem that you can’t play any more unless you spend some cash, all you have to do is wait a little while and you’ll be able to play more without any problems.

It's great to return to Dunwall ahead of next year's sequel, but this Definitive Edition doesn't add anything to the overall Dishonored experience.

Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate is the ultimate version of Dead or Alive 5 (to date), but its additions serve more to please existing Team Ninja fanatics than to make the game more appealing to a general audience.

The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication is filled with some excellent scares, wrapped up in an interesting story and some well-designed puzzles.

Utterly brutal, The Walking Dead is back with multiple bangs. Telltale emotionally batter us over the head repeatedly, telling us to forget things that matter to us in real life.

Partisans 1941 is a very good game in its own right, though it comes a little too close to imitating its inspiration. But if you can look past that, tactics fans will have a blast.

It’s a real breath of fresh air to travel around an open world with such wild abandon, and the variety of enemies combines with the general movement to make fun the most important aspect of the whole package.

Addictive gameplay challenges and a smorgasbord of enemies, game mechanics, and locations make Midnight Fight Express a superb indie brawler.

By modern standards, the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection is far from perfect, but without these games, modern standards wouldn't exist

Price is a sticky issue, too. It’s simply too much for a game that, despite its status, is showing its age visually and mechanically.

An innovative auto-runner with a AAA shine.

It would be easy to sit and reel off a list of things Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS doesn’t have, but it’s better to focus on what it is. And what it is, is a functionally excellent, portable version of Super Smash Bros.

The Atelier Arland Series Deluxe Pack brings together 3 classic Atelier games for modern systems and while the ports could have been better, these are still some great and relaxing JRPGs.

Fae Farm is a little rough around the edges, but there's so much to do with satisfying pacing and tons of loveable characters to meet.