If nothing else, it whets the appetite for next year’s big Onimusha revival, so perhaps that’s job done after all.

People of Note offers a visually arresting tableau, scored by a collection of agreeable tunes in genres from rap to rock. The developers’ love of puns delivers a regular supply of chuckles and a smattering of optional puzzles based on everything from moving blocks to mathematics adds novelty to the gameplay. But aside from Cadence’s slight obnoxiousness, People of Note is less of a hit because the music at the heart of the story is only loosely connected to the gameplay and the songs themselves are short on memorable hooks.

High on Life 2 falls between too many stools to be worthy of a seat at the top table. Its humour will be divisive, sure, but provides plenty of laughs. The gameplay never quite clicks despite propelling you through the story at a fair clip. But its wonkiest pillar is the technical instability of its world, which is rife with glitches that swallow characters into walls, overlap dialogue or, unforgivably, make completing a quest impossible.

Star Wars buffs will find much to relish here as Outlaws shines a bright light on fresh parts of the galaxies untouched by the relentless flow of TV spin-offs. But this attention to detail may be lost on players seeking a power fantasy akin to 2023’s Star Wars Jedi Survivor, or a more inventive take on Ubisoft’s overworked open-world blueprint.

This remaster has its moments, blending spoofery and comedic violence, but this 18-year-old now feels a little immature.

The developers build an evocative monastic backdrop using painterly visuals and a cast of eccentric characters, overlaid with stealth mechanics and puzzle solving. Nonetheless, some glitchy animations and wonky interface design hint at a limited budget for playtesting. The Stone of Madness may not have the panache and depth of say, Shadow Gambit, but it’s an unorthodox prison sentence worth serving.

It's not that Resistance is impossible to resist but this war machine has been finely honed over several instalments and offers a thrilling if predictable ride.

Outside of Screamer’s punishing story mode lies a more persuasive set of challenges, time trials and multiplayer races. Yet as a whole it rarely generates the irresistible momentum that drives you to come back.

The heart of Bahnsen Knights, is therefore the conversational back and forth, elevated by sharp exchanges crafted by the team behind related pulpy visual novels Mothmen 1966 and Varney Lake. The allegorical plot may not take us very far but the flavoursome characterisation of this freakish group justifies the price of admission, which on most platforms is less than a tenner.

Peach’s adventure may not possess the sheer wit and flair on show in Nintendo’s most recent tour de force, Super Mario Bros Wonder, but it acts as a long-overdue promotion for a promising heroine.

Still Wakes The Deep reminds me of John Carpenter’s equally implausible The Thing, an enjoyable schlock-horror set in the Antarctic. But if you can suspend your disbelief about this rigged rollercoaster, you’ll find layers of depth beneath the surface.

It has constructed a fascinatingly hostile and deliberately unstable environment. But the lack of strong characterisation, the clumsy interface and the sheer anarchy of the world are obstacles to truly enjoying being in the zone.

It acts fast but substitutes speed for intelligence and as much as it would like to be the new Titanfall, it doesn’t quite have the moves.

Though a little rough and ready round the edges, Atomfall’s nuclear fiction is an interesting fusion of ideas, albeit one that isn’t going to blow you away.

Not everyone will warm to Akka Arrh’s ascending difficulty level but at a mere €20 for the mind melt of this PSVR2 version, it’s cheaper than hallucinogenic drugs and probably less risky too.

Wizardry lacks the historical extras that made the Atari and Minter exhumations so fascinating, its bare-bones presentation exposing a game very much of its time that has long been surpassed.

Everyone’s a bit anxious, the pacing is all over the place and humour is in rare supply. Buffy, this ain’t.

Grasshopper makes games like no other, a superpower in which the sheer creative force outweighs the sometimes-juvenile side-effects. Romeo is a Dead Man may not always be coherent and is often not pretty but it nonetheless possesses something compelling – as if you can’t look away.

F1 24 takes the most appreciable leaps for the franchise in years but for all that it remains just an incremental upgrade for owners of the 2023 version. If you haven’t kept up to speed lately with Codemasters’ revisions, however, then F1 24 is the new model to get the pulse racing.

My initial impression was that this periodic monotony was intended to function as a meta-commentary on your job as a dogsbody. But my overriding feeling might just be classed as boredom. You get the sense that a more tightly wound plot with expanded gameplay to hook the player could have turned the Halibut’s tale into a story that could really reel you in.

You will want to keep playing just for the sheer pleasure of the sharp dialogue – by turns sarcastic and poignant but at its heart drolly funny. Less successful is the musical aspect that notionally underpins the whole expedition – the tunes at your gigs are pleasant enough but the mini-games that accompany them quickly become tedious. Reigns: Beyond shows the formula might be running out of legs. But priced at under a fiver it offers plenty of laughs even though it’s more of a game that plays you than you play.

WoW can rest easy knowing Throne and Liberty won’t steal its crown any time soon. But NCSoft’s RPG has a light touch that has clearly taken many lessons from its inspirations, brought some new ideas to the table and won’t constantly nag you to open your wallet.

If Fitness Boxing 3 gets you moving even a little bit more than usual, perhaps that’s job done. But you might just as well look up a few boxercise videos on YouTube and save your money for a new pair of trainers.

As likeably silly as it is, To a T feels like an extended episode of Sesame Street that drags on too long between the good bits. Takahashi has again delivered a singularly unusual design but one that lacks the gameplay loop that Katamari wielded so compulsively.

Eternal Strands offers minimal handholding and opens a vast world to explore, so you’re often left fumbling around in empty spaces to discover the path to your next quest. But even this padding just leaves you yearning for the next exhilarating encounter you know will be around the corner.

Herdling succeeds on the level of a wistful voyage, the idea that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive. Yet its gameplay elements are undermined by the awkward controls of the herd, who turn uncooperative at odd moments. Puzzles provide scant challenge compared to the Far games, and stealth sequences involving a giant angry owl outstay their welcome. This shepherding lark is not quite the dream job it first looks.

A steady drumbeat of patches has eliminated the worst excesses of the underlying code. But it will still take a long uphill march for Asobo to crest the summit of its ambitions. For now, this flight is just struggling to get off the ground.

The evocative presentation carries Nutmeg! a long way, particularly for gamers of a certain age. So add an extra star to the rating above if you’re a child of the 80s.